He remained there, moving his head at different angles trying to see what was there, and moved back to see it better and he saw the room, which he had appeared there in, had vanished and there was a gateway, and region of blackness identical to the blackness at the center of the gateway at the moonbase
He put his hand into it and realized there was no pull and it was far more advanced than the Moonbase X3 gateway!
He leapt in it and rushed through a wormhole and yellow globes became visible, and his vision adjusted and he saw the place that had been on the screen further out and he entered there and saw that it was a dimly lit narrow corridor, and he turned around and saw that he had been in an identical room to the one at the other place and that it had a screen and controls at its side.
At a distant region of the corridor it abruptly darkened, where the lights did not go any further, and he saw that it was the corridor of something, and he moved away from the gateway to it.
Corridors went out endlessly all along it, and he examined everything, and he sensed the size of the structure was colossal!
He walked into the darkness at the end of it until an entrance finally appeared in front of him, and he opened it, not seeing where he was going, and his side hit something!
In amazement he saw that he was no longer just in darkness and that a large translucent dome surrounded him, and he turned, and his entire sight filled with the stars of deep space!
It was an observation point of a starship, and it was designed so it gave the observer a view that was identical to being in space and being surrounded by stars. The black floor and starship was barely visible behind him.
A distant sound startled him and he could not realize what could create it, and it sounded like it was caused by a living thing, and he realized how alone he was there. Perhaps more alone than any human in history! He was in the deepest deep space itself! Endless light years away from the solar system!
He was positive that it had been the noise of something though, and he gently shifted himself away, making faint moving sounds. And he moved towards where he heard it.
In the dim starlight he shifted into the corridor and spotted a closed entrance on the wall, where he was sure the sound came from, and he silently opened it revealing a dark interior, with some lighted controls.
He examined them wondering how fast the starship was traveling, and realized that it must travel at many times the speed of light or the starship would be useless!
He returned to the wormhole gateway, and on approaching it he spotted the form of screen and line of dots going down its side, and he pressed the first that he saw and was amazed when the screen lit up and showed a view of a bright place, and he entered the wormhole, and the darkness swiftly turned to blinding light and he could not see at first, until his eyes started adjusting, and he saw he was in a type of tunnel about his size, about him, made of translucent material, and below he suddenly saw an incredible world covered in bright blue water, glowing in intense brightness!
He was sure if the light had been more powerful it could blind him, and he watched reflections of strange objects in the water of the world below, and he watched distorted shapes and a distorted sun, which seemed magnified.
He was on some form of colossal space station, surrounded by other forms of space stations with tremendous sizes, stretching out for miles all about him, with networks of translucent tunnels, with large round and square bulges.
The sun there was of an incredible size and he realized that the place might have been built an incredibly long time ago and that the sun had increased in size for some reason.
He entered a spherical bulge of transparent material, connected to another translucent tunnel, which went on into the distance.
Stars shone at his side intensely, as he clumsily rested.
Another large world’s sphere was shining in space, at his side. It was completely different, and he could barely believe that it was a normal world.
Further along, he spotted a region, and he stood staggered, where he spotted a region of the space station with an even more colossal size, stretching out for hundreds of miles all about it, in networks of translucent tunnels, with large round and square bulges that had sizes that were in miles.
After a long time, of observing everything, he returned to the wormhole gateway and made his way back to the starship.
In the darkness of the starship he stood shocked at what he had seen and he realized that he did not know how to properly handle an alien encounter with a highly advanced race! How could he communicate with them? Other locations surely had them! The dangers were immense and he considered what would happen if they found the gateway at Moonbase X3, and he was sure they could not deal with such an advanced civilization! If they were deadly it would be the end of everything!
On his approach to the screen and line of dots going down its side he gasped, and gasped more every time he pressed a button and saw a new location on the screen, and stood amazed when he saw one with a view of a bright place, as he recognized something, and amidst a blur he saw it was a view through a rotating sphere form at the center of a chamber, and he spotted the scientists at the moonbase faintly visible about its sides!
The starship’s technology was incredible and he somehow sensed there had to be something there on how it worked and he returned to where all the controls in the room had been and looked around until he found a hidden away screen.
He looked through information on it, which he could not decipher, and searched for anything to do with the starship and started photographing diagrams and drawings of it and information with it, and photographed everything he could, using a device he had, and for hours he continued on going, until he was sure he had everything, and what he wanted, and returned to the wormhole gateway, and decided to return!
He realized their knowledge was colossal and he could barely understand it! They used the gateways to keep their civilization connected, over the immense expanses of space!
The familiar pattern of movements of the Moonbase X3 wormhole was amazing and he never thought he would be watching them from inside it, from galaxies away!
While he was thinking of all the other worlds there were on the screen, and undoubtedly on other entrance points, an unusual view appeared on the screen and he watched Commander Craven entering the Moonbase X3 chamber, and stand talking to Lucas, and Weaver rushed through the gateway!
V
The Transcendents
All the scientists stood staggered when Weaver rushed out of the wormhole without warning and rushed over and shut down the colossal magnetic field holding the gateway open!
It was incredible that it worked and that the whole gateway collapsed and vanished, and he spotted the relieved faces of many of the scientists!
The extraordinary scene that developed there afterwards was incredible, and he warned all the scientists there what was there and that mankind was not ready for an alien encounter of its kind! It would be far more dangerous than the Ice Station X1 voyager!
Some leading scientists started trying to reopen the wormhole, but they could not, and he believed when he reported everything he had that they would avoid doing so, and the immense cost of constructing another was too high!
He was also sure that they had carried out all their experiments on it as an entire month had passed since he had entered it, and he realized he had been going through the wormhole for an entire month, before he had arrived at the room, and he started to recall some strange encounters that had taken place, and he had met the last of the transcendents that had built the more advanced version!
He realized that it would have resulted in disaster for mankind and that it would have met with many civilizations and things far more advanced and that it would have been destroyed!
He realized many civilizations must have encountered the wormhole while trying to build their own and had been stopped with different methods!
The entire chamber was full of scientists and he saw that
many were angry and he wondered what they would do!
Eventually a famous leading scientist took a microphone and started calming them, and Weaver was handed the microphone to explain what had happened and he wondered if they would accept what had taken place!
He suddenly recalled more of what had occurred in the stargate, and his encounter with the highly advanced transcendents, from another universe, and for some reason he started to explain what the dangers of using wormholes were, and his encounter with the transcendents and that in the starship, to explore the stars the correct way, they had given him plans to build a starship!
Chapter 6
The Alien Source Code
(From the novel The Alien Artifact 5)
Bryson sensed that there was something that they were not saying, but he knew he would only needed to wait for them to tell what it was, and he kept wondered if they were in danger and tried to get Parker to give him what needed to know.
While Bryson considered what could happen next Parker and his scientists started consulting with each and made an agreement!
“The stuff is highly classified!” Parker announced to Bryson and Mortimer. “We’re still just playing safe and assuming that we return home at the end of this ...”
“But if it is used we are going to see it anyway!” Mortimer stated, seeing Bryson’s viewpoint.
“It might not work! Why release it for nothing is the argument against it! We have already gone over the borderline of giving highly classified material ...”
“We’ll give our word not to reveal it anywhere unless we have to!” Bryson replied. “We have also been given classified material in our past projects, and we helped create some! For instance at the last castle exploration ...”
“There is little to it anyway!” Parker moaned. “In the nineteen seventies they had a first contact scenario that they gave to scientists and others to handle, and one of the outcomes of the project was The Alien Source Code, which was designed to communicate with any extraterrestrials through communications, which was later improved, and was to be also used in physical communication.
“All the old stuff is out date ... But it has been vastly improved, especially since the Pacific island incident, and, of course, your encounter at the castle! With the incredible advances in computer technology!”
“Well, there’s a version that does not need special equipment for it! It was made into software and is to be used if a sudden encounter occurs again, and we were to use it to communicate ...”
“You have the technology to communicate with it ...” Mortimer replied cheerfully.
“And perhaps make a first contact situation occur!”
“So what’s happened?” Bryson replied, anxiously waiting for a reply, and answer to what was occurring.
“We haven’t found a way to communicate with it! It has not replied to anything we have done, which we have gone by the instructions with!”
Bryson laughed and replied, “So we are trying to find a way to talk to it!”
“Correct!” Parker replied firmly, hoping for an answer.
“Thanks!” Mortimer answered firmly. “Since you have given what you know ... I’ll add what I know! I believe that what’s active there is the equivalent to our subconscious mind, while it’s in a type of sleep or suspended animation state, which acts as its defense and carries out various other functions. I think it brought the airplane down and for some reason wanted us here, especially by showing the structure to you on your scan of the island!”
“So we’ve to contact its subconscious?” Bryson replied.
“Right!” Parker replied. “Another classified element of The Alien Source Code is that we can send it or communicate with it telepathically, using some of our equipment!”
“I think it has a physical presence!” Mortimer replied. “As the alien in the Pacific island spacecraft had! And the entity at the other castle had! We’ll have to find it as we did before. And we’ll find it down the tunnel from the tower, and we’ll have to use ropes to reach it at the bottom! Unless there’s a way of making a hole through this wall here!”
II
The Bottom of the Tunnel
Bryson was blinded by the black abyss below him as he was lowered down through the tunnel, from the last stone steps from the tower above.
He gripped the rope hard, but spun round, and fixed his foot against a wall to stop it, and looked up to the top of the tunnel and through the hole there, and listened to two archeologists over him still conferring and arguing on what way to lower him.
They had found little there so far and had taken a long time arranging the exploration of it, and Bryson had been unchallenged with his insistence in going down, and the archeologists had agreed to help and to follow him.
It was incredible that they had weak lights again, after all their technology advances, and making lights the way that they wanted them, and he could see nothing in their dim light and occasionally stopped and checked his light as he fed the rope away and lowered himself.
A deep thud echoed down from the top as the scientists at the tower gathered there to look down and he wondered why he was lowering himself so slowly down when they could easily lower him faster, making the task easier.
It was their ultimate discovery and expedition and he wished it to be done right, and as one of his adventure expeditions and to give the full discovery everything that it deserved. Yet he was mainly confused as to what had been discovered and would be found, especially after being surprised at so much in the past with such things, and being given such little facts.
The ebbing radiance of the torches clearly was not enough to allow them to see much, and he realized how tired they all had become and that they had not even bothered getting someone to get another light!
A bright radiance of a large star beamed down through a gap at the top of the tower and he watched its reflections from things with his dreamy sight, with it probing amidst the abyss below, scattering beams in clusters.
Some of dust entered his throat giving him cough sensations, but he speeded up and unleashed the rope allowing him to fall down and to inhale better air.
What was the outcome of all this? Would they even find a treasure? What would it being doing with treasure?
Hazy echoes off his deep breathing broke the extraordinary silence and he examined the artificial walls around him as he shifted downwards, and he started to find the stale air harder to inhale and he frequently gasped for air, while dangling, with hideous expectations of plunging into some mind-bending hideously dangerous vortex.
The walls interested him and he was sure that there was a way to alter them, and that they could rearrange the castle/starship walls to allow them to enter below, making a door into the tunnel through the room wall, and he realized that it might be done by a different method and that there might be a control center where all the structure rearrangements were carried out.
What if it had not been the precise spot of the disturbance and that they had detected it wrongly? Where would it be?
Yet he just accepted it, and the frantic reactions of the two archeologists to increase his speed.
A distant rumble above released debris and he realized how dangerous the area the two archeologists were on might be, and that it might not be able to support their weight, and he recalled Merton hanging from there by his fingers when he had saved him! It had been damaged with age and he imagined it and them crashing down on top of him, and considered if he could survive!
In an instant the rope jerked and wildly oscillated and he spun uncontrollably around and a surge of blackness engulfed him.
It mystified him! He thought of ancient devil and black magic worshippers concealing something below, beyond their comprehension, hidden away from mankind!
He tried straining his eyes to see further down, but there were no features of anything. Its tunnel shape vanished into darkness!
When he finally hit the ground he never fully realized where it was, and in the
turmoil he fell over sideways into rocks.
He got himself up with the help of the rope and released the rope’s tightened grip around his body, and shivered at what was there and how dangerous it was.
He cleaned away dirt and casually gave looks around him at the debris from the above steps piled there, and wondered how they could shift it and what was under it, and he realized that the others were about a room below just feet away from him through the wall in front of him, and they would be monitoring him with their equipment, and he fitted a small camera to his jacket and switched it on, for them to see what was there.
He switched on his communicator and started talking to Mortimer, who was standing at the other side of the wall staring at the wall.
“As you can see there is far too much rubble over the bottom to see anything, and the tunnel in front of you is packed with debris from the collapsed stone steps!”
“What do you think we should do?”
“Well, if there is nothing in the castle/starship for altering and removing parts of structures like the wall there we’ll have to hoist up all this rubble and clear it away!”
“We’ll get onto it!” Parker replied, from beside Mortimer. “I’ll have the archeologists start removing that rubble below you, and I’ll send out some people to look for a way to remove the wall!”
III
The Search for the Lost Artifact
Bryson examined equipment about the top of the tunnel, below the tower, and heard the archeologists finish clearing out the debris and watched the others near him hoist it up and get ready to remove it from there to nearby rooms.
From the edge he saw the powerful lights at the bottom, and the now empty shaft there, and he realized that they would now begin digging into the ground below the castle.
The Deadliest Alien Artifacts (Story Collection) Page 6