The Elicon

by Rob Roth

  “Well sir, I was watching the helicopter hovering there while DeMarco was no doubt talking to you. Suddenly that spacecraft appeared out of nowhere. And I don’t mean it came in from somewhere else very quickly. It literally seemed to pop into existence above DeMarco, or it can move so quickly I didn’t see it until it appeared right above them. The ship reminded me of a blob of mercury you’d see in an old mercury switch. Also, the surface didn’t seem solid like our aircraft, but more ‘fluid’... almost alive… I don’t exactly know how to describe it, but it shimmered or shifted like flowing mercury.”

  “I wonder if that could have been some sort of field around the ship, or maybe a disturbance in the air around it,” Severs wondered aloud. “And you mentioned you also saw some red lights…?”

  “Yes. The red lights were positioned on maybe the bottom quarter of the egg-shaped craft, or even lower — close to the bottom surface, which was only slightly flattened. Like I said, it was shaped like what a blob of mercury would look like if it was sitting on a surface and the bottom flattened a bit. The red lights moved in a circle around the ship. I don’t mean like most sequences of lights you see, which are in a fixed position and just light up in a pattern that looks like they are circling. Those red lights I think were literally moving on the surface faster and faster until the red beam shot out at the Helicopter. When the 'copter exploded, I was in shock. Gromit rocked from that explosion, and Vickers and I were temporarily blinded by the light of the blast, since we had been looking up into a fairly dark sky. I couldn’t believe what had just happened!”

  Severs understood. This challenged all their logic and training as skeptics of reports just like this.

  “I understand, Davis. When I saw DeMarco’s helicopter disappear from radar, and you gave us your report, everyone standing by me was in shock. To lose a team like that so suddenly and needlessly is hard to imagine. But for me to hear your radio report that it was an extraterrestrial spaceship… I don’t doubt you, but I think we need to go collect that artifact to be sure. Go on, what else happened?”

  “It felt like… one of those dreams where you are suddenly standing naked in public, if you know what I mean, Captain. Vickers and I were in shock and totally exposed, so we shut everything off except the radio, which I turned down as low as I could. My heart was pounding."

  “That was very quick thinking, Davis, given what you had just seen. It may be that action in part is what saved you both.”

  “Maybe…” Davis paused, considering that possibility. Then he continued.

  “After downing the helicopter, the beam scanned the helicopter wreckage. Then it scanned the inside the canyon. My guess is that is where the object of their search was located, because it stayed focused on a particular section of the canyon... probably that strange depression you mentioned… for quite a while. They either retrieved it somehow, or actually I’m thinking they determined it wasn’t there, because after that it seemed like they spun the ship or the beam around suddenly and turned their sights on us, as if to see if we had it.”

  “Did anything unusual happen when they were scanning Gromit?”

  “Nothing we could detect. I don’t know why they decided to leave us alone, but the beam just moved on. Maybe their scanner could tell we didn’t have what they wanted. After that, they lowered that artifact or whatever it was downward inside the cone of the beam. It came down slowly, like they were being very careful not to damage it. Once it was down, they wasted no time bugging out. The beam snapped off, and they just popped out of existence, as far as I could tell.”

  Severs could try to convince himself the craft was not extraterrestrial, but a beam that blows up helicopters or lowers objects was too much of a stretch. Either Davis was lying, or Davis was telling the truth and his assumption about the ship’s origin was correct.

  Severs nodded as Davis finished up his report, and then said, “Thanks Davis for giving me a sense of what it was like for you and Vickers. Witnessing a tragic accident like that is always very difficult.” The sympathy in Captain Severs’ voice was evident.

  “Begging your pardon, sir. This did not look like an accident to me. That ship struck the helicopter like a viper would a mouse. It was attacking quickly and efficiently like the killer instinct of a predator. It wanted whatever it was looking for, and the helicopter was merely in the way. One thing that bothers me, though. If it was looking for some object, why blow up the helicopter first, and then scan to see if it had it? Seems like they risked it being destroyed in the explosion, unless they thought it would withstand their attack.”

  TUESDAY NIGHT - HOTEL

  “So, this is the meteorite?” Dooley asked that evening as he sat and hefted the nine-pound rock in one hand while Jace was pouring drinks for them inside his luxury suite the conference had provided for them at the hotel. Jace and Dooley had spent the last hour recounting their experiences of the day and were both up to speed on the events that transpired for each of them.

  “It’s the one that presumably caused the impact crater,” Jace answered, handing Dooley a drink. Dooley was positioned in a nice soft chair by the fireplace, while Jace sat facing him in another chair also by the fire.

  “I have a bag full of other fragments, but they are all different from this one. Those are iron-nickel meteorites, whereas the one in your hand appears to be non-metallic. I would guess it’s an igneous rock, but I can’t be sure without further testing. It’s unbelievably hard, I know that. My rock pick does nothing to it. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  Dooley took a nice slow sip, clearly enjoying the drink and the relaxing feeling that was spreading over him. But then his look got more serious.

  “Speaking of something you’ve never seen before, Professor, what do you make of that floating circle of light? Could it have been something like ball lightning?”

  “I don’t think so, Dooley. There were no clouds out that night. Anyway, it didn’t move. It just appeared out of nowhere, almost like… a window opening. I know, that sounds crazy. It hovered there for a while, and then vanished without making a sound. Here, I’ve got some pictures of it,” Jace said as he showed the images to Dooley on the camera.

  They scanned through the images, then Jace decided to zoom in on the clearest picture, and almost dropped the camera.

  “Dooley look at this! What do you see?”

  Dooley took the camera and stared at it for almost a minute, squinting his eyes and tilting the camera at slightly different angles.

  “It almost looks like a face is inside the light… maybe a woman…? It could be longish hair next to a face. But it could also be a trick of the lighting or something, couldn’t it? That can’t really be a face, can it?” The struggle to find some reasonable explanation was evident in Dooley’s voice.

  “We need to be certain, Dooley. I have an acquaintance who teaches at Cornell University, Professor Nicolai Petrov, who teaches Video and Image Processing. I once collaborated with him on analyzing images taken on Mars for the JPL. I can upload the RAW image files to him and see if he can enhance the image for us. I’ll do that first thing in the morning. Then, I think I should make a trip to Northern Arizona University. They have a Geology lab there, and hopefully I can convince them to let me use their equipment to analyze the meteorite. I want to see why it is so hard.”

  “Sounds like a plan, Professor. Want me to come along with you?”

  “While I’m doing that, I think you should get to know Miss Allison Trask a bit better. See if you can join her at the Barringer conference for the next two days. Stay very close to her. Find out what you can. I’m quite sure this is an assignment you will not mind too much.”

  “If duty calls, Professor, you know you can count on me, no matter how unpleasant the assignment,” Dooley said with a smile.

  TUESDAY NIGHT - DESERT

  Before too long Captain Severs and Davis spotted the helicopter wreckage from their front seat location as lead truck of the convoy. Although the flames had mos
tly abated into smaller brush fires, smoke was still rising from several spots amidst the carnage which was located several yards from the edge of the canyon.

  Severs had Davis drive close to the wreckage and park, and the other two trucks joined to form a triangle by stopping roughly thirty feet behind Severs to the left and right of his truck. Everyone got out and gathered within the central area between the trucks, to await the captain’s orders.

  “Johnson, I want your team to utilize the body bags and gather the fallen soldiers. Be respectful and please honor the dead as your own family. Miller, your team should perform a quick survey of the surrounding area and then set up a security perimeter about fifty yards out. Davis and I will oversee the immediate canyon area and collect some equipment Davis left by the canyon. Lopez, please take three men and grab the harness and scaling equipment we brought. I believe the meteorite may have landed in the canyon. Everyone perform your duties and once the canyon team finishes their investigation and ascends from the canyon, we will depart with what we have collected. Let’s try to get everything done within ninety minutes.”

  After Captain Severs gave the perfunctory orders, he and Davis quickly and unobtrusively made their way to the edge of the canyon, carrying a Geiger-counter to where the artifact was still lying undisturbed. The rest of his team began their assigned duties.

  The army truck headlights were left turned on to provide some light on both the wreckage and the canyon and Severs and Davis each carried thousand lumen flashlights, providing plenty of light as they approached the artifact. The shadows cast by rock and scattered wreckage invoked the imagery of an unnatural off-world scene in Sever’s mind, as their flashlights guided them toward their goal.

  The artifact was dark and appeared to be metallic, shaped somewhat like a headless octopus lying on the ground with five webbed short legs sticking out, making it somewhat star shaped. The center section was slightly thicker than the webbed legs and completely flat on top. Severs estimated it was about eighteen inches in diameter, with a scorched look to it where the edges were lighter in color but darkened in shading approaching the center.

  “There doesn’t seem to be any radiation coming from it,” Davis noted while looking at the Geiger-counter.

  Severs pulled on a pair of thick gloves and nodded for Davis to do the same. Then they each got on one side of it and picked it up. For its size it seemed heavy — about forty pounds. They carried it over to their truck and set it on the bed.

  Staring at it, Severs frowned and said, “You were right about them leaving an artifact, Davis. This looks like nothing I’ve ever seen before. I assume you were also right about there being a spaceship. How in the world do we know what the visitors want us to do with this? Presumably the ship sent this down for us to get. It’s not as if the darn thing comes with instructions.”

  “Maybe the instructions are on the back,” Davis said with a slight laugh.

  “Actually, that’s not a bad idea. The top is flat. Let’s at least flip it over and have a look at the underside.”

  Together, they picked it up, turned it over, and set it on its back.

  “Well I’ll be... Davis, you were right. I think the instructions are pretty obvious.”

  Right in the center of the artifact was a clear indentation that was shaped exactly like a human hand. Covering the artifact up with a blanket, Severs and Davis moved it up to the front of the truck with them.

  The rest of the ninety minutes seemed to pass quickly. Johnson’s team collected the fallen in the body bags and placed them in the covered bed of the truck. Miller’s survey team had discovered dark pebbles and other fragments in their reconnaissance of the area, and it didn’t take them long to determine they were likely iron-nickel fragments from the meteor. Captain Severs directed them to collect some of the larger pebbles so they could analyze them back at TUFO, but he told the team to leave the majority in place.

  Lopez and the men that scaled down the canyon were able to take several photographs and delivered their conclusions to Captain Severs.

  “About forty feet from the top, it appears that a small meteorite hit the side of the canyon wall, producing a twenty-foot-wide crater. However, at the vertex of the parabola where one would expect to find some buried meteorite fragments, it appears someone dug something out,” Lopez reported.

  “Are you sure about that, Lopez?” Captain Severs asked, since Davis had not seen anything that indicated anyone had left the ship, and there had not been enough time for a scaling and extraction effort.

  “The area around the vertex had clearly been chiseled, and we found two more chiseled areas for toe grips within the crater. Then, we noticed to the left of the crater going back up the canyon wall were other areas that were chiseled, presumably for hand or toe holds. Finally, there is evidence of tire tracks near our climbing site. We took some photos of those and made tread measurements. Someone most definitely came down to the crater, took something out, and climbed back up. Then they headed off in a south-eastern direction in their vehicle. My guess is that these could be the people who took out our helicopter. Maybe it wasn't an accident after all.”

  For now, Severs was willing to let Lopez believe the person taking the meteorite may have taken down the helicopter. That a spaceship destroyed the helicopter would be kept under wraps, Severs decided. But someone was here. Someone took whatever produced that crater. And the beacon came on before the spaceship ever arrived, so it had to relate to the meteor, not the spaceship. What the hell is going on?

  “Excellent work, team,” Severs stated as he clutched his hand in a fist for emphasis. “Every one of you has performed well tonight, and we’ve gathered a lot of good intel. I think we can assume someone was here before DeMarco and extracted a meteorite. Perhaps they were afraid of being thwarted by the military and decided to blow our helicopter out of the sky, but that is just speculation at this point. Miller, your team will stay here and protect the crash site. Our truck will take back the meteorite fragments you collected. I am radioing TUFO and requesting an additional twenty men. When they arrive, set up a perimeter around this whole area so no one can get within a mile of this site. Now team, let’s pack it up and get back to TUFO.”

  THREE

  WEDNESDAY MORNING - HOTEL

  Jace and Dooley got up early in the morning, and Jace uploaded the RAW image files from his camera. He fired a note off to Nicolai Petrov at Cornell asking for his help in enhancing the image — in particular the woman in the ‘fiery mirror’ as Jace called it. Then he and Dooley went downstairs for a quick breakfast in their hotel. The conference began at 8 am and Dooley wanted to get there a bit early so he could ‘run into’ Allison Trask when she arrived and join her for the day. Jace had a little more time now as the lab at NAU wouldn’t be available until after 9 am. So, while Dooley had to settle for a rushed continental breakfast, frowning at Jace as he rushed out the door, Jace ordered the hotel special and enjoyed a big breakfast of steak and eggs.

  Dooley stood hanging around inside the doors of the auditorium where the Barringer conference was being hosted, casually keeping an eye out for Allison. He had picked up a coffee just outside the auditorium courtesy of a portable coffee bar provided for the attendees and was sipping it while he waited.

  The auditorium was comfortable with theater-style seating, sloping downward toward a large raised stage up front. Two main aisles divided the seating into three sections, and since the room was slightly rounded, it made the sections somewhat pie-shaped, narrowing as they approached the stage.

  Spotting Allison as she came through the wide doors at the entrance, Dooley waved beaming with pleasure he approached her.

  “Hey Allison. It's great to see you here! It turns out that Dr. Larkin had some business at Northern Arizona University today, so I decided to catch some of the speakers this morning at the conference.”

  “Hi Dooley. I see you kept your promise to join me. I like a mate true to his word,” Allison said with a warm smile on he
r face. “Your Dr. Larkin certainly seems to keep himself busy. I hope you can stay for the afternoon as well. They have a good lineup of speakers.”

  Dooley glanced at Allison’s name tag and said, “Dr. Allison Andersen Trask. Now I don’t recall you mentioning to me you were a Dr.” he said with a slightly humorous smile.

  “I didn’t want you to run like a ‘roo on our first encounter. It tends to scare some people if they think I’m an intellectual, which I’m certainly not, so I rarely go by that title. And if you start calling me Dr. Trask, I will be most disappointed. Allie is just fine, if you please,” she said smiling back.

  “I’m good with that. So, Allie, I noticed your name tag also says ‘Panterra Enterprises’. Do you work for them?”

  “Yes, I’m a planetary geologist like your own Dr. Larkin, although he’s a household name, being a learned professor who’s written numerous textbooks on the subject. I’m afraid I’m just a researcher stuck in a lab most of the time.”

  “Isn’t Panterra Enterprises the group that searches star systems hoping to find Earth-like planets in our galaxy, or some such thing?”

  “Why yes. I’m impressed you’ve heard of us.”

  “Well Jace… I mean, Dr. Larkin, has mentioned them before. There aren’t too many people out there doing that type of research and being a planetary geologist, I imagine Dr. Larkin is pretty much familiar with most of them.”

  After a second or two Dooley added, “Hey, come to think of it, I believe Panterra was the group that recovered the meteorite that fell in the outback last year. Jace and I happened to be in Australia very near there at the same time on business. Unfortunately, due to an emergency we had just left for the U.S. less than an hour before that meteorite strike. Had we still been there, I’m sure Jace would have dragged my… me... out to that site as fast as he could. He still fusses about missing that opportunity by literally only minutes and was envious Panterra recovered the meteorite. That’s no doubt where I heard the name.”