Legacy eg-6

by David L. Golemon

  “Ah, the very resourceful Colonel Collins. You know him on a personal level?”

  Alice again didn’t answer.

  “You have said nothing, but have answered me nonetheless, madam. I suspect this old man knows him also, and that you may be close to him in some way. Therefore, you will be what is known as a bargaining chip.”

  “And you think Jack’s going to deal away whatever you want for two old farts like us?”

  “For a mere weapon or two from the excavation, yes, he should have no possible argument.” He turned and raised a flashlight, clicking it on and off twice. “If not, he risks the chance of me killing you and sending the entire cave system tumbling down around them all. And then we all lose. Yes, he will trade, I believe.”

  An explosion rocked the gallery. In the distance Alice heard the crashing of rocks and a rumbling beneath her feet.

  “Please, don’t be alarmed. We just made sure that the front door closed behind us.”

  The Mechanic gestured for his men to assemble. He took Alice by the arm and pulled her toward the back of the chamber, his men falling into step behind them.

  ***

  Lee mumbled in his sleep, his good eye opening.

  He didn’t know what had awakened him, but he felt the last trembling of the earth as it passed through the legs of the cot. He raised his head and felt the cotton in his mouth from the painkillers. He smacked his lips and that was when he thought he heard voices. He tilted his head and listened, but no one spoke again. He tried to sit up but found that his back wouldn’t work the way it should. So he threw his left leg over the side of the cot and moved his right leg over after it. He tapped the ground with his boot and tried to move again. This time he sat up until he could rest his weight on his left elbow. He looked around in the semidarkness of the tent. Alice was gone and that helped him get his thoughts into some sort of order. He finally sat up and saw his hat where one of his feet had knocked it to the floor. To Lee it looked as though it had landed a hundred miles away. He shook his head and closed his good eye. He tried to stand. He pushed upward with one hand and swiveled his hips until he felt his feet under him. Then he pushed with both hands against his knees and he was up.

  “Well, that wasn’t so bad for a zombie,” he said to himself. “Now I know why they walk so slow in those movies. It damn well hurts.”

  Lee turned shakily and eased the flap aside. He ducked his head back into the tent as the last of the terrorist force vanished through the old composite buildings left by the Visitors.

  “What the hell is going on? I take a nap and everything falls to pieces. Where the hell is that old girl?” he asked himself, chancing another look outside. As he finally located the head of the force, Lee saw Alice in the front quarter of the men. She was being pulled along roughly toward the falls where Jack and his men had found the opening.

  “Goddamn it,” he hissed. His brow furrowed and his lips set into a straight line.

  Garrison Lee turned and looked back into the interior of the tent. He spied his cane and took hold of it. He reached down without feeling any of the previous pain or stiffness, snatched up the fedora, and placed it on his gray head. He stepped out of the tent and saw that the men, with Alice in tow, had vanished into the opening of the next gallery. When he finally looked away he saw the bodies of the men that the Mechanic had just killed. Lee closed his good eye and shook his head. Then something happened that he hadn’t experienced in some time-he became furious, murderously so. He opened his eye and looked at the cane in his hand. He angrily tossed it away and reached down to retrieve one of the fallen soldiers’ weapons. It was an Ingram submachine gun. Lee hefted it and liked the weight of it. He reached down and tore free the ammunition belt. It contained a pouch full of ammo clips for the weapon.

  “I’m sorry, young man, but in return for the loan of your weapon I’ll kill the son of a bitch who killed you.”

  ***

  Collins stood before the cement blockhouse and watched Captain Everett and Major Sebastian Krell enter. He could see the darkened and barred windows flare to life with light, which illuminated still more torn and tattered flags emblazoned with swastikas. The large eagle, symbol of the state, stretched across the opening of the blockhouse and Jack felt anger for what the Germans had done here. As he thought about the situation his eyes never left the windows. He was just dawdling along and totally cut off from any information on the fate of Dark Star. It was starting to drag down his ability to think clearly. Carl was forcing him to do things more in line with the book, reminding him that there were a bunch of young soldiers in here who depended on him.

  Jack watched as Everett cleared the large blockhouse. He was coming to the conclusion that he would have to turn over command to Everett or Sebastian, because he was starting to take shortcuts, and shortcuts got men killed. Finally, Everett stepped to the large door.

  “All clear, Jack,” he said. He nodded his head, indicating that he believed they had found just what they had come to Ecuador to find. “Mr. Director, you’d better bring in your equipment.”

  Niles closed his eyes and thanked God that they had finally found something that would make all this death not as meaningless as it otherwise would have been. He gestured to the twenty soldiers who were carrying their cases, including a large computer for Pete.

  “Are you coming, Jack?” Niles asked.

  Collins acted as though he hadn’t heard Niles. This was the second time the director had noticed that Jack had wandered away in his mind.

  Finally Niles slapped Collins on the shoulder and faced him.

  “Colonel, are you with us?”

  Jack nodded his head and, without saying a word, stepped past Niles and the men carrying the equipment. He went into the blockhouse.

  Compton watched until he vanished and then turned to see Ellenshaw looking at him.

  “Charlie, lend a hand and let’s get this thing over with.”

  “Didn’t you feel that?” he asked, not even hearing Niles.

  “What?”

  “It felt like, I don’t know, a deep rumble, like an explosion.”

  “Just help with this equipment, Charlie,” Niles said as he followed Jack inside the concrete laboratory.

  Niles stood beside Jack and saw the technologically advanced weapons sitting in what looked like a large gun rack. There had to be close to a hundred of them. They were all intact and despite being covered in dust looked brand-new. Around the large room there were workstations, a much more elaborate setup than in the first gallery’s lab. There were film projectors and screens. There was what appeared to be discs of some kind, lined up and protected by clear plastic. There was a whole row of hanging alien environment suits, complete with helmets protected from the passage of time by the very plasticlike material they were made from. On the far concrete wall was a flag, and it was this that Jack and the others were staring at. It was blue, and it had the four circle emblem just like the one the senator had drawn for them in his dining room. The circles were blue, red, white, and gray. The flag was trimmed with gold tassels and it had a golden triangle in the upper left-hand corner.

  “Wow,” a voice said from behind them.

  Charlie Ellenshaw and Pete Golding entered the laboratory and set down the large case they had been struggling with. Appleby and Dubois followed them in and they too were kids seeing Disneyland for the first time.

  “Amazing, simply amazing,” Appleby said as he saw the stored weapons of these ancient Visitors to the planet.

  “Oh,” Ellenshaw said. He advanced into the room and found himself staring at a globe. It was large, about ten feet in diameter, and the Germans had covered it with a sheet of plastic. With Pete’s help, Ellenshaw pulled the sheet of thick plastic from the large globe. Both men stared at the unfamiliar terrain of a world that wasn’t theirs. “A green ocean, almost like our own. And look at the continents. They’re much smaller than ours and there are only-” Charlie slowly spun the globe. “-three large ones compar
ed to our seven.”

  Pete stepped back and looked at the ocean-covered world. He tilted his head and almost ran to the crate that he and Charlie had just wrestled inside. He pulled out his laptop. Before Jack could stop him, he opened the lid and turned it on. Collins, Niles, Sebastian, and Everett froze. They felt a momentary vibration, sharp and hard, which vanished far faster than the vibrations that had preceded it.

  “Doc, you take it easy. Don’t make sudden moves like that.”

  Golding ignored him. He was busy attaching what looked to be a camera to the laptop. He ran out a line and placed the small camera on the tabletop facing the globe.

  “Did I ever tell you my big hobby when I was a kid, Niles?”

  “No, Pete, you didn’t.”

  Charlie Ellenshaw watched Pete move around like a bug on a hotplate. He smiled as he saw the enthusiasm in the computer man’s face.

  “Well, it was astronomy. Mostly kid stuff. My parents bought me telescopes. I sent letters to NASA asking for pictures, things like that. Well, I had one set of pictures that amazed me and I used to stare at them for days on end.”

  “You go, Pete,” Charlie said. He loved the way Golding had become excited. Ellenshaw knew that feeling of discovery and wanted Pete to take it all in.

  Jack, Everett, Sebastian, and Niles turned and looked at Charlie, who smiled timidly.

  “Europa, are you online?” he asked the laptop.

  “Yes, Dr. Golding,” Europa answered in her sexy voice.

  Appleby, the director, looked over at the MIT professor and raised his brows as the computer spoke in her Marilyn Monroe voice.

  “Europa, do you see the planet’s representation in your camera lens?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you recognize the surface features of the planet represented?”

  Europa was silent for a moment. Pete looked up at the faces staring at him.

  “Yes, Doctor.”

  Pete stepped up to the large globe and pointed to a raised area mostly covered with snow. The mountain towered from the center of one of the landmasses.

  “Europa, according to your records from NASA and the Hubble Space Telescope, what is the name of this mountain?”

  “It is actually a volcano, Olympus Mons. Mons means mountain. It is the highest known mountain in the solar system.”

  Oh, my God,” Appleby said as he stepped toward the globe and saw what Pete had noticed right off.

  “Olympus Mons is calculated to be 373 miles across at its base and eighteen miles high,” Europa added, as if she were bragging about her knowledge.

  Pete spun the globe and pointed at another mountain.

  “In relation to the polar north and south, what mountain would you say this is?”

  “Tharsis Montes, actually a mountain range consisting of three extinct volcanoes, located south of the previously mentioned Olympus Mons.”

  “I can’t believe it,” Niles said, finally understanding what Europa, Pete, and Appleby saw.

  “Do you mind letting us humans in on what you’re looking at?” Everett asked, angry that they were being left out of the thought process. The room remained quiet.

  “Europa, what is the name of the planet you are currently examining?” Jack asked, showing that he had no patience for the amazement in the scientists’ faces.

  “Mars.”

  Jack was stunned. He leaned against the edge of the large table. He looked over at Everett and Sebastian and saw in their faces that they were just as stunned as he was.

  “Look at the oceans,” Ellenshaw said. He joined Pete and placed a hand on his shoulder. They all stared at the world known to them their entire lives as the red planet, only now learning that it had once been beautiful and filled with green vegetation and gorgeous oceans.

  “Niles, are you going to say that this is where our Visitors came from?” Everett asked, as everyone else remained silent.

  “I’m not saying anything, Carl. Nothing at all.”

  Ellenshaw saw something sitting in the corner. It was larger than the globe of Mars and was also covered in plastic. Charlie kicked a swastika-embossed flag out of the way and struggled with the thick plastic. He pulled on the tarp, assisted by Everett and Sebastian. As the plastic fell free they were stunned to see three more globes.

  Jack looked at Compton and they both thought the same thing at the same time. Niles pulled the first and largest globe away from the wall.

  “Earth,” Appleby volunteered. “Before the continents separated.”

  The globe was mostly blue, totally covered in water except for the one and only landmass on one side of the world.

  “The Pangaea supercontinent,” Niles said, looking from the globe to Jack. “Earth, about seven hundred million years ago.”

  Collins pulled the third and fourth globes over. They looked almost alike. Both were dead-looking worlds. One, Jack saw, was the Earth’s Moon. The other was larger and far darker in color. Jack examined the globes and found holes in each. He asked Carl for help and together they pulled the Earth and Mars globes over. Jack reached out and removed a thin rod that had been attached to the large moon. He reattached it to a hole in the Earth globe. He tried the same with a rod from the smaller moon, but the rod wouldn’t fit into the hole on the other side of Earth. So he raised the metal bar on the smaller moon and the steel slipped in, where it locked. Then he tried the steel rod from the larger moon. It connected nicely to the small moon.

  “What the hell?” Sebastian said, as everyone in the room stepped closer, curious what Jack was doing.

  Collins went to his knees once all the rods were connected and found what he was looking for.

  “I’ve always been a wiz at stuff like Rubik’s Cubes and Chinese-box puzzles.” He flipped a small switch at the base that held the large Earth globe off the floor.

  Mouths fell open and everyone stopped breathing as the Earth rose off the floor by three feet, supported by its large metal arm. Then Mars lifted by two feet, the small moon by seven feet, and finally the largest moon by five feet. As they all watched, the ancient globes started turning in an orbital pattern. First the Earth, then Mars opposite it, then the small moon around the Earth, and finally the large moon next to Mars.

  Sebastian, Ellenshaw, and Pete had to step out of the way as the worlds began their orbital turn. The rods ran around a small track at the equators of each world and the orbital patterns matched the turning of the largest-Earth.

  “Holy cow,” Ellenshaw said as he watched the spinning worlds.

  “The Earth had three moons, and Mars, the largest moon, was inhabited,” Pete said. He removed his glasses and watched the amazing show in front of him.

  Niles faced Jack and smiled. “You never cease to amaze me, Jack.”

  “That part was easy. Pete was the one who recognized Mars for what it was.”

  “Mars was a moon of Earth. Unbelievable,” Sebastian said.

  “Now, what the hell happened to the solar system that eliminated the large moon and sent Mars off to a new orbit thirty-four million miles distant? What could have done that?” the professor from MIT, Dubois, asked.

  “What do you make of these?” Ellenshaw asked. He handed Pete one of the two-inch-diameter discs. “Looks like a little CD.”

  Pete looked it over. “That is more than likely exactly what it is,” he said. He picked up another and looked it over. “I doubt it’s German-made. I don’t think the Nazis were that advanced.”

  “It wouldn’t surprise me a bit. I’ve seen too much strange stuff,” Everett said, also picking up one of the plastic-looking discs.

  Sebastian looked over at Everett and then at Jack.

  “Colonel, someday you will have to tell me just who the hell you really work for.”

  Pete took the disc he was holding and went to the laptop.

  “Europa has a two-inch data slot for discs not unlike this one,” he said. He pushed a button on the laptop and a small drawer popped free of the body of the computer. Pete ins
erted the alien disc and closed the bay.

  “Europa, can you read the formatting of the inserted disc?”

  “No,” came the immediate answer.

  “Wow, she sounds like she doesn’t even like having it in her,” Charlie said, smiling. The smile dimmed as he noticed that no one else was amused by his joke.

  “Europa, can you ask the disc to assist in formatting itself to your system?”

  “Attempting communication with known language acquired through recent NASA photography.”

  “At least they’re talking. That’s something,” Charlie said, once again looking around the room and once again getting stares from everyone. “I’m here all week.”

  Suddenly, as they watched, the monitor on the laptop flashed white, then went blank.

  “Adjusting video quality,” Europa said. “Cross-referencing alien alphabet. Cross-referencing alien numerical value to thirty-six-word alphabet.”

  The monitor flashed once more and a picture materialized that was a cross between an old-fashioned sepia-toned photo and a very old 35-millimeter film. The picture was scratchy and faded in large areas. Numbers appeared on the monitor, flashed twice, and then vanished. They were now looking at a man not very much different from themselves as he gazed into what must have been a camera. His hair was long and very blond. They could see that his eyes were somewhat larger than their own. As the humanoid placed his hands on the desk he was sitting at, they saw that his fingers were longer than theirs. His cheekbones rode high on the front of the face and his ears were smaller.

  “Damn near a match of our own physique, wouldn’t you say?” Niles asked. He moved to get a better view of the monitor.

  The man was speaking, and Europa was picking up the strange language, trying to reproduce it in type on the screen. Only a few letters appeared, with extensive gaps in the text.

  “Europa, what is the percentage of spoken language you are able to translate?” Pete asked.

  “Seven percent, Dr. Golding.”