The Alien Artifact 8

by V Bertolaccini

  “It was at night when we went to sleep! We hardly moved while sleeping in the spacesuits!”

  Cronenberg avoided telling him and them about the ghost astronaut he had seen, as it was not linked to the incident, and he was now unsure if he had imagined it.

  “How did he die?”

  “He looked as if he had been eaten by something!”

  If it had been one of the others in the shuttle, who had followed them there, and how could the person have done it? They had been in a group!

  And it could only have been done while Rosenberg was away investigating the other side of the hill! He believed there was something out there, which had to be with what had taken them there or it was it itself, which he had explained to the police, and he had told Orwell and he agreed it could have been, as what had happened to the shuttle was far stranger and difficult to occur.

  He realized that he only needed to explain what it had been, and he realized it might have taken samples of Campbell’s body for some reason, and he wondered why.

  Had this infernal place a killer alien or not? Yet why would it want anything from him?

  Still nothing about it made sense – and neither did anything else there – it was obvious it could have attacked all of them.

  From the looks that he caught from the police he knew that the incident had affected them! The police were now aggressive! And he was sure that they had not found any other clues.

  His killer, whatever it was, had to be ruthless and carefree to have done it in the way that it had been done it.

  He wondered if something was on the southern pole that did not need proper supplies of oxygen, and had been there from when Mars had an atmosphere and water, and had adapted to survive in the harsh climate!

  Fish survived with barely any oxygen in water, and lived off miniature life forms, he wondered if it had tried what they had been like as a food supply, and he wondered if it liked it!

  Yet that was fantasy, and they had not found anything like it, and why had they not found anything like it and what would it have normally have consumed? Yet was a big planet and they had hardly explored the surface and there was water and life forms that froze and dried out and returned to life, including plants ...

  He and Orwell marched along a corridor to the library, for their regular visit and they occasionally looked into rooms with their doors open, as it interested them what people were like there.

  “It’s also incredible,” Orwell muttered, “that most of the people that investigated the body thought it was some form of animal!”

  They then entered the library, and he asked Cronenberg, “Have you found anything else?”

  “I found a photo of a newspaper article of Anders, found in his apartment, about a scientist that found something, which I’m sure was the diamonds … I’ve been trying to trace information about him and what he was doing.”

  Chapter 11

  The Deaths

  It was almost a week later when he saw Orwell again and he thought he had lost interest and was glad to see him and was surprised that he had been searching elsewhere in his spare time, and had arrived with some news.

  Cronenberg search in the library had just about become exhausted when he saw him enter the outer library, marching over to him, and he studied him trying to see what he was up to.

  “What you got?” he swiftly asked.

  “There’s been another death!” Orwell replied, making Cronenberg gasp.

  “What happened?”

  “The person was found in the same condition as Campbell! Large regions of the body were eaten! And they’ve found Campbell was definitely eaten in the same way.”

  Cronenberg was confused, and wondered what was going on about, as the day earlier he had found declassified material in the library showing similar attacks and deaths at the base and that they had covered it up.

  “I’ve also found stuff on deaths here!” he replied, and flicked through a pile of documents he had at the end of the table, and handed him over two documents about it, which were of deaths occurring there over a decade, five years from then.

  Orwell searched through it in surprise, and stood confused, staring a section of one document.

  “In one case they were unable to find out if it was an animal or human!” he finally replied, and put the document down.

  “We could have been followed there, by someone?”

  “Or there are things of Mars that kill? They might have been covered up? They might not have declassified the stuff!”

  Cronenberg nodded his head, and agreed it could be the answer and he wondered why they had not been warned by some means about there be a possibility of them being there, and he gasped when he realized that they could enter the base.

  “Found anything new about the diamonds then?” Orwell finally asked, after a few minutes of stunned silence, with Cronenberg realizing he could have been the one.

  “Yes!” he replied, firmly, searching through another pile of documents, and pulling documents out.

  “What you go there?”

  “I found stuff on the scientist that found the diamonds! It seems he was working with a new satellite, at the time, that could magnify into areas of the Earth and Mars far greater and clearer than before, and he was the first to use it on Mars! I think he found the diamonds with it!”

  “From up in orbit! I never knew that could be done!”

  “I reckon he knew where to look for diamonds and that he discovered them!”

  “So if we managed to get the use of it we could explore the area where the shuttle went down for them …”

  “Or where the diamonds may be under the ground …”

  “I’ve not heard of any diamonds being found on Mars yet!”

  “Exactly! And their value would be great!”

  Chapter 12

  The Satellite

  Cronenberg could not believe the length Orwell went to find and get the use of the satellite, and he was sure they were now being watched by security agents, and was sure the satellite was still highly classified, even after decades, and perhaps vastly improved and used for some military purposes.

  He was sure that he only gained use of it for them to get what he was up to, and he realized why they had started watching Anders, and he had also highly illegally taken an expensive classified space vehicle.

  Orwell had updated himself on where to look for diamonds, and techniques used to locate them, and he searched the region where the shuttle had gone down.

  Cronenberg was invited to join them and welcomed it and he became sure they had little on them other than they were trying to use the satellite for a project, and if they found the diamonds, they were an interest to science and their missions there anyhow.

  They used it to search everywhere they could on and around the hill, searching there in such incredible detail that he was sure he would never think he was not being watched outside again. It was incredible and he managed to examine where the shuttle had come down, and the massive amount of footstep and vehicles marks left there, and where the shuttle had been and had been repaired and taken away, and he studied where Anders had been, and the remains of the rocket, which had been dug up and examined, with its interior searched.

  He realized it was the ultimate way of searching for it, as he could search everything there, hill by hill, but realized that where the diamonds had been may now be buried deep beneath the sand, but the area looked unchanged to him, and the sand was not as deep as it seemed, and he proved that they could not be properly hidden away.

  Eventually he returned to finish the last of his research in the library, and searching through the last of the documents.

  What was peculiar was he somehow sensed that there was something missed out in the documents! So he was not surprised when he found it, and it was hidden away in the last of the documents, and it was a document about security services watching Anders’s wife and he was sure they believed he intended to meet her at some point, and it never happen
ed, and he found a photographed letter from her to him, which was her last letter to him from the Earth to him on Mars, which mentioned his search for something, which he was sure was the diamonds, and that he intended to return to the Earth for good, and it mentioned the map and Anders’s belief that the scientist, who actually was the astronaut with him, had recorded the location wrongly.

  Cronenberg discovered suggestions that the map, which had been made by the scientist, had more information hidden on it, and Anders thought he was up to something!

  Chapter 13

  The New Mission

  For an instant Cronenberg thought he could die a hideous death, and he even considered what it would be like being a ghost trapped out there on the desolate world.

  They had to land! Soon! Surely they should not take the risk continuing to fly to their destination at night! The shuttles were still new and the repairs on theirs was only recently completed and they were trying it out for the first time, and testing it for the first time over Mars, and he was sure they had hardly even tested the thing out before they had given them it back!

  Loud explosions and flashes had suddenly appeared from somewhere out in the dark Martian night sky, and had sent the whole shuttle shaking about, and he realized it had to be some form of storm, created by the weak Martian atmosphere, and he heard the other astronauts talking about it and announce it was, from the information from their equipment.

  The entire crew was the same except for Campbell who was replaced by Deputy Commander James Mitchell as the new head flight engineer, and who incredibly resembled Campbell, and had the same experience and was an astrophysicist/planetary geologist, and was being helped by Rosenberg the other flight engineer, and they were all basically checking the performance of the shuttle and findings the new detection equipment aboard gathered, especially in the unexplored regions they were entering.

  He realized the shuttle might not be designed for the storm and it could be far different from Earth storms, and have incredible wind speeds, and he realized the shuttle could go down and again crash on the surface of Mars.

  Though he could not imagine the empty atmosphere coming out with a powerful wind, even though a high speed wind could be generated, and he considered what had actually taken them down the last time.

  The sky outside, over the space vehicle, was so peculiar and strangely colored that he was sure that it was no longer in the universe, and at the outer limits of the universe, floating outside it somewhere.

  The problem with the mission was that they were ordered to stick to the route they were given no matter what, and he realized that if they were confronted by a storm ahead that they would go straight through it.

  He recalled the shuttles were now shielded to stop anything, after being taken down at the Antarctica the last time, and they thought it would stop anything taking control of the shuttles, and he thought it might help protect them from the powerful energy disturbances in the outer storm.

  He switched on a small powerful light over him, to properly see the booklet he was given with his orders and the mission described on it, and he stared out one of the windows at the surrounding darkness, and into visible stars there, and started properly examining the details in the booklet to see if he was missing anything he should know.

  It was the perfect time of the year for the mission, for it to be light enough in the Artic and Antarctica, and the mission was for all twenty shuttles to go to and assemble at the Martian Antarctica, going there at their different sections, and the first sections to leave would cover the current daylight region of the world, would do their first scan, and a practice scan of Mars from the Artic to the Antarctica – as all the shuttles were to scan a section of Mars from the top to the bottom, over many months, and they would all scan an equal amount of Mars, and map it in more detail than had ever been done before, giving people the ability to study anything on the surface of the world back on the Earth, and someday people on the Earth would completely explore the whole of Mars!

  They had to properly check all the shuttles were working and giving them the exact information they needed, and satellites would make sure they followed the exact routes and control them.

  If successful it could be used to explore many worlds and moons, and in other solar systems, and he wondered if someday they would replace them with computers, and create the ultimate probe voyager that would scan entire worlds.

  It was an incredible piece of luck for them as they were getting to scan every square foot of the world and they could use it to find the diamonds there, at whatever location they were at.

  He was positive it was located at the southern pole though and he was starting to believe it could be at the pole itself, and Orwell had agreed and they had eagerly joined the new mission.

  The world that they were exploring was like it had no sun, and it was like there were billions of light years of space between them and the nearest stars.

  Chapter 14

  The South Pole

  Something startled Cronenberg, when he stepped out the shuttle and stepped onto the south pole, and he struggled to grasp what as he focused on the bright sun, over the Martian horizon at the side of the shuttle, and he gasped as he watched the glowing landscape.

  Other shuttles were resting behind the shuttle and he saw that five were still landing, making it all twenty being there.

  Something staggered him about the mission and he sensed something was going to occur, and he shivered, and examined the ice around him, and that it was hard and had been there a long time, and he realized how ancient the world was.

  He saw the sun edge its way along the horizon, and he realized he could not avoid whatever he was going to encounter! He had to go through with everything! He believed he could survive if he did everything he could and avoided making any deadly mistakes!

  The world about them was a flat stretch, with occasional large asteroid dents.

  “What a place?” Orwell finally moaned, and tried laughing, and moved close to him, and Cronenberg watched him, wondering what he was talking about.

  “There’s something not right about this mission!” Cronenberg confessed, considering if he could give him anything that he might have missed.

  He realized it could be just Mars affecting them! It was the new things and hidden dangers there! It was exploring where nobody had been before, and the great deadly environment and mistakes they could make being somewhere with such an environment for so long! The region they were in was the least explored!

  It was the legendary Martian Antarctica, and he still sensed there was something strange there! Something he had not encountered before! Something that could only exist in such a place, and in the depths of space, and it gave him chilling and weird sensations, but he could not grasp what, and he wondered if he was destined to die on the remote world.

  As the shuttles completely turned silent he watched the rest of the crew rush about observing the whole south pole, and he increasingly felt a presence of something, somewhere, in the chilling distance of the alien world, and it was clear that the five other members of the crew said anything about it.

  A silent vibration went through the ground and he expected to hear a sudden explosion sound in the distance, and he knew it was only a tremor, but it gave the world a feeling of being unstable.

  All the crew slowly vanished behind the shuttle, over where the main shuttles were, and Orwell walked around its edge to see what was happening, and stood with his mouth open and Cronenberg wondered what it could be and if it was his reaction to nothing, and he went over to him, and he then stood with his mouth open.

  All the astronauts from the shuttles, a hundred astronauts, were standing in a group discussing something and he suddenly realized, from their communications from their spacesuit communicators, that it was a search for the diamonds and he wondered how the hell they had heard of them and started watching Orwell and he realized he had to have been behind it.

  But he then knew he had not by his r
eactions! But he had to have unknowingly done it!

  He was surprised when two of the other shuttle commanders looked directly at him and started discussing something, and he gasped and realized his luck was vanishing.

  Cronenberg marched in close and observed all their spacesuits standing about a central area, where there was a large meteorite boulder, and he anxiously started listening into their communications.

  After a few minutes he showed a glint of humor, followed by some sadness, as he realized that they never had any real information about the diamonds he then realized that they could gain knowledge of what they had.

  “Are you saying that you think that there’s treasure here too?” one astronaut that had not properly heard them asked with amusement and astonishment, wondering what they were really talking about.

  Everyone listened, and some stopped doing things.

  “There’s a page missing from this,” one of the astronauts broke in the conversation with, and Cronenberg watched him with astonishment holding a diary.

  “Yes, and I found it,” one of the other shuttle commanders, called Tom Eagle, forced himself to reply, walking out of the crowd of astronauts, and he stood in front of them all, and they formed into a crowd in front of him, and Cronenberg and Orwell rushed over and stood at the side of them.

  Eagle took the diary and held in up and took the missing page out of his pocket, and continued, “It was on the bottom of the bookshelf, where it was found!”

  Cronenberg wondered what the hell he was talking about as he had not heard anything until then and he knew that they had something, and he could sense something was coming, and Eagle even seemed to warn him of it.

  Eagle took the page and spread it out in front of him, and all their eyes seemed to go on it at once, and he muttered, “It refers to a clue that the scientist with Anders gave! It says it is on a map that Anders managed to get from him!”