Endangered Ch. 11

"Damn it, Hailey." His exasperated words followed her. "I can't meet the people from NASA with a hard-on."

***

Chris and Hailey had been waiting with increasing nerves for over half an hour. It felt decidedly strange to twiddle one's thumbs in the President's dining room.

Despite tasteful decoration, the beautiful dark-wood table, and the exquisite chandelier above them, Chris thought it felt a bit lifeless. It looked more like a dollhouse or a museum than anything he would personally want to sit around in for a family meal.

After the temptations of the shower, Chris had dried their clothes with judicious use of one of his orbs. When you forbid water from entering a portion of space, instant garment drying is amongst the most mundane of applications.

Hailey was back in her original outfit, but his own shirt and hoodie were utterly ruined by drying blood. He'd tried to magically clean them, but the dead, ruptured cells had degraded into a complex mixture that flouted his ability to mentally define. It was no longer simply 'blood', not that there was anything simple about blood on a microscopic level. He now understood that thanks to Hailey. Therefore his magic failed to remove the browning stains, leaving the garments completely unpresentable. Absently, he wondered if it might have worked if he didn't know any better.

His jeans were barely any better, but as his last bastion against being presented to some of the nation's lead scientists in his underwear and a stolen bedsheet, he was about to wear them anyway.

Rogers saved the day. Apparently one of the Secret Service guys was really bulky too because the blue tracksuit and t-shirt Chris was given fit pretty damn well. He felt awkward wearing someone else's workout gear while Hailey redonned her tidy, flattering ensemble but there wasn't anything to be done about it.

Looking much like his imagined cliche of an early nineties street-hustler, he was ready to explain why he'd almost blown up the Moon.

There had almost been an incident when Agent Rogers was moving them through the family level to the dining room. The President's adult daughter came flying around a corner but was too engrossed by her cell phone to notice the presence of the unusual strangers. Chris and Hailey were bustled back into the bathroom before they could be seen. When she did stop, their escort stood staunch, pretending he was precisely where he was supposed to be and that nothing was amiss. He received only a brief glare and a small noise of exasperation for his trouble before the young woman swept on, intent on some mission of vital social importance.

The danger passed, Rogers snuck them down the lavish hallways and sequestered them in the dining room to await their meeting.

Distracted by their own nervous musings, Hailey and Chris both shot upward out of their chairs when the door clicked open and the President strode in. Like a queen in a hive, he was followed closely by a court of bustling personnel. Chris was mildly surprised to see the NASA guy from the press conference was there, looking even more tired and put-out than he had on TV.

"Well, here we all are," the President shrugged as two of his bodyguards did a quick inspection around the room. "Deputy Director Williamson, these are Christopher Baryst and Hailey Sibon. Chris is a government consultant... of sorts. He contacted me because he believed he could explain the incident on the Moon. I'm inclined to believe him, though I'll admit I didn't understand a lot of the details. That's why you're all here."

Ben Williamson eyed the two youngsters dismissively, sighed, and rubbed at his bloodshot eyes.

"Mr President," he spoke eventually, his deference pushed to the limit by exhaustion. "I haven't slept in well over twenty-four hours now, and you drag me down here for what? A couple of college freshmen? We've got the best minds in the world working on this, just give us some damn time. Please, Sir."

The NASA man added the last with a straightening of his back, as if he only just realised who he was addressing.

"Trust me, Ben. I know you're tired and I'm sorry, but you're going to want to hear this. I thought it was only fair you get the explanation from the horse's mouth after dealing with that rowdy lot of reporters this morning." The President smiled at the director before looking around the room as if trying to find someone. "Agitha? What have we got for lunch? I'm starving."

"It's a pea and ham soup, Sir, served with fresh brioche and a selection of cheeses and dried fruit," replied a stern-bunned middle-aged woman who'd been hovering just outside the doorway.

"Perfect!" he barked, with obnoxious enthusiasm. "Let's get down to it then."

"Coffee," Deputy Director Williamson groaned, glaring at Chris. "A whole carafe's worth of the darkest, nastiest stuff you know how to brew."

"That's the spirit." Robert clapped the man soundly on the back. "Now, let's sit down. Introduce your colleagues, why don't you?"

Dr Ivan Schmitt and Dr Isabella Kettering both looked confused and ill-prepared for the unorthodox meeting. It wasn't every day you got shoved into a small motorcade and bustled off to see the President, only for him to claim a couple of youngsters had figured out the mystery that had their entire agency scrambling.

Ivan's field of expertise was solar monitoring. The deputy director introduced him as having a long, solid career pointing telescopes and all kinds of sensors at various solar anomalies. Chris thought calling it a long career was probably putting it politely. He had the look of one of those people who was so committed to their work that they refused retirement. His appearance was tidy, but his body seemed to be thinning unhealthily in his advanced age. Despite the abundance of well-worn skin sagging around the bones of his thin face, his dark eyes were still sharp. At the moment they were attempting to skewer Chris through and through with a deadly shaft of accusation.

Dr Kettering, on the other hand, was a delight to look upon. If Chris had to guess she was in her early thirties, with a healthy, womanly figure. Most importantly to him, she had a friendly face, and eyes that were full of curiosity rather than reproach. The director explained that she worked on developing power systems for NASA's various spacecraft. She had several degrees, but her passion was engineering. After hearing 'fusion' and 'reactor' in Chris' over-the-phone CliffsNotes, the President had specifically requested that Williamson bring someone with knowledge of experimental power systems.

As the group took seats around the mahogany table, Chris noted the presence of several others in the room. A few Secret Service guys were, of course, aiming decidedly wary looks his way. After the drama out on the lawn, that wasn't exactly unexpected given their duty to protect the President at all costs.

There was also a professionally unobtrusive general, or perhaps a colonel, listening discreetly in the corner. By his uniform, Chris assumed he was with the Airforce, but he didn't know enough about rank insignia to decide how high up the chain of command he lay.

Most disturbing was the unexplained presence of a crisp-suited blonde woman taking notes by the door. Well, that was when she wasn't fixing him with a piercing, hawk-like gaze. She had a decidedly military look about her, and an air of confident untouchability that set the back of his neck tingling. Whoever she was, she was a predator. He was about to ask for her to be introduced when a balding fellow stepped up and opened a briefcase on the grand table.

"Before we go any further, we need to get everyone here covered by a nondisclosure and bump your clearance up a few levels," the President explained as papers were passed to the two scientists and their boss. "Nothing too untoward, I promise."

"Don't we need to sign anything?" Chris asked as the three grumbled and began flicking through the ridiculously officious documents.

"That's a little more complicated," the President mused. "So far it's been agreed that you're primarily answerable to the Synod, not the laws of the nation you reside in. That means you can't go round spilling secrets, but so long as I do the initial explanation of the situation, you shouldn't land in hot water. Most people here are already up to speed."

The strangeness of that statement caused a few wary glances between the scientists, but it also piqued their interest. As they began scratching out numerous initials and signatures, Chris looked to Hailey, whose chair was almost touching his now. He took her hand under the table and gave it a reassuring squeeze.

"I'm okay," she whispered under her breath, squeezing him right back.

An unspoken tension seemed to grow in the quiet dining room as the three NASA employees signed away their souls. Thankfully the promised coffee and refreshments arrived, pushed in on an ornate beverage trolly, interrupting a stare-down between Chris and 'that-hawkish-woman.' They were served in turn, and Chris eventually accepted a dark coffee served in fine china cup, complete with saucer and all. He barely knew what to do with the delicate thing, which didn't suit his large hands at all.

"Alright, folks, hold onto your horses," the President said when everyone had been served. A gleeful hint of mischief twinged the corners of his mouth into a rather unpresidential expression as the confidentiality agreements were collected. "It boils down to this. Magic is real, there have been mythical creatures living among us for millennia, and Chris here is a dragon. Yep, I know, it's a real mind-fuck, but everyone's going to have to deal with it someday soon. We're calling it the Revelation. There you have it. Discuss."

That didn't sit too well with sceptical science types. The disbelieving protestations were still going on several minutes later despite the President's level reasurances.

"Sir," Chris muttered across the table, "Perhaps a demonstration might help convince them?"

"Okay, Chris," Robert Falconer nodded thoughtfully. "Nothing too dangerous mind, my wife will kill me if you blast a hole in the wall."

And so, Chris got the attention of the room with a gruff clearing of his throat, downed the last of his coffee, and summoned a marble-sized orb into existence from the Ether. With his audience looking on is awed silence, he took a few moments to check his parameters. Air was passing in and out smoothly, not creating a dangerous pressure gradient. When he touched it, the light-devouring boundary resisted his finger's intrusion absolutely. That was good, no one would lose a chunk of their hand if they foolishly tried to swat it out of the air.

With a final glance around the room, he picked up his saucer, held it up for all to see, and slowly ran the orb back and forth through it five times. The result was an improbable piece of swiss-cheese porcelain, still intact without any sign of cracking.

"Be careful, the edges could be very sharp," he warned as he leaned across Hailey to slide the saucer to Dr Schmitt.

However, Ivan was convinced it was some sort of parlour trick. Williamson examined the plate suspiciously, but Dr Kettering soon discarded it when it was her turn, more intrigued by the floating ball of darkness that Chris repositioned right over his cup.

As he let a tiny stream of sand-like particles trickle out the bottom of the orb, the unintroduced woman by the door scribbled notes furiously, eyes alight as she glanced between her book and the magical display.

"It's incredible," Dr Kettering observed, cocking her head as she watched Chris' idle magic. "I can't help jumping to assumption that it's some sort of miniature black hole, but that's obviously not right."

Chris smiled, having struggled with the same terrifying prospect during his early experiments.

"I thought the same thing to begin with, but as you can see, matter can pass both ways. Plus, there's the fact that we aren't all having this crisis of belief from the inside of the thing, crushed into human-guacamole by overwhelming gravity."

"Preposterous!" Ivan interrupted with a disgusted grunt, flinging the holy saucer down. "Don't put any more crazy ideas in his head Isabella."

Chris could only shrug in the face of such obstinance. As the orb winked out of existence with a small flash of liberated photons, the argument resumed with even more fervor. It appeared he'd won over Dr Kettering though, or at least made her think. He didn't want to risk his usual demonstration of phase jumping, but clearly something more was required to hook the others. Stepping into the Ether anywhere near here wasn't something he wanted to repeat. With his options limited, he next concentrated hard to bring small, flickering flame to life in the palm of his hand.

"Well, that's easy!" Dr Schmitt protested. "You've got some sort of hydrocarbon being released from a tube running up your sleeve. A simple stage magician's deception!"

"Ivan, just stop for a minute and think about what you've seen," Isabella urged, a hint of exacerbation entering her tone. "Stop trying to justify fire for a minute, that was completely light-absorbing ball that somehow put holes in a tea-set. They're not asking you to throw special relativity out the window... Well, not just yet anyway, I hope? Just to keep a slightly more open-minded, and less confrontational perspective as they make their presentation."

"Fine, fine! I'll shut up. But I don't see how you stand for it, Isabella, I thought..."

"I could try something else?" Chris tried to help, though his dislike for the old grump was rising to critical levels. It turns out dragons don't appreciate the comparison to stage tricksters. "What would it take?"

"Believe it or not, I don't have all day for this," the President groused. "Chris, stop trying to convince them and just explain what the hell you were doing on the Moon. I'd like to hope someone in my leading science agency can wrap their head around it because I sure as hell can't."

"Okay, I guess." Chris nodded, wondering how best to do so..

"Well then doctors, suspend your disbelief for a minute and listen." Robert gestured for Chris to proceed.

"Hmm, where to start. Yesterday, after a couple weeks of experimentation, Hailey and I travelled to the Moon using my magical abilities. Our goal was to test the first step in our development of a viable fusion reactor, and well, we succeeded."

Silence rained, even the quiet scratching of pen on paper from the corner died for a moment.

"Haha! Sir, I'd heard you have a bit of a sense of humour, but this is... wow," the Deputy Director laughed, though not as desperately as in his TV performance. "You've really gone to some effort. I appreciate the motorcade and everything but..."

"We're not joking," Hailey finally spoke up, though her voice was quiet. "We visited the Apollo Eleven landing site, and I've got proof."

Everyone watched as she reached into the pocket of her coat and produced several of the trinkets they'd collected. She slid them the short distance down the table to Isabella; the black message disk, the cosmonauts' medals, and the Apollo One commemorative patches. All were neatly packaged in their own plastic baggies.

"Good thing you came prepared," Chris murmured. "This is one tough crowd."

"I took a video too," Hailey shocked him by sliding her phone over to the President.

"What? When? Hailey, why didn't you tell me?" Chris hissed under his breath.

"Sorry." The blonde rested her head against his shoulder as the scientists looked over the trinkets with increasing agitation.

Robert Falconer's eyebrows looked like they wanted to launch off his forehead as he pressed play and watched the slightly washed out clip. He couldn't help but get a little misty-eyed as he saw his flag returned to pristine glory and planted once again in the Moon's dusty soil.

"This is exactly the stuff we need for the Revelation press packages," he beamed at the scowling young man and passed Hailey's phone over for him to view. "I knew you were right for the job."

Chris thought he'd better keep his opinions to himself on that count. Robert had been supportive and lenient so far, and the man was writing his paychecks. Instead, he watched the video Hailey had taken of his little Moon-walk.

"Alright," he sighed, quickly planting a kiss in Hailey's hair. "I guess I forgive you. That does look pretty cool. It's actually the first time I've seen my dragon form from another perspective, too."

"May I please see it?" Isabella asked, leaving her two colleagues to quibble over the authenticity of the lunar artifacts. It appeared that Ivan's resolution was weakening, and the deputy director was glancing at the two youngsters more reverently than skeptically now.

"Sure." Hailey passed the phone over to the dark-haired scientist.

"That was you?" the woman asked Chris after the second playthrough.

"Yeah," Chris shrugged, feeling a bit embarrassed. "Though I never would have made it up there without Hailey. She's the brains of the operation."

"I'd like to hear more," Isabella prompted. While still uneasy with what she'd seen, the inexplicable excited her enough to put aside her disbelief and hear the rest of the story. Besides, it sounded like they were just about to get to the really juicy part. "You mentioned you were trying to test a fusion reactor? Is that what caused the energy burst we detected?"

"That's right," Hailey said cautiously. "We used one of Chris' orbs to create a hydrogen plasma, and compressed it to incredible density. We were only trying to see if we could seed some deuterium, we weren't prepared for the reaction to continue at an accelerated..."

"Impossible!" Ivan barked indignantly, thumping a wrinkled fist on the wooden table with renewed ardour. "You can't fuse pure hydrogen. The half-life of a proton in the sun is about one billion years before it even gets a chance to emit a positron."

"Yes, but..." Hailey tried.

"No buts, girl. This has been entertaining, I'll admit. You won't slip blatant fudgery like that past me," the old scientist said imperiously. He was pleased to see that he'd cowed the blonde upstart. "You're spinning lies and you're not even bothering to make them half believable!"

"Apologise," Chris threatened quietly, barely-restrained temper rising at the accusation.

"I... I won't!" Ivan spluttered back.

"Enough," the President stepped in. He could see that the dragon was about to escalate the defence of his girlfriend. "I want to hear the rest of what happened. No more interruptions, Dr Schmitt. Miss Sibon, please continue."

"Um, okay. Well... Chris has incredible control over anything going on inside one of his orbs. I'd already explained the current theory on beta decay as best I could. Our plan was to have him watching closely and wait for the first event we detected. We were hoping that with increased temperature, at least one might occur before we were forced to give up, and it did. When it happened, Chris got a 'feel' for what we were looking for and used his magic to slightly increase the chance of an up-quark changing to a down. It worked."

Shocked silence rained amongst the scientists. Even Ivan couldn't muster a protest, blinking owlishly with mouth agape. The President and everyone else looked to each other, shrugging their admission of ignorance.

"The reaction came alive as soon as I put that condition in place," Chris supported. "We were getting deuterium nucleating at a nice clip, and producing a ton of energy in the process."

"Incredible," Isabella breathed, her engineer's mind racing, leaping forward to potential application.

Everyone at the table was listening avidly now, wanting to hear more even if they didn't believe.

"We sort of got a bit carried away with congratulating ourselves at that stage," Hailey admitted sheepishly. "We didn't realise that the reaction was continuing on past helium-three so fast. It all happened so quickly."