Reynolds had decided on using the absolute minimum of personnel inside the small chamber for the attempt. It would be just himself, Greissman and Lightfoot. In the tunnel, Matthews and two of his men stood ready to either open the wall or blast the tunnel closed. With them was Commander Taylor, who could blow the shaft either from where he stood, or after getting some or all of them back to the surface. The entire main chamber and the tunnel up the side of Town Hall were cleared, with all non-essential personnel uptown, not in the main shed, but in the original survey shack, more than a hundred feet away.
Since the keypad was outside the airlock, Greissman and Lightfoot entered and sealed the outer door while Reynolds stood by, or rather leaned by, against the wall. Greissman had a full set of biological testing instruments and sensors with him. Lightfoot had his MultiPhasic Analyzer — his “Tricorder” — and his spectrum analyzer, along with a few other odds and ends.
“Ready?” Reynolds asked the two men in their bio suits.
“Ready!” replied Lightfoot.
Since the symbols on the right side of the door — what they hoped was the combination — were on the other side of the airlock, Reynolds had a photograph of them from which to work.
“Alright, here we go!” he announced.
The first question was, were these actually buttons after all? The second was, if he pushed them, would they still work? The third question was, in which order should they be pushed?
Reynolds was guessing that this culture’s writing was read from top to bottom, which was of course only a hunch. But did they then go left to right or right to left? The majority of humans are right handed, and thus the process of writing is less messy if you do it left to right. Which hand did the beings who built the Town favor? For that matter, did they have hands?
He took a chance, and starting from the top left, found the corresponding button. He reached out his gloved hand and touched the button gently. Nothing. He pushed a bit harder. Nothing. He put his thumb on it and pushed harder. Nothing.
Shifting his position slightly, he put both thumbs on the button and pushed with all the force he could muster. And the button gave. It pushed in until its highest point was flush with the wall. Reynolds immediately moved his thumbs away, and the button stayed in.
“It pushed in!” he shouted for the benefit of Greissman and Lightfoot. The others could see what was happening on monitors.
“No reaction in here,” said Lightfoot over the intercom.
“OK, I’m going to the second button,” Reynolds announced.
He found the button that corresponded to the middle left symbol of the key. Using both thumbs again, he pressed, this time using strong pressure. After a moment, the second button pushed in. It seemed to have taken less effort than had the first.
“That’s two,” he said.
The third button required every bit as much effort as the first, but finally it, too, gave way, and sank until it was flush with the wall. And then Reynolds got a real surprise: All three buttons sprang back to their original levels.
“Damn! Anything happen in there?” he asked.
“Nope, nothing here. Why? What’s going on?” asked Lightfoot.
“I got the third button in, and then all three of ‘em snapped back out.”
“What do you think that means?” asked Greissman?
“Well, I’m not sure,” said Reynolds, “but it’d sure seem to indicate that something’s still working here.”
In the airlock, Greissman and Lightfoot looked at each other without saying anything. Both already felt a bit vulnerable, and the discovery that this might not be a completely dead artifact didn’t help.
“Hal, can you hear me?” Mitchell asked over the intercom.
“Yeah, Steff, what is it?”
“If you’re willing to go with a hunch, try the right column symbols next.”
“Any particular reason?” he asked.
“I’m guessing that it’s actually only a three-number combination, and I’ll bet what you just did is enter the combination that closes the door.”
“That’s as good an explanation as any. OK, here we go again.”
Reynolds pushed the first button, which went in more easily than any of the previous ones. Then the second, which was a little harder, and then tried the third. It didn’t want to budge. He used all the force he could with both thumbs, but without success. After more than a minute of pressing, he gave up.
“The third one doesn’t want to go down. I’m gonna give it a tap with a mallet.”
From the toolbox nearby he found a mallet with a rubber pad at one end. He took it over to one of the standard work lights and held the rubber end up to warm it — otherwise he might as well have hit the button with a piece of steel.
After a couple of minutes he tried the rubber against the metal light stand, and decided it had enough give to it that it wouldn’t damage the button. He returned to the wall and leaned himself onto it.
“OK, here we go!”
Positioning the mallet carefully, he raised it about eight inches, and gave a whack. The button popped down, and stayed down, as did the other two.
For a moment all was quiet, and then suddenly there were voices on the intercom.
“Oh my,” said Greissman.
“Uh… I think it worked,” said Lightfoot.
Inside the airlock, the two men watched through the window in the inner airlock door as the door sank back into the wall. In no more than four seconds it slid roughly six inches behind the surface, and then stopped. Then it started to move again, only this time it was sliding to the left, either behind the pyramid’s inner wall, or into a cavity inside the wall. As it slid further, Lightfoot shined his flashlight on the side of the opening and saw that the door was indeed sliding into a cavity, and that the entire wall appeared to be nearly a foot thick, while the door itself was about five inches thick.
So far, there had been almost no sound save a very low scraping sound and a dull “thunk” followed by a “whoosh” when the door had stopped moving backwards. The “whoosh” was almost certainly ancient air escaping from the interior. Now there was a distinct scraping sound that got louder and then suddenly stopped, as did the door’s motion. The right side of the door still protruded into the opening by a couple of feet.
As all this was happening, Reynolds had pushed himself off the wall, and had come around to watch through the airlock windows. When the door had stopped opening, it was again absolutely quiet in the chamber, and Greissman and Lightfoot turned first to look at each other, and then, simultaneously, at Reynolds on the other side of the window.
“Gentlemen,” he said, “welcome to the Outhouse.”
Chapter 14
Exploration
Through the window in the inner airlock door, Lightfoot shined his flashlight into the interior of the pyramid, and at first could see nothing. Taking out his MPA, he flipped open the false front panel — the one Reynolds had seen — and held it in front of the door. The LEDs that would show radiation and electromagnetic fields stayed dark. He pressed the test button to make sure the unit was working properly, and all indicators lit up. The pyramid was quiet.
Meanwhile, Greissman had opened up and activated his own equipment. Fans whined as they sucked air through filters that would capture anything larger than a molecule for analysis. He’d already set up a video microscope, and while the particle collectors ran, he got it ready along with a series of chemical tests.
Lightfoot turned on the spectrum analyzer — the actual functional part — which could do a more detailed and faster job of profiling the electrical activity in the pyramid than could his MPA. It too showed nothing. He next activated his gas spectrometer. As the readings appeared, they showed nitrogen, oxygen and carbon dioxide as the main components, along with a series of trace gases. It was pretty much the same as the air outside, except that there were fewer complex hydrocarbons. From his perspective, it looked as if it would be safe to breathe.
&nb
sp; Within 20 minutes, Greissman had pulled the filters and retrieved what they’d caught. Some of the material he swabbed onto petri dishes, which he then sealed. These could take from hours to days to show results. He then prepared a slide with some of the samples that he then inserted into the microscope. He examined the image on the video screen as he moved the sample under the lens.
As Lightfoot waited for Greissman, he peered into the pyramid’s interior, shining his flashlight around. He could make out vague shapes, but couldn’t tell what they were.
Finally, after another few minutes, Greissman spoke. “Well, we’ve got what looks like everyday dust, a bit of pollen, some fungal spoors, and various odds and ends. The air’s actually pretty clean, but that could just indicate that most of what was suspended is now resting on the floor. But my first impression is that it looks pretty good. Not too different from what you’d find anywhere on Earth except Antarctica.”
Reynolds felt a great weight lift off of him. At least prior to going inside, it appeared that they weren’t going to end up entombed down here under thousands of tons of ice after all.
“You guys want to go in?” he asked. “It’s entirely up to you.”
Lightfoot turned to Greissman. “Whaddya say? You up for it?”
“Let’s go.”
With one hand, Lightfoot picked up a lantern, and with the other he picked up the spectral analyzer. Greissman noticed this, but said nothing.
“Let me go first,” said Lightfoot. “If there’s anything nasty waiting, and I scream and fall over, don’t follow me.” Greissman grinned, somewhat without conviction. He sincerely hoped Lightfoot was kidding.
Lightfoot, with his heart pounding, turned the handle and opened the door. He moved slowly through the opening, keeping well clear of the door’s sides. Though they looked smooth, he didn’t want to risk any possibility of tearing his suit.
As he cleared the doorway, the lantern cast a dull illumination over the interior, and he began to make out some details. Along each of the three walls there were a series of identical low… things, about thirty inches tall and roughly the same width and depth. He counted the objects, whatever they were, along one wall, and there were six. Times three made eighteen.
“There are regularly-spaced objects in here,” he said, narrating the images that his helmet camera was transmitting. “They appear to be made from more of the same material. They almost look like furniture… like chairs.”
He moved between two of the objects, and was now in the central area of the room, which was clear. The ceiling overhead was about eight feet high, with a slight peak in the center.
He turned to the door, where Greissman was waiting. “Looks OK, Arnie. Come on in.”
Greissman, loaded down with gear, came through the door with the same care that Lightfoot had taken. Once inside the room, he placed most of his equipment near the entrance, and then moved to join Lightfoot.
As he came near Lightfoot, he said, “I hope that damn door stays open while we’re…” and then stopped. Something was happening.
Lightfoot had noticed it too. The room was getting brighter.
“Oh, shit.” he offered.
He looked up, and saw that the ceiling was starting to become lighter. First gray, then almost a beige color, until it nearly glowed, illuminating the room with what looked like dim daylight through a frosted skylight.
Through the window, Reynolds could see what was happening. “Holy crimony,” he said.
Commander Taylor, listening over the intercom out in the main chamber, and not within view of a monitor, didn’t like what he was hearing, and his hand instinctively tightened on the detonator.
“What’s happening?” he shouted into the intercom.
There was silence for a moment, and then Lightfoot responded.
“We seem to have turned on the lights.”
And then he realized who it was who’d asked the question. “Commander, relax. We’re in no apparent danger. It’s just that the ceiling in here is glowing, providing illumination.”
Looking up, he started to walk toward the far corner, and as he did, the ceiling almost immediately began to dim. He stopped, and on a hunch, walked back to where Greissman was standing. The dimming stopped, and the brightness went back up.
“Arnie, take a few steps away from me.”
Greissman moved back towards the door, and again the ceiling began to dim.
“OK, now come back over here.”
The light level went back up.
Lightfoot smiled as he started to comprehend what must be happening.
“Arnie, walk with me.” The two started to stroll around the room, and the light level remained constant. Whenever the two moved apart, the brightness started to drop.
Outside, Reynolds could see only parts of this strange pas de deux, and finally couldn’t contain himself. “What’s going on in there?” he asked.
“Hal, I think what’s happening here is that the lights come on in response to weight on the floor, only it’s calibrated for something heavier than a human being. By ourselves, we don’t weigh enough to trigger it, but together, we do.”
“I’ll be damned,” Reynolds responded.
Lightfoot now turned his attention to the nearest of the objects that filled the walls of the room.
It stood roughly thirty inches tall, and was smoothly sculpted with rounded surfaces, apparently of the same material used everywhere else. There was no visible seam between it and the floor; it seemed to be one continuous casting with the floor.
From above, it had a roughly triangular shape — was there anything here that wasn’t triangular, he wondered — and the corner that pointed into the center of the room was raised slightly. Behind the point there was an opening about fourteen inches wide, this time in a rounded triangular shape. The two corners away from the room’s center also rose, but even higher than the front corner, to a height of around eight inches above the area with the hole. But the back surface between the two raised back corners curved down smoothly.
Lightfoot leaned over the object, and shined his flashlight into the hole. Inside, the walls flared away from the opening into a larger shaft that simply dropped away. He could detect a slight curve towards the center of the room as it descended, but aside from that there was nothing to see.
Lightfoot and Greissman had been sticking close together in order to keep the lights on, but Greissman had let Lightfoot take the lead. As Greissman looked around the room, he was struck by a vague sense of familiarity, as if he’d seen something like this before.
Then suddenly, he was hit with a flashback, to his days in boot camp at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas.
“Dan, I think I know what these are,” he said.
“Yeah?” Lightfoot replied.
“Let me try something. Now this will turn off the lights.”
Greissman approached the nearest object, and taking great care to not strain the seams of his bio suit, climbed up onto it, facing in toward the center of the room with one leg on either side of the slight rise at the center point.
The moment he had done so, Lightfoot immediately knew what he was thinking, and it seemed painfully obvious. He started to laugh, and Greissman joined in.
Reynolds couldn’t see what was going on through the window, and Lightfoot’s helmet camera was moving too quickly for the monitors to show what was happening.
“What the hell is going on in there?” asked Reynolds.
“Hold on a second,” said Lightfoot.
Stepping back, he held the lantern to illuminate the scene for the camera.
“I think we know what these things are,” he said. “They’re toilets.
“The Outhouse… is an outhouse!”
Chapter 15
Eugene
Eugene Northrup surveyed the room he’d been assigned at the site, which didn’t take long. His room was one of six in the portable quarters left behind by the Seabees. It measured six feet by nine feet, or
about the size of a small prison cell. There was a shelf on the wall above the cot, which itself took up nearly half the room. There was a three-foot wide by two-foot deep board that swung down from the opposite wall to form a flat surface — a table or a desk — and there was a chair. There was a rod that ran across the back wall for hanging clothes. With his footlocker in the room, there was barely space to turn around.
None of this bothered Northrup. He wasn’t here to be comfortable; he was here to do the Lord’s work.
Making certain his door was locked, he opened his footlocker, and began removing items and arranging them neatly on the cot. There was his Bible, a satellite phone, a Toshiba laptop computer, five changes of underwear and socks, two flannel shirts, two pairs of corduroy pants, an additional sweater, a survival poncho, two towels and two wash cloths, a travel alarm clock, his shaving kit, his other “shaving kit” with the 9mm Glock semiautomatic pistol and five full clips, and four pounds of C-4 explosive and detonators hidden inside a duplicate Bible, all contained in a lead-lined film pouch, a second pair of boots, a notepad, a compact digital camera and 6 memory cards, four packs of spearmint chewing gum and a picture of Jesus, which he taped to the wall across from the cot.
He spent a few minutes stowing, hanging and arranging his gear, and locking the second shaving kit back in the footlocker, he stowed it under his cot. Satisfied that everything was in order, he knelt on the floor next to the cot and asked God to guide him on his mission.
He then pulled on his parka and left to go report to Dr. Reynolds, as he’d been instructed.
Walking across the open area between the residence end of the shed and the offices, he was drawn to the top of the shaft. There was a railing surrounding the top of the shaft, and the elevator mechanism rose about 8 feet in the air. The elevator was at the bottom now, and he leaned over the railing to look down.
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