by T I WADE
Ryan thanked Martha profusely. He was so glad she was aboard. Between her, Petra Bloem, Dr. Nancy Marten, and dozens of others, America One was a hive of knowledge.
“We need to take a concentrated look at that globe,” stated Ryan, deep in thought. Why does this alien globe show Earth, Africa and a period 10,000 years ago?”
“Maybe these are the tribes that never made it into our history books, as Martha suggested,” replied VIN.
“So the aliens, or as you are implying, Mr. Noble, these Earth people who set up this base, could look like us?”
“Or Bushmen. They are short and dark and the Africa Bushmen don’t look much like Americans or Europeans,” added Jonesy. “I’ve been told that they are only four feet tall.”
“Exactly,” replied Ryan. “If we conflate what Martha told us, with the size of those bodies and spacesuits, the size is a perfect match.”
“And I was so looking forward to shaking blobby hands of little green men,” smiled Jonesy.
“I doubt that, Mr. Jones,” remarked VIN smiling at his partner. “Why would you, they don’t brew Budweiser!”
While the five men eagerly waited for the 12 hours to pass, they chatted about what they might find next. VIN told them about the dreams he had been having, and that he thought that they would find more on the asteroid which was on its way farther out into the solar system. With a couple weeks remaining before America One had to leave Mars in order to catch up with the small round planet and catch a free ride to Jupiter, they were determined to uncover everything these people had built on this planet. During the 12 hour rest period, the remaining spiders had been activated to continue enlarging the tunnel into the cavern. The height from the docking port was increased to enable the men to walk upright to the cavern.
On their return to the surface to resume excavation of a different civilization, Igor hit the power switch. The globe returned, as well as the hologram opening to the outside. Ryan was consumed with exploring if there was a shield covering the ledge, so, rather than have the build crew work on their chamber wall, they were instructed to go to the ledge to look for little dots in the surface, and any wires leading to them.
VIN joined the other four, the only crewmembers allowed in this area, and saw that the globe still showed planet Earth in all its glory. Ryan, Boris, and Igor were examining the globe; it was exact. Somebody must have been in orbit around the planet to get such accuracy. There were no signs or marks on the planet, only a red dot placed in the middle of the green Sahara region; there also appeared to be a very low, white snow line that extended down the U.S. East Coast to Key West in Florida, and covered most of Europe right down to the shores of the Mediterranean.
VIN then looked towards Boris, who was studying the console and all its dials and switches, and was taking notes.
“Trying to figure out the dials?” VIN asked.
“No, the scribbles, or letters around each dial,” replied Boris. “It is like Chinese, or hieroglyphics. I think I should take photos of the letters and let Frau Von Zimmer take a look,” which he did with a small camera.
VIN felt he was out of the loop. The other four were deep in thought or conversation. As they were all suited up, he could hear what they were saying, but he couldn’t see as much as he would like through the visor. He suggested to Ryan that he would learn more if he took off his helmet; he also wanted to listen for the hum he heard before and try to locate its source.
Gradually Ryan gave in and asked Igor to help VIN off with his helmet. The temperature in the room was 52 degrees, the air a little thin, and the pressure a hair over safe levels. Ryan ordered the last tank of air to be brought up; after that they would have to wait for resupplies from above. VIN drank from the life-giving tank.
The first thing Ryan did was give him the white board. The boss looked serious through his helmet visor. He wrote, Will connect breather to tank before its empty as back up. VIN gave him the diver’s sign that he understood and listened to the room while the others got back to work. The humming sound was coming from the rear wall, opposite to where the hologram was showing its movie of the outside.
Carrying the tank of air, VIN walked towards the rear wall of the room that held the globe, where one of two other security panel covers had opened up showing some sort of controls. He inspected the glass face with his naked fingers and noticed that it was glowing like an LED light, and looked blue on his skin. VIN thought he detected life in what he thought were door openers. The panels were all only four feet off the ground. He placed the palm of his hand over the glass face; nothing happened. He exerted pressure on the glass face, still nothing happened, He tapped it, swiped his hand over it, first slowly, and then quickly. The damn thing reminded him of a self-checkout station in Home Depot, when an item’s barcode won’t scan.
After a few seconds of thought he decided to look into the blue glow inside the glass panel to see if anything inside might reveal more secrets to the controls.
Ryan was watching VIN, smiling at his antics, when he saw him kneel down and gaze directly into the panel. Suddenly, a blue light shot out and shone directly into VIN’s eye. He didn’t know if VIN could see it, he hadn’t jumped back or anything, and Ryan bounced over to the non-helmeted man. He was too late.
Chapter 6
So that is how you open these doors!
VIN experienced the odd sensation of having his eye flashed by the glass panel, as though it was photographed using a flash bulb. It blinded his eye and he closed it and opened the other eye.
He stood up and felt a hand on his shoulder; it was Ryan, whose body language communicated concern. VIN turned back to the wall and slowly opened his momentarily blinded eye. Next to the glass panel, part of the wall disappeared and a narrow doorway opened revealing a very small room that looked like an electrical, or power, room, filled with what appeared to be strange electric boxes, most of which had flashing red lights.
Igor and Boris came over rapidly. It seemed that VIN’s eyeball had hit pay dirt. VIN pointed to the second panel on the far wall. The men entered the middle room and approached the new panel with the hope of opening it as well. This one was different; it had a red light inside the glass panel. VIN tried to open it with his eye, but this time nothing happened. The light inside the panel just continued to glow red.
Twenty minutes later, as Boris helped VIN put on his helmet, the scientists returned to their previous conversation. “I believe this control system is what we are looking for,” Igor told Ryan. “If there is a protection shield out there, this one, the largest control box, must be the master control, but how do we connect power from the one we have working to the one we want to work?”
“Connect them all up by splitting the wires from our batteries?” VIN suggested.
“But the other boxes have no terminals, or plugs we can connect into,” Igor replied.
“Try to make a direct connection by bringing the battery into this room,” VIN continued. “Since you wanted a secure room to protect us from the battery’s radiation, wouldn’t this be the perfect room to store our battery in?”
“But how do we disconnect the battery? It will close all the doors and trap us inside,” Ryan added.
“By using a second nuclear battery from one of the other shuttles, or maybe the crew aboard America One can devise another power source,” replied Boris. “Maybe solar or even one of our spare hydrogen engine turbines; either unit can be installed on top of the cliff. If this shield activates, I’m sure it won’t be on the top of the cliff, more likely on the ledge.” A second battery was called for.
VIN tried to convince Ryan that he could not wear his helmet if he was to continue trying to find ways to open more doors. Ryan, always concerned with safety, reluctantly agreed, but stipulated that he must always have the tank of air with the breather next to him before he allowed Boris to remove his helmet.
There was only room in the smaller electrical room for two suited astronauts. VIN motioned to Boris to follow him.
He grabbed the tank and they returned down the corridor to where the vertical shaft was, moved the steel floor over the hole, walked over the hole, and then opened the shaft for the crew underneath.
For the first time they entered the rear cavern with two of the mobile lamps and their helmet lights. Their lights weren’t needed as the power in the walls now glowed in this cavern as well. VIN noticed that the power jolt had opened two small round security wall covers in the cavern walls, one on the second floor, above where the walkway stood out from the wall, and the other at ground level on the opposite wall.
VIN asked Boris to unscrew his helmet and, after putting the breather in his mouth, he peered into the ground panel with one eye and was again blinded by the blue light. The same type of sliding door opened and he saw that the walls in the empty room glowed just as they did in the cavern. However, instead of many small handles glowing blue on the walls, there were only three; VIN opened them one by one to reveal large store rooms. When they had opened all of the doors they could find, Boris reattached VIN’s helmet.
“So that is how you open these doors! I still wonder why they would put the morgue right next to the command center,” VIN said to Boris when they could talk again. Of course, everybody else could hear them.
“The captain’s day room, or sleeping quarters would be next to the Bridge on a boat. Captain Pete has his day room pretty close to the Bridge.”
“Where are you, Mr. Noble, Boris?” asked Ryan over the intercom.
“In the second cavern, Boss, going through the rooms I can open. So far, nothing.”
“Just be careful, guys,” Ryan returned.
“Maybe that wasn’t a morgue, maybe it was a sort of command off-duty sleeping chamber, where the last three aliens who were alive decided to end their days,” continued VIN thinking deeply.
“Maybe they didn’t even know that they were going to die,” Boris suggested.
VIN nodded. “Then we might find more bodies in here.”
They didn’t find any more bodies, but they did find interesting containers that looked both ancient and familiar, such as old oil lamp vessels, and wooden cases made from Earth-like wood, with strange writing on them. Unfortunately, as soon as VIN’s hand brushed against a corner of a very ancient-looking case, the object disintegrated leaving nothing more than a pile of dust.
Before they destroyed anything else, Boris took photographs of the several dozen objects that would be the most likely to disintegrate. The six large urns, or jars in front of them that retained their integrity looked like they were made of clay, and were as strong as when they had been formed.
Both men realized that this must have been a main storage room, perhaps where the aliens kept their produce. Some of the clay jars were six feet tall, probably weighed a ton or more, and must have held at least 1,000 gallons, Boris surmised they only held liquids, but there were no taps, or faucets to open the jars.
After checking the two other storage areas, easily opened with the same handles that the cabinets in the first room had, their interiors viewed and photos taken, the two men returned to the larger rear cavern to scrutinize the room they knew to be on the second level.
Their intercoms crackled. “We have the second battery up here and will let you know if we play with the power. Igor is leaving the first battery in place and is connecting the second battery to the systems in the power room,” stated Ryan.
Carefully, VIN and Boris climbed the staircase to the upper level. Each of the steps was only six inches high and certainly designed for smaller people than VIN. Once again Boris removed VIN’s helmet—a task that was quickly getting old—and he was breathing air from the tank. VIN kneeled down before the glass panel and peered in. As before, the light flashed and, this time a large double door opened. The walls did not glow in this room, and something made VIN check the readouts on his arm monitor. It didn’t surprise him to see that no breathable air existed in this larger room. He was grateful that he had good air, took several breaths and had his helmet replaced.
This room was nearly as large as the cavern below. When VIN was secure in his helmet, the two men played their lights over at least a dozen horizontal beds along each side wall, each bed three feet from the next one.
What shocked both men was that each bed was occupied; twenty-four beds, two feet high, each with a pile of dust on its flat surface, in the shape of what appeared to be the remains of a body.
“Boss, I think we found the real morgue,” Boris said into his helmet mike. “Twenty-four mounds of ash, or dust, on steel beds.”
“Also, before we opened it, the room had zero oxygen, high levels of carbon dioxide, and nearly 92 percent nitrogen. Glad you made me get back into my suit, Boss,” VIN added.
“Don’t touch any of the bodies; Igor and I are on our way,” Ryan replied.
“Well, that’s makes the air in this entire alien base a new and dangerous mix. We will have to clean it up before we can get out of our suits again,” VIN commented as he looked around the room.
“Look,” said Boris. “Each bed has a sort of gold-toned metal case at the bottom of the bed.”
“I see,” said VIN, “like military barracks, back in the Marines. I bet the cases have the private possessions of the dead aliens. We need to number and record them so we know which case goes to each bed. Let’s start from the left side of the room and number the beds down one side and then up the other. Didn’t you bring some tags, or a notepad and marker, with you?” VIN asked Boris, who nodded.
By the time Ryan and Igor arrived they had six of the 24 gold cases outside the door. Ryan told them to replace them; they needed to be photographed with each bed and its pile of dust before being taken out. Once each bed was numbered and each chest labeled with the black marker, the four men completed the task of carrying out the small cases. They weren’t big or heavy, about two feet square and weighing less than 20 Martian pounds.
There was nothing more to see in the room. They searched for telltale signs of other doors, but there were none. The room was a dead-end, so to speak.
Next, the four examined the entire staircase and found two more door handles glowing red.
Looking inside they found exact replicas of the last room, 24 beds with the ashen remains of bodies and gold-toned chests. VIN couldn’t understand why the walkway completely circumscribed the cavern if it only went up to rooms along one wall. It was the same with the last door he had tried to open on the first level. It seemed to require a higher authority than just somebody’s eye. He was sure they were missing something.
VIN had no interest in viewing dust piles. They were unrecognizable as bodies without the spacesuits the first three bodies were wearing in the first cabinets. Even the tops of the beds were dust, except for the metal bases and legs. The bedding, or whatever was on the metal bases, must have also disintegrated, even without oxygen in the room. These bodies had been here for a very long time.
He saw the other three exit each room; each had marked and grabbed a case and they all headed down the stairs.
Twelve hours later they were back. Because they didn’t have down time on their previous break, they slept most of the twelve hours. Jonesy and Allen Saunders were in orbit on America One and wouldn’t be back for two days with more panels, so the crew just continued building outside, and the four men returned to the first cavern.
Boris and VIN marked and emptied the rear morgue’s 72 private boxes, and had them ready to ship up to America One. Meanwhile, Igor was ready to power up the largest of the aliens’ control boxes.
As far as anybody knew, Igor could be blowing them up. The crew outside was ordered back into the inner chamber, or inside the accommodation cylinders, and was instructed to find the four men if they didn’t hear from them through the intercom when the power came on.
The other three watched as Igor switched on the power to 20 percent from the one pound of plutonium-238 that was inside the second battery casing; it was connected to the larger of two black bo
xes, about the size of a personal computer.
Inside the rear power room nothing happened, except the silver walls, now nearly white, glowed even brighter. VIN peered outside to see if anything had happened and was shocked to see a vivid blue bubble begin to grow from the floor of the ledge. He told the others to look through the hologram, or window, to see a line of clear blue seawater building itself upwards, foot by foot. They rushed over to the console to watch.
The steadily growing blue wall did not cover the whole ledge, and nobody had found any lines of wire or small pimples of metal sticking out of the rock. The line, a circular shield, was growing a couple of feet further out from where their own new outer chamber ended. The empty air tanks and aluminum cylinders were outside the shield, and so was the empty landing zone. There was one thing on the ground right where the growing dome originated, a single canister, forgotten by somebody, and VIN watched as the light surrounded the sides of the canister.
The shield quickly grew higher than where they stood. While the other three watched, transfixed, VIN told them that he was going outside to check out this new alien protection system. How, he didn’t know yet, but he was sure he would find a way.
As quickly as it was safe and possible he proceeded through the docking port into the safe room. The spiders had completed the increase in height along the vertical tunnel during the last break period, so he walked along the tunnel, crawled into and through the port, and out into the most beautiful sight he had ever seen. Several of the crew in the inner chamber were looking up and pointing at the growing blue plasma wall. VIN exited the inner chamber through one of the side chambers and then he was outside, alone with the monstrous, blue shield towering above him.