Close Up the Sky by James L. Ferrell

the
mystery of the water was solved, so we programmed the computers with all the
information we had obtained from the initial test and ran a simulation.”
    Durant leaned
forward. He stared intently at Matt, as though whatever he was about to reveal
would go directly to the heart of the matter. "The computer simulation
indicated that if the stellarite was subjected to another fission test, the
quantity of the new isotope would exactly double. A third bombardment would
double that quantity, and so on until the entire mass was transformed into the
isotope, creating an entirely new element and totally destroying the
stellarite. Since the rate of change was so small, the computer estimated we
would be able to run almost unlimited tests before the transformation was
complete. At the rate of one test per week, it would take almost two hundred
years to use up the stellarite. Unfortunately, we didn't know how wrong we
were." He trailed off, becoming pensive for a moment.
    A short beep came
from the kitchenette. "Coffee's ready," Taylor announced. She went
over and brought back three steaming cups of the strong black liquid, handing
one to each of the men. The hot, bitter taste helped ease the tension Leahy was
feeling. He had been listening closely to Durant’s story, alert for a clue as
to how he fitted into this, but so far there was nothing.
    "Well, to
continue," Durant said. He put the coffee down and clasped his hands,
fingers interlocked. Leahy noted that he worked the fingertips nervously
against the backs of his hands. "A few days after the computer test, we
received the results from the chemists concerning the material recovered from
the reactor room. Their analysis showed the liquid to be ordinary seawater. The
plant material was identified as a marine plant, commonly called seaweed. That
part of the report was no surprise since we already suspected it. But the
second part was most amazing." He picked up his pipe and began playing
with it.
    "As I said
before, we sealed the water in airtight containers before shipping it to the
lab. The seaweed content was relatively dense, and for safety reasons none of
the technicians actually examined the material during its removal from the
chamber. Had we done so, the shock we received from the lab report would have
been considerably less. During the analysis, a living organism was discovered
in the water. That, in itself , was not unusual, since
all water contains some type of life. The shock was that this particular life
form was a trilobite, a kind of
crustacean that has been extinct since the Paleozoic era." Durant fell
silent, leaned back in his chair, and waited for Leahy's reaction.
    Leahy shook his
head in puzzlement. "I don't understand. How could seawater leak into a
nuclear reactor? There's no ocean within hundreds of miles, not to mention one
containing extinct shellfish, or whatever it was."
    “That’s just the
point,” Durant replied in a quiet voice. “Millions of years ago there was an ocean here.
In fact, the entire New Mexico desert was once a sea.”
    Leahy shifted to
the edge of his chair. He looked back and forth from Durant to Taylor. "What
do you mean?" His voice was almost a whisper. "Are you saying the
water in the reactor came from an ocean that existed a million years ago, here
on this spot?" Even as he asked it, the enormity of the question shocked
him.
    “I don’t blame you
for being skeptical, Matt, but it’s true,” Durant answered. “That’s the same
reaction we all had when we realized the implication of the report. No one
wanted to believe it, but there was only one explanation. We explored every
conceivable way the phenomenon could have occurred, but none of them fit the
facts. There was no way to avoid coming back to our original theory. The water
and its contents were somehow pulled forward into our time from a bygone era. As
impossible as it sounded, we could not dispute the evidence. Once we accepted
the truth, we were able to get on with