Leviathan(15)

Adler's eyes had widened. “And this ... this kinetic release of energy is what caused the fire we had in the cavern this afternoon?”

“No,” Frank responded. Adler's ignorance of the creature's true potential was almost frightening. “Today's fire was caused by Leviathan's ability to ignite the carpasioxyllelene gel.”

“Yes!” Adler exclaimed suddenly, before settling both hands again on his chair. He nodded. “Yes. That is it. Go on, Doctor.”

Frank sighed. “At some point in the tenth week of development,” he continued, “when I was using the nerve-input interpretative stimulus to upgrade its central neural net in the cerebral cortex with tactical data and initiating automatic reprinting of echo-memory on new brain cells, Leviathan developed gel sacs in the roof of its mouth and the front of its neck.”

“The carpasioxyllelene,” Adler contributed.

“Yes. One of the sacs contains carpasioxyllelene. The other sac contains another organic substance, still unknown to us, that reacts with it. Alone, each chemical is useless. But when they are misted together in an oxygen atmosphere they become highly flammable and react against each other to initiate explosive combustion. By rerouting muscles in its neck to provide pressure to the gel sacs, Leviathan can spray both chemicals at once from its mouth. Just like a pit viper sprays venom from its mouth to blind prey. And, like I said, when the chemicals mist together in an oxygen atmosphere they ignite. Explosively.”

“How long can it sustain this combustion?”

Frank hesitated, as if the question had never occurred to him. “I ... don't really know for certain. Today is the first time Leviathan ever did it. And I wasn't even sure that it could. I don't even think it knew that it could until it tried. And I've been a little busy since then, so I haven't run any computations.” He squinted. “But ... it looked like Leviathan sprayed the gel approximately 300 feet with a temperature of maybe ... 12,000 degrees. More than enough to melt steel if it's focused for a few seconds.”

Motionless, Adler stared. “Surely you overestimate.”

Frank leaned back. An apocalyptic vision of hellish flames exploding against the Plexiglas shield passed before him.

“Look, Mr. Adler, you really need to understand what we're dealing with here. This type of chemical combustion is similar only to plasma arc welding. It produces extremely high temperatures. Sometimes as much as 18,000 to 20,000 degrees. It's a type of welding used on high nitrogen metals that are innately resistant to ionization.”

Not appearing to notice the slight, Adler continued, “And do you think that the creature can sustain the combustion long enough to melt steel? Or titanium? Or even a niobium-titanium alloy?”

Frank shook his head. “It can't melt niobium-titanium alloy. Niobium-titanium doesn't even have a melting point because it's created in a magnetic matrix where the molecules are electromagnetically converged to form a high nitrogen content. But 12,000 degrees can certainly melt steel. Leviathan has a capacity for about twenty gallons in each individual sac. With both sacs combined, that's forty gallons of gel that it can utilize. That much gel will probably allow it to sustain a significant level of combustion at a twenty percent oxygenated atmosphere for as long as five minutes. But then the sacs would be exhausted and Leviathan would need time to regenerate carpasioxyllelene pressure. “

“How much time?”

“A couple of hours, probably.”

Pacing, Adler turned away. “This is absolutely incredible. Truly, this is something completely unknown to science.”

“No,” Frank replied, finding some pleasure in taking a little wind out of Adler's sails. “It's not unknown to science at all. The bombardier beetle in South America does the same thing. It sprays two chemicals that mist together to create quinine. And the quinine bursts into flames upon contact with oxygen. The beetle can fire about twenty bursts before exhausting itself, and scientists have known about it for years. It's just that we've never seen the same external combustion process on this scale.”

Adler walked to the side. He cupped his chin before turning back. “And is there any possibility that the creature will melt the vault of the Containment Chamber?” he asked.

“No.”

“But can it break down the doors? Is that possible?”

Strangely, Adler seemed more concerned for the creature than for the staff. Frank was struck by the sensation. “Yes,” he replied, staring, “it's possible that it could break them down. We never counted on having to contain anything like this.”

“But we are taking precautions?”

Frank nodded.