Labyrinth
Mark T. Sullivan
A MysteriousPress.com
Open Road Integrated Media
Ebook
For Betsy, Connor, and Bridger, who make every day of my life the best kind of adventure.
Contents
Approach
Entrance
Descent
Deep Cave
Final Connection
Surfacing
Acknowledgements
At the bottom of the abyss comes the voice of salvation.
At the darkest moment, comes the light.
—Joseph Campbell
APPROACH
THIRTY-TWO YEARS EARLIER …
APRIL 22, 1972
12:03 P.M., HOUSTON TIME
6 DAYS, 0 HOURS, 9 MINUTES MISSION ELAPSED TIME
DESCARTES HIGHLANDS, THE MOON
DURING THEIR SECOND FORAY outside the lunar module, James Elder and Howard Kennedy were jolted about as their moon rover lurched across a jagged landscape of boulders and minicraters.
Great view. Kennedy’s familiar midwestern accent came crystal clear over the radio headset Elder wore under his helmet.
Elder nodded, mesmerized by the scene unfolding outside his tinted visor. The sun at their backs was as brilliant as a bomb blast. Stone Mountain rose before them in a series of shadowed ridges while Earth hung overhead in a sky of speckled black.
Elder parked the rover, then called into his microphone, Houston, we’re five hundred feet above the Cayley Plains. Highest point ever reached by man on the moon.
Fantastic, said a voice from Mission Control. The crackling transmission was solid. Now you boys better get to work.
Kennedy got out and immediately began to gather samples. Elder climbed farther up the mountain, looking for rocks known as basalts, which would indicate that volcanic activity had formed the Highlands. But all he was seeing were “breccias,” stones created by the impacts of asteroids and meteors.
Four billion years ago, the theory went, the moon was pummeled by giant chunks of rock hurled through space by the Big Bang detonation that created the universe. One huge impact created the South Ray Crater on the side of Stone Mountain, five times the size of a football field, more than a hundred feet deep, and covered with coal-and-pearl-colored rocks. As Elder approached the rim of the chasm, he was looking at matter forms from the beginning of time. When studied under a microscope, he thought, these stones might well seem a universe unto themselves.
Elder paused, aware of the suck and whoosh of his breath inside his helmet, then called into his microphone, Houston, I’m gonna dig a trench up here, see what really made these old highlands.
Roger … keep…The radio link with Houston broke up under waves of static.
Come back, Houston?
Not reading…flares …
Elder turned and looked downslope eighty yards toward Kennedy, who worked with his back to him.
You catch that, Howie?
Must be a solar storm choking communications.
Damn big one, Elder agreed, holding his hand up to shield his eyes from the sun.
If we lose Houston more than fifteen minutes, we’ll head back to the module.
Roger that.
Elder used his rake to dig into the chalk-white dust on the crater’s rim. After several minutes of work he felt as if he might not find anything. Then the rake turned over a stone roughly the size and shape of a child’s soccer ball. He photographed and gave a number to the find: moon rock 66095, a shock-melted breccia, eleven hundred grams in weight.
Elder used a scooper to lift moon rock 66095 and transfer it to his left hand. Shaking the stone so the dust would fall away, the astronaut held it up to his visor. At first glance, except for its shape, it seemed rather plain, a gray rock composed of concave planes and a few minor extrusions. But closer examination revealed a ragged web of dark crystals embedded in the surface of the stone.
Elder shook more dust off the rock, then tilted it so the sun shone directly on the crystals. The sunlight invaded the black glass, made it flash like a rushing stream. Then it began to vibrate. The crystals’ sparkling flared into a welder’s blinding arc of light. The astronaut heard the hollow, oscillating roar of something deep and primitive.
A gale of energy, strong and electric, gusted through Elder and he doubled over as if punched. A flare of razored pain seared through his head. For a moment the astronaut could see nothing but that glaring light, hear nothing but that insistent, hushed roar, feel nothing but pulse after bolt of hot, insistent energy passing through him. Elder went to one knee, still clutching the rock in his hand, sure he was about to collapse.
Howie! Elder gasped.
Downslope, Kennedy spun around to see Elder force his hand open and drop something. The second astronaut saw it free of his commander’s fingers for only a split second. But it was enough. He stood dumbfounded as Elder collapsed to one side.
Jim! Kennedy cried, dropping his equipment and climbing as fast as he could, bellowing into his headset, Houston, Houston, Elder’s down! Houston, do you read me? Elder’s down!
Nothing came back but heavy static.
By the time Kennedy reached Elder, the mission commander had gotten himself up into a sitting position. The searing, deafening pain that had all but crippled him had eased. His vision and hearing were returning but he was nauseated, dizzy, and panting.
Kennedy crouched by his partner. You okay? What happened?
Elder gestured dully behind Kennedy. Like I was plugged into something, like grabbing a live wire, Jim. But not in the shocking way you’d expect. More like waves of … stuff … going through you, shaking you all up, deep, like in your cells, like …
Elder could not go on; he just shook his head in bewilderment. For a moment, Kennedy gaped at his partner, normally such a strong, even-keeled man. Then again, he himself had seen something from down the slope; it had appeared in his field of vision for a fraction of an instant, but that flashed image had been retained; it looked for all the world like heavily filtered photographs Kennedy had seen of solar eclipses—a dense mass surrounded by a shimmering corona of light.
Now Kennedy followed the line of Elder’s gesture to a rock behind his left foot. He picked it up, turned it over, and examined it, a gray stone seemingly no different in appearance from any of the ten thousand others strewn about them.
This?
Yeah. I think I … I don’t know.
Jim … Howard? Do you copy, over? The radio link with Houston had returned.
Houston, Kennedy began, we have a prob—
Elder reached out and put his hand on Kennedy’s arm, stopping him from finishing his sentence. Their eyes met through their visors in silent understanding. They’d been exposed to something. Kennedy had caught a glimpse of it. Elder had been all but overwhelmed by it. But the event was not ongoing and that was the problem.
NASA had cut short several space walks during the earlier Gemini missions because astronauts floating in the void had exhibited symptoms similar to those of anoxia, what deep-sea divers call “the rapture of the deep”: disorientation, a feeling of detached well-being, hallucinations. Without evidence to support what they’d seen, the boys back in Houston might cut short their stay on the moon. Both men had spent their entire adult lives preparing for this single endeavor. They did not want to be accused of bugging out.
Come back? the mission commander called.
Jim’s feeling a little out of sorts, Kennedy said.
Jim? What’s going on?
I’m all right, Elder insisted, forcing himself to his feet. Just got a little … queasy there for a second.
There was a long pause, during which both astronauts stared down at moon rock 66095 in Kennedy’s glove.
Elder hesitated. Kennedy nodded. Rapid change in light, Elder said. Must be it.
We’re going to want to run a fall check on you when you get back to the module.
Roger, Elder said. But I’m good to go now.
You’re sure?
Elder took one last long look at moon rock 66095 before holding out his collection bag to Kennedy. He had already photographed and given the rock a number. The stone had to return to Earth or they would face intense questioning about its absence. Kennedy nodded, then dropped the rock into the bag.
Positive, Houston, Elder said. Absolutely positive.
Three months after his return to earth, however, James Elder’s behavior turned erratic. He sank into depression, suffered bouts of insomnia, and began to drink. One night he tried to break into the Lunar Sample Laboratory, where all rocks brought back from the moon are kept. He was drunk and belligerent and told NASA security officials that he alone had the right to possess the moon rocks he’d brought back from the Descartes Highlands. In response to the incident, NASA quietly placed Elder on administrative leave and demanded he seek psychiatric help if he wished to rejoin the space agency. He admitted in therapy that he was obsessed by the moon rocks he’d brought back to Earth and that he was haunted by nightmares that all took place on the dark side of the moon. A psychiatrist put Elder on antidepressants and then antipsychotic drugs, but they did not help. In early 1974, despondent and suffering from delusions, Elder committed suicide. An autopsy showed an inexplicable concentration of heavy metals in the cortex of the astronaut’s brain.
THIRTY TWO YEARS LATER …
JANUARY 12, 2004
1:32 A.M.
UNIVERSITY OF TENNESSEE
THE BRANCHES OF AN old, gnarled oak clacked against the clapboards of the small bungalow a mile south of campus. Inside, a world-famous physicist, Carson MacPherson, tossed and turned, unable to sleep. He was approaching fifty and worried constantly about his place in scientific history, more so that night because he had just returned early from a symposium in Geneva, where his most recent research paper had been greeted with a decided yawn.
The wind gusted and the slapping of the branches against the house became intolerable. In frustration MacPherson flipped on the light and got out of bed. A tall man, he had the gaunt build of a mountain climber, one of those who approaches life as a pinnacle to be conquered at all costs. His admirers and detractors alike described him as an imperious workaholic, an egocentric dictator of boundless ambition and drive. Two wives had left him because of these traits. He lived alone now and rather liked it that way. Wives, he had found, just got in the way of work
MacPherson thought about pouring himself a snifter of Courvoisier in hopes the liquor might calm the chatter in his head, but decided instead to take a run. Exercise always seemed to calm him when nothing else would.
The physicist padded over to his closet and pulled on a pair of tights, a turtleneck top, gloves, a windbreaker, and a knit cap. He went into the kitchen, got his keys, went out the front door, down the steps, and onto the sidewalk.
The night was cold, blustery, nearly moonless. Within minutes MacPherson had worked up a sweat and opened up his stride, increasing his pace. He turned onto the university grounds, where most students were still away on Christmas holiday. The campus was virtually empty at that time of night.
He passed the darkened student union, then ran on into the shadows cast by the streetlights and the giant football stadium that dominated the center of campus. MacPherson powered his way up a rise past the Gothic façade of the physics hall and skidded to a halt across the street from the annex building.
A weird, metallic wavering light shone from a window on the third floor. The annex’s second and third floor housed the Center for Applied Materials Research, a prestigious facility that MacPherson himself had cofounded and codirected the past nine years, a lab that had become increasingly important as the United States tried to reduce its reliance on foreign energy sources. MacPherson’s laboratory was one of many now engaged in the frantic search for superconductors, materials that would allow electricity to flow more efficiently and thus help alleviate that dependence.
MacPherson frowned at the odd light emanating from deep within the main laboratory. He’d never seen anything like it before and a pulse of fear passed through him. Then he found himself wondering what or who had produced such a light and he began jogging, then running, toward the annex, as if he were an ancient Greek sailor attracted by sirens. His mind raced with thoughts as he used his key to open the front door. A few of his colleagues and postgraduate assistants kept strange hours, but, ironically, due to recent budgetary restraints, he’d been forced to order them all out on leave until the following Monday morning.
The physicist entered the dark foyer, ascended three flights of stairs, then turned right down a dimly lit hallway. At the far end, MacPherson unlocked the door to his office and became aware of a vibrating hum echoing from within the main facility. He eased toward the bank of windows that overlooked the lab, a cavernous place strewn with benches, computers, and massive electrical sensors. At one of the benches, with his back to MacPherson, worked a figure of medium height and flabby build, wearing a welder’s hood and smock jeans, a red flannel shirt, and work boots. The hooded figure blocked MacPherson’s view of the source of the strangely beautiful quivering light that made the whole lab look like a photograph developed in silvertone.
Then the physicist’s focus jumped to a bank of computer sensors and data recorders laid out on the bench to the hooded figure’s left and right and he was seized with righteous anger. “What the fuck!” MacPherson fumed. He had been using the equipment himself on a promising experiment before his trip to Switzerland.
The physicist wrenched open the door to the laboratory and stomped down the metal staircase. As he crossed the cement floor, the hum that filled the room became a more insistent buzzing and the light surrounding the hooded figure was amplified. MacPherson threw up his arm to shield his eyes and stumbled into a trash can.
The figure at the bench spun around, froze, then slowly lifted the glass-faced hood to reveal a wild shock of dark brown hair above the chubby, acne-scarred features of a man in his late twenties. His cheeks were flushed red with excitement His eyes, however, were distrustful, wary, like those of a dog facing a man who’s whipped him before.
“Gregor!” MacPherson bellowed.
“D-Doctor,” the young man said. “You’re supposed to be in Gen-Geneva.”
“Dr. Swain and I gave strict orders that no work be done over the break!” MacPherson roared. “We’re on a tight leash financially. We can’t afford to be burning this kind of energy!”
“Yes, uh, yes, sir, I remember you saying that,” Gregor said, rubbing his hands together in a washing gesture, his brows tightly knitted. “And you know, I meant to, but m-my work was going so well I couldn’t tear myself away and—”
The young research assistant hesitated. MacPherson had turned his attention to the digital readings coursing across the computer screens and a flicker of puzzlement passed across his face.
“Something wrong sir?” Gregor said.
MacPherson thrust his hand toward the screens. “You took these sensors from my experiment without my permission and now you’ve screwed up the calibrations. Dr. Swain and I had them set perfectly before I left. Look what you’ve done, you blithering idiot!”
Gregor shook his head. “They’re ca-calibrated correctly. I’ve checked. About one hundred times.”
“Impossible!” MacPherson snapped. “Those readings defy—”
The physicist stopped in midsentence. The buzzing noise had ebbed to a hum and the quivering light emanating from behind Gregor had lost much of its force.
“Stand aside,” MacPherson
said.
At that, Gregor looked like he might throw up. “Please, don’t be angry, I—”
“Away from that bench. Now.”
Gregor hesitated, then shuffled to his left, staring down at the floor.
MacPherson’s jaw dropped. “My god!”
Moon rock 66095 sat atop a Plexiglas pedestal inside a cubicle of glass attached by clamp and hose to a tank of supercooled liquid hydrogen. The glass was completely surrounded by a matrix of thin electrical cables. The surface of the rock crackled with energy. Thin, tremulous fingers of electrical fire whipsawed off the surface of the rock like flare-ups of heated chrome.
“S-sorry,” Gregor said in a pleading tone. “I know you forbid me to request a lunar sample from Houston. But as you can see, it—”
The physicist cut him off with a sharp dismissive gesture as his attention jumped from the rock to the numbers flashing across the screen and back again. “You’re sure these sensors are working correctly?”
“Yes, sir.”
“What’s the temperature inside the case?”
“Fifty-six degrees above Fa-Fahrenheit.”
MacPherson reacted as if a mule had kicked him in the gut. “Fifty above?”
A triumphant smile appeared on Gregor’s doughy face and he began making petting gestures in the direction of the rock. “That’s what I was trying to tell you, sir. But it’s more than that, it seems to amplify—”
“Who else knows? Dr. Swain? His nephew? Any of the other assistants?”
Gregor shook his head. “Just me, sir.”
MacPherson tapped one finger to his lip, his eyes continuing to dart between the source of the light and the sensors. As he did so, his expression changed by degrees from one of awe to something more self-centered. Dr. Swain, the co-director of the laboratory, had no idea of what had occurred here. Neither did the other research assistants. Just this fool, Gregor. “How did you get the sample?” he demanded.
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