It was during the early morning meal that the question of the singing sounds, or the lack of them, was brought up.
‘How come we haven’t heard them so far? asked Paul. ‘Both of the other expeditions did, and to their detriment.’
‘Perhaps the mind block is more effective than we were led to believe.’ John answered thoughtfully. ‘Or perhaps it has broken down, and the complex is using the illusion system instead. One thing does bother me though, we have no way of knowing how much of what we see is real, or an illusion.’
‘I wish you hadn’t said that,’ retorted Hans, ‘I was just getting used to the idea that this was an alien culture and I had to accept it for what it was, and now I don’t know what to believe.’
The morning excursion began as did the previous two, nothing untoward happening, until they found the tracks left by their late night visitor.
‘Whatever it was, it skirted around the Lander and then went back that way.’ said Ben, pointing towards a far distant ridge. ‘Do we need to go and look for it?’
‘No, not now, we’ve got enough on our plates at the moment, and it didn’t do us any harm,’ replied Greg, sounding a little more confident than he felt. ‘If it gives us any trouble, then we’ll track it down and give it a thorough pasting.’
No more was said on the matter as the team made their way to the edge of the valley. The line of stones they had left the night before, denoting the beginning of the slope down, was still in place, and the slope looked real.
Halfway down the slope they noticed a pair of lights flashing on the far side of the valley. They stopped, just in case it was their presence which had triggered a response, but the light continued to flash, and then stopped.
‘Let’s go a few paces,’ said Greg, ‘and stop again, we’ll see if it was us that triggered the lights.’
They stopped a second time, but the lights didn’t come on again, nor did anything else happen as they went the short distance to the second line of stones they had left, marking the hidden entrance to the complex.
‘Still feels odd,’ said Paul, ‘going through what looks like solid stone.’ And then they were in the main tunnel leading to the complex.
Although it was only their third venture into the Martian complex, they walked along the tunnel with a confident air as if they had been doing it all their lives, which was mainly why it surprised them so much when they met the Sentinel.
They had been talking among themselves about what the rails in the main cavern might have been for, when their way was barred by a tall figure in the tunnel ahead.
It was almost twice their size, very well muscled, and the head nearly touched the roof. Dressed in what looked like a polished leather skirt with a tunic to match, the arms were crisscrossed with leather thongs, which only accentuated the entrapped bulging muscles. The skin was a beautiful dark toned honey bronze, the flashing eyes of the purest blue. And then it spoke, raising one arm and pointing down the tunnel, the way they had come in.
The group froze as the figure repeated its gesture of ‘go back’, the voice booming out so loudly that it made them wince.
Hans immediately went for his side arm, and only refrained from shooting by the quick action of Greg, whose arm flicked out to hold the gun pointing downwards.
‘Wait Hans, let’s see what else the show contains.’
The giant figure took two steps forward, and repeated his gesture, again with the booming voice. The team stood their ground, but were ready to run for it should direct action be taken against them. The figure dimmed a little and then brightened, and Greg’s suspicions were confirmed.
‘It’s only an illusion, we should be able to walk through it, but lets see what it does first.’
It didn’t do anything, except repeat its gesture over and over again, and advancing towards them, the voice increasing in volume each time.
‘I like their technique,’ said Ben, once he also realized the whole thing was an illusion, ‘if they don’t understand it the first time, shout a little louder.’ The others laughed, breaking the tension which had built up.
‘Pass the trolley up’, said Greg, ‘I’ve got an idea, and put any loose stuff on top inside the covers.’
Greg, pushing the trolley before him, advanced towards the Sentinel, who was going through its routine for the umpteenth time. Five metres from the gesticulating phantom, Greg carefully lined the trolley up, and gave it a push.
The trolley gently rolled along the tunnel floor, losing momentum as it drew nearer to the huge figure, and had almost stopped as the front end disappeared into the ghostly apparition. A fine filigree of miniature lightning danced all over the trolley, and the Sentinel faded from sight.
‘It doesn’t seem to have hurt the trolley.’ Greg commented as he checked it over. ‘It must have caused a short circuit in the works somewhere though.’
‘I expect the metal of the trolley absorbed the energy field of the holographic projection,’ said Ben, ‘and the supply was unable to provide enough power to satisfy the surge.’ He felt quite pleased with himself for his erudite explanation.
‘Can’t say I’ll miss the noisy sod.’ Hans added, as he lifted the cover of the trolley and made sure the contents hadn’t been damaged.
Cheered up considerably by their handling of the situation, the team moved on down the tunnel, eager to get into the main cavern and solve the mystery of the rail tracks.
‘I wonder what ‘it’ thinks of our dispatching the guardian of the tunnel, I’ll bet that’s the first time anything like that’s ever happened.’ John mused, as they walked long, their footsteps echoing along the smooth walled passageway.
‘Oh, come on, John, I’m surprised at you,’ said Greg, ‘there’s no sentient being running this show, it’s just a computer driven security system, with sensors dotted about all over the place to pick up any unauthorized intruders.
‘It doesn't think, it just reacts to a stimulus with a given response, therefore it’s most unlikely that ‘it’ will take offence and turn nasty, mind you, it may not send us a birthday card now.’ A few soft chuckles from the others followed Greg’s remark.
‘I was only speaking figuratively.’ John replied, wishing he had thought it out before making his statement.
They went through the airlock without mishap, and the main cavern beckoned with its myriad mysteries.
Standing on a raised section just inside the entrance, the group surveyed the rail track running the entire length of the cavern, apparently disappearing into a pair of vast shutters.
‘It’s fairly obvious that this centre section is an assemblage point for whatever they made.’ began Greg, summing up the scene. ‘I would assume that a flat bedded platform of some sort would be wheeled in, perhaps with a sub frame, and the workshops on each side would make the various parts, which would then be assembled on the platform.
‘Whatever they made is then wheeled out through the end down there. What we need to do is find a way through those shutters and into the next section, where we may find a clue as to what they manufactured.’
‘Do you think we could acquire a few more tools on the way?’ asked Hans, eager to augment his limited tool box with the alien equipment.
‘On the way back, perhaps,’ Greg replied, ‘but only if we can fathom out what they do, and can use them safely. We are also limited weight-wise, don’t forget.’
They walked down the length of the cavern beside the track way, looking out for anything which might have been left over from the manufacturing process, but all had been put away neatly, or assembly had been terminated on the last project, and nothing new begun.
‘Judging by the size of those rails, whatever they made must have been massive.’ commented Hans, as they neared the end of the cavern. ‘And look at the size of those doors.’
A door, smaller than those on the workshops, attracted Ben’s attention, and he walked over to it, but it didn’t open.
‘Wonder what’s in here?’ he called ou
t over the radio link.
‘See if you can open it,’ Greg replied, ‘it looks different to the others, and it hasn’t responded to your presence, so there must be some restricted method of gaining access.’
They could find no sensor plate, knob, latch or other means of opening the door, and that included several physical assaults by the burley Hans, putting all his not inconsiderable weight behind his efforts. In the end Paul suggested that someone go back to retrieve one of the laser cutters from a workshop, and hack their way in.
Before Greg’s head had completed his nod of approval at the suggestion, Hans was already heading back up the track way, to return later with one of the laser cutters.
‘Are your sure it’s a cutter?’ asked Greg, wary of the alien tools, and the possible damage they could do to his team.
‘Yes,’ replied the beaming Hans, ‘I cut a long slot in the workbench to make sure. My God, this’ll make a difference to manufacturing back home.’
Hans made a long vertical cut from top to bottom of the door, reasoning that any hinge or locking mechanism would be near the edge, while the others stood well back just in case the cutter did something unexpected.
They had to make a cut down the other side of the door before it gave way, and then it was with a degree of reluctance, as a set of lugs ran down each side, locking it into the main frame.
‘Obviously the workers weren’t intended to come in here by the look of the locking mechanism.’ Hans stood admiring the ingenuity of the locking system, but couldn’t find the means by which the aliens opened it.
‘There might be an energy field surrounding the door, and the authorized person carries a token which the field recognizes.’ offered Ben, looking for sensor coils, but finding none. ‘Anyway, we’re in now.’
The long passage stretched before them, but no lights came on to guide their way, so the trolley lamp was switched on bathing the sleek stone walls with its stark white glare.
A soft glow of light up ahead caused them to slow down, and they approached the end of the passage with a degree of caution, not knowing quite what to expect from this different environment.
The passage opened out into what seemed to be a reception hall, with doors and other passages leading off deeper into the complex. The walls were aglow with colour, murals depicting scenes of life in a very strange looking landscape, but little information could be gained from studying them as they were surrealistic in nature, and only illustrated the artist’s concept of reality.
‘Funny looking lot.’ John said. ‘But it does at least prove the point that they are basically humanoid in structure, although I’m not too sure about the artists who painted them.’
‘I’ve seen a few worse back home,’ Paul added, ‘but not many. Remember, beauty is in the mind of the beholder, or something like that.’
‘Any of you looked in the mirror lately?’ Ben added.
The doors to each room opened when approached, and this surprised them as they expected some degree of privacy to have been observed.
They entered the first room to find basic furniture, as would be expected in their own homes, chairs, a table and a series of cabinets along one wall, all empty of any artefacts. Shelves, which could well have held books, stretched along another wall, surrounding what looked like a vision panel, but there were no visible controls to switch it on.
‘Well, it looks quite homely,’ John said, looking around at the not too unfamiliar furniture, ‘but a bunch of flowers would brighten it up a bit.’
A door at the back of the room led them to further rooms, one of which was undoubtedly for sleeping in, as a raised platform with a soft spongy top took up most of the space.
‘This looks like their ablutions room,’ Paul called out, but the taps look a bit weird.’ The others joined him as he tried in vain to get a flow of water from what was obviously a water control valve.
‘Try putting your hand under it,’ said Greg, aware that most things worked on the principle of ‘proximity’ in this alien place. Paul did as he was bid, and sure enough, a trickle of water came out of the curved pipe above the basin, but with little enthusiasm.
‘Not much of a flow,’ he said, sounding disappointed, ‘a bath would take for ever at this rate.’
‘Don’t forget, the system has been disused for God knows how long,’ Greg said. ‘I’m surprised you got anything out of it, apart from a puff of dust. They’ve shut everything else down, so I wonder why the water was left on?’
No one else had anything erudite to offer on the subject.
They went back to the main hall, and tried another door. It seemed this was a dormitory area where the elite had resided, for all the rooms were the same, with only small differences in the internal layout and the furniture.
The group went on down the hall area, looking for something different, and then they found it. A door which opened to a narrow passage, made them all feel a little claustrophobic as they entered the narrow passage and squeezed their way along to a room at the end.
‘I think we’ve found the main control room, or something like it.’ Greg sounded more than pleased at their discovery.
‘Careful not to get too close to anything which looks as if it might switch on if you get near it, and don’t touch anything until we can figure out what it might do.’ He wasn’t taking any chances this far into the complex.
The walls of the room were covered with flat viewing screens, below which were recessed panels covered in different coloured discs, supposedly for controlling them.
Four desk shaped objects took up most of the space in the in the middle of the room with their accompanying chair like seating arrangements. The desks had a different type of control disc on a sloped section, with a series of small button like objects below them.
After they had a good look around, and decided this was probably the control room for the complex, Ben sat down on one of the chairs. As he swung around to face the desk, a soft whisper of sound accompanied the viewing screen as it rose up from the back edge of the desk. They all froze.
The screen gave out a pale glow of light from within its surface, and the temptation for Ben was too much.
Before anyone could stop him, a finger touched one of the discs, and a scene sprang to life on the screen.
A picture of the main cavern in three dimensions was so real that it made them gasp.
‘Now that’s real 3D.’ Ben said quietly, almost afraid that a louder voice might ruin the magic of the picture.
‘OK to try another disc?’ Greg nodded.
Scene after scene flickered across the screen, mostly of the cavern and the attached workshops, but one scene brought back memories of the pyramid dome as a picture of the jewelled door flashed and twinkled at them, but they couldn’t find one of the chamber beyond the door.
There were two views of the main tunnel they had come in by, one of which showed the line of stones they had placed to mark the way in, and one of the area just outside.
Two views of the illusion pit did little to make them smile, as one was of the pile of bones at the bottom of the pit, a reminder of what might have befallen their predecessors, although they hadn’t found any human bones.
‘Let’s try another desk.’ Ben was fascinated by the clarity and realism of the pictures, and the fact that the system still worked after so long.
The next desk seemed to specialize in exterior pictures, the first being of the Lander, but the Lander was off to one side, so they assumed that it was a chance shot and not an intentional survey of their exploits.
A picture of the valley containing the two entrances, revealed a third entrance unknown to them, showing as a faint red line on an otherwise featureless wall of rock, but there were no pictures of where it went or what lay within.
While the others were enthralled with what the screens had to show, John soon got bored, and began wandering about the rest of the room, and that’s when he discovered the hidden panel which was to change things for ever.
‘Look what I’ve found,’ he called out, ‘a hidden doorway.’
The others came over and gathered around John, peering at what seemed to be just a bare panel set in the wall.
‘What makes you think it’s a doorway?’ asked Paul, ‘it’s just a panel to blank off a hole in the wall.’
‘These people don’t leave holes in walls, they’re too tidy, and I very much doubt if they make holes without a very good purpose, so there’s something behind here, or you can have my rations tonight.’ He didn’t see Paul’s facial response.
‘OK, lets see if we can get in then’, said Greg, ‘but no fiddling with what you find inside until we figure out what it is, we were lucky with the screens, so don’t push it.’
It didn’t respond to their being in close proximity, and there were no other means of opening it, so the laser cutter was brought into action.
No sooner had the blue white light beam touched the panel, when it slid up into the ceiling, and a huge control consul rolled out into the only remaining space in the room. They all had to jump back quickly or be crushed, as the unit remorselessly ploughed forward and then ground to a stop.
‘Bloody hell fire, you nearly got us squashed, Hans.’ John was the last to move away from the panel, and therefore got a severe prod as the machine rolled forward. ‘Sorry John.’
The huge consul had a screen twice the size of those on the desks, and it was aglow with a soft red light. A series of lines dissected its surface, turning the lit area into a grid of eight squares. Each square had a small symbol on its top right corner, and the square in the top right corner of the screen had its symbol flashing.
‘Looks as if we are meant to start something, that’s what a flashing symbol usually means.’ said Ben, hopefully, as his finger moved towards the flashing mark.
‘No you bloody don’t,’ Greg yelled, ‘leave it alone while we try to work out what it’s for.’
They tried, but they couldn’t make any sense out of the grid, its symbols, or the one lone symbol which was flashing. The controls on the desk section of the device gave no clue what they were for either, as they were totally different to all the others in the room.
The Martian Enigma Page 9