Serendipity

by Paul Carlson

such a thing without anyone spotting all the rockets and heavy equipment that would've been necessary to construct a lunar cave? Or the massive tracks left behind?

  Each ASK member focused on the images with greater interest. The underground room was rectangular, with smooth stone walls, except at the far end. Back there, reminding Leo of the Lincoln Memorial, the upper part of the wall was covered in writing. On both sides, at the far corners of the room, stood a matched pair of tripods. Atop each was a strange device, boxy with a round hole in the front. Whatever they were, each bore a thin coat of dust. They had not, Leo figured, performed any sort of function in ages.

  The rover's main camera zoomed in and panned the rear wall, examining three lines of writing, embossed on a hard flat surface. The dark symbols, a different script on each line, contrasted with the beige-colored surface underneath.

  Leo thought the writing looked vaguely familiar, like half-remembered images from a dream, or a story read in childhood. The symbols were high above the rover's limited vertical reach, and covered the ancient surface in three distinct rows. These reminded him Chinese ideograms, Egyptian hieroglyphics, and perhaps Sanskrit.

  If this was a hoax, it was outrageously elaborate.

  "I can imagine a rectangular natural cave, but are those tripod things for real?" Palomino asked. "Are those markings unknown languages? They resemble ancient scripts, but our people can't make out any meaningful words."

  Rabbi Rosenblum gasped. "It couldn't be!" With that, she dashed outside to her car.

  A minute later, she returned with a large bound folio. "An archaeologist I know sent me this information about the Mother Tongue." She opened it to a plastic-covered page.

  Leo noted a similarity between the characters in the folio and those on that faraway wall. Serendipity had dealt them another card, as archaeology and planetary science intersected at their meeting table.

  "The Mother Tongue is controversial," Rosenblum explained. "Two weeks ago, a large sample was found on the walls of a cave in Botswana's Kalahari Desert. Until then, no one knew the full extent of its written form. Not always easy to translate, but the words are ancestral to hundreds of human tongues."

  "How old is the desert cave's writing?" Ben Buridan asked Rosenblum.

  "About seventy thousand years," the rabbi answered. "But these lunar markings could be five hundred thousand years old! That means there must have been multiple visits by whoever created them."

  Rosenblum pulled out a sheet of paper. "Several uncatalogued symbols came to light yesterday, when my friend excavated a sand-filled chamber. I got a fax this morning." With a gentle touch, the rabbi traced each pictogram on her laptop screen. "I see four of those symbols here, on the wall's middle line. Good thing about neural-net computers, approximating their meaning so quickly."

  "Marvelous." Palomino was delighted. "If these unknown symbols exist on both worlds, there's got to be a lot more to this story. I've heard plenty of tales about hidden aspects of human history. My Zuni people have a long memory, and legends subject to fanciful interpretation."

  Palomino's smile brightened. "Now we might actually find a basis for some of those legends. What does the writing say?"

  "The carvings in Botswana are still being translated," said Rosenblum. "They're stories of trust and betrayal, of a great spiritual conflict, and an epic journey." The rabbi checked a printed list, then scribbled a few notes. "This could serve as a Rosetta Stone for the whole depth of history! As best I can tell, each of the three lines read the same: Wolf Star. Running Fast Paintings. Happy Watchers Gather. Hut Making Clan."

  An unspoken "Huh?" resounded from everyone else at the table.

  The rabbi grinned. "In context? The Wolf Star is now known as Sirius, the Dog Star. This looks to me like a commemoration, a multilingual plaque, if you will. I'd render it colloquially as: Sirius Film Studios, Props Department."

  Kung shook her head, obviously perplexed.

  Rosenblum parsed it. "Sirius. Movies. Audience. Sets."

  "Movies?" Palomino exclaimed. "That is bizarre. Life imitates art, or something like that. Please, let's figure out every detail we can."

  As a climatologist, Leo was used to integrating data from far-flung sources. He'd experienced the ferocity of scientific controversies, and this discovery promised to make global warming look like a picnic. Barring a miracle, or some moral antithesis thereof, the cave had to be genuine. Even so, and despite himself, his eyes kept going back to the rover's odd-looking tracks.

  ASK specialized in doing a lot with a paucity of data, and ferreting out new angles from innocuous details. With a flash of understanding, Leo met Ben's eyes.

  "Jessica, your rover does chemical analysis, right?" asked Leo.

  "Yes," Palomino replied. If the question surprised her, she didn't blink.

  Ben spoke up. "Did your team do any analysis on that floor of that chamber?" The rover's initial visit had left faint tracks, scored with minor flaking, as with a dry lake bed rather than stone.

  "Probably," she said. "I'll send an urgent request to the mission science coordinator."

  Coordinator, singular, Leo noted. However well funded, this was definitely not a government operation. On impulse, he began a web search on Palomino's reclusive sponsor.

  Palomino set up a video link with a white-shirted man who simply radiated nerdiness. Eager to please his boss, the NASA veteran soon found the requested information.

  A screen icon flashed. "Thanks much." Palomino closed the link. "Here's the record of our analysis." She opened the file and passed it along. "Even that far underground, dust accumulates due to solar-electrostatic effects. The rover used its shovel as a brush, and cleared dust to get a better sample. After that, the drill easily broke up the regolith. That floor isn't like any encountered before."

  "I took chemistry in premed," Dr. Kung said. "Those mini-lab chips are amazing. This looks to be a desiccated phyllosilicate substance. Most unusual." She began a search on her own laptop.

  "Phyllosilicates are more commonly known as clay," Ben explained.

  Leo took interest in another piece of data. "Its isotopic ratios don't resemble those found on Earth or the inner solar system." He went over the readouts again. "Maybe those Sirius Film people brought it there, to build some kind of movie set."

  How much material did they bring, a gazillion years ago? Leo mused. Enough to reshape that whole region of the lunar farside? The outer solar system had raw material to spare.

  Kung said, "So, if it were hydrated, you could shape it? Make things?"

  "Sounds like it," said Palomino. "Must never have been fired into brick."

  Ben asked, "Are those images in natural color?"

  Palomino frowned. "The rover spotlights were an afterthought. Never thought we'd enter an artificial shaft! Can't vouch for the visual accuracy." She consulted her laptop. "Here we are, spectroscopic image analysis. The floor's color peaks at 5500 angstroms."

  Ben looked thunderstruck. "5500? But that's . . . " He burst out laughing.

  Leo slapped the table with both hands, and joined in Ben's laughter. At meeting after meeting, ASK tackled strange and even threatening mysteries. By comparison, he found it a joy to revel in such cosmic oddity.

  "Clay at 5500 is like . . . " Leo couldn't get it out.

  How in the hell did humanity end up with an old wives' tale about such a thing? Leo asked himself, and broke out in renewed mirth.

  Perhaps actual stories had been told to early humans, then leached of context by the passage of seventy thousand years. Leo knew he'd spend a lifetime wondering why those movie-making aliens had used such a substance to mold an entire landscape.

  Palomino gave him a pleading look, and Leo caught his breath. "Thing is, 5500 angstroms is in the yellow-green section of the visual spectrum. Green clay! It's almost like the moon, your part of the moon, really is made of green cheese."

&nb
sp; "Green cheese?" Palomino doubled up with a fit of giggles. Finally she managed to add, "If they thought something that lame was funny, they really must be aliens."

  "Your people have prankster gods," Rosenblum said. "Coyote, for one."

  Palomino turned to the rabbi, and Leo thought she looked startled.

  "Of course," the Native American woman responded. "Also, in common with the Pueblo tribes, there are several clown Kachinas. Our oldest gods, the specifically Zuni deities, are more nurturing. Especially the Moonlight-giving Mother."

  "How fitting," said Ben.

  "Together those mythic demigods express the psychology of humanity, and perhaps that of some ancient aliens as well," Dr. Kung observed. "If anything, more clearly than does the better-known Greek pantheon."

  "Too weird," Ben said, with a solemn expression. "I can see why the public might conclude you guys are kooks. Fifty million prize dollars would buy a whole lot of clay—or cheese."

  Leo addressed Palomino. "I was already thinking, when you first showed us the cave, that other Farside Challenge teams could provide verification. Three rovers haven't landed yet, and could redirect to that region."

  "We'd have to be discreet," Palomino said. "Show their team leaders what we've found. Get some better orbital shots of the cave area." She closed her eyes, thinking hard. "Later, we'd hold a joint press conference."

  "You could follow SETI protocols," Rosenblum said. "As a framework, I mean."

  Kung asked, "Whose idea was it to land