Odyssey Rising

by Best, Michael T.

  Neither Doctor Starling nor any of the other executive members of the panel answered the question. They were scientists first and foremost and they refused to provide a guess on such a potentially momentous discovery. Despite centuries of exploration and conjecture and the musings of poets, astronomers and biologists alike, life of any shape or size had never been found anywhere except on Earth.

  And even though Theo’s Final Exam had been cut short, he figured he had passed with flying colors. The primary color just happened to be a surprising bone white.

  CHAPTER 3

  GREETINGS & SALUTATIONS

  Down on GidX7’s surface, the Wet Willy probe took off into the dust and debris of the planet’s atmosphere. In a little under an hour, if atmospheric conditions cooperated, the probe would return to the starboard docking area where the entire crew was ready to view perhaps the most anticipated discovery in space history.

  Theo, Sam and Ravi made their way through the hallway to one of the starboard ladders that led down to the bottom floor of the shuttle.

  “Do you know Wet Willy’s ability to return to Odyssey is one of its key next-gen features,” Ravi was saying, “and actually, it is its most distinguishing feature.”

  “I know,” Theo said.

  “For its one thing to see probe images on a computer screen and it’s another to touch and feel those samples an hour later in the lab. Did you know it can make the return flight with up to ten pounds of samples?”

  “Yeah, I know,” Theo said. “What do you think I’ve been studying for two years?”

  “There’s plenty of room for some unidentified calcium phosphorous objects and a few ounces of the planet’s soil. It’s quite amazing, actually,” Ravi kept talking.

  “I know.”

  “Don’t you know what all of this means?” Ravi asked.

  “Not yet,” Theo said.

  “This might be some kind of false positive,” Sam said, “that’s what your father said.”

  “You saw them. I saw them. Everyone saw them. They were bones,” Ravi said.

  “I’ll believe it when I see it,” Theo said.

  “Me too,” Sam added.

  When Theo jumped off the last rung, Ellie Lloyd walked toward the prep room.

  She was athletically fit and seventeen years old like her classmates in the summer program. She had her long raven hair pulled into a tight ponytail.

  Sam smiled and held up his best mid-century ancient digital camera. “Pretty on up and smile those nice chompers, cause we got us a party going on. Yo-ho!”

  “So Ellie, you heard the one about the asteroid and the green belt?” Ravi asked.

  “No, and I don’t think I want to,” Ellie answered. “So what’s up? I hear you found something miraculous and surprising and it’s heading up here.”

  “Five bones are on their way up to Odyssey,” Ravi said.

  “Really? Cool. This is crazy wild,” Ellie said.

  Theo smiled at Ellie. “So, I guess I told you so.”

  “What?”

  “Guys make all the important discoveries,” Theo said.

  “I was going to say good job, but now I just want to punch you,” Ellie said.

  “You really can’t take a joke,” Theo said.

  “Maybe because you can’t tell one,” Ellie said.

  “Your Dad will dissect and analyze and theorize,” Sam added.

  “It’s what he does best,” Ravi added.

  “Drive everyone crazy,” Theo said.

  “Maybe, but just maybe he and the Big Brains will confirm that you really did find a bunch of bones,” Ravi said.

  “And maybe he won’t,” Theo said.

  “It is highly probable that something once lived down there on GidX7,” Ellie said.

  “And maybe, just maybe it’s still down there. For thousands of years, human beings have looked up at the stars,” Ravi added. “We’ve always been thinking, wondering, hoping, praying”

  And now we know. I hope they come in peace.”

  Within about two minutes, all thirty of Odyssey’s crewmembers had heard the news. Most were already heading to the lower level.

  As the four classmates turned the corner and headed to the far end of the hallway, they were greeted by the Siberian Husky. The dog ran straight for Theo and sniffed at Theo’s shoes, slithering his tongue all over it.

  “Hi Harry. Hi there buddy. Hi,” Theo said as he ran his fingers through his dog’s fine gray coat of fur as the dog.

  “Harry Wolf, you are a real son of a gun,” Ravi said as he bent down to the husky’s eye level and the dog nearly kissed him on the lips. Harry Wolf was an energetic, friendly pain in the rear and as much as Theo and Ravi tried to train the dog to be obedient to their commands, the dog did whatever he wanted.

  Sam backed away from Harry Wolf as he tried to fend off the dog’s advances.

  “Man, can’t you get this thing to stop being a slob?”

  “He just likes you,” Ravi said. “Why, I really don’t know.”

  Sam glared down at Ravi. “Mutant, I have the access codes to the waste expulsion system and I am strongly considering using them. Understand?”

  “You wouldn’t dare,” Ravi said.

  “Sure, I would.”

  “Okay, okay,” Theo said. “Will you two children focus on the important subject of the day?”

  With Harry Wolf in tow, they walked toward the docking area.

  At the doorway, there was a pale young man, a muscle bound blonde haired, crew cut Swede named Larson Jensen. He looked like he was standing guard. He was. There was a taser hanging from his belt.

  Ravi and Theo were both anxious and Harry Wolf wagged his tail and sat on his rump at attention by Theo’s feet.

  Theo took his security card and prepared to sweep it through the lock.

  Larson Jensen placed his arm in a blocking position. “Sorry. No access for anyone except Captain Barton.”

  “Seriously?” Theo asked.

  “Nobody but Captain Barton,” commanded the guard.

  “But, I made the find,” Theo said.

  “Just following the Captain’s orders,” Larson said.

  They waited in the hallway until Captain Barton, a bearded man, approached the group a few moments later. He was tall, with a little more gray than brown in his beard. He offered a handshake to Theo.

  “Nice job, Startling. Very nice,” Captain Barton said.

  Theo tried not to smile. “Thanks.”

  “No problem,” Captain Barton said. “Is Ed Lorre here yet?”

  “No sir,” Larson Jensen answered.

  “Then get him down here without delay,” Captain Barton ordered.

  “Yes sir.”

  Captain Barton looked at Sam. “Hey Suzuki, you have your camera?”

  “Yes sir,” Sam answered.

  “Then why don’t you suit up?”

  “Yes sir,” Sam answered.

  Despite his role in the discovery, Theo still was just a common grunt. He didn’t have any kind of seniority aboard Odyssey, nor did he have the top-level security.

  Sam shrugged. “Captain’s orders. Sorry buddy.”

  “No problem,” Theo said. Clearly, he was a little disappointed about his exclusion form the greeting party.

  Captain Barton and Sam went into the docking area prep room. The probe hadn’t arrived yet. At least there was a window by the door where Theo and Ravi watched as Captain Barton put a gray hazmat suit over his uniform.

  Thirty-two year old Ed Lorre jogged down the hallway toward the young classmates. He was huffing and puffing and still retained a paunch of a beer belly.

  “There’s the man of the hour! You lucky son of a gun! Too bad your Dad isn’t here in person,” Ed said to the brothers.

  “He’ll be on screen,” Ravi said.

  “Definitely. Well, gotta suit up,” Ed said. “And congratulations, man. This is history, my friend. Seriously.”

  “Thanks,” Theo said with a sheepish, humble
smile and nod of his head. He really wasn’t used to all the attention. Frankly, he had always been in his father’s shadow.

  News of Theo’s discovery still spread like the common cold. Though most of the crew had been asleep and were still yawning, there was an excitement brewing in the room. This moment was a long time in the making.

  Through an observation window, all had a clear view of the probe approaching the shuttle with the backdrop of a billion stars. In flight Wet Willy was a thin silver speck against limitless blackness. It looked like a half moon motorcycle with four wheels in retracted flight mode. A plasma tail of argon white heat burned against the blackness.

  “That probe is a thing a beauty,” Ravi said.

  “It’s just a machine,” Theo said.

  “Yeah, but without it we wouldn’t have found the skeleton,” Ravi said.

  “Dork, there is no we in my discovery,” Theo said.

  “Well, we were both in the probe room,” Ravi said.

  “Just stop talking,” Theo said.

  “Sorry. I just…you know…”

  “…can’t shut up when you’re excited.”

  “Now is a very exciting time,” Ravi said.

  “Just try to chill,” Theo said.

  “Hey! There’s Willy! “Right on time,” Ravi commented.

  “It’s quite a piece of machinery,” Ellie said.

  “Yes, it is,” Theo commented.

  Ellie smiled. She had set her verbal trap.

  “But hey, didn’t Marisa Markov design it all by herself?”

  “Maybe,” Theo said with a tentative shrug.

  Moments later, Sam was in the prep room with Captain Barton and Ed Lorre. Just looking at the yellow hazmat suit made Sam sweat.

  Wet Willy made a safe and fairly gentle return to Odyssey’s docking bay where the drone probe and its calcium phosphate contents were met by the anxious four in yellow. With a slow whine, the docking door closed tightly. The drone probe was the size of a motorcycle.

  The arrival team was comprised of Captain Barton, Ed Lorre, Sam Suzuki and Larson Jensen.

  “Let’s see what’s arrived,” Captain Barton said.

  With Wet Willy safely in the docking bay, Ed Lorre approached the probe. There was an interior compartment where the planetary samples had been in safekeeping.

  “Detaching,” Ed Lorre announced.

  Ed Lorre double-checked the scan stats. Nothing had changed. The objects still weighed four pounds and ten ounces and its resting temperature had not changed. There were five of them in the probe’s storage compartment.

  “Any change?”

  “None.”

  “Any little green men in there?”

  “None,” Ed Lorre said with a slight, though nervous chuckle.

  There was no unusual radiation, no movement, no unusual heat source. Everything was as they had expected and so they were ready for the next step, which was transporting the detachable sample case to the lab.

  Theo, Ellie and Ravi followed with Harry Wolf as did a small group of crewmembers.

  Once in the lab, Ed Lorre placed the ivory white objects onto an examining table. Doctor Starling had a great view of the examination on his Ark computer. While this kind of discovery had never happened, there still were a set series of basic protocols and Captain Barton was following them to the letter.

  “I’m ready,” Larsen said with both his hands wrapped around his taser gun.

  “We see that,” Captain Barton added. “Just don’t nuke the thing or anyone else accidentally.”

  “No sir. Definitely not sir,” Larson said, “I’m just ready…for anything.”

  “Larson, seriously, you can take your finger off the trigger now,” Captain Barton said.

  “Okay sir. Yes sir,” Larson said as he lowered his taser to his side.

  Even Harry Wolf sat up and tried to catch a glimpse of what was going on in the lab room, though Theo doubted the dog even knew what was happening. Even in space, the dog could only think of food, slobbering and sleep. Everyone else could only think about what looked like a bunch of bones.

  CHAPTER 4

  EXAMINATION

  Theo knew enough about the basic process of archaeology and wondered if his father or the science team back on the Ark would be able to re-construct a skeleton from five samples. Doubtful but a guy could hope for miracles.

  Theo also knew that the Wet Willy probe had applied a laser tag number to each of the skeleton’s bones. How the bones were found, their order, their position all meant something. Five were found. Though the largest bone they had found on the planet’s surface was just a hair under four feet long, the curved ivory white, calcium phosphate objects almost all appeared bigger than life. It was history and the future, all weighed down in a series of ivory white objects, the kind which had never been found anywhere but on Earth.

  Theo was anxious and a little disappointed. He was out in the hallway waiting with the rest of the crew. Harry Wolf was sniffing shoes.

  In the laboratory, Ed Lorre did a scan. An x-ray. The first object was weighed and its temperature was taken. Since leaving the surface of the planet, the object had not changed. All readings were again unchanged.

  Back at the Ark, Doctor Starling watched and monitored the examination. His image was up on a computer screen in the lab where Theo and Ravi could both see him.

  By his side Captain Barton peered over Ed’s shoulder and asked, “They are bones, right?”

  “The objects are made mostly of dried collagen, magnesium and calcium phosphate,” Ed Lorre said.

  “Can someone please confirm or deny or disprove what we’re looking at? Is it animal? Mineral? Human? Alien? Someone tell me. Seriously guys, what kind of creature could we be dealing with here?” Captain Barton asked.

  “Hopefully a dead one,” Sam joked.

  “What do you think Doc? Could it be human?”

  Doctor Starling answered, “That is a wonderfully intriguing question. If I were truly a betting man like you and the rest of the crew aboard Odyssey, specifically, I would have to say the odds are not at all in our favor. But since I’m not much of a gambler, I would have to say that these objects require more examination and it is wishful thinking for us to imagine what they may be a part of. We don’t know enough about the objects or GidX7 or how life may – and I stress – may have evolved down there.”

  While Sam took a few more photos, Ed placed the object under the microscope.

  To get a high-definition view, Ed and Captain Barton went to the corner of the lab where there was an office encased in clear glass with a bank of three computer screens. The magnified object was up on all three of them.

  The first bone was magnified. It was mostly ivory white with dark lines. When the magnification reached a power of eight, everyone noticed microscopic dots, almost a maze of black and white.

  At a power of sixteen, there was even more detail. The dots were plentiful, at least a hundred of them clustered together in a larger uneven oval.

  Each of the microscopic dots was round, almost a circle and in the center there was an “S”-like groove running through the center of the circle that created dark and light shadings.

  At a power of thirty-two all could see that the dots had dozens of barnacle like suckers around the perimeter of the dot. The suckers were round and pale brown and the rest of the dots were the consistency of milk.

  At a power of sixty-four, the dots and the dark and light shadings came into focus in more detail and suggested the Yin-Yang symbol. While not an exact match, it was the logical name and logical symbol that came to anyone who observed the dots at that magnification. Whether the unusual dots were more yin or more yang or an equal balance of both was a mystery Doctor Starling and his scientific staff planned to solve.

  “No temperature, no movement, no signs of current life,” Ed Lorre said.

  “What are those dots?” Captain Barton asked.

  “Don’t know yet,” Doctor Starling said. “Just give u
s an hour, maybe two or four. Just give us some time. We have to run several tests to know what we’re really looking at.”

  In the lab, Sam was sweating big beads inside the hazmat suit. His perspiration was all over his skin, welling up in the cracks of his suit. Sam was sweating so much that he was having trouble getting any good photos. Through an opening in his suit between his neckline and his shoulder blade, Sam scratched and scratched. The sweat had gathered in an annoying pool and it was driving him crazy. When he was done scratching his neck, several drops of his sweat remained on his glove.

  In the span of four heartbeats, Sam’s sweat fell from his glove and landed on the bone. He didn’t even notice he had added his own salt water to the bone.

  Sam stepped right into his own sweat that had fallen from his glove to the bone to the floor. He took a few last photos and decided to end his sweating misery.

  Sam poked his head into the office, “I’ve got my shots. Thrilling stuff. If there’s anything else, don’t wake me up until morning. Beauty sleep, you know.”

  “Yeah, it shows,” Larson Jensen commented.

  “But seriously, don’t hesitate to wake me up again. This is one big step for mankind and an even greater one for air-conditioned hazmat suits. Can’t some tech head back on the Ark get working on that?”

  “Just for you, Mr. Sam,” Larson Jensen said. “Just for you.”

  Sam left the lab and threw off his hazmat helmet and visor as quickly as he could. His hair was dripping wet with sweat.

  Outside the lab, Sam went to be with his classmates.

  Immediately, Harry Wolf licked and licked at Sam’s feet, right where he had stepped in his own sweat – the sweat that had fallen from the bone. The dog’s pink tongue was naturally speckled with a few gray textured creases. Harry Wolf used it as a tool of investigation. The dog had found something of interest on the bottom of Sam’s shoes.

  Sam played with Harry Wolf and actually let him slither his tongue around Sam’s sweating hands.

  “Sometimes I love this dog and sometimes he is a real pain,” Sam said.

  “Down boy,” Theo said while the dog’s tongue licked at Theo’s outstretched hand in command mode.