Brydon was now organizing the scientists, and inspecting the equipment in under the coverings that they had put it in, under the shelter of the trees, protecting it from the outdoor conditions.
When Brydon had finished, Parker called him over.
“What did they record in the scan of this place?” he asked enthusiastically.
“They detected something incredible …” the tall scientist replied slowly, ruggedly. He was lacking sleep, either from the conditions of the island or the events of the previous day.
“What do you mean incredible?”
“Well I have not seen anything myself, as we have not had any of the equipment on. We have no power source, and it may have been damaged.”
“Who saw it?”
Brydon marched over to a small scientist who was bending over some equipment, and cleaning sand from its plastic sheet cover, and he spoke to him, and they came over to Parker.
“Tell him what you saw!” Brydon demanded.
“Everything was barely in operation when the plane reached this position. But we saw images flashing on the screen, near this precise spot.”
“Images where?” Parker asked, in confusion, trying to work out what they were actually talking of.
“Underground!”
“Under this beach?” he asked, observing the beach, and where the plane had come down over the Pacific.
“Not the beach! Further in – about five miles, and it went right out of its range ...”
“It must have been massive!” Brydon continued.
“What was massive?” Parker asked, trying to contemplate what was so powerful that it could create such a powerful magnetic field, and cause such damage, and bring down such an advanced plane, designed to such a degree.
“Give us a better description of what you have seen!” Brydon demanded.
“We spotted an unusual formation, within a blur of flickers, of something artificial – but none of us could recognize what!”
“There is something artificial underground five miles inland – which stretches out further than ten miles.”
“What is the terrain like five miles inland?” Brydon asked, realizing that Parker had been the only person to look properly there – except perhaps for the pilots.
“There was a massive deep fifteen-mile round cavity five miles inland,” Parker replied, wondering what it was.
“Over the site where they saw the disturbance?”
“Yes!”
“So someone has built something at the bottom of the cavity. What was in the cavity?”
“It was basically flat, covered over by tropical trees, with thick jungle areas, and golden sand areas …”
“So someone may have something in there – in the trees – and perhaps hidden away.”
“Correct!” Parker replied, shrugging.
They stared at each other, and left it there, and Brydon and the other scientist returned to what they were doing.
Parker recalled the events in Cornwall, and the first event when they had found something was there.
Yet there had been nothing there but the strange fossil.
Parker started to realize their situation on the island, around him, and the problems that they had, and he looked out at where the plane had gone down, and he realized that they had sunk a whole plane, beneath the waves.
It was under the blue water, slightly rocking with the currents.
He had not even heard of any plane crashes occurring for years. They had virtually conquered all the problems encountered in the past.
He felt the temperature in the hot air increasing, as the morning drew on.
He had a remembrance of coming ashore, the day before.
He viewed the beach, as he took some food from one of the pilots, who walked up to him with it – who looked as if they were not sure if they had been part of the cause of the crash, by taking the plane up without being properly checked, or something.
At the opposite direction from where the plane had flown in from, Parker saw palm trees overhang the shore, and spotted the perpendicular cliff, which he had seen on the plane, going along the beach.
He sat on a chunk of vegetation, and shaded his eyes, and examined the sight behind him. A jungle of variations of trees and plants went from the beach, inland.
The sun was now scorching, and the air hot.
He stretched out his tired limbs, feeling slightly dizzy, and he turned his blank expression to a smile. He had actually survived a plane crash – like many of the great explorers of the past – and was a castaway on an island.
The main task now was to preserve the food until they were rescued.
He could try fishing, as he had done at school – if there was a food problem.
Sounds of rummaging came from behind him, from some animal in the undergrowth, and Carlton, who was eating some bread, finished consulting with the pilots, and walked over.
“Would you believe it! They never radioed for help.”
“They never thought that it would happen ...”
Parker gasped at the thought of having to stay there for a long time, and the people who had caused all the disturbances out there, and, perhaps, knowing of them being there, and them sitting out in the open on the beach.
Yet surely if they were concealing themselves from the outside world, they would not take the chance of being found – no matter what.
“The last location of the plane before it vanished from the radar will be recorded though,” Carlton announced. “And, perhaps, someone was monitoring it …!”
“That could very well save us!”
“The pilots brought a radio ashore too! It has some damage like the other stuff on the plane, but we may be able to repair it.”
“But what if it is affected by what happened to the plane?”
“It is not! We checked. There is no more interference from magnetic occurrence that did it. It has gone away, and we can be rescued without there being another crash.”
“The occurrence could have been triggered by the scanning ...”
“It could very well have been that way.”
“Whatever it was generated by!”
“It must have been powerful!”
“Why is it out here?” he mumbled to himself.
“We could go over there and check it – there’s are gaps in the trees.”
“Alright! We’ll take Brydon with us.”
They cleaned themselves up, took food, and left through an area of empty trees, from the camp.
They looked for traces of any signs of humans everywhere, as they went along – and anything that would indicate humans had been there.
Even though it was soon hard to believe that humans had ever been on the island.
Scents of plants and trees blended in the hot air, while they walked fast but silently through it.
It was a long open area through the jungle, and at any moment Parker expected to see a tiger hiding in the tangle of vegetation.
Their pace stayed fast, but at a speed that they could see anything dangerous in in the front of their path, while staying hidden.
Just ahead of them, a shape of a building emerged in the vegetation, and they approached it in stages, examining bits of it through gaps, trying to figure out what it was – or even resembled.
In the distance shapes of shrieking monkeys hung on branches.
“What do you think it is?” Parker finally asked Brydon, breaking their silence, as they moved up to it.
“It could be some sort of observation construction ...”
“How old could it be ...?” Carlton asked, looking at its stone surface. “If we can establish that we may establish what it is.”
“And how long ago someone was here!”
They moved up close to it, and examined the ruins of the hidden building.
“It’s from the Second World War,” Brydon announced. “And surely built by the Japanese ...”
Chapter 4
The Ruins
While he followed Brydon, down the stairs, under the ruins, he watched the floor below for anything.
Vague echoes came off its boulder brick walls in hollow surges.
When he reached the floor below, he saw that the chamber amazingly reached twenty feet high.
“Why does it have an underground chamber, must be the main question?” Brydon spoke, looking around.
“Either to hide in if they were attacked by troops or to keep weapons and ammunition in!” Carlton replied, with his voice making surreal echoes from the walls.
Parker, who was more curious than them, searched further in, and moved into its deepest fringes – searching along its square stones – while insects scurried away under his shoes.
Out in front, a black door came into his sight, from the darkness.
Thick webs and dirt obscured it, and he pushed himself in close to it.
An area of wall had thick webs, and a gap behind it, where a doorway had been – and had crumbled and collapsed across the ground.
They entered it in stages searching a thin tunnel going along, under the jungle above, with their shadows flickered along the damp soil, and their unblinking eyes watching the ground in the glimmer, searching for obstructions or loose boulders.
Cobwebs crawled over their faces, and they ignored them.
Its creepy mysterious darkness made Parker’s heart beat fast, and, at any second, he expected to find something deadly.
Out in front, he observed a dim gleam, from stone lit up from a mysterious source, near the end of the tunnel.
He saw a stream of light from behind inundating the tunnel, producing a magical effect upon his hazy sight.
Carlton’s loud breathing echoed in the silence along it, as they marched on, trying to avoid tripping.
Parker’s sight fixed on a magical glow – where the wall shone.
A small patch of stone glowed – as though it contained energy.
“What could that be?” Brydon muttered, leaning in close to it.
“It has no heat!” Carlton replied, placing his hand over it.
“Radioactive ...?”
“We’ll have it analyzed – when we get off this island.”
Brydon copied him and removed a sample, and put it away in his pocket.
Chapter 5
The Rescue
The helicopter emerged out of a dot on the horizon, and swept in low across the island, and hovered above the scientists, blowing sand everywhere about them, before landing on an area of flattened sand – where they had flattened it, hours before.
Parker smiled for the first time since before the crash, and finished the remains of his breakfast, which he had left.
All the equipment was loaded aboard, and they all got aboard, and fastened themselves in, still considering there being some chance of danger from the disturbance that took the plane down.
Once above the beach, Parker spotted more helicopters racing towards the site, in the distance.
They would rescue the plane, and the equipment that they had been unable to remove.
Colors of nearly every feasible distinction shone with luminosity all over the beach, like a mind-bending animation.
Loud eerie sounds emerged in the distance, from animals, which he tried to identify. Then he listened intensely, with amazement – as he could not believe that the sounds could possibly reach that distance.
They were coming from over at the large cavity, where they had walked to, from the construction.
It had been a disappointment, as the trees about the spot were too dense to see anything through. However, the animals there, which he was sure he could now hear, had baffled them with their strange unknown sounds, and, in fact, they could not recall ever having heard anything like them.
Chapter 6
The Glowing Rock
Parker entered his California branch of his US research company, and acknowledged Brydon deeply engrossed at his work with three scientists in a laboratory, and he smelt a sweet tobacco aroma lingering in the air, and knew Carlton was about.
While going up the stairs, he vaguely observed a painting on the wall that he had placed there some months before, and he wished to change it now.
At the top of the stairs, he met Carlton, who had seen him from the top window, and was coming over to meet him.
“We’ve had all the equipment returned from the plane,” Carlton announced, “and some of it has been repaired.”
Parker stared into his bright eyes, and saw he had something for him.
“Did you get the images of the last scans?”
“I have what we have checked so far here. But there is nothing much in what we have so far recovered ... This time!”
He handed over a photo.
“Why this time?”
And Parker observed a round massive blur, from the cavity area of the island – as if some mass of energy had blasted out, showing some detail of the area that they were created from. But the lines and configuration had little detail and could have been anything.
He handed over some more photos.
The picture was similar but very small, as if it was a miniature version, but showed a better view and that it had a round shape.
“All our enquires about it have given us no leads.”
“What about that glowing rock substance, anything there?”
“We have not properly checked it! But we have just found out from some confidential sources that this substance could have been present at the Cornwall site, where the first occurrence occurred – and there had been some concern there over the discovery.”
Parker removed a small container from his case, and as Carlton’s sight fell on it, he gave a shudder – either unintentionally and uncontrollably trying to control his emotions or to express some fact or concern over it.
Parker threw it out of its container into his hand to Carlton’s surprise.
As he held it in front of them, it started to glow brightly, and produced beams of light, which shone light over their faces, and then started dazzling their eyes.
“That’s strange!” Parker announced, as he had not checked it.
“It creates other incredible energy releases …”
“What does?”
“It is not the rock itself. There is a substance in it.”
“Of unknown origins?”
“In my opinion: definitely unknown!”
It was strange, and he could not recall seeing anything like it.
What sort of substance gave out such a powerful glow?
They briskly entered the laboratory, and entered a room.
They began telephoning different specialists making enquiries, and searching through information on all similar substances.
It soon dawned on Parker that there was no mention of it anywhere. Nothing even vaguely mentioned it – and he knew that they would have heard of it! He ordered the test of the substance to get a rough insight into what it was.
Carlton took a crumb of it with a scalpel, and he placed the remaining part in a container in a supply room – and Parker studied him – wondering why he looked so nervous – and wondered what he had learned – and why he had only taken a crumb of it.
He gave it to a laboratory scientist, including some instructions, and they went to the other side of the building, and watched the scientists cut a bit – the size of a match head, and quickly drop it into a glass tube, positioned over a flame.
The scientist left towards them, and went into a supply room near them, for some equipment.
Just as he went in, a blinding whiteness exploded out from the substance like a super nova, blinding their eyes with its radiance, and they rushed for cover outside a side door as it was proceeded by pieces of glass shooting out with a thunder blast of an explosion, going out beyond the doorway.
For an instance hell seemed to break into the world, and Parker conside
red diving on the floor, almost positive that the wall that they had sheltered behind would explode in from the force.
The floor under them vibrated with fury, and they looked through the doorway, as light exploded out, with an almost blinding intensity, but before they looked away, it dimmed and a miraculous force picked up objects all over the floor, like they were in some form of anti-gravity field, and they swiftly floated out, through the air, throwing them out to great distances, and crashing into walls and windows.
A sort of force field with magnetic properties lifted and projected objects at an incredible speed faster than any normal explosion into everything in the room.
It continued with a frightening force, and gradually subsided, leaving them astounded.
The silence, and withdrawal of the explosions of energy, left their senses frozen – drastically lowered to receive the high levels of input thrown at them
There was a vague distant door bang, followed by shuffling steps going up the stairs, and Brydon and the other scientists arrived at the top of the stairs, and walked slowly forward, with confused perception, of what had happened
They stood at the doorway, and attempted to see what had caused the explosions.
The laboratory floor was scattered with pieces of glass and debris, and smoke smoldered from the furniture, from the intense heat. Sheets of burning plastic and wallpaper hung and fell from the walls, and doors swung gently on their hinges.
A breeze blew through the remains of window frames, and gently helped clear away smoke.
They silently surveyed the damage, with mystification.
“Are you all right?” Brydon asked cautiously, wondering if someone had deliberately done something – not quite grasping how such an occurrence could take place.
Parker and Carlton entered the room further, examining the damage done to the laboratory for further.
With astonishment, Brydon examined the point of impact, and could do nothing but shrug.
At the point of impact Parker saw long deep scorch marks going over the floor, where the table had been, and he observed that it all came from a single point.
From Beyond Reality (Novelette) Page 2