by Byron Craft
Coming within the circle of the vehicles, he made out a dark spot surrounding the shiny metal object on the ground, and there was movement. The sun’s glare made it difficult to see clearly. It was an irregular black area with a silvery post sticking out of it at an angle, no two posts with a piece of beige linen flapping between them. Ironwood fumbled in his top pocket, pulled out a pair of clip on sunglasses and attached them to his spectacles. The glare was cut in half. The two silver posts became aluminum, and they projected up a couple of feet out of a hole in the ground. It was a ladder and wrapped around the rungs, were empty sand bags, probably put there to keep from burning your hands on the sun-baked aluminum. The Mojave summers could be brutal. One of the scientists from Ironwood’s team had gotten a nasty burn on his hand when he leaned on the hood of a car that had been parked in the direct sun all day.
The Professor stopped abruptly in front of the ladder and peered into the opening. It was no more than four feet across. It was dark inside the hole, and while his eyes adjusted to the gloom, it appeared bottomless. Cool air drifted up from below. It was stale, but when he inhaled it, it had a sweet musty quality that reached inside his head and whispered, “I am old. . . So very old.”
“Watch out Ironwood,” snapped Eastwater. The professor turned sharply to see the Captain marching his way.
“We don’t know if it’s safe yet. I wouldn’t get too close. I’m having some of the men shore up the ceiling around the hole just in case.”
“Ceiling?” mumbled the Professor momentarily confused. Had he been dreaming a second ago? Collecting his thoughts, he faced Eastwater. “What do you mean, ceiling? I don’t understand.”
“I am afraid we don’t at the moment either,” he replied indicating Hawkins and Stream on his right. “We, of course, just got here as well.”
Ironwood hated his smugness. He wished they were alone so he could knock him on his arrogant ass.
“. . . but,” Eastwater continued, “it seems that one of our EA’s has found herself a pretty big sinkhole.”
“EA?” Ironwood puzzled out loud, almost afraid to ask.
“An Engineering Aid Professor,” interrupted the admiral apparently recognizing the tension once again building up between his two project heads. They were all perspiring profusely as the summer desert sun cooked them. Their tempers could easily boil along with the rise in body heat. “Her name is Gilhooley. She was out here with some of our geologists taking seismograph readings when she fell in.”
“Excuse me, Admiral,” pleaded a voice from behind Hawkins. It was the young man that had been talking on the truck’s radio. Ironwood noticed for the first time the Seabee insignia over his shirt pocket. He also noticed that he was wearing a sidearm. A peculiar piece of hardware for an engineer. “Lieutenant Riggs, sir, First Division Seabees. Request permission to speak, sir?”
“Go ahead,” ordered Hawkins putting on a friendly face in response to the young officer’s nervous tension and looking grateful for the interruption. “Please be at ease.”
“Aye, aye, sir. Well, it is the hole, sir. It’s kind of strange. You see, it is not a hole in the conventional sense of a sinkhole or a ground fault disturbance. Nor was it caused by water erosion from some ancient stream or river bed that may have existed here a long time ago.”
“Well, what is it then?” piped in Eastwater.
“It’s a tunnel, sir,” he said hesitating shifting his weight from his right foot to his left, “and it doesn’t look like it was naturally formed.”
“You mean man made, Lieutenant?” asked Hawkins.
“Yes Admiral, I guess so.”
“Well that isn’t so unusual Riggs,” snapped Eastwater. “These hills around here are honeycombed with caves and mine shafts from the old mining days. Some of them go back over a hundred years.”
“Yes Captain, I know. But like you said, those mines were dug into the side of mountain faces. This cave is beneath a flat land area, and besides, the walls inside of those old mines are jagged rock from all of the blasting and chiseling that went on to dig them. The walls in this one are smooth.”
“Smooth?” interjected Ironwood, his curiosity peaking.
“Yes sir,” replied Riggs to the stranger in tropical wool. “Smooth like poured concrete.”
There was an uncomfortable silence. The admiral cleared his throat. “Well . . . let’s have a look-see, Riggs.” Hawkins turned towards the jagged hole in the earth.
“It’s about five meters deep, sir,” volunteered Riggs. “About the same in width and runs approximately the length of a football field.”
“Doesn’t it lead anywhere?” asked Captain Eastwater with genuine interest. Ironwood thought he detected the hint of disappointment in his voice.
“Not that we can tell, sir. Gilhooley had already explored it from end to end by the time I got here. Besides a little rubble, there isn’t much to see.”
“Gilhooley?” exclaimed Hawkins. “Didn’t you have her medevacked out of here?”
“Uh, no, sir,” squirmed Riggs. “Her injury appears only superficial. A slight sprain, she says, to her left ankle.”
“That goes against procedure Lieutenant. You are not a medical man. An officer’s first duty is to the health and welfare of all of his personnel.”
“Aye, aye, sir, but Gilhooley is a bit . . . well, stubborn, sir.”
Eastwater bent closer to the hole and laid a hand on the ladder. “It is probably just an old sewage excavation. The Indians that once inhabited this area were pretty clever. Little Petroglyph Canyon lies only a short distance from here. There you can see hundreds of intricately detailed rock drawings made by them thousands of years ago. They’re probably responsible for this.”
“This is not a sewer Captain Eastwater,” echoed a solemn voice unexpectedly from out of the hole.
Eastwater froze. Visibly shaken by the strange voice, he looked down at the opening. Ironwood watched as Eastwater’s eyes went wide with fear.
A round metal head with goggles for eyes and protruding antenna glistened in the sunlight. A small compressed air tank hung down the back.
Eastwater backed away quickly and grabbed Riggs’ right arm, “Lieutenant, your gun,” he ordered in a harsh whisper.
The weird alien thing rose from the earthly cavity. The creature halted halfway out of the hole and rocked back and forth shaking with laughter. Placing a pair of humanoid hands on top of its “skull” the thing yanked its “head” off with a quick jerk. Alan Ward squinted in the afternoon sun. “I didn’t mean to startle you,” Alan lied. “I thought you’d like to see this,” he smiled tapping the helmet.
Captain Eastwater’s expression transformed into pure rage. Ironwood, suppressing a grin, moved closer and peered over his shoulder. “What’s the matter Eastwater? Did you think he was E.T.?”
“Ward,” he roared, but was stopped from saying anything further when Admiral Hawkins, recognizing the makings of a fight, stepped between them, his large form casting a shadow over Alan.
“Mr. Ward, what in hell’s name are you doing here? This is a classified project. How did you get into the base?”
Alan was not a tall man, to begin with but standing halfway out of a hole in the ground next to Hawkins made him look like a Munchkin. Ironwood privately bet Alan felt like he was addressing Paul Bunyan.
“The supervising civilian geologist here is a friend of mine Admiral. I got in with a pass from the Maturango Museum.”
Ironwood knew that the million plus square acres of the Naval Weapons Center surrounded a great concentration of Indian rock drawings. Fragments of old missiles and wrecks of drone planes, evidence of over seven-decades of weapons testing, lay scattered near the basalt cliffs and pecked on these cliffs are drawings of ancient man hunting the big horn sheep with weapons of his time, the spear thrower or atlatl and the bow and arrow. A survey of these sites by the local museum, as well as amateur archaeologists, has been permitted ever since the late 1960’s.
The adm
iral removed his hat and mopped his forehead with a handkerchief. A much needed afternoon breeze played with his gray hair. “Once again I am faced with having to deal with you, Mr. Ward. I’ll spare you just a little more time but your reasons for being here better be sound.”
“Fair enough Admiral. I believe you’ll find them down here,” Alan cocked his head to one side indicating the tunnel below. “Whether this is an ancient sewer or some other relic of the past I’m sure you will agree that it will warrant further investigation before you start black-topping the desert.”
Eastwater, still angry, looked like he was going to say something but Hawkins was quicker, “Proceed, Mr. Ward; I would like to see what is holding up a four-hundred-million-dollar project, please proceed.”
“Excuse me Admiral,” interrupted Ironwood, “but I’d like to know something first. What is that thing Alan?” pointing to the helmet.
“Oh,” chuckled Alan, “This is AIS, Audio Infrared Scanner. You can see exceptionally well in the dark with it and this filter,” he continued, pointing to the mouth area, “screens out harmful gasses and replaces them with oxygen from this tank. The antenna here, with a series of wireless relays, allows for radio communication at great depths beneath the earth’s surface. But the icing on the cake is the locator,” he continued, fidgeting with a red capsule-shaped object fastened to the base of the antennae mount. “There is a small radioactive isotope in here that, although shielded from the wearer of the helmet, can be pinpointed with the proper equipment topside. It could be a lifesaver if someone is lost or trapped underground.”
Alan’s mood was infectious. He was on an adrenal high from his victorious confrontation with Eastwater and Hawkins. Ironwood couldn’t help from being caught up in his enthusiasm. “But all of this state-of-the-art stuff,” he almost laughed, “it is so unlike you. How did you come by it?”
“Oh, it is not mine,” smiled Alan. “Willett has been developing it for the miners around here. It is all his creation.”
“Who’s Willett?”
“Marinus Willett. He is the supervising geologist I mentioned earlier. Come on,” he urged, going down the ladder. “I’ll give you the ten cent tour.”
***
Ironwood started down the ladder after his old friend, hesitated and then looked up. Congressman Stream, who had been quiet up until then, decided to make Eastwater’s and Hawkins’ lives miserable. Fearing news of a “historical find” leaking to the media and disrupting the project, he started to berate the two senior officers. “We’ve had to put up with the EPA breathing down our necks about the sage grouse and desert tortoise and now this!” he shouted.
The congressman’s three-piece blue suit that fit him so well that morning had been soaked with perspiration and hung on him like damp rags. The desert heat was beginning to take its toll on the politician from California, and it wasn’t showing well. Ironwood found it hard to feel sympathy for the congressman.
When he had stepped foot on the tunnel floor, two things immediately struck him. The first was the sudden change in temperature. It was cool, and his wet shirt felt like cold sheet metal against his back. The second was the floor. He had expected a gritty or gravel strewn surface. But, the tunnel floor was instead smooth with a thick layer of what appeared like fine sand on top. Shuffling his feet like a child making lines in the snow he discovered that, except for an isolated area that had become littered when the desert floor above fell in, the rest of the floor was covered with several inches of dust not sand. Glancing up from his discovery, he spied a man in a white lab coat with an equally white goatee and mustache leaning against a portable specimen table chatting with Alan. Behind Alan was a pretty blonde-haired woman in NWU’s. Ironwood guessed that she must be Gilhooley. He detected the faint scent of Estee’ Lauder White Linen. He felt a tug at his heart. It had been his wife’s favorite. He wondered how Ms. Gilhooley could work all morning in the hot sun, fall through a hole in the ground, and then go spelunking for the rest of the afternoon and still smell so good.
Across the top of the table were a battery-powered lamp, a microscope, and several rock fragments. The lamp, the only source of light the explorers had, barely illuminated beyond their circle and made it difficult to guess the tunnel’s dimensions.
“So far every tile appears to be uniform in size,” said the man in the lab coat.
“Fantastic,” cheered Alan. “They’ll have to sit up and take notice now. I’ve been waiting for this moment for a long time.”
“Excuse me,” Ironwood broke in. “You mentioned tiles?”
“Yes, I did,” answered lab coat. “But I’m afraid I haven’t had the pleasure.”
“Oh, my fault, I’m sorry,” interrupted Alan waving his hands as if to clear the air of smoke. “Willett, this is an old friend of mine and an ex-colleague from Miskatonic University, Thomas Ironwood. Ironwood, this is Marinus Willett.”
“Doctor Willett,” replied Ironwood offering a friendly hand. “Alan was showing us your handiwork. That AIS is a lot to be proud of sir.”
“Thank you Professor, but I only work on it in my spare time. The mining industry is in a big slump right now. Most of the mines around here are closed down, but they’ll come full swing again. The price of ore is going up, and young men will once again risk their lives down there in those shafts. Hopefully, I’ll have the bugs worked out of A.I.S. by then.”
Ironwood thought Willett’s reply sounded more like a speech. A bit rehearsed. Arrogance seemed to run wild in the desert.
“My true love, however, is physics. Geology is just a sideline,” continued Willett.
“He’s modest Thomas,” added Alan. “Willett holds three degrees.”
“And you Professor,” countered Willett feigning an air of superiority. “I believe you work at Mike Lab, don’t you? Chemical lasers, isn’t it?”
“Only in their application with solar lasers. I leave the rest of the field wide open to everyone else.”
Willett guffawed with a laugh that seemed forced and then apparently recalling Ironwood’s original question changed the subject. “Some of the rocks don’t appear to be rocks at all. Some of them seem to be wall tiles. Some,” he mused, “I am not sure what they were used for.”
“Used? You mean such as Native-American artifacts?” Ironwood could hear Stream grunting his way down the ladder. The whole gang would be coming up behind him soon. He did not turn around.
“No, I don’t think so. They look precision made. Here, take a look for yourself.” Willett adjusted the lamp to shine directly onto the tabletop. When he turned, Ironwood noticed a white haired ponytail dangling halfway down Willet’s back almost rendered invisible against the lab coat. One by one Dr. Willet quickly arranged a half a dozen thin flat stones the size of playing cards across the plastic surface of the table as if he was beginning a game of solitaire. But unlike playing cards, these were five sided, notched on the bottom and a half an inch thick. “These I have picked at random from off of the floor. They must have gotten there when Ms. Gilhooley fell through.”
Gwen smiled, “I am always dropping into places uninvited.”
Ironwood smiled. He was glad to see someone with a sense of humor for a change. “They look identical,” he said returning his gaze to the table, “But earlier the lieutenant said the walls were smooth. Tiles wouldn’t necessarily produce a smooth surface.”
“Look here Professor,” interrupted Gilhooley pulling a flashlight from her hip pocket and shining it on the wall. A section of the masonry, about three feet across, had been wiped clean, probably by the young petty officer when she was exploring the tunnel. “You can barely see the joint lines between the tiles. Take a closer look.”
Ironwood moved closer to the wall. The joints between the tiles were almost as thin as a human hair. It made the surface appear to be smooth and continuous.
“To achieve that,” continued Gilhooley with authority, “they would have to be machined, which means that sophisticated engineering had to t
ake place to keep them straight and connected.” She paused to allow this to penetrate. “This was not done by any prehistoric man.”
Ironwood, a bit incredulous, turned and looked at Gwen.
“Ms. Gilhooley is a civil engineer,” volunteered Willett, evidently sensing Ironwood’s disbelief.
“Please don’t turn out to be a chauvinist Professor. You look so adorable in tweed.”
Ironwood had thought that he was beyond the age of blushing, but he felt his face turn a shade of red all the same. Thankful that it wasn’t visible in the dim light he forced a smile and said, “It’s tropical wool. It was a knee jerk reaction I am afraid, but your line of reasoning does seem flawless. You have both done a lot of detective work in the short time you have been down here.”
“Not really,” countered Willett. “This is just surface info. Geology 101 stuff.”
“With a little basic engineering thrown in,” added Gilhooley.
“What we really could use,” said Willett, “is an archeologist.”
Captain Eastwater’s voice rang out from the other end of the tunnel. “We don’t need additional personnel from the outside. We will keep this strictly Navy.”
Ironwood had expected him to be at his elbow and was taken back by the distance of his voice. Turning to his right and peering beyond the reach of the dim yellow lamplight he was attracted to movement in the shadows. One end of the tunnel erupted with the white light of an LED lantern. Momentarily blinded, he held up a hand against the glare. Eastwater adjusted the brightness. Ironwood’s vision restored, only a retinal after image of the brilliance remained.
