“It doesn’t make any sense.” Donovan ran a hand through his hair. “If what you’re saying is true, that it’s coming from the Ocean of Storms, then the crew of Apollo 12 should’ve picked up this EM energy. They had walked all over the damned—”
“Our best guess is that it was completely buried when Apollo 12 landed back in ’69. It’s possible that whoever buried this object there two million–odd years ago may have timed it to go off on a particular date.” McKenna continued after letting that last thought sink in for a moment. “With this fissure having opened up over the suspected buried object, we believe it would be a relatively easy matter for an experienced archeology team to dig it up and—”
“A relatively easy matter?” Donovan laughed, looking at the lantern hanging in the center of Zell’s tent. “Do you have any idea how difficult that work would be, even if it were partly exposed? We would be digging on the Moon, General, one-sixth the gravity of the Earth, in space suits not designed for the careful manipulations of an archeological dig—”
“NASA has promised to provide you with all the equipment and training you need.”
“It’s been my experience that NASA’s promises aren’t worth a hell of a lot.”
“Alan,” Zell said curtly. “General, wouldn’t it be better for NASA to send an unmanned probe to the Moon to dig it out? The object on the Moon could be powered by some type of nuclear battery, which could be harmful—”
General McKenna waved his cigar. “NASA has a satellite in lunar orbit right now. All the spectral analysis indicates that no harmful radiation seems to be emanating from the object. Further, it would take several years to design and build an unmanned robot probe to dig it up. By that time the world could be thrown into a complete panic. Such a panic the President does not take lightly, especially in the current political climate.” He sighed. “Besides, there’s the Chinese to consider.”
Donovan folded his arms. “What about the Chinese?”
The general gave a short, quick nod. “I’ve been cleared to give you this information. Spy satellites indicate that the Chinese sent an unmanned probe this week, with the possibility of sending a manned expedition sometime this summer.”
“So that’s it!” Donovan said, slapping the tent post. “You guys just want to beat somebody else to the Moon. This isn’t about science at all; it’s about sticking the Stars and Stripes in the ground and chalking up another victory for American ingenuity.”
The general stood up and looked as if he was prepared to walk out. He turned and looked squarely at Donovan. “I can assure you, Dr. Donovan, that if this mission is successful, it will be due to American ingenuity. However, this mission is of vital importance to science, and we are treating it as such. It could very well mean that we’re being contacted by beings who came to our solar system eons before humanity could rub two sticks together. However, the President believes that whatever information that object holds should be shared with all of humanity. The best way of sharing that information would be for the United States to mount a recovery mission. As you are well aware, the People’s Republic of China does not share our beliefs regarding the dissemination of information.”
“Wave that flag, General,” Donovan chuckled. “But you’re not convincing me. We’ll go there, study whatever caused the pulse, and abandon the Moon as we did before, when you fellas in the military convinced the government that you needed a little more cash.”
The general pursed his lips slightly. “So I take it you are not interested in serving on this mission?”
“Let me put it to you this way, General. Tell NASA to go to hell.”
“Goddamn it, Alan!”
General McKenna ignored the outbursts. “I have been asked by your president to remind you that your country would be in your debt if you should choose to accept—”
“My country owes my father a debt, but he’s not here to collect.”
The general nodded stiffly. “Very well.”
Zell cleared his throat. “I’ll walk you out, General.”
Donovan poured himself another scotch, holding the drink in his hand as he paced back and forth across the center of Zell’s tent. Some goddamn nerve, he thought. Let them get some other patsy to go to the Moon. What the hell did they come here and ask me for?
Zell came in as the tent began billowing. He stood for a second by the flap, watching the helicopter lights disappear over the treetops. Then he turned and tossed his hat on the cot and refilled his glass.
“You’re a stupid bastard,” Zell said flatly as he stuffed the cork back in the bottle and sat down.
“Don’t start, Elias.”
He turned to look at his former student. Thirty-five years old and just as much of a hard case as when he was a child. “Do you happen to have any idea what you’ve just turned down?”
“I turned down a mission that will probably be scrapped the second NASA sends another probe and realizes they’ve got nothing more than—as you said—some naturally occurring phenomenon on their hands.”
“And what if it’s not? What if it is what they’re saying it is—an ancient object placed there by a civilization that came to our solar system millions of years ago? What then, Alan?”
“Come on, Elias. That’s science fiction. Do you really think it’s all that?”
Zell slapped his thigh. “How could it not be, Alan? You heard the damn intelligence for yourself. But to turn down an opportunity like that without looking at any of their data, just because you’ve got a goddamn chip on your shoulder the size of the Rock of Gibraltar—”
Donovan waved his scotch glass at his mentor. “I do not have a chip on my shoulder.”
“You do. You do and you damn well know it, Alan. You know what you just threw away? The dig of a lifetime. Goddamn stupid sack of shit is what you are.”
“Well, there’s no point in beating me up about it. It’s gone, whatever it was. You think that brass hat is gonna come back here on his knees asking me to do this dig? Forget about it. I know these military types. When you say no, it’s taken as such.”
Zell smirked. “Are you so sure it was an absolute no?”
“What are you getting at?”
Zell stretched back in his chair with a sigh. “Let’s just say I made sure you didn’t slam the door.”
“Come again?”
“I left the door open. I know what’s best for you, even if you don’t. I told the general you’d think about it. That I’d get you to change your mind.”
Donovan shook his head. “You did what? Where do you get off?”
“Alan,” he said after another sip of scotch, “you’re a good archeologist. Perhaps as good as my own father was, God rest his soul. You’re willing to take risks. To dare to imagine. That is, provided that your damn pride doesn’t get in the way.”
“So then you told him—”
“I told him that you’d look over NASA’s data.” Zell reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a one-terabyte flash drive. “This data. And that you’d get back to him first thing in the morning.”
Donovan grinned over his scotch glass at the small black object in Zell’s hand. “Oh you did, did you?”
Zell held it up to the lantern. “If you’re not curious, I could just . . . toss this.”
Donovan snatched it from Zell’s fingers and sat on the bed. “Do you really think—”
“Alan, something no one can see from orbit is sitting about a mile below the surface. A fissure one mile wide and ten miles long opened up over this object just before the pulse hit the Earth. It sent landing coordinates to the Ocean of Storms. All it needs is a goddamn X to mark the spot. What the hell do you think it is?”
He smiled. “It’s not ours. Definitely. Nothing we’ve ever built could hit the Moon at such a speed and bury itself that deep in the surface and still be able to emit a signal. It can’t be ours.”
Zell folded his arms. “And now you have the opportunity to go and dig it up. The first artifact from
not only another age but from a civilization not even remotely human.”
“Not even remotely human,” Donovan repeated. “You know what this is?”
“I already told you. The dig of a lifetime.”
“The Moon, Elias. It’s been on the Moon all this time, since long before Homo sapiens walked the Earth. All those years of us shooting radio signals into the sky, and this has been sitting right in our backyard.”
Zell picked up his laptop. “Do you want to look at the data?”
“Yeah. But this doesn’t mean I’m going to join this little camping trip. After all, NASA hasn’t given me everything I want yet.”
“What the hell else could they give you? They’re offering you all the equipment and training you need, a goddamn moon shot by the summer—”
Donovan rubbed his bristled chin and smirked. “There’s one thing they haven’t offered me yet. Choice over my team of archeologists. I mean, they can’t expect me to dig this up all by myself.”
Zell waved away that notion. “Ach, they’ll give you whomever you want. They’re nuts to beat the Chinese there. They’d give you anybody.”
“Even you?”
“Me?”
“Well,” Donovan said, slapping Zell on the knee, “if they want me, they’re getting you. After all, we’re a matching set.”
Zell stood up, glass and cigar in hand, and went out to take in the night air. He chortled, shaking his head. “You really are a stupid bastard.”
Donovan watched his friend go, then turned the flash drive over and over in his hand thoughtfully.
“And you really are going to the Moon.”
Chapter 4
December 31
Houston, Texas
5:47 a.m.
The SH-60B Sea Hawk thundered across the dawn sky, en route to Houston. Two days had passed since Donovan and Zell first met McKenna, and they hadn’t done much sleeping since. As they sailed over the landscape, Donovan peered out the helo’s window, taking note of the occasional flickering dots of light that flecked the landscape.
“What are those lights?” Donovan asked the pilot.
“Fires, sir,” he answered. “Cities all over are going up in smoke. A lot of folks think it’s the end of the world. Over in Galveston, some cult calling themselves the Pillars of Revelation walked into a fast-food restaurant and killed everyone there with automatic weapons, then offed themselves on TV when the news crews arrived. A note left behind said that it was the first of many ‘cleansings’ that had to be done before God’s hand wiped the Earth clean, or some happy crappy like that.”
“Jesus,” Donovan whispered.
“I’d be calling that name a lot more if I were you, sir,” the pilot said. “Just last night a NASA scientist was killed in Houston because some nuts thought he had something to do with the pulse. Killers cut his throat with a butter knife, then tried to use it to saw his head off. Cops caught them in the act about three-quarters of the way through.”
A material silence filled the helicopter’s cabin. Zell gazed out at the smoldering world below him. He thought of his grandmother’s stories about the war, of London burning during the Blitz as she and other children her age fled to the relative safety of the English countryside.
“Happy New Year.”
Upon their arrival in Houston, Donovan and Zell were greeted by a security detail in an armored Humvee. The two men were then escorted to their accommodations, a motel right around the corner from the Johnson Space Center. Zell peered out the Hummer’s window at the rather modest lodgings, then tapped the driver on the shoulder.
“My good man,” he said, “is your GPS up to snuff?”
“Five by five, sir,” the driver said.
“Then enter this address, if you please . . .”
In less than an hour, they were settling into the Zell Institute’s regular luxury suite at Houston’s famous Hotel Derek. The pair, who had spent the last month sleeping in a bug-infested tent in the middle of Peru, was eager to spoil themselves a bit. After a long workout in the hotel’s weight room, followed by sixty laps in the pool, Donovan was sitting in the hotel room idly flipping through channels. From one end of the dial to the other, it was all the same. Chaos. The President’s press conference had done little to extinguish the fuse on a powder keg that was already itching to go off. In a growing number of places in the country, people were rioting, looting, or just lamenting to anyone who would listen that the end had come at last. Others had decided to take advantage of the situation. Makeshift booths had sprung up in cities everywhere selling T-shirts (“The Man in the Moon Is Watching . . .” was the most popular one), bumper stickers (“E.T. Phoned Me”), and “authentic” moon rocks.
Some channels were still devoting attention to the TGI congressional hearings, which had become somewhat more heated in the wake of the President’s speech. TGI executives were now making the argument that the human race may be poised on the brink of annihilation, and cloning may be the only way to stave off genocide. The argument was bogus, Donovan felt, but one that seemed to be turning the odds in the company’s favor.
At that moment, the bathroom door swung open and a cloud of steam washed into the suite’s common room. Zell stepped out of it in one of his monogrammed bathrobes, looking like a new man. He strolled over to the bar and poured himself a scotch with two ice cubes, then padded over to his suitcase, where, after a small amount of digging, he produced a box of Cohibas. Neatly clipping the end off, he lit the cigar, then sank into a chair across from Donovan and exhaled a haze of blue smoke. Donovan looked at his old friend and smiled. Zell could spend months sleeping in a ditch he dug himself with only a palm frond for a blanket, but put him in the lap of luxury, and he transformed instantly back into a proper blue-blooded English gentleman.
“What?” Zell said, noticing Donovan’s look.
“Enjoying yourself?” Donovan asked, then gestured at the television. “While all this is going on?”
Zell dragged on his cigar. “It was your idea to bring me along on this little camping trip. They wanted you. I figured as long as I’m here, I may as well indulge myself a bit.”
“It’s NASA who’s indulging themselves,” Donovan said. “You know they’re just going to pick our brains a bit, then send us packing while they take all the credit.” Taking note of Zell’s disinterested expression, he leaned in conspiratorially. “C’mon. You and I both know there’s no way they’re going to send two untrained men to the Moon. Two civilians. They barely did it in the heyday of the space program. Trust me, at the end of the day, they’ll chew us up, spit us out, and send us off with a grant that will probably amount to what I made on my paper route.”
“You never had a paper route,” Zell countered.
Donovan stood up, exasperated. “You’re missing the point.”
“No, you’re missing the point,” his former mentor shot back, weary of Donovan’s petulance. “At first we thought this was just going to be the dig of a lifetime. And it is, for certain, it is. But damn it, Alan, look around you. The whole damn world’s coming apart at the seams, and we’re being offered a chance to help put it back together. This has ceased to be just about you and your father. It’s bigger than that now. Bigger than any of us. And unless you’ve got a glass navel, I’d suggest you get your head out of your ass so you can actually see what’s going on here.”
Donovan stared out the window for a moment, looking down on the street below. He thought a moment longer, then turned to Zell.
“Get dressed,” he said, a smile cracking his face. “I’m buying.”
Zell pointed at him with his cigar. “Now you’re thinking, boyo.”
Donovan went to get changed himself, then stopped and turned around. “Elias?”
“Yes, Alan?”
Donovan paused a second before speaking up. “A glass navel?”
Zell’s baritone laugh filled the room. He shook the cubes in his glass. “A few more of these and it’ll make sense, trust me.”
As any good and responsible pair of scientists would do when faced with a world in upheaval, Donovan and Zell spent the evening getting good and soundly drunk. The men had a few good friends at the Houston Archeological Society, as well as at the archeology department of Rice University. A few well-placed phone calls, and Donovan and Zell soon found themselves hosting a New Year’s Eve steak dinner at the hotel’s renowned Revolve Kitchen. Although the mood was somewhat more somber than New Year’s Eves past, food was consumed, wine was poured, and tales were told, some taller than others. At midnight, the champagne corks were solemnly popped. For the two archeologists, it was a welcome return to the real world after a month in the field. And, in some ways, they knew it might be the last time they had an evening like this for a long while.
Around two that morning, they were seated in Derek’s bar, nursing the last in a seemingly endless line of scotches. Donovan was well in his cups, but Zell, always the picture of control, looked as sober as a choirboy, despite having ingested enough liquor to make Winston Churchill blush. He was sitting quietly, dragging on one of his hand-rolled cigars.
Overhead the TV droned on, tuned to one of the twenty-four-hour news channels. Although news about the EM pulse and its effects had died down, there was still rampant speculation as to what was really going on up there. Right now a popular radio-talk-show host was rambling on about the conspiracies surrounding the events of the last ten days. As he talked, his Adam’s apple vibrated wildly, causing his bow tie to bounce up and down in a curious rhythm. “I’ve been studying this topic for some time,” he continued, spittle flying liberally from his lips as he did, “and I’m telling you that NASA has known about this alien presence on the Moon since the early days of the space program. And this presence has attempted to make contact long before then. In 1955, something blocked astronomers’ view of the Taurus-Littrow area. In 1882, moving shadows were spotted in the Aristotle area of the Moon. And in 1587, astronomers reported seeing a star within the body of a crescent moon!”
Ocean of Storms Page 6