Who had the gunman astronaut been? Who had wanted to kill him? He even wondered if someone had known of the alien sphere, and had tried to stop them finding it for some reason!
What had astonished him was that none of the astronauts had actually left the shuttles, and they were positive of it, and he had even proven nobody had sneaked away by recordings of them on the shuttle recordings, and it had left him bewildered.
He had been told confidentially that there had been occurrences at that region of the Antarctica before their shuttles had been brought down, and they had been highly classified occurrences, and Anders crash had been recorded, but they had not found their remains and wreckage.
The events of that week were incredible and he saw the whole base react to the alien discovery, and the information had appeared all over the media there, and it had finally reached the Earth, and he had even become famous there for finding the discovery, and had returned to see it with the other astronauts, and they had told them of the occurrences that had taken the shuttles down, which the scientists believed it had been responsible for the occurrences, and they believed that the sphere had something wrong with it, which nobody fully understood, and that it had not been able to take the shuttles where it had wanted and had landed them where it was safe to land, and that the rocket vehicle Anders and the scientist had been in had been too hard to land properly, leading to its crash.
They believed it had tried to take them to where it was to have them find it, and he was positive of it now, and also going by the accounts the scientists there gave of things that had happened since they had entered the cavity, and it later enlarged the tunnel into the hill, and the appearance of strange things!
They believed it was trying to make contact with them, but nothing had been established, though it had communicated with many of them, as he had done, but they had been confused by it and had not achieved much and it revealed little, but he was surprised that the astronaut with the gun had been seen the night before and he had questioned the scientists that had seen him and they gave him a photograph of him and he had identified it as the astronaut, and they were sure it had used the generated astronaut copy to get him to go to the cavity to the discovery, which he surely would not have gone to if he had not been chased!
But he also thought it generated it to do things and they were there for some other reason, and nobody had given a full and proper explanation of why, and they never fully got the alien sphere’s actual function, or if it was just an advanced life form and what it was really like, and what it was doing there and what environment had it originated from, and what it really wanted, other than the fact it had wanted to be discovered!
The scientists were mainly involved in trying to monitor and analyze everything they could about the sphere!
Chapter 22
The Cavity
A panoramic spectacle view of the Martian landscape stretched out all the way around Cronenberg as he rested on the top of the hill, almost over the cavity, and he watched the fascinating rugged golden shapes of the world beaming in bright sunlight everywhere, and in the thin blue sky he studied stars, and where all the vehicles and shuttles were below, and below where the archaeologists were working away, checking if there was anything in the ground everywhere, and he heard their excited conversations, talking of the discovery, which had to their ultimate find, and perhaps the best find in centuries.
He liked archeology, especially there, and liked exploring the past and the occurrences that had taken place.
The world below now looked like it had been frozen in time, and was a fantastic surreal prehistoric times world, and he recalled why he had even wanted to be a paleontologist. It conjured up great visions of the original primitive worlds of the universe, with its astounding untouched magnitude.
While he moved over and rested against a large boulder he occasionally examined clouds of dust from the stone and debris, the archeologists sifted through, and he still listened for anything of interest to him, and he watched the sky in a place that he had not examined before and wondered what existed there and what other strange worlds there were to explore, and he started to realize he was starting to like the world more than his own, and that he would miss being there if he left, and the stars on the Earth would not be the same.
The cavity had fascinated everyone there and he watched them dig away the hill, enlarging the tunnel out, more and more, to allow them to get proper large equipment in.
An image was still in his mind! Something about the astronaut with the gun fascinated him, as if it had tried to kill him, and he wondered if it meant the alien sphere was a killer life form, and was it waiting for its chance to do something?
He could not grasp why it had not shown it intended to do harm, but he was sure it used the astronaut to get him there!
What had eaten Campbell and the other people at the base though, and yet the alien sphere could not reach the distance of the base and he began to suspect there was something else!
The entire outside of the cavity and the boulders there were destroyed and their remains removed, and everything there and further out was being checked by archeologists, as they searched for the remains of anything that could give them the slightest clue to the energy sphere’s origins or anything else.
It was incredible that with the entire incident he had forgotten about the map and the diamonds, and he was amazed that he was actually sitting on the spot where he had intended to look for them, and he still had not done it!
He looked over to where the other hill was, where he had climbed up when they had crashed there, and looked over at where the shuttles had been, where Eagle’s shuttle had crashed, and the shuttles had landed, and examined all the mess it had left.
Eagle and the other astronauts had now entirely lost interest in the treasure map, and that made him happy, and he recalled Rosenberg knowing of the map, when he saw Cronenberg taking it out Anders pocket, and he was sure it was him that had told them of it, but he had not gone near Eagle anywhere.
He spotted where Anders’s rocket vehicle had come down, and where their shuttle had been over at its side.
He removed the treasure map and studied it, and the entire region about him, sure that it had to be out there or about him somewhere, and he was surprised at how bright the map was there and how details on it became visible, which were not visible before, and he studied it with some surprise, and in an entirely new light, seeing the entire area and map properly, and as not the vague jumbled muddled scrap of paper as it had been, but as the scientist had made it, as he knew what he was like now, now that he had all the information of the scientist, and how he did things!
To his surprise he spotted a mark, like a vague small hill with a cross marked on it, and it was surely the hill he was on, and he started searching about the hill for the place, and for anything that looked like it, and went to a slightly higher point behind him and he measured the hill and mark on the map and saw the place close to him, to his surprise, and he searched where it was marked at, and spotted a bright gleam nearby and rushed over to it.
Chapter 23
The Awakening
Cronenberg stopped dead, confused, bewildered, and he rushed down the hill, gasping hysterically for air, thinking of the diamond in his spacesuit pocket, and in the deep silence of his spacesuit it sank in that something else was occurring simultaneously with his incredible discovery, and the discovery of the first diamond on Mars and with an immense size he had never seen before!
Saliva poured down his mouth, and he had to calm himself, and rest, to see what he was missing!
When he had rested he examined everything over at the cavity entrance and watched scientists rushing out, and falling about, and technicians and archeologists swiftly removing expensive equipment, as though something deadly of immense proportions was occurring, and he tried to recall what they had been doing.
He stood baffled with his mouth open, as he had not even seen them react anything like it before
!
What the hell was going on? He did not know what to do? Would he lose what he had found?
The diamond had astounded him! It was just lying out in the open, shining in the sunlight, embedded in a strange form of Martian rock, which he used a tool to hack out.
He sat down, still exhausted, thinking of all the things he could use the cash on back on the Earth and slowly started realizing the ground was vibrating and dust and stones were shifting about him, and the intensity of it was increasing, and he started to see something unbelievably dangerous was going to happen, and large boulders at his side started rolling about the hill, and as he stood he started falling about as though in an immense earthquake, and saw and heard boulders rolling down and smashing into things on the ground, and he ran down at full speed as he saw the ground starting slide down and form a landslide.
The bottom of the hill was now being smashed with more and more large boulders, and everything was collapsing about him, and he searched everywhere until he saw a place that was free from the destruction and he swiftly took the safest route across to there, and fell over, over and over, and kept immediately rushing back on his feet.
Once on the ground he used the last of his energy to escape from the hill, but he collapsed against a pile of boulders, with his eyes still on the hill, and he grasped what the incredible force behind it was like.
To his shock he spotted all the scientists and others still running and escaping for their lives – and they were further out than him – and he rushed away on his weakened limbs and ran away from the site as fast as he had ever tried to run, and he even thought of removing the lower part of his spacesuit to get away!
When he heard the explosion he just dived straight over some boulders, to an area behind them, and covered himself by burrowing himself below the boulders, and covered his ears as the blast intensified and he felt the blast hit the other side of the boulders, and he gritted his teeth as he waited for the powerful impact to kill him!
Chapter 24
The Artifact
Once the dust cloud slowly vanished, with no sign of anything else occurring, they all started returning to the remains of the hill, and mainly in rubble heaps across their front.
Cronenberg watched the dead and injured being taken away in undamaged shuttles, and he wondered what was going on, and swiftly approached scientists he knew.
“What did you do?” he moaned to one, and he just laughed back, feeling his arm trying to find how damaged it was, from a rock that had hit it, as they went back to where the alien energy sphere had been.
A horrendous sensation struck him as he felt energy from something pulsating through the ground – the same energy that he had felt from the energy sphere, going through the ground, but it had far more power and energy to it. He was so startled that he was not able to exhale properly and he checked his oxygen supply, and wondered what they had done to the energy sphere.
“They never did anything!” one scientist replied, and stared at him.
“What happened then?” he replied firmly.
“Nothing! They were trying to dig it up and we were setting up equipment, and massive energy surges appeared, and the ground everywhere started shaking, and we detected something was going to occur, and we had to run out and escape as the hill started collapsing everywhere …”
When they approached where the center of the hill was they all started slowing and examining there and Cronenberg saw it was different from everywhere else, and as they moved closer saw all the rubble had been pushed away from the central region by some force, and that the energy sphere was there, hovering over a black artificial object, which had been buried away under the rock, and that it had clearly used the force to free itself from beneath the hill, and they all approached it cautiously now seeing the dangers of it, and that it had clearly taken the whole hill down on top of them, killing and injuring people there.
Though as they approached it he sensed that it had not purposely killed anyone and had done its best to avoid it!
At the edge of the energy bubble, altering wildly, gleams of light shone like bright miniature stars were being held there motionlessly, and some scientists filmed it and studied it, and started recording information about it, and he heard one of the scientists give the exact time the disturbance started and he was surprised that it was the exact time that he had removed the diamond at the top of the hill, and he realized that it had been directly above it.
Chapter 25
The Strange Black Object
For days he watched the archeologists at work removing the black object beneath the energy sphere, and he watched them discover it was made of something they could not recognize, and none of the scientists had any proper theories what it was, as there were no clues anywhere to anything, and the energy sphere refused to give any proper communications, and most of the things it gave were beyond their understand, and it became clear to him that every time he appeared it started to give communications, which he originally thought he was imagining, and then he thought it was the scientists doing something that they wanted to do when he was there, and then the scientists started questioning him about it!
They questioned him about everything they could and never got anything, and the only proper theory put forward, by a leading scientist, was it had connected itself to him for some reason, and perhaps because he found it and perhaps it trusted him, and it had allowed him to find it, and he was the chosen one to make communications with, even though it answered them while he was there, and they tried occasionally to discover why, without much success, and they could not grasp something.
The work continued for days, and they all accepted that there was an existing danger from it, and its form altered – and shrank to nearly fifty feet across from every side – and was suspended over the artifact, in a large cavity that was dug around it.
The entire top region was covered in equipment and scientists studying the alien object and energy bubble above, trying to find what connected them, as there had to be some form of communication between the two, but they never found anything and it was agreed that it was either undetectable to them or it connected when the object was activated in some way, and some thought that the energy sphere had to be created by the object below as nothing was found that could give its vast powers.
Detection equipment was everywhere all around it and at the end of cables entered into areas of its field, where they found it could now be entered further, and the scientist reacted immediately when they received results, and one time they found that digital numbers were frozen on an atomic clock entered into its field, and even created multidimensional forms through the air, and they studied the suspension of partially transparent layers, and saw them vanish somewhere.
Paranormal scientists were even brought in and were left staggered and bewildered at what it was, and there was in fact little that was identifiable, and even after immense amounts of experiments little was found, but vast amounts of research and recordings were done, which might be used to find a solution to its identity one day, and they were sure if they could grasp some clue about its identity that they might be able to start solving their unanswered questions.
One day Cronenberg got up early in the morning with his shuttle crew, as they were to return to the base for the first time in a long time, and he was surprised to see the scientists monitoring the equipment in large shuttles there, and had just been woken up and had started checking information on what was happening, and he was about to announce that they were due to continue their mission of mapping Mars when he spotted that they had raised the object below the alien sphere.
The size of the cavity beneath the object below the energy sphere had been increased and they had removed the giant block and raised it up over the Martian landscape.
Cronenberg and his shuttle crew stood by its side examining the object with amazement.
“It must weigh tons …” Rosenberg gasped, checking the equipment that they had used to lift it ove
r the ground.
“Well, they’ve virtually carved the entire block out!” Mitchell continued. “It was not as deep downwards as they expected, and they’ve tunneled under and around it to get it up. It’s incredible! It resembles a black version of the flying saucers they use to claim to see years ago on the Earth!”
“What the hell is it though?” Cronenberg replied, making all of them gasp, and look above it to the energy sphere floating over it, and he felt the surface of it and felt a firm vibration from something, showing it was functioning.
“It’s like there is something missing from it!” he replied. “It’s as though it’s somewhere else at the same time – and we are only seeing this part of it …”
“That could explain why they got so little information from it!” Orwell answered firmly.
Chapter 26
The Gateway
Cronenberg sensed something strange that he could not grasp, when he returned to the alien energy sphere, with his shuttle crew, and he tried to get what it was but failed!
The Lost Treasure Map Deluxe Book Collection (2017 Edition) Page 39