The Temporal Key

by Adam Benson

  "If there’s not any place to stay hidden in there, then we’ll have to figure something else out." Dayk said.

  "I thought you said the rescue wasn't supposed to come for another four days?" Naomi asked.

  "And it's not, but I do want to get there early and stake it out. I want to be there when they arrive, so there won't be any chance of them having to find us, and in case something else does go wrong, we can at least be somewhat prepared. They won't be able to detect us if we're cloaked. I don't want to take that chance."

  Dayk, why do we need to go now? Can’t we rest? Thalia asked him.

  Something doesn’t feel right.

  The Hangar

  Reserve Power: 69%. Imminent Cloaking Field: 1.043 meters. Status: Active. Came the telepathic voice from Dayk's cloaking device as Naomi opened the front door. He vanished right behind her and Thalia disappeared a chron after as she led them out into the morning sunlight.

  Dayk was overcome with a mental itch that wouldn’t leave him alone. It was as though he could feel the draft of something large coming toward them from the fourth dimension. Everything felt wrong, the air, time, the radiation coming from the military base, and his anxiety rose the closer they got to the hangar.

  Thalia, this radiation is going to negatively affect our telepathics. Dayk thought as loudly as possible to overcome the dampening effect of their cloaking devices. If we start to hear static, let's find each other and hang on. It may be the only way to stay together in the radiation. Let's hope it doesn't disrupt the cloaks.

  It won't. Thalia thought back. The cloaks bend almost all frequencies of radiated energy around us evenly. That's why the telepathics work so poorly. Our thoughts are being folded around us. They're barely visible!

  It’ll be worse if all we hear is static.

  They walked down the street behind Naomi, staying only about a meter away from her heels, jogging to keep up with her strong pace. Naomi turned a corner and continued toward another main street. Then she turned down the main street and began walking toward an air field that was only a short distance away.

  They walked for almost a kiloChron before they reached the hangar, and then without any effort whatsoever, Naomi opened the door on the side and held it open long enough for both to get in. It couldn't have gone easier. The door shut behind her and she mumbled out of the corner of her mouth.

  "Are you in?"

  "Yes." Dayk replied. "Thank you!"

  "How will you get back out?" Naomi asked.

  "We'll follow one of the other people out." Dayk told her.

  "Do you remember where my house is?" She asked.

  "Of course."

  "Just knock three times when you want back in. I won't be home until about six thirty." Naomi said at last. "Hi John!" She suddenly said loudly to someone standing across the hangar near a piece of the wreckage. And she picked up her pace and walked quickly away from them.

  They were alone again, invisible time travelers in a room full of primitive humans. The hangar lent itself easily to their plans to stow away. There were nooks and crannies all around. The hangar itself was full of crates and gadgets and working and failed experiments. There was even a rafter catwalk that went around the perimeter of the building and across its top in several locations. Most of the primitives had their attention locked on the wreckage, which meant that the sides and top of the hangar were going to be relatively unwatched for the entire duration of their stay there. This is very good, Dayk thought loudly to Thalia.

  Very good, she agreed. Are you thinking the rafters?

  Yes, I am, Dayk thought confidently. The crossways hold up those lights. The lights will have a blinding effect on anyone looking up. It’s perfect.

  The debris of the Chronis was all laid out in an evenly space grid with larger objects being arranged according to how they most likely fit together, and smaller objects laid out with small paper cards showing a catalogue number and any details that the primitives may have ascertained. It was all very organized, and the room was bustling with activity as the ancient humans of this time period did their best to understand technology that was millions of years more advanced than they were.

  Head toward the North side behind the green vehicle thing that's piled up along the side. He thought to Thalia.

  I'm right behind you! She said loudly back. There was a hint of static in both of their thoughts, but the radiation wasn't enough to disrupt their communications any worse than they already were. Every couple of chrons they would check their telepathy and make sure that they could still hear each other through the cloaking fog.

  Before they reached the fuselage of the green airplane that had been pushed haphazardly to the side of the hangar, Dayk spotted the ladder that lead up to the catwalk above them, two thirds up the massive hangar. The whole area had been cast in the shadows of the floodlights that lit the workspace of the crashed remains below. From above the lights they could easily watch in relative obscurity.

  Thalia! He called. Look to the left. I'm heading for the catwalk above.

  Right behind you! She shouted back.

  Dayk wasted no time climbing the large ladder. He was glad that his boots were designed to muffle sound, because the metal bars would have clearly echoed throughout the hangar if they didn't. Only a few meters up he called back to Thalia to make sure she was still with him. Her voice was faint, but it was there. He continued up the ladder carefully and quietly until at last he reached the catwalk. He had climbed almost fifteen meters above the floor. The catwalk continued out across the hangar and moved out over the wreckage toward the center of the room. There, amongst the other trusses that held up the ceiling, was a small platform clearly design for someone to handle various riggings that might be stationed high up in the top of the building. It was the perfect place for two stowaways to hide comfortably with an incredible view. The catwalk continued past, onto the other side of the building. Which meant that there was at least a second exit if they needed one.

  I'm at the top. Dayk heard Thalia say only a moment later.

  Great. There's a platform in the middle that will be perfect. I'll see you there. He replied and walked carefully out to the middle of the hangar and sat down on the platform.

  Where are you? Thalia asked as she approached the center platform.

  In a quick flash Dayk disengaged his cloaking device and appeared sitting directly in front of her. She immediately disengaged her own cloak and sat down beside him.

  This is perfect! She thought. I can even get my recorder out up here.

  They're so wrapped up in the ship, we'll never get seen. And, in a couple of days when the rescue comes, we'll be able to just teleport down! Thought Dayk excitedly.

  We're not planning on sleeping up here until then, are you? Thalia asked.

  No. We'll head back to Naomi's tonight. This is perfect. We can relax and record history until the ship comes. He said.

  I could probably just leave the recorder up here. The rescue ship would simply retrieve it when they collect everything else. Said Thalia. We could get a lot of good recordings of this event as it's taking place!

  Let's do it. Dayk thought. In four days’ time, we’ll be back here and ready to meet a much-needed rescue team.

  Feeling elated at how easy their ingress had been, and how perfect their hiding spot was, Dayk relaxed for the first time, ignoring the small sense that something was approaching, and turned his attention to the group of men below smoking heavily and pouring through the 'alien' technology laying all around them.

  The Vortex

  "Hey Colonel, you might want to come take a look at this!" Said Nathan Warner, a physicist who had been brought to the hangar to help examine and try to reverse engineer the alien space ship. He and one of his colleagues, Dick Benfer, were looking at some of the strange transparent hairs that had been dangling like torn wires from broken sections of the ship.

  Colonel Turner came over smiling big with his shirt sleeves rolled up. "What have you got
boys?" He said cheerily.

  "Dick shined this light into the back end of one of these clear wires and look what came out the other side." Nathan held the Transparent little hair in his hands as Dick shined a workbench light directly into the tiny hair's end.

  "What am I looking for?" Said the Colonel.

  "This, sir." Nathan said as he pointed out the bright spot of projected light coming out the other end of the cable. "It's as if all of the light getting shined into this end, is getting perfectly directed through the hair and then is sent on its way as though the light was right there, out the far end." He began taking the wire in his palm and wadding it up, leaving the two ends exposed. "And even if I crumple the rest of it in my hand, the light still comes out the other end without any apparent change in luminance. I think they're using light, instead of electricity, to send signals back and forth. The same way we do with copper and electrons."

  "Is that better?" The Colonel asked.

  "Well, sir." Dick spoke up. "Theoretically, this would allow signals to be transmitted at the speed of light, which would mean much faster transmission times. No resistance,"

  "Not to mention the relatively low amount of energy it would take to power something like this." Added Nathan Warner.

  "So, then do you know how it works?" Asked Colonel Turner.

  "Well, right now, best we can figure is that they're using these little transparent fibers to conduct light. How you use that... we'd still have to do some work..." Said Nathan.

  “But the potential applications could be unlimited,” Dick added.

  "Well, keep after it." Colonel Turner said. "Let me know what else you find out." He continued on across the hangar, surveying his command, and checking the progress of the various scientists and technicians as they pondered the specifics of the strange ship they had the good fortune to come across.

  Across the way was one of the larger three sections of the ship, and inside three men were doing their best to figure out the blank rooms and how they functioned. What they assumed was perhaps the command center of the ship was surrounded in blank panels, all of which looked like they should be some sort of control panel, but none of which had any kind of marking or button or knob of any kind.

  "How's it coming along, gents?" Colonel Turner said as he approached the men.

  "Well, Frankly Harold, there's not a lot to this thing. We know it's hard as nails, its thin, and has what appear to be some sort of dark layer running along the cross section of it, but if this is a device of any sort, then it's like nothing any of us have ever seen. It took us all morning just to get a hole drilled into it. We broke five saw blades and three drill bits before we ever made a mark in it." Said Wayne Roemersberger, one of the Range Instrumentation Developers there at the White Sands. Wayne's specialty was instrument panels, and weapons instrumentation. A panel wasn't the kind of thing to elude him, and yet he remained stumped by what they had found.

  "Well, nobody's found so much as a switch or a knob anywhere on this tub. Something's got to control it." Colonel Turner said, with a baffled look on his face. "You guys haven't even found a button?"

  "Nope. Sorry Harold. We're not even sure what kind of materials this is made of. By the end of this we may be adding a few blocks to the periodic chart." Said Wayne.

  "Well, let me know if you find anything." Colonel Turner wanted to see some grand discovery. Something they could really use. This was a weapons base after all, and there was a growing concern in America that the Russians were starting to develop their own capabilities, and that if things got out of control, they could have an all-out war on their hands. Anything they could gain from this encounter that could boost their weapon's power or functionality would be worth a fortune, and he wanted that to come from his base. Harold had practically built the White Sands proving grounds with his own sweat and blood. It was he who had given it the name "White Sands", and it was he that had grown the base from "that place in the desert" to one of the most respected and amazing laboratories in the world. Alien technology falling into their hands was the cream on the top for Harold Turner.

  He moved on around the hangar circling like an eager vulture, wandering in and out of various small teams of men working to unlock the secrets of one of the treasures they were examining, all the while hoping that something incredible would happen just as he walked by. Mostly all he found were baffled and frustrated scientists who couldn't make heads or tails of what they were looking at.

  There were very few moving parts on anything in the wreckage. There was nothing for a mechanically inclined man to discover. Besides the transparent hairs running this way and that through torn sections of the hull, there didn't appear to be any wires or power terminals running anywhere. The device at the center of the ship, one of the only pieces to have any markings on it appeared to be little more than a hollow tube with a dark iridescent coating on its inside.

  They were all excited about the strange materials that returned to their original shape, no matter what the torture applied to it. And they were all fascinated by how incredibly light weight almost all the pieces were, while still being dense and rigid. There was a lot that they could learn from these materials, but in the short term they had no idea what they were made of, or how they worked.

  "Howdy Colonel." Said Clyde Tombaugh as Colonel Turner paced by.

  "Hello Clyde." Said the Colonel. "Stepping back for a minute?" He asked.

  Clyde Tombaugh was getting up in years and wasn't especially qualified to figure out unfamiliar technology. Clyde was primarily an astronomer. In his youth, he had worked under Percival Lowell at his observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona. Mr. Lowell had been searching for the elusive "Planet X” and had also been one of the first to really map and investigate the Martian Canals. After Lowell's death, Clyde continued the search for Planet X, and eventually discovered it. It was named Pluto and was added to the list as the Solar System's ninth planet.

  Later in life, Clyde went to work at the White Sands as their Chief of Optical Measurements. He had spent his life looking through telescopes and using optical instruments in various measuring capacities and had proven to be a valuable asset at the White Sands Missile Range at Alamogordo.

  Clyde had stepped back from the mass of alien technology he'd been given to play with, and started pacing around the room, much as the Colonel had. In his own wanderings through the hangar, he had managed to pick up some tidbits that the Colonel may have missed, and he hoped that the Colonel would have his own tidbits to share.

  "Yeah, just takin' a moment to walk around and see what everyone's come up with." Said Clyde.

  "Find out anything about what you've got?" The Colonel asked.

  Clyde turned up his nose and waved the Colonel's off in a dismissive gesture. "I haven't got a clue what that thing is. So far, not a damned thing's made a lick of sense."

  "Yeah, that seems to be the consensus." Agreed the Colonel.

  "You see what the guys in the tube found?" Clyde asked. For lack of a better description, the men had come to calling the Temporal Core, "The Tube". They had no idea what it was, or what it did, but it seemed to hold a prominent place in the ship, and so everyone knew it had some importance.

  "No, let's go take a look." They moved off from where they were at and started moving toward the largest section of the ship. As soon as they arrived, they hunkered down and crawled inside. Several long extension cords had been dragged inside by the men, and were being used to power shop lights, and a few instruments so they could see what was going on as they worked.

  "Clyde say's you guys found something." Said Colonel Turner as he squeezed in around the three men in the small engineering section.

  "Yeah, take a look at this Colonel." Said George Gardiner, the director of the Physical Sciences Lab. "We ran a current through one of these panels..."

  "What did you hook it up to?" The Colonel interrupted.

  "Just clipped the power to the side of the thing. We wanted to know if the material was conduct
ive." George answered. "But take a look." George took a large copper alligator clamp and clamped it onto the thin side of the panel. Around the area where the clamp touched the panel there was a faint, but much defined noise pattern glowing in the otherwise flat white surface. "Looks like static. It doesn't seem to do anything, and clearly it only shows up faintly, and then only around the area we put a current through it. But I’d go so far as to conjecture that we know a little more about how their panels work. It seems all this stuff lights up from the inside. With the random pattern of the static I'd say these things might even work like a cathode ray tube."

  "Wayne just told me that the panels were empty. That there wasn't anything in them." Said Harold Turner.

  "Well, and that's true here, too." Said George. "If you look it over it just looks like a thin piece of Bakelite of some sort. Sturdy stuff, but nothing to it. But when you add a current..."

  "Does this mean we can power the ship?" Harold asked.

  "Harold. This means we know the thing uses power of some kind. How that power flows, and how it interacts with the rest of this thing are a completely different mystery. We've got a long way to go before we figure this thing out." Said George gruffly.

  "Alright, well. Let me know if you find anything else out."

  "Will do. I guess you haven't run into David yet?" George asked.

  "No, is he looking for me?" The Colonel asked.

  "Well, he was, but it was only to tell you about this. If he ain't with you, then I guess he's still out looking for you. Send him back this way if you see him." George said, and then turned right back around to his work.