by Adam Benson
“Whoever runs these must be pretty small. Doesn’t look like more than three and a half, four feet or so. Guess that confirms the 'little' in 'little green men',” Captain Cavitt commented to Jesse. "Hello!" He called into the interior.
"Captain! Don't call out!" Jesse scolded him quietly. "We don't know who or what is in there, and it isn't like they're going to speak English anyhow."
"Sorry sir." Captain Cavitt said ducking his head and starting to crawl inside. He only made it in a few feet before he turned around and came back out. "We're going to need to grab some flash lights." He said. "It's pretty dark in there."
"Let's check out the rest of the area first. Let's make sure we've got the outside secured before we start crawling around inside." Said Major Marcel
"Yes sir." Captain Cavitt said. The two men cautiously pushed on walking around to the second section of the hull.
As they came around, some Mack’s story started to reveal itself. There were signs of movement in the ground. Something had been dragged through the dirt toward the pile of hulls, and there along the side of it were pools of what looked like dried blood smeared all around.
"Red blood?" Jesse said aloud. “If Mr. Brazel was right, and one of them was pinned to the side of this thing, then that would seem to confirm it. The rancher may be telling the truth. Little green men have crash landed here in New Mexico.”
“I can’t believe we have Martians! Here!” Sheridan said excitedly.
This second section of hull was easier to look inside. The rip in the ship was wider and more gaping than the larger section had been. Inside they could see the basic two decks laid out and trashed with debris. Not everything inside seemed foreign to them. There was a table and what looked like armatures of some sort with tools on the end, but otherwise the inside of the top deck seemed pretty strange.
"There doesn't seem to be any sort of buttons or knobs on anything." Cavitt said, observing the space they were staring into. "How do they control any of it? It's all flat. Everything is just flat."
"Maybe this isn't the control room." Jesse replied. "Maybe everything's automatic."
They peered into the room for only a moment longer before moving around to the last piece of the ship to find out if anyone, or anything was lurking. The section was broken in such a way to make it very easy to see inside. The upper deck had two chairs, and almost nothing else. There was an angled table hanging from the curved inside wall, but there were no markings on it, no buttons or knobs; nothing that could identify it as anything but an impractical table. The lower deck was very easy to identify. There was a bunk bed and a few lockers. The lockers didn't have any handles or knobs on them, but it was clear that this was some sort of living quarters.
"Care to take a look inside?" Major Marcel asked Captain Cavitt.
"Yes, I would!" Cavitt said excitedly. Without hesitation, he crawled into the lower deck of the ship with his gun at the ready.
Major Marcel waited outside looking around for any signs of movement before hunching over and crawling inside.
It was a living area, with bare bunks and empty lockers, but otherwise there was nothing discernible in the cabin. There were no markings, and no contraptions of any kind. It was a strange bedroom with smooth walls all around, and everything seemed to be built as one large piece. The beds blended into the floors and walls, the locker cabinets were molded in the opposing bulkhead. There were strange transparent cables, like thin hair, dangling from torn areas of the ship, and they were obviously not made of metal.
Cavitt ran his hand across one of the bunks. The material changed under his hand as he got closer to the place where the aliens would have slept. "It's soft!" He said excitedly. "Where they sleep is soft, like a mattress, but everything it’s connected to is hard like steel." In his excitement, his mind prompted him to feel the bottom of the bunk as well. It too was soft like a mattress. "It's the same way on the bottom!"
"But it’s all one piece! What kind of metal can be soft as that?" Jesse said, backing out of the cramped living quarters. He stood up and easily lifted himself up to the second deck. Jesse didn’t wait long to follow.
“Two chairs, and a blank white, slanted table around a cylinder. What is it?” Sheridan asked.
“There’s no writing anywhere. Everything’s just blank. How do you control this thing?” Jesse said.
“We don’t even know if there are controls on this thing.”
“It’s certainly not here,” Jesse said feeling around the surface. “You get a load of these little clear hairs hanging off some of these broken edges?”
“Yes, sir. What do you make of them?” Sheridan asked, looking around.
“No idea. They’re grouped together though. It doesn’t quite feel like the same material as the hull.”
"Why would they have two chairs facing a wall like this when there's nothing there to look at?"
"Maybe it's just some seating, and we're over thinking it." Jesse suggested.
"Or maybe there's a projector behind it that puts the pictures up on that table."
"Interesting notion,” Jesse said. "That makes more sense than a control room with no controls."
The tear in the hull went on to the other side of the small room they were in but was separated by a bulkhead with an oval shaped portal door. Immediately on the other side of the door was the gaping hole that remained where the rest of the ship used to be. The door was opened, and so it was easy enough for them to look out through it. More of the thin transparent threads hung breezily from the ripped hull of the ship and fell like a beaded curtain around the portal.
"Let's check out that big section." Major Marcel said, looking out through the door. "We'll need to grab some flashlights. Come on, Captain."
The two men hunkered through the small room to the other side where the ship had been torn apart and lowered themselves down to the ground. With their guns still at the ready, they looked around warily, wondering if they were being watched, and exactly what kind of threats were lurking around them. They ran back to their cases and grabbed a couple of flashlights, and then immediately went back to the largest section of the ship.
Sheridan shone his flashlight into top deck and looked around. “Major Marcel,” he said. “Sir, come take a look at this.”
Jesse came up alongside of Sheridan and shown his light up into the upper deck. He saw a table of some kind with armatures extending from the walls around it. He could make out opened cabinets and devices that looked like they had purpose. “Let’s take a look,” he said, taking a cautious look back over his shoulder.
“Will you give me a boost, sir?” Sheridan asked.
Jesse braced for Sheridan’s foot and then lifted him up into the narrow crawlspace opening. Sheridan disappeared up into the upper deck and then extended his arm downward to help up Major Marcel.
“Thanks Captain,” Jesse said as he hoisted himself up into the ship.
Neither of them could stand up, and both were hunkered over as they ran their flashlights over every surface in the infirmary.
“Medic?” Sheridan asked.
“Maybe so. Could be a lab of some kind.”
Sheridan scanned across the workstation tables that followed the perimeter of the room. “What do you suppose all this stuff is?” he asked.
“Search me. Why isn’t it piled up over there with the rest of it?” Jesse asked as he pointed his flashlight at the pile of junk collected at the base of the cylinder that made up the center of the ship.
“There’s hand-grips on some of these tools, hanging on these arms,” Sheridan said as he set his gun down and grabbed one of the tools. “There doesn’t seem to be any way to use the thing.”
“How so?” Jesse asked as he focused on the table in the center of the room.
“There’s no controls on it.” Sheridan said, picking his gun back up and focusing his attention on the other tools. “Looks like it’s the same on all of them.”
" I think this table might be an o
perating table of some kind. The top of it is soft, like the bunks in that other section were." Major Marcel replied. "Any guesses to what any of this stuff does?" He said holding up a peculiar club shaped device.
"Beats me." Sheridan said. "How do they use this...? Wait a second!" He suddenly said, his flashlight stopping on a section of the wall. "I see some writing!"
"What does it say?" Major Marcel asked quickly.
“Major, are you serious? I don't read Martian. You want to give it a go, sir?"
Jesse gave Sheridan a stiff glare and then waved him on through the room. Both men moved quickly over to the writing and shined their lights on it.
"You sure that's writing?" Jesse asked.
"Well, it's a mark of some kind. Looks like some kind of writing to me."
"I wonder what it says. Look around and see if you find any more of it."
"Yes sir." Cavitt said scoping the room out a piece at a time.
Below the writing, Jesse noticed a cabinet that still had something in it. The door to the cabinet was ajar and it was easy for him to open. He put his gun in its holster and then opened the cabinet the rest of the way. Inside the cabinet were two folded up squares of what looked like linen sheets. He pulled one out and examined it closely. The thing almost started coming unfolded in his hands. So, to move the process along he grabbed one corner of the thing and shook it out. The thing unfolded and hung there limply from his hands.
"What is that sir?" Captain Cavitt asked
"Looks like a bag of some kind." Jesse said as the thing unfolded before him. He looked at the thing for a few more seconds and then dropped it to the floor, moving onto the next item in the room.
“There’s more writing over here,” said Sheridan as he holstered his pistol and then ran his fingers over the lettering. It was smooth and flat against the surface; no raised lettering. His hand moved further down the wall until something felt strange to him. It still felt flat and seamlessly smooth, but something was different. Giving it a light push with his fingers the wall clicked and then the thing opened up. It was very similar to the cabinet on the other side. "Sir! I think I've found something."
Jesse Marcel came quickly over to where Sheridan was standing. Inside the cabinet was a rack of empty glass tubes, each with more of the alien writing on it, and there were also some vials of liquids stored there as well.
"I just pushed on the wall a bit and this thing opened!"
"That’s incredible." Major Marcel said intensely with his light glaring on the glass tubes. "It's like a bunch of test tubes!"
"This has to be an infirmary, sir." Captain Cavitt suggested. "It's either that or a lab of some kind."
"So, you think they were doing some kind of experiments here? That makes sense, I guess. There are a lot of tools piled up on the bed there."
"Major, why do you suppose they piled those devices up on the bed after the crash?" Sheridan asked. "I mean, clearly that was done after the crash, sir."
"I have no idea Captain." Jesse replied. “Let's push around on these walls and see if anything else opens up."
"Yes sir."
They both started pushing on different areas on the walls around them. Sometimes the walls would open up to reveal a cabinet and sometimes they didn't.
“This one’s molded for a tool,” Sheridan said.
“Same over here,” Jesse said, turning his attention to the pile of tools on the bed. He looked through it, going back and forth from the molded cabinet to the table. “Here!” he said. “Look at this. It fits into this cabinet.” He held one of the tools up to the molded cabinet and shown his light on both. “I wonder what it does.”
“You think we’ll be able to figure them out when we get them back to the base?” Sheridan asked.
"Let’s hope so. Come on, let's see what's on the other side of that hatch." Jesse said pointing his flashlight toward the open portal door. He pulled his gun back out and nodded to Sheridan to do the same. Then both men crawled forward through the door into the next room hunkered over under the low ceilings.
"What the..." Jesse started as they entered the next room.
There were odd contraptions attached to the walls, some of which looked vaguely familiar, and others that defied reason. There was something that had hand levers and foot pedals with a seat that sat straddling the contraption. Next to that was a cylinder turned on its side, large enough for a small man to stand in. It looked as though it would pivot on the wall that it was attached to. Nearby was another contraption that had bars attached to cylinders, and other mechanisms coming off of it that appeared to have some physical, functional value.
There was a small area beside all of these contraptions that had two small chairs with a small table between them. They sat off to the side as though they didn't have much to do with the rest of the room.
"You don't suppose this is the control room, do you?" Sheridan asked, moving his flashlight from item to item. "I mean, the one gizmo looks like an exercise bike of some kind, but why the hell would they have an exercise bike on a space ship."
"It is the only room with some noticeable controls,” Jesse agreed, "but it does almost look like some crazy gymnasium rather than a control room. And you know what else bugs me about this whole place?" He asked open ended.
"What's that sir?"
"No windows. I haven't seen a single window anywhere on this crazy bird." Major Marcel's flashlight moved across the walls to the oval portal where a small amount of daylight poured into the room. "There's windows on the interior doors, but not so much as a single pane of glass looking outside. How do they see out of this thing?"
"Maybe they use some kind of radar." Sheridan suggested.
"Sure, maybe so." Said Jesse. "If this is the control room, then how does any of this stuff work?"
"It looks like exercise equipment, sir." Sheridan said when he finished playing with the gear around the small room.
"That is the damnedest thing I ever heard of." Major Marcel said. "We can't rule out that these may be some sort of controls though. It is the only thing we've seen that even resembles some kind of control room."
"I don't know sir." Captain Cavitt said. "I mean, I know what you're thinking, but it seems like an odd sort of control room for such an advanced piece of machinery."
"This whole thing is odd, Cavitt." Jesse retorted. "There are no windows, no doors. How do they get in and out of this thing?"
“Probably not through there,” Sheridan said as he pointed his flashlight at the tear in the hull that flooded the room with a beam of light from outside.
“What’s down there?” Jesse asked.
Sheridan crawled over to the hole in the hull and looked out through the small tear between the remaining bulkhead and the outside world. The hole was only large enough for him to peer through with one arm shining in his flashlight. From that hole, he could see down into the lower deck, and he shone his light all around the room below. “Uh, this might actually be the control room,” he said.
“What do you see?”
“There’s a bunch of panels… they’re all blank, but they go all over each wall. There are two that seem to have broken free. The floor’s pretty collapsed in there.” Sheridan said as he moved his light around. “That cylinder in the middle has a glass chamber of some kind. There’s a symbol on it.” Sheridan pulled himself up and turned around to face Jesse. “Sir, we might be able to get in there from outside. This hole’s too small from in here, but I think if we go back out, we can probably get in from the other side.”
They crawled back out the way they came in and walked around to the other side of the broken hull where they climbed up onto a collapsed bulkhead and squeezed their way down into the lower deck. There was debris and broken equipment laying everywhere, but again, no buttons or knobs could be found anywhere.
Along the walls were flat pieces of glass-like material that hung at the same awkward angle as the table they had found earlier. There were some writings arranged around som
e of them, but others were completely blank. In the middle of the room was a broken console that had a few transparent wires dangling from it, but nothing made of metal.
The focus of the entire room seemed to be a cylindrical tube that sat at the center of the ship. It was completely covered in shielding in every room they had been in, except for a section of it here that was exposed with thick pane of cracked glass.
“You think that’s some sort of engine?” Sheridan asked rhetorically.
“Maybe.” Jesse replied.
“Think it’s radioactive?”
"It's possible. We'll need to grab the snoop and bring it back in here. We should do that sooner than later. How do you feel?" Jesse asked.
"I feel fine. Nervous and excited, perhaps, but nothing..."
"Nausea, burning?" Jesse interrupted.
"No sir, nothing out of the ordinary."
Unlike the other rooms, this one had exposed gadgets. There were conduits that went across the ceiling, and into an adjacent bulkhead. There were more of the transparent wires running in bundles up and down the walls, to and from various other equipment. In some ways, seeing all of the functional parts of this strange ship was a relief for them, and gave them a sense of understanding about what they were seeing; perhaps it was the control room that they had been looking for.
“There were fires in here. Look at that charring.” Jesse said.
Captain Cavitt's flashlight came upon a very strange puddle of translucent liquid that started smoking and bubbling as soon as the light hit it. "Hey Major, come take a look at this." Major Marcel carefully stepped over things in the floor, still hunkered down in the low ceiling, and came up beside Captain Cavitt. He shined his light on the liquid again and within a few seconds it started boiling up and smoking and popping.
"What the hell is that?"
"I don't know sir. You ever seen anything like it?" Sheridan asked.
"No, and we don't know what the hell it is, so you probably shouldn't be doing that." Major Marcel ordered. "Whatever this room is, I don't think we should hang around in it too much longer. You smell that? Smells poisonous. Let's check out the next section."
