Earth Awakens (The First Formic War 3)

It was only then that Mazer noticed the small cameras on the wall behind them. Other spectators would be watching apparently.

Gadhavi walked to the center of the room in front of the glass wall where a red circle was painted on the floor. As soon as he stepped in it, holoprojectors above him turned on and bathed him in a holofield. He put his back to the glass and faced them, directing his words at the cameras. "The Formic gas is a highly toxic, cell-wall-degrading enzyme solution. In principle, it's not unlike, say, phytopathogenic fungi here on Earth, which degrade plant biomass at an alarming rate. The difference of course is its toxicity. The Formics' gas is a thousand times worse than our nastiest fungi. It eats through lignocellulose, for example, which is often resistant to enzymatic degradation, as if it were cotton candy. And we've all seen what it can do to humans. It breaks down cell walls and initiates a proteolytic process that's not unlike what our digestive system does to a bite of steak. It short, it turns biomass into gooey pulp. That's the bad news."

He turned around and faced the glass wall.

In the holofield, his sequined gloves twinkled in the light.

He raised his arms to the side, and two long robotic arms in the other room lowered from their recessed hiding place in the ceiling. Gadhavi walked in place, turned his head slightly to the right, and the robotic arms moved along a track in the ceiling in the direction Gadhavi indicated. The arms came to a stop at the table, and Gadhavi spread his fingers apart. The ends of the robotic arms split and separated, forming matching digits.

Using the bot arms as an extension of his own, Gadhavi lifted two sealed, liter-sized jugs off the table, carried them to the center of the empty room, and set them a distance apart on the floor.

Then he turned and faced the cameras.

"Those two containers beyond the glass wall each hold six hundred milliliters of the Formic solution, or 'goo' as the soldiers call it. The protein looks like this."

A giant model of a globular protein appeared in the holofield beside him.

"As you can see, it has a very complex tertiary and quaternary structure in which the polypeptides fold around each other to essentially form a sphere. This shape is maintained by hydrogen bonds and ionic forces. Altering its shape through heat, a change in pH, or nonreversible inhibition renders the enzyme denatured, or useless. The molecular structure may be alien and unlike anything we've ever seen, but the laws of chemistry are universal. We may not have mastered interstellar flight, but we do know how to shake up a molecule. That's the good news."

He flicked his hand, and the protein disappeared. Then he turned and faced the glass wall again. He lifted his arms, maneuvered the robotic arms back to the table, and picked up a glass jar of orange liquid with a screwed top.

"This, ladies and gentlemen, is our counteragent, an enzyme inhibitor, preheated to sixty degrees Celsius. When it's fired at the goo, the heat causes some of the Formic enzymes to vibrate so violently that the delicate bonds that maintain their molecular structure are broken. The inhibitors take care of the rest, rendering the entire enzyme solution useless. But that's not even the fun part. Once the molecule changes its shape, we can do whatever we want with it, including turning it against the Formics."

Gadhavi moved his hands. Inside the other room, the robot arms came to life and unscrewed the lid from the jar. When they were finished, the bot arms set the jar back on the table and lifted a shotgun from a gun case. A sprayer mechanism with its own barrel adjacent to the shotgun barrel was mounted on the underside of the weapon. The bot arms picked up the jar of orange counteragent again and screwed it into the bottom of the sprayer.

Gadhavi said, "We have two objectives in China as far as the gas is concerned. One, clearing the air of what's already been sprayed, and two, destroying the goo guns and other caches. This weapon is designed to do both. For the gas in the air, it can spray a mist."

Inside the room, the lid popped off one of the two jugs of goo on the floor. Gas poured upward, a swirling fog of grayish green vapor.

Gadhavi got into a firing position.

In the other room, the gun unleashed a thick stream of orange mist into the cloud. When the two solutions met, the fog became a fireball that flashed bright and then snuffed out a heartbeat later, like a lit match tossed into a pan of gunpowder. The now empty jug skittered across the floor and bounced off the opposite wall.

"The other jug is like a goo tank," said Gadhavi. "We made it with a substance of similar durability. The shotgun round has an armor-piercing slug that punctures the goo tank and releases pellets of our counteragent into the goo. Since both solutions are concentrated, the reaction is even more volatile."

The robot arm cocked the shotgun, aimed, and fired. The jug took the round dead center and shot across the floor, spinning. One second passed. Then another. Nothing happened. Then the jug detonated like a bomb, and tiny fragments of shrapnel pinged against the glass.

Gadhavi turned around and faced them. "Since it's orange, spicy, and cooks Formics, we're calling the counteragent 'Delhi Duck Sauce.'" He smiled at his own joke.

"How do we know the goo has been neutralized?" Wit asked. "You've demonstrated that you can create a violent reaction, but you haven't proven that the air is clear. How do we know there aren't lethal traces of it still in there?"

Gadhavi's smile broadened. "Captain O'Toole. You never disappoint. Always with the tough questions. But you're right. Pyrotechnics will not solve our problem if the counteragent doesn't completely neutralize the goo. I couldn't have asked for a better setup to the final portion of our demonstration."

Gadhavi faced the glass again and made a few hand gestures in the holofield. In the demonstration room, a door slid open, and a chimpanzee stepped out into the room.

"The demonstration room has not been ventilated since I released the gas," said Gadhavi. "The air has not been filtered in any manner. The test subject is breathing the same air that was exposed to highly lethal doses of the gas only moments ago."

Long handrails lowered a foot from the ceiling. The chimp jumped up and grabbed them and began swinging around the room.

"Even with increased breaths and when moving to all corners of the room, the test subject remains perfectly healthy. No melting of the skin, no cell degradation. I could release a dozen more animals or people in the room with the same result. And should you require it, I can analyze the air and prove the gas is neutralized."

For a moment, Mazer and the others were too stunned to speak.

"How quickly can you mass produce this?" asked Wit.

"The formula isn't terribly complex," said Gadhavi. "If we could commandeer a few chemical facilities with the right capabilities, we could make a few thousand barrels in a week. If China were to join in the effort, we would make four times that many."

"What about the weapons and shotgun rounds?" said Shenzu. "How long would it take to mass-produce those?"