by Yunker, Todd
Shackleton’s Folly
Todd Yunker
Contents
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
CHAPTER FORTY
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
For my family who keep me going
Shackleton’s Folly Copyright © 2014 by Todd Yunker.
All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return it, and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
For author information, contact; www.toddyunker.com
Book and Cover design by Derek Murphy, CreativINDIE
Artwork by Ali Ries, Casperium Graphics
Published by Whirligig Publishing, LLC.
ISBN:
First Edition: January 2015
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CHAPTER ONE
"For scientific leadership, give me Scott; for swift and efficient travel, Amundsen; but when you are in a hopeless situation, when there seems to be no way out, get on your knees and pray for Shackleton."
Sir Raymond Priestley (1886 - 1974)
The thick, luscious, life-affirming green jungle canopy below was coming up fast when the faster-than-light ship changed course and pulled out of the hurtling dive. The space yacht Quest hugged the terrain at an altitude of no more than a hundred meters. The ship’s mirrored skin added an extra hint of orange to the green blur of treetops decelerating across it upon its approach to the ancient, desolate capital city of Daltron-6. Its hull was a design favored by those who valued elegance and speed, knowledge and cunning, over sheer brute force.
An emergent layer of trees dotted the jungle canopy, adding a topographical richness to the biosphere. The planetary rings of glittering silver arched their starlight-enhanced beauty above a titanic, black-onyx pyramid. The abandoned city surrounded the massive pyramid, with scavenger-ravaged skyscrapers of colored crystal poking high through the jungle vegetation. The black pyramid dwarfed even the tallest of the skyscrapers, its form casting a shadow over the ravaged capital.
The Quest spiraled into the city’s core, its sensors scanning for danger. The ship eased to a stop, hovering over a clearing. The landing gear appeared, and the exhaust toppled plants and scattered the small, honey-brown ferret-like creatures that populated the single piece of granite that made up the city square. The yacht slowly sank toward it. The roar of the engines cut out as the magnetic landing struts compressed, taking on the added weight as it settled dirt-side.
The portside hatch slid aside, replaced by the airlock’s shimmering force field, as Captain Ernest “Alec” Shackleton strode through the hatch. Alec stopped a meter from the yacht. He closed his tired, dry eyes as he sucked in the baked, humid air of the planet. It permeated his nostrils and tasted like hothouse mulch.
The getup he wore was straight out of the adventure movies he loved while he was growing up. From the stone-colored, short-sleeved Safari shirt down to the dark, earthy-brown desert boots, he wanted to be larger than life. It was as much a statement to the galaxy as was his ship, the Quest. He would not go quietly into the night, and neither would the human race, if he could help it.
Life being as it was, Alec was wearing the weight of humanity’s future on his shoulders — a broad, muscular pair that matched his 36-year-old, lean, 180-centimeter rower’s build. Alec flexed his hardened hands and then raked back his trimmed auburn hair. He pulled his Oregon State University belt buckle into place. It was a classic from Earth, handed down by his father, who had received it from his father, and so on. He wore it as a reminder of where he came from and to remember the planet now 38 years gone.
Alec stretched his neck before he pushed a lustrous silver wrist bracer over his forearm, slung an olive-green canvas equipment satchel over his shoulder, and began to walk the perimeter of the ship. He inspected its surface and stopped to flick a bug from the mirror-like skin of the ship.
Dancer stepped through the force-field shimmer, his cobalt-blue, alien-android-centaur body absorbing the sunlight. He stretched, from the pads of his four feet to his twenty-four tentacles. His extremities looked like a Leonardo Da Vinci anatomical sketch of muscles, but he moved with, stretched with — and was filled with — a different kind of life. The tentacles bundled themselves into four arm-like structures, two on each side of Dancer’s torso, with shoulders, elbows, and the six ends making up the digits of each hand.
Alec nodded to the sky as he turned to Dancer and said dryly, “The battle up there won’t last long.” He pulled out the well-used black datapad from his equipment satchel and tapped the app to life, scanning the area. “The Koty will be here soon.” There was a touch of concern in his voice as he put his finger on the datapad’s surface and flicked through the applications until he found his notes.
Dancer pulled his datapad from a utility belt slung across his chest; its burnt sienna color complemented the vibrant blue of his tentacles. “Where was I?” he asked playfully. “Oh yeah, the game ended up being called the ‘The Toilet Bowl’ because it was so bad — the last NCAA game allowed to end in a tie.”
Alec covered the distance between them in two steps and went nose-to-nose with Dancer. “It was a crappy civil-war football game played a long time ago. Why do you try to provoke me?” he said, with the irritation plain on his face.
Dancer stood his ground, as twigs crackled underfoot, and challenged, “Why do you continue to do this?”
Alec’s eyes drifted skyward. He took a deep breath and held it. He slowly released it, turned, and walked away. “We aren’t going to get another shot — this is th
e last good lead we have.” He paused and then added, “The inscription piece has to be in there, or we’re dead.” Alec smiled faintly and said reassuringly, “Come on, partner.”
“You need to get out more and work on your social skills,” replied Dancer. “It can’t be healthy for you to abstain from being with your own kind.”
Alec said with a pained smile, “It’s not like I’m going to find a date way out here.”
Dancer followed as Alec walked out of the city square onto a paved boulevard. Alec flicked to another app and held his datapad up in front of him. It magnified the terrain, surveyed the distance, highlighted trees and creatures, and passed directions across the bottom of the screen. The jungle had taken back most of the city. The great drill trees rose hundreds of meters; their aerial prop root systems broke through what was once only a crack in the gray pavement. The calls of the planet’s avian population rang around them from the large, open branches above. Thousands of years of planetary pillage and random destruction in the city had given the edge to the jungle in its reclaiming of the city, the plant life growing up the buildings’ aged and compromised exterior walls of the buildings to heights concealed by the jungle canopy.
Alec and Dancer headed northward, toward the blackness of the pyramid that filled what sky they could see through the tree canopy. They arrived at the boulevard’s end and stood in awe of the Central Pyramid rising to the heavens at a height of 700 meters; its base covered 1.2 square kilometers and had lifted the first casing stone eight meters off the ground. “That pyramid is a storehouse of the best this world could offer in the visual arts, literature, and knowledge,” Alec said enthusiastically as he nodded to Dancer. “Let’s keep an eye out for anything we can use to upgrade the Quest.”
They crossed the street to the pyramid. Alec touched the wall’s cool, polished surface gently. He could see the surface of the material changing. The wall panel sensed their presence and retrieved data for display. It shimmered momentarily, and then alien glyphs appeared. Alec raised his datapad and called up a file with old video scenes of an archaeological dig.
“The resemblance to the glyphs discovered on Earth is too uncanny. They must have the same origins, but, if so, then how did it get 10,000 light years away to Earth 11,000 years ago?” He paused. “Humans were incapable of leaving Earth, so an alien race must have visited.” Alec looked at Dancer, his excitement building, and continued. “My theory, based on the research done by a number of leading scholars on the First Ones’ language, is that this wall is communicating with us. The papers I have read on linguistic archaeology are truly fascinating.”
“We’ve confirmed your father’s theory that this language belonged to a race of people who had been to Earth and were connected to your race in some manner,” Dancer replied, in earnest. “Jack Shackleton was a great research librarian and archaeologist. His theory regarding this language,” he said, pointing to the wall, “was that it was alien; it predated the Sumerian written language on Earth by five thousand years. This is the proof.” He tapped on the wall twice with his datapad. “You followed in your father’s footsteps, and we have proven the visitation to Earth by an alien race.” Dancer added sympathetically, “His belief in alien visitation was not folly.”
Alec walked toward the corner as Dancer followed. The alien glyphs kept up with them, changing their form and pattern every three seconds. “The times were different back when my father was still on Earth. I’m curious about many subjects,” said Alec, as he flicked confidently through the apps on the datapad. “My father believed these were not only the same language — he theorized that this writing was Old Empire. First Ones.” He read the screen intently. “I found nothing in the literature about the Old Empire’s territory including Earth.” Alec stroked the screen of his datapad until he found what he was looking for and tapped it. “If aliens were on Earth, then I think what we’ve found here could be the basis for the lost-tribe myth he was following,” he postulated.
Alec and Dancer arrived at the end of the wall, and the building sensed their movement, continuing to display its messages around the corner. An 80-meter stretch of the base about 150 meters further down the wall was transparent, revealing the dark interior of the pyramid. The transparent material was ever so slightly marred by thousands of unsuccessful attempts to open it, the blemishes faded by the regenerating process of the material. Alec stopped in the middle of the section and peered in. The rays of daylight illuminated the interior for a short distance, and what it revealed was astounding. The few displays that could be distinguished were 20 sculptures cut from white and pink marble. They were dancing figures rising from the floor four meters in height — a ballet frozen in time, with a grouping of principal dancers in the center of the gathering, the male holding the female high, her arms stretched to the heavens. It was as if the inhabitants of this world had never left, with no signs of decay or even dust present.
Dancer put his datapad away as he crossed the geometric-patterned promenade of white, pink, and gray marble, reaching the overgrown greenway in front of the building. The drill trees had made significant inroads into the once-manicured gardens. It was now hard to distinguish what had once been a garden from the jungle encroaching on the city. Dancer went directly to the bronze-colored sculpture of a stylized humanoid discus thrower that towered 10 meters above its base. He clambered up from the base, clearing vines and plant life from it as he went. Dancer leapt to the ground after completing his task and went directly to the bushes with significant pink flowers.
He pulled a large camouflage bag from where it lay hidden in the deep brush, producing a 1.24-meter silver parabolic reflector from it. Dancer scanned the sky and the sun, taking readings of its inclination above the horizon. He said confidently, “Our timing is fine. The sun is almost perfect, and the alignment with the bronze discus thrower is imminent.” Dancer took a taupe towel and some cleaning/polishing liquid from his satchel. His four arms blurred as they deftly polished the disk to a perfect, mirror-like gleam.
Dancer scampered back up the base of the statue, spider-like, and sprang up the legs, catching hold of the vines that hung from the athlete’s shoulder. Dancer climbed up to the torso and leapt across the gap between him and the thrower’s arm. He walked out on the arm and placed the reflector in the curled hand, adjusting it just so. The sun’s position moved ever so slightly. It looked down upon the world, the city, and the pyramid. The sunlight struck the parabolic reflector, and a focused beam crossed the promenade; its energy hit the transparent wall next to Alec. The wall warmed to the touch of the beam of concentrated sunshine, and it sensed the wavelengths of the star’s light spectrum. It was a very special lock that required the correct response to the key. The 80-meter stretch of wall vanished instantly. Dancer smiled broadly. “This is our third trip inside.” He cautioned, “I think it took five times to get past this lock. What are the odds we make it all the way this time?”
Alec entered the voluminous space, the beam of sunlight passing through the ballet dancers into the depths of the building. The floors reached back farther than the eye could see, displaying intricate patterns of polished stone and the extraordinary skills of master masons. The beam provided enough illumination of their surroundings for them to see the enormous tapestries that lined the wall nearest them. The pyramid was a people’s cultural repository of the art, music, dreams, and knowledge of the long-gone race that had inhabited this world. A line of structures in the middle of the floor continued into the distance, disappearing into the darkness and highlighting the diverse collections of paintings and drawings spanning the inhabitants’ history. The foyer stretched far past the reach of illumination above and extended deep into the pyramid.
“Dancer, would you recall our grad students?” Alec said delightedly.
Dancer caught up to Alec. “You mean the minions? Recall signal sent.” The sound of a small eight-wheeled vehicle came toward them from the painting collection. The autonomous robot braked as it reached t
hem; its sensory mast raised to look at them from a collapsed position to a medium height.
Alec inspected the robot intently. “When the others get here, I want all of you to report to the Quest for upload. Understand?”
“Yes,” said the robot respectfully. “Digital versions of the art collections estimated at 97%. Recommend additional archival units deployed to improve efficiency in the cataloging of the collection.”
“I will think about it,” said Alec courteously, as an autonomous dirigible came slowly down from the darkness above. “Dancer and I are going in.” The two robots waited for more of their kind to arrive at the entrance.
Alec followed the path of the beam of sunlight for 100 meters. They had ing mubject materhe inhabitant’reached a point far inside the building when another robot raced across the floor toward the recall point. It chirped as it passed by Dancer. The beam reached a silver disk-shaped reflector mounted on a black tubular stand that redirected the beam 90 degrees. The new corridor widened, and its galleries displayed all types of photography whose subject matter included nature studies. Alec slowed to view the magnificent works of art this world had left to the ages. Then came the canvases of watercolors, oil landscapes, urban life, and domesticated wildlife. A bronze plaque mounted on the wall beneath the photo listed the artist, biography, date, medium, and subject.
The two continued down the corridor and followed the beam of sunlight until they arrived at another disk-shaped reflector turning the beam in a new direction. Alec stopped and adjusted the beam slightly to the left.
“You know that it is unnecessary to adjust them every time we come here, right?” admonished Dancer.
“Yes, I do. If I don’t, it will go horribly wrong,” Alec retorted. He sighted the beam back to the right again, feeling this to be better than before. “It’s in the fine tuning where we’ll succeed.”
They started out again and followed the beam. It was turned again with a reflector down a new corridor that ended at a flight of stairs. Alec kept fine-tuning each as they passed, with Dancer reminding him he need not do it. The sounds of their footsteps echoed off the polished stone. The reflector bent the beam up the stairway. Alec and Dancer maintained their trek in silence. They went up the stairway; down the hall, through a gallery, the beam still lit their path. Multimedia artwork using natural fibers filled the walls, the museum’s best works on display. Alec had a favorite tapestry that he stopped to view. Its geometric pattern dazzled the viewer with the weaver’s amazing skill. Dancer was concerned and tapped Alec’s shoulder. “We don’t have much more time. You can see it again after we have the inscription.” Dancer was able to tear Alec away.
