Nonetheless, Starr needed a dose of reality.
“Look, I understand but if Charles is a spy and if I did not follow my orders and his buddies showed up, they would have killed us all to claim G-Moon.”
Starr could not argue that point. They flew above the most important resource in the universe: a habitable biosphere.
The navigator answered the original question.
“I was part of the Niobe’s standby crew and was a week from joining them on Ganymede when the Chinese attacked.”
“You have been with UVI your entire career?”
“I received a scholarship to corporate flight school after working dome maintenance on Mars. Now that was a shit job.”
Hawthorne glanced at the Martian and felt, again, as if he walked the edge of the uncanny valley. Thin and long described every feature of Starr’s body including face, fingers, and arms. While clearly a human being, Marvin seemed…different.
“Commander?”
Hawthorne realized he stared and turned his eyes forward.
Professor Coffman’s voice broadcast over the radio: “Jonathan, can you hear me? Are you there?”
“Yes, professor, I hear you, go ahead.”
“The probe’s QE connection has become active again. We are receiving a message!”
“What, whoa, hold on a second. What are you talking about?”
“Probe 581’s pincushion, I brought it onboard before we launched. It went dormant during the initial survey mission but it’s receiving a signal again! I believe it landed on the moon!”
“Professor, what exactly is it broadcasting?”
“Coordinates.”
---
Hawthorne guided the shuttle down through the clouds, along the way suffering turbulence that, with the artificial gravity off, was bone rattling. Once below the cloud cover, he steered the craft over a nearly black landscape of rolling hills just south of the equator on G-Moon’s largest continent.
Starr helped guide them to the coordinates the probe broadcast, and the brilliant glow of another descending ship’s rockets—Coffman’s capsule--helped illuminate the landing zone.
On his navigator’s signal, Hawthorne activated the landing cycle, starting with forward braking rockets followed by landing struts and then vertical descent thrusters. They touched down on grass-covered earth three hundred yards from the capsule that had returned Coffman, Wren, and Stein to the surface.
The crews spent the next thirty minutes decontaminating their outerwear and unpacking robotic helpers before moving toward the rendezvous. On Coffman’s advice, Tommy Starr remained with the heavy lifter and Bill Stein stayed aboard the capsule.
Wearing pumpkins suits, Hawthorne led Kost, King, and Thomas from the plane to the northeast, joined by a trio of six-foot walking light posts and one rolling rover carting gear.
Lights from the robots and the top of the astronaut’s egg-shaped helmets lit the grassy ground. Wrist-mounted environmental monitors measured the temperature at forty-two degrees Fahrenheit and low humidity.
After a minute of walking, they rendezvoused with Coffman, Wren, and two more walking lampposts at a big white ship that was Probe 581.
“Professor, was this meant to land?” Hawthorne asked by proximity radio, although the acoustics on G-Moon were almost identical with Earth. If not for their helmets, they could carry on a normal conversation, assuming nothing in the air managed killed them first.
Coffman craned his neck to spy the top of the fifty-foot tall spacecraft constructed of barrel and ball-shaped body parts supported on three big struts.
“The ability to land was incorporated into the probe’s design but Project Manager Fenner never sent instructions to do so. We first lost control of the probe, and then we lost contact.”
Wren said, “So you lost control of the first ever interstellar probe? I bet that went over like a swimming pool on Mars with the brass.”
Coffman was too interested in the find to let his attention wander but when Kost innocently asked a simple question, it did stir his curiosity.
“Professor, why did it land here?”
Wren brushed aside her question saying, “Just random luck. For Christ’s sake, not everything has to have, like, ulterior motives.”
Hawthorne figured Wren referred not only to the probe’s choice of landing spots, but also to his choice of words at the Captain’s table weeks ago when the mission began. Since that day, the relationship between Wren and Kost had chilled.
Anyway, the question was valid and, after a moment, they found the reason.
The walking spotlight tripods reacted to their human hosts, focusing their illumination on the probe at first. But as the landing party turned their attention to the surrounding darkness, so did the lights, one following Ira King as she found something of interest.
“Professor, look.”
More spotlights joined the first, revealing a hole in a hillside fifty yards ahead.
For ten seconds, no one said a word, although Hawthorne heard the rate of respiration increase among the landing party, particularly his own.
Horizontal in shape, the cave opening measured eight feet high and twenty feet across, and while he blamed his imagination, Hawthorne swore he felt an ice-cold breeze sweep out from the interior and gust among the group.
Kelly Thomas pressed against him and said, “I should have brought my boys.”
As a soldier, her natural impulse was to assume hostile intent and that ominous black hole gaping at them like the mouth of a monster—perhaps one of Stein’s feared predators—did make him quiver beneath his space suit.
Coffman’s instincts were of a different nature. This new mystery demanded discovery, and he was already halfway to the opening before anyone realized he had moved.
“Professor, are you sure that is a good idea?” Hawthorne called.
Two of the robotic tripods escorted Coffman. After a moment, the entire landing party followed, with the remaining walking searchlights on their flanks.
Over the radio, Bill Stein’s voice asked, “Say, what are you guys up to?”
Hawthorne replied, “Looks like we found the opening to a cave.”
“Natural?”
“I don’t know.”
Signs pointed to a series of rock and mudslides causing the hillside to give way. But at the same time, the open section had an artificial feel to it. Roots and jagged ridges of earth surrounded the hole, but straight lines marked its borders, resembling the opening to an ancient bunker or garage.
Coffman reached the entrance first, his lights reflecting off dirt and rock.
The professor said, “Do you feel it?”
“Feel what?” King asked.
Wren spoke as he studied the forearm computer built into his suit, “Holy shit, my EF meter is pegging.”
“What does that mean?” Thomas asked.
Kost told her, “There’s a powerful electromagnetic field nearby.”
Hawthorne felt his stomach lurch but he had to ask, “Naturally occurring?”
“Most likely, yes,” Kost answered, but she did not sound convincing.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck,” Wren mumbled as his eyes alternated between his arm-mounted scanner and the path ahead.
Coffman drifted forward with a tripod a step behind. Hawthorne hurried to catch him, but worried the ceiling—the lion’s mouth—might slam shut like a Venus flytrap made from dirt and stone.
“Frederick, hey, slow down…”
Hawthorne went silent when he saw what lay ahead.
The cave narrowed to a shaft, supported by rusty-red beams built from what might have been metal or a solidified gel. The walls resembled rock, but Hawthorne suspected they might have been warped by time to take on a jagged, cracked look that hid their true nature.
That shaft ran six feet and opened into another large chamber, this one circular with smooth walls made from stone but supported, again, by those rusty-red gel-like beams.
Before the team c
ould fully grasp that they had found building materials of a nonhuman origin, they discovered the source of the electromagnetic field, and it was not natural
Every light, from the walking tripods to the lights atop each helmet, shined on the center of the room where a cylinder stood, six feet tall and a third of that in radius with ruddy metal skin.
Except, it did not actually stand but hovered, detached from both the floor and the ceiling, seemingly anchored in space on invisible tethers. Hawthorne had the feeling that a nuclear warhead could explode inside the chamber and that cylinder would still not move.
King recited a prayer in a voice short of breath: “In the name of God I go on this journey. May God the Father be with me, God the Son protect me, and God the Holy Ghost be by my side.”
Using his own form of prayer, Wren reacted, “Holy fucking shit.”
Coffman shouted, “Amazing!”
Kost stumbled and fell on her ass. Thomas also replaced words with action, stepping in front of Jonathan, shielding him from this potential threat.
As for the Commander, in the face of humanity’s most important discovery, he wished he were someplace else, twenty-two light-years away captaining his cruise ship worried only about women, booze, and celebrity egos.
What am I doing here? Why me?
While Hawthorne felt as if he might fall apart, Dr. King was already a step ahead. She struggled to speak through a trembling voice.
“That…that is an abomination. Can you feel it? It’s so…so cold.”
The air inside the cavern was cold, but unless her suit malfunctioned, any drop in temperature came from her imagination and Hawthorne knew it, but he was too busy battling his own misgivings.
Coffman ignored the others, his eyes alternating focus from the cylinder to data streams projected on the interior of his helmet controlled by his thinker chip.
“Yes, now this is interesting, not only a strong magnetic field but my sensors indicate a gravity field inside the confines of the, well, object.”
The walking tripods spread out, illuminating the whole chamber.
Kelly moved away from Hawthorne, helped Kost to her feet, and then dusted off her suit because it was the only contribution she could make at the moment.
Wren stopped mumbling obscenities long enough to reply to the professor, “My readings are not clear; the scanners are not effectively penetrating the outer layer. Christ, is this some kind of container?”
King scolded, “Do not speak his name in here. This is a dark place.”
Wren heard her this time and did his own scolding: “I don’t want to hear your preaching right now, I’m busy.”
Stein radioed Hawthorne, “Hey Commander, everything okay in there?”
He did not know how to answer. The object emitted energy but nothing threatening. Other than its suspension in mid-air, there was nothing remarkable about it, except for being of alien origin.
Actually, we are the alien invaders here.
“Commander?”
“Yes, Bill, everything is fine but we discovered something that is, well, appears artificial. Stand by, we are coming out in a moment and Professor Coffman will be better able to explain.”
Coffman overheard.
“Leaving? I do not think so. This object is proof of extraterrestrial intelligent life. To call this moment historic is an understatement.”
Hawthorne felt like a coward but he said it anyway, “We need to pull back and figure out what we found. You have remote equipment that can study this thing.”
“Remote equipment? I will study this personally.”
King boomed, “We should leave. It is not of man, it is dangerous.”
Wren jumped, “This is not the time for your crazy religious bull shit.”
Thomas said, “The Commander is right, we should pull back.”
“Like you know what the fuck you’re talking about,” Wren spat.
Hawthorne came to her defense, “Shut up you foul-mouthed son-of-a-bitch. The only thing you have done this entire trip is piss everyone off.”
“Yeah, and you’ve been so fucking helpful Mr. War Hero by pulling off a mutiny. Fucking kudos to you.”
“I am not leaving,” Coffman insisted, although he became a sideshow as Wren stepped up to Hawthorne and Thomas moved to intercept while King clasped her hands and prayed.
Dr. Kost shouted louder than anyone, “Stop! Just stop it!”
Their arguments ended as previously undetected cracks on the surface of the cylinder glowed burnt orange. With the light came an intrusion into their minds, a powerful flood of information that overloaded their senses, causing them to stagger and clutch the sides of their helmets in a vain attempt to ward off the invasion.
Hawthorne’s own thoughts were shoved aside in favor of images his mind could not unscramble, like a transmission hidden in electronic noise. He vaguely noticed Dr. King lean against the wall for balance as she, too, struggled to understand the assault. He and King, however, were the least affected of the group.
Wren dropped to his knees and shouted, Professor Coffman grunted and fell to the cavern floor, but even their reactions were mute compared with Thomas and Kost.
Kelly cried out and stumbled as if struck in the head by a weapon. Although still fighting his own battle, Hawthorne reached out, steadying her balance.
But Kost screamed the loudest; a terrifying cry that suggested a horrific attack.
“Help me,” she begged, “I can…I can see everything I can see everything THEY’RE IN MY MIND! GET THEM OUT!”
The cylinder’s assault ended, the cracks disappeared again, and Dr. Ellen Kost collapsed to the floor motionless.
39. Signs
Hawthorne removed his helmet and fell into a chair in the shuttle’s passenger module. The landing party—including Stein—gathered inside with Wren and Coffman hovering over Kost who lie on the floor, eyes open but motionless.
After twenty seconds, the cylinder’s emission had subsided and the group retreated after rigging the robotic rover into a self-propelled gurney.
Hawthorne’s hands trembled, he felt a chill around his spine, and wanted to blast off this moon and fly SE 185 back to Earth, where he would happily accept his sister’s suggestion to teach flight school.
Something had happened in that chamber but he suffered the effect less than the others. For Hawthorne, the sudden blast of what he could only think of as energy caused visions to flash in his mind, images he struggled to decode, leaving him shaken and puzzled, but unharmed.
The discharge hurt Thomas far worse, immobilizing her during the event and leaving her with a severe headache. She sat across from him with her eyes closed, rubbing her temples.
Coffman seemed dazed, as if suffering a concussion, but remained coherent enough to answer Stein’s question of “What happened?” with “We do not know.”
Dr. King spoke of the “devil” and “an evil presence,” as she examined Kost. It appeared the cylinder’s assault had driven King’s nerves to the breaking point.
Wren’s condition resembled Coffman’s: dazed, as if suffering from a blow to the head. He was, however, desperately worried about Kost, kneeling at her side and pleading with her to “say something.” She answered only with grunts, as if she no longer knew how to speak.
Tommy Starr sat in the pilot’s seat, baffled to the point of silence.
Hawthorne crossed the aisle and sat next to Kelly. He put an arm around her and while he tried to provide comfort, he did it mainly because he found it comforting himself.
“Are you okay?”
“Head hurts,” she said, “like a nail in my brain. What about you?”
“Physically, I am fine, but I may have shit myself.”
The joke resulted in a flashed smile followed by another grimace. It felt good to see her smile, even if it faded fast. He did not like seeing her in pain.
She told him, “Something got in my head; I saw stuff.”
“Me too,” he admitted, “but loo
ks like whatever hit you packed a bigger punch.”
Coffman overheard and raised a finger.
“Yes, well, I had a similar experience.”
Wren asked, “What are you talking about?”
“It appears the three of us suffered visions during the, well, I guess you could call it an event.”
“Fuck, make that four, professor,” Wren said. “I figured I was having a scary hallucination.”
“Of course it was scary,” King looked up from Kost and made eye contact with every member of the landing party. “Visions of Hell, a world of smoke and fire; this moon under a sun as red as an inferno. The beast revealed his plans for this place; we are in the domain of the serpent.”
“You saw visions, too?” Hawthorne spoke before Wren could.
“Images, yes, like memories of a picture,” King then looked to Kost on the floor with her eyes open and staring blankly. “It put those pictures in our minds as a warning to leave.”
“Shut the fuck up and make her better,” Wren pointed at King and then Kost. “That’s your patient, doctor.”
Hawthorne felt Kelly shiver in reaction to King’s suggestion of the supernatural, and that made him mad, but he felt fear, too. He was a trained astronaut and should not let superstition contaminate his thinking. But when confronted with something so alien and unexpected, so mind-shatteringly important, men often reach for the darkest—even the most absurd—explanations.
Coffman placed a hand on the wall for balance.
“We all saw images projected by that cylinder. I saw… strange buildings a mile high and built from materials I did not recognized. There were machines, some large, some flying. I cannot describe their design but as these images progressed, a force destroyed everything. The buildings, the machines, entire cities…taken apart piece by piece; deconstructed at the molecular level.”
Wren said, “Yeah, well, I figured what popped into my head were just memories from England.”
“What do you mean?” Tommy Starr asked between coughs; anxiety must have irritated his respiratory problems.
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