Dark Moon Rising

by Michael E. Gonzales

  With their lights on, they passed through the door and ventured down a dark tunnel where the walls had obviously been augured out with some machine. This tunnel was about ninety meters long and opened out onto a ledge of stone that was suspended above a vast, dark void, the far ends of which were not visible even in the brilliance of all their lamps.

  "End of the line, Sergeant?" Stanley asked.

  "Why would we have been led here if it's a dead end?"

  "Dead end, you say? Perhaps that is exactly why we are here." Stanley was now looking to their rear. The blue light was coming through the aperture in the wall. It entered the area before the door, and then slowly advanced on them. As it did, its light grew too bright to look upon and the group was forced to shield their eyes. At a fantastic speed, it shot over their heads and started to climb up toward the roof of the massive cave. Its light reflected off the ceiling as it climbed; then, it stopped, perhaps two kilometers distant and several hundred meters above them.

  The light hovered there for several minutes, and then it began to increase its intensity, brighter and brighter, until it hurt the eye to look at it. Its wavelength changed as well, becoming more yellowish in color.

  Hugh joined the others looking down from the edge of the stone outcrop upon which all were standing. They were looking into an immense room that had been hollowed out by design. It was cylindrical, five kilometers in diameter and three to four kilometers tall.

  The object of everyone's attention was the bottom of the area. Along a third of the floor were a vast number of cubicles, cylinders, and spheres, all seemingly connected by tubes of varying diameter. These objects looked as if they were piled one upon the other until they seemed to climb up the wall like the moss in the previous room. Windows and hatches were visible as well.

  "This was a habitat," Hugh stated matter-of-factly, "an installation." But as unbelievable as it was, it was overshadowed by what was contained in the other two-thirds of the floor—a disk-shaped spacecraft.

  "Is that a...a flying saucer?" Martha asked in hushed tones.

  The object was thirty-six meters in diameter with sloping sides and a slightly convex top. In the center was a dome four-and-a-half to six meters in diameter. The object had once been a silver color, no doubt highly polished. Now, though, it showed the effects of centuries of neglect.

  Breaking the awed silence, Balaji asked softly, "I am wondering how it was flown in and out of this sublunar chamber?"

  Looking directly above it at the roof, Hugh could see a nondescript smoothed circular, area. This must have been the exit and entrance for this craft.

  After a moment, Larry called to the others. To the right of their rocky perch he had located a set of narrow steps that led down.

  The steps were clearly made either for shorter beings or beings with short legs. They were cut directly into the rock. They followed the curve of the chamber down to the near side of the alien installation. Hugh studied the path a moment. Then he started down. The others followed silently.

  ****

  Mary separated herself from Hugh intentionally. She was torn, her mind trying to come to grips with her emotions.

  As they descended, Larry asked, "Hey, is anybody recording this? Taking pictures?"

  "The suits have cameras but no way to record what they see," Hugh replied.

  "That is unfortunate," Balaji said. "All this equipment, and no ability to record."

  Mary had expected Stanley to rise to the defense of the suit he helped design, but he said nothing. This was not at all normal for him, Mary thought. Meeting Martha's eyes, she saw that her friend had noticed it as well.

  At the base of the steps, but a dozen meters from the alien installation, Hugh handed out more water and insisted everyone drink. They had just finished the refreshment and had passed all the empties to Hugh when Martha leapt to her feet and pointed up. "Oh, my God! Look!"

  Mary stood slowly, watching the area that Martha had indicated above them.

  Toward the top of the installation, one by one, lights were flickering to life. From cylinder to sphere to cubical, the interior lights came on and shone through the many windows. Then, a door in the side of the structure before them slid open.

  "That is an obvious invitation," Balaji said.

  "What? Go in there? Are you mad?" Stanley asked angrily. "This is a death trap. If not designed to kill us, it looks as if it's about to collapse."

  "You stay here if you want to, Doc," Hugh said, then turned and approached the door. Mary trotted up behind him. He looked at her over his shoulder.

  "Well, let's go," she said.

  Hugh turned to face her. "I'm going in alone, just to test the structural integrity of the place." He shook his head as Mary started to protest. "Alone, period. No discussion." His eyes were stern. He turned and entered the facility. Mary stood watching him for some distance. When he came to a "T" intersection, he looked both ways, and disappeared to the right.

  Mary looked at Balaji as he came to stand beside her. "He's mad at me."

  "Oh?"

  "I said something that ticked him off, I don't know what."

  Balaji took her by the arm and led her away from the others. "You are acting so foolish."

  "What?"

  "Everyone knows what's going on here between you two, except you. The man is in love with you, Mary. And you refuse to see. Why? Because you have a career? Foolishness!”

  “Well, he’s never said it—never told me he’s in love.”

  “Perhaps because you have never given him the slightest indication that you would be amenable to the idea.” Balaji turned and walked away.

  "Great," Mary muttered. "Now he's mad at me, too."

  Balaji walked to the door, and shouted down the corridor, "Hugh, are you all right?"

  From far off in the bowels of the structure they heard a faint response. "Yes. I'm coming back." Shortly, Hugh was back at the door, his suit and hair covered in Moon dust.

  Mary stood looking at him thinking, He's never had a love in his life. Hell, he apparently had never even had a girlfriend. He must have been terribly lonely. She wanted to rush to him and—

  And what? she asked herself. Hold his hand? Kiss him? Take him behind a rock and— it was crazy to have these thoughts, and she knew it. They were most likely all going to die here.

  "The place is filthy, particularly in those areas where doors were left open or windows are broken out," Hugh reported. "There's some serious damage to the place, as well. I'm concerned because there is the possibility of damaging an Ess-CEPS suit in there. Should that happen to one of us, that person will be in serious trouble. I suggest we remove the Ess-CEPS and leave them here, out of danger."

  Out of danger, Mary repeated the words to herself. There is no getting out of danger.

  ****

  As they all started removing their suits, Hugh approached Balaji and spoke in low tones.

  "Doc, there are skeletons and mummified remains in there, is it—"

  "What?" Balaji became excited. "Really? Show me!"

  "Doc, you're a biologist, any chance of a bio hazard here?"

  Balaji's excitement was replaced with dread. "That is difficult to determine. There are terrestrial viruses and microbes that can survive for decades, activating again when conditions are right. But we are talking about an exobiology unknown to us. It could be capable of anything."

  "In that case, I want you to explain the risk to everyone. The decision to continue in there must be unanimous. If one of us becomes infected, we could all be infected."

  Balaji got everyone's attention and reported on Hugh's discovery. Once the excitement had died down, Balaji tried to explain the dangers of contact with items and areas that might contain contaminants. "We will be kicking up a lot of dust in there, which we will inevitably inhale. We could get back into our Ess-CEPS for this exploration, but our suits will become contaminated regardless. This means we would not again be able to remove them in order to eat and drink. So the
question is: do we forgo this investigation and pursue our escape? Or do we act like the curious scientists we are?"

  "Well," Bob said, "when you couch the question in that manner, it's hard to say no. I vote we explore."

  "Martha, Larry, Joe,” Balaji said, turning to the three, “you are not scientists. So, if but one of you wishes to avoid these dangers, then we will all of us leave this place and continue to seek a return to the surface."

  They all three looked at one another. Heads started to bob. "We're with you," Joe said.

  "Wonderful. Now I need a show of hands. Will everyone agree to proceed without our Ess-CEPS?"

  Balaji turned to Hugh. "It is unanimous. We go in, and without the Ess-CEPS."

  Stanley approached Hugh, but addressed Balaji, "You could have saved yourself that speech, Dr. Sharma, as the question is academic." He then brushed the dust off Hugh's shoulder. "If there is a biological hazard in there, your fearless leader brought it with him out here—in which case, we are already dead."

  Stanley smiled slowly at Hugh as if to lord some superiority over him.

  "In that case," Balaji said, "there can be no argument or need for further concern. Let us remove these suits and proceed."

  "You're making a mistake," Stanley insisted. "This place is ancient in the extreme. This atmosphere could vanish with our slightest contact with the walls, a minor vibration, and we all die. I've changed my mind. I say we leave the suits on."

  "Let me ask you, Stan," Joe proposed. "If your suit is damaged in there, will you be happy to remain behind? Or perhaps one of we lesser mortals should surrender to death so that you can survive."

  "Your puny attempt at sarcasm aside, everyone stands a better chance at survival with superior minds in charge."

  "Hey!" Mary shouted as she turned and dug into her back pack. "I had forgotten I brought these E-COMs with me." She produced four of the Emergency Communicators she'd brought from the shelter.

  "Great!" Hugh said. "We'll divide into four two-person teams; not that I'm advocating dividing up inside this maze, but we have four E-COMs. Bal-ah-gee you're with Baw-ab. Lar-ree, you're with Mar-tah. Joe with Stan-lee. And Mary, you're with me," then softly he said to her, "if you don't object."

  "How could I?" she whispered back. "How can you save me if we're separated?" Then, she smiled at him.

  Hugh handed out the E-COMs. "Again, we're going to use Winchester. Set your frequencies and let me hear an E-COM check, one at a time."

  After it was confirmed that everyone could both receive and transmit, Hugh looked them over and said, "Stay together, stay with your partner. Let's go."

  Everyone lined up in their pairs behind Hugh and Mary. The corridor beyond the door was the same size as the door, obviously made for a smaller being. Hugh's head just cleared the ceiling. Stanley and Bob were forced to crouch. Inside, like that moss-covered cavern, the place was illuminated by an unknown means. There were no obvious lamps or fixtures. The walls seemed solid, so there was no light behind them. The place was simply bright. The air was more stale inside than it had been outside. So far, the place was relatively free of dust. No one failed to notice the rubber-coated floor, still soft after centuries of neglect. There was little in the way of instrumentation on the walls, but they did discover a box mounted to a wall with some extremely complicated symbols on it.

  Chapter 20

  It was Balaji who noticed the symbols first. "Hello," he called out, "this is writing here!" There were a total of twenty-six symbols; seven arranged across the top, on the horizontal, and nineteen on the left side on the vertical. The top of the vertical column and the left of the horizontal line seemed to share the one symbol in the upper left of the box.

  "They are not hieroglyphs," Balaji stated.

  "No, nor are they pictograms," Bob observed.

  "I don't see anything you could call a determinative either," Stanley stated in a more lucid, rational moment.

  Martha looked in and said, "It's sort of like trying to read a code, isn't it?"

  Hearing the word 'code,' Hugh stepped forward. "A code is usually considered as an algorithm which uniquely represents symbols from some source alphabet, by encoded strings, which may be in some other target alphabet. An extension of the code for representing sequences of symbols over the source alphabet is obtained by concatenating the encoded strings—"

  "Hugh, have you been trained in code breaking?" Joe asked.

  "Ah, no, I've just read on the subject is all."

  "Well, step forward." Balaji reached back and pulled Hugh in. "Look at these symbols. Can you make anything of them?"

  Hugh glanced at the cryptic notation for just a moment. "If it's a code, I'd need the source alphabet. But this probably is the alphabet."

  "I don't think we can stay here while you try to decipher this," Larry stated. "I think we all want to see these mummies."

  "We don't have to wait," Hugh said, tapping his forehead. "I have it all right up here. Let's Charlie Mike—I mean, let's go."

  "You have all that," Mary asked indicating the bizarre symbols, "in your head, just like that?"

  "Ah…yeah. Photographic memory." Hugh shrugged and turned.

  At the 'T' Intersection they turned right. The corridor ended about six meters further, though there was a door to the left. At the foot of the door was a skeleton in a very poor state of preservation. The bone was gray and turning into dust or ash.

  Everyone began making observations very quickly. "Height about one-hundred-fifty-seven centimeters," Balaji stated.

  "Note the width of the skull and the size of the eye sockets," Mary pointed out.

  "And the small jaw and tiny teeth," Bob observed.

  Martha added, "Oh, look, he only had four fingers."

  "Three fingers and an opposable thumb," Stanley corrected.

  "Take a look at its clothing," Hugh pointed to the gray, single-piece garment the creature was wearing. There was no obvious means of putting it on or taking it off. No buttons, no zipper, no seams at all. And, as Hugh observed, it felt as if it were made of metal.

  "Any indication of what may have killed him?" Stanley asked.

  Hugh was the first to notice something odd, "The creature's right leg appears to be broken, just here. On a human leg, this angle would indicate a catastrophic break of both the Fibula and the Tibia."

  "On this guy, that bend of the leg might be natural," Joe pointed out.

  Mary rose to her feet, placed her hands on her hips, and announced, "Hugh, you've made the scientific discovery of the millennium."

  At this, Stanley popped up on his feet. "He made the discovery; this is my team, thus my expedition! He's...nothing! He's cannon fodder! These cowboys don't make discoveries, we scientists do! This is my discovery do you understand that? Do you?" Stanley spun on his heels and fled down the corridor to the intersection, and turned left. His steps echoed on the floor until he had exited the installation.

  "I better go after him," Bob said, and followed Stanley out the door.

  ****

  "Well, I think it's clear Dr. Whitmore has snapped," Mary suggested.

  "Great," responded Martha. "Like this mess isn't difficult enough."

  "Perhaps we should call this off and head out," Hugh suggested.

  The E-COMs all cracked to life with Bob's voice, "Okay everyone. I have Dr. Whitmore. He's better now. We're just going to sit here awhile. You guys go ahead, just stay in touch, okay?"

  "Hold on a minute, Bob," Mary responded, removing her finger from the transmit button. "Well, I vote we continue. Frankly, I think we're better off without him."

  There was really no discussion. Knowing Stanley was all right and being watched after, they all felt better about continuing the exploration.

  Mary spoke to Bob again. "Bob, we're going on. You and Stanley stay where you are. Okay?"

  "Okay, Mary."

  "I have to point out," Hugh put in, "this place is huge, and we'll be tempted to spend days even weeks exploring. Let's jus
t remember that we are limited by our food, water, and by the remaining power in our Ess-CEPS. Right now, we're in good shape, but we could end up needing every minute of that power and every bit of food and water."

  "Hugh, you keep track of the time for us then, will you?" Balaji asked. They both knew Hugh was the most qualified to do so.

  "Okay, Doc. As interesting as this fellow is," Hugh said, indicating the desiccated remains on the floor, "wait till you see what's up ahead." Hugh turned and passed through the door to the left. Beyond was a much taller and wider corridor; nine meters wide and four tall. Two meters beyond the door, the corridor was adjoined by a smaller one that intersected it from the right. This corridor descended twice, then went east, obviously entering into the rock behind the structure. Interestingly, it was still dark in that area.

  Passing a room on their left, Hugh pointed in without comment and kept going. As each passed, he looked into the small chamber. It was empty, but the opposite wall was decorated with small glowing domes mounted to it. Each glowed with a startling array of brilliant iridescent colors.

  Martha paused as she looked in. "This is beautiful," she asserted. "At least these people had art. They must have been very advanced."

  "Martha," Larry said, "for all we know, that is a nuclear reactor."

  "Oh," Martha replied, and glanced about at the sterile walls of the passage way. “I wonder if these people had any art at all?”

  Hugh had not stopped here. He led the party to a door through which they entered into a laboratory. Odd instruments, various containers, and many strange, glass vessels had been placed on the countertops. None had been moved for, perhaps, centuries.

  "Balaji, come look at this," Mary called out.

  On the other side of a low table Balaji found Mary kneeling by a broken glass container, much like a beaker. Around it, a dark red stain covered the floor.

  "Blood?" she asked as Balaji squatted down next to her.

  "I doubt it. After all the time that has passed, perhaps hundreds of years, blood as we understand it, would have long since been gone. Regardless, this is an ominous sign." He rose to full height and continued, "I have worked in biohazard labs, and I fear that is what we have here."