Sapiosaurus | Out Of Time

by Lon McQuillin

  “You mean they’re cooling the ice somehow?” asked Mitchell.

  “In a roundabout way, yeah. More precisely, they’re soaking up heat from the ice.”

  “What heat?”

  “Anything above absolute zero contains some heat energy. The surfaces of the pyramids appears to be able to absorb whatever energy is available. It’s probably getting a lot more from our lights than it was from the ice, but it’s getting some from the ice just the same.

  “As for the toilets,” Hanrahan continued, “the lowest part of the surface at what we’re guessing is the front measures just over 28 inches in height. For comparison, I measured one of the toilets in the residence bathroom, and the seat was about 15 and a half inches off the floor. There are 18 toilets, each with an opening that leads to a large tube. The tubes all bend in toward the center of the room.

  “We lowered a camera and a light into one of the holes, and all eighteen tubes meet about six feet under the floor, as we guessed they would. At the junction, there’s an opening downward that leads to a horizontal pipe. It looks to be a sewer pipe.

  “The interesting thing about the inside of the tube walls is that while they’re made of the same material as everything else, the surface finish is different. It’s got a finer grain than everything else, and it feels and acts almost like Teflon, only even a bit slicker. Nothing will stick to the surface.”

  He looked around the room. “That’s about it. The guys from Berkeley are doing a laser scan that’ll let us make models back in our respective labs.”

  “What would be your next step?” asked Reynolds.

  “Well, if it’s OK with you and Dick, we’d like to take in a diamond-bladed saw and cut a section out of the ceiling. That might give us a handle on what makes it work.”

  Reynolds looked over at Behling, who gave no response.

  “Let us talk it over. It sounds like a good idea, though. Thanks, Barry.”

  He turned to Mitchell. “Steph, would you give us your assessment, please?”

  “Happy to,” she replied. “First, we’re assuming that what we found in the Outhouse were, quite appropriately as it turns out, toilets. Unless we find new evidence to contradict that, I think it’s pretty safe to proceed on that assumption.

  “The creatures who used these toilets had to have been built rather differently from us. But there are some things that we can extrapolate about them from the toilets’ design.

  “First, they would appear to be bipedal, just as we are, and it would appear that their legs were designed to work similarly to ours, which is to say, that their legs bent back at the knee. Actually, the triangular shape of the toilets, if scaled down, would be fairly appropriate for us.

  “If we look at the height of the toilets in comparison to our own, that would put the length of the lower portion of the leg — what would correspond to the leg below the knee in a human — at roughly twice the length of the average human leg.

  “Second, it’s unlikely that they’re simply larger versions of humans. Given the average human height of, say, five feet, six inches, that would indicate a height of eleven feet for these folks. But the ceiling inside the Outhouse is less than eight feet high. This would indicate a different physiology, a different layout, if you will, with relatively long legs and short upper bodies.

  “Third, I was struck by a peculiar feature of the toilets.” She rose, and walked to the white board, where several color photos of the toilets were posted. “If you look at what we think is the rear of the toilet, this depressed edge between the two raised corners suggests that this was designed for a creature with a tail.” She pointed to the area in one of the photos.

  This caused a slight stir in the room.

  “Then, there are the social implications of the room’s layout,” she said, returning to her seat. “My guess is that these creatures viewed what we consider to be a private function as a social occasion. A communal bathroom with all seats facing inward not only suggests that they weren’t concerned about privacy, but may have used the time for social interaction.

  “Unfortunately, though we’ve been over the room in careful detail, we haven’t found any traces of organic material other than microscopic dust and pollen. If we’d been lucky, one of the creatures would have cut themselves or in some other way left behind a tissue sample to study. Hell, I’d even be happy with a sample of their stool, but the sewer pipe appears to be clean.

  “And that pretty much sums up what we know so far. They were bigger than we are — though not twice our size, they probably walked something like we do, and they may have had tails.”

  There was something in her manner that led Reynolds to believe there was something she was holding back, but he decided not to press the issue right then. Instead, he turned to Lightfoot. “Dan, I know the NSA’s been working on the language of the writing we’ve found. Since you guys are the experts at decryption, can you tell us what you’ve found?”

  Lightfoot had resumed his place as an accepted member of the team, his earlier duplicity having been largely forgotten. This was especially true since the arrival of Fred Taylor, who had assumed the mantle of designated government heavy.

  “To put it bluntly, so far we don’t have diddly squat. No one’s ever seen a written language like this, and we’re no closer to being able to decipher it than we were when we got the first samples.

  “About all we know is what most of you know from the keypad on the Outhouse. It appears that these people used a base nine numbering system. We’ve now cataloged well over 100,000 characters in the writing on the walls of the two pyramids, which boil down to an alphabet of 81 letters and nine numbers, and numbers have appeared in five different places in the text, three of which were number groupings.

  “If we look at the numeric keypad on the side of the Outhouse, and if we assume that their writing runs top-to-bottom and left-to-right, then we think we can translate their numbers into our own. When it comes to number groupings, however, we don’t know whether they were ‘big endian’ or ‘small endian.’ ” Lightfoot rose and went to the white board. Picking up a marker, he illustrated his point.

  “In other words, when we construct a number over ten — say, a hundred and twenty three — we put the hundreds value first, then the tens, and then the ones. In the case of their numbering system, that would correspond to eighty-ones, nines and ones. But we don’t know — and shouldn’t assume — that they ordered their number the way we do. It could be ones, nines, eighty-ones, etc.

  “If they were ‘small endian,’ like we are, meaning that the first number carried the most value, then 123 would translate to 136 in base nine,” he said as he wrote the second number on the board. “For what it’s worth,” he added.

  Lightfoot turned to face the group, tossing the marker from hand to hand casually as he continued.

  “The number groups we’ve found don’t really offer much in the way of clues, since we have no idea what they’re describing. And we’d hoped that they might give us some clues on punctuation, but so far they haven’t. The bottom line is that our people are still working, but we haven’t come up with much.”

  “Alright. Thanks, Dan,” said Reynolds.

  As Reynolds stood before the group, it struck him that he was an unlikely leader of this expedition. Had it been formed at its current size and scope from the beginning, it was highly unlikely that he would have been picked to head it. But the project had grown like Topsy from modest beginnings, and U. C. Berkeley was still in charge, and Royce Clayton had made sure that Reynolds had been allowed to continue to hold the reins.

  For his part, Reynolds felt up to the task. While his specialty was geology, he’d taken a broad range of science classes, and had been teaching for more than a decade. He’d headed several previous research teams, and was comfortable in the role of team leader. That very ease with the job in turn made the others on the team comfortable with him.

  “Ideas?” he asked. “Any thoughts from anybody.”
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  The room was quiet for a moment, and then Dan Lightfoot broke the silence.

  “This may be nothing,” he said, “but we’ve got a guy back at the office who’s kind of our resident genius, and he made a comment early on that’s come back to me several times.”

  All eyes were on Lightfoot, but nobody said anything, so he continued.

  “We’ve kinda been assuming all along that what we’ve uncovered here is of extraterrestrial origin.” He paused to scan the faces in the room. “This guy said that he didn’t think what we’ve got here is the result of an alien visit. But he wasn’t willing to explain his feeling. I’m curious as to whether anyone else has any thoughts on this.”

  Sinclair was the first to speak up. “Well it sure doesn’t look like anything built by human beings. And given the fact that it dates back roughly 65 million years, who else could have built it other than aliens?”

  Eugene Northrup was sorely tempted to speak up, since he knew that the Earth was nowhere near that old, but feeling outnumbered by secular scientists, he decided to remain quiet.

  But Sinclair remembered that Northrup was present, and simply couldn’t resist the temptation.

  “On the other hand, Mr. Northrup here would have us believe that the Town — in fact the entire planet — is at most only around six thousand years old.”

  Northrup could feel all eyes swing towards him, and despite his attempt to maintain his composure, he blushed.

  “Yes,” he said, “that happens to be true.”

  There were several soft groans amongst the group.

  “And how,” asked Sinclair, “do you explain radio carbon and potassium-argon dating?”

  Northrup was very uncomfortable, but felt he had no choice but to defend his beliefs.

  “Both forms of dating are notoriously inconsistent,” he said, “and are based on assumptions that cannot be proven. But beyond that, if the Lord wanted to make something appear to be very old, it was well within his power to do so.”

  “So the fossil record was created intact, at the time the Earth was created?” asked Sinclair.

  “That’s essentially correct,” answered Northrup.

  “You’re saying God’s playing jokes on us?”

  “I can’t say what God’s plan is. I just know that the Earth was created approximately six thousand years ago.”

  “Oh, give me a break,” said Sinclair.

  Reynolds felt it was time to jump in. “Gentlemen, I think we’ve strayed from the subject at hand. This is not a theological seminar, and I doubt that either of you are going to make any progress persuading the other.”

  Sinclair glared at Northrup, who returned his stare with what he hoped was an even gaze.

  “Bob, you seem convinced that the Town was built by extraterrestrial visitors. That’s hardly a new theory. Does anyone else have anything to offer, based on what we’ve found at the Outhouse?”

  No one spoke for a moment, and then Stephanie Mitchell leaned forward in her chair. “Hal, I have a thought, though it might seem a bit far-fetched.”

  “I can’t imagine anything that’d be too far-fetched to explain this place,” Reynolds replied.

  “Well, the physiology that we’ve extrapolated from the toilets doesn’t match the design of the human body, but it does fit in pretty well with another creature with which we’re familiar.”

  She hesitated, and then decided to go for it.

  “The toilets would be perfect for a number of species of dinosaurs.”

  Again the room was silent as the group tried to wrap their minds around the idea. Finally, Reynolds broke the silence.

  “Dinosaurs.” It was more of statement than a question.

  “Are you suggesting,” asked Sinclair incredulously, “that dinosaurs built this place?”

  “I’m not sure what I’m suggesting at the moment, but look at the facts we have so far. We’ve dated the town to right around the time the dinosaurs disappeared. We know that there were numerous species of dinosaurs that would fit a physical profile to match the toilets. How is this a less plausible explanation than space aliens?”

  “But dinosaurs weren’t intelligent,” argued Sinclair.

  “We don’t know that,” Mitchell responded. “Look, dinosaurs existed on Earth for hundreds of millions of years, and evolved into thousands of different species. If humans could evolve from early primates to intelligence in a few million years, why couldn’t a species of dinosaurs have evolved intelligence during a time span at least a hundred times longer?”

  “But if this were the case, then why haven’t we have found any evidence of a dinosaur civilization before?” asked Sinclair.

  “Well, I can think of a number of reasons,” Mitchell replied. “For one thing, 65 million years have elapsed since the cataclysm that destroyed the dinosaurs. That’s a hell of a long time. How much of the evidence of our civilization do you think will still exist 65 million years from now? Even without a meteor or asteroid hitting Earth?”

  “Only our credit cards and Twinkies will survive,” Barry Hanrahan offered, getting a chuckle from the group.

  “Also,” Mitchell continued, “we’ve found only a small fraction of the fossil record, and much of what we have found has been seriously damaged over time. Since the dinosaurs’ time, the continents have drifted. Antarctica was once part of a super continent we call Gondwanaland, which included Africa, South America, India, Australia and New Zealand. It started to break up around 200 million years ago.

  “Maybe a dinosaur civilization arose only in what’s now Antarctica, when its climate was more temperate, and not elsewhere. But even if the civilization did extend elsewhere, the rest of the planet has been subjected to meteors, volcanoes, earthquakes, hurricanes, floods — you name it. In that amount of time, all traces of a civilization could be destroyed.

  “But Antarctica ended up at the bottom of the world, covered with ice. The ice cover would have preserved what was destroyed elsewhere.”

  Mitchell paused, waiting to see how the others would react to her theory.

  “Dinosaurs,” Reynolds said, repeating himself. “The more I think about it, the more reasonable it seems. It’s certainly a lot more reasonable than creatures from outer space.”

  “I think it makes a lot of sense,” said Arnold Greissman. “We’ve been talking about intelligence as if it’s reserved for humans, but that’s not correct. We know that there are species of cetaceans, such as dolphins, that are close if not equal in intelligence to humans.”

  “Actually,” said Mitchell, “intelligence appears to span a range that makes it difficult to nail down. If we use tool-making as a requirement, then chimpanzees and other primates could be thought of as intelligent. If we use communication, there are lots of species that have sophisticated methods of doing so. There’s been a lot of debate about it, but a lot of folks are convinced that Koko and the other gorillas who use sign language show intelligence. If we use self-awareness as the most rigorous standard, then at the very least most scientists would include some varieties of cetaceans, as Arnie mentioned.

  “So I don’t see how we can summarily exclude the possibility that dinosaurs might have evolved to a level of intelligence equal to our own.”

  “Actually, judging from the technology we’re seeing here, perhaps even beyond our own,” Reynolds observed.

  “But, ya know,” said Hanrahan, “that’s been buggin’ me a little. Until now most of us were going on the assumption that this was some kind of alien outpost, and that bothered me ever since we started exploring the Outhouse. I mean, the technology’s pretty cool, but it’s not what I would have expected from an advanced alien species. Take the door, for example. It works on a counterweight, not magnetic levitation. The toilets work with gravity and a sewer system, not some kind of matter converter. In some ways, the technology is advanced, like with the ceiling, but in other ways, it’s not much different from ours.”

  “So,” said Reynolds, “if we’re dealing with d
inosaur artifacts here, how would that affect our assault on Town Hall?”

  Arnold Greissman spoke up. “I must say that I’m encouraged by the fact that nothing we found in the Outhouse indicates any sort of biological hazard. And if the town was built by a dinosaur civilization, that may reduce the potential risks, since they were part of Earth’s evolutionary line. At the same time, I think we need to remain on guard when it comes to Town Hall. I’d like to follow the same protocol there that we used at the Outhouse.”

  “I agree completely,” said Reynolds.

  Now Fred Taylor jumped in.

  “I hate to bring it up, but I feel that our procedures should be the same in all regards when it comes to opening the main pyramid. The small one proved to be benign, but we shouldn’t assume that the main one will be the same. I’m not a scientist, and this dinosaur theory sounds like it makes sense, but it’s still just a theory.”

  “Well,” said Reynolds, “I can’t claim to be as comfortable with that as I am with Arnie’s suggestion, but I really can’t argue with you.” This brought another groan from many in the room, since it meant that most of them wouldn’t be present when Town Hall was opened.

  “Folks, please remember that we’re still dealing with something completely unknown here, and it could be dangerous. Commander Taylor is completely correct in his assessment. We need to be cautious.

  “Does anyone have anything else?” he asked. The room was silent.

  “Rank, what’s our progress up the stairway?” Reynolds asked the question mainly for the benefit of the three new arrivals.

  Matthews shifted slightly in his chair. He’d been content just to listen to the discussion so far.

  “We’re better than half way up right now. The vertical rise is 60 feet, but with the angle involved, the actual distance is around 80 feet. We’re currently about 50 feet up the stairs, and we’re up to better than fifteen feet a day. We should be at the face of the upper pyramid within the next three days.”