“We are not going to know that until we can get in there.” Hitch said, returning to the crawler case. He opened it, and then looked around on all sides, scanning the immediate area. “Did you only bring one case?”
Pen dropped his head before nodding in agreement. “Yeah…”
“Damn amateur.”
* * *
Three days later, Pen and Hitch stood in front of the temple again, its door carefully liberated from the entrance. It had taken the crawlers forty-six hours to chisel enough rock from the doorway that ropes could be wrapped around the door and another full day for the anxious explorers to drag it just far enough that they would be able to squeeze into the passageway behind it. Hitch checked the fuel in the lantern before lifting the glass chimney to light the wick and then handed it to Pen.
“Watch yourself in here, Hitch.” He said, pushing the lantern into the darkness before sliding past the door himself. Hitch took a deep breath and followed him into the unknown, again.
Hitch had followed Pen into the middle of the darkest jungle in what was once called Cambodia, thousands of miles from home, because Pen had a hunch that the secrets they sought would be discovered there. But that was not the only reason or the first time he had followed him halfway across the earth merely on a hunch. Four years before, he had accompanied Pen in the deserts of the East, searching for more evidence to support his theory that the ancients possessed electrical technology that far surpassed Bagdad battery.
He had rediscovered some ancient hieroglyphs and inscriptions in Egypt, discoveries made by generations long before the flare, but for the most part, they had returned empty handed. Years of archeology and grave robbery had destroyed much of the integrity of those locations.
Pen needed a location that was undefiled, someplace so remote that it had managed to go unnoticed, even before the flare. Long ago, a tribe was said to have lived and worshiped at a temple that supposedly held such amazing technology it would have only been given to them from a more advanced race, an alien race. That myth was what had drawn Pen to the temple in one of the most remote places of the earth.
To believers, the school of thought was known as the ancient astronaut theory. To skeptics it was bunk. Hitch hoped that whatever proof Pen needed to establish advance technology existed in ancient times long before the flare was in the temple, because the last time they had gotten skunked. He doubted even Pen would get the University to fund another expedition if they came back unsuccessful again.
Pen and Hitch had to duck their heads as they slowly walked down the gradually sloping passage. It was narrow, just wide enough that Hitch’s fingertips could touch both sides of the smooth walls. He wondered where the ancients had quarried the stone to produce the blocks, which were uniform and square, three-feet long by two-feet high. He could only imagine how thick, or how much they must weigh. Those details would come later, but for the moment both explorers were consumed by the thrill of the hunt, their ambitioned tempered only by the fear of booby traps or becoming hopelessly lost.
Finally, the passage opened into a great room with an amazingly tall ceiling, which revealed how far underground they had delved. Pen took the chalk from his shirt pocket and quickly marked the wall with an arrow to show the way back out. He looked up the passage and could only see a faint glow of light, an indication of the outside but not the light directly. Standing in the center of the room, Pen unhooked another, larger lantern from the back of Hitch’s pack and lit it as well. The great room came to life, seeming to breathe the light into itself.
“Well, would you look at that?” Pen exclaimed, walking closer to the wall with the smaller lantern. Spanning across each wall were murals, telling the story of whom the temple was dedicated to. Both men were silent. The only sound was the soft hiss of steam circulating through Hitch’s prosthetics and the clicking of their gears and sprockets.
The mural told the story of a man, whom they recognized from the carving outside, flying above a primitive village on the back of gigantic fiery bird. The villagers were upon their knees in supplication, struck in fearful awe. In the next scene, the gigantic bird had crashed into the earth, bent and crumpled. The native inhabitants surrounded its corpse and mourned its death. On the third wall, the godlike visitor was seated in a place of honor. He had become their king. On the fourth and final mural, the villagers were once again in mourning. Their extraterrestrial king had passed away. He was depicted rising back to the heavens in a glowing aura, his spirit returning to the stars from which he had come.
“They worshipped him as a god, a god-king like a pharaoh.” Pen whispered in reverent voice, knowing that not only were they in an ancient place of worship, but a burial chamber. “This is his tomb.”
“We know it’s not King Pacal. The carving of the Palenque astronaut was the lid to his sarcophagus.”
“So who is buried here?” Pen questioned. Hitch agreed with a nod. “We are just going to have to find out, this way.” He marked the hallway leading away from the sanctuary with another arrow and disappeared into the black.
* * *
Pen and Hitch followed the passageway that seemed to wander throughout the underground without reason, crawling through and slipping past caved in areas and bottlenecks, briefly exploring several smaller rooms as they discovered them. Pen had to resist the urge to note every artifact, every detail, but he kept his focus, made note of their locations on his notation terminal, and continued onward.
“Pen…” Hitch called with short breath, setting his overburdened pack on the ground. “Pen, we have to go back. I am running out of steam.”
The exhaustion on his friend’s face was evident, but Pen understood that his phrase had a double meaning. The water tank that fueled his prosthetics was running low. If they did not return to the surface soon, Pen would be carrying him out.
“Just a little further, I promise.” Pen pleaded.
Hitch wiped his brow on his sleeve and nodded. He wanted to know what was behind the next turn just as badly as Pen did, but not so badly that he was willing to maroon himself in an underground complex of questionable stability.
“Twenty minutes, and then I am going back with the lantern...” Hitch drew the proverbial line. “With or without you.”
“Alright, twenty minutes.” Pen conceded, knowing he could at least stall him for forty- five.
Pen raced down the passage at a frenzied pace, ignoring a couple more small rooms and leaving Hitch in the dust. The burial chamber had to be close. He hoped it was at the end of the main passage and not leading off from a room he had already passed. The lantern swung back and forth in front of him as he sprinted, the flame flickering despite his efforts to keep it steady.
At the end of the hallway, he skidded to a stop, nearly tripping over his own feet. It was a dead end. Pen stood in shock, panting for breath in the stifling humidity. He set the lantern down and stared, pushing his hair away from his sweaty forehead again, wadding his fingers in it.
What if it is simply another temple and not a tomb at all? What if it is all just a myth and I have come all this way just to return with some dusty pieces of pottery and some photographs?
The discovery itself was an accomplishment to be proud of, but it was not what he sought. He starved for truth, for an explanation of what had brought man out of the Stone Age. He was not prepared to believe that structures as amazing as Puma Punku had been constructed with copper chisels and stone hammers. No! There has to be more. It has to be here.
Pen stared at the roughly stacked wall, the stones irregular and taken straight from the surrounding landscape. It was out of place in the precisely crafted edifice. A level could be laid against almost any surface and it would still be true, despite eons of earth settling. This wall was hastily constructed, unplanned. It had not been built with the rest of the structure. It had come later. He quickly began to pull the stones away from the top of the wall, dropping them to his feet. The noise rolled like thunder down the hallway, rushing throug
h the darkness behind him. Faster and faster, Pen deconstructed the barrier between himself and the wisdom that had brought him halfway around the world.
“Hitch! Get down here! Hurry up!” Pen screamed, grasping and dropping the stones as quickly as he could lay hand to them.
Unbeknownst to Pen, Hitch was already well on his way to investigate the source of the clamor that had blasted up passage, a narrow beam of light illuminating the way from his head lamp. With every click of his geared knee and ankle, with every puff of steam, he knew he was getting and closer to being stranded. He hoped that Pen was uninjured, that he had simply knocked something over or clumsily destroyed some priceless relic, and was not trapped beneath a ton of collapsed tunnel or half under a fallen support column. His water tank was dangerously close to being empty. If his prosthetics stopped working, it could take him a day just to drag himself out of the temple and the closest settlement was over twenty miles away. There was no one waiting to save them, no emergency team stationed at the front of the temple. If Pen was seriously injured, he would most certainly die before rescue arrived, before Hitch could even tell them he was hurt.
“Pen!” Hitch shouted just as the crumbling wall came into view of his dim light. The darkness beyond what remained of the false wall looked as thick as molasses and had swallowed his friend whole. “Pen, are you hurt?”
No response. Hitch could hear his breath and the gears of his leg and arm turning. His heartbeat was in his ears.
“Hitch, you have to see this…” Pen said calmly, almost as though he had not heard him shouting.
Hitch carefully stepped over the rubble and into the burial chamber of an ancient ruler, an ancient god. The walls were as carefully constructed as the rest of the complex, smooth and exact, stacked so carefully it was difficult to see where one block ended and the next began. In the four corners, the supplies for the king’s journey to the afterlife had been stacked high and deep. Baskets that had once been filled with food supplies held mostly dust; jars for wine had long evaporated away. Statues, offerings of gold trinkets and jewelry, anything that his people had valued, had been laid to rest with him. But most importantly, a large metal capsule sat in the center of the room, covered in a thick layer of dust. By the dents and streaks on its surface, it had obviously been used and not simply liberated from the craft for burial purposes. Its deployed parachutes where stretched behind it ceremoniously like a bride’s train. Pen stared at it from a distance, his arms limp at his sides, too awestruck to proceed.
“Their god did not arrive on the back of a giant bird; it was a spacecraft. They just didn’t know how to depict it so future generations would understand.” Pen whispered, walking slowly to the capsule. He took off his shirt and used it to wipe the dust away from the hatch windshield. He held the lantern aloft to shed light inside the compartment. The meticulously placed and adorned remains of their king was inside, cradled in the capsule for his journey. “He ejected, the craft was destroyed, and he was stranded on earth. They thought he was a god, so they made him their king.”
Hitch scrutinized the outside of the capsule until he found the release mechanism and gently opened the hatch. The odor of centuries old death and wilted flowers rushed their nostrils. They covered their mouths and noses with their shirts and dared to look closer. The king had been dressed in the suit he had worn on his descent, but instead of the helmet, he wore a large, intricate gold crown, which was surrounded by decayed foliage. A necklace comprised of several individual strings of jade and gold beads adorned his neck. The large pendant that hung from it had been engraved in the unmistakable design of a constellation, his place of origin.
“It’s Canis Major.” Hitch pointed out.
Pen agreed and dared to look closer into the capsule, climbing onto the structure to place his hands on the navigation controls.
Hitch nearly grabbed him by the waist and pulled him down like an unruly child. “What are you doing?”
“This is what we have been looking for, evidence of extraterrestrial technology. This is how he got here, Hitch.” He said, wrapping his shaking hands around the steering controls. The heat of Pen’s hands warmed the handles and after centuries, and only a moment, the instrument panel of the small craft flickered. It startled him and he quickly let go and leapt down.
“Go back!” Hitch urged. Cautiously, Pen returned and grasped the steering handles. After only a moment, the lights began to flicker again. “Don’t let go!”
As the craft began to hum and lightly tremble with long forgotten energy, Pen’s face was illuminated by the electronic glow of the capsule’s display. He looked to Hitch, smiling wide with amazement and accomplishment.
“This will change everything.”
Gas Mask
Amanda Gatton
Well Oiled Machine
By Nina Stevens
As a little girl, she loved to watch her Daddy work on cars.
Wrench in hand and curses at the ready.
The smell of gasoline and oil,
is Nostalgia's perfume for her.
As a woman, she loves the Creator's calling.
Golden gears and twinkling chrome make her feel steady.
The silky feel of metal against soft flesh,
is Desire's beckoning to her.
As an artist, she loves the Muse's closeness.
Vintage dreams and lofty aspirations that are too heady.
The suppleness of leather corseting lifting her spirit,
is Freedom's touch on her.
Point of Departure
By Wayne Carey
Harrison Pierce leaned back in his wicker chair, rested his boots on the wood railing of the veranda, sipped his Earl Grey, and watched the lone rider approach from across the wide stretch of savanna. Tall, stoic Murunga swung open the door to the bungalow and brought out fresh tea. His eyes narrowed as he noticed the horse and rider and the cloud of dust trailing them.
“British officer,” Murunga said, topping off Pierce's cup.
“Yes,” Pierce said. All he could see was the red tunic and white helmet, no details to suggest rather the rider was an officer or enlisted. His eyes weren’t as good as they used to be, but he wasn’t about to admit that. One lone soldier. Not a good sign. At least it wasn’t a regiment. “Wonder what he wants. Well, Murunga, better lay out an extra setting for lunch. I'm sure he'll be thirsty and famished after his ride.”
“Yes, Captain.” Murunga went back inside.
He returned to the veranda when the rider pulled his sweat-soaked mount to a halt in front of the bungalow. The horse hung its head down, breathing heavily, and nostrils flaring. The rider was indeed an officer, as indicated by the collar pips on his travel-stained, red jacket. He slid from the saddle in an aura of dust and pulled the tinted goggles down from his eyes, squinting into the shade of the veranda. His dirty face grinned.
“Harry! Good to see you. Is that tea? Could I bother you for a cup? Dreadfully thirsty, old chap.”
Pierce pulled his feet from the rail and stood up. “Well, this is a surprise. Murunga will take care of your horse, Reggie. Come on inside. Murunga's prepared some lunch.”
Murunga stepped down and extended his hand.
The visitor glanced up at the tall Maasai warrior, dressed in crisp khaki shirt and shorts, knee socks and polished shoes. He smiled and handed over the reins, nodding his thanks.
Pierce didn't expect anything less of Reginald Shepherd. Some fellows would have ignored Murunga's presence, dropped the reins, and walked past the Maasai as though he didn't exist, but Shepherd wasn't like that. One of the few who cared about the indigenous people her majesty ruled over, though he still did not believe they had the ability for self-rule.
Murunga walked the horse to the back of the bungalow to cool him down and water and feed him, where he could rest in the shade of the small stable behind the house with Pierce’s own horses.
Pierce opened the door to the bungalow's cool interior for his visitor.
Shepherd climbed the steps, pulled off his helmet, and shook Pierce's hand vigorously.
“So good to see you, Harry!”
“And you, Reggie! So, they've made you a colonel! Come in and wash that grit off you.”
Pierce led Shepherd to the washroom, where his visitor cleaned up in a bowl of fresh water still cool from being pumped into the porcelain pitcher by Murunga. Once refreshed, Shepherd joined Pierce at a tabled laid out with cold slices of Guineafowl, cheese, bread, fruits, fresh vegetables from the garden, and tea. Shepherd lifted the teacup and took a grateful sip.
“Okay, Reggie,” Pierce said, after they had begun eating. He wanted the impending doom to be over with, so he could get back to his dull life. “You didn't come all this way for tea. Not that I'm ungrateful for the company, but something tells me this isn't just a social call.”
“No, indeed,” Shepherd said around a mouth full of Guineafowl. “I've come to ask a favor.”
“I'm retired.” Pierce had been waiting for the request, and was ready with his stock answer.
“Psh! You're younger than I am. And you're the best explorer I know.”
“The modern world doesn't need an explorer. Not with airships that can go anywhere and with the Tesla portals. I read in the Times that Montagu is organizing an expedition to fly to Everest and drop a portal onto the peek, so it won't have to be climbed the traditional way. Now tell me, Reggie, what kind of exploration is that? Dropping portals into remote corners of the globe, so any fool can visit any part of the world in a matter of minutes.”
Shepherd shook his head. “Not the same.”
Pierce shoved his plate aside. “I know it isn't. It's cheating. Tell me, Reggie, where were you last night?”
“London.”
“And this morning?”
“Nairobi.”
Cogs in Time Anthology (The Steamworks Series Book 1) Page 5