“No, ma’am.”

“But there’s clearly a world on the other side,” the President said. “Dr. Weaver, would you be willing to go to that world? Assuming it’s survivable for a human?”

“Sir, it would take a platoon of marines to keep me away from that gate.”

“Funny you should say that,” the defense secretary said with a slight smile.

“I’m Spec… Sergeant Crichton, sir,” Crichton said, saluting the Navy officer in desert camouflage. “I was the NBC guy that did the initial evaluation.”

“Lieutenant Glasser,” the SEAL said, returning the salute and then shaking his hand. “I saw the approach; good work.”

“Thank you, sir,” Crichton said. He knew he was getting a swelled head but didn’t know what to do about it. The battalion commander had passed on good words from the Chief of Staff for God’s Sake. His evaluation, that it wasn’t a nuke, that it wasn’t an asteroid and that it was a gate, had been ahead of FEMA’s, the national science advisor and God Knows who else. And now he was being complimented by a SEAL.

Glasser just nodded his head and looked into the hole. The team had been at McDill Air Force Base in Tampa, home of the Special Operations Command, doing a dog and pony show, read briefing, for the incoming commander. It was the sort of shit that SEALs normally managed to avoid but the new SOCOM commander was a Green Beanie, Army Special Forces, Green Berets, who had limited experience in commanding or managing SEALs or most of the other forces that fell under his command. The team had been chosen because it was in country, not doing anything important and it had a wide range of experience from Command Master Chief Miller, who had been a SEAL since Christ was a corporal and had been in every land and sea action since Grenada, to Seaman First Class Sanson who still didn’t have the Coronado sand out of his boots.