by Alan Nayes
Astor exhaled. “I suppose.” He stepped back, dismissively studying the huge figure. “How did something so primitive looking get inside something seemingly so advanced? Unless it’s extraterrestrial, too. Hm…a cosmic riddle that may never be answered.” He scratched the top of his head a moment. “So what is that thing, Dr. Hollister? I’m assuming you’re of the wavelength that we are not looking at an alien being, though since no one has actually verifiably witnessed a visitor from beyond our planet, that is a major assumption in and of itself. The simplest explanation, of course, is this creature is an alien being. Could this primordial monster fly thousands of light years through the cosmos? Possibly. I must admit, though, there is a certain mundane appeal to your analogy—a giant specimen jar.” He looked at Shelby. “So assuming your analogy is correct, what is Goliath?”
Shelby noticed the optical scientist, Dr. Lujno, had joined them on the platform along with Mendle. Shelby thought a moment. If the specimen jar idea was a wild guess, what she was about to propose was even more out on a limb. “There was a species of extinct primate that roamed Southeast Asia,” she began. “Only a few fossils have been found but Gigantopithecus supposedly stood close to ten feet tall and weighed well over a thousand pounds. I’m wondering if Goliath might be a close relative, though where the UCO was found is thousands of miles from China.”
Astor shrugged. “We crossed the Bering land bridge, why not this creature?”
“True.”
The astrophysicist turned to Lujno and John. “To really ascertain what we have here, meaning the receptacle, we need to get a piece of it. Isotopic examination, reactions to chemicals, even grinding studies only indicate what we don’t have. It’s not metal, and it’s not a crystal lattice, at least not a known crystalline structure, yet it’s so hard nothing can penetrate it.”
Lujno corrected, “Except ultraviolet light.”
Astor agreed. “But that was only after it changed from gray to this darker indigo color. The UCO’s molecular structure altered, which,” he added, “will be its Achilles’ heel.” He smiled and indicated Lujno had the floor.
The optical specialist removed a device from her purse which looked like a penlight. “What is ultraviolet light but a type of electromagnetic radiation,” she said, flipping on the tiny light pointer.
Shelby followed the narrow red beam as it danced over the UCO’s smooth surface.
Astor reached out and confiscated it. He aimed the pointer up at the giant ape’s chest. “What I am proposing the military has yet to try.” He met Mendle’s gaze and the lieutenant nodded. Astor moved the penlight pointer up toward the primate’s massive head. “UV light is electromagnetic radiation and we know that penetrates the UCO. And what is a stimulated focused emission of electromagnetic radiation?”
Shelby watched the red beam hover over a closed eye of Goliath.
The astrophysicist brashly answered his own question. “A laser. We are going to blast this alien enigma wide open with a very powerful laser beam.”
CHAPTER 8
The laser test was tentatively set for 9 a.m. the next morning.
Shelby watched John sear the slab of fresh pink salmon on the grill. The fish sizzled and the aroma wafted on the cool breeze. Damn, she was hungry. When he’d invited her out for dinner after leaving the air force base she hadn’t expected him to go through the hassle of fixing the meal himself at his home. But she’d accepted with an eagerness that surprised her. Well, he was handsome and in great shape. Why not? Dr. Reddic was always trying to set her up with younger single colleagues in Los Angeles but she always seemed to have an excuse—another dig to go on, research, working out, or just staying in and reading. He called her a beautiful bore. He would be surprised to see her mingling—she didn’t consider it a date—in of all places, Fairbanks, Alaska.
And it did feel good to relax after such an exciting day. Goliath. She gazed at the copse of balsam poplars just beyond his backyard fence. She only knew their names because he’d told her. She couldn’t help imagining the huge primate crashing through the brush in search of food, breaking off tree limbs and trunks. In a strange way, the vision frightened her mainly because the huge ape looked so damn alive locked in his confined indigo prison, vanishing whenever the black lights were turned off and suddenly appearing again when turned on, that massive right fist clenched like he meant to do someone some real damage.
Her eyes roved above the tree line. The grill setup in John’s backyard allowed a perfect view of Denali over a hundred miles away. His modest one-story ranch home sat on the outskirts of town, less than ten minutes from the university. On warm days he could ride a bike to his lab, he’d told her. She sipped her white Chardonnay. The gentle taste coated her tongue with a citrusy flavor but also something else she couldn’t describe, buttery perhaps. She looked up and he was watching her from the grill.
“Wine okay?” he asked.
“Perfect.” She pulled her jacket around her and rose, walking across the lawn to the raised brick fire pit. “Any help?”
He shook his head. “Another eight minutes on the cedar planks and we’ll be set.”
“Smells delicious.”
“Seasoned with lemon pepper and garlic powder.”
“Can’t wait.” She gazed at the stubble on his chin. If she’d had to guess what he did for a living, someone who hikes glaciers would not have been too far off. Definitely Dr. John Stevens wore the outdoor wilderness look well. “That’s a beautiful rock collection you have inside.”
He grinned and lifted his wine glass. “Over twenty countries represented and twice that in glaciers. Glacial moraines yield the most interesting finds—mainly because they tell you the path the glacier followed and how quickly the ice flowed.”
Both gazed at the grill a long moment and Shelby could tell he was thinking along the same lines as she. “The UCO,” she said.
“Yes,” John said. “If my age estimate is anywhere near accurate, the UCO could have moved anywhere from ten to more than a hundred miles from its original position after Okpilak picked it up.”
“Along with the skeleton,” Shelby added.
John wore a pensive look, nodding. “Along with the bones, yes.”
The evening was cool yet mild so they ate outside. Shelby found herself enjoying John’s company more than just as a research colleague and she could tell the way he looked at her when he spoke he was enjoying her being here as well. After all, he had invited her over. She smiled inside. She wondered if they had met under different circumstances—not intimately involved in one of the most thrilling discoveries she could imagine—would the excitement be the same? It really didn’t matter, she decided, finishing off her second glass of wine. They were here under these unusual circumstances. And she sensed this was only the beginning.
His mood turned thoughtful, as he said, “Will it work?”
Shelby set her glass down. “The laser? I don’t know. Astor sure seems confident it will.”
“Mendle, too, or he and his superiors wouldn’t have given the go ahead.”
“Lujno’s the optical expert. I wonder if it was her idea.”
“And Astor ran with it. Could be. He’ll definitely be running with it tomorrow if it’s successful.”
John’s cell phone rang and he answered, “Hey, Mark.” Shelby watched his lips widen in a skeptical grin. “Thanks, bro,” and disconnected. “That was the doctoral candidate that was with me on Little Okpilak.” He rose. “Let’s go inside. Mark says Goliath made the evening news.”
The photos were stills but regardless, anyone watching would be able to see the huge cylinder under the black lights, looking like a gigantic blue crystal. The announcer’s reporting grew more animated as several closer shots of the giant primate locked in the UCO’s matrix hit the screen. He even called the ape by name—Goliath. Shelby felt John’s nudge and smiled. The piece was short and ended with the astrophysicist declaring from outside Hangar 13, “More in
formation will be available tomorrow.” No mention of the laser.
John did a few channel surfs and found more news clips. Shelby envisioned the video feeds spreading like ripples in a pond. By this time tomorrow, no telling how big the story would be.
On the ride back to Pikes Lodge, John asked, “Any more on the partial skeleton?”
“I’ll have some preliminary DNA analysis back in a day or two.”
“You were able to collect DNA from a twenty-eight-thousand-year-old bone?”
“It can be collected from a fifty-million-year-old dinosaur fossil.”
He nodded. “Jurassic Park.”
“Right. But in this case it was far simpler. I was able to isolate a few well-preserved hair follicles and shafts from a section of humerus. And once we get access to Goliath, I will be able to tell if there is a link between the two entities or if finding the UCO and bones in such close proximity was only a bizarre coincidence.”
“Exciting. What are you expecting?”
Shelby watched the twilight that seemed to go on forever. “My intuition tells me they’re linked.”
“My mom used to say a woman’s intuition is more accurate than a man’s word.”
“Guess that would depend on the man and woman.”
He chuckled. “My parents were divorced, which might have jaded her opinion.” He pulled into the lodge. “Did I mention Mark and I initially thought that skull when it was in the glacier was human?”
“Did you ever get a good look at it?”
“I was there when we pulled the bones from the crevasse, but no, not really.”
Shelby had an idea. “Would you like to see it?”
“Sure.”
“Good. I’m interested in what your intuition says about my hypothesis.”
Shelby carefully removed the young juvenile primate skull from the top drawer and set it next to the plastic crate of long bones removed from the Arctic ice which she hadn’t had time yet to examine fully. The recent developments with the UCO had done a helter-skelter with her research schedule. She didn’t mind.
One look and John exclaimed, “That thing is huge! You say that’s a young one?”
Shelby positioned the skull upright, resting on its maxilla. “No more than three years, and possibly much younger. See, the sagittal sutures haven’t completely fused yet and the creature still has its deciduous, or baby, teeth,” she explained pointing out the relevant features. “I’m speaking in human terms as I have no way of knowing what the natural lifespan of this extinct species was. Gorillas can live over fifty years in captivity and more than forty in the wild.”
“You name this one yet?” He smiled.
Shelby returned his grin. “Not yet. Haven’t even determined its sex.”
John pointed to the right orbit. “What happened there?”
Inwardly Shelby was pleased. He’d seen it too. “This round hole?”
He nodded. “Looks like it was drilled.”
Shelby carefully lifted the skull, having to use both hands. “I think it was placed there antemortem. There are no micro fissures around the border that would indicate postmortem once all the soft tissue had rotted away.” She thought a long moment. “I believe this child primate was killed.”
“By what or who?”
“The twenty-eight-thousand-dollar question.”
“So that skeleton was left exposed to the elements prior to being buried in Little Okpilak.”
“Yes, but not too long—less than a year—otherwise the bones would have been more widely distributed.” She turned the skull over. “Look at this.”
John leaned closer. “That big hole in the base. Spinal cord?”
“Exactly. The foramen magnum. Where the spinal cord enters the skull. And it’s located directly under the cranium. This primate walked upright most of the time.”
“Like us.”
“Yes. Like Homo sapiens.”
“It is a primate, an ape, right?”
“One hundred percent.”
“That means Goliath walked upright.”
Shelby replaced the skull on the counter. “That’s assuming they are of the same species.”
“You believe they are.”
“I do.” She went on, “However, the DNA will confirm or disprove that relationship.” She noticed the glaciologist’s attention move to the long bones in the crate beside a microscope. “Just getting to those but they are the animal’s extremities, some of them anyway. Missing a radius and a few of the carpals.” She removed one. “A femur. See this line? It’s an unfused epiphyseal plate. Only seen in young primates. By the time a chimp or gorilla reaches adulthood, these plates vanish.”
John seemed genuinely interested as he lifted a longer, thicker bone from the crate. “This is a big one. Another femur?”
Shelby glanced, then did a second look, much longer. “What the hell?” she murmured, taking the bone from John.
“Was I not supposed to move it?”
She cast him a reassuring look. “No, it’s not that.” She flicked on a magnifying loupe and placed one end of the bone under the glass. “I’ll be damned. This is a portion of ulna, one of the bones of the forearm.”
“Only a portion? It’s giant!”
“That’s because it came from an adult. See, the epiphyses are fused.”
John thought a moment. “Does that mean…?”
“Yes,” Shelby answered, still gazing at the long bone. “There is another primate skeleton somewhere under Little Okpilak. And it’s an adult!”
By 1 a.m., most of Eielson Air Force Base slept. The two main runways lay silent, though still illuminated, and it’d been over an hour since the last plane touched down, a Boeing C-17 Globemaster cargo aircraft. The pilots would remain on standby until orders changed. Only a handful of airmen manned the guard positions around Hangar 13. In the last twenty-four hours the structure had taken on a mysterious aura approaching cult status with the media, as well as with the remainder of the base.
Hangar 13 housed what no other structure in the world could claim to hold.
Hangar 13 housed the UCO—and Goliath!
Inside, the black lights had been turned off and the huge cylinder sat bathed in soft white illumination from a set of five floodlights surrounding the raised platform.
Private airman Seth Jacobs yawned for the second time in the last five minutes. He approached the platform, hesitating a moment to stare at the tall indigo cylindrical block. It was his job to inspect the UCO’s surface temp visually—for some arcane reason, no one was informed why, air force management thought any temp change would be a big deal—so every hour throughout the night he would climb the steps and record the numbers from the gauge attached to the cylinder’s surface and ensure it coincided with the real-time wireless twenty-four-hour monitoring. A second wireless gauge had been secured behind the mysterious container. It didn’t matter. Neither had budged all evening.
Ninety-five point nine degrees Fahrenheit.
Airman Jacobs raised one boot onto the first step. He paused.
A voice from one of the two older airmen monitoring the computers at the work station called out, “What’s the holdup, Jacobs? You scared of a dead monkey?” he joked.
The young man’s eyes remained riveted on the UCO. “Shut the fuck up. I think I heard something.”
“Besides that bug up your ass?” the other one gibed.
“No, I’m serious.” Slowly, he moved up on the platform, stooping to get a look at the gauge. There it was again. SCCRRRP. “Get up here, guys.” He ignored the prickly sensation of goose bumps. It wasn’t his imagination. A light scraping sound was coming from inside the massive indigo cylinder!
All three guards hunkered low, ears placed on the smooth warm surface above and beside the front gauge. Jacobs noticed the other two were no longer smiling and held their weapons ready. “It lasted a few seconds then stopped, only to repeat,” he explained.
The other two squinted their eyes shut as if that would assist them in hearing better.
“Anything?” Jacobs asked.
Neither spoke. Finally they stood up. “I might have,” one said, the second one commenting, “Couldn’t say for sure, but doubt it. Nothing now.”
Jacobs studied the UCO, his eyes roving to the top. “Maybe we should turn on the UV.”
“Orders are not to do anything except watch,” the older airman said. He checked the time before casting a skeptical glance at the UCO. “That big ape’s been locked in there for almost thirty thousand years. I guarantee he ain’t gonna wake up on our shift.”
CHAPTER 9
The air force base utilized a variety of lasers, almost all having to do with weapons defense systems. The most powerful was the ATL, or Advanced Tactical Laser, mounted on the C-130 Hercules, making it impractical for current purposes—burning a hole through a cylinder composed of material the identity of which thus far had remained a perplexing secret.
The second most powerful and immediate at hand was the MTHEL—Mobile Tactical High Energy Laser—capable of producing a 150-kW beam strong enough to blast incoming missiles from the sky. This was the system Mendle and his superiors had decided upon after lengthy discussions with Drs. Lujno and Astor.
At precisely at nine a.m., the Humvee carrying the mounted laser backed through Hangar 13’s doors.
Shelby followed John, driving her rental, having arrived a half hour earlier. A second staging area had been set up about thirty yards from the platform tangential to the front of the UCO and this was where Shelby along with the other experts assembled. Mendle had allowed Bayliss and only a few press corps to be members of the observation entourage. Not near as many as the previous day. The remainder of the personnel present belonged to the military.
Shelby took her seat next to John after having inquired about the UCO’s temperature during the night. No change. Something told her this was more significant than what the others present seemed to think but she couldn’t express why. She watched Astor, Lujno, and the lieutenant break away from the crew of the Humvee and come toward them. Behind them she had a clear view of the UCO. The UV lighting was off, pending the laser preparation. Once the experiment was ready to roll, the black light illumination would be turned back on. The excitement in the hangar was palpable, almost approaching a tangible vibration that reverberated in the still cool air, the same anticipation that had prevented her from sleeping soundly last night. Another prehistoric primate skeleton in the glacier and in less than an hour the laser test. What more would the next twenty-four hours bring?