Algorithm - Book 1 - The Medallion

Chapter 2

Clearly the object had excited old George. Adam felt a bit guilty and decided to trust him, at least to the point of keeping the results of the analysis confidential.

"Oh, all right then."

Adam spent the next few minutes relating the discovery that took place twenty years ago. When he finished, George's eyes acquired a distinct squint and his head tilted to one side as he asked, "So, this coin came out of a solid piece of coal?

"That's what I'm saying."

"Do you realize how old it might be?"

"I'm not sure. A few thousand years?"

George tilted his head back and blew out a gust of air.

"Adam, as I understand it coal takes a long time to form. All coal owes its origin to vegetation, compressed and decaying. Softer coals could be tens of thousands of years old, but if it was anthracite, then that would be very old. Hard coals like that could take anywhere from one to a couple of hundred million years to form. Are you sure it was inside the coal?"

"That's how I found it."

George gazed at the shiny little disk in his hand with a new-found wonder and respect. A fine bead of sweat began to form about Adam's brow as he soaked in the potential ramifications. George waved at Adam to follow and they both marched down the hallway.

"I agree we should try and figure out what it's made of, and then go from there. Trace metals analysis can pinpoint the type of process used to make it, and even suggest the where and when of it … of course, assuming it was made by some conventional means."

When they reached the end of the hallway, George swung open a set of metal firedoors and they entered the main analytical laboratory. It was a modestly sized lab with four bench areas, two along the walls and two running down the middle in parallel. An instrument of some kind occupied every available square inch. Two ventilation hoods faced each other from opposite walls. Four and five foot gas cylinders stood alongside the equipment, connected by metal tubing to a host of liquid and gas chromatographs, mass spectrographs, and other instruments Adam could only guess at. The room hummed as automated injectors and collectors processed samples and data. Cabling dangled from the drop ceiling, connecting most analytical instruments to a central data collection system.

They made their way to a corner where a monolithic blue-gray apparatus resembled one of the sheet metal movie robots of the nineteen fifties—a silent sentinel overseeing its lesser metallic minions. A smattering of yellow and black radiation hazard placards surrounded the brooding metal giant, while faded post-it notes scrawled with added warnings and illegible instructions clung to its sides. Some lay on the benchtop, fallen years ago, judging from their faded colors and the thickness of accumulated dust.

"This is the beastie that will tell us what we want to know. It's an EDXRF unit we inherited from Penn State some years ago. The acronym stands for energy-dispersive x-ray fluorescence … basically a device which will blast your sample with x-rays and then provide a readout of the radiation that's emitted back. Each element has a characteristic emission spectrum, so we can find out what's in there and how much."