Phobos

by Steve Alten

  Twisting the steel handle, she yanks open the cockpit door, venting the cabin. Leaping into a maelstrom of wind and sea, she treads water, only to discover she can stand.

  They are in a cornfield, the stalks submerged under five feet of water.

  Remaining in the Nexus, they push through the gelid fourth dimension until they are standing on an elevated strip of concrete.

  Manny releases the inert pilot, slipping out of the higher realm. A blinding wind whips at his legs, the ash clouds soaring overhead at a dizzying speed. The air is static with electricity, generating sparks of lightning that dance around upswells of wet ash, feeding the turbid heavens.

  “Lilith, where are we?”

  She looks to the east where waterspouts dance across an olive-green horizon, the shoreline littered with grounded oil tankers, a maze of gray battleships, and mangled pleasure craft. “I’m pretty sure that’s Galveston Bay. What happened?”

  “The megatsunami is what happened. It entered the bay through the Gulf and flooded the Texas coastline.”

  She points to a highway off-ramp. “That’s the Gulf Freeway, it leads into Houston. We’re about twenty miles southeast of the space port. Maybe we can find a car.”

  “Too dangerous. The ash cloud is moving so fast it’s charging the atmosphere with electricity while popping tornadoes faster than we could avoid them. It’ll be exhausting, but our best shot is to do this on foot within the Nexus. At least we can see the updrafts coming.”

  “What’s causing the ash cloud to move so fast?”

  “ … a miracle. Call it God or the Second Coming, but whatever it is, it’s clearing Earth’s atmosphere and jettisoning the debris into space.”

  President Hiles stares at the holographic Earth, tears in his eyes, as the gray-brown blanket of volcanic debris dissipates from the Northern Hemisphere, drawn into space hundreds of miles below the South Pole like a steadily draining hourglass. “You say it’s jettisoning the debris into space—where exactly is it going? Is it orbiting our planet?”

  “No, sir. Astronomers stationed at observatories in Ontario and British Columbia confirm clear views of space, at least over the Northern Hemisphere.” Despite the startling developments, atmospheric scientist James Thompson appears visibly shaken. “To be perfectly honest, Mr. President, we just don’t know what is happening. We’re calling it a miracle simply because there’s no precedent for this or scientific explanation for why any of this is happening; for that matter, we still don’t know what triggered all the volcanic eruptions. We can’t access our satellites for answers either; the atmosphere is so charged with electromagnetic particles that it’s scrambling our communications from space.”

  “What happens when the atmosphere is cleared of debris? Will the process stop?”

  “Again, sir, since we have no idea what’s causing the phenomenon, we have no way of answering that.”

  “Maybe it’s a do-over?”

  “Sir?”

  “A clean slate … you know, God’s way of letting us know He’s out there, that He’s giving us a second chance.”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. President, I’m not what you’d call a religious person.”

  “Maybe that’s the problem, Dr. Thompson. Maybe God wants people like you to be more religious.”

  Thompson fights back tears of frustration and a chuckle caused by the absurdity of the accusation. “So you think God decided to unleash a caldera and volcanoes and a megatsunami—not because of war or greed or all the hatred and killing in this world, but because people like me aren’t going to church enough? With all due respect to you and your ‘chosen survivors’ hiding out in this bunker … go fuck yourself.”

  The atmospheric scientist pushes past the president and his political advisors, seeking the nearest elevator to the surface.

  They have covered the twenty-two-mile marathon in less than an hour within the Nexus, the fourth-dimensional portal slowing time while magnifying their physical performance. But the two Hunahpu are still half-human, and the stress of moving through gelid air has drenched their muscles with lactic acid.

  Lilith makes it as far as the torn steel gates of H.O.P.E.’s Houstonbased space port before she collapses. Emerging from the Nexus, Manny carries her across the compound as the night sky miraculously reappears overhead—revealing a bright violet ring of charged particles from the aurora borealis.

  And in that split second Immanuel Gabriel knows what is causing the ash clouds to be drawn to the south, and the fear of what is soon to come jolts his exhausted body with adrenaline.

  “Lilith, the singularity’s manifesting in the physical universe. Where’s the space port?”

  The hangar is six stories high and as long as three football fields. The space planes are lined up at their private terminals—save for one, which is parked by the sealed doors. A lone worker stands by the aluminum alloy vessel, sucking on a pacifier bong while liquid hydrogen is fed through hoses into the space plane’s rocket boosters.

  An auxiliary garage door is kicked open and a tall man enters, half carrying a familiar figure. “Mrs. Mabus? I wasn’t sure … I mean, we were told you were coming—”

  Lilith leaves Manny to check the fuel gauge. “Where’s the pilot? Where’s the launch crew I ordered?”

  “Gone to be with their families. I’m the only one left. Been here thirteen years, Mrs. Mabus. I’d do anything—”

  “Sober up, shut up, and listen! If I’m not airborne in the next five minutes, I’m going to erupt like that caldera. So unless you want to end up like my dead husband you’d better disconnect those hoses and get those hangar doors open—am I being clear?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Shutting off the fuel pump, he begins uncoupling the hoses.

  Manny looks over the space plane. “Lilith, can you fly this thing?”

  “We’re about to find out.”

  The technician tosses aside the fuel hoses, heading off to open the bay doors.

  “Wait. Where’s my son?”

  “Devlin? Everyone assumed he was with you aboard one of the Mars shuttles. Give me a moment and I’ll drive over one of the mobile gantries.” The workman’s mouth drops open as he witnesses two blurs of movement leap two stories onto the portside wing and enter the ship.

  Unlike the flight decks of NASA’s Orbiter space shuttles, which were organized using a g-force priority of heads-up displays, key instrument panels, and switches, the cockpit of H.O.P.E.’s space plane relies on thought control relays initiated by the pilot’s and copilot’s headpieces.

  Strapping herself into the pilot’s seat, Lilith activates her headgear and positions the eyepiece over her right eye. “Activate voice command, authorization Mabus, Lilith Alpha Tango Beta Gamma Delta.”

  The horseshoe-shaped onyx glass consoles activate, revealing myriad colored heads-up displays and color-oriented controls.

  “Start main jet engines. Engage throttle controls.”

  A holographic throttle appears. Lilith grasps it, maneuvering the space plane out of the open bay doors—never noticing the twisted corpse of the technician, lying in a heap beneath several rain parkas.

  The wind whips at the space plane’s enormous wings, pitching the vessel as it emerges onto the deserted runway. Lilith blows Manny a kiss, then engages the jet engines, propelling them down the stretch of ash-blown concrete.

  Aided by the upswell of air currents, they lift off, accelerating into the night sky. Their exhausted bodies sink against the leather seats behind three Gs of force, the space plane pitching violently as it rises into the fast-flowing current of volcanic debris.

  Lilith activates the shuttle’s rocket boosters, launching the space plane at a near-vertical angle through the atmospheric turbulence. The roar is overwhelming, the lateral drag threatening to unhinge every plate holding the vessel together—and then they are through, surrounded by the dark velvety silence of space.

  Confronted by the monster.

  It is the size of a neighborhood cul-de-sac, it
s event horizon as large as the moon. Brown ash swirls within its vacuous orifice, sequestered within a magnificent rainbow halo of its womblike aurora australis. The singularity rotates in space a thousand miles beneath the Earth’s southern pole—a dilating black hole inhaling a stream of volcanic dust through the straw of its gravitational vortex.

  As the last of the atmospheric dust is consumed, the monster begins to move.

  Manny’s heart pounds like a rubber mallet against his chest, the fear of what he is witnessing paralyzing his limbs as the singularity—appearing as a gelid halo—approaches Earth. Distorting the charged particles of color into spilled soup, it consumes the aurora even as it reaches for Antarctica.

  There is no visible moment of contact. The monster simply consumes the icy continent in a gargantuan gelid inhalation, swallowing land and ocean within its invisible expanding orifice, exposing the fiery orange glow of the mantle as it simultaneously moves deeper and wider. Absorbing molten magma and the collapsing landmass of South America like acid on flesh, the silent killer’s event horizon spreads wider into Africa and across the Atlantic Ocean, evaporating land and sea into an all-consuming vortex of nonexistence until the core itself is engulfed and there is nothing left, save a black halo of aexo–dark energy space—a temporal anomaly birthed as an innocuous proton-seeking missile of gravitational destruction, unleashed by the egocentric creators it has now consumed.

  The two panting Hunahpu humans reach out to one another, entwining their fingers, neither able to speak. Finally Lilith utters, “Wormhole.”

  The scarlet-ringed aperture appears where the Earth had orbited the cosmos only moments before.

  “Computer, take us in, sixty-second countdown. Now transferring command to copilot.” Releasing her harness, she floats up from her seat, placing the controls firmly over Manny’s head. “Sorry. I need to find an air sickness bag before I lose it.”

  “Lilith, wait—”

  She’s gone before he can stop her, floating through zero gravity into the next compartment.

  The space plane alters course, heading straight for the wormhole.

  “ … FIFTY SECONDS … FORTY-NINE … FORTY-EIGHT …”

  “Lilith, come on! Get back here and strap in.”

  No reply.

  The wormhole’s orifice blooms into view.

  “ … TWENTY-NINE … TWENTY-EIGHT … TWENTY-SEVEN …”

  “Lilith?” Discarding the headpiece, he unbuckles his harness and launches himself out of the flight deck and through the empty ready room to the passenger deck.

  The spinning object floating toward him through the ninety-foot cabin jettisons rings of scarlet bubbles as it flips over and over again until finally it becomes recognizable.

  Manny bellows a wounded primordial cry as he catches the severed head of Lilith Mabus in mid-flight.

  Devlin is right behind his mother’s decapitated skull, wielding the bloodied blade in his right hand as he launches himself horizontally down the empty aisle.

  “ … SIXTEEN … FIFTEEN … FOURTEEN …”

  Leaping into the Nexus, Manny grabs Devlin’s right wrist. Unleashing his pent-up fury, he crushes the bone into splintering fragments, at the same time twisting the knife into his nephew’s abdomen—as Devlin smashes through the fourth-dimensional vortex, bludgeoning Manny’s head with his elbow, the near-death blow bruising his uncle’s brain, rendering him unconscious.

  The demon turns to go after him—only to be confronted by the spirit of his deceased father, Jacob Gabriel.

  Devlin’s crimson eyes widen in disbelief. “The wormhole … you’re controlling it?”

  “As I now control you.”

  “ … THREE … TWO … ONE—CONTACT.”

  The space plane enters the wormhole’s gravitational vortex, Devlin Mabus screaming in agony as the physical vessel harboring the Hunahpu abomination fragments into billions of atoms in an expulsion of matter that rivals that of the Big Bang.

  Immanuel Gabriel’s eyes open in slits, his being encompassed in a soothing cocoon of ethereal blue-white light, his twin brother shielding him within his aura.

  PART 1

  THE CAUSE

  I happen to have been privileged enough to be in on the fact that we’ve been visited on this planet and the UFO phenomenon is real. It’s been well covered up by all our governments for the last sixty years or so, but slowly it’s leaked out and some of us have been privileged to have been briefed on some of it.

  —DR. EDGAR MITCHELL, APOLLO 14 ASTRONAUT

  The world is made for people who aren’t cursed with self-awareness.

  —ANNIE SAVOY IN THE FILM BULL DURHAM, WRITTEN BY RON SHELTON

  TESTIMONIAL May 9, 2001: National Press Club, Washington, D.C.

  Dr. Steven Greer, host: The Disclosure Project (excerpted from opening remarks)

  We are here today to disclose the truth about a subject that has been ridiculed and questioned, denied for at least fifty years. The men and women who are on this stage and the some 350 additional military and intelligence witnesses to the so-called UFO matter and extraterrestrial intelligence can prove, and will prove, that we are not alone. [ … ] I have personally briefed a sitting director of Central Intelligence, James Woolsey, President Clinton’s first CIA director. I have personally briefed the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency; the head of intelligence at Joint Staff; members of the Senate Intelligence Committee; many members of Congress; members of the European leadership; the Japanese Cabinet, and others. And what I have found is that none of them are surprised that this is true, but they are uniformly horrified that they have not had access to these projects.

  We can establish through these witnesses [ … ]—people who have been inside the CIA, NSA, NRO, Air Force, Navy, Marines, Army, all divisions of the intelligence and military community, as well as corporate witnesses, contractors to the government, and these are folks who have been involved in so-called black budget, or covert unacknowledged projects—these unacknowledged special access projects are taking in at least forty to eighty billion dollars per year, and they are sitting on technologies that can change the world forever. [ … ]

  We can establish through this testimony that these objects of extraterrestrial origin have been tracked on radar going thousands of miles per hour, stopping and making right-hand turns; that they use antigravity propulsion systems (which we have already figured out how they work in classified projects in the United States, Great Britain, and elsewhere); that these objects have landed on terra firma, at times have been disabled, and have been retrieved—specifically by teams within the United States; that extraterrestrial life forms have been retrieved, and that their vehicles have been taken and studied thoroughly, for at least fifty years.

  We can prove, through the testimony and documents that we will be presenting, that this subject has been hidden from members of Congress and at least two [ … ] presidential administrations that we are aware of, and that the Constitution of the United States has been subverted by the growing power of these classified projects and that this is a danger to the national security. There is no evidence, I wish to emphasize, that these life forms from elsewhere are hostile towards us, but there is a great deal of evidence that they are concerned with our hostility. There are times when they have neutralized, or rendered inert, the launch capabilities of intercontinental ballistic missiles. Witnesses here today will describe those events to you. They have shown clearly that they do not want us to weaponize space. And yet we are proceeding down that dangerous path [ … ].

  Now, I expect people to be skeptical, but not irrationally so, because these men and women have come forward and they have their credentials. They can establish who they are, and they have been firsthand witnesses to some of the most important events in the history of the human race. As was pointed out to me by some of the men here, they were charged with handling the nuclear weapons of the United States; their word was trusted on everything of great importance for the national security. We mus
t trust their word now. As Monsignor Balducci said at the Vatican, in an interview I had with him recently, “It is irrational not to accept the testimony of these witnesses” [ … ].

  This is the end of the childhood of the human race. It is time for us to become mature adults in the cosmic civilizations out there. To do this, we must become a peaceful civilization, and we must look as we go into space with an intent of cooperating with other civilizations, not weaponizing that high frontier [ … ].

  —Dr. Steven Greer former chairman of the Department of Emergency Medicine at Caldwell Memorial Hospital in North Carolina, Founder and Director of CSETI and the Disclosure Project

  Used by permission of the Disclosure Project

  The Journal of Julius Gabriel

  DATE: JUNE 14, 1990

  PLACE: NAZCA PLATEAU, PERU

  AUDIO ENTRY: JG-766

  I stand before the vast canvas, sharing the feeling of loneliness its creator must have surely felt thousands of years ago. Before me lie the answers to riddles—riddles that may ultimately determine whether our species is to live or die. The future of the human race—is there anything more important? Yet I stand here alone, my quest condemning me to this purgatory of rock and sand as I seek communion with the past in order to comprehend the peril that lies ahead.

  The years have taken their toll. What a wretched creature I’ve become. Once a renowned archaeologist, now a laughingstock to my peers. A husband, a lover—these are but distant memories. A father? Scarcely. More a tortured mentor, a miserable beast of burden left to my son to lead about. Each step across the stone-laden desert causes my bones to ache, while thoughts forever shackled in my mind repeat the maddening mantra of doom over and over in my brain. What higher power has chosen my family among all others to torture? Why have we been blessed with eyes that can see the signposts of death while others stumble along as if blind?