Ellen aimed hers at the other side. “All right. Laser time.” A secondary visor closed over their helmets, much darker than the normal one. “You all might want to look away. The beams are bright enough to cause permanent damage to the retina without protection.”
“Good thing I’m never without protection,” said Marco over the comm.
Everyone except Don and Paula chuckled.
Gina shook her head. “That guy just doesn’t know when to quit, does he?”
Kerys grinned.
“No one who quits easy would be on this rock,” said Ellen, still glaring at Lars.
Don handed Kerys his handheld. “Might as well check the ‘head room.’”
“Sure thing.”
Brilliant shimmering blue light erupted from the laser units along with a loud droning buzz.
“One good thing about workin’ out here in these suits. We can’t smell a damn thing,” yelled Lars over the noise.
“That is the only reason I’m able to stand so close to you,” said Ellen, adding a laugh to the end.
Lars straightened to look over at her. “Aww, come on. I showered already this month.”
Kerys shivered, afraid he might not be joking, and hurried to the north tunnel. The secondary chamber remained as they had left it, with the metal panel open and the ‘head room,’ as Don had called it, exposed. The place felt ten times eerier being alone. She stared at the pedestal, which appeared to be made of the same volcanic glass/silicon mix as the head without the maroon tinge. An unsettling feeling sent a tingle down her back, as if someone or something else stood in the room with her, watching.
Now I’m being silly. It’s just a creepy abandoned alien temple. Bah. We don’t know for sure it served as a temple. She switched on the scanner and held the probe near the wall, moving it up and down in slow, even passes while focused on the wireframe model generated on its tiny display screen. If the scanner detected any hollows or changes in material density, they would appear in 3D.
Her nerves prickled. Every minute or so, she glanced over her shoulder expecting to find Will standing there―or some alien ready to pounce on her out of nowhere, but each time she looked, the room remained empty. Inch by inch, she took readings around the exterior wall of the head chamber. Aside from a channel of loose dirt near the northwestern corner, rendered as sandy texture on the screen, the walls scanned as either solid rock fronted with cut bricks, or had open space behind them.
A soft scrape close behind made Kerys whirl around with a gasp, raising her arms to defend herself―but the room remained empty. “What the…?”
The footstep-like scratch repeated. With her facing the entrance, it seemed more like a strange echo from the outer room. The acoustics in here are weird. A few minutes later, she ignored a third scuff as well as a metallic clank that followed―until a shadow moved on the wall. Kerys let out a yelp and spun around.
Gina jumped back, wide-eyed. “Hey easy… it’s just me.”
“Shit, you scared me.” Kerys let her head hang for a second or two while she caught her breath. “This place is creepy.”
“Abandoned tombs like this always are, especially if you’re alone.” Gina wandered closer, twisting left and right to stare around at the walls and up at the pyramid-shaped vault ceiling. “Wow… this almost looks like a missile silo… if they made missiles square.”
Kerys laughed and got back to scanning the wall. “Yeah. I think it was ceremonial, but I haven’t made up my mind yet between tomb or place of worship. It’s creepy. Before you got here, it felt like something was watching me. Almost as if this place was angry we’d disturbed it.”
“Oh boy,” said Marco on the comm. “Here we go with the voodoo.”
Gina put her back to the wall and aimed her assault rifle around the chamber. “I got nothin’ on thermal. Don’t feel anything weird either.”
“I’m sure it’s just my overactive imagination. Being alone in a place like this lets the mind play.” She edged to the right, raising and lowering the scanner, grateful for having some company.
After another few minutes of the same boring blankness going by on the screen, Don’s voice came over the comm channel. “Kerys, have you discovered anything interesting in there?”
She frowned at the handheld. “I’m about three-fourths the way around the chamber, and so far I’m only seeing rock and some loose dirt. The aerial scans didn’t show anything beyond this point, so I’m thinking this is probably a dead end.”
“You can get back to that later if you’d like to see this. They’re done cutting on the door.”
“Be right there.” Eager to get out of the creepy room, she headed back down the tunnel to the secondary chamber and paused at the corridor leading to the outer area. The front room had filled with dense smoke, making it difficult to see much more than a few feet in any direction. “Whoa.”
Gina stopped close behind. “Wow, that’s a lot of dust.”
“Mind your step,” said Paula.
Kerys made her way across the first room to the east wall, placing her boots with care to avoid tripping on the wires she couldn’t see. Soon, the wavering beams of shoulder-mounted spotlights became apparent in the mist. She stopped beside Paula and leaned forward for a better look at the door. A one-inch-thick gap went all the way around, the stone still glowing faintly orange at the top where the two lasers had converged.
Ellen and Lars bored holes in the center of the slab, in which they inserted expanding hooks. After securing heavy ropes to the eye loop at the end of the rods, they hauled the stone monolith out of the way, the exo suits making it look easy.
Don stepped in first, followed by Paula.
“Whoa,” said Marco over the comm.
“My word.” Don coughed. “Will you look at that?”
Kerys darted forward.
The next chamber’s ceiling had to be five or six stories tall. Bas-relief carvings of alien shapes adorned the walls, eroded by thousands of years. They bore a rather striking resemblance to the stone head, and appeared to be biological creatures of some form—though the bizarre shapes left her unable to imagine what they might’ve looked like in life. The pattern made it impossible to tell where one creature began and another ended, though here and there, parts looked enough like the statue she found to guess at ‘faces.’
Four massive hexagonal stone pillars stood in a square arrangement about midway between the corners and the center of the room. Each one bore thousands of pictographic characters like the ones from the buttons, only a far more varied assortment. Low-lying slabs sat between the obelisks against the north and south walls, about the size of dining room tables, but only two feet tall. A large, triangular door occupied the center of the eastern wall, directly across from the cut-open passage. Six familiar symbols adorned its center.
“That’s the same word.” Kerys advanced to the center of the chamber, pointing east. “The marks on that door. I found thirty-seven examples of the same ‘phrase’ on Copernicus. It has to be important. The name of their species, the name of… I guess a company maybe? Or their god?”
“Interesting.” Paula approached the door and studied the marks. “They’re quite precise. Laser cut.”
“If the Atlanteans had access to technology like that, why are they still carving up statues and building stone temples?” asked Marco.
“Mister Trem, will you please cease referring to these beings as Atlanteans? It’s distracting and it creates conjecture that we are light years away from even suspecting, much less proving.” Paula shook her head and continued complaining to herself while holding her e-pad up to the writing.
Kerys squatted by one of the slabs. The top had evidence of abrasive wear, deeper in the center. After a little while of studying it, she blinked. “I… think these might’ve been seats.”
“What?” Don rushed over.
“Look.” She pointed at the erosion that formed a shallow bowl-like depression in the slab. “All of them have similar wear patter
ns, and they’re not identical. They weren’t designed that way. The Atla―aliens were using them as benches.”
“My, my.” Don took a knee. “That could offer quite a bit about their anatomy. These relics are low to the ground, suggesting the beings who lived here possessed serpentine or slug-like bodies.”
“Maybe they had stumpy little legs,” said Gina.
Kerys grinned.
Don held his arms out. “The dimensions of this slab suggest a creature longer than its height, again like a snail, slug, or serpent. Assuming, of course, that your theory of these being ‘benches’ is true.”
“If these surfaces had regular contact with the aliens, there might be traces of DNA in the stone.” Kerys took her hand off it.
“So, stone benches and stuff.” Gina wandered over to one of the obelisks. “This kinda looks like Ancient Egyptian writing. Think your Atlanteans built the pyramids too?”
Paula groaned and bonked her helmet into the door.
Gina winked at Kerys. “What if all them stories are wrong? You know, all those sci-fi things where the humans are outgunned by real advanced aliens? What if we’re the advanced civilization and the aliens are still learning how to make fire?”
“Then,” said Lars, “the galaxy is fucked.”
“How… eloquent,” muttered Don.
Lars twirled his hand around, the actuators of his exo suit whirring, and rendered a formal bow.
“It’s definitely an oddity.” Kerys got up and wandered over to stand by Gina, leaning close to the obelisk to examine the symbols. “If our alien friends were slug-bodied, how did they cut writing on a stone pillar that’s more than thirty feet tall? These markings look too precise to have been made with hand tools.” She shivered with excitement. Visions of giving presentations at universities and interviews with the media flooded her thoughts.
“Maybe they had wings too,” said Gina.
Marco laughed. “They might’ve been gaseous. Like living balloons. Maybe they could float? Those slabs might’ve been landing pads instead of seats.”
“Kerys, why don’t you help Paula catalog all the markings on those obelisks, generate some virtual tablets out of them. I’ll start on a biomatter sweep of these… ‘benches.’” Don opened a case and unpacked several boxes to get at something near the bottom.
“Sure.” Kerys held her scanner up to the obelisk, focusing on an intricate glyph that had swoops and whorls as thin as grass blades. According to the device, the pillar consisted of solid stone. The details within the carvings looked so perfect they appeared more like computer generated graphics than a real object. “The markings do look laser etched. They’re far too precise for hand tools… but I’m not reading any evidence of melting and recrystallization.”
“Which suggests no heat,” said Marco. “Maybe they weren’t cave-aliens after all if they can manipulate matter like that.”
Kerys grinned. “I think we’re going to wind up being here longer than six months. This is big.” For no other reason than already being close enough to reach, she hugged Gina. “This is what I’ve been hoping for ever since I graduated.”
“Looks like these Atlanteans are an enigma.” Marco started chuckling even before Paula gasped in frustration.
“How long are you going to insist on calling them that?” Paula stared at the ceiling.
“I dunno. How long is it going to get on your nerves?”
Kerys bit her lip to keep from laughing.
“Besides,” said Marco, “Atlanteans sounds better than AV494-i-ans.”
“I formally object to using that term in any documentation.” Paula pointed at Don. “It’s misleading and it’s going to make people take our work less seriously.”
Don looked up from a bench, the front of his helmet lit green in the glow of a mapping laser. “She has a point there. For brevity’s sake, note them as UAS―unidentified alien species.”
“Hey, why not Kerysians?” Marco snickered. “Give her some overdue credit.”
She rolled her eyes. First Will wants to name that flower after me, now this. “Uhh, pass. Having a race of giant space slugs named after me isn’t exactly flattering.”
“We don’t know they’re slugs yet,” said Don.
Laughter filled the comm for a few seconds.
She stared up at the obelisk. “Ellen, Lars, you guys have any scaffolding or ladders or something so I can reach the top of these pillars?”
“Yeah, not here though.” Ellen started for the exit. “Back in about twenty.”
“Thanks,” said Kerys.
Lars followed her out.
“The ladder’s that heavy it takes both of you?” asked Kerys.
“No.” Lars twisted back to look at her and pointed at Ellen. “Buddy system. It’s against the rules for anyone to be alone while outside here.”
“Oh. Okay. That makes sense.”
Kerys retrieved a laser modeler from a case and opened a new, blank file. Recording the writing on the obelisks would likely involve assembling multiple separate sections into a single, large rendering. Despite facing days of tedious work, her body vibrated from the sheer thrill of it.
This is it. We’re making history.
9
Spooked
A little after 8 p.m., a machine spat out a portion of roast chicken cut into little cubes, mixed with mashed potatoes and gravy. Kerys carried her tray to a seat in a mostly-empty cafeteria. Still flying on a wave of excitement, she proceeded to devour her meal as well as a pair of small rolls.
AV494 had no moon, which made the night hours pitch black, save for the occasional sparkle of starlight on the regolith. She gave up on the window and hurried her meal along, eager to get back to her quarters and start stitching 3D models together.
“Wow, what did they put in that?” asked Annapurna, from behind.
“Huh?” Kerys glanced back at her with half a mouthful.
Annapurna sat next to her on the bench, facing away from the table. “You’re inhaling your food like it’s going to be taken away from you.” She smiled. “Glad to see you found an appetite.”
“We made some promising discoveries today.” She swabbed a dinner roll in the gravy mixture and took a big chomp out of it.
“Excellent. Speaking of discoveries, I wanted to give you an update on that ‘head’ you found.”
“Mmm?” Kerys looked up, pausing in mid-chew.
“I found evidence of microbial life inside it. Petrified microorganisms. We’re still attempting to verify their age, but the cells are long dead.”
“Mmm!” Kerys rushed to swallow, and wound up coughing for a moment. “That’s amazing… what were they? Bacteria? Plant cells?”
“The specimens are distorted due to being dessciated. It appears that whatever species lived here previously might have sealed them in that object as a means of preservation, but I believe that such a great amount of time has passed, even that didn’t protect them. I’m hopeful they were preserved enough that I can build a digital model, simulating the organism’s behavior in the computer to see how they may have looked and behaved while alive.”
Kerys bounced. “Alien life…”
“Their structure is similar to single-celled organisms like amoeba, but it could be a form of algae as well. Perhaps you found something akin to a seed store.”
“A what?” Kerys glanced down for a second to scoop more gravy on a roll.
“This organism or plant or whatever it is may have been a vital component of their existence, so they created a bunker in the mountainside to store it in case something cataclysmic happened.”
“Oh. But there’s that forest. Do you think this planet got wiped out?”
Annapurna smiled. “That’s a little out of my wheelhouse, but Proxima Flora is the only major collection of biological life we’ve discovered here so far. Granted, we haven’t touched the oceans yet. That’s projected to start in about six years once we’ve exhausted terrestrial research.”
“Proxima F
lora?” asked Kerys with a hint of a chuckle. “Doesn’t that basically mean ‘nearby plants?’”
“That’s the official name for the ‘forest’ north and west of us. It’s about 270 miles from end to end and thirty-four miles across at its widest point. Thus far, we’ve documented 118 individual species of plant life, most of which have characteristics similar to fungus.”
“Oh. You must be so excited to find something here that isn’t a plant.” Kerys grinned, dropping her fork on the empty tray. “I know I’m orbiting the moon at what we’ve found. I don’t think I’m going to sleep much tonight.”
Annapurna pursed her lips. “Yes, but…”
“What?” Kerys leaned closer.
“I shouldn’t discuss it. There’s already some improprieties going around. A rushed approval process, carelessness. Some samples were lost.”
“Oh.” Kerys grimaced. “Hope it wasn’t too bad.”
“Doctor Bhatia?” asked a younger man in a green jumpsuit, hanging in the cafeteria door. “Do you have a moment?”
Annapurna stood. “Be right there, Ethan.” She smiled at Kerys. “Oh, just a small sample. I’m more alarmed to have something go missing like that. None of my team knows what happened to it.”
“Who would steal research samples?” Kerys blinked. “What would they do with them? Not like they can run off and sell it.”
“That, my dear Kerys, is the question that’s going to keep me up tonight.” Annapurna sighed. “How’s your situation?”
“Will?” Kerys shrugged. “I haven’t seen him since. Going to work in my room tonight instead of the cube to stay out of sight.”
“You have my EIN. Please comm if you need anything.”
“Thanks.” Kerys frowned at her empty plate. “I think I might spoil myself. There’s a donut over there with my name on it.”
Streams of warm water flowed over Kerys’s face and down her body. She stood in one of eight shower stalls arranged around a circular room with a single drain in the middle. Partitions of hospital-white plastic separated each station, but didn’t offer much cover. Most of the female staff tended to shower in the early morning before their shifts, which gave Kerys the room all to herself. She found it amusing how she’d avoided organized sports in college mostly out of fear of group showers, and wound up stuck with that reality on Copernicus. Of course, the military would’ve been worse.
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