by Tom Norton
Upon entering the room, Hendrick and John could see what appeared to be a graph on a large monitor. It was a simple linear graph from left to right with spikes here and there, typical of a graph.”
Randolph said right away, “That’s odd, no copper. That indicates it was refined, but all those impurities say not refined well. I’ll tell you what we have, and you understand these are trace amounts that were in the gold. What we are seeing is not anywhere near pure gold. It is about eighteen carat; lots of silver. It is what you would expect to find in cheap jewelry gold. Not enough to diminish the looks, and extremely hard.”
John said, “Anything jump out at you?”
“Yes, its hydrothermal gold.”
“Volcanic?”
“No not really, no volcano involved. An ore deposit like you would find on the ocean floor, but probably a deposit found in an ancient now out of water ocean floor, like Australia. They have a lot of this gold. Big nuggets, not that fine stuff you find in gold ore.”
“Australia? It might have come from Australia?”
“Or somewhere like it, yes. The aborigines found it and didn’t know what it was, just another rock to them.”
“Well this disk surely didn’t come from Australia?”
Randolph replied, “You said you didn’t know where it came from?”
John replied, “Well what if it was found in England two thousand years ago?”
“Then I would throw out Australia.”
Hendrick said, “Well, where then?”
“How in the hell would I know. Where ever there are or were underwater hydrothermal vents I guess.”
John asked, “What do you think on the time the disk was made or the gold was mined?”
“I don’t know but if there is some way you could date the piece, we could research gold mining at that time.”
Hendrick said to Randolph, “You seem to know a lot about gold.”
“Well, geologically there is more known about gold than other minerals, so that’s what they teach you.”
John said, “Ok, is there any of this type of gold in the Americas?”
“Little or none. If there is, it’s down deep and isolated cases, which is typical of hydrothermal deposits. Look for old ocean bottoms now out of the water like Australia. What’s all the fuss about this thing anyway?”
“We have a nutcase that might finance our archeological sites if we butter him up. He is obsessed with this damned thing. Thinks it’s worth a billion dollars.”
“Well it might be by the time you find out what it is.”
John said, “Ok, Randy, we have troubled you enough. We might bring the owner by to ask you a thousand questions about this damned thing.”
“He’s your problem not mine, let’s keep it that way.”
“Hendrick said, “Randy, are there any active hydro thermals right now depositing gold?”
“I don’t know about gold, but there are lots of them at the divergent zones in the oceans where the crust is pulling apart.”
Back at Hendrick’s lab, Hendrick asked John, “What do you know about hydrothermal and divergent zones?”
“I don’t know shit about either one of them, but I’m going to have Rick study up on it. I do know that someone didn’t travel half way around the world with that damned disk, so we can eliminate half the world. You still getting texts from the students?”
“Yeah and I keep telling them we are working on it. A couple of them are becoming a real pain in the ass. We had better have Rick settle them down a little.”
“Ok, I’ll talk to him about it. I’m going to be out of town all next week for the University, a conference in Switzerland.”
A week later John contacted Rick and they went to Hendrick’s lab. In a back room of the lab the three had a beer and talked about the gold thing.
Hendrick said, “I sent a copy of the spectrophotometry results to the School of Mines in the U.S. Maybe they have something they can add to what little we know.”
Rick replied, “I’ve been asking around and doing a little research. They say there was part of the ocean where the cave is, so I thought maybe the gold was from somewhere close to the cave. That would solve a lot of our problems.”
John said, “And?”
“No luck. That was not an area having volcanic or hydrothermal activity.”
“Well Hendrick, when are we going to hear from your U.S. people?”
“Don’t know.”
“Just call me, I’m busy with finals.”
“Hey John, Hendrick here. Just got a text from the U.S. A Dr. Cooper will call and of course it will be the middle of the night for us.”
“When?”
“One a.m., our time.”
“I’ll be there, how about Rick?”
“Yeah.”
At midnight the three sat in the lab with the curtains drawn drinking beer and waiting for the call.
Rick said, “I hope this Cooper guy knows something about the gold.”
John replied, “I don’t have my hopes up, there isn’t a hell of a lot to go on.”
Hendricks said, “This gold thing may just be a dead end and we are wasting our time when we should be considering other things.”
“And what would those other things be?”
“Hell, I don’t know, but seriously it looks to me like we are playing a game here to solve our problem before one of those students breaks.”
John asked Rick, “You talked to the students?”
“Yes, and I’m a little uncomfortable with a couple of the girls.”
“Why is that?”
“They seemed to be overly interested in what we’re doing.”
“Like what?”
Rick replied, “Have we been back to the site? Wondering if where we put the skeleton and data was secure and stuff like that.”
“A little overly curious, huh?”
“Just a feeling I had.”
John said, “There is nothing we can do about that short of sending out job resumes when this thing blows up in our faces. I can probably get on with the National Inquirer as a science advisor.”
Another beer later the phone on speakerphone rang and Hendrick answered. The speaker bellowed, “Andy Cooper here.”
Hendrick replied, “Go ahead Andy.”
“Examined your results and you said within a thousand miles of Germany?”
“That’s right.”
The speaker bellowed, “Iceland.”
John said, “Iceland?”
“In a thousand miles, Iceland,”
“I didn’t know there was any gold in Iceland.”
Andy replied, “Not many people did until a few people showed up with a shit pot full. The kind of gold you’re talking about.”
Hendrick said, “Is it the kind of gold the locals could mine a few thousand years back?”
“No, because there weren’t any locals back then. You get any gold from there it was dug up just recently. The Vikings didn’t even know it was there.”
John asked, “Any place else within a thousand miles?”
“Not unless you have a submarine to mine it. What’s the deal, Berlin University going gold mining?”
“No, we are just setting up a mineral exhibition at the University.”
“Is there anything else?”
Hendrick replied, “No, and thanks a million Andy, we owe you one.”
“No problem, have a nice day.”
John said, “Iceland?”
Hendricks replied, “That has to be it, there is nowhere else.”
“There has never been any evidence of early man on Iceland. As small of a habitable area as there is, artifacts would have been discovered. At least rock chips, old ash or something.”
Rick replied, “People from somewhere else might have got the gold from Iceland.”
Hendrick said, “That could be, but they would have had to know the gold was there, so they couldn’t have been from too far from it.”
“Well
we all agree that there is no evidence of a landmass that had people more advanced humans than the homo sapiens or Neanderthals, so if it wasn’t Atlantis, it was an isolated island that experienced the same fate that Atlantis was supposed to have.”
Rick replied, “That makes it Atlantis.”
Hendrick replied, “Whatever. We have a hoax by a bunch of archeologists, being us, and we can’t prove it isn’t a hoax.”
John said, “We have run the gauntlet on the gold disk thing; we have to fall back and regroup. Why didn’t we just say we had a Neanderthal skeleton with part of its skull missing. Throw away a few bones and we were home free?”
Hendrick said, “That would have been the smart thing to do, but I guess our professional pride got in the way of common sense.”
Rick said, “I didn’t even think about it at the time, but I might have thought, how are we going to tell the other students we were going to do that.”
“You’re right. We wouldn’t be in any better position than we are now. In our profession, destroying artifacts is as bad as a hoax.”
John said, “Well, we have to do something before the students crack on us.”
Rick replied, “Maybe the people in Iceland have artifacts twenty-five thousand years old and they don’t know what they are. I have never read of any archeological expeditions to Iceland.”
“Are you suggesting we go to Iceland?”
“Yes. That will soothe the students some knowing we are actively trying to solve our problem, which is theirs, too.”
John moaned, “It’s wintertime there.”
“I would think its winter time there all year long.”
“John said, “Let’s sleep on it and think of a plan A before we freeze to death with the plan B.”
Hendrick added, “I think we should have a sit down with all of the students to let them know we are going and maybe that’ll help.”
“Set it up Rick.”
“They will want to know why.”
“Well let’s get everything out on the table; I’ll feel better about it. They know enough anyway to screw us.”
Additional chairs were in the lab and seated were the eleven students that had spent all summer at the dig site. John, Hendrick and Rick sat at a small table and John got everyone’s attention and said, “Hi, ladies and gentlemen, glad to see you again. We have tried to keep you informed as to where we are on this matter, but frankly there has not been much to tell you until just recently. We will tell you everything we know and any plans we have for the future on this thing. You are much more familiar with Rick here, and I am sure you will give him more attention than you are used to giving your professors. Go ahead Rick.”
All eyes went to Rick and he said, “I will buzz through what you know. We discovered a Neanderthal skeleton and a gold disk at the site. Upon assembling the back of the skull, we found a round hole in it. The skull had healed at the edge of the skull and it was obviously the result of an operation.”
“We discovered that the disk is made of gold and it was obviously to cover the portion of the brain below the hole. It was decided that any news of this discovery would be called a hoax on our part because there was no one on earth at that time capable of performing such an operation. This is throwing out the space alien possibility and at least we three here at the table find that not credible. But the National Inquirer would and there would be an international pissing match of people claiming hoax and aliens from outer space.”
“This being the case, and we were all aware of it, the three of us here at the table took the skeleton and all the data and hid it in a safe place, which left you eleven without any evidence that a skeleton was ever discovered. In all honesty this was done to save all of our reputations if word was to get out. We all agreed to complete silence on this matter. If the University becomes aware of this matter, we are all going to be out on the street.”
“This you all know and this is where we are since that time. What we all want is credit for our discovery and any benefits it will be to each of us. There are two scenarios that can play out. We prove that our discovery is not a hoax or that the world never knows there was a discovery.
“Of course we all want it to be a proven discovery and this will require a nearly impossible task, or it cannot be proven at all. I would like to comment here that this thing could have been handled better at the onset and would have required a loss of personal integrity on our part, but it wasn’t. Example, we could have said we found a Neanderthal with a large portion of its skull missing and no gold disk.”
“Anyway, the three of us have done the research on our only lead, being the gold disk. The gold disk was made from molten gold with a mirror smooth finish, has four holes that were machined and it was affixed to the skull with screws. All of this being what one would consider impossible twenty-five thousand years ago. The conclusion drawn was that there was a civilization on earth capable of building the disk and mounting it over a brain surgery. We have had the gold disk examined with the best technology we have trying to locate its origin. At this point, our only option being that the gold originated from Iceland some twenty-five thousand years ago and either inhabitants or travelers acquired it there. This being the case, the three of us will be traveling to Iceland to research the possibility. That about covers what we at the table know, but ask your questions.”
Scott the electronics wizard said, “I’ll ask the obvious. What about Atlantis?”
John replied, “God knows we have considered that and nothing is off the table.”
Scott continued, “I’m assuming there were no inhabitants of Iceland, so people from Atlantis acquired the gold in Iceland and somehow got it to Poland.”
Rick said, “Excuse me Scott, I forgot to tell you that the cave was then next to an inland sea attached to the ocean so they would have come by boat.”
Scott said, “That’s still a little hard to get my head around.”
John replied, “So is brain surgery on a Neanderthal, but it happened.”
“Yes it did sir, I saw the hole.”
Questions continued, but there were no answers beyond what the students had been told and one of the girls even asked how all of this pertained to the scriptures. Hendrick being an old seminary student fielded this using the same old talking points that all science professors use.
The three were asked where the skeleton was now and they were told that the same security principles that applied last fall, still apply.
The discussion got off on repeated questions about Atlantis and John terminated the meeting telling the students that they would be informed about the Iceland trip results.
chapter 3
Iceland
Immediately after Christmas, the three started their journey to Iceland, requiring two different airlines and they landed in Reykjavik, Iceland. Surprisingly the blowing wind was not much colder than it was in Berlin.
Waiting outside the terminal in the dark for the cab to show up, Rick said, “I thought it would be colder than this, we’re right on the Arctic Circle.”
John replied, “Well it suits me. I suppose we hit it just right for that twenty-four hours of darkness crap. What time is it?”
“It’s about noon, but its overcast.”
“How can you tell, its dark?”
“I saw some snowflakes.”
“Well there’s probably more where those came from. Here’s the cab.”
An airport porter loaded the luggage in the cab and Rick whispered to John, “What about the tip?”
“You tip him; I bought the damned airline tickets.”
Rick said, “Where would I get any money?”
John asked the cab driver to take the three to a moderately priced hotel and in minutes they were at a decent looking hotel and checked in. The attendant said check in time wasn’t until two o’clock. John had heard this before, but not when it was pitch black outside. He said to Hendrick and Rick, I’m all screwed up. I feel like I want breakfast and I can har
dly keep my eyes open.”
Hendricks replied, “How about some lunch and a nap. They have a small café in here if you can order in Icelandic or whatever they speak.”
“Let’s do it.”
Eating what turned out to be similar to fish and chips, Rick said, “We need a map. I know the University of Iceland is in Reykjavik somewhere, but I don’t know where. I guess a cab driver could tell us.”
“I hope. I want to call ahead though, kind of low key the thing. We have our story down pat, right? What language the person speaks determines which of us do the talking. My guess is that they will speak some English and you two know that to some degree.”
After lunch they took a nap in their very large hotel room with two beds and a rollaway. About four p.m. John attempted to call the University of Iceland and eventually was put through to the Science Department.
“Do you speak English?”
“Yes.”
John explained that the three would like to visit him and the University concerning an archeological expedition they are considering in Iceland.
“It will have to be in the morning about ten, I have a class at eight.”
“That will be fine, we will see you then.”
Hendrick said, “Its beer and steak for me.”
John replied, “I am certain they have beer, but that steak could be anything but beef.”
By ten in the morning they had found the University of Iceland and waited at the locked door of Professor Baldur. Shortly thereafter the professor showed up and led them into his office. They all took a seat and the professor asked, “How can I help you gentlemen?”
As planned, John said, “The University of Berlin has an interest in the culture and history of the people of Iceland. The first inhabitants and their tools, art and the society in general.”
The professor replied, “Well, it is not all that interesting. The short version is; the first inhabitants were Vikings and the slaves they captured in England and Norway and wherever. That was about 800 AD. Roughly twelve hundred years ago. There were monks that kept records. Their art was minimal, tools early English and their society was generally a typical Viking society with slaves. That’s about it.”
