Disclaimer: I do not own the Hardy Boys. I am making no money off of this fanfiction.

Chapter 1

The rain poured down, hammering onto the ground, turning the normally smooth concrete into a flat, roiling, raging sea. The black clouds overhead covered a greenish sky, glimpsed only in flashes as the clouds clashed and seethed across it. Lightning seemed to split the sky itself, and even through the thick panes of glass in the windows, the thunder was loud. Great, gray hulks of metal lurked near the windows, motionless and cold: planes that normally would have left for other cities were it not for the summer storm that had decided to rage across the Midwest.

Joe Hardy sat in an uncomfortable chair by the nearest window, gazing morosely out at the rain, cursing it every once in a while under his breath. Normally he would relish the opportunity to sit and watch such a storm; he loved thunderstorms under most circumstances, and the more violent, the better. But not tonight. Tonight he sat, not at home, but in the plastic chairs of an airport terminal, alternately cursing the storm that was delaying his and Frank's return home, and wondering if the people who had designed the chair he was sitting in had ever worked for the Inquisition.

"Some storm," said Frank quietly, looking up from his magazine to per out of the huge, plate-glass window. He didn't look entirely thrilled, himself, but he wasn't fidgeting like Joe was, nor so blatantly letting his displeasure be known. "I've never known one to last quite this long."

"Yeah," said Joe disgustedly, huffing against the back of his chair and letting himself slump down. "It's been pretty constant, too...I'm beginning to think we shoulda chartered an ark, not a plane."

Frank chuckled, tickled by the comment, but Joe wasn't laughing. He was serious; this storm was like nothing he had ever seen in his entire seventeen years of life, and had been raging full force for at least two and a half hours. It began as their plane was on its final approach into the tiny Omaha airport, and hadn't let up since.

About fifty other travelers were sitting much as Joe was, spread across the terminal, or wandering among the little shops (though most were closed), or investigating the various vending machines. The in-flight meal had been served there in the terminal, and several apologies had been made for their inconvenience and discomfort.

"At least we weren't caught in the plane when it began to get really bad," said Frank.

"I guess...bet there were plenty of people who were, though. Hope they're okay...no planes have made it here since it began. Tell me again why we couldn't just wait for a direct flight from California? Why we had to stop through Nebraska?"

Frank didn't answer; he knew Joe wasn't really asking; he was just making a point. Their flight had been paid for by their client, and it was really stupid to spend hundreds of money on a plane ticket when it wasn't necessary. "I'm just surprised that the tornado sirens haven't gone off yet," said Frank. "It's summer; they get a lot of tornadoes out here."

Joe nodded disgustedly, looking back out into the rain, aware that he was dangerously close to sulking. He didn't care. As the younger brother he felt it was his right to sulk every once in a while. But a sudden sound caught his attention and he blinked, frowning, leaning closer to the glass to hear it better. A little chill went down his back as he caught the discordant warble of a powerful siren, then turned slowly to look at Frank. "Um..."

Frank looked taken-aback, wincing as an announcement came over the intercom just above them.

"Ladies and gentlemen, there has been a tornado warning issued for Douglas County. Eppley Airport Terminal personnel will be directing you to the downstairs shelters. Please follow in an orderly manner, and remain calm."

Joe shot his brother a sideling glance as they both stood up, grabbing up their carry-on bags, and following the general exodus from the terminal. "You don't happen to be descended from Nostradamus, do you?"

Frank laughed a bit bemusedly. "Not that I know of. Besides, if I am, that means you are, too."

The two of them were silent as everyone began tromping down the stairs leading to the lower level of the airport, heading for the designated tornado shelters along with everyone else. Joe suddenly felt like a cow or a sheep, and quashed the urge to be a wise guy and start mooing as he was prodded along.

Still, that had been pretty creepy. Coincidence, of course, but it was a lot easier to get spooked when the sky outside was green, the air dark and stormy, and you were stuck inside some little airport in Omaha, Nebraska at night with nothing but your overnight bag and your older brother. Joe was suddenly very glad Frank was there.

There was no basement at the Omaha airport; everyone ended up sitting against a sturdy stone wall in the middle of the lower floor, watched by alternately bored and anxious looking airline employees. Joe would much rather be outside watching the tornado, but he knew there was no way they were going to allow that. If he'd been of age, maybe. And who knew how long they'd all have to sit here?

Feeling glum, Joe sat cross-legged, one elbow on his knee, his face in his hand, and thought about the case that had brought them to California to begin with. It had all begun with a very strange news report.

---

"Hey, Joe!" came Frank's voice from downstairs.

Joe, on the way to his room to listen to a new CD he'd gotten the day before, peered downstairs into the living room. Frank was sitting on the couch, his bare feet propped up on its arm, and their father, Fenton Hardy, was sitting in the nearby armchair. "What is it?" he asked. It was nine o'clock, so he figured Frank was probably watching the news. He did that as often as not, but Joe had little interest in it.

"Hurry, even you'll be interested in this!"

Joe scowled with mild indignation, the phrase "even you" rankling just a bit, but he was still curious. Affecting only the barest outward interest, Joe leaned against the wall behind the couch and watched. When Fenton said that it related to a case that Joe and Frank might be going on the very next day if they were willing, Joe's interest grew.

Five minutes later, he was hooked; Frank had certainly called this one right. The subject was black holes, and the reporter was standing in the middle of some street in Council Bluffs, Iowa, according to the white words at the bottom of the screen. Joe had clearly missed some of the report, but what he heard was very interesting.

It was the beginning of summer, and the day in Iowa looked like it was just as hot as New York summer days could get. A flat, uninteresting building was the backdrop for the man' report, a building Joe would have sworn started out life as a school building except for the observatory dome at one end. The sign proclaimed it to belong to "Mid-America Physics and Astronomy". A lab, Joe figured.

"...have already succeeded in duplicating some effects using magnets and vacuums," the reporter was saying, "though they can give no details of their experiments. Now they are gearing up towards 'the real thing,' creating an actual, miniscule-scale black hole in their laboratory. Here to speak to us on this subject is Cori Fletcher, one of a team of five scientists heading up this project."

The camera panned to a very short woman with bright red hair and a winning smile. She was dressed in a lab coat with cartoon characters on it, and Joe laughed in surprise. He didn't think scientists were allowed to wear anything but blinding, white coats when they worked in the lab. "Thanks, Mr. Harrigan. Well, of course we're not allowed to give away much detail of our work, but we can say that we are very confident that we will be able to succeed in creating a black hole. Of course, with all of the safety precautions we have to take, things are progressing quite slowly. To compress an object large enough to have an easily-discernible pull of gravity...well, it'll take us a while. But we're getting along nicely."

"Perhaps you could tell our viewers, Ms. Fletcher, exactly what a black hole is."

The woman grinned, and it was clear that it was a subject she could talk for hours about, given half the chance...kinda like Phil and his computers, or Chet and his current hobby-obsession. "Be glad to, Mr. Harrigan. A black hole is a thing that was, recently, mere speculation. Theory. But no longer. Black holes exist, and there are even different kinds, classed by size. There are galaxy-size holes...those we don't know as much about as we'd like, but we can see their effects. And star-sized. Supermassive, and stellar-mass. Those names are a bit misleading to the layman, because mass and size are not the same thing. Size, of course, being how big something is, and mass being how much...stuff...there is in any given object."

Joe began to zone out of the woman's explanation...she might be a brilliant scientist, but she surely sucked the big one when it came to talking and explaining. It seemed to be that way with scientists. Joe almost asked what this had to do with their next case...surely they weren't going looking for black holes...but decided not to. Frank and their dad were both listening intently to the woman's technical prattle.

Once the interview was wrapped up, Frank turned off the television, grinning excitedly. "That's really something," he said. "I can't imagine the idea of a miniature black hole sitting in some kind of laboratory."

"Okay," said Joe. "I don't get all of what she said. There're two kinds, that's all I really got. A big and a small kind. But they dunno as much about the big kind."

"Exactly," said Fenton. "A 'stellar-mass' black hole is made by a very large star beginning to die, going nova, then beginning to collapse in on itself. Only a very large star is big enough to collapse in on itself enough to create a black hole."

"Why?" asked Joe. "Wouldn't a small object just make a small black hole?"

"It could," said Frank. "But not on its own. Something else would have to do the compressing. It's like your bookbag, Joe." Joe blinked, wondering how the heck his bookbag related to stars. "See, you stuff it to the top, and it all just stays there, stuffed to the top."

A corner of Frank's mouth was tweaked in a barely-concealed smirk, and Joe raised his eyebrows, crossing his arms and gazing levelly at Frank. "Yes," he agreed.

"For you to make more room in your backpack, you would have to use your strength and weight to cram it all down at the bottom. Cramming that same amount of papers, books, and assorted weird junk into a smaller area." Fenton chuckled, and Joe rolled his eyes. "But imagine," Frank went on, "that your backpack was a hundred-thousand times bigger. Instead of just threatening to take over the world, as it does now, it's a world unto itself. Now all that stuff is a lot heavier, and it would begin crushing itself down by itself, collapsing under its own weight."

Joe finally laughed, shaking his head and heaving a great, long-suffering sigh at the teasing. "Yeah, okay, thanks," he said. "So a huge star collapses on itself, but smaller ones aren't heavy enough."

"That's it," said Frank, grinning now. "And the bigger start collapse until they're just this tiny bit of mass floating around the universe. All the mass of a huge star in something that's hundreds of times smaller than it used to be. It's got all the gravitational pull of that star...in a small area."

"That's why things get sucked into it if they get too close," said Joe wonderingly. "Like if something gets too close to Earth, Earth's gravity pulls it in."

"Yep! You've just about got the hang of it. Once you pass the point of no return...past the safe-orbiting distance...you get sucked in."

Joe felt a little ill. "And they're trying to make one of these?"

Fenton broke in then, his mild baritone serious, though a bit of a smile still lingered on his face. "A very small one, Joe. Something with the gravitational pull of a small asteroid, say, not a star hundreds of times bigger than our sun. Very small things could get sucked in, but I would say that humans are pretty safe."

Joe relaxed a little bit. He supposed that was a little better, but it was still a pretty creepy thought. "So...what does this have to do with a case? We're not gonna be investigating this project, are we?"

"No," said Fenton seriously. "That's all top secret. Even I don't know much more than what they've told here. No, yours is a missing person. One of the scientists working on this project, in fact, has gone missing. Hiram McDougal. Not the lead scientist, but neck-deep in the project. He was last seen in Los Angeles, California, where he attended a convention of scientists to discuss the project, and has not been seen since. He has been missing for about two days...was reported just this morning by the folks at the lab."

"Where's the lab, again?" asked Frank.

"It's in Iowa, actually, near the border. All farm country out there. Out of the way of the lights and the towns, an observatory, and the lab facility where they're doing their experiments."

Creepy or not, Joe found that he was eager to take on this case...and besides, since when had he not liked creepy things? "Let's go for it!" said Joe with a grin. "Maybe I can get some surfing in..."

The case hadn't turned out to be anything hugely difficult at all. They got almost the entire story in California, where they talked to several of the scientists who had attended the conference. As the conference had only ended the day before the boys' arrival, many of the participants were still there, most of them with rooms in the hotel that had hosted the conference.

Hiram McDougal had gotten a phone call from a man who worked for an independent lab in Missouri, wanting to join forces with McDougal's team to work on the black hole project. When McDougal refused, he said that the man who had contacted him "threatened" him. One of the people who was the most help was a security guard for the hotel, who spoke of McDougal with mild contempt, saying , "He got some phone call, and it got him all hyped up about something. Said his life was being threatened, and he needed a safe place to hide out for a few days."

"Ya know," Joe muttered, "This guy knows nothing of hiding out." If Frank and Joe had so easily tracked him down this far... And then, as a perfect end to the whole farce, the guard named the hotel the man had been sent to. The guard himself had suggested the motel because it was away from the city proper, which was what McDougal wanted. And so the boys were able to track him down with very little effort.

McDougal turned out to be a tall, thin, nervous sort of a man, and Joe wondered if he was just jumping at shadows. After asking him a whole lot of questions, Frank was also of the opinion that McDougal simply misinterpreted something the man from Missouri had said, and hidden out at that hotel at the edge of the city for two days, afraid to make contact with anyone. He "freaked", as Joe put it, indulging in "creative paranoia."

Still, Joe wanted to check out the rival lab just to be safe, but Frank pointed out that their job had been to find McDougal, and they'd done just that. "We can have Dad check 'em out later,' Frank had said, "but for now let's just get McDougal back."

They'd contacted their father and Mid-American Physics and Astronomy, telling them that the man would be on his way back on the private plane he'd taken to San Francisco. (On McDougal's insistence, the Hardys checked the pilot and the chartering service out thoroughly before agreeing to go), and the lab had insisted they pay the Hardys' way back to New York.

And so they had accompanied Hiram McDougal on the puddlehopper plane to Eppley Airfield in Nebraska, where a representative from the labs had picked up McDougal, who looked thoroughly relieved that the whole thing was over. The Hardy brothers were given tickets from Nebraska to New York, McDougal's business card, and the thanks of Mid-America Physics and Astronomy...

---

...and now they were sitting on a cold tile floor, with their backs to a boring, white wall, waiting out a tornado.

"That guy was a complete chickenguts, you know that?" Joe Hardy said quietly.

Frank, apparently having delved into his own deep thought, blinked and turned to Joe. "Hm?"

"That McDougal guy. Can you really believe he was being threatened?"

Frank frowned, shaking his head slowly and replying in a tone only just above a whisper. "No, Dad checked the Missouri lab out, remember? When we called him to say we'd found McDougal. I think that McDougal just panicked, is all. He's probably never had to deal with other people wanting in on his research, and people can get pretty touchy about their intellectual property."

"Well I don't blame 'em for that, I guess," said Joe. But the guy had still been a wuss, in his opinion.

A cool female voice caught Joe's attention then, and he looked up, hearing the babble and murmuring in the room go quiet as everyone looked up at the stewardess who'd appeared before them. "The sirens have gone off, and the tornado warning cancelled," she announced. "You may return to your gates if you wish, but be ready for another possible warning to be called. We're still in a tornado watch for the rest of the night, meaning conditions are favorable for another funnel cloud, and the storm's not through yet."

'Finally!' Joe thought.

"If we wish?" a nearby women muttered. "If? No, I would much rather sit here with some guy's elbow poking into my side." She glared at a man who was walking ahead of her, and Joe had to clap a hand over his mouth to stifle the burst of laughter that threatened. Seemed he wasn't the only one getting antsy.

Frank also seemed to be stifling a snicker, and when the woman was out of range, he said, "Coulda been worse. It coulda been poking her someplace a little...lower."

This time Joe couldn't help himself, he let a bray of laughter that caused several of the patrons to give him a quick, strange look, and Joe muffled his mouth once more. His face was getting a bit hot, which always seemed to happen when his brother made some kind of smartassed remark like that. "You are a pervert," he said a moment later, shaking his head. Frank didn't often make that kind of gutter remark – only when he wanted to watch Joe's face turn colors – but still!

"It happens once you turn eighteen," said Frank, his face deadpan. "You'll see in a few months."

Joe rolled his eyes.

He had hoped that after the tornado passed that the storm would let up, but it didn't; the rain fell even harder, something Joe would not have thought possible an hour earlier. Someone had tuned their radio in to an emergency broadcast, and it said that several areas had been put on a flash flood warning. They were even thinking of evacuating the people who lived near the Missouri and Platte rivers, as well as several of the major creeks and streams.

"Damn," said Joe quietly, "it's gotta be pretty bad if they go about formal evacuations, doesn't it?"

"Yeah," said Frank quietly, staring uneasily out the large terminal windows once more. Most of them were back in the terminal, waiting at the gate their flight was supposed to have left from almost three hours ago. The plane sat at the gate, water streaming down its silvery sides, the lightning flashing off of it like flares. "I know you like storms, Joe, but this is ridiculous."

"I like storms when they're not forcing me at lightning point to sit in a hard, uncomfortable chair," Joe shot back, and Frank snorted laughter.

"Well, I am going to try and get some sleep," said Frank. "Wake me if anything interesting happens."

"Like if an ark goes gliding down the runway?"

"Yes. Like that." Yawning, Frank closed his magazine and slumped down in the airport chair.

It didn't take Frank too long to sink down into slumber. One might have thought he wouldn't be able to sleep, what with the raging thunder and the crying kids and the murmur of discontented passengers. But Frank and Joe had been in more strange situations than any sane person could imagine, and could sleep under just about any circumstances. In fact Joe felt his own eyelids growing heavy, and he slumped in his own chair, his head sliding down to rest on his brother's shoulder.

Joe did not know how much time had gone by when a feeling of deep unease filled him, cutting through his muddled dreams and hauling him up into wakefulness. The storm still spent its fury outside, if possible even more viciously than before. He blinked when he saw that he was curled up in his chair, nearly cuddling up against his brother despite the chair arm that separated their chairs, and he sat up quickly, feeling his face begin to tinge red. He had no problems demonstrating his love for his brother, but to curl up with him in the middle of a crowded airline terminal was a bit much. He caught a few of the passengers looking at them with some amusement, and a teenage girl giggled as if she was looking at the cutest thing ever.

Feeling surly, Joe reached out a hand to shake Frank awake, when there was a flash like a billion strobe lights blowing their fuses all at once. Almost exactly at the same time, an ear-rending, horrendous crack rent the air outside, shaking the entire building, making nearly everyone in the terminal cry out or scream in shock. Frank bolted upright, a grimace on his face, his hands clamping over his ears before he was properly awake. Joe's own hands had covered his ears, which felt numb, and he realized he was shaking. He saw several of the children in the terminal crying, but he couldn't hear a damned thing. A vague worry that he'd been deafened was assuaged when he realized he could hear, and that his hearing was returning rapidly, but he was still unnerved.

"What the hell was that?" Frank hissed.

"I-I dunno," said Joe, looking uneasily out the window. "You don't think it could be thunder, do you?" His hearing was still a little off, and he was getting a nice case of tintinnabulation to boot, but at least he could hear.

"I..." Frank trailed off, frowning, as he stood up from his seat. His expression deepened from startled half-wakefulness to something that was almost fear, and Joe felt his heart rate spike uncomfortably. "Joe...I can't hear anything."

"It's okay," said Joe, glancing sympathetically at a nearby little girl of maybe four, who was wailing in fright as her weary-looking father tried to soothe her. He looked back at Frank, alarmed at the fear on his brother's face. "It'll return, my ears did that, too."

Frank shook his head rapidly. "No, no, not that, I mean outside. Listen."

Joe did. Several others around them, having overheard them, also fell silent and listened, and Joe realized that Frank was right. The storm, raging full force only a minute before, had stopped. Just like that, stopped dead, as if someone had flipped a switch. "Um. That's not normal, is it?"

"Not even in Nebraska," said a woman, laughing a bit nervously. "They say the weather here changes by the minute, but this is ridiculous!"

"Look," said Frank, his voice disbelieving. "The clouds aren't even moving; they're just...well no, they're moving a little," he said after a moment, sounding a bit relieved. "But they're just swirling around in place...they're not blowing away."

"Well," said a man, "at least we'll be able to get the hell out of this damned terminal, now."

Normally the news would have filled Joe with glee, but it didn't this time. For some reason, the only thing Joe felt was uneasiness, and he did not think they would be leaving any time soon. Frank, the more levelheaded of them, nodded his head slowly. "That's true," he said. "I really do want to get home, now." But there was something in his expression, so subtle that Joe was the only one who could catch it, said that he wasn't so sure, himself.

"Let's see what the airline says," said Joe. He glanced once more out of the large windows, up at the lazily swirling black clouds, at the glimpses of deep blue sky behind them. The night was completely still.