Read Jaunt for Free Online Page B

behind was fair game to not only the Chinese, but the Confederation, if they decided to start sniffing around their backyard. And whatever they had here was just strange enough to get the Confederation ample reason to dig around for more.
    “Then I’ll try to exhaust every avenue at our disposal,” Waters answered.
    De Lis nodded, then departed with Gilmour and Valagua, leaving Mason as her sole assistant.
    “Ready for some action?” Waters asked the agent.
    “What can I do, Doctor?”
    “First of all,” she smiled, “stop calling me doctor. It’s Stacia, all right?”
    “Gotcha.”
    Mason retrieved a sterile container from across the lab and brought it over to Waters. She removed the lid, exposing the opalescent jewel and its many facets to the light again. Waters’ gloved hand enveloped the jewel, cradling it as she gently placed it inside the spectrometer’s hood, then dialed a set of commands into the keypad.
    The scanning plate hummed while the pair waited patiently for several moments, more than long enough, Waters thought, to receive a good spectrum from the relic.
    Scanning the spectrometer’s monitor for activity, Waters let out a deep, confused groan when the readout remained static, merely droning its usual mechanized voice, as if no object had been placed on the plate at all. She turned to Mason.
    A single eyebrow popped up on his face. “Maybe it’s just shy.”
    “I’ve never seen a spectrometer do this before...I don’t understand....” Waters tapped the scanning plate with her hand, causing the device to whine. Undaunted, she gave it a smack to its side for good measure.
    “Can we try scanning it again?” Mason asked. “If it’s malfunctioning, maybe there’s another analysis you can perform.”
    She sighed. “None as sensitive as this.” Waters tapped another button. “I’m programming it to run a simultaneous self-diagnosis while it scans the object. If it is a malfunction, we’ll be able to pinpoint it.”
    With the “START” button toggled, the spectrometer began its second attempt at solving the mystery of the jewel’s identity, and perhaps origin.
    Everything seemed normal, Mason thought, since the spectrometer hummed like before. He also didn’t see any black smoke streaming from the device, so they had that in their favor. His eyes drifted back to the spectrum readout. Once more, a dull red flatline was displayed, giving them no hint or clue as to the jewel’s composition.
    After the scan cycle had been completed, Waters looked at the machine with disguised disgust, the same visage she had tried to hide from Doctor de Lis a day ago, Mason noted. She linked her holobook in with the spectrometer’s computer and accessed the device’s self-diagnosis.
    Mason drew closer to glimpse the holobook’s results. “Well?”
    “There’s nothing wrong with the spectrometer,” she said, switching her holobook off. “It’s this jewel. Somehow it’s obscuring the sensor.”
    Incredulity slowly crept into Mason’s eyes.
    “Don’t ask me how,” she intoned, before Mason could even find the words. “I’ve never heard of any substance ever having been theorized to possess no spectrum.”
    They soon succumbed to the power of their collective awe, each wondering precisely what it was they had discovered in this remote corner of the world.
    Mason soon broke his silence. “What about a good old microscope?”
    “Hmm?”
    “Is there a microscope on board to get a visual picture of the jewel’s quantum structure?”
    “Yes...we do.” Even as Waters crossed over to an equipment cabinet, she still seemed to be lost in a daze, perhaps even lost to herself. When faced with an object that appeared to be contrary to all that she had learned and observed with her scientific background, the young doctor became a shadow of her professional self, perhaps unfairly humbling herself into self-doubt.
    Waters set the half-meter-barreled gamma particle microscope on a mobile tray cart. She