The Skywalkers: A Thriller (A Rossler Foundation Mystery Book 5)

by JC Ryan

  When he picked himself off the floor from laughing at Robert, JR tried one. He expected the jerk, but it still disconcerted him until it lowered him as well, again at exactly the right height for his feet to rest comfortably on the floor. At the same time, the chair molded itself perfectly to his spine. “Hey, I need one of these back at the office. What do you suppose holds them up?”

  Robert shrugged, now a couple of feet lower than JR because he’d stretched his legs out straight. “No clue. Magnets maybe?”

  The desks were more like tables, with no walls under the desktop, and no legs, either. They floated at a height to match the chair that was paired with them, no matter what position the chair assumed. There wasn't a speck of dust or an object of any kind on any of them. Had they stumbled on some secret government installation? Maybe something from the cold war, in the previous century? But if so, why no dust? In fact, the air smelled fresh, not like JR would have expected after fifty-thousand years of being shut in a room with no windows.

  Robert was counting a row. "Twenty to a row in each section. Five sections, that's one hundred. Times one, two, three..."

  "Call it four thousand. Four thousand or more people in this room, doing what?"

  Echoing JR's earlier idea, Robert said, "Could your government have built this for some reason? Are we going to be shot for spies, as soon as someone realizes we're here?"

  "Nope. First they'll torture us for information. Don't worry about it." In truth, JR couldn’t believe it was a government installation. There was too much here that hinted of superior technology. It had to be Eighth Cycle, but his brain wouldn’t process it all at once.

  Robert gave a nervous chuckle. "Let's see if there's more."

  JR stood easily, but Robert had more of a struggle from his half-reclined position to get out of the chair. Once upright, the two men started forward down one of the wide aisles that separated section from section. JR felt slightly ridiculous in his dirty outdoor clothes, carrying gear for rough minimalist camping, when they'd clearly found something like an office building. The emptiness oppressed him, though. As modern and utilitarian as it appeared to be, the building gave him the creeps.

  There were two possible explanations. Either this was a government facility from the Eleventh Cycle, his own, which he’d already dismissed. Or, it really was an Eighth Cycle construct, which meant the Eighth Cycle had achieved a greater level of civilization, or at least a more technologically advanced one, than the Eleventh.

  In which case, the Eleventh was clearly on the wrong path--because this one was gone. The cataclysm that ended each cycle after 26,000 years if the people hadn't ended war hadn't been avoided, though it must have been a non-violent event, since this place was intact. If this building was from the Eighth Cycle, then his sister-in-law Sarah was right, they were headed inexorably for doomsday.

  ***

  Robert was out of his element in this place, and he suspected JR was, too. There was no need for a geologist in the man-made space. A metallurgist, maybe, to explain why the walls and ceiling glowed with white light that bathed everything in equal measure. There weren't even any shadows in here. Other experts, too, like engineers, architects, physicists to explain those crazy chairs, and some he couldn’t even imagine. All he could do now was follow JR's lead and hope to be useful in some way.

  The trouble was, JR seemed kind of clueless, too. After all, he was probably more at home at a dig where the civilization he was studying was barely out of the Stone Age. But, no matter what, they had to figure out what this was. Otherwise, they'd have to keep looking, and they hadn't really come prepared for much more than a five-day outing. That was if they could stretch their food that far. Can't carry much food, even dried stuff, in one backpack. The way Robert saw it, their first objective was to find some water down here. If they couldn't do that, they'd have to get back in that freaky elevator and go back where they came from. He shuddered. Didn't fancy riding back down again, either. That drop scared the shit out of him, and he’d never forget the effect it had had on JR.

  They'd come to the back of the room, a distance of some three hundred feet, maybe. The room looked to be square... Crikey! He'd forgotten the instrument in his backpack.

  "JR, I've been an idiot." He pulled out the instrument, showing it to JR. "This'll measure this room, and draw a three-dimensional map of it."

  "Dude, it's just a big square, with, I'm gonna say a twenty-foot ceiling."

  "I know, mate, but d'you realize how vast that is?" He did some quick mental arithmetic. "This room is around 90,000 square feet, under how many thousands of tons of rock, and there's not a support column in sight." He aimed the instrument at the opposite wall and set some dials, then pressed a button. As the camera lens moved around automatically, measuring all the distances and angles, he continued. "That tells us right there that this isn't construction from our cycle. I don't know of any engineering technology that could pull it off.

  "I'm no expert in that, but you're probably right. So, we need to find a way out of here and into somewhere that will give us a freaking clue what this is."

  "All right, but give me a moment to get this measurement down. Then we'll go."

  When the instrument was finished with its measurements, Robert brought the record up on the small screen. It showed a structure much as they had observed it, three-hundred and thirty-three feet long by the same width. The ceiling was higher than they'd thought, an optical illusion based on the sheer size of the room. It was thirty-three feet high.

  "Someone liked the number three," Robert remarked.

  There were two flaws in the perfect square, though. In the center of each of what Robert was thinking of as the side walls, a three-foot wide notch suggested a door. Either of them could lead to discovery of more of the building, and what was becoming increasingly urgent: water. Robert's preference was to stick together in this place, but there was no question that the more efficient idea would be for each of them to take one of the doors, and then meet back in the middle to compare what they'd found.

  "We need to split up," he said, pointing at what he was only assuming were doors.

  ***

  JR hated to split up, since he still had a tingle between his shoulder blades that was an awful lot like the one he always got just before a round whined past him in Afghanistan.

  But, Robert was right. They'd find whatever there was to find more quickly if each of them took one of the doors.

  "Is your watch working?" he asked.

  Robert glanced at his wrist. "Yeah, I think so. It's been about half an hour since we got into the elevator."

  Half an hour? Why did it seem like half the day? JR assumed the strangeness was messing with his sense of time. He checked his own watch. "Okay, it's twelve-fifteen. We meet back here, no, at the doors where we came in, in an hour." He pointed past Robert in the direction opposite. "I'll head out this way."

  "What if one of us isn't back?" Robert asked.

  "Then the other go to the door on the side wall and wait, let's say another hour. Then head back to the canyon, and trek out as soon as it's light in the morning. Someone needs to report back."

  "In that case, leave the sat-phone at the door."

  "Good idea."

  JR felt a bit ridiculous, assuming deadly danger in such an innocuous-looking building. It was the emptiness that freaked him out. Where had they all gone, the four thousand or so people who'd presumably worked in this room? What had they been doing in here? In modern buildings there would have been a computer on each desk in front of each seat, but here was nothing.

  He had the idea there should be some sort of formal leave-taking, just in case one of them didn't make it back. Turning toward Robert, he thrust out his hand. "Good luck, mate," he said.

  Robert, using JR's slang in kind, shook JR's hand as he said, "Right back atcha, dude." The word sounded funny in his accent, as if there were more vowels in it. They grinned at each other, then turned and walked in opposite directions.<
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  JR turned to peer across the enormous room at Robert, he had quite a way to go before reaching his. His friend looked small at that distance, about the length of a football field, from behind the goalpost to behind the other. He couldn't tell whether Robert was looking across at him or would see him, but he waved anyway. Not getting a responding wave, he took a breath and swiped the door open. Was it a good omen that he guessed the right direction the first time? Because this wasn't a double door like the others. Never mind, he muttered. Quit procrastinating and get your butt in there. The dark void in front of him would light up when he crossed the threshold, wouldn't it?

  JR let out the breath he hadn't known he was holding when the light did indeed come on as he crossed into the next room. Except that it wasn't a room, more like a hallway, with doors at regular intervals on both sides as far down the hall as he could see. Once again, it seemed as if he'd never find anything useful. There was no choice but to start opening doors, since the hallway ran straight into the distance with no end that he could see.

  With a mental shrug, he swiped at the first door, but it didn't open. Maybe he'd swiped the wrong way, though he could swear it was the same way he'd just opened the other door. He tried the opposite direction. Nothing. Pushing, swiping down and up, and an ill-tempered kick at the bottom did nothing to open the door, either. By now he was fully convinced there was no way this was a modern facility, though in some ways it was more modern than the city he’d left behind. He couldn’t wrap his mind around it. As mind-boggling as finding a government facility hidden in the depths below the Grand Canyon, it was even more so to find a fifty-thousand year-old facility that was more modern than anything he’d ever seen before.

  Frustrated, he gave up on that one and turned to the opposite side of the hall, where the next door in the staggered configuration waited. When that one also failed open, he hurried along, trying each door in succession until he was out of time. He'd need to turn around and head back to meet Robert in time to keep him from making a fruitless trip to this side. He gave the door he was standing at one last kick, and to his surprise, it flew backward into the room, like a normal door instead of the slider he'd expected.

  By now he was used to facing a black void whenever a door opened, but this time the light was already on. Must be a function of the door itself triggering what he'd decided were motion detectors that turned on the lights. As he stepped in, it was immediately apparent that this was a sleeping room. The whole hall must be a dormitory, and the other doors had been locked, though he hadn't seen any sort of mechanism that would require a lock. JR set aside that mystery for a moment, because for the first time since they'd dropped down the rabbit hole, the room he was in looked as if it had been inhabited.

  A bed was pushed against the wall opposite the door, and there was even bedding on it. It looked similar to any bed he'd ever seen; a headboard, fabrics that he took to be sheets spread on it, even a pillow. It was narrow, meant for a single sleeper unless he missed his guest. The beds were like the chairs - no legs - hanging in the air. But no money on earth and not even Rebecca, not even Rebecca naked, would get JR in that moment to test one of those beds like Robert had done with the chairs. For all he knew, it would zoom him into the ceiling and lock him in for however long its last occupant had thought sufficient for sleep.

  JR turned his head to take in the rest of the furnishings, which were spare. Another of the peculiar floating chairs a shelf built into an alcove. Hmmm, that wouldn’t adjust, he figured. On the opposite side, shelves running from the floor to near the ceiling. Nothing was on any of them...no, wait. On closer inspection, a small box rested. Something the occupant had left behind by accident, when he--or she?--had left?

  JR approached it with the caution he might have given an IED. Nudged it and jumped back, as if the action could have prevented an injury if the thing exploded. Feeling slightly foolish, he used both hands to pull it out of the shelf and turned it over in his hands, looking for some sign of what may be in it. Finally, he held it in one large hand and lifted the lid, a thin metal shape that showed a slight line around the edge, with his thumb. Inside there were a number of paper-thin metal leaves, quite a few it looked like. Not wanting to damage anything, he closed the lid again and tucked the box gingerly inside his backpack.

  Now he'd really have to hurry to meet Robert, but at least he had something to show for his time. He wondered what, if anything, Robert had found.

  ***

  Robert was pacing and looking at his wrist when JR got close enough to see him, about halfway there. He looked up when JR was a few yards away and visibly relaxed.

  "Thought I was going to have to come after you, mate. What took you so long?"

  "I'll show you."

  JR had covered the remaining distance by that time, and was swinging his backpack off his shoulder. "What do you make of this?" He handed the box to Robert, who did exactly the same thing JR had, turning it over and around until he found the narrow seam that indicated a lid, and then opening that.

  "No idea. Looks like microfiche maybe?"

  "What the hell is that?"

  "Before your time, nipper. They used to burn reduced-size copies of documents on film, like negatives, and you had to read them with special machines to magnify them."

  JR regarded Robert with suspicion. "Are you having me on?"

  Robert laughed. "No, mate. Ask your grandpa." He put the lid back on. "But one thing...that looked like metal, not film. Never mind. Put it back in your pack and let's get out of here, before it's pitch dark outside. Look what I discovered." He stepped up to the door, which opened with no other effort from him.

  "Hmmm. So, you have to touch it to open it from outside, but from inside, it's automated."

  "Right. Can't imagine why. And there's more. What I found on my side was all the infrastructure to take care of a large number of people. I'm assuming large, because, for example, the kitchen had these enormous cooktops and pans that were big enough they’d need a pulley system to move them in our time. But they floated when I nudged them, just like the chairs."

  "It actually looked like stoves and pans, like we use today?"

  "Sort of. Close enough I could deduce it, anyway. I looked inside one of the pans, and it was very thin, but probably held twenty gallons or more when it was full of food. Easy to figure out, really."

  "All right. Just a kitchen then?"

  "No. Another room with huge machines I couldn't figure a use for, until I started thinking about it on the way back here. Probably laundry facilities; but instead of washing clothes with water, it may have used some other technology, like microwaves or something."

  "Let's go back and see."

  "You’re the leader, but let me point out to you that we've got a technical climb to get back down to the valley floor. And unless you found running water, we need to get back to our supply before too many more hours. But it's going to be too dark to climb today."

  "Oh, right. Let's go."

  Back in the elevator, JR reflected that this part would have already been over, if he and Robert had thought to save their conversation for later. He had just enough time to brace himself before Robert hit the button again, and they shot upward, leaving his stomach behind. Ruefully, he realized he’d be nervous about traveling in this thing for the rest of his time here. Not that he did not want to end up in heaven one day, but he certainly did not want to arrive there before his time.

  In the alcove formed by the canyon walls, the two men stood shakily recovering from the long ride from the bottom at what seemed like two or three Gs. The sun was long gone from the canyon rim, so their descent on the climbing filament would need to be as quick as they could make it.

  An hour later, the two stumbled back to the wall where the slot canyon opened twenty feet above them in near-total darkness. With most of their water gone, they decided to have energy bars for dinner rather than trying to reconstitute dried rations. Robert would go up to the seep the next morning at f
irst light. Then they'd discuss whether to return to the strange construct below, or head back out to the river and try to get a call through to Daniel.

  JR was already inclined to call the mission a success and head back. It had been a remarkable feat to find the evidence in only four days, even though they had a map to it, more or less. He'd given up the idea that the facility was abandoned by any US government agency. If that had been the case, he reasoned, the place wouldn't have been picked as clean as it was. No doubt any facility that the government closed would be left in a state where it could be reopened and put immediately to use, or cleaned out but sold to recover the value of it. He'd have to run the theory past older and wiser heads, but for now, he was working under the assumption that it had been Eighth Cyclers who'd built it. What was the significance of the resemblance to modern office buildings, except with the addition of dormitory and living facilities? It came to him then that it resembled something else in that way...a military base.

  JR went to sleep with the last idea circling in his mind. What if that had been an Eighth Cycle military facility, or more likely a military intelligence base? What would it mean if they'd required four thousand analysts working in a hive environment like that? The concept fueled dreams that wormed their way into his subconscious but left no remnant for his waking mind to find the next morning.

  Chapter 18 - Open Sesame

  Daniel left Nicholas' office with a heavy heart. It hurt to see the old man faltering, after being such a heroic figure all his life. He needed to make time to talk to Grandma, and see if she wouldn't help him ease Grandpa into retirement again. The story of that Grand Canyon trip was going to be a good one, though. Grandpa had been born in the mid-nineteen thirties, during the grip of the Great Depression.

  What JR had explained to Daniel was unbelievable. What looked like a modern office building, deep underground, but made of some kind of metal that emitted light from the walls and ceilings, so it was even. It reminded Daniel of the light in Paradise Valley, but JR hadn't made the comparison. There was still some question in JR's mind, and Robert's as well, about what exactly they'd found. But, their instructions were not to talk about it until they got back to Boulder. The artifact they were bringing back, the only thing portable they'd found in the place, would either shed light on the subject or wouldn't.