The Martian Pendant

by Patrick Taylor

  Together, they lifted the aft anchor, after undoing its lashings, and with a coordinated effort, they swung it toward the nearby pass. Their united effort brought the stern over just enough to be encouraging. At that point, the tide began to run toward the reef’s entry. They needed to cut the chain to the forward anchor, and when this was finally accomplished with a hacksaw from the toolkit, the bow came around in a wide arc on the incoming tide, almost reaching the pass into the calm lagoon. There was a rending crash as the swinging bow hit the jutting coral at the entry, the impact throwing the men into the surging water. Both were carried into the lagoon as the lifeboat quickly sank into the blue water outside, the churning surf dislodging its holed hull from the massive outcropping that had impaled it.

  NINETEEN

  Flying Back

  Diana was a celebrity when they docked at Guam, but wearing baggy dungarees, and with her unkempt hair, she looked and felt like the castaway she was. Courtesy of the Captain of the Jarvis, she was given privileges at the base PX, where she was able to buy replacements for the personal items she left on the sunken ship. In the meantime, her khaki shorts and shirt, underthings, and shoes, which she had rinsed and hung out in the sun, had quickly dried.

  Lunch was at the Officer’s Club, and after a long nap, she paid a visit to the admiring crew of the destroyer, again thanking her rescuers for having saved her. She then gave a brief description of her work with the hijacked alien material that was sent down with the ship. She was asked why her lifejacket failed to keep her head above the surface by the crewmember who had fished her out of the sea.

  “Ma’am, after we pulled you aboard, you wouldn’t part with that lifejacket, which had failed you. What was in it besides kapok? That stuff is supposed to give good flotation for way more than just three hours.”

  From her shoulder bag, she pulled out the fossil Martian jaw and the still-wrapped book and photos. “I saved this thing, and it almost killed me,” she said, waving the alien mandible. “How’s that for Martian gratitude?”

  After the laughter subsided, the sailor who had steered the rubber dingy stood there observing, “Ma’am, speaking of jawbones, with your luck, not even the biblical Samson swinging an ass’s jawbone could kill you. You must be lady luck herself!”

  Diana laughed at that, replying, “No, for me, Lady Luck was the Jarvis and her crew.”

  The next morning at breakfast, she was given a note by an enlisted man from the Base Adjutant. It seems that an Air Force plane was leaving for the West Coast at noon. Arrangements had been made to include her among the passengers if she wished.

  “Home!” She exclaimed to the waiting seaman. In her enthusiasm, giving him a quick hug, she excitedly told him, “Tell them yes, and many thanks!”

  The big plane was a four-engine C-54, fitted for freight rather than passengers, judging by the benches. There was one bench on either side, with all the hallmarks of having been installed just for that flight. There would be nothing luxurious on this hop, she realized, except for the anticipation of arriving back in the U.S. and seeing Danny again. Thinking back, she recalled her quarters on that freighter. Hardly first-class, either.

  A friendly crewman, who turned out to be the Navigator, gave her a hand up the steps. With a mischievous smile, he said, “Your first-class accommodations, Ma’am. The lavatory is just behind the flight deck there, and the galley is that thermos and brown bag on the right.” Seeing her look of disbelief, he added, “Lady, in the Air Force, class is always relative. If you don’t believe me, just take a look through that curtain past the benches. That’s tourist class, usually known as cargo.”

  As he showed her how to buckle her seat belt, he handed her a blanket. “You might not think staying warm will be a problem, but at 10,000 feet, where we’ll be flying, it can be cool enough for you to wrap yourself in this. Our first stop will be Wake Island, around 1,500 miles for our first leg. Then Midway, Honolulu, and finally San Francisco.”

  “Just like the China Clippers,” she offered.

  “Not quite,” he replied, “We better not set down in the water the way they did. It could get really wet.”

  Diana reflected once more on struggling to stay alive in the ocean, and said, “I’ve been there recently, no thanks!”

  Their conversation was ended when the idling engines were opened up one by one to test their magnetos. With a smart salute, he disappeared through the flight deck door, taking his seat behind the copilot, and buckling up. The takeoff run seemed longer than Guam was wide, but in no time the blue of the Pacific below could be seen from the single pair of windows. The four powerful engines created very little vibration, and after a half-hour, she wrapped herself in the blanket, and using its mate from the opposite bench as a cushion, lay down for a long nap. The first leg of the flight would take at least six hours, she figured. Sleep was the best way to speed up any plane ride.

  And so the flight, Spartan as it was in accommodations, progressed uneventfully. She had been through so much in the last year, and now all she wanted was to get back to normal, whatever that was. Exotic islands, even lovely Oahu, held no fascination for her.

  When they landed at Hickam Air Field outside Honolulu, she was able to obtain a telegraphic money order from Max for enough to buy warm clothes and airfare to Chicago from San Francisco. No more cargo planes for me, she thought.

  The first landfall was navigationally perfect, and, from the open door to the flight deck, she could see through the windshield the Golden Gate Bridge in the distance, glowing orange-gold in the setting sun. She could hardly control her tears of joy at the sight. It was the same feeling she had when they flew over the Statue of Liberty on their return flight from the Spanish dig. She was, after all, half-American.

  When they landed at Hamilton Field in Marin County, on the north shore of the Bay, she gathered her meager belongings and stiffly negotiated the steep steps to the concrete.

  Thanking the crew for the safe flight, and accepting with gratitude the GI raincoat they insisted she take, she got a cab for the trip into San Francisco. On the way, they passed through the charming little waterfront town of Sausalito, just north of the Golden Gate.

  “This is so pretty; I could be happy here,” she remarked.

  “Yeah,” the cabbie replied, “And it’s prettier up in those hills, what with the view of the whole Bay Area.”

  “How’s the weather here usually? I know San Francisco gets plenty of fog, but I just hate anywhere that gets really cold.”

  “It’s not bad, but didn’t you say you were headed for Chicago? It’s plenty cold in January there, and this year I hear is the coldest in the last fifty!”

  Despite the Air Force crew’s gift of the raincoat to cover her tropical khakis, she still hadn’t been able to get warm, and she began shivering at the thought of freezing weather. She got out at Union Square in the City, paid her fare, and headed across Geary to the White House Department Store. She was still cold, and it was just as well, since she was already motivated to get an outfit that would hold up to the frigid winds that howled off Lake Michigan.

  Wearing her chic new outfit, incongruously carrying her sea-bag, she took the bus to the airport. There was just time to hop the red-eye to Chicago. Although exhausted, she was able to sleep only fitfully during most of the flight. Finally she was shaken awake by the stewardess, announcing their arrival at Midway.

  In her sleepy confusion, Diana blurted out, “It can’t be! I’ve just come from there!” It took a minute for her to realize Midway Airport was what was meant, on Chicago’s South Side.

  Groggily getting off the plane, she remembered her precious bag in the overhead only after being jarred by the biting wind. After retrieving her bag, she made for the nearest coffee shop on the concourse. A strong brew was a necessity right then. It was only eight AM, much too early to call the Department at the University to talk to Max. When she was more than awake by virtue of a second cup of coffee an hour later, she called the Department off
ice. Myra answered, elated when she recognized Diana's voice. The enmity she had felt toward Diana was long gone after all they had endured together in Africa. When Max came on the phone, his amazement was evident; he assumed that she was still aboard the missing freighter. The Navy had not yet released news of its sinking.

  After he drove hurriedly across the South Side and arrived at the airport, she quickly spotted him and hailed him to a stop. He nearly stumbled over his own feet, sprinting to her and wrapping her in a celebratory bear hug. He was all questions, centering on the whereabouts of the ship, and the condition of the cargo they had worked so long to secure.

  She extricated herself from his embrace with some effort, saying breathlessly, “Thanks for coming, but slow down, Max. It’s too cold out here. I’ll fill you in on the details in the car.”

  During the drive to the University, she recounted what had happened to the ship and to her, from the time they put out of Dar-es-Salaam until she was picked up by the U.S.S. Jarvis.

  “My God, our entire shipment at the bottom of the Pacific? Please tell me, not all our fossil specimens!”

  “Well, no, not quite,” she replied. I did manage to save a mandible, my photo journal, and the Martian book. The rest of the one skeleton I packed is hidden on the second lifeboat, wherever it is. God only knows what happened to the craft. The last I saw, it was heading toward Ulithi, in the Caroline Island chain.”

  Max was silent as they drove the rest of the way. Turning onto South Woodlawn Avenue, he asked where she was staying, offering a nearby apartment that the Department leased to house their grad students.

  “They’re on another dig, and won’t need the flat for almost a year, probably. It’s quiet, and would be ideal for us to work on the paper about our findings.”

  “I’ll take it, Max, but forget about the two of us spending time together there in my bedroom. I think we can work together, but only in the Department office or the library, seated at a table.”

  When they entered the office, she received hugs of greeting from all those who had been at the dig with her. Everyone was curious about her story, and again she recounted the essentials of her odyssey. Opening her bag, she displayed the fossil mandible and her journal with the photos taken of the bones and Martian words that had been uncovered on walls and machinery. She enthusiastically showed the Martian book, pointing out the symbols that matched the print.

  One of the men who had done a lot of the sifting through the soil alongside the spaceship exclaimed, “Almost a Rosetta Stone!”

  “Exactly my impression,” Diana replied, “when at first I saw the two elements. But remember, that stone has one thing these don’t: Parallel Greek to match to the Egyptian.”

  At that point Max interjected, “Okay, gang, back to the grind. She and I have to get to work on this material. The Society is meeting here in two months. Maybe we can at least finish a preliminary paper by their deadline.” Then, turning to Diana, he said, “Bring your stuff to the library with me. There’s so much to talk about.”

  They spent an hour re-examining the fossil specimen, comparing it with the human skeleton hanging in the corner as well as similar specimens.

  “See,” she pointed out, “the mandibles match in every detail. Look at the condyles, and the anterior symphysis, forming a modern chin. The dentition is pure modern human, although the teeth are in much better shape than we see these days, especially in Britain.”

  “What you say is certainly correct, but that’ll be our very problem. To convince our colleagues in the field that the fossil is not really from one of our contemporaries, altered to appear a million years old. Remember Piltdown Man, ‘found’ in 1912? It was a jawbone then too, but of an orangutan, matched with a modern cranium. That hoax misled many of our profession until as recently as five years ago.”

  “I know, Max, but this mandible is mostly fossilized, attesting to its age. Sure, there’ll be doubt, but certainly we’ll be able to establish its existence in Africa before Neolithic times. The spaceship is in the field of lava flow from that volcano, and the part of the vessel not covered by basaltic rock from the volcano was almost totally encased in calcific depositions, analogous to stalagmites in limestone caves. Some method measuring the rate of decay of radioactivity in the volcanic rock, or dating the deposition of the lime salts, would be ideal.”

  “You always have been a visionary, Diana, thirty years ahead of your time. But there is a technique now that could show that your Martians got here at least fifty thousand years ago, somewhere in the Pleistocene age, using Bill Libby’s new carbon-14 dating method.”

  She replied, “I read his book, published when he was still here at Chicago in 1952. Carbon dating can be accurate only back that long, since carbon-14, upon which the method depends, decays to undetectable levels by that time. Still, we could place humans from that spaceship here before Cro-Magnon man, the earliest true Homo sapiens known until our discovery.”

  Turning the Martian fossil over, the professor said, “Even if mankind originated in Africa, wouldn’t that be expected? It would take time for a migration of primitive people to get so far into Northern Europe. And it’s a million years we’re talking about. That means that unless someone comes up with a method of assay based on the decay of some other natural isotope with a longer half-life, we’ll have to rely on geologic evidence from the strata of rock where our discovery was found. But you know how broken and jumbled that stuff is everywhere around the dig. What’s more, even if the rock were still arranged according to geologic time, because of the ship’s position in the fault itself, assigning an age to its time of landing there might be anybody’s guess.”

  “We must find some other proof, then. How long does it take for bones to fossilize? The finding of the advanced propulsion and metallurgic technology may even hurt our theory. Perhaps solving the mystery of their language will help; that’s another of my projects.”

  He ended the conference then, countering emphatically, “Our projects.” Then he said

  dismissively, “Get going on all that, but remember, any publications that come out of this Department must carry my name as first author.”

  They parted, both angry, after she had the last word. “Max, I almost drowned preserving this stuff, and I’ll be damned if I’ll take a back seat to anyone. I’m still on loan from Buell, and you know that they and Big Oil are the source of the grant money for all this. I was assured of first authorship on anything I produced, even before any of their own participating scientists, and yes, even before you. Obviously, that also extends to my doctoral dissertation, which will cover all this!”

  * * *

  Ballard, the geologist-metallurgist, had flown with the rest to Chicago, and then, parting company, continued on a flight to LA. With Diana and Olszewski, he had built the prototype cutting torch for the Impervium, which made up the hull of the spaceship. Attempts to melt the fragments sent home earlier had met with failure, due to the material vaporizing, leaving no molten substance to handle, or to use for welding. It had been only after capturing the volatilized substance in a closed chamber that the first step in analyzing the makeup of the material was achieved. Using X-ray spectrographic methods, characterization of it as a composite became possible.

  Although the ultramicroscopic structure still remained uncertain, the results suggested that it consisted of carbon nanofibers interwoven somehow with a tantalum4/hafnium carbide crystalline matrix. It was calculated that the melting point would be 7,500 degrees Fahrenheit, far higher than tungsten at 6,192 degrees, and almost as high as carbon alone. But rather than actually melting, as with carbon, the Impervium underwent sublimation, burning off as a vapor instead. Attempts to condense the gas in the vacuum chamber where it was collected were totally unsuccessful until Ballard arrived. He repeated the work done by the combined departments of Buell and Caltech, predictably duplicating their failed results. However, it wasn’t until he employed electrolysis, under low temperature and pressure, that anything po
sitive was achieved. Using those techniques, a minute deposition of solid material accumulated on the electrodes. The limited availability led to further difficulty. It was soon found, however, that the higher the pressure and the lower the temperature, the greater the deposition.

  Unfortunately, separation of the individual elements did little to further the understanding of the complexities of the Martian material. Attempts to synthesize the composite from the isolated metals and carbon also failed. The few fragments found at the dig could be welded together by using the electrolyzed material, but the strength of the union was poor, cracking under stress due to brittleness. At that point, funding was withdrawn and the project was shelved until further technical advances might warrant its resurrection.

  Work on unlocking the secrets of the propulsion unit by using the detailed photos that had been sent with the Impervium fragments was also put on the back burner after attempts to find a method for strongly welding the metallocarbon composite failed. It might be possible to build a model engine from the photographs, but the risk of leaks from a nuclear reaction, without the means to repair them, was deemed too dangerous.

  * * *

  As Diana set to work on her paleoanthropological paper, she intended a straightforward comparison of her fossil jawbone with a modern-day specimen. It didn’t take long to review the literature on comparative identification, establishing the validity of her methods. Certainly, great strides in the field had been made on the basis of less solid research. Her slides would at least clarify that the specimens were comparable. She would back that with photographs taken of the intact Martian skeleton, still in its pod, showing its characteristic features to be identical to Homo sapiens.

  But she realized that Max was right. The lack of adequate isotopic dating methods and of geologic uniformity at the site forced her to limit the presentation’s scope. Establishing her fossil examples as true Homo sapiens still wouldn’t absolutely prove her theory that a million-year-old landing of Martians gave rise to modern humans. That conclusion would depend on her resolving problems she hadn’t yet solved.