by Nick Cook
Alice shook his offered hand and tilted her head to one side. ‘You’re Mike Palmer, am I right?
‘Yes, that’s me.’
‘When we have some time I’d love to pick your brains about your E8 theories. I’m something of amateur fan myself.’
‘You are?’
‘As with most areas of science, yes. I find cutting-edge theories wildly stimulating.’
‘In that case, I’d love to talk it through with you.’
‘Then we shall.’
Jack stepped forward. ‘It’s great to finally meet you at last, ma’am.’
‘Please, not so formal. Just call me Alice. You must be the famous Jack Harper. I’m so sorry about what happened to Skara Brae and your dig site.’
‘Not as sorry as Colonel Alvarez will be if I ever get my hands on him again.’
‘Just so, Jack, just so…’ Alice gazed at all of us in turn with that spotlight gaze of hers. ‘Tom’s told me a great deal about all of you.’
‘All good, I hope,’ Mike said.
‘I can assure you that my report has been glowing,’ Tom replied.
At that moment the door opened again and an old dark-eyed, grey-bearded guy wearing green coveralls walked in.
‘Everyone, meet Niki Lindén, our head of security and my right-arm man when it comes to intelligence gathering,’ Tom said.
‘So these are the new recruits?’ Niki said in a Nordic accent – Icelandic, maybe.
‘We’ll have to see about that, but so far the welcome tour has been pretty impressive,’ Jack said.
‘It’s like that for everyone the first time they see it,’ Niki replied. ‘Tom, I’m glad you’re back – I have an urgent matter I need to discuss with you.’
‘Which is?’
Niki’s eyes travelled to Jack, Mike and me.
Alice waved her hand at him. ‘You can relax, Niki. We have no secrets when it comes to our very special guests.’
Niki nodded. ‘In that case, we have had a significant cluster of TR-3B sightings over Illinois that we need to follow up on.’
‘A what?’ Jack asked.
But I’d come across that name hundreds of times across the UFO forums. ‘You’re talking about Astra, aren’t you?’
Tom nodded. ‘I am indeed.’
‘We’re not talking about a crappy old car here, are we?’ Mike said.
‘No. The Astra is something of a legend in UFO circles,’ I replied. ‘It’s basically a US military craft that uses an antigravity drive, which is rumoured to have been reverse-engineered from recovered alien craft.’
‘You’re shitting me?’ Jack said.
‘I’m not, although I can’t swear it’s true either.’
‘Well, I can,’ Tom said. ‘I’ve seen this craft with my own eyes – it’s something so secret that even the US president knows nothing about it. The Overseers have as much money as they need for their secret projects like Astra, thanks to their penetration into our world’s governments and militaries, and their direct control over the US black budget. Worryingly, there the sightings of Astra craft have significantly increased recently.’
‘Why’s that worrying?’ Mike asked.
‘When I was working undercover infiltrating the Overseers organisation,’ Tom explained, ‘I discovered their master plan that they have been working towards for many years now. Astra is a key part of it. Unfortunately, I was unable to learn exactly what that plan was before my cover was blown.’
I sighed. ‘Because of us.’
Tom held up his palm towards me. ‘I can put your mind to rest there, Lauren. Whatever that secret is, it’s buried so deep within that organisation that it’s only known by people at the highest level.’
‘The same secret oligarchy who run our world,’ Jack said.
Alice nodded. ‘I can assure you that this secret organisation is just as great a concern to us as it is to you. Whatever their motivation for developing Astras, you can guarantee it won’t be in the general public’s interest. And that is why Tom is continuing his investigation into their activities.’
‘Talking of which, I’d better go and get briefed by Niki,’ Tom said.
‘Do please let me know if there are any developments,’ Alice told him.
He nodded and turned towards us. ‘I’ll see you all later for the traditional welcome drink in the Rock Garden.’
‘The what?’
‘The Rock Garden’s a bar here in Eden – and something of an institution.’
‘You’ll all love it,’ Niki said.
‘Perhaps that will have to wait for tomorrow,’ Alice said. ‘I imagine our guests will desperately need to catch up on some rest once I finish the final part of the tour with them.’
A smile filled Tom’s face. ‘Then I hope you’re all ready to have your minds blown.’ He winked at us as he stepped out through the door with Niki, which rotated closed behind them.
I turned back to Alice. ‘I can’t wait for whatever is coming next, but first there’s something I’m dying to know.’
‘Which is?’ Alice asked.
‘This place is beyond incredible, but why build it underground? I realise advanced rocketry like your Starbright engine is something you don’t want your competitors to know about yet. And your Eden project lends itself to being constructed in a large natural cavern, especially if you want to simulate the Martian atmosphere. But you could have saved yourself a ton of cash by building it all on the surface inside huge buildings, which would have been just as effective.’
‘Lauren Stelleck, you are very perceptive,’ Alice said. ‘You’ll soon discover the reason for the extra level of secrecy.’ She pressed one of the buttons on the arm of her wheelchair.
The view of the labs through the window started to slide upwards as the room descended into a shaft lined with polished rock – without so much as a gentle tremor.
I stared at Alice. ‘This room is actually a lift?’
‘Oh, it most certainly is.’
‘And what’s at the bottom of wherever we’re headed now?’ Jack asked.
‘The stuff of dreams,’ Alice replied with a wide smile.
Chapter Three
Mike gazed out at the rainbow strata colours in the polished rock moving past the windows. ‘This is a geologist’s idea of heaven.’
Alice nodded. ‘But please don’t go chipping out lumps of my beautiful stone walls.’
Mike chuckled. ‘I’ll try to restrain myself.’
Jack peered down at the two-centimetre gap between the window and the walls of the shaft outside this round lift room. ‘So how far are we going down? I wouldn’t be all that surprised if you took us to the centre of Earth.’
Alice chuckled. ‘Not quite that deep.’
I was already building up a mental picture of Alice, a true visionary who was prepared to go to incredible lengths to make her dreams a reality. And if what we’d seen already was anything to go by, what awaited us at the bottom of this ride promised to be something truly exceptional.
The lift room began to slow and another laboratory slid into view as we exited the shaft. Through the window I saw a young woman with blonde shoulder-length hair jumping up from her laptop.
‘Welcome to my private lab,’ Alice said.
The young woman, who had an elfish face framed by large eyes, bounded over towards us as the door tube opened into the lab.
‘This is my lab assistant, Jodie Elliott,’ Alice said.
Jodie thrust out her hand to shake ours. ‘Great to meet you all,’ she said in a similar accent to Niki’s although her surname suggested maybe a different country.
I noticed Mike hanging on to her hand a fraction longer than was polite with a slightly goofy smile on his face.
‘Good to meet you too,’ he said.
We stepped out into a huge lab that put the others we’d seen to shame. Built into another cavern, the room was filled with lab benches and banks of 3D printers. But it was what was at the other end of the room that r
eally caught my attention.
A metal doughnut ring about two metres wide wrapped in an intricate latticework of fine metal pipes had been mounted on metal rods over the floor. The only time I’d seen anything like this was on a visit to the experimental fusion plant at Culham in Oxfordshire with Steve, who’d been my boss at Jodrell Bank. Although that torus ring reactor had been larger than this one.
I gestured towards it. ‘Are you dabbling in fusion power down here?’
Alice shook her head. ‘We leave the development of fusion power to others. However, once we iron out the kinks, the device before you will have just as big an impact as fusion power.’ She turned towards Jodie. ‘I think it’s time for a demonstration to our visitors, don’t you?’
Jodie’s cheerful expression evaporated like someone had just doused her with ice water after a hot sauna. ‘But the energy field is nowhere near stable enough yet, Alice.’
‘That doesn’t matter. I just want to give our guests a taste of what we are trying to achieve here.’
‘In that case, of course,’ Jodie replied. She bobbed back to her desk and began tapping at her laptop. A moment later a humming sound came from the torus ring and I felt the tingle of static wash over my skin.
‘This looks as though it’s going to be interesting,’ Jack said.
‘Oh, it’s most certainly that,’ Alice said.
‘Torus core temperature is now one hundred and twenty Celsius,’ Jodie called out while looking at her laptop screen.
‘Things are about to get interesting…’ Alice said.
As we approached the torus ring I immediately felt the heat radiating off it.
‘OK, apart from being a fancy space heater, what else does it do?’ Jack asked.
‘What you’re looking at is a mini accelerator ring,’ Alice replied.
‘As in a particle accelerator, like CERN?’ I asked.
‘Not quite. This accelerator contains liquid mercury that is now being spun at high speed using a magnetic field within the ring.’ Alice glanced at Jodie. ‘Could you demonstrate the next step?’
‘Sure.’ Jodie jumped up and came back to join us. ‘I need a volunteer for this.’
Mike’s hand quickly flapped in the air like he was trying to get picked for a football match. ‘I am so your guy.’
Jodie flashed him a dazzling smile. ‘Maybe you are…’
Jack raised his eyebrows and I managed to suppress a smile. There was an obvious spark between these two and it seemed I wasn’t the only one who’d noticed it.
Jodie took Mike by the arm and led him up a short set of stairs to the end of a small wooden chute, which sloped downwards and finished about three metres above the centre of the accelerator ring. She picked up a bowling ball from a number sitting a rack and handed it to Mike.
‘You need to roll this down the chute,’ she said.
‘Sounds easy enough,’ Mike replied.
He placed the bowling ball on the chute and gave it a gentle nudge. As the heavy ball rolled it gathered speed rapidly. I braced myself for the inevitable thud when it struck the floor.
‘Get ready for the magic part,’ Alice said. The ball reached the end of the chute and plummeted straight downwards, but then…
I gasped as the bowling ball slowed as though the air round it had turned to treacle.
Mike stared at Alice. ‘Some sort of magnetic effect? The bowling ball has a metal core and is charged with an opposite polar field?’
‘I can assure you that there is no metal in that bowling ball,’ Alice replied. ‘It’s just pure plastic resin, nothing else.’
My mind reeled as Jack gawped at it. Could this be what I thought it was?
‘And just to prove this isn’t a trick…’ Alice said. She headed over to a nearby lab bench and took a banana from a plastic box.
‘Hey, that’s my lunch,’ Jodie said.
‘I need it as a prop for our little demonstration,’ Alice replied. ‘Besides, you can help yourself to a whole year’s worth of fruit from one of the canteens.’
Jodie grinned. ‘True.’
Alice aimed the banana at the ring as if about to shoot a basketball hoop from her wheelchair. She lobbed the banana forward and it arched upwards and then down towards the middle of the torus ring – where the bowling ball was still slowly heading for the floor. As the banana approached, it moved in a crawl and began tumbling end over end in slow motion.
‘What the hell sort of magic are you weaving down here?’ Jack asked.
But I was grinning like a mad thing.
Alice rotated her wheelchair towards me. ‘Lauren, you look as though you might have an idea what this is?’
‘I think so. It’s something that comes up on the UFO forums all the time. This is a magnetic accelerator, rumoured to be the same device that powers the TR-3Bs. A device that reduces the effects of gravity to seventy-five per cent.’
Jack gave me a shocked look. ‘You’re seriously telling me that this machine generates antigravity?’
‘You can see that for yourself, Jack,’ Alice said, gesturing towards the slowly descending banana and bowling ball.
‘And of course we’ve seen the Angelus micro mind use some sort of antigravity drive, so we already know this is technically possible,’ Mike said.
‘But that’s alien sci-fi tech and…’ Jack flapped a hand at the torus ring. ‘This is tech that someone on Earth built. For me that makes it much more real.’
‘Not the stuff of magic in other words?’ I said.
‘That,’ Jack replied.
A warbling alarm came from the laptop and Jodie rushed back to it. ‘Perkele!’
‘That’s a Finnish swear word, I believe,’ Alice said.
Jodie groaned as she stared at the screen. ‘Just as I feared. The energy field is becoming unstable.’
Sparks flew out of a wiring conduit connected to the accelerator ring as the acrid smell of burning filled my nose. A split second later the bowling ball and banana came crashing down to the floor.
‘That’s one of the kinks I mentioned,’ Alice said. ‘Unfortunately, we’re still a long way from an operational and reliable drive.’
‘A drive?’ I asked.
‘Ah yes. Follow me and I’ll show you.’ Alice spun her wheelchair round and headed for a door tube behind the accelerator as Jodie unhooked a fire extinguisher and directed it towards the flames playing over the wiring conduit.
The door revolved and we stepped into the bottom of a huge vertical shaft, which had to be at least three hundred metres wide. Sitting at the bottom of the shaft on one of four landing pads was every fantasy I’d ever had about seeing a UFO come true. A smooth silver saucer – not a rivet to be seen anywhere – stood on three articulated tripod legs, a ramp with steps lowering from the middle of it.
‘Holy crap, it looks like you snagged yourselves an alien UFO,’ Jack said.
Alice shook her head. ‘I can assure you this is all our own work. She’s called Ariel. This craft is a full-scale 3D-printed prototype just waiting for us to crack the antigravity drive unit you just saw. Once we have, Ariel will form the backbone of our efforts to fulfil the mission statement of Sky Dreamer Corp: to colonise Mars. An antigravity drive will also of course spark a revolution for our species.’
‘With spaceships you mean?’ Mike asked.
‘Not only those,’ Alice replied.
I already knew what she was getting at. This technology was the holy grail for UFO hunters.
‘Do you mind if I answer this, Alice?’ I asked.
She smiled and nodded.
‘A working antigravity drive has huge implications for our world. It could be used in all forms of transport, including people’s cars. Once we have a way to negate the effects of gravity, transport costs will tumble. We could even have flywheel power generators spinning for ever – if gravity wasn’t a factor. Can you imagine the impact that alone would have on fossil-fuel industries such as oil?’
‘The oil companies would
be out of business in a matter of years,’ Jack said.
‘At least when it comes to producing fuel,’ Alice replied. ‘And that’s why the Overseers, who make a good deal of their money from oil and the associated energy industries, have suppressed the knowledge of this technology since the recovery of the saucer from the Roswell UFO crash in the 1950s.’
‘You’re saying that Roswell actually happened?’ Mike asked.
‘I most certainly am,’ Alice replied. ‘Of course, the truth was quickly buried, but since then the Overseers have had the US military reverse-engineer that and other downed UFOs. Over the years they have perfected this technology, as we have seen with the Astra craft.’ Her expression grew fierce. ‘For all these years the Overseers have had a way to tackle global warming, but instead they have continued to line their pockets.’
So there it was. The Overseers had risked the future of our world for their own financial gain. It was the worst evil I could think of. A few had prospered at the expense of everyone else.
‘I’d like to show you one other thing in here,’ Alice said. She manoeuvred her wheelchair over to the curving stone walls of the shaft. The bottom three metres of the rough stone had been polished like the walls of the lift room. Along the entire circumference small spotlights illuminated its surface. But it was only as we neared the walls that I started to make out the hundreds of names engraved into the stone.
‘Are these the names of employees?’ Mike asked.
‘Some of them, yes…’ Alice’s expression became drawn. ‘This is a memorial for all the people who have lost their lives at the hands of the Overseers. The ones who worked for me were trying to secure information about the antigravity drive system.’
I shook my head. ‘And all the other names?’
‘Some are the people who tried to reveal the truth about UFOs and were killed for their efforts by Overseers agents. Others were scientists getting close to breakthroughs that would have threatened the Overseers’ grip on the energy industries.’
We turned to look at the names stretching away round the circumference of the tunnel and an icy feeling crawled over my skin.
‘But there must be thousands of names in here,’ Mike said.
