Note from Loth: Again, great thanks to Beth for sharing her gi-normous skills as an editor, as well as her enthusiasm and support!

The Rainmakers, ch 25
Cavern of Secrets

When the lights in the control room all suddenly blinked out, those people holding their breath as the clock ticked down – which was everyone present – inhaled sharply in unison. Had the military jumped the gun and fired the missile early? There had been no loud explosion… but then if they were all dead, would they even hear it?

The lights flicked back on before anyone could say a word. Then they were off again. Burke, his face lit red by the emergency lights, anxiously demanded, "What's with the lights, Colsen?"

"I don't know!" Pete was as baffled as Burke. With all the damage that had been done to the Kiva, the power circuits had remained the most reliable.

Gene, the head engineer of the Kiva, watched the lights flashing on and off and something lit inside his own head – a memory of a time not so long ago when he played with his grandfather's ham radio. He snatched the pencil from behind his ear, and began scribbling on his clipboard, right over the schematics that he'd been reviewing. Gus, who'd been working with him, stared at him as if he was a lunatic.

"Will somebody tell me what's going on?" Pete demanded, turning to his engineering team. The seconds were still slipping away, and the sodium hydroxide flooding would begin in less than 30 seconds.

"Morse code, sir!" Gene shouted.

Burke's head whipped around. Gantner leaned against the equipment bank he'd been standing next to; he'd gone through so many swings from hope to despair that this latest shock nearly sent him to his knees. Pete hurried to where Gene and Gus were working.

Gene was writing furiously, translating the duration and frequency of the flashes into words.

"What's it saying?" Burke demanded excitedly, checking his wristwatch against the countdown. He could imagine the activity outside the complex, where the soldiers were preparing the ground strike, staring at the same counter ticking away… twenty seconds… nineteen… eighteen… seventeen… sixteen…

With his boss breathing smoke down his neck, Gene belted out the message as soon as he had it. "'Acid stopped… all safe… Mac'!"

Cheers broke out. In his delight at hearing that MacGyver was safe, Pete buffeted his engineer so hard on the back that Gene dropped his clipboard. Gus gathered a handful of papers and tossed them into the air; they fluttered through the air like oversized confetti.

Gantner heard the cheers and applause. He leaned his head against the computer bank; his laughter was a small sound under the noise of jubilation, and there were tears of relief leaking from his eyes.

Burke laughed and jumped with the others, but remembered himself quickly and dived for the microphone. "Abort launch!" he shouted into the thing, loud enough to be heard over the happy ruckus in the control room. "ABORT LAUNCH!"

Outside the Kiva, the message came through clearly. The radioman touched his ear as if he couldn't believe what he was hearing. "Abort launch? Yes, sir!"

The soldier backing up the radioman snatched up the microphone and repeated the message, "Abort launch! Abort launch! Repeat, abort launch!"

The solider at the launcher had his hand hovering over the execute button. When Colonel Keele heard the message, he calmly reached out and gripped the man's wrist. With his other hand, he pushed down the safety cover to the launch trigger. Burke had better have a good reason to delay this, he thought. "Maintain your position, soldier… I'm going to go and get to the bottom of this."

"Yes, Sir!"

Deep underground, far beneath the sounds of laughter and relief, two men sat amid the ruin of their work. Oblivion would come; they were resolved to wait for it calmly.

But Sidney Marlow could not wait in silence. He bent down and touched Barbara's shoulder gently; she opened her eyes briefly in response, then closed them again as she concentrated on distancing the pain. Marlow looked up at his partner and friend Steubens, and spoke his mind.

"Well, Karl, if you'll forgive me for being blunt – I hardly think that a suicide pact is the answer to our problem. I mean really – if we found the answer, it is just a matter of time before it will be found again."

"No," Steubens said softly. "It would be suicide if we let them use our work to kill the Earth! Sidney, what I did – I wasn't trying to be selfish or cruel. I was trying to prevent the extinction of mankind!"

"Grand," Marlow said dryly. "You always did have the gift of vision, Karl… but I think you're jumping a bit too far ahead. Good God, man! No one in their right mind would use this as a weapon! It – it's inconceivable!"

"Dr. Marlow." Both men subsided at the sound of Barbara's weak voice. "It is conceivable … not that I'm saying that you were right, Karl …"

Steubens bowed his head in contrition. Barbara pulled her hand free of his limp grip and reached up, smoothing back a wild patch of silvered hair. He recaptured her hand and enfolded it in both of his. "Rest quietly, Barbara. You should be saving your strength."

"For what? I don't think we're going anywhere soon…"

"Of course we are," MacGyver said. He was half-through the hole in the wall. He pulled in his leg and walked over to where Barbara lay. "I got through! They won't flood the Kiva now!"

Barbara's joy could not hide her discomfort from MacGyver; he saw tightness in her face as she smiled at him, heard it in her voice as she said, "You should go on… get Karl and Dr. Marlow out of here…"

Both Karl Steubens and Sidney Marlow protested her words with a loud "No!" overlapping MacGyver's reproof. "We're not going anywhere without you, Spencer. You think a little wound like that is going to slow you down? I've cut myself worse shaving…"

"But – "

"No 'buts'!"

"B-but how?" Marlow asked. "How did you get through to them?"

"I guess you could say that I made them see the light." MacGyver quipped. "I sent a message upstairs that we were all down here and would like to leave – preferably alive and undissolved!"

"H-how do you know that the m-message got through?"

"We're still alive, aren't we?" MacGyver said reasonably. "Also, whoever their Boy Scout or radioman is up there, they answered my message with some Morse code of their own, using the same master light controls that I used to call them."

"How w-will we get out?" Marlow asked. "I can probably w-walk well enough, b-but Karl isn't – and Barbara c-can't – " Flustered by his own stutter, Marlow fell silent and clenched his hands into fists.

A strong, dirty hand on Marlow's shoulder steadied him up considerably. "We'll wait right here. Rescue will be coming down with all the necessary equipment to get Barbara and all of us safely to the surface." MacGyver's voice was confident, and Marlow subsided with a nod.

MacGyver knelt down beside Barbara. "How are you really doing, Spencer? Let me see…" He checked her side, frowning at the scrap of cloth he'd used to stanch the blood from the gunshot wound. He wanted something cleaner and some antiseptic; he was too aware that they were inviting infection with every second that passed, using such a dressing. "Isn't there a First Aid kit in this lab somewhere…?"

"It's buried under rubble." Steubens said grimly. "But there's one in the lab adjacent..."

"I'll fetch it!" Marlow said quickly. He rummaged in his pocket and brought out the gun, thrusting the butt of the revolver toward MacGyver as if eager to be rid of the thing.

MacGyver shook his head. "Keep it. Or drop it in a hole somewhere. I don't think we're going to need it any more…" he said – eyeing Steubens, who had returned to bowing over Barbara's hand, which he still held.

"Mac?" Barbara glanced from Steubens to MacGyver, her eyes pleading. "Isn't there something we can do for Karl?"

"I don't know, Spencer… apart from destroying this lab complex, he's responsible for the lives of the people who died down here. That can't be forgotten."

Barbara nodded, tears leaking from the corners of her eyes.

"Don't cry, Barbara," Steubens said. "I deserve nothing less than prison. I must have lost my mind – I didn't think that the amount of plastic explosive I used would do so much damage. It was meant… meant only to… destroy this lab. No one else was supposed to be hurt."

MacGyver frowned. "How much did you use?" Something clicked in his mind, something that had been bothering him about the wreckage that he'd seen. "I found traces of the plastique in the rubble… but the blast pattern isn't consistent with such an explosion. Way too powerful. I'm thinking that something else must have contributed the blast. Here – keep up the pressure." MacGyver showed Steubens how to hold the bandage, then he rose and began picking through the pile of debris.

He found what he was looking for; a fragment of metal half-buried in a wall. It was part of a tank of explosive gas. "Just as I thought; the explosion that you set off must have started a chain reaction. This stuff would have quadrupled the power of the plastic explosive… and if there was more than one tank…" MacGyver shook his head. "Kaboom."

"I don't understand," Steubens said. "Are you saying… that my explosion didn't cause all this…?" He looked around at the wasted room, as if he could see beyond the pitted walls and ceiling to the damage on the other levels.

"No, that's not what I'm saying," MacGyver said mildly. "What I am saying is that it's proof that you didn't mean the blast to be as bad as it was. That you didn't intend to bring down the entire complex. A jury might take that into consideration."

"It would be better if I were to die here," Steubens said morosely. "Die here with my research."

"That wouldn't be enough." Marlow had reentered the lab. He carried a white box with a large red cross painted on it. "We need to do more than destroy the research. And do stop going on about dying, Karl… really, you carry the drama too far!" He seemed to have recovered himself during his time outside of the lab; his stutter was almost nonexistent.

"Too many other people know of the work and can reproduce our results. Even if we had all perished here, others could have picked up the pieces. No, the only way to accomplish what you want, Karl, is to discredit our discovery – make the pieces look like they are unworthy of serious attention. We must convince everyone that the theory is fundamentally flawed. If we succeed, then the research will be abandoned." He sighed. "A pity it will be, too… so many good things could have been done. But I agree with Karl that it can't be allowed to be manipulated into a weapon."

Steubens could hardly bear to hear Marlow's words; he would have felt more comfortable hearing his friend revile him than agree with him. "I've ruined us… I almost killed you, Sidney. I am sorry."

Marlow pursed his lips but did not respond. He wasn't ready to forgive yet. He merely nodded. Belatedly he passed the first-aid kit to MacGyver. "H-here you are."

MacGyver opened the case and worked quickly. Barbara gasped as he removed the old bandage and replaced it with a pad of clean gauze, her knuckles whitening as she clung to Steubens' hand.

As he worked, his mind ground over the problem.

Mac's Voice-over:
The fact that Steubens was responsible for the initial explosion was not common knowledge – as far as I knew, only Steubens, Marlow, Spencer, and myself were aware of it. Everyone else had insisted that it could be nothing but an accident. And they were partially right – but that didn't excuse what had happened. It certainly didn't bring the dead men and women of the Kiva back to life.

On the other hand, how many would die if the Rainmakers technologywas used to destroy the ozone? And not just human lives would be lost, but animals and plants – the entire Earth –could very quickly be laid waste by an overzealous soldier, or a single megalomaniacal politician. Even by a well-intentioned but short-sighted scientist.

Looking at Steubens, I saw a man that I knew – knew down in my bones – would punish himself for the rest of his life for what he'd done. And with Barbara and Marlow's help, he'd make restitution as he could, if for no other reason than to eventually be able to look at himself in the shaving mirror again.

It was going to be up to Marlow to pull it off. Marlow would have to become the assassin – of Steubens' character and of their joint research. He'd be the one who carried enough clout to pull the plug on all their work and on Karl Steubens' career. There was steel beneath that stutter – I didn't doubt that he could do it.

As I began to outline the plan to my audience, I tried not to notice the way that Barbara was looking at Steubens. Someday I'd find a girl who looked at me with that gleam in her eye – maybe down the road when I've finally seen all the new places and met all the people – maybe one day I'd find a woman that would make me trade my life in to share an existence with her.

Not today… and not tomorrow, I bet… but someday…

Pete Thornton left the control room and headed toward the access hatch. Brusquely he ordered the men preparing the sodium hydroxide delivery system to stand down.

"Clear the area, please! Yes, get that hose out of here! Make way!"

Around the corner, as if on cue, a team of men came marching quick-time down the corridor. They were dressed in protective clothing, not full hazmat gear like the people handling the NaOH, and they carried different gear; ropes, tool kits, medical supplies, and stretchers.

"What's going on?" Burke asked. He'd followed Andy Colsen from the control center, to make sure that the sodium hydroxide flooding was being delayed. He didn't recognize these new men; they were not Air Force or Kiva personnel.

"I'm sending down a team to extract MacGyver and the survivors," Pete answered briefly.

"Who authorized this?" Burke was puzzled. He wanted to get Steubens and Marlow out as much (or more) than anyone else, but he was overwhelmed by the sudden appearance and efficiency of these men.

"I, ah… foresaw the necessity," Pete said. He wasn't quite ready to let his cover slip – his work here wasn't done yet. He was convinced that there was something going on in the Kiva beyond an industrial accident.

"Good thinking, Colsen." Burke said, patting Pete on the shoulder. He reiterated Pete's command to the hazmat team, clearing the way for the US Army Rescue Unit.

Burke didn't know it at the time, but all of these men were close, personal friends of Colonel Peter Thornton and had jumped at the chance to help out when he had called.

By the look in his eye, Pete suspected that Burke was beginning to have his own suspicions about his Chief Engineer. He stood back out of the way and lit what he hoped would be his last cigarette as Andy Colsen.

tbc