Wouk - A Hole in Texas

Copyright 2004 by Herman Wouk

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

Little, Brown and Company

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First eBook Edition: April 2004

The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and without any intent on the authors part. Where celebrated public personages briefly appear or are mentioned, no historical accuracy concerning them is intended.

The author is grateful for permission to reprint Me And Bobby McGee, words and music by Kris Kristofferson and Fred Foster 1969 (renewed 1997), TEMI COMBINE INC. All rights controlled by COMBINE MUSIC CORP. and administered by EMI BLACKWOOD MUSIC INC. All rights reserved. International copyright secured.

ISBN: 978-0-7595-1066-1

Books by Herman Wouk

Novels

Aurora Dawn

City Boy

The Caine Mutiny

Marjorie Morningstar

Youngblood Hawke

Dont Stop the Carnival

The Winds of War

War and Remembrance

Inside, Outside

The Hope

The Glory

A Hole in Texas

Plays

The Traitor

The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial

Natures Way

Nonfiction

This Is My God

The Will to Live On

To my brother

Victor Wouk, PhD,

California Institute of Technology 42

with admiration and love

It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress.

MARK TWAIN

At a rough guess, 99.9999 percent of all Americans dont know what the hell a Higgs boson is. Nevertheless, when Congress voted several billion dollars to fund a search for the thing, American taxpayers footed the bill. Then, when this gargantuan project, the Superconducting Super Colliderthe largest basic science project in world historywas well under way, Congress abruptly pulled the plug, killed the project, and voted another billion dollars just to close it down. That left some two thousand particle physicists high, dry, and unemployed on a forlorn plain outside Dallas, and these scientists were not used to such career jolts, or in blunter language, such jerking around. Ever since coming up with the atomic and hydrogen bombs, they had been the pampered darlings of Congress. But all that suddenly and rudely ended. The sole residue of their miscarried quest for the Higgs boson was a hole in Texas, an enormous abandoned Hole.

Its still there.

W e all have bad days, and Dr. Guy Carpenter awoke to rain drumming on gray windows, with a qualm in his gut about what this drab day might bring. Late at night an e-mail had come in, summoning him to an urgent morning meeting at the Jet Propulsion Lab with no reason given, an ill omen indeed to a survivor of the abort on the Texas plain. He was in pajamas at the desk in his den, gnawing at a slice of Swiss cheese on sourdough bread as he marked up a gloomy cost estimate of new space telescopes, when his wife burst in, her long black hair hanging in wet tangled ringlets, her soaked nightgown clinging transparently to her slim body. Sweeney got out, she barked.

No! How, this time?

I took out the trash, thats how. They collect it Wednesday at seven, or have you forgotten? Its raining buckets, I hurried, I left the screen door unlatched, and the bastard slipped out. I tried to catch him and got drenched.

Ill find him.

Dont you have that meeting at seven-thirty? Im wet through and stark naked, as you see, or Id look for him.

No problem. Sorry about the trash.

Dr. Carpenter threw on a raincoat and plodded out barefoot on slippery grass. The downpour was helpful. Sweeney hated the wet, so he would be holed up in some dry spot of the backyard instead of hightailing it over the fence for a major chase, and if that failed, a general neighborhood alarm. Pennys obsession for keeping her cat indoors was a given of their marriage. Wonderful wife, Penny, with a human weakness or two such as a slight streak of jealousy and an unarguable dogma that outside cats were short-lived. Sweeney, a resourceful Siamese, ignored her for a doting fool, he knew he would never die, and he lay in wait for any chance to get out.

Poking here and there, Carpenter spied the bedraggled creature under a padded lounge chair. Okay, Sweeney! He crouched to grab the beast. Sweeney inched rearward just beyond his grasp, blinking at him. Standard cat maneuver, but this was no time for such foolery, so Carpenter kicked the chair aside and pounced on the cat. With an electric stab of pain, his back went out. Three weeks of slow healing, shot in an instant! He had pulled a muscle playing tennis, with an overhand smash at set point plunk into the net; and now this, no tennis for at least another three weeks. Standard Carpenter performance, he thought, clutching at his throbbing back. Guys colleagues regarded him as a top man in high-energy physics, his wife Penny adored him when he remembered to take out the trash, but he had a downbeat opinion of Dr. Guy Carpenter, due to a perfectionist bent always nagging at his self-esteem.

Bad cat, Penny said as he brought Sweeney in, meowing in outrage. Muffled in a bathrobe, she was drying her hair. Good Lord, youre drowned. I hope you didnt catch your death. The Project Scientist phoned in a huge tizzy

Call her back, say Im on my way.

Wincing at each move, he dressed, limped out to the garage, and eased himself into his car. When he pressed the garage-door opener, nothing happened. What now? Low battery? He lurched to Pennys car and tried her remote. It did not work, either. The wall button goosed the door to rattle upward a foot, then it halted. He had never before tried using the manual lift. How did it work, exactly? He grasped the thick rough cord in both hands and with excruciating pain hauled the screeching door halfway up, where it stuck. His lower back aflame, pulsating, he called the Project Scientist on his cell phone to beg off from the meeting.

She was unsympathetic. Guy, take a couple of Aleves. Peters on his way. Why dont I alert him to pick you up? Youve got to be here.

Why me, Ottoline? Im crippled, I tell you

You know more about the Superconducting Super Collider than anyone here.

The Super Collider? So what? It was killed back in 93. Its dead and forgotten.

Not anymore.

Hows that? For crying out loud, Ottoline, whats up?

Not over the phone. Ill page Peter and see you in a bit.

Penny said, Aleve, my foot, and gave him two of her migraine capsules. These will do the trick.

Codeine? Ill be a zombie, he protested, downing them.

All the better. Dont commit yourself to anything involving colliders.

Not with a knife at my throat.

Soft soothing warmth gradually suffused his back as he waited for Peter Braunstein. Memories flooded him, memories long suppressed, released and made dreamily vivid by the opiate. Those years in alien Texas, years of working his heart out on that stupendous machine; years of the greatest fun and challenge in his life, and the worst frustration! He knew too much, that was the trouble. The monster might well have worked, but then again, every one of those ten thousand supermagnets had to function flawlessly, and they were his responsibility. He had fought in vain for more time, more careful designing, more testing. Hurry, hurry, national prestige at stake, get the thing going, then see! That was the word from on high, with unsubtle slurs about his foot-dragging