She was in the process of doing a loop scan, the dishes slowly rotating to get a clear radio picture of a section of sky, when the master warning light bolted to the beam running across the front of the control room snapped on and a high-pitched tone screeched.
At those two simultaneous occurrences, Brillon dropped his Coke, the can bouncing on the carpeted floor, dark fluid pouring out unnoticed as he stared at the flashing warning light. Compton was more practical. She immediately hit the record button on the console in front of her, which turned on every piece of monitoring machinery in the control center. Then she focused her attention on the large screen to her left, which had a series of electronic grid lines laid over the section of star map the radio scopes were currently aimed at.
“Off center, move quadrants. Left four, up two,” she ordered.
Brillon shook his head, trying to get back in reality, and Compton had to repeat the order until he sat down at another console and began realigning the radio telescopes to be more on line with the incoming message.
Compton spun her chair to the left and looked at another screen. A jumbled mass of letters and numbers filled the entire display. “We’ve got data coming in,” she said in a surprisingly calm voice. “Real data,” she added, meaning it was not random radio waves generated by astral phenomena.
“Sweet Jesus,” Brillon muttered, realizing what this meant. Contact. Not first contact as they had always dreamed—that had occurred with the discovery of the Airlia artifacts—but this was first live contact, beside which even those earlier discoveries paled.
Compton checked another display. “Damn, it’s a strong signal. Very strong.” She glanced over at her partner. “Are you dead on yet?”
“I’ve centered up as best I can,” Brillon reported, “but it’s a very tight transmission beam and I can’t seem to center.”
“How do you make a radio transmission on a beam?” Compton asked. “They’re not directional.”
Brillon didn’t have time to answer the hypothetical question as he continued to work. Compton quickly turned to another computer and accessed the secure Department of Defense Satellite Internet Link. She typed in the two addresses that she had long ago memorized but never used. As soon as she got a line and a prompt, she typed.
>NSA AND STAAR THIS IS DSCC-10. WE’VE GOT A TRANSMISSION AT 235 DEGREES AND AN ARC OF PLUS 60 FROM ZERO.
Compton cursed to herself as she read the message. She quickly typed in more information.
>NSA AND STAAR THIS IS DSCC-10. TRANSMISSION IS NOT RANDOM.
Compton sat back in the chair and waited while replies came back.
Compton shook her head in irritation at the STAAR questions.
>THIS IS DSCC-10. WE ARE WORKING SOURCE AND DESTINATION. WE ARE RECORDING ALL DATA. TRANSMISSION IS VERY POWERFUL. READS 10 BY ON SCALE. HOWEVER THE BEAM IS DIRECTIONAL.
“Do you have a lock yet?” she asked Brillon.
“I’ve got a source lock!” Brillon yelled. “I’m sending it to your computer. Nothing yet on destination except it’s west and south of here. This system wasn’t designed to pinpoint a destination here on Earth for a transmission.”
Compton accessed another program on her computer and put that box next to the one that was her dialogue with STAAR and the NSA. She transferred the source numbers to the dialogue box and transmitted them.
Compton glanced at the other screen. More numbers and letters were still coming in.
>THIS IS DSCC-10. I WILL FORWARD OUR TAPES AND COMPUTER DATA ONCE SOURCE STOPS TRANSMITTING. WE’RE STILL DOWNLOADING.
>THIS IS NSA. ARE YOU SECURE?
Compton glanced over at Brillon. He was concentrating on what he was doing. Compton slid her hand under the edge of her desk. She felt the special switch the NSA had installed and flipped it on. It shut the center down from the outside world by severing all links except the one she was using.
>THIS IS DSCC-10. WE ARE SECURE.
>ROGER DSCC-10. THIS IS NSA. WE ARE DIVERTING RESOURCES IN YOUR DIRECTION TO VALIDATE AND ENSURE YOUR SECURITY.
“I can’t get the destination,” Brillon said. “Somewhere southwest a long way.” “Easter Island.” Compton said it out loud before she could catch herself. “Jesus!” Brillon said. “It’s the answer to the guardian.”
“Yeah, but I can’t make any sense—” Compton began, but she was interrupted by a new message from STAAR.
Brillon was now looking over her shoulder. “That’s because it’s coming from a spaceship, assholes,” he muttered. “It has to, to be that strong. It’s not coming from outside the solar system. It wouldn’t be that strong,” he repeated, “nor could they keep it directional over a distance of light-years.” He frowned as something occurred to him. “Who the heck is STAAR?”
“NSA,” Compton said, although she doubted very much that the pale blond man and STAAR really were part of the NSA. Why else, then, would she be sending the data to both of them?
“NSA? We work for the university.”
“Not right now we don’t,” Compton said. “Check the numbers,” she ordered.
Brillon grumbled something, but he sat down at his computer and did as she ordered. “Numbers are verified,” he announced. “Whatever is transmitting is along that line.” He cleared his screen and brought up a computer display of the solar system. “And I’ll bet you my paycheck it’s coming from a spaceship heading into our solar system on that trajectory. We’ve got to contact the university!” he said. “Professor Klint will be—”
“We can’t contact anyone,” Compton said. She was speaking from memory, seeing the pale blond-haired man in her mind. “This data and this facility are now both classified and closed by National Security Directive forty-nine dash twenty-seven dash alpha.”
“Bullshit,” Brillon said, reaching for the phone. He turned to her when he couldn’t get a dial tone. “What did you do?”
“We’re sealed off to the outside world, except for the NSA and STAAR,” she said.
“Screw you!” Brillon said. “You sold out to the government.” He stood, grabbing his jacket. “I’ll drive and call it in on a pay phone, then. You people aren’t going to pull another Majestic!”
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Compton said in a surprisingly calm voice. “Why not?” Brillon was tensed, his body leaning toward hers. “Are you going to stop me?”
“No.”
“Then screw you and your national security directive.”
“I won’t stop you, but I think they will.” She pointed to the ceiling. They could both hear the dull thud of helicopter rotor blades coming closer. “Shit!” Brillon threw his car keys down.
Compton turned back to her computer and pulled up Brillon’s display and looked at it for a moment before typing in a few commands. In a second an electronic green line reached out from the small dot representing Earth. It speared through space and intersected dead-on with a red circle.
“Goddamn,” Compton muttered. She looked up at Brillon. “Besides owing me your life, you also owe me your paycheck. The message isn’t coming from a spaceship. It’s coming from Mars!”
CHAPTER 3
The screen of the laptop was difficult to read even though it was in the tent’s shade, guarded from the fierce sunlight beating down on the rim of the volcano on Easter Island. Kelly Reynolds’s fingers flew over the keys, her eyes slightly unfocused as her mind worked over the thoughts, fears, and questions she was trying to translate into the black-and-white of letters on screen so that readers back in the United States would understand the significance of what had been discovered here. Her quick tri
p to the mainland for Johnny’s funeral had disconcerted her, as she saw that the major import of all that had happened seemed to be mixed up with the search for culprits over the entire Majestic-12 operation and fear over the message the Guardian had sent out into space.
The discovery of the alien computer known as the “guardian” hidden here on Easter Island at least five thousand years ago, has been the most significant and most disappointing discovery in recorded human history. Significant because it conclusively tells us we are, or at least were, not alone in the universe. Disappointing because we can no longer access the wealth of information the computer contains. Like a hacker breaking into a top-of-the-line computer, we can read the file names but we don’t have the code words needed to open those files and read the advanced secrets they contain. The guardian shut down less than forty-eight hours after transmitting a message up into the skies, toward whom or where we do not know.
The secret to the bouncers’ drive system lies just a few inches away. The details of the mothership’s interstellar engine lie just as near and just as far. The technology of the guardian computer is guarded with equal jealousy by the machine. Control of the foo fighters also rests inside the guardian. The answer to the mystery of where the Airlia, as the alien race called itself, came from and exactly why they were here on our planet also lies within.
We know some basics, the barest sketch of what happened five thousand years ago when the alien commander Aspasia decided to get rid of all trace of his people’s, the Airlia’s, presence here on Earth to save the planet from their mortal enemies, who we now know are called the Kortad. Upon making that decision, Aspasia had to fight rebels among his own people who did not wish to go quietly into the night and in doing so destroyed the land that in Earth legend we have called Atlantis, where the Airlia colony was home-based. By doing this he protected the natural development of the human race and for that we owe him a large debt of gratitude.
But beyond those few facts there are so many unanswered questions:
–What happened to Aspasia and the other Airlia?
–Why was an Airlia atomic weapon left hidden in the depths of the Great Pyramid of Giza? Indeed, as we now suspect, were the pyramids built as a space beacon by the Airlia?
–What really happened to Atlantis, site of the Airlia colony? What terrible weapon did Aspasia use to destroy it?
–And, perhaps most importantly, to whom was the transmission directed that the guardian made four days ago when it was uncovered? And what did it say?
–And how do we turn the guardian back on?
Kelly Reynolds frowned at that last line. Her finger paused over the delete key. There were many who felt that no attempt should be made to access the guardian. Those people were the ones who looked to the skies full of fear of what the guardian might have called toward the Earth. In the last few days since the computer had been uncovered nothing had happened, but that had not allayed the fears of the Isolationists, as the media were calling them, but rather left them to stew in what was becoming a cauldron of paranoia. The United Nations had taken over the entire problem and there were demands from isolationist groups in many countries to pull out of the UN and not to support the UNAOC, the United Nations Alien Oversight Committee.
Screw them, Kelly decided. It was more than likely that the message had gone to no one, since the Airlia outpost on Earth had been abandoned over five millennia ago. For all anyone knew, the Airlia’s home planet, wherever that was, might have been wiped out by the Kortad, who might have become extinct themselves, their knowledge of the Earth returning to the ether.
As vocal as the isolationists were, there was another movement just as keen to gain the new technology and information held by the guardian, and they were pressing UNAOC to go forward. Dubbed the progressives, they believed the alien machine held answers for the multitude of complex problems the human race faced.
There was even a very strong argument made by the progressives to fly the mothership, something that Reynolds and her comrades had raced against time to stop the Majestic-12 Committee in Area 51 from doing. At least by finding the guardian, they had discovered the reason the massive mothership shouldn’t be flown: the interstellar drive, once activated, could be detected by the Kortad and traced back to Earth, which, according to records they’d uncovered, would lead to Earth’s destruction. That is, if the Kortad still existed, not a likely possibility in the opinion of the progressives.
Practically everyone on Earth had an opinion about what should be done with the alien artifacts, but the control of the guardian computer and all the technology the United States has had kept hidden over the years at Area 51 in the Nevada desert outside of Nellis Air Force Base had been ceded to the Alien Oversight Committee, since this issue clearly transcended national boundaries. The bouncers, nine disk-shaped craft that operated inside of Earth’s atmosphere, and the mothership had finally been opened to public scrutiny and international inspection after decades of secrecy.
Kelly typed on.
Ultimately it comes down to two key questions, one looking back and the other forward :
What is the truth of Earth’s history now that we know an alien outpost was established on our planet ten thousand years ago and disappeared over five thousand years ago?
What is our future now that we have uncovered artifacts from those aliens, one of which has been activated and has sent a message, and what do we do with a large craft capable of interstellar flight?
Should humanity reach for the stars before its natural time, and if we do, who—or what—is waiting out there for us? Or has the decision of first live contact been taken out of our hands by the message the guardian sent and are other interstellar craft like the mothership already racing through space, coming toward us in reply? And who is piloting those ships if they are coming? Peace-loving Airlia or the Kortad bent on destruction?
Kelly Reynolds stopped typing as a shadow filled the doorway to the army-issue GP medium tent that had been set aside for the press. Since the guardian had ceased contact, there had been little to report in the last two days. Kelly had been surprised this morning, when she’d arrived at the airfield, at how quickly the number of media people on the island had dropped. Most of the media’s focus was now on Area 51, recording the Air Force flying the bouncers and wandering through the massive bulk of the mothership on guided tours of equipment Majestic-12 had jealously guarded for so many years.
Kelly smiled when she recognized the person entering. Peter Nabinger was the man who had made contact with the guardian and received from it the information about what had happened five thousand years ago. He was also the foremost translator of the Airlia high rune language, traces of which could be found at various ancient sites all over the globe, and had sent Kelly and her comrades on the right path to finding the guardian hidden under the volcano on Easter Island, arriving just before the Majestic-12 forces.
Nabinger was over six feet tall and heavyset. He had a thick black beard below his wire-rimmed glasses. When he spoke, his thick accent showed his origins and employer, the Brooklyn Museum, where he was the head of archaeology. Kelly enjoyed his company and his unique take on things.
It was amusing, Nabinger often said, that people had always thought that first “contact” with an alien race would be done by astronauts or radio astronomers, but few people had ever considered that the most likely evidence of alien life would come in the form of the archaeological discovery of alien artifacts left here on Earth. Nabinger had argued long and hard that it was much more likely that Earth had been visited sometime in its millions of years of history rather than right now in the present and that those visitors could have left some form of evidence of their visit. Of course, Majestic-12, flying the bouncers out at Area 51 for decades, had fueled the UFO hysteria that Earth was currently being visited by aliens and directed attention away from more likely sources of contact.
“Hey, Kelly,” Nabinger greeted her with a hug. “When did you get back?”
>
“This morning. I feel like I’ve been in the air forever.” Kelly herself was short, just topping five feet, but she was large; not fat, but big boned. She had thick gray hair that she kept tied to the rear with a bright ribbon. Her skin was red and peeling from exposure to the harsh South Pacific sun. “I heard about you getting booted by the guardian.”
“The whole world’s heard,” Nabinger said, sitting down on a folding chair. “Looks like you’re going to have this tent all to yourself soon. We’ve suddenly become rather boring here.”
“The major networks and CNN will keep a stringer here indefinitely,” Kelly said. “They don’t want to get caught flatfooted if the guardian does come back on-line. But the smaller outlets can’t afford putting out this much money for nothing. They’ve filed all the stories they could dredge up on this island and taken all the shots of the guardian. It costs a lot to keep someone out here doing nothing, and they can get their feed off those of us who are here. I’m syndicated now in over sixty papers.”
That was a far cry, Kelly knew, from where she had been just two weeks ago, when she’d been struggling to sell articles to any paper or magazine that would pay. But being part of the group that had uncovered the secrets of Area 51 and the guardian here on Easter Island had certainly bolstered her career, a thought that brought back an image of Johnny Simmons’s casket.
Nabinger caught the look on her face. “How did it go?”
“The funeral was a media circus. I don’t think the real feelings have caught up with me yet. And I’m not sure I want them to right now. I have too much to do. I owe Johnny that. He wouldn’t want me to sit around crying when I could be hitting sixty papers with this”—she pointed at her laptop.
Nabinger nodded. “I understand.”
“So,” Kelly said, taking a deep breath. She forced a smile. “So. Since I have an exclusive with the man himself, why don’t you tell me what’s going on?”
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