In the first day of exploring the library, the research team examined 18 different tablets taken from various sections of the library. Not all of the tablets examined include audiovisual content — some appear to be reference texts with written information only. The team has been hoping to find a tablet with pictures of the Sapiosaurs themselves, but so far that hasn’t happened.
And despite having examined 18 of the 21,827 tablets contained in the library, little light was shed on the Sapiosaurian culture on this first day of viewing, due to the present lack of understanding of the language.
“We’d love to locate a section of the library with the equivalent of children’s books,” said Dr. Hummford. “Finding tablets that they used to teach their young how to read would make our job much easier.”
Learning the Sapiosaurian language will be a key factor in also learning about their technology, which is in many ways far advanced of our own. Their electrical technology, for example, is much more efficient that ours. Adopting their technology for lighting homes and offices alone could save billions of gallons of oil and tons of coal each year, reducing pollution and global warming significantly in the process.
In the coming days and weeks, as the research team continues to examine and catalog the thousands of tablets, there’s little doubt that an overview of the Sapiosaurian civilization and language will begin to emerge. What fantastic secrets will be revealed one can only imagine at present.
And while most of the scientists here express grave doubts about the possibility of reviving living examples of what are now officially known as “Sapiosaursus Antarcticus,” even the slim possibility of doing so has spurred the researchers to double their effort to decode this alien tongue.
Chapter 23
Sapiosaursus Antarcticus
On the second day in the library, Hummford, Mitchell and Reynolds had agreed to add a second terminal to the task of examining the tablets. They were concerned about adding any more for fear of the power drain. Hummford and Ruggiero would concentrate on finding tablets that would help learn the language, while Mitchell and Hanrahan would focus on learning about the culture and technology. Grad students served as library assistants, shuttling tablets from and to the shelves.
After the first day, the live feed of the video to CNN3 had been cut, the library team having felt uncomfortable having their every word broadcast around the globe. CNN hadn’t complained; after the first ten hours or so, viewership had started to drop off.
At just after 11:00 AM, Hummford placed a new tablet in the viewer — her fourth of the morning — and sat back on her stool. When she looked up at the screen, she gasped. “Woof,” she exhaled. “Um… guys! Come look!” she yelled. The others rushed over, and added their own exclamations.
“Hello, Mr. Sapiosaur,” said Hanrahan.
On the screen, the standard text characters marched down the left side. On the right was a picture of a dinosaur.
“It’s a theropod,” said Mitchell. “A member of the saurischian group. More specifically, part of the group known as coelurosauria.”
“Coloro-what?” asked Hanrahan.
“It’s part of the same family as tyrannosaurs and velociraptors. Probably closer to the latter, based on the scale of the pyramids.”
The creature was standing in quarter profile. Its legs were straight, as opposed to being bent at the knee as species like it were normally portrayed. The legs from the hip down constituted perhaps three fifths of its total height, and its arms, which hung at its side, extended well past its hips. Its tail hung nearly to the ground. Its head was the most striking feature, with a large, rounded skull, a short snout, and dark eyes that seemed to radiate intelligence.
“Look at the length of the arms,” said Mitchell. She leaned closer, peering at the image. “Three weight-bearing toes, and three fingers, including an opposable thumb. And the skin — kind of a gray-brown, and smooth.”
“I wonder if they wore clothing,” said Ruggiero.
“That could depend on whether they were hot-or cold-blooded, and what the climate was like,” Mitchell replied. “The debate on bloodedness has been going on for decades. I suspect now we’ll find out for sure.”
She reached out and touched the “next” character on the screen, and the picture switched to show two Sapiosaurs standing next to each other. They appeared to be almost identical.
“I’ll bet you one’s male and one’s female,” said Mitchell.
“I don’t see any difference,” said Ruggiero.
“Can you tell the difference between a male and female bluejay?” asked Mitchell.
“No.”
“Same thing here.”
“Whaddya mean?” asked Hanrahan.
“Birds are the descendants of the dinosaurs,” Mitchell explained. “Their sexual organs aren’t visible externally, and since the females don’t nurse their young, they have no mammary glands. Males and females look almost identical. Externally, at least.”
She touched the gold characters to the side of the left image, and the image changed to six different pictures. There were close-up shots of the head, torso, arm, hips, leg and tail.
She touched the characters next to the head, and the image changed to a cross section of the Sapiosaur skull.
“This is a medical text!” she said. She picked up the headset hooked on the edge of the keyboard and keyed it on. “Anybody up top who can hear me?” she asked.
After a moment, there was a response. “Yeah, hi, Dick Behling.”
“Dick, it’s Steph, down in the library. Could you find Deirdre McCollum and ask her to come down?”
“Sure,” he replied.
Fifteen minutes later, McCollum arrived in the library. “What’s up?” she asked.
“You’re the closest thing we have to a veterinarian,” said Mitchell. “My specialty is critters that have been dead for a long time, but this stuff is out of my field.”
McCollum looked at the screen. “Whoa. I think you guys struck pay dirt here. Mind if I sit?”
“Be my guest,” Mitchell replied. She stood, letting McCollum take her stool.
“How do you work this thing?” asked McCollum.
“It’s just like the web,” answered Hanrahan. “The gold text represents a link to more information. This is the back button, this one’s home, and this one is next.”
“Got it. Is this being recorded?” she asked.
“Everything’s being recorded on video,” said Hanrahan. “In fact, make sure you stay to the side. Until we figure out how their video system works and can tap in directly, we’re basically just shooting their screens with our cameras.”
“Got it,” she replied.
With Mitchell and Hanrahan standing by, she started navigating her way through the tablet’s many pathways. After a while, she offered her assessment of the information it provided. “This is incredible.”
•
While work progressed in the library, the teams in the other rooms were completing the photography and cataloging of the other rooms. In the tool room, Dan Lightfoot approached the wall that held the objects he had concluded were firearms.
The objects were about four feet long, with what appeared to be an obvious barrel and stock. They were attached to the wall in form-fitted clamps.
Deciding that the safest approach would be to grasp it by the barrel and the stock, he checked to make certain that there was nobody nearby, and reached for the nearest one.
With a slight tug it came free, and he examined it.
Its design was such that it would be comfortable for a human to shoulder, if a bit long. The stock was angled down, just as with human rifles, and there were sights mounted on the top surface. There was a trigger guard enclosing a curved wedge that projected from the underside. Lightfoot was struck by the fact that such a basic mechanism would necessarily be developed in such a similar way in two very different cultures.
On the rifle’s side he found a triangular knob, with a depression at on
e of the points. There appeared to be four possible positions, each marked with a character in the Sapiosaur’s writing.
On the underside of the rifle was a receptacle, which Lightfoot guessed was where an ammunition cartridge would go. Looking inside, however, he saw no mechanisms for chambering a round.
Examining the end of the barrel, he found that it was hollow.
He grasped the handle on the wall under the clamps for the rifle, and pulled. As he expected, a drawer opened, and he found three objects about an inch and a half wide by two and a half inches deep by five inches tall standing upright in the drawer. Gingerly, he put his hand on the first object and pulled. With a slight click, it came free.
The object looked very much like an ammunition clip, but as he examined it, Lightfoot could see no opening where cartridges could enter or exit. The end that had been at the bottom in the drawer, however, obviously would fit perfectly into the receptacle on the rifle’s underside. He considered inserting it, and then thought better of it. There’d be plenty of time to check out the weaponry later, after they’d learned more about the technology.
As Lightfoot wandered around the room, two of the graduate students were busy straightening things up, replacing things that had obviously fallen off the shelves. One of the students was Eugene Northrup, and it was he who found one of the supposed laptop computers that had been found in the tool room. Unlike the others, however, this one had a tablet inserted in its recess.
“Mr. Lightfoot,” he called out, “Look at this!”
Lightfoot crossed the room. “A wayward tablet, eh? How ‘bout we take this over to the library and see what’s on it?”
Lightfoot had the watch duty on Northrup at the moment, and though he was fairly certain that Northrup hadn’t brought anything down with him, he still prefered to keep him in sight.
The two men crossed the main chamber to the library, and approached Mitchell.
“We found one of the portables with a tablet in it in the tool room,” Lightfoot explained, handing it to Mitchell.
“I wonder why it’s not active.”
“Battery’s probably dead,” said Hanrahan. He took the tablet they were currently viewing down from its recess on the wall, and pulled the tablet in the portable free. He then mounted the new tablet in the recess. The screen immediately came to life.
At the left was a rather fuzzy, indistinct object against a black field punctuated with points of light — a view of an object in space. In the center was a picture of the Moon. At the right was a picture of the city. From the angle, it appeared to have been taken from the Penthouse level of Town Hall. There were pyramids of various sizes and heights, and in the distance was the green of a surrounding forest or jungle.
“Holy cow!” said Hanrahan.
“This is it!” said Mitchell, “This has to be the record of what happened. That’s an asteroid, there’s the Moon, and there’s the city! This is it!” she said again.
Hearing the excitement in her voice, Hummford and Ruggiero had come to see what had caused it. McCollum looked over, but was too engrossed in her study of the Sapiosaurian physiology to break free.
“Dr. Hummford, please don’t block the camera,” said Hanrahan.
“Oh, sorry,” she said, taking a step back.
Mitchell reached out, trying to decide which of the options to pick. She finally chose the picture of the asteroid, and touched the gold characters next to it. The picture of the asteroid now filled the screen. She pressed the play button, and for a moment, nothing appeared to happen, except for a slight shimmer of the image. Then a voice started speaking in the low, guttural Sapiosaurian tongue. As it did, they could see that the asteroid was slowly spinning.
The picture then changed, and now showed a rendering of the solar system from above the plane of Earth’s orbit. As they watched, a line appeared, drawing the asteroid’s path as it approached Earth. As it drew closer, the scene started to zoom in, keeping the asteroid at the left of the screen and Earth at the right. As Earth grew larger, the Moon grew from just a dot to a circle.
“Look at that,” said Hanrahan. “The Moon’s rotation is different. It’s not showing the same face to Earth!”
The asteroid came ever closer, accelerating as it entered Earth’s gravity well. And while the Moon was nearly in its path, it appeared as though the asteroid would miss Earth itself.
And then the asteroid struck the Moon a glancing blow, raising a tremendous amount of debris before bouncing off and continuing on. Only now the trajectory was changed, and the asteroid was headed directly towards Earth.
“Oh my god!” said Mitchell. “If the timing had been different by even an hour or so, the asteroid would have missed both the Moon and Earth!”
As the group watched with rapt attention, the asteroid closed the distance to Earth, trailed by some of the debris from the lunar collision. As it entered the atmosphere it began to glow, and then a moment later it struck, coming almost straight down.
The explosion was enormous. The shock wave spread in all directions, circling the planet and coming around, having crossed itself at the far side. The area of impact, in the ocean between North and South America, was a fiery inferno. Huge masses of molten rock were ejected into space, much of which then fell back on the planet. After a few minutes, the entire surface of Earth was covered by dark clouds of dust and steam. Eventually, the glow at the impact point faded, and the Earth appeared as a dark gray ball, uniform except for flashes of lightning. The playback stopped.
For a very long moment, the group sat or stood unspeaking, stunned at what they’d seen.
“That was their prediction,” said Mitchell finally. “It was an animation.”
“Yeah, but I’m guessing they were right,” said Hanrahan. He pressed the home button, and the three original options appeared. “Mind if I try a different link?” he asked. Mitchell waved her hand towards the display, and Hanrahan reached over and selected the picture of the Moon.
The image changed, and the Moon now filled the screen. Hanrahan touched the play button. The only change was that a series of white characters at the left of the picture appeared, with the bottom character changing at regular intervals.
A Sapiosaurian voice spoke briefly, and then there was only silence.
“It’s showing the time!” said Mitchell.
“Which tells us something we’ve needed to know,” said Hummford.” They’re apparently ‘small endian’ in their numbering, just like we are.”
“Hey, look at that,” said Hanrahan, pointing at the screen.
A small shape could be seen moving in from the upper left of the screen towards the Moon. “Here it comes!”
The asteroid closed quickly, striking about a third of the way across from the left edge. A huge explosion appeared, with rock and dust being thrown far off the lunar surface.
“I thought there was something missing,” said Hanrahan. “That’s what created Copernicus,” he said, referring to the large crater visible to the naked eye on the Moon’s surface.
As they watched, some of the ejecta that had been thrown into space slowly began to settle back to the Moon’s surface, leaving an angry glowing red scar where the asteroid had struck.
“Where’s the asteroid?” asked Hummford.
“It’s lost against the background. We can’t see it because it’s coming almost directly at us.” He had just finished saying this when the picture changed. It now showed a close-up view of the impact area.
After a moment, Mitchell reached over and pointed to a gray spinning object moving slowly against the background. “There it is.”
They continued to watch for a few minutes, and then Mitchell said, “If no one minds, why don’t we check the city shots?”
She hit the back button, and then touched the letters next to the picture of the city.
The screen now showed three different shots of the city, separated by just enough space to include thin columns of gold characters. It was a panoramic triptych
of the city. At the right of the screen were the standard playback controls. Hanrahan touched the play button.
The images came alive, but the only movements were the trees in the distance, two creatures — birds, or perhaps pterodactyls — flying in the left shot, and the clouds moving slowly. There was nothing moving in the city. There was the sound of a gentle breeze, and an occasional feral cry from a distance, presumably from the forest, but otherwise all was quiet.
Suddenly, the pictures grew brighter as the city was illuminated from above, and then, in the center frame, there was a brief, bright flash on the horizon, and the city once again looked as it had. It was still eerily quiet. A minute elapsed, then two, and finally, Ruggiero broke the silence.
“What’s happening? Why don’t we hear anything?”
“The asteroid hit near the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico,” answered Hanrahan. “That would have been roughly 6,000 miles away. The sound of the impact wouldn’t have gotten here for nearly ten hours. The shock wave wouldn’t arrive for two to three hours, I’d guess, but the seismic waves should show up in less than an hour.”
“Can you imagine what it must have been like?” said Ruggiero. “To have been one of them, seeing the impact on the moon, then that flash on the horizon, and knowing that you were doomed, even though everything still seemed normal?”
“It’s even worse than that,” said Hanrahan. “The animation we saw was way speeded up. After the asteroid hit the Moon, they probably had another five or six hours before it arrived at Earth.”
“Hey, look at that!” said Ruggiero. From behind one of the smaller pyramids, a figure had emerged, walking toward the camera. Though too small to make out in detail, it was clearly dressed in a long robe, which had an overall burgundy color to it. It was moving rather sedately, almost strolling. After a minute, it disappeared out of view, below the bottom of the frame.
“I’ll bet it was headed up the side of Town Hall,” said Mitchell.
“Where better to watch the end of the world?” said Hanrahan.
A minute later they heard approaching footsteps, which stopped, and then there was silence.
Sapiosaurus | Out Of Time Page 21