by Talbot, Luke
“Not natural,” Montreaux finished his sentence for him, “I agree.”
From where they now sat, the stone betrayed not only its huge dimensions, but also its unexpected shape and orientation. It was about six metres wide and rectangular, protruding at least ten metres from the cliff-face.
Although it was difficult to tell with any accuracy from where they were sitting, the stone looked to be completely flat amidst the chaos of debris deposited around them.
“It looks almost like a,” Danny searched for the word. “Like a jetty, where you moor a boat on a riverbank.”
The two astronauts looked at each other and then continued to descend in silence. Montreaux checked the small LCD display on his forearm to ensure that his suit camera was capturing the whole event.
The Russian reached the stone first. He stood up to his full height and looked at Montreaux, who had continued past the stone and was now investigating below.
“This is incredible,” he said. “The stone comes right out of the cliff, it’s about a metre and a half thick, below is filled up with soil and other rocks, but apart from that you can clearly see the shape of the stone.” His voice was filled with awe. “This stone has to be artificial. The edge is perfectly flat all around, and wait.” His gloves had a built in rubber wiper along the seam of the thumb, for his own visor in case of sandstorms. He used it to scrape the stone clean. “Yes, that’s incredible! There’s a thick coat of dirt and dust, but underneath it’s the same jet black stone, and it’s so smooth!”
Danny was using his gloves to expand the impact crater that his small projectile had created.
“Same up here; it’s perfectly smooth. And whatever it is, it’s –”
Montreaux waited for him to finish his sentence, but the words didn’t come.
“Yes?” he pressed.
“Oh, my God,” Danny said, followed by a short burst of Russian that Montreaux didn’t understand. “Yves, get up here and look at this!”
Despite his usual friendly carefree attitude, Marchenko never referred to Montreaux using his Christian name. That was a break in protocol that only Dr Richardson enjoyed. Montreaux almost fell over himself reaching the top of the stone to join the Russian.
“What?” he said, urgently, glancing sideways at the stone.
He pointed to the patch of black surface he had uncovered. His hand was shaking visibly.
Captain Montreaux did not need it spelled out. What had stunned Danny had the same effect on him. His knees grew weak, and he sank down slowly until he could touch the stone. He ran his gloved fingers across it until they slotted neatly into a groove, about two centimetres deep and ten wide that ran in a perfectly straight line from under one edge of the cleaned area, near the wall of the crater out towards its centre. Danny’s gloved fingers had left small furrows where he had done his best to clear out most of the sand. After about sixty centimetres, the groove split in two in a perfect V. At the edges of the cleared area, he could make out the lines of two more possible grooves. He stood up and tilted his head as he examined the stone. The grooves made the shape of a V, pointing towards the crater wall, with a line emerging from its apex and disappearing into the cliff.
The grooves had been perfectly, and unmistakably, carved into the stone. And both astronauts immediately interpreted them in the same way: whatever had made the lines had intended them to point towards something that was now buried under the rock and debris of the cliff-wall.
They sat in silence for several minutes before Montreaux regained his composure. He pressed a button on his communicator pad and hailed the MLP.
“Dr Richardson, please confirm that you are getting the data feed from Captain Marchenko’s and my helmet cams.”
There was a momentary pause.
“Hi there. What am I looking at?” Jane said in a confused voice.
“Please confirm that you are getting this data feed and that it is being stored correctly, Dr Richardson,” he said plainly.
“That’s affirmative, Captain Montreaux, both feeds coming in, there’s a bit of atmospheric interference, a little worse than when we spoke earlier. But what the hell am I looking at?”
“We are out of your line of sight, I imagine that is causing the interference,” he explained. “Can you give a quick assessment of the material we are standing on?”
There was a long silence, after which the scientist spoke quite cautiously. “I would say from its colour that it could be an igneous rock, it resembles obsidian.”
“Igneous? Obsidian?” Montreaux asked.
She sighed. “Igneous rocks are basically cooled down magma that on Earth forms most of the crust,” she elaborated. “Basically, magma leaves the mantle, normally during movement of tectonic plates or during a volcanic eruption, for instance, and solidifies as it becomes part of the crust because it is further from the heated core of the planet. In theory, the closer the magma is to the surface when it hardens, the faster it will do so because the ambient temperature will be lower. If magma cools slowly, the solid crystals that form can easily be bigger than your fist. As the rate of cooling increases, however, so the size of those crystals decreases. If the magma is on the surface, what we would normally call lava, and the environmental conditions are just right, it can cool so fast that crystals hardly have the opportunity to form, in which case we get obsidian. In these cases, the crystals have to be observed under a microscope.”
Danny ran his hand along the smooth surface. “Could obsidian be this smooth, naturally?” he wondered.
“Absolutely. Polished obsidian was even used for mirrors thousands of years ago. I would expect a substance such as obsidian to be that smooth naturally. Danny, can you show me a more ground level view, please, from the edge of the stone across it?”
He obliged, climbing down the side of the stone that Captain Montreaux had just emerged from. He scanned the edge of the stone, and then raised his head slightly and tilted it down so that Jane would be able to appreciate how flat and rectangular it was.
“Fascinating,” she said eventually. “It looks perfectly flat, and the stills I have taken from the video feed suggest that the angled edges I have seen are all at ninety degrees.”
“What do you make of the grooves, Dr Richardson? Could they have been carved or etched into the surface?” Montreaux asked.
“No,” she replied. “At least not if the stone is indeed obsidian. Obsidian is very similar to flint, in that it splinters and creates flakes. Fantastic for making arrow heads and knives, but very difficult to craft, and virtually impossible to chisel or strike with any reliability. When used in ornaments nowadays, it is usually polished, so it’s relatively easy to create a smooth and accurate edge. However, a groove is entirely different: I don’t think you could polish a groove into a flat piece of stone, at least not a groove like that.”
“Can’t you use lasers?” Danny offered.
“Indeed you can. In fact the only useful application of obsidian I can think of right now is surgical knives. The blades of precision instruments can be fashioned using a laser. Because of the compact nature of the crystals that make up the rock, the width of obsidian blades can literally be measured in molecules, so they are hundreds of times more accurate than steel.”
“Stone knives?” Montreaux was amazed.
“Even now they’re still used in heart surgery, Yves,” she confirmed.
Montreaux took a step back and contemplated the stone beneath him. He found his eyes inexorably drawn towards the crater wall by the grooves. He wanted nothing more than an excuse to start digging like crazy, but if this was what he sensed it to be, then things would have to be done properly. “Dr Richardson?”
“Yes?”
He measured his words carefully, not wanting her to infer anything unprofessional. “Having seen the stone we are standing on, its dimensions, shape and,” he paused, as if looking for the correct terminology, “other characteristics, what do you think made it?”
“I am not a ge
ologist by trade, Captain,” she replied without hesitation. “However, I have seen some incredibly unbelievable rock formations on Earth, particularly where cooling magma is involved. The grooves may have been set as the magma cooled, possibly the imprint of other stones, maybe even by water, which we know at some time existed in abundance in this area. This stone could be a naturally occurring phenomenon. I would need to see a sample.” She waited for a response, but none came. “And I would very much like to visit the stone myself,” she added.
Danny looked at Montreaux and winked. “Jane, cut the bullshit now, OK? We’ll use that last bit as a sound-bite for Earth, you sounded great,” he said. “Now tell us what you really think.”
“Danny, you are standing on a perfectly flat surface, as smooth as a pane of glass, with perfect parallel sides and straight edges, all seemingly at a perfect ninety degrees to each other,” she said. “Not only is the stone flat, it also appears to be horizontal, which is why you two aren’t slipping off it. It’s also jutting straight out of the side of the crater, possibly pointing directly to the centre of said crater. And to top it all off, there is a groove in its surface that is not only aligned with the stone itself, but is also uniformly one-point-eight centimetres deep and ten-point-six centimetres wide – I know because I’ve checked it from the video feeds you sent. Can any one of these features on their own be produced in the natural world? On Earth, certainly. On Mars? Who knows, but the laws of physics are no different here to back home, we simply have different environmental conditions. I would say that probably yes, too. Now you’re left with the big question.” She paused. “Is it possible for all of these features to be found together, in the same place, given the context of the stone?”
“Dr Richardson, I appreciate your thorough summation of the situation, but could you just give us a straight answer?” Captain Montreaux was getting uncharacteristically impatient. He knew what the answer was, he just wanted to hear her say it.
“Yves, I am a scientist, and we never say things of any major significance in anything less than five hundred words. But to be blunt, there is no doubt in my mind that what you are standing on was put there. And although I cannot believe I am even saying this, I am sure that you and Danny are not the first beings to have stood on it, either.”
There was a very long, weighted silence.
Captain Montreaux couldn’t help but remember the journey to Mars, the conversation with Lieutenant Su Ning, the suspicious circumstances of her death. He had known then that something big was going on, and things certainly didn’t get any bigger than this. On the one hand he was excited at the magnitude of their discovery, but on the other he knew that people were prepared to kill them to cover it up. His heart sank. He knew deep down that nobody back on Earth of any importance to him would ever find out about their discovery. He also now knew why they had landed on the northern edge of the Hellas Basin rather than any other, and why the pre-planned coordinates of their rover expeditions had been so exact. And now that they had found the Jetty, what next?
If this is going to be part of a cover up, he thought, how likely is it we’ll be allowed to return home alive?
“What do we do now?” Danny broke the silence.
Montreaux looked over at him, hoping that the reinforced Plexiglas of his helmet did not reveal anything. “I have an hour of air left in this cylinder, how about you?”
“About the same. And we have three hours more in Herbie.”
“Dr Richardson,” Montreaux hailed her.
“Yes?”
Through the environmental interference on the com system, Montreaux fancied he could detect something odd in her tone, a hint of self-assuredness, of knowing, and suddenly an alarming thought materialised: was she in on it? Were they both? The dark thoughts crystallised, only making sense now, as he stood on the alien stone with the enormity of the situation staring him right in the face. Did either of them know of the cover-up because they were involved? He had a momentary flashback of Dr Richardson and Captain Marchenko the previous day, having one of their friendly arguments. As they did every day, he thought. He swallowed hard. Was he the only one not in on the cover-up? Was he going to be next?
“Captain?”
Danny’s voice came through faintly in his earpiece. He cocked his head and looked at the Russian. Suddenly extremely self-conscious, he realised that he must have been looking into space for quite some time.
“Yves, are you alright?” Jane sounded genuinely concerned.
He snapped out of his daydream in an instant. Nonsensical paranoid delusions, he concluded.
“Dr Richardson, you’d better put a hold on those steaks, for an hour or so.” He gestured towards the wall of the crater, to where the groove in the stone disappeared. “Captain Marchenko, let’s get some tools from Herbie and find out where this groove goes.”
From its viewpoint two thousand metres further along the edge of the Hellas Basin impact crater, Beagle watched the two figures ascend the crater wall. Using a high-resolution lens, it zoomed in on the black object, three hundred metres below, upon which they had been standing moments earlier.
The rover edged forward slowly, coming to a halt against a small round rock which hid most of its body from the direction of the MLP.
The lens refocused on the object, picking out the grooves in its surface.
It started taking pictures.
Chapter 31
The rain came down in waves, lashing the flat sides of the tall building again and again. Bright halogen beams cut through the darkness from their source along the roofline of the building, reflecting against the drops of falling water on their way to the ground. A simple white door was the only noteworthy feature of the plain white walls. A group of tall palms bowed under the forces of nature, their flexible bodies saving them from the worst of the hurricane. In the distance, the roar of the disturbed sea was hardly perceptible above the sound of the rushing wind.
At the side of the building, a white van sat purring in the darkness, its headlamps dipped, waiting.
“So much for global warming,” the driver said, resentfully.
The percussive fall of rain on the van’s roof was almost incessant, save for the short bursts of very strong wind, when the water would be whipped back into the air before it had the chance to hit.
His passenger shivered and tucked his hands deeper into his coat pockets. “Warmer for some, though, isn’t it? Otherwise where do you think all this would be coming from?”
They both stared into the building’s courtyard and contemplated this. Suddenly, as if on cue, the driver turned off the engine and the heating. “Here comes another one, let’s get out of here.” He switched off the headlamps and rested his hand on the door release.
Outside, the howling wind reached its terrifying crescendo then dulled, the threat of its return lying oppressively in the air.
The men jerked open the van’s doors and slammed them shut behind them. As they ran towards the small door in the side of the building, the driver pointed his arm behind him and pressed a button on his keys, rewarded by the quick chirp of the van’s central locking system. His passenger had already reached the wall and was pressing the intercom button repeatedly.
The door gave a loud buzz and they pulled it open in unison. They were barely through the opening when the wind made its return, violently slamming the door behind them and making the frame shake. They had been outside for a few short seconds, and yet they were soaked through to the skin. The passenger stood motionless with his legs apart, leaning his body forwards and holding his arms out to his sides, frozen in the posture of a man who has just been punched in the stomach.
“My God!” he exclaimed. The water had already left his hairless scalp and most of it had made its way to his bearded chin, from where it dribbled to the floor with a patter.
They found themselves in a short corridor with another door at the far end, also secured by an intercom.
The driver shook his arms before runni
ng his hands through his short hair. “And to think people come here to retire.” He stopped in the middle of unzipping his coat. “Your bag?”
The passenger looked in disbelief at his own empty hands. He turned his head back towards the door and the raging storm outside. “Damn.”
“You’re kidding me, right?” he gaped, still halfway between taking his coat off and reluctantly putting it back on again. “I don’t get paid enough for this! Here, take my keys, you can go and get it.”
A few moments later, the passenger burst through the small door again, this time holding a satchel against his chest.
“Time for a drink,” he said.
“In this place? I think machine coffee is about as good as it gets!”
They walked towards the second door hastily and the passenger pressed the intercom button once.
“Coffee it is then,” he said.
Seth Mallus, dressed in an immaculate black suit, crisp white shirt and light blue silk tie, sat in a large executive chair at a large executive desk. In front of him, a letter-size notepad sat exactly perpendicular to the edge of the desk. A Mont Blanc pen lay on the pad, aligned to the margin, in which the day’s date had been written neatly and underlined: November 9th, 2045.
“Dr Patterson, how are things progressing?” he said to the dishevelled man who sat opposite him in jeans and short-sleeved shirt.
Patterson had been in the facility for barely half an hour, the time to quickly dry off, change and grab a terrible coffee, before their meeting had begun. He brought his hand to his chin and played with his beard briefly. It was well kept, but the silver-grey hue added at least a decade to his fifty-six years.
“Here are the latest transcripts, with the translations.” He slid the paper across the table. “They are consistent with the other transcripts; whatever happened to these –” he hesitated before saying the word, “– people, there was nothing they could do to stop it.” He flicked through his notes. “There is a lifetime of work here,” he gestured to the small folder on the table in front of him.