SALIENT

by Simon Rosser

  “Good idea, this sure would be a bad time to run low on bullets,” Bruce replied.

  “Come on, let’s keep going. It can’t be much farther now,” Tom said, grabbing Jess’ hand.

  They walked around the curved section of tunnel, the electrical buzz getting louder, reminding Tom of the noise a large electricity pylon gave off on a wet day back in the U.K.

  Suddenly, there was a pulse of bright blue light, followed by a loud pop of electrical discharge. “Get down!” Tom shouted, as they all threw themselves to the ground, fearing an explosion.

  “Ouch, my bloody wrist,” Alicia cried.

  “What the hell was that?” Bruce asked.

  “Is everybody okay? There’s an electrical power source just up ahead. It’s giving off plenty of static but as long as there's no water around we should be okay.”

  “Oh that’s great! Don’t forget there’s a tonne of frozen water above our heads,” Jess said.

  Tom got to his feet. “Hopefully it will stay in that form. Come on, it’s time to find out what's really going on.”

  Up ahead was a kink in the passage, caused by a huge slab of granite that the builders of the mine a hundred years ago must have found too hard to move. The blue glow was coming from the other side of it.

  “Let me go in first, Tom,” Armstrong said, gripping the M14.

  “Good idea. We don't appear to have been followed,” Tom said, directing his flashlight into the dark, but thankfully empty tunnel, behind.

  Armstrong moved forward, through the narrow gap and into what they assumed must be the cavern beyond, with the girls followed quickly behind, and then Tom with Bruce last.

  Tom squeezed past the giant slab of granite and into the space beyond where the other four were staring at something, their mouths half open, eyes wide in what Tom could only describe as a look of wonder mixed with fear.

  They were standing in a large, circular, dome-shaped cavern, approximately thirty feet across, and a similar size in depth. The cavern roof rose to about fifteen feet above them and was two thirds solid granite and around a third solid ice, turquoise in colour, part of the Cobalt Ridge Glacier above.

  Lying on the ground, where the sides of the cavern rose from the solid granite floor, were several recognisable items. A number of old picks, lanterns, hammers, piles of old rope, and lying on its side, an old, wooden mining cart; just some of the tools and items of equipment used by the miners that once worked in the tunnels.

  It wasn’t this that Tom and his friends were staring at in bewilderment however. Half entombed in the turquoise ice, as if being slowly revealed as the glacier above melted, was some kind of device, or machine. It was hard to describe, but Tom doubted he was looking at anything that had originated on Earth. The device was black, but appeared to change from gloss to matte and then weirdly to a translucent black, which appeared to show the turquoise glacier behind it.

  The device was humming and giving off an indigo/blue glow, then bright, white, light and was pulsating slightly. On the cavern floor, beneath the object, was a pile of sleek, shiny metallic-coloured objects. It took Tom a few seconds to register what they were. They were the harpoon-like devices that they’d found in the forest, at least a hundred of them, lying in a pile under the device.

  “My God!” Tom said, removing his backpack to check the device was still in his pack. It was, and not only that, it was starting to glow again.

  Before any of them could speak, a blue haze started to appear around the device, filling the cavern, top to bottom directly ahead of them. The hum coming from the object started increasing in intensity and then, as if they were watching some weird special effect in a science fiction movie, a tennis ball-sized, ovoid, jet-black hole opened up in the blue light field, becoming larger by the second, until it was about ten feet in length and five feet in height. Then there was a flash of silver and one of the harpoon-like objects appeared from the black space and dropped out, landing on the pile that had formed on the ground. As the ovoid started to diminish in size, something else appeared to emerge from the black space, this time, a dark, solid, shape.

  The dark mass appeared to be moving, and was levitating in an aura of blue haze inside the black eye. As it emerged from the black void, Tom could see that the thing was alive.

  It landed on the ground to the right of the mound of harpoon-like devices with a thud. The black oval then winked out, leaving a haze of blue in its place once more.

  “What in the world…?” Bruce uttered, as the two girls screamed at the sight in front of them.

  Lying on the floor, clearly confused, and possibly injured, was what appeared to be one of the Bigfoot creatures. It tried to stand, but staggered and fell as its legs buckled beneath it. It then saw the five of them looking at it from the opposite end of the cavern, and let out a painful sounding growl, quickly scrambled back onto its feet—this time maintaining its balance—and stumbled towards them.

  “Shoot the fucking thing!” Tom shouted, turning to Armstrong, feeling as if time had inexplicably slowed down.

  Armstrong raised the M14, and squeezed the trigger, but nothing happened.

  “It’s jammed!” he screamed, as the creature lurched forward.

  CHAPTER 26

  THE MOON

  Far side, Saha Impact Crater

  THE TWO ASTONAUTS guided the lunar rover around the crater wall of an ancient meteor impact crater, and across a debris-free section of anorthosite rock—a calcium-rich type of rock found in abundance on the Moon.

  The backdrop of brilliant, white stars hadn’t ceased to amaze the men as they both continued to stare in awe at the magnificent sight.

  A high resolution video camera mounted on the rover was recording the entire mission. A similar camera, one of the many array of instruments mounted on the X40 had filmed the astronauts as they left the vicinity of the landing site and headed out towards the Saha Impact Crater.

  “Can you hear that?” Bannister asked, referring to a deep, continuous hum that had become increasingly evident inside his space helmet. The sound, he knew wasn’t anything that they were hearing from the Moon, as of course they were in a vacuum, but it must be some interference they were picking up from within their own communications systems.

  “Affirmative, some kind of background interference up here,” Scott replied.

  Bannister guided the rover down a steep, thirty-foot bank, its wheels kicking up grey dust as the vehicle’s large wheels spun momentarily, as they lost grip on the Moon’s surface. A glowing red dot was now visible on the rover’s navigation screen, the vehicle’s auto-guidance system now taking the astronauts to the location of the mystery signal and the eastern edge of the ancient impact crater.

  The steep bank gave way to another wide, flat section of breccia rock. The matrix of different materials, minerals, and fragments clearly evident in the breccia as the rover travelled over it.

  “Interference becoming more intense,” Scott said, as the rover manoeuvred between two twenty-foot diameter impact craters.

  The navigation screen on the rover confirmed that they were now only three-hundred feet from the edge of the crater.

  They travelled across the Saha Plateau for another two hundred feet or so before the rover made a right turn and headed towards a steep bank that formed the outer rim of the crater.

  “Sixty feet to crater rim,” Bannister confirmed.

  “Picking up increasing levels of static,” Scott replied.

  The rover proceeded across an area strewn with small boulders, ejecta from the meteor impact that took place millions, perhaps billions of years ago.

  Suddenly, a brilliant flash of blue light erupted from the crater ahead before vanishing again.

  “Jesus, did you just see that?” Scott gasped, breathing heavily. The monitor on the arm of his space suit showing his vital signs confirmed his heart rate had just jumped to 190 bpm.

  “Affirmative. It would appear that we’re not alone up here,” Bannister replied, the
tone of his voice tense.

  The rover reached the bank of the crater and proceeded up the outer rim until a boulder field made any closer approach impossible.

  “Looks like we need to make the final approach on foot,” Scott panted.

  The rover’s monitor confirmed the signal source was just twenty-five feet ahead, inside the ancient impact crater.

  As the rover came to a halt, Scott powered it down, and set it to solar recharge, ensuring the movie camera remained on.

  From the compartment at the rear of the rover, the astronauts grabbed the equipment given to them during the mission briefing back at the Groom Lake base, before looking up at the crater rim and the eerie, blue glow that was now coming from somewhere inside the ancient impact site.

  “Are you ready?” Scott asked Bannister over the static.

  Bannister wasn’t ready. He’d been concerned as soon as he’d left the briefing room back at Groom Lake. The fact that they’d been made aware that NASA had been monitoring certain ‘activity’ on the surface of the Moon that needed urgent investigation had started alarm bells ringing. He couldn’t show his fear otherwise he’d have been removed from the mission and never gotten this ride to the moon, something that he and every astronaut longed for.

  Bannister simply nodded, his anxiety plain to see as a trickle of sweat ran down his forehead.

  The two astronauts left the rover and started clambering up the eastern ridge to the crater rim.

  The canvas of bright, white stars spanning the horizon beyond the crater rim and above them was now intermittently coloured blue, from the weird glow emanating from the crater.

  Bannister felt his heart racing as he realised that what they were about to discover had to be alien in origin.

  The Saha Crater was around sixty-six miles in circumference, its rim on the plateaux side elevated thirty-feet above the Moon’s surface; regolith ejected from the impact zone and formed at the time of the meteor strike. The slope leading to the rim was strewn with tektites, obelisk-shaped rock, melted into glass from the energy created by the impactor meteorite.

  The astronauts reached the crater rim together, the blue glow enveloping the glass visors of their space helmets as they peered into the crater.

  What they saw captivated them. Within the crater, and close to the eastern side, was what appeared to be a device of some sort, about the size of a truck, dark in colour, and rising from the Moon’s surface. It had to have been engineered and constructed at some point after the impact, by an alien civilisation. It was the only conclusion that could be drawn from the surreal sight in front of them.

  “My God! We appear to be looking at some kind of alien structure, built within the impact crater. It seems to have risen from below the Moon’s surface judging by the small ridge of crater ejecta surrounding the object. My guess is that it’s some kind of transmitter, but there appears to be no radio antenna dish as such. This is just weird. We are seeing dark, revolving orb-type objects hovering around the structure. There are flat, dark panels, surrounding the object which could be capturing starlight and generating power. The entire thing is surrounded by a halo of brilliant, blue light, coming from...wait—” Scott reported what they were seeing back to Groom Lake Mission Control above the heavy interference.

  The blue light was now strengthening and had formed into an intense glowing orb about the size of a football. The astronauts watched as the orb started moving around the edge of the base of the crater, before slowing again. It hovered momentarily, and then started moving up the bank towards them.

  “Move… Move!” was all Scott could shout, as the blue orb started accelerating up the crater towards them.

  Bannister felt an immense heat, and then images; moving images like a movie being played quickly over in his mind. He felt love, anger, power, humility, and fear. Finally, he saw an image of the object they were both looking at actually being constructed, and then he finally understood why. No, please no, it couldn’t be. We deserve another chance!

  The blue light intensified, and then, in a flash of searing pain, everything went black.

  CHAPTER 27

  ARMSTRONG FINALLY MANAGED to release the safety catch on the M14 and promptly let off a three-round burst of 7.62×51mm NATO cartridges, which tore into the creature’s chest, forcing it backwards and down onto the ground, where it lay, whimpering in deep, guttural tones.

  The sounds reminded Tom of the attack at the campsite and a shiver shot up his spine in response. “Jesus, that was close,” Armstrong said, wiping perspiration from his brow.

  “What in the hell is going on here? Where did that thing just come from? Was that dark void some kind of portal from another time zone, or even another planet?” Bruce asked, nonplussed at what he’d just witnessed.

  Tom shook his head, trying to piece together what he’d just seen. It did kind of make sense. The mystery harpoon devices, clearly looked as if they were from another planet, or perhaps from Earth’s distant future, or more worryingly, alien in origin. Could they all have just witnessed a wormhole opening up; a theoretical passage through space-time that allowed shortcuts across the universe? Wormholes after all, have been predicted to exist by the theory of general relativity. Such a thing could perhaps allow the creatures, Bigfoot, Yeti, whatever you wanted to call them, to come into the present from Earth’s past. Tom had a bunch of questions firing off in his head, but none of them had answers, as he stared at the creature twitching on the ground.

  Suddenly the alien device half-hidden within the glacier started to glow an intense blue again.

  “Get down!” Tom screamed.

  All five of them dived to the ground, covering their heads and fearing an explosion. They all lay on the cavern floor, bathed in indigo/blue light, the loud hum being emitted from the object vibrating around the domed cavern.

  Tom lifted his midriff in surprise as his smartphone vibrated in his pocket. He reached in and grabbed it. The power bar was showing only 6% battery life left. A message had come in from his friend over at MIT.

  “It’s a text from Gerry,” he said to the others, who were all looking at him, eyes wide with fear at what might happen next.

  “Well, read it out!” Alicia shouted.

  Tom brushed a film of dust from the screen, swiped it and opened the message. “Okay, here goes,” he said, reading out the text.

  TOM, I HOPE YOU GUYS ARE SAFE. WHAT I HAVE JUST DISCOVERED, IF CORRECT, IS INCREDIBLE AND SO DAMN SCARY I DON’T KNOW WHETHER TO TELL ANYONE, BUT FIGURED I HAVE NO CHOICE. JUST WHAT WE CAN DO ABOUT IT I DON’T KNOW…

  I THOUGHT ABOUT WHAT YOU SAID ABOUT WHETHER THE SIGNAL MIGHT CONTAIN SOME KIND OF A MESSAGE, AND IF SO, HOW WE MIGHT GO ABOUT DECODING IT. WELL, I THINK YOU WERE CLOSE TO THE MARK WHEN YOU SAID ANY SIGNAL MEANT FOR US WOULD BE MADE DELIBERATELY EASY FOR US TO DECIPHER BY THE SENDER. I LOOKED AT EVERYHTING, STARTING WITH EARTH’S MOST COMMON ELEMENTS AS YOU SUGGESTED, THE PLANET’S LOCATION WITHIN THE SOLAR SYSTEM AND THE MILKY WAY ETC. BUT CAME UP WITH NOTHING. I THEN THOUGHT, WHAT IF THE MESSAGE WAS MORE GENERIC IN NATURE? WHAT IF THE SIGNAL WASN’T SPECIFICALLY MEANT FOR US, BUT WAS A MESSAGE SIMPLY CONCERNING US?

  WELL, THIS IS THE SCARY PART. I TOOK THE ATOMIC NUNBERS OF THE MOST ABUNDANT GASSES IN THE UNIVERSE, HYDROGEN AND HELIUM, AND ASSIGNED THEM TO THE DECODING SOFTWARE WE’VE BEEN USING OVER HERE AND I FED IN THE SIGNAL DATA. I CANT BELIEVE THE RESULT. THE SIGNAL APPEARS TO BE USING A FAIRLY SIMPLE MEANS OF COMMUNICATION. IT’S PURE MATHS AND EASY FOR ANY ADVANCED CIVILIZATION TO DECODE, BUT HERE’S THE SCARY PART. THIS APPEARS TO BE THE TRANSLATION;

  586743-3953974397 48 (REPRESSENTS OUR SUN’S POSITION WITHIN THE MILKY WAY GALAXY) THEN 3 (EARTH IS THE THIRD PLANET FROM THE SUN) AND THEN THIS – SPECIES: HOMO SAPIEN… NUMBERS… POPULATION GROWTH… WARS… DEATH… FAMINE, POLAR REGIONS MELTING… SPECIES EXTINCTION… TECHNOLOGY, NUCLEAR FISSION/FUSION… UNVIABLE… TERMINATION.

  THE SIGNAL DOESN’T APPEAR TO BE FOR US, BUT IS ABOUT US. I BELIEVE THE SIGNAL IS ALERTING OTHER ADVANCED
CIVILIZATIONS NEARBY THAT WE ARE ABOUT TO BE TERMINATED. SOMEONE HAS DECIDED WE POSE TOO MUCH RISK TO THE SOLAR SYSTEM, PERHAPS THE GALAXY. TOM, IN SHORT, I BELIEVE WE’RE ALL SCREWED!

  “That’s it. That’s all it says,” Tom said, shielding his eyes from the blue glow coming from the object, his mind spinning.

  “Is he being freaking serious?” Alicia replied.

  “Well, it doesn’t sound like a bloody joke to me!” Jessica added, mascara streaked under her eyes from where she’d been crying.

  “Hold on, I have an idea. I have to text him back, but my bloody battery is about to die,” Tom said, frantically typing out a message.

  GERRY. I HAVE THE MESSAGE. WE ARE IN THE CAVERN AND THERE IS A DEVICE HERE. IT MUST BE THE TRANSMITTER, AND SOME KIND OF TIME TRAVEL/WORMHOLE TECHNOLOGY COMBINED. WE WITNESSED A WORMHOLE OR SOME KIND OF TIME PORTAL/GATE OPENING UP, PERHAPS TO ANOTHER DIMENSION OR ANOTHER WORLD. I HAVE AN IDEA. WE NEED TO TRY TO TRANSMIT SOMETHING BACK. GERRY, FEED THIS INTO THE TRANSLATION SOFTWARE AND SEND ME THE AUDIO OF THE TRANSLATED TEXT BACK. DO IT NOW!

  THIS IS A MESSAGE FROM PLANET EARTH - 586743-3953974397 48 – 3. PLEASE GIVE US ANOTHER CHANCE. WE CHERISH OUR PLANET AND ALL THE LIFEFORMS ON IT. AS A SPECIES, WE ARE CAPABLE OF SUCH BEAUTIFUL DREAMS, AND SUCH HORRIBLE NIGHTMARES. WE WILL DESTROY YOUR MACHINE, BUT DO NOT TAKE THIS AS AN ACT OF AGGRESSION. WE SEEK PEACE AND FRIENDSHIP. WE ARE ALL BORN FROM THE STARS… I SEND ON THE FOLLOWING COMMENT, WHICH IS FROM ONE OF EARTH’S GREATEST INHABITANTS, THE PHYSICIST, CARL SAGAN – “THE NITROGEN IN OUR DNA, THE CALCIUM IN OUR TEETH, THE IRON IN OUR BLOOD, THE CARBON IN OUR APPLE PIES WERE MADE IN THE INTERIORS OF COLLAPSING STARS. WE ARE MADE OF STARSTUFF.”

  Tom read his message out to the others. “It’s all I can think of saying,” he said, once he’d finished.