The Green Trap Read online

  THE GREEN TRAP

  Tor Books by Ben Bova

  As on a Darkling Plain

  The Astral Mirror

  Battle Station

  The Best of the Nebulas (editor)

  Challenges

  Colony

  Cyberbooks

  Escape Plus

  The Green Trap

  Gremlins Go Home (with Gordon R. Dickson)

  Jupiter

  The Kinsman Saga

  Mercury

  The Multiple Man

  Orion

  Orion Among the Stars

  Orion and the Conqueror

  Orion in the Dying Time

  Out of the Sun

  Peacekeepers

  Powersat

  The Precipice

  Privateers

  Prometheans

  The Rock Rats

  Saturn

  The Silent War

  Star Peace: Assured Survival

  The Starcrossed

  Tales of the Grand Tour

  Test of Fire

  Titan

  To Fear the Light (with A.J. Austin)

  To Save the Sun (with A.J. Austin)

  The Trikon Deception (with Bill Pogue)

  Triumph

  Vengeance of Orion

  Venus

  Voyagers

  Voyagers II: The Alien Within

  Voyagers III: Star Brothers

  The Winds of Altair

  THE

  GREEN TRAP

  BEN BOVA

  A TOM DOHERTY ASSOCIATES BOOK

  NEW YORK

  The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you without Digital Rights Management software (DRM) applied so that you can enjoy reading it on your personal devices. This e-book is for your personal use only. You may not print or post this e-book, or make this e-book publicly available in any way. You may not copy, reproduce or upload this e-book, other than to read it on one of your personal devices.

  Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the author’s copyright, please notify the publisher at: us.macmillanusa.com/piracy.

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this novel

  are either fictitious or are used fictitiously.

  THE GREEN TRAP

  Copyright © 2006 by Ben Bova

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book,

  or portions thereof, in any form.

  This book is printed on acid-free paper.

  Book design by Mary A. Wirth

  A Forge Book

  Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

  175 Fifth Avenue

  New York, NY 10010

  www.tor.com

  Forge® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Bova, Ben, 1932–

  The green trap / Ben Bova.

  p. cm.

  ”A Tom Doherty Associates Book.”

  ISBN-13: 978-0-765-30924-2

  ISBN-10: 0-765-30924-6

  1. Microbiologists—Crimes against—Fiction. 2. Cyanobacteria—Fiction. 3. Hydrogen as fuel—Research—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3552.O84G74 2006

  813'.54—dc22

  2006004876

  First Edition: November 2006

  Printed in the United States of America

  0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Still and always to Barbara,

  to D. H (again),

  and

  to the memory of Melvin Calvin

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  My thanks to Eric Von Leue, who provided crucial technical advice and support. The section titled “Novel Reaction Produces Hydrogen” is reprinted with permission from Science News, the weekly newsmagazine of science, copyright 2005.

  Science knows no country, because knowledge belongs to

  humanity, and is the torch which illuminates the world.

  LOUIS PASTEUR (1822–1815)

  THE GREEN TRAP

  CONTENTS

  Gasoline Prices Expected to Climb Higher

  Tucson: The Mirror Lab

  Palo Alio: Calvin Research Center

  Redwood City: Days Inn

  Melvin Calvin

  Tucson: Steward Observatory

  Palo Alto: Cochrane Residence

  Palo Alto: Marriott Residence Inn

  Palo Alto: Calvin Research Center

  Greenhouse Gases Cause Rising Global Temperature

  Manhattan: Waldorf - Astoria Hotel

  Tucson: Student Recreation Center

  Tucson: Las Casita De Molina

  Tucson: Sunrise Apartments

  Tucson: Bmaa

  Brain-Destroying Algae

  Oracle, Arizona: Biosphere 2

  Cessna Citation VII: 38,000 Feet Above Nebraska

  Tucson: Sunrise Apartments

  White House Calls For New Technology As Solution To Energy Problems

  Tucson: Police Headquarters

  Tucson: Sunrise Apartments

  Tucson: Sunrise Apartments

  Is It Time To Shoot For The Sun?

  Arlington: Cambridge Savings Bank

  Revere: Four Points Sheraton Hotel

  America West Flight 64: Boston To Tucson

  Tucson: Sunrise Apartments

  Dallas: Gould Energy Corporation Headquarters

  Tucson: Sunrise Apartments

  Hydrogen Fuel Storage For Automobiles

  Tucson: Arizona Inn

  Manhattan: Gould Tower

  Manhattan: Gould Trust Headquarters

  Is Hydrogen Clean?

  Interstate 95: Bridgeport, Connecticut

  Boston: Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum

  Hybrid Sales Lag

  Boston: Top of the Pru Restaurant

  Palo Alto: Calvin Research Center

  Manhattan: Gould Trust Headquarters

  Boston: Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum

  Fuel for Thought

  Washington, D.C.: Old Ebbitt Grill

  Washington, D.C.: Dirksen Senate Office Building

  Washington, D.C.: J.W. Marriott Hotel

  Washington, D.C.: Senator Bardarson’s Office

  Washington, D.C.: National Academy Of Sciences

  New York: United Nations Secretariat Building

  Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University

  Washington, D.C.: J.W. Marriott Hotel

  Catch-22 for Lite Fuel

  Philadelphia: The Franklin Institute

  Washington, D.C.: J.W. Marriott Hotel

  Interstate 95: Delaware Memorial Bridge

  Manhattan: Gould Trust Headquarters

  Washington, D.C.: J.W. Marriott Hotel

  Local Man’s Car Gets 250 Mpg

  Dulles, Virginia: Dulles International Airport

  Cabo San Lucas: Hotel De Las Flores

  Cabo San Lucas: Hotel De Las Flores

  Novel Reaction Produces Hydrogen

  Manhattan: Gould Trust Headquarters

  Manhattan: Gould Trust Headquarters

  Manhattan: Gramercy Park Hotel

  Palo Alto: Calvin Research Center

  San Francisco: Russian Hill

  Manhattan: Gould Trust Headquarters

  Palo Alto: Calvin Research Center

  Palo Alto: Calvin Research Center Parking Lot

  Tucson: Sunrise Apartments

  Tucson International Airport

  Tucson: Police Headquarters

  Las Vegas: Mccarran International Airport

  Gould Trust To Acquire Calvin Research Center

  San Francisco: Russian Hill

  Terrorist Scandal Hits Unesco Official

  San Francisco: Russian Hillr />
  Palo Alto: Calvin Research Center

  Manhattan: Gould Trust Headquarters

  Gould Energy Corp. Confirms Hydrogen Fuel Breakthrough

  Ua Professor Killed In Hit-And-Run Accident

  Gasoline Prices

  Expected to Climb Higher

  WASHINGTON—There’s pump shock at every corner gas station, with prices well over $7 a gallon—and the government says you’d better get used to it.

  The Energy Department projects high gasoline prices at least through next year as producers struggle to keep up with demand, which has not slackened appreciably despite rising prices.

  Crude oil prices climbed to an all-time high of $112 per barrel yesterday, triggering a 634-point drop in the Dow-Jones Industrial average on the New York Stock Exchange.

  “We can expect to see gasoline prices soar as high as nine or ten dollars a gallon this summer,” said James Dykes, chairman of the Federal Reserve Board. “Gas prices have nowhere to go but up.”

  Energy Department officials blamed the climbing oil prices on the growing demand for petroleum by China and India, two of the fastest-growing economies in the world, coupled with the fact that global oil production has peaked and is unlikely to increase.

  “There hasn’t been a major new oil field discovered in well over a decade,” said Roberta Groves, head of Gould Energy Corporation’s explorations division. “With global oil production flat and global demand increasing steadily, oil prices will continue to climb for the foreseeable future.”

  —FINANCIAL NEWS

  TUCSON:

  THE MIRROR LAB

  Paul Cochrane dreaded leaving the Mirror Lab. Set beneath the massive slanting concrete of the University of Arizona’s football stadium, the lab was only a three-minute walk from Cochrane’s office, but it was three minutes in the blazing wrath of Tucson’s afternoon sun. It was only the first week of May, yet Cochrane—who had come from Massachusetts less than a year ago—had learned to fear the merciless heat outside.

  As he limped down the steel stairway toward the lab’s lobby, he mentally plotted his course back to his office at the Steward Observatory building, planning a route that kept him in the shade as much as possible.

  He was a slim, quiet man in his mid-thirties, wearing rimless glasses that made him look bookish. Dressed in the requisite denim jeans and short-sleeved shirt of Arizona academia, he still wore his Massachusetts running shoes rather than cowboy boots. And still walked with a slight limp from the auto crash that had utterly devastated his life. His hair was sandy brown, cut short, his face lean and almost always gravely serious, his body trim from weekly workouts with the local fencing group. Although his Ph.D. was in thermodynamics, he had accepted a junior position with the Arizona astronomy department, as far from Massachusetts and his earlier life as he could get.

  He reached the lobby, nodded to the undergrads working the reception desk, and took a breath before plunging into the desert heat outside the glass double doors. He saw that even though the window blinds behind the students had been pulled shut, the hot sunlight outside glowed like molten metal.

  His cell phone started playing the opening bars of Mozart’s overture to The Marriage of Figaro.

  Grateful for an excuse to stay inside the air-conditioned lobby for a moment longer, Cochrane pulled the phone from his shirt pocket and flipped it open.

  His brother’s round, freckled, red-haired face filled the phone’s tiny screen.

  Surprised that his brother was calling, Cochrane plopped onto the faux leather couch next to the lobby doors. “Hello, Mike,” he said softly as he put the phone to his ear. “It’s been a helluva long time.”

  “Hi, there, little brother. How’s your suntan?”

  Michael Cochrane was a microbiologist working for a private biotech company in the Bay Area of California.

  “I don’t tan, you know that.”

  Mike laughed. “Yeah. I remember when we’d go out to Lynn Beach. You’d get red as a lobster, and the next day you were white as Wonder Bread again.”

  Cochrane grimaced, remembering how painful sunburn was. And other hurts. His marriage. The auto wreck. Jennifer’s funeral. Jen’s mother screaming at him for letting her drive after drinking. He hadn’t even been out of the wheelchair yet. Everybody in the church had stared at him. Just the sound of Mike’s voice, still twanging with the old Massachusetts inflection, brought it all back in a sickening rush.

  “I try to stay out of the sun,” he said tightly.

  “So you switched to Arizona,” said Michael. “Smart move.”

  Keeping his voice steady, Cochrane asked, “How long has it been, Mike? Six months?” He knew it had been longer than that. Mike hadn’t called since Cochrane had asked his brother to repay the thirty thousand dollars he’d loaned him.

  “Don’t be an asshole, Paulie.”

  “Come on, Mike. What’s going on? The only time you call is when you want—”

  “Stuff it,” Michael snapped. “I’ve got news for you. Big news. I’m gonna pay you back every penny I owe. With interest.”

  “Sure you will.” Cochrane couldn’t keep the sarcasm out of his voice.

  “I damned well will, wise-ass. In another few days. Your big brother’s going to be a rich man, Paulie. I’ve come up with something that’s gonna make me a multimillionaire.”

  Cochrane raised his eyes heavenward. Ever since they’d been teenagers Mike had touted one get-rich-quick scheme after another. His bright, flip-talking big brother. Quick with ideas but slow to do the work that might make the ideas succeed. The latest one had cost Cochrane a chunk of his insurance settlement from the accident.

  “Mikey, if you want to get rich you shouldn’t have gone into research,” he said into the phone.

  “Like hell,” his brother replied tartly. “What I’ve come up with is worth millions.”

  “Really?”

  “You bet your ass, little brother. Hundreds of millions.”

  Cochrane started to say Really? again, but caught himself. Mike had a short fuse.

  “Well, that’s great,” he said instead. “Just what is it?”

  “Come on over here and see for yourself.”

  “To San Francisco?”

  “Palo Alto.”

  “Near the big NASA facility.”

  “That’s in Mountain View,” Michael corrected.

  “Oh.”

  “So when are you coming? This weekend?”

  “Why can’t you just tell me about it? What’s so—”

  “Too big to talk on the phone about it, Paulie. C’mon, I know you. You’ve got nothing cooking for the weekend, you dumb hermit.”

  Cochrane thought about it bleakly. Mike was right. His social life was practically nonexistent. He wouldn’t have a class to teach until Tuesday morning. And there were all those frequent flier miles he’d piled up in the past eighteen months attending astronomy conferences.

  “Okay,” he heard himself say halfheartedly. “This weekend.” He never could oppose Mike for very long.

  “Good! E-mail me your flight number and arrival time and I’ll meet you at the airport. See ya, squirt.”

  PALO ALIO:

  CALVIN RESEARCH CENTER

  Mike wasn’t at the airport to meet him.

  Cochrane’s Southwest Airlines flight from Tucson arrived at San Francisco International twelve minutes early, but the plane had to wait out on the concrete taxiway for twenty minutes before a terminal gate was freed up. Once inside the terminal Cochrane searched for his brother at the gate, then walked down the long corridor pulling his wheeled travel bag after him. Mike wasn’t at the security checkpoint, either.

  “Just like him,” Cochrane muttered to himself. He went down to the baggage claim area even though he only had the one piece of luggage, on the off chance that Mike might be waiting for him there.

  Nettled, Cochrane yanked out his cell phone and called his brother. The answering message replied brightly, “Hey, I can’t take your call r
ight now. Leave your name and number and I’ll get back to you pronto.”

  Anger seething inside him, Cochrane took the bus to the Budget car rental site, phoned Mike again while he stood in line, and again got the cheerful recorded message. He started to call Mike’s home number, but by then he was at the counter, where a tired-looking overweight Asian-American woman asked for his driver’s license and credit card.

  It was late afternoon, with the sun still a good distance above the low hills that ran along the coast. Speeding down U.S. 101, Cochrane decided to pass his hotel and go straight to Mike’s office. He’s probably working in his lab, Cochrane told himself. He never did have any sense of time.

  The Calvin Research Center was nothing more than a single windowless boxlike building off the highway in Palo Alto. Not even much of a sign on it: merely a polished copper plaque by the front entrance. Cochrane parked his rented Corolla in a visitor’s slot and walked through the pleasant late-afternoon breeze to the smoked-glass double doors. The young woman behind the receptionist’s desk smiled up at him.