by T I WADE
Nothing had changed in the morgue and, with the door open, they could all enter. Both Igor and Vitalily wanted to de-suit in the chamber. How could they figure out how a system worked wrapped up in a space suit?
VIN undressed with them. He could at least talk to them and, without his suit, he had Boris’ Plasma Taser and his Bowie knife if there was any trouble.
Igor was the most excited upon seeing the cavern and entering the first located chamber. VIN could see it in the excitement in his eyes. The typically quiet Igor was never so upbeat.
As soon as all were undressed and in long johns (VIN’s suggestion; it was cold down there), Igor looked at the electrical outlet VIN had opened in the wall.
“It is totally dead, made out of some sort of ceramic material,” Igor determined after testing to see if anything was live. “Maybe they used gypsum in alabaster form from here to make this, whatever it is.”
“How many holes are there in the socket?’ Vitalily asked.
“Eleven,” Igor responded. “Physics and electricity are much the same across the universe,” Igor added not turning away from the socket. “The largest hole, I bet is the ground, or the main power connection. I would say the latter.” Vitalily agreed with him and over the course of an hour they discussed each hole.
Igor connected certain wires from the now decapitated grips, the same cables VIN had used. VIN wasn’t an electrician, not like these guys, and he watched as they fed in several wires separated from the others from the power cables.
“Looks more like a computer connection to a computer screen,” VIN suggested.
“I think you are on the right track,” replied Igor. “I bet this is a positive, maybe a couple positive, a negative, a ground, also video, sound and even holes connected to gauges, like atmosphere, temperature, even radioactivity, all coming through one connection. This is like a Rubric’s cube. I just wish they were color coded.”
“So they could determine what was in this room from their headquarters, or command center?” VIN asked.
“I’m sure every room we are going to find will have the same connections. I just wonder where the connections went to. It looks like something was connected to this unit, but what?”
“Maybe light or laser connections?” suggested VIN, and he got a slap on the back from Vitalily he never expected.
“Of course!” Igor said, standing up and acknowledging VIN. “You are so in tune with the universe, Mr. Noble. What the hell were you doing in the Marines?” he laughed. “Of course! These terminals or connectors could feed laser beams or light beams through them.”
“That is what I thought when Boris and I were on the asteroid,” VIN added.
“Yes, I believe you are right. Maybe that circle you guys found was a plasma circle of defense, a sort of shield against outside space and its radioactivity. Ingenious!” shouted Igor.
Ryan and Boris, still in spacesuits, were trying to figure out what everybody who was undressed was so excited about.
“You mean a wall, a barrier against the outside?” VIN asked beginning to get lost.
“Yes, I believe you found a shield against space, something much like a laser or light shield against the outside elements, and if that asteroid had a shield, I bet this place has one too.”
“Wow!” was the only word VIN got out.
Igor and Vitalily discussed the possibility of feeding electricity back through the plug, or whatever VIN thought it was, into where the system led.
After two hours, the two men were finally satisfied that they had wires in a few of the correct holes; VIN wrote on the white board for Ryan to give juice for a second or two only, and on low power. The power came on and suddenly a second door slid open in the far corner of the room where they were. This time the door opened silently, with no noise and disappeared into its recess in the wall. The metal joined back together and it was if there had never been a door there.
“Well that opens up the next room,” stated Igor excitedly. “Vitalily, check the air change before we go in.”
A minute later, standing close to the door with his arm inside the new room, Vitalily told the two that the readings were nearly back to normal. There was a slight reduction of oxygen and an increase in carbon dioxide, but most importantly, there was no severe reduction in pressure, and it was safe to enter. VIN was back to breathing in hard.
Carefully, the three men who were not very diplomatically outfitted, peered into the next room. Ryan and Boris, more formal in full spacesuit attire, joined them to possibly meet alien beings. The room was dark and empty, and Igor wrote a message on the whiteboard to be relayed to the battery room: I want 20 percent power for 60 seconds. Ryan relayed the message over the intercom and as the power surged up the cable, the room in front of them changed color, and the walls began to glow slightly.
“Not only is the wall covering a protection against the outside, but I think the light emanates from the metal, which may also control the heat for the room. I just had a notion, thinking about your defense shield,” Igor said to VIN.
“A pretty pink color?” asked VIN. Igor asked for 30 percent power and suddenly the walls glowed white, the room lit up and a faint humming could be heard from behind the walls. “Leave it at that power setting for now,” wrote Igor. “Vitalily, Geiger counter, please.” The Russian turned on the Geiger counter and it omitted no sound. There was zero radiation in the room.
VIN looked around. Several round covers had opened showing three possible doors around the new room, one to his left, one directly in front of him, and one on the wall to his right; the last was where the humming was coming from. In the middle of the new room a globe two feet in diameter was perched on a two-foot high pedestal. He wandered over to the ball, while the two electricians returned to the morgue explaining to VIN that they needed to add more wires into more holes.
The ball was perfectly round, or was it? VIN’s hand slipped over the cold metal surface which was as smooth as glass. The lights suddenly cut out as he was touching the ball, the power must have been turned off, but he could see light from the lamps placed in the morgue. The round ball was covered in the same metal that covered everything. Then he suddenly understood what this metal was: a protectant against the air, the cold, and the extremities of space. Ryan sent the message board around ordering everyone to get dressed, helmets on.
“Can you hear me?” VIN shouted into his intercom once Boris had helped him on with his helmet, his now gloved hand again on the globe.
“Da,” Igor responded, “I’m now dressed, so is Vitalily.”
“I know what this metal is. It coats everything. It protects everything it covers from decay, or bad air, or cold, or even outer space. It has been on everything I have ever found on both planets. It is like a seal covering the equipment when not in use.”
“I think you hit the nail on the head, VIN,” Ryan said.
“You have made a correct assumption, now don’t touch anything,” continued Igor. “I’m testing the electrical socket. It might change something. Boris, increase the power to 40 percent. Turn power on now!”
Suddenly the humming started up, the same lights came on, much brighter this time, and the globe in front of VIN’s eyes changed color from silver to something he didn’t believe. It was an exact replica of Earth, and he was staring down at the planet they left over a year ago.
“Africa looks different. Very different! There is a red dot in the middle of the “Head” of Africa, and the “Head” of Africa doesn’t show the Sahara Desert; it shows a green belt right across from east to west, and even greener than any other part of the continent. Wow! Never seen that before!” he exclaimed, not over the intercom, but to himself. He had passed over this exact area a hundred times while in orbit. “Guys, leave the power on exactly how you have it. Come and see this!” As his gaze shifted from the globe he was staring at, he beheld a fully computerized or electrical command system, like the entire Bridge of America One; it was on the other side of the wide door
way that he did not see or hear open, to his left. But, what really stunned him was that the entire rock wall on the opposite side of the room had either opened or disappeared, and he was looking directly outside, outside the cliff and right into the Martian atmosphere itself, except that there was some sort of barrier between him, the new room, and the outside.
“For heaven’s sake, Igor, tell them not to turn the power off,” VIN shouted. “The whole side of the cliff has opened, like a bloody cave door to the outside. If they turn the power off we could lose our atmosphere.”
Ryan and Boris entered to see what VIN was babbling incoherently about. They were rooted in shock at seeing three newly opened doors and VIN standing in a chamber that one of the doors opened into with his hand on a globe of the Earth. VIN turned to them and beckoned them forward.
Ryan immediately saw what VIN was staring at: a hole in the cliff wall about twenty feet wide and ten feet high. The outer wall, the rocks, and the cliff face to the outside atmosphere were gone. He and VIN were staring directly into the atmosphere of Mars. Protected by his spacesuit, Ryan quickly walked over to the wall and realized that it was actually still there; it was like a hologram from a camera that depicted the outside. The wall was still there, except that it had become invisible, like a glass window.
He beckoned the others over and their hands played on the smooth wall/window.
“Is anyone outside of the outer chamber?” Ryan asked into his intercom.
“Yes, a couple of us working on the panels,” one man responded.
“Look up, look up to the cliff wall. Can you see any difference?” Ryan asked the man.
“Holy crap! There is a massive hole in the cliff! It wasn’t there before. Is that you, Boss? I can see five astronauts, clear as day! I can’t believe it! Everybody look up. A large hole in the cliff has just opened up. You guys look like you are staring out of a screen in a drive-in movie.”
Ryan felt the wall as far as he could, just to make sure that there was a barrier between the outside and inside. It was as if the wall had never moved. It hadn’t, it was still there.
Everybody, inside and out, stopped what they had been doing and stared with disbelief at what had been the rectangular slice of cliff wall directly above the outer chamber they were working on.
It took a full minute before Igor, the first to regain a sense of reality, moved. In front of the clear wall was a command console about three feet high; it looked like they had found the command center, or at least something to do with the controls of the cavern.
For the first time, VIN and Boris saw lettering above and below numerous buttons and dials, all of which resembled the controls they found on the walls, albeit much smaller.
“I’m afraid that if we turn off the power, something may go wrong. Until we know more about the workings of this cavern, we could push the wrong button and something could go amiss. I want full suits in here until further notice.” Ryan ordered.
Boris brought in two lights, and then Ryan asked that the battery be turned off, then on again a minute later. The room went dark; their lamps lighted the command center, the wall reappeared, and the door closed behind them sealing them in. He had been right. It was not a place to walk around without power. They waited a full minute and the power came back on, the door opened, the walls glowed and the outside view could again be seen.
“Igor, Boris, Vitalily, figure out how we can get continuous power into this system. We can afford to part with one nuclear battery for the time being so we can wire it up to keep this system running. It just means that one of the shuttles will lose its laser weapon, which is no big deal out here. We need to be protected in here, so let’s find a room, or a cupboard where we can keep the battery sealed up until we find some sort of power room.”
“One of the body cabinets in the morgue?” suggested VIN. All agreed and the spider was activated to laser two holes big enough for the thick electrical cables to protrude from the cabinet. They lifted the battery up the shaft and into the morgue; then VIN lifted it into a cabinet and closed it. VIN was on the button; no radiation was being emitted from the battery in the closed cabinet. This metal, whatever it was, worked well.
Twenty-four hours later they returned to the morgue on their next spacewalk shift to find that the spider had created two holes large enough to squeeze the thick cables through. Ryan brought some of the soft Nano-Silicone to seal the holes around the protruding cables and, once this was done, Igor and Boris reconnected the wires as they had done before.
“What about our time?” Ryan reminded the team. “We have sixteen minutes before our suits run out of energy. Let’s call it a day, leave the power off, and return in twelve hours.”
Reluctantly, the crew put down their tools; the spider was put in dormant mode, and the cavern was closed and sealed.
Peering up at the cliff wall, the outside workers showed them where the hole had been and where they had stood. The lower edge of the hole would be a foot higher than the top of their outer cavern; Ryan was to beginning to suspect that building these chambers was a total waste of effort.
Ryan wanted to know what VIN had seen on the globe of Earth. They were in the supply cylinder relaxing with the five other men while their suits powered up.
“Africa, and the entire Sahara region was green, like a dense belt of vegetation around the equator, just like the Amazon,” VIN replied. “I have orbited Earth so many times the entire planet is fixed in my memory.”
“Who remembers their history or geography? Anyone?” Ryan asked. Nobody could remember when a green Sahara might have existed, so Ryan called up to America One. The ship had risen over the horizon several minutes earlier. Ryan asked Captain Pete who thought that it was millions of years ago, the last ice age. That was impossible so he asked Suzi for her opinion. Suzi knew of a more recent time, but the real brains on the ship, Martha Von Zimmer, the walking encyclopedia, as Jonesy called her, came to the mike.
“Ja, the most recent time the Sahara was green, was only about 10,000 years ago,” she replied shocking the men listening down on the surface. “I have been discussing the exact era with Fritz and Petra. ‘When the Rains Came’ was a thesis I did in university for one of my examinations, which one I can’t remember, but it was fascinating to me, and I remember my writing well. Herr Warner did the same thesis exercise as well, and we were discussing what we had both written. Some 12,000 years ago, the only place to live along the eastern Sahara Desert was the Nile Valley, but around 10,500 years ago, a sudden burst of monsoon rains over the vast desert transformed the region into habitable land. This opened the door for humans to move into the area, as evidenced by nearly 400 radiocarbon dates of human and animal remains from more than 150 excavation sites. The climate began to change 10,500 years ago, which turned the 3.6 million square mile Sahara into a savannah-type environment. This actually happened within a few hundred years, certainly within less than 500 years. This change was also researched by a colleague of mine who still works at the University of Cologne in Germany. In the Egyptian Sahara, semi-arid conditions allowed for grasses and shrubs to grow, with some trees sprouting in valleys and near groundwater sources. The vegetation and small rain pools drew animals well adapted to dry conditions, such as giraffes, to enter the area. Paintings of humans frolicking in the rain pools were depicted in rock art from Southwest Egypt during the same time, and they did not look to be Homo sapiens. If they were, they looked more like the Bushman from the deserts of southern Africa. That is a question that still nags me to this day. Why did the paintings look like perfect Bushman paintings, so far north? In the more southern Sudanese Sahara, lush vegetation, hearty trees, and permanent freshwater lakes persisted over hundreds of years. Nobody can tell exactly, but it lasted as long as ten to fifteen centuries. I personally believe more than that. I believe this time zone was about the same amount of the time our current human civilization has existed. Anyway, there were large rivers, such as the Wadi Howar, once the largest tributary to the Ni
le from the Sahara. Wildlife included very demanding species such as elephants, rhinos, hippos, crocodiles, and more than 30 species of fish up to two meters long.”
“Like the Amazon jungle?” VIN asked.
“Correct, Herr Noble, exactly described, but think of the animals as African, not South American. Between 8,000 and 7,000 years ago, retreating monsoonal rains initiated desiccation in the Egyptian Sahara, prompting humans to move quickly to remaining habitable niches in Sudanese Sahara and again closer to the Nile and its tributaries. The end of the rains and return of desert conditions throughout the Sahara coincides with population returning to the Nile Valley and the beginning of pharaonic society, or the time of the Pharaohs. Many of us who studied this time period believe that this green period in the desolate parts of northern Africa could have lasted even 2,500 years; its end brought about the Sahara desert and the disappearance of many of the people living in the area. My friend at the German university believes that civilized species of humans lived and died in this region, and were never mentioned in our history books. Lastly, this area, the green Sahara, was the place where much of the pharaonic society developed intellectual prowess such as, building systems, construction of their great pyramids, and their systems of government.”
“Atlantis?” added Jonesy listening in.
“You would think along lines of fantasy, Herr Jones, but some of us believe that the people of North Africa headed far afield and even ended up in places like Indonesia and southern Africa, not Greece.”
“You said that these people might have been civilized, maybe technically able to be equals to our current areas of technology?” Ryan asked.
“Ja… that is where my theories break apart, Herr Ryan. There has never been evidence of anything modern throughout the Sahara, other than what has been left by our current civilization and, the people believed to have ended up in Indonesia and a few other areas, were no more advanced than the Bushman, who many believe, moved on to Southern Africa.”
