by John Foster
“Let’s start with a 50 cm square,” West yelled to make himself heard over the whine of the saw. West started to say something else, but thought better of it, since he doubted Theo was now paying any further attention.
Madison had crouched down and switched on her exterior helmet light and was now searching through the equipment box. West grinned at her as she held up an adhesive pad in triumph. She grinned back at him and then walked to Theo and stood next to him, patch in hand.
There was an audible click as Theo cut off the power to the hand laser but West could feel his ears vibrating from the noise as if it were still running. The close proximity of the tunnel walls had enhanced the noise of the laser to an uncomfortable level. The plaster dust was settling quickly making West wonder what it was made of to drop out of the air like that. He made a mental note to ask Madison to check on that even while thinking it was very convenient since it made visibility and breathing an easier task in these unventilated tunnels. West moved towards Theo and Madison as Madison deftly connected the patch and, looking to Theo for a nod to her unasked question, gently pulled. The patch came off like a piece of cork board. Beneath it was the rest of the red coloration they had partially exposed earlier, a perfectly round dot floating on a white background that looked exactly like the plaster cover they had just cut through. West made a note on his HDA to check whether the chemical constituents of the plaster surfaces were the same which would provide a clue about whether they were contemporary or not.
“Okay, Madison, do your thing, and we’ll let Theo have his turn again.” said West eying the patch for any clues that might be there.
Madison took out a slender can of condensed air and held it up before the enlarged patch and sprayed it slowly, removing residue of the plaster powder. She also sprayed her helmet face plate before setting the can aside. Facing the new exposure, the familiar buzz of the helmet imagery array flooded the tunnel. West waited patiently as she took her sequence of pictures. His hand vibrated slightly indicating the images were being fed into his HDA.
She finished and backed away from the wall and the buzz abruptly stopped. Theo stepped forward and looked to West, his face concealed behind his face plate but West knew he was seeking permission to proceed and West nodded approval. Theo now placed the hand laser at the wall below his previous cut and slowly started to inch his way down in a vertical line. The hand laser acted as a type of saw but with much greater precision. Theo was making this cut much larger, sensing that his calibrations were correct and that the image wasn’t going to be damaged by the sawing of the plaster face. Both Theo and Madison picked up a rhythm, working methodically, sawing, cleaning, and imaging the exposed plaster surface as section by section was removed. As they removed more of the plaster it became clear that the images were on a horizontal line from right to left and always about one and half meters above the tunnel floor. By the end of the day they had exposed half of the area, exposing five colored dots of varied sizes and colors, but mostly in hues of brown and blue.
“What do you think?” asked Madison as she took off her helmet and attempted to shake out her sweat dampened hair.
West moved to the center of the tunnel in front of the panel and looked thoughtfully at it. “Good job, but as for the meaning of the pictograph, I've no idea.” West said.
Theo had removed his face shield and watched the debris fall to the floor as he shook his head. He moved next to West to get a better view of the exposed images. “I know what they are."
“Oh, right Theo!” said Madison, her eyebrows raised with exaggerated disbelief as she glanced up at him, her head tilted and arms crossed. “How is it you are privy to the interpretation of this ancient pictograph?” West also looked at Theo expectantly, wanting to know the same exact thing.
“Because it was one of the first things I ever learned. Except for eating of course.” said Theo, a smirk hidden behind his unruly beard.
“Oh yeah?” asked Madison, turning and looking back to the plaster painted surface. Her face and West's were both caught between amusement and disbelief.
Theo was grinning at them, relishing the moment.
West had seen this look before on Theo's face, when they had discovered what West had been certain was a large bone dagger but Theo stubbornly insisted was the tooth of some alien monster on Terra X. It had turned out Theo was right, and West had been eating crow because of it for days afterward.
“Okay, okay, let’s hear it,” sighed West, knowing that this would be all over camp that night.
Theo, clearly enjoying himself, made an exaggerated display of dusting off his work clothes and then delivered his verdict. “It’s our solar system.”
After a drawn-out pause, West and Madison turned as one to look back at the painted imagery.
“Is it?” asked West not quite wanting to believe it, but his heart beat a little faster and his mind whirled at the possible ramifications if it was true.
“Sure, we’re looking at it from the outer planets in towards the sun, which means there’s more circles to the left under the plaster,” said Theo, his chin jutting up and a huge smile on his face.
“I’ll be damned,” said Madison looking at Theo with new respect.
“And what is more important is that they didn’t consider Pluto a planet either, which we didn’t figure out until the beginning of the last century,” said Theo looking at the multi-colored dots again, mentally comparing the tunnel painting with his own knowledge of the planets.
“The proportions match?” asked West, turning to look at Theo and trying to stem the feeling of excitement.
“Well, generally, there appears to be some adjustments for scale, but overall the effect is there.”
“Okay, lets peel back the rest of the plaster and test this,” said West.
Speechless, Madison's gaze focused on the wall before her.
Theo pulled his mask down and the buzz of his careful sawing cut the air. Madison pulled her helmet back on and West could see her hand manipulating the imaging remote control as she turned back to the wall.
Theo had presented an interesting hypothesis and he was, after all, their space navigator. If anyone knew what the solar system looked like, it was going to be Theo. West remembered back to their first meeting, when West had gone to the salvage yard to look over the Paradig. West’s employers at The Converse Corporation had offered to provide a ship to use in his explorations of alien planets. When he had gone to check it out at the space ship docks, he had found a massive bear of a man giving it a close look as well.
West had approached him rather cautiously, unable to read said bear's disposition. “Hey, what’s up?”
Theo had turned, his warm brown eyes looking directly into West's openly friendly face. “Just checking if this ship is worth anything. Looking for one.”
“Ah, sorry man, Converse Mining, a division of the Converse Corporation, already snatched it up.”
Theo's expression clouded in obvious disappointment at this news and he asked, “Mining? You're gonna use this little beauty for mining?” He had worked for several years as a pilot/engineer of a merchant ship with transits throughout the Luridian system but that stint had ended when the Interplanetary War began between the alien race of the Soshi and Terra's lost colony, the Sovar. Out of work since then and hoping to find a ship he could pilot once again for hauling ore in the Jupiter moons. Theo had come to the yard hoping to find an old relic he could salvage when the sleek lines of the Paradig had caught his eye and he couldn’t resist taking a look.
With a grin and an outstretched hand West answered Theo, “Yeah, we're going to mine the past …so, what do you know about archaeology?”
That had been 10 years ago and the beginning of a long friendship.
For the rest of the afternoon, Theo and Madison methodically removed the plaster section by section. By nightfall, the remaining portion of the panel had been exposed. Theo was wildly excited about the pictograph which West found very amusing in light
of his usual taciturn nature. Especially important, in Theo's opinion, was that the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter was clearly illustrated. It hadn't been "discovered" until the beginning of the nineteenth century and yet here it was illustrated by these tiny dots generated 5,000 years ago. In many ways, it would rewrite the history of astronomy.
An even more intriguing and enigmatic element was the addition of a circle and spokes with a small star in it over what they believed to be a representation of the planet earth painted as a small blue circle. At this point they couldn't even begin to guess what it meant.
West had reluctantly left the tunnels and returned to the Paradig, looking for research information on the status of planetary knowledge of the Tugi People which was the designation of the culture they believed they were excavating. Sitting at the research console in the Paradig, West scanned through the relevant literature of the culture, hoping to find some clue to their astronomical knowledge, but he had perused every written document that was known about the Tugi and there was nothing about the solar system, and not much else either. They were a Bronze Age culture dating 5,000 years ago, that had been relatively prosperous for their time and lived in sedentary communities, practiced simple agriculture, and had domesticated some herd animals, notably camels and goats. There was no written language; only pictographs and petroglyphs survived to show their modest desires for good hunting and water for their herds. West mused that water here, then and now, was the key to life and probably would be for some time to come. The ruins of the Tugi would probably not have been found except for satellite imagery that had captured traces of a buried radial pattern in a specific area of the Gobi Desert. His grandfather, James Carter, had been the first one to theorize that the tunnels were some type of cistern and he had come out twice to explore the area and investigate the tunnels, but that had been 20 years ago. He had assiduously mapped the tunnel complexes and the material culture he had encountered. Radiocarbon dating of wood found in the tunnels had given him the Bronze Age date of 5,000 years and since the artifacts he had found were in keeping with that time period he had accepted it. His grandfather’s finds had made the news and had even been highlighted in government reports as a scientific priority for additional funding. That is, until the press had reported that Trevor had also found a Tugi rock painting of apparent space aliens. He had kept that part of the discovery quiet until the media had gotten wind of it and forced him to report on it openly. The tabloid press went to town with it and all of a sudden, the wondrous water tunnels of the Tugi had become “Alien Fortress found in Gobi Desert.”
West sat back in his chair and held his old-fashioned pencil to his chin thinking back to old news reports of the Gobi Space Aliens. With a slight shake of his head he remembered his grandfather trying to salvage his valid, hard won information from the rapidly growing media circus it was becoming. West had been a graduate student at the North American Science Center and had been studying Bronze Age cultures of Europe when the news had come out on the Gobi Desert findings. He had been on all of his grandfather’s expeditions until he had started college. He knew his grandfather was excited about the tunnels and was afraid that the alien business would displace the real and very important information about the network of tunnels buried in the desert. Even though West knew nothing of the Bronze Age cultures of the Gobi, he had agreed with his grandfather’s assertion that the tunnels were probably for holding water from the runoff of the snow-clad Gartha Mountains more than 70 miles to the south of the Tugi Region. It was while tracking down other possible tunnels in the area that James had come across a rock panel with red painted figures that looked like crude men in space suits. Many previous rock paintings of aliens had been found in various parts of the world and the scientific community had cast them down as images of gods, demons, or the imaginations of drug induced shamans. The Gobi figures were no exception and it was not long before geologists had joined the archaeological community with their analysis and reported that the Tugi tunnels were nothing more than elaborately carved tunnels that the natives had patched up with hydraulic cement and utilized for capturing and holding water. It was amazing that in those short 20 years aliens were actually found to exist. It was West’s job to investigate all sites that had any possible connection to space aliens. After Terran exploratory space ships had found the ruins of an alien civilization in the Theron System the discredited theories of aliens on earth were no longer so farfetched. The North American Science Center had asked West to track down alien related sites on earth and determine if aliens had actually visited the planet in times long gone. The Converse Corporation, a mining company, which funded West and his ship had agreed thinking that the publicity would add to their public image. That had been 20 years ago and had led to a spectacular career both in outer space and on earth. That is until the First Interplanetary War had started two years ago between the Sovar and the alien creatures called the Soshi which effectively ended civilian exploration in the only systems with evidence of past alien life. It was a short-lived celebration that we were no longer “alone” when the Sovar claimed that the Soshi had destroyed a mining colony in the Tene System newly established to take advantage of a new and unknown mineral ore on an uninhabited planet. From that point on the two groups had waged war on each other. The Terran government had been in the process of establishing relations with the Soshi when the war broke out. The Soshi envoy had been astute enough to realize that the Terrans and Sovar were not of the same mind in terms of territorial expansion. The Soshi accused the Sovar of making a land grab and war resulted. The recognition of the separate bases of power and government had led to a pledge of non-involvement from the Terran government with a reciprocal pledge from the Soshi. However, the Soshi remained closed to all Terran traffic and contact was limited to neutral ground.
It was late and West put his pencil down and leaned back in his chair and ran his fingers through his hair feeling little grains of sand fall on his shoulders. He smiled and thought of what the next day would bring. Tomorrow, they would uncover the other side of the corridor and West couldn’t even think of what surprises might be there. It had been difficult to stop Theo who had been all for exposing the second hidden panel. The entire crew had been all for doing the work right then and there but West had vetoed the idea wanting to put some space and thought into what would happen so that nothing would be overlooked or found wanting afterwards. He went to bed for a well-earned rest. It had been a long day and it would be an early morning tomorrow. The question of what lay beneath the other panel lingered in his mind.
The camp was unusually quiet when West woke up. He dressed slowly, trying not to hurry out but to keep a sense of balance and perspective with the work ahead of him. He walked out the Paradig hatch door and down the ramp. A knot of people was collected around the Gopher Hole, as the tunnel entry point was now called. He smiled, squinting up at the painfully blue sky and then he pulled his old-style ball cap down over his eyes and strolled to the milling crew.
“Okay, let’s get on with our assignments,” said West. Turning to Volkum, he told the chief assistant, "Take your crew on survey to the northern transects and wrap up that part of the investigation.”
Volkum was clearly disappointed and he argued pitiably, “Chief, let us stay and watch, we all want to see the panel being exposed.”
“You can see Madison’s images later when it is over. I don’t want a lot of people in there when Theo and Madison are already in each other's way.”
“And there is a LOT of Theo in the way” quipped Madison as she pushed pass Theo who glared good-naturedly at her.
“Aren’t I the favorite?” asked Malena her face forming a perfect smile, “and shouldn’t I be allowed to supervise?”
“Of course, you are, which is why I am sending you out with Volkum, so that you can keep an eye on him while being his number 1 crew member,” said West smiling at her.
She pouted and looked at Volkum who simply shrugged his shoulders and heade
d for the equipment shed. “Okay, all the rest of you clowns get your gear and mount up,” said Volkum over his shoulder. The crew moaned in unison but turned to follow.
West watched them briefly, then turned as Theo and Madison clambered into the Gopher Hole.
As soon as Madison cleared the bottom of the ladder, West descended into the cool tunnel, his stocky body acutely registering the 20 degree drop in temperature. The glow lamp cast a feeble yellow light but Madison immediately turned it up for maximum brightness as Theo fished around for a second and third lamp to stick up on the tunnel walls to provide even greater light. To facilitate their work, the lights and a documentation video imager were all rigged to a motion detector to turn on automatically when someone entered the area of the burial.
Theo and Madison had by now established a routine and they went about it in a distinctly professional way with little conversation and intense concentration. West placed the HDA patch over his eye and continued to review feed from the Paradig on the Tugi Region. He was hoping to find more information but knew the odds were exceedingly slim that there was anything more in existence. The Tugi culture had been rarely investigated and West’s own grandfather was actually the person who had done the most work. Nonetheless, it was necessary to check out what was known and West dutifully continued the scan.
Theo and Madison began removing the plaster facing on the opposite side of where they thought the panel would be if it were there. They found a copy of the yellow sun and what they concluded was the planet Mercury that they had found on the opposite wall yesterday.
“It seems to be a repeat of the first pictograph,” said Theo looking over to West.
