by Terry Mixon
He made his way over to it. The remains of a number of tables were scatted across the open area. Piles of strange looking leaves and debris covered everything. A stiff breeze blew everything around in little eddies. No one had been here in a long, long time.
It only took a few minutes to record everything with his suit camera. He grabbed some organic debris and put it into a sample bag. Then he returned to the room where his team waited.
“That wasn’t what I expected,” he said. “Not at all. This transport system can obviously cross incredible distances. There was no telling where that system was.”
“Congrats, Boss,” Leann Branson, his commo specialist, said. “You’re the first human being to leave the solar system and explore an alien world. Too bad you didn’t have some prepared remarks.”
He laughed. That hadn’t worked out so well for him last time.
“Also,” she continued, “I figured out what you did wrong. You transposed two of the numbers. See?”
He looked at the controls more carefully. The alien numbers weren’t natural to him, yet. He’d made a rookie mistake. One that led to the greatest discovery in human exploration.
Wasn’t that how science worked? Someone tried something, had an unexpected result, or made a simple mistake, and something tremendous happened. He’d take the lucky find.
“Twenty numbers. How many possible combinations is that?” he asked. A lot, he suspected. Millions. Maybe billions.
One of the scientists used a calculator. “2.4 quintillion.”
He frowned. “I can’t count that high. Break it down for me.”
“That’s 2.4 million trillion possible combinations,” the woman said. “That’s more than the number of stars in our galaxy by quite a bit. Which is only about 400 billion, by the way.”
“What the hell would they need that many possibilities for?” Leann asked incredulously.
He shrugged. “Aliens. Who can understand them? Maybe they just didn’t want to be short sighted. Like the moron who didn’t leave enough digits for the years to roll over on computers at the millennium. When it was only a few decades away. Not smart.”
“Wasn’t that the same loser that thought 640 kilobytes was all the memory a computer would ever need?” Leann asked. “Wow. Talk about getting it wrong.”
“I’m not sure those were the same losers,” he said. “Could they really have that kind of need? That looked like a scenic restaurant view, but there was no restaurant. They might need a ton of these tunnels in their civilization, like phone numbers or IP addresses.”
Leann looked mulish. “How could they stop two people from calling the same destination? A busy signal? Something doesn’t sound right.”
“We’ll have time to figure it out.” He checked his timer. Only a minute to go before Sandra opened up the arch. He’d best try the correct number. Being a bit more careful this time, he entered the correct code.
The arch opened a tunnel and he was relieved to see Sandra standing there beside the forklift.
“You took your sweet time,” she said. “I was starting to get worried.”
“I dialed a wrong number. Let’s see if we can get the other portals to dial it for us.”
They’d experimented with the controls enough to discover how to send a code to each of the three available arches. One of them seemed broken, but the second worked fine.
He left the one to the room with his people open. Hopefully, there wouldn’t be any power issues.
Harry started to enter the code combination, but stopped. “This goes to a different location. One with an atmosphere of its own. Helmet on, Sandra. It might not be healthy.”
The rest of the team was suited, of course. Since he and Sandra had already been exposed to the room they’d found, she hadn’t bothered to helmet up.
It only took a minute for her to lock her helmet on. Then he finished entering the code and hit the activation button.
The second arch lit up and opened a quantum tunnel to the beach he’d just explored.
“Holy shit,” Sandra muttered. “That’s not Earth.”
“Not with two suns,” he agreed. “I brought some of the plant life back in a sample bag. I accidentally transposed two numbers. God only knows where it is. Or what it was.”
She turned to him and shook her head. “How damned big is this thing we’ve stumbled into? I thought ships were hot stuff, but this is a game changer. It literally opens up the whole universe.”
He nodded. “And it’s a two-way street. If someone out there has the right codes, they could pop up here. We know there are bases of some kind scattered all around the solar system. These things could connect them all. Hell, Freedom Express might have some, too.”
“Then why even have a ship like that? This doesn’t make sense.”
“That’s what happens when you don’t know all the facts. I can see possible reasons why someone with access to quantum tunnels like these might want to get between point A and point B without someone else tracking them. They were fighting a war of some kind.”
She shook her head again. “This is too weird. It reminds me of some old science fiction show I watched once. Star something.”
“Stargate,” he said. “A classic. They had a couple movies and several television shows. I can sort of see some similarity to that. Fiction mimicking reality, I guess. Or vice versa. Let’s hope we don’t have to fight any ancient Egyptian gods with super weapons.
“Personally, I associate this more with something like The City on the Edge of Forever from Star Trek. Without the time travel, of course.”
He shut down the tunnel to the beach and handed the samples and codes off to someone who’d be staying behind. “We need to start a database of destinations by code. We know the Mars base code for first arch. We should get the code for this one. Let’s switch the tunnel to the first location over to it.”
Once he did that, they had both arches’ codes. He made sure every member of the team had a copy. Not the best idea, but they didn’t have time to memorize them yet. That would be the next step. If they didn’t have a copy with them, an enemy couldn’t take it from them so easily. They had to protect humanity.
“There has to be a better way of accessing these things,” Sandra said as she walked with him into the compartment with their people. “Some of these arches have controls, but others don’t. Surely, the forklift only works on the ones at the Mars base. What if someone got stuck on that beach? How did they open it from that side?”
“Damned if I know. Maybe some kind of controller? We’d have to find one before we would know for sure.”
Once everyone was safely inside the compartment, he killed the tunnel. They were alone on whatever this was. Somewhere in space.
They’d look around for two hours and then return. That left plenty of time to get a better idea of where they were, but didn’t put them at extended risk.
“Hey,” Sandra said, looking out the wide window into space. “I can see something.”
Harry stepped beside her. “What?”
“There’s a shadow over to the right. Something is blocking the stars.”
He killed his suit lights. “Everyone, lights off.”
The room went spookily dark. It took a few minutes for his eyes to adjust, but he finally saw what she’d seen. There was an oval of dark material there. A slender, curved rod came away from it and led towards whatever this was that they were in.
No. Not a rod. An arm, like they had on Liberty Station to hold the mining platforms away from the hull of the ship. Their view of the stars seemed to be rotating slowly and that thing kept exact pace with the changes.
It was part of whatever they were on. Ship, station, something else. Whatever this thing was, it was big. One more mystery left behind by the people that had watched and mingled with them a thousand years ago.
“Okay, people,” he said, turning his suit light back on. “Let’s move out. Keep together and don’t touch anything without telling me fi
rst.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Clayton, Mick, and his people made their way back to camp without a problem. Penny was still out with her team and no one knew precisely where they’d gotten off to.
He told the pilot to go start his preflight inspection while the men broke camp. Mick and he went off to round up Penny and the rest after he grabbed his pack.
He expected to find them close by, but that instinct proved wrong. They finally found them on another wing of the ridge, far above their level in the valley. Some shouting gave them the idea that he wanted to join them and they directed him to a steep, narrow path.
Penny met him at the top of the climb beside a tall rock outcropping. “We found something promising.”
“It will have to wait,” he said. “The US military is shadowing us. We spotted a drone. It’s time to get out of here.”
A shout from below pulled his attention. One glance toward the plateau told him it was already too late. Two men in mottled camouflage had the pilot under the command of their rifles. A look at the camp showed more soldiers herding the men together.
It wouldn’t be long before they were on their way to his location. If they weren’t already.
The area below them was still clear. He eyed the large rocks overhanging the narrow path. “We might be able to push those over and delay the inevitable, I suppose. Mick?”
“Hang on.”
The young man was lying on the ground near the edge of the ridge. He had a rifle with a scope to his shoulder. Clayton hadn’t seen him grab it.
“Don’t shoot them,” Clayton said firmly. “Those men are just following orders.”
The man gave him a frown. “I’m not shooting at them. Now, if you’ll give me a minute of peace, I might be able to give us some breathing room.”
Clayton held up his hands. “Pardon me, then. Carry on.” Under other circumstances, this would be amusing.
Mick lined up his shot and squeezed the trigger. The loud blast rolled off the hills around them. Down below, men shouted, but didn’t fire on them. Clayton backed away from the edge anyway. Why take chances?
“Got it!” the young man shouted with a grin. “How much does a drone cost, anyway?”
“A lot of money, probably. If we get out of this, I might buy you one. You took it down, I assume?”
“It went right down into the ground,” Mick confirmed as he backed away from the edge of the ridge, rose to his feet, and slung his rifle. “Unless they had two, we’re not in direct sight of them anymore. And no drone, please. A fast red car would be fine,” he quipped with an impish expression.
“I’ll see what I can do,” Clayton said. “Let’s push some of these rocks over and make getting to us more difficult.”
The two men got behind the pile of rock at the top of the path and gave it their all. It didn’t budge a centimeter. In the end, it took Penny and the men with her to tip the rocks over.
Just in the nick of time, it turned out. He saw a squad of men round the base of the ridge just as the rocks obliterated the steep path. One of them stood there, looking up at Clayton as the others rushed forward to examine the destruction. A man in subdued civilian clothes came out to join him.
The uniformed man sketched a salute toward them and shouted up. “Clayton Rodgers, on behalf of the United States of America, I’m instructing you to surrender peacefully. No one needs to get hurt.”
“And if I choose to do no such thing?” he shouted back.
“Then I’ll come up there and take you with whatever force proves necessary. I can’t promise no one will get hurt that way. I know one of you has a rifle and I won’t take chances.
“We’ve already captured your aircraft and there’s a jammer blocking any communication. This only ends one way. I’ll leave the other people in peace. Be reasonable.”
Clayton pulled out his sat phone. There was no signal. He didn’t think they could be blocked. Score one for the US intelligence services.
It was probably the doing of the other man down there. CIA, Clayton wagered. Or maybe NSA.
“We’ll see how things play out,” Clayton shouted down. “We’re not going to shoot at you, so there’s no need to do anything hasty.”
“Like shooting down a drone?” the civilian yelled. “Do you know how much those things cost?”
“Mick Bird,” the officer said. “You’re the one with the rifle, right? If you say this is over, then it’s over. You and your men will not be harmed. You have my word as an officer and a gentleman. End this before someone makes a mistake that can’t be walked back.”
“Sorry,” Mick yelled. “I don’t work for you, Mate. The boys and me are loyal to our boss. You want him? Come up and get him.”
And Clayton was supremely confident that they would do exactly that as soon as they could.
* * * * *
Queen sat down at the break room table. They’d cuffed Doctor Ethan Wagner to the chair across from him. That wasn’t strictly necessary, but he thought it would put the man into a cooperative frame of mind.
Wagner looked rumpled and more than a bit frightened. Good. That would smooth matters considerably.
“Doctor Wagner, I’m Josh Queen. You can think of me as your best friend right now because you have the opportunity to help me and help yourself at the same time. Cooperate and we’ll forget that you were working for a snake like Kathleen Bennett. It will be as if your treasonous actions never happened. Do you understand?”
The man nodded convulsively.
“And just so we’re clear,” Queen said genially, “if I find out you’ve misled me or held something back, I’ll lock you beneath the highest security prison I can find. You’ll spend your time in solitary. Maybe you’ll never see another human being for the rest of your life. I hope the choices before you are as black and white as I can make them. Choose once, and choose wisely.”
“I’ll tell you whatever you want to know,” Wagner said. “This is just a job. I didn’t know anything about treason.”
“Very good. Agent Cabot, please remove the good doctor’s cuffs. I’m sure he won’t cause me any problems. Will you, Doctor?”
The man shook his head vigorously.
She stepped forward, removed the cuffs, and resumed her place against the wall.
“Let’s start at the beginning, Doctor. When did you first hear about this spaceship?”
“Shortly before Mrs. Bennett delivered it. It came in a cargo freighter. A helicopter lifted it out in the dead of night and brought it here. We landed it out back on a mobile platform and brought it inside.”
“She just brought it right in and customs enforcement didn’t find it?” He looked at Cabot. “Find out who signed off on that ship. They’re dirty.”
She nodded and made a note on her phone.
“I’m told that someone on your staff purged the computers. Now I’m going to have to pull the data out of you one bit at a time. If I find out that you’ve left any stone unturned in your report to me, the aforementioned bad things will happen. What have you found?”
The scientist licked his lips. “Well, I suppose the big find is the power supply. A little blue cube with the output of a nuclear reactor. More, probably. We weren’t able to stress it enough to determine the maximum throughput. That was going to wait until we had more equipment.”
“I’ve seen it. How can it hold that much energy?”
“We’re still discussing the merits of that. Whatever it is, it’s been able to hold power for a millennium and still have a lot of kick left.”
Queen frowned. “What’s your best theory?”
“There’s a theory that even empty space has a sea of energy, both positive and negative, that cancels one another out. If someone could tap that sort of thing, a cube of that size would be able to liberate enough energy to boil the oceans off this planet.”
“That sounds dangerous.”
“It might be. We have no way of knowing. All I can tell you is that every test we’ve gi
ven it shows it’s stable. Obviously the designers didn’t think it was something to be overly concerned about.”
He considered that and slowly nodded. “Perhaps you’re right. What can you tell me about the designers?”
“Very little,” the scientist admitted. “We recovered three bodies from the wrecked ship. They were in very tough body bags. One female and two males. One of the males was a boy in his teens and the DNA results indicate the other two were his parents. He even had a cell phone, or the equivalent. Carbon dating and other tests lead us to believe they died about a thousand years ago.”
“So they were human? Fully human?”
“The DNA doesn’t lie. I can tell you these people came from somewhere in central Europe, probably Italy. They were modern humans that could have walked the streets today and not drawn a second glance.”
That was disturbing. “Do you think that’s likely? Could we have them among us?”
Wagner shrugged. “Anything is possible, I suppose. If this ship came to Earth, odds are that others did, as well. Perhaps their ancestors are out there right now. Some secret society of those who remember the glory days of their people through stories whispered in the dead of night.
“Seriously, why be so paranoid? Surely, if something like that were true, we’d have heard something by now. No one is that good at keeping a secret.”
Queen’s phone rang. “Perhaps you would like some water, Doctor?”
“That would be very welcome.”
He gestured for Agent Cabot to handle that, stepped into the hall, and answered his phone. The Caller ID indicated it was his assistant. “Queen.”
“A SEAL team has Clayton Rogers pinned down on a ridge in the back hills of New Zealand. They’re working on securing him now.”
He smiled. “Excellent!”
“Only to a point. We lost the drone watching over the scene. One of them shot it down.”
“That doesn’t matter, as long as our people get out with Rogers. I’ll be back in the office shortly.”
He disconnected the call and put his phone away. Things were coming together It wouldn’t be long before he had everything well in hand. He’d take the dead boy’s cell phone with him to have an independent lab look it over. Just to be certain Wagner wasn’t lying to him.
