To some extent, Kaufman admired a man with a little larceny in his heart, and at the very least, Lang’s record gave him nowhere else to go, something Kaufman knew would make him extremely loyal. And so he’d brought Lang on board, given him an almost unlimited budget and sent him to work on the long shots, to swing for the fences. Lang’s marching orders were simple: to find Kaufman’s next wave, to bridge the gap between the theoretical and feasible. So far Lang had struggled.

The scientist scratched his head and then pulled the black plastic-framed glasses from his face, rubbing at the indentions they left behind on the bridge of his nose. As was his habit, he answered a question with a question.

“Why are there no abstracts or explanations attached to any of this?” he asked. “Why all this raw data?”

Kaufman had wondered about that himself, but in truth he liked the raw data approach—it forced Lang to reach his own conclusions. “I don’t know,” he said. “Is it a problem for you?”

Lang put his glasses back on. “I can run it. The problem is, a lot of it seems …”

“Fabricated?” Kaufman asked.

“Beyond the realm of current theory,” Lang replied.

Kaufman exhaled. He had always been an expert at reading people and knowing which buttons to push. With some he used kindness, on others force; with Lang it was constant reminders of his failure to spur him on, to push him into taking steps he would otherwise avoid.

“As a research scientist,” he said, “you are without peer, but your thinking is shallow. The NRI stole these crystals from the Museum of Natural History and created a fake story to cover the theft. Spent millions of dollars testing them and then encrypted the results in the highest level of code. They then dispatched two separate teams to the depths of the Amazon to find the source of these crystals. Now, what does the scientific method tell you about that?”

Lang held his tongue.

“I’ll answer for you,” Kaufman said. “They think they’ve discovered a new source of power—a clean, unlimited source of power, nuclear energy without that annoying little problem known as nuclear waste.”

Lang nodded. “Fusion.”

“Exactly,” Kaufman said.

Nuclear fusion was considered by many to be the energy source of the twenty-first century—the solution to a world choking on fumes, sweating under global warming and allegedly running short of fossil fuels. After all, nuclear fusion had already given us the hydrogen bomb, and a similar type of reaction powers the sun. As the theory went, if such a process could be harnessed without incinerating entire cities, fusion could power the world. And as a result, nations around the world were studying it, and almost universally they were focused on a particular type of fusion: hot fusion.

To be a player in the hot fusion game required a massive entrance fee. The effort cost billions, took years, and so far had led only to monstrous machines that actually used more energy than they produced, the equivalent of burning two barrels of oil to pump one more up to the surface.

Despite that fact, billions more were going into the next step, a sprawling project in the south of France called the ITER, an acronym which in Latin meant “the passage” or “the way.” Whether that moniker would prove true or false was anyone’s guess, but certainly it would take a long time to find out. The latest estimates had construction of the ITER lasting through 2018. And even if all went as planned, it would only lead to bigger, more expensive prototypes before any working reactors were produced.

Estimates on the debut of a viable system ranged from fifty to a hundred years. And in all likelihood, the energy source of the twenty-first century wouldn’t actually arrive until sometime in the twenty-second. A date that was too far off for Richard Kaufman.

Instead, he pursued a different goal, a smaller, more controversial form, one forever tainted by the scandal of its birth: cold fusion.

“Now,” Kaufman began, “assuming they’re not the village idiots, are they or are they not onto something?”

Lang hedged. “If their measurements are accurate, then yes, they may be on to something.”

“Explain.”

“Based on their descriptions, it appears that they studied four crystals, two of which contained inclusions, filaments of palladium. And yes, almost every successful cold fusion experiment that’s been run has used palladium. Even Fleishman and Pons used palladium before they were burned at the stake as heretics.”

Fleishman and Pons were the researchers who’d first discovered cold fusion. They were hailed for a while, before the hot fusion community, fearing for their grants and endowments, attacked and savaged both them and their experiments. Very quickly Fleishman and Pons found their reputations destroyed, their concept shunned and treated as a hoax. In the aftermath, scientific journals followed suit, refusing to publish papers on cold fusion, while mainstream universities barred their fellows from working the field. To even express an interest in the subject was considered the death knell for a career.

“Palladium,” Kaufman repeated, one eyebrow raised. “Interesting. What else?”

Lang plucked one of the printouts from the stack and handed it to Kaufman. “If the NRI is correct, the crystals show the following: a background level of radiation consistent with a low energy reaction, indications of metallic transmutation on the inclusion, primarily streaks of silver and copper at the tip. A high concentration of sulfur in the quartz. And a measurable residue of trapped, gaseous tritium.”

Kaufman studied the printout, moved by the magnitude of the moment. Tritium was the one element they’d been looking for, a radioactive waste product that could only form during a nuclear reaction of some kind. The inclusion’s other properties were rare and extremely odd, and they could almost be explained, except for the presence of the tritium. It proved that the crystal had been used in a reaction that released nuclear energy. Its continued existence could only mean that the reaction had been a type of cold fusion.

“If their data are correct,” Lang repeated.

Kaufman had no doubt that the NRI had gotten its data correct. “What else does the data describe?”

Lang acquiesced. “First of all, the crystals are primarily quartz. But they’re also filled with microscopic lines running in geometrically precise patterns—almost molecular in size. I’m talking several angstroms, here. I don’t know how they were made or what they’re for, but they act like fiber-optic channels, directing specific wavelengths of light through the crystal while screening others out. The effect is only visible under a polarized light.”

“What wavelengths are we talking about?”

“High-energy spectrum: violet, ultraviolet and beyond. According to the report, the tunnels are present in all four crystals, and they’re similar on the crystals containing the inclusions. But the pattern on the other two is far less complex.” Lang paused. “The NRI report tentatively labeled them as blanks. You know, like a hunk of metal that hasn’t been drilled and lathed into whatever it was supposed to become yet.”

“What about the last data transfer?” Kaufman asked. “Were you able to make sense of that?”

Lang reached over and clicked open a new program on the monitor. “There you go,” he said smugly.

Kaufman saw a bunch of dots spread randomly about the computer screen—dots of various sizes—along with a few streaks and arcs on a black background. The screen was divided into four by a pair of lines that crossed in the center. It meant nothing to him.

“What am I looking at?” Kaufman said.

“This is the data displayed in a graphical form,” Lang replied.

“Is this some kind of distribution?”

“No,” Lang said. “Of all things, they’re star charts—four separate panels of them.”