If only–– Her thoughts broke as the room started to tilt. Something began pulling her from inside the wall, like a giant whirlpool sucking her into its depths! Dawn tried to break free. With a supreme effort, she twisted around, arms akimbo as she clawed at the air.
With a clap like thunder, the wall split open. For a moment, as she teetered on the brink, she shot a desperate look at Gus. But then, she was wrenched backward into the gaping, pitch-black hole.
What she heard next seemed beyond belief. “Houston, we have had a problem!” Jean-Michel cried out. How she’d hoped she would never hear those fateful words.
Dawn barely registered Gus yelling, “Grab ‘er! Sonofa––”
His voice cut off neatly as the door closed with a resounding boom. Terrified, she careened down a pitch-black chute until the tunnel angled off, and her momentum slowed. Without warning, her body sailed into space, then struck solid ground.
Heart racing, Dawn held herself still for a long moment. It was totally dark. She brought a hand up to her face, seeing nothing. Everything was as black as outer space. With a shock, she realized her helmet had vanished. She was breathing air, a moist, thick, warm atmosphere with a slightly moldy aroma.
She stared out blindly and rose to her feet, rubbing a bruised elbow. It ached miserably, but she ignored this, resolving to let Gus and the others know she was alive. “Hey, guys, can you hear me?” she yelled, hoping she was facing the tunnel, willing them to answer.
The lights flickered, then flashed on, as if in response, and she squinted, trying to adjust to the glare. After several seconds, she gauged the chamber where she stood. It was small, about the size of Destiny’s safe room. She turned, wondering what the hell she’d stumbled into, scared, yet overwhelmed by curiosity.
She sucked in her breath. A monolith stood at the center of the chamber. A third one?
There was a recliner-style chair sitting next to it, reminding her somewhat of the kind used by dentists. It was coated with dust, but she could tell the upholstery was intact; in fact, it looked like it had been recently made. But how old was it? How had something as fragile as a chair survived the passage of time?
Resisting the urge to check it out further, she slowly, with modulated steps, circled the monolith. Then she realized there was a slight notch carved into its midpoint, the indentation stretching all the way around. On the far side, she found a device nestled in the notch, reminding her of an old-fashioned telephone, like the ones used before the time of her grandparents.
E. T., phone home? Despite her apprehension, she found herself smiling as she recalled one of her favorite old movies. If only Gus knew. He’d have appreciated that one.
She spotted her helmet on the floor. How had it gotten off her head? A trickle of sweat rolled down her back. It was hot and steamy, like a rainforest. Removing her remaining gear, she stripped down to her T-shirt and shorts. She eyed the monolith again. Upon further inspection, she decided the device in the notch resembled some kind of VR headset.
Should I try? Dawn’s curiosity got the best of her, and she decided to go for it. She settled into the chair. Immediately, something grabbed hold of her body. The chair had come alive, throbbing, reaching out for her, attempting to pull her inside.
“Leave me alone!” she cried out and the weird movement stopped. She took several deep breaths, noticing how comfortable the chair felt, how much it conformed to her shape. Taking hold of the headset, she saw there was no eyepiece or microphone, just two small side knobs which seemed to belong on the ears, like stereo buds. For a moment, she studied the device, turning it over and over in her hands. The familiarity of the design was somehow comforting. Maybe the Martians had been a lot like humans, after all.
She placed the headset on her ears, but it was too big. Had it been made for someone with a larger braincase? With a renewed sense of doubt, she tried to adjust it, pushing the knobs against her ears. When that didn’t work, she let go of the left side, then pressed the right knob only.
Dawn waited. Was she going to listen to some sort of welcoming speech? What if she was incapable of understanding the message?
She closed her eyes, fighting a sudden dizziness, then felt a slight prick inside her ear.
“You are safe, Dawn Anne Stroganoff, PhD.”
Her eyes flew open. “Wha – who are you?” she stammered.
The deep, robotic voice rang out. “Dawn Anne Stroganoff, PhD, I have read the patterns of your cerebrum. Your brain waves are complex, and I am pleased with your intelligence. Now I know everything about you. Do not be afraid. I will not harm you, Dawn Anne Stroganoff, PhD.”
“Dawn, call me Dawn. And what do you mean? How could you know everything about me?”
“To put it simply – I read your mind. I know everything about you: that you love two members of the species Canis familiaris, whom you call Wendy and Peter; that you’ve always needed nine hours of sleep per night; that you love tea and chocolate; and that you’ve had three sexual affairs in your lifetime, with the most important involving a marine archeologist you met at a conference in California––”
“Enough! I believe you.” Fingers trembling, she touched the headset. “Who are you?”
“You would not be able to pronounce my name. In your language, I would be called the Keeper.”
Dawn’s heart raced with all that the name implied. This wasn’t some kind of alien zoo, was it?
“I am the Keeper,” the voice went on. “I oversee––”
“Is this a zoo?” she blurted out.
“I see you have heard of the Zoo Hypothesis. A few of your more imaginative scientists speculated Earth, and perhaps your entire Solar System, contain such rare oases of life in this quadrant of the galaxy that aliens have created a kind of national park, a big zoo to preserve all of your rare species.”
“Yes,” Dawn whispered back, her mind awhirl.
“Being in a zoo might explain why no one bothered before now to contact you Earthlings, for the zoo must be kept contained and apart from all else, inviolate, uncontaminated by space aliens. The hypothesis is wrong, however. Human beings would not be part of the equation if this were a zoo, for you are not the caretakers of your world. In fact, you are the antithesis of caretakers, the very reason Earth is in crisis and so many species are dying in a planet-wide mass extinction. You humans have overpopulated and polluted your world.”
“I know,” Dawn said quietly.
“The name Keeper refers to my role here on Mars. My mind was chosen to be preserved because I was once, long ago, a historian. Now I am the one who keeps knowledge, who remembers all. It is most pleasing to me that you also keep knowledge, while you attempt to reconstruct the history and prehistory of your world.”
He’s saying he likes the fact that I’m an archeologist? Dawn thought. Okay, okay, I guess that’s good. She had to admit this wasn’t so easy; being the first human to conduct an interview with an alien was a role she’d never prepared for, or even dreamed about. She glanced down at the chair, so weird and otherworldly.
After taking a breath, she ventured, “Were you and your kind indigenous to Mars, or did you come from somewhere else?”
“You humans are a curious species, aren’t you? Ah, but how do you say it? Is this to be a question and answer session?”
There was a short pause. Was it Dawn’s imagination or had she heard something in the distance? It almost sounded like laughter, but it had a strange staccato, a weird rumbling.
“There were no life-forms beyond the microbial level on Mars when we arrived.”
“Then you’re saying you came from another solar system? Where was your home planet?”
“My species evolved on a small, terrestrial world. We were bipedal and oxygen breathing, like you. Our home planet orbited a star located some twenty thousand light-years from the galactic core. At the time of its demise, our star was in the Orion Spur of the Milky Way. If I use your method for calculating the passage of time, it burned out 4.1 mill
ion years ago. My species escaped before our solar system was destroyed and traveled for generations in search of a new home. I never knew my home world, having been born aboard a spaceship. We traveled for eons. Despite the fact there are planets orbiting the majority of stars, there are few worlds suitable for life.”
Dawn nodded. “Our astronomers have found thousands of planets, but so far, only a few worlds are rocky and similar to Earth, with the potential for supporting life. There’s the large super-Earth, Gliese 581D, and also the habitable world, Gliese 581g, but we can’t prove they actually harbor life.”
“Yes, that solar system is close, only twenty light-years away. Beyond that, there are perhaps two billion planets with simple, microbial life in the Milky Way Galaxy, out of four hundred billion stars, many of them with orbiting planets, most not suitable for life. There are also ten million worlds with more complex creatures, like your animals and plants. A small percentage, but still, they do exist.”
Whoa! “Ten million?” Dawn asked. “I had no idea there were that many.”
“The distances between solar systems with lifebearing planets are vast. It took my kind a long time to find yours. We looked for a system with rocky inner planets in what you call the “Goldilocks” zone – not too hot or too cold, with liquid water. It also needed gas giants in the outer orbits, so important for deflecting most comets and meteors away from the inner worlds, thereby preventing most catastrophic impacts and mass extinction events. Your Jupiter in particular serves that function well. Then, to our amazement, we found that six planets and moons harbored life in this solar system: Earth, Mars, Europa, Titan, Enceladus, and Callisto. We were particularly struck by many of Earth’s life-forms, because they had faces like us.”
“Faces?” Dawn asked.
“Intelligent life in the universe has evolved in myriad ways. We never found any other life-forms with faces – two eyes, a nose, and a mouth. It was amazing to find such a parallel to our own evolutionary path. Our scientists spent years exploring many of the planets and moons here. Your Solar System is the richest place we ever found, in terms of life.”
“You know, NASA plans to send a probe to Europa next year. It’ll capture the water shooting into space from the southern geysers, which could contain organics from the sub-surface ocean. Eventually, we plan to drill through the surface ice and then deposit a minisub into the ocean below. And now you’re saying––”
“Europa is teeming with life,” the Keeper finished for her. “Actually, you have already seen evidence of it.”
“What?”
“A scientist named Brad Dalton postulated the reddish-brown streaks on Europa’s surface ice look like bacteria. The infrared signature matches your earthly Deinoccus radiodurans. In addition to that found in the southern geysers, the Europan ‘bacteria’ come up from the subsurface ocean whenever there are tidal upwellings, or after a meteor crashes onto the icy surface.”
“Is there more complex life there?”
“Yes, your scientists will be amazed by what they find, especially when they see how bioluminescence is used by the more intelligent sea creatures for communication. Europa has the most advanced species, yet other moons harbor life as well. Callisto has an extremely salty sea filled with what you call halophiles, not unlike the bacteria found in your Great Salt Lake of Utah. Enceladus has an ocean beneath its ice-bound south pole, with primitive RNA-based life-forms; the ecosystem is similar to that found beneath the permanently frozen surfaces of your Antarctic lakes. And Titan has extremophiles adapted to its liquid ethane/methane lakes.”
It took another moment for Dawn to digest all this. Life everywhere in the Solar System!
“All right,” she said, “then answer this for me. You ended up on Mars. But you said Earth’s creatures looked like you because they had faces. Why didn’t you settle the Earth? Even back then, it must have been more habitable than Mars.”
“There were several reasons. Firstly, gravity was too great on the Earth. Because of our physiology, we could not adapt to long periods there. We had no choice; we had to live on Mars. Secondly, my species was terrified of the prospect of living on Earth.”
“Terrified?”
“We had traveled in flotillas of self-contained spacecraft for so long that a place like Earth seemed utterly chaotic. The planet was home to hundreds of billions of organisms. Many were viewed as wild and dangerous. As a result, even if we had not had the physiological limitations due to gravity, the Earth would have been considered unsuitable for colonization. On Mars, though, we could build structures that mimicked the safe, closed environments found in our spaceships, creating artificial living quarters on and beneath the Martian surface.”
“What happened to your people?”
“Alas,” the alien said, “I am the last of my kind.”
There was a profound silence, broken only when Dawn sighed. She wanted to ask the Keeper more, but decided to stay quiet. No doubt he was still in mourning. He had lost everyone, after all. Perhaps, his own family.
She glanced around the room, feeling quite lonesome herself.
“Do not despair,” the Keeper said, as if sensing her thoughts.
Dawn looked back at the tunnel. “I’m confused. I––”
“You are handling this quite well.”
“But, where are my friends, my fellow astronauts?”
“I sense your concern, Dawn, but do not worry, for your companions are alive and well.”
“Will I see them soon?”
“I am certain you will be reunited in the future.”
“But you can’t tell me when?”
“No.”
“Do they know I’m okay?”
“No.”
Dawn felt frustrated by his evasiveness, but she decided to ignore it for the time being and change the subject. “Then what about you?” she asked. “Are you alive?”
“No, my body died long ago, ages ago. The essence of my mind exists deep within this planet. The technology is beyond the realm of your experience.”
“But... if you died long ago, what have you been doing all these years?”
There it was again, that eerie rumbling. Dawn shuddered, suddenly unnerved, then the Keeper broke into her thoughts by saying, “I have been dreaming, Dawn Stroganoff. I have been dreaming of you.”
***
“You’ve been listening to our transmissions?” Dawn asked.
She fingered her headset as she awaited the Keeper’s reply. In the last fifteen minutes, the alien had kept her busy with instructions for tightening the device and making the chair even more comfortable than before.
“Yes,” the Keeper said. “If I use your current dating system, I have been monitoring them since A.D. 1897. That was the year of first contact.”
“1897? I don’t understand.”
“Tesla and Marconi,” the Keeper explained. “Surely you’ve heard of them? Each sent faint, localized, wireless signals – what you call radio – across small bodies of water for the first time in 1897; Tesla in New York, Marconi in England. And Marconi sent the first radio transmission across the Atlantic in 1901. The transmissions were extremely faint, but I detected them, even from Mars. You might recall it wasn’t until the 1920s that radio was used on a truly global scale. I have been listening to everything since, and then, with the advent of television, I have been watching your progress.”
Progress? Despite her astonishment at everything the Keeper had revealed, Dawn couldn’t help but smile. She didn’t have the courage to ask him what he thought of the vast majority of programs. Although now displayed on 3-D flat-screens, TV was still known as the “idiot box.”
“If you’ve been monitoring us for well over a hundred years,” Dawn asked, “why didn’t you make yourself known to us?”
“There was no need to do that. If you did not destroy yourselves, I knew you would eventually find me. Mars is, as you humans would say, right next door.”
“What about other intelligent life? Th
e universe must be teeming with civilizations. Do they know about you? And what about us? Why haven’t we found them yet? Despite the S.E.T.I. project, we still haven’t picked up any verifiable transmissions or beacons from deep space.”
“The technological civilizations you seek do exist, but the nearest one is over one thousand light-years away and beyond your present capabilities of detection, for they use spread-spectrum transmissions, and you do not have the computer power for finding them yet.”
Dawn sat still, her mind trying to take this in, to understand the profound implications. Of course, first contact with the Keeper had already proven aliens existed. Even so, the fact that there were others out there boggled her mind.
“Mankind has not found other civilizations,” the Keeper added, “not only because some transmissions are very complex – your S.E.T.I. astronomers have not detected them, merely dismissing them as random or natural space noise – but also because the distances in our galaxy are vast: a hundred million times your Solar System’s circumference. A few use radio transmissions, but others use ultraviolet lasers or pulsed laser signals, like that which was sent from here.”
“Are you in touch with any of these civilizations?”
“No, most are too distant, in space and time. Besides, I do not wish to broadcast my whereabouts to anyone, other than humans. Most intelligent civilizations do not send signals into space. They’ve hidden themselves away.”
Dawn frowned. “Why would they do that?”
“Dangerous forces exist in our galaxy. It has been this way for eons, and I assume it has not changed since the days when my species wandered the cosmos. There may be several dozen intelligent civilizations in the Milky Way at any one time. Only a few have ruinous intentions, but they are formidable and truly savage. On the other side of the galaxy, in what you call the Scutum Centaurus Arm, there exists an evil empire.”
She found herself smiling at that one. “You’ve got to be kidding.”
“No, I am not kidding, as you so charmingly put it. The Evil Ones are silicon-based life-forms, essentially immortal and ruthlessly efficient at mass murder. These beings do not wish to share the Milky Way with any carbon-based species. Slowly, they have spread out, conquering vast regions of space. Humans must learn to exercise caution. Although most of the radio and television transmissions leaving Earth dissipate to a great degree after several light-years, more powerful signals could reach them. Radio astronomy is by its very nature a major culprit, of course, but also intentional signals meant as specific communication with aliens. There have been several attempts by your scientists to send messages into deep space, including one seemingly whimsical transmission by NASA of the Beatles’ song, “Across the Universe,” directed at the star which you call Polaris. I realize it excites your human imaginations to do this, but it is not wise to continue taking such risks, because the Evil Ones are always searching for carbon-based life – always. Since you live on the other side of the galaxy from them, you have thus far been spared.”
Dragon Dawn (Dinosaurian Time Travel) Page 13