Dragon Dawn (Dinosaurian Time Travel) (14 page)

“The representation of Earth is dead on,” Kris said. “And take a look at the other picture.” She grinned. “How cool is that? It depicts the entire Solar System, all the way out to the start of the Kuiper Belt.”

Jean-Michel’s face came up in a split/screen image on the com. “
Oui
, I agree with Dr. Jefferson’s assessment.” 

In silence, Dawn studied the monolith’s picture. There were spherical symbols for the Sun and the inner and outer planets – including a long string of pearl-like marks stretching between Mars and Jupiter, representing the dwarf planet or plutoid called Ceres and the rest of the Asteroid Belt – and then beyond Neptune, the other plutoids and innermost Kuiper Belt objects, chief among them Pluto and its largest moon, Charon. 

“Notice the fourth planet is set a little above the rest,” Jean-Michel said. “Might that signify Mars as their home world?” 

Everyone stared at the screen as Kris said, “I don’t know. Maybe.” 

Dawn leaned in. Something tugged at her memory, something familiar, like a feeling of déjà vu, and she swore she’d seen the Martian representation of the Solar System somewhere else. But where?

She pursed her lips in puzzlement and then it came to her. Long ago,
she’d read a book about the two
Voyager
spacecraft. With a grand leap of forethought, the scientists and artists of
Voyager
, including Carl Sagan and Jon Lomberg, decided to include a record on each, with images and messages for any alien civilizations encountered on the spacecrafts’ journeys through the cosmos. 

The records could last a billion years in space, maybe even longer. If and when they were found, mankind might be long extinct. Perhaps the Earth would be a cinder, the charred remnant of the dying Sun. But the aliens would still be able to decipher the
Voyager
records, because Earth’s scientists had recorded information in the logical and decipherable binary code.

Dawn studied the com display with new insight. Just what were the Martians trying to tell them with this message? 

The middle of the picture held a line of dots and dashes going from left to right; they were the binary representations of the numbers one through ten, matching the planets of the inner Solar System. In binary, each successive position after the number one had the power of two, so as you shifted to the left, you got multiples of two. As a result, the number one would be written as “1”, the number two as “10”, while ten would be “1010” (8 plus 0 plus 2 plus 0).

She focused on the first planetary symbol. Beneath Mercury was a single dot and then under Venus was a dot/dash. This was followed by a dot/dot for Earth, then a dot/dash/dash for Mars. The Martians had done this to give clues as to processing the rest of the code.

“Here. Let me switch this to the more familiar 0s and 1s,” Dawn said. “A 0 stands for dot, and a 1 for dash. That way, we can see this in a more familiar light.”

Her fingers flew over the tabletop display, rearranging the data. “Now look,” she said as she pointed to the completed image:

Mercury (one) = 1 (first planet from the Sun)

Venus (two) = 10 (second planet, etc.)

Earth (three) = 11

Mars (four) = 100

Ceres (five) = 101

Jupiter (six) = 110

Saturn (seven) = 111

Uranus (eight) = 1000

Neptune (nine) = 1001

Pluto/Charon (ten) = 1010

“Well, I’ll be!” Kris laughed. “The aliens decided to make it simple. I guess this was their message for kindergartners.” 

Dawn smiled. “That’s right.” But then, her expression grew thoughtful as her eyes lingered on the extra symbols above Mars and Earth. There was more to consider here. There was a six (in binary – 110) above the Earth, while the number above Mars was very large. That number would take some time to compute.

“What are those extra symbols above the third and fourth planets?” Gus asked, echoing her thoughts. “They can’t be moons.”

Dawn nodded. “The numbers don’t fit any pattern, as far as I can tell. Besides, the spaces above the gas giants are blank. There’s nothing to indicate the moons of Jupiter, Saturn, or the rest of the outer Solar System.”

Everyone frowned as they pondered the com display. Dawn went to work on the long string of digits above Mars. 

Just then, Jean-Michel said, “It’s the binary representation of 410,353.”

“That’s a pretty big number.” Dawn’s eyes focused on the third planetary symbol. “Since six is far smaller, maybe we can figure out it’s meaning more easily.” She stood there, scowling. “Hmm, I still don’t get it. What’s a six doing there?”

The question gave her pause. She focused on each member of the crew, then turned impatiently back to the com.
Six, huh?

Striving for some sort of connection, Dawn began to tick off numbers, tapping her fingers lightly against her thigh. At that instant, her gaze veered to Gus’s face.
The commander’s number one, right?
She looked over at Tasha and Lex
. The docs make two and three
. 

Unconsciously, she touched her own chest.
Four
.

Her gaze widened as she glanced at Harry and Kris.
Hey, wait a minute!
 

“Do you know what this might mean?” Dawn asked. 

Kris looked up. “What?”

Dawn’s brain throbbed with the possibilities. “Maybe it’s population data. Look here. That’s one heck of a big number above Mars. Perhaps it means there were hundreds of thousands of Martians when the monolith was created.” She pointed to the symbol above the Earth. “And there were six––”

Kris gasped. “They had traveled to Earth! There were six of them. Six Martian astronauts were exploring the Earth!”

Chapter 12

All right, said the (Cheshire) Cat; and this time it vanished quite slowly, beginning with the end of the tail; and ending with the grin, which remained some time after the rest of it had gone.

~Lewis Carroll,
Alice’s
Adventures
in
Wonderland

The next morning, Dawn and the ground crew had mundane yet necessary tasks on Mars, including the retrieval of the rest of the equipment from the cargo barge. In fact, everything from the barge would be used in the establishment of Lowell Base; eventually even sections of the hull would be buried in the ground for use as habitat modules, providing an excellent shield against deadly space radiation and the ferocious winds caused by the sporadic, planet-wide Martian dust storms. 

Meanwhile, Jean-Michel orbited in the
Destiny
and busily prepared for the next few months. In addition to monitoring the activities of his crewmates and providing a communication link with Mission Control from orbit, he was responsible for the upcoming deployment of new Martian weather and communications satellites, the depositing of several scientific probes on the Martian moons, Deimos and Phobos, as well as the establishment by remote control of a robotic rocket fuel factory on Phobos, providing a cheap, efficient means of making propellant for landings and take-offs for future missions.

By the afternoon, however, the lure of the unknown proved too strong, and the ground crew reconnoitered out on an informal survey of the foothill where the monolith had been found.

As the pair of Rovers approached the area, Dawn felt overwhelmed. With only eighteen months of study on Mars, she knew her time was precious. Although it would take decades for her to analyze the anticipated findings, she wished she could stay a lot longer. 

She found herself smiling. Given her state of mind the other day, when she felt so homesick for Earth, her thoughts now seemed quite contradictory. Was it logical to want more time on Mars, yet wish to be home at the same time?

“How in the world am I going to make sense of all this?” Dawn asked, breaking the quiet.

Kris and Gus, who were riding in the Rover with her, shifted slightly and gazed at her through their helmets, but did not reply.

“I think I’m going crazy,” Dawn admitted. “I have no idea where to start.”

“In that case,” Kris piped up, “take it one step at a time. Just do what you were planning to do. You’re the first archeologist on Mars. After we find the passageway inside the volcano, set up the muon probe we lugged all the way here and see if you can find any hidden chambers. Consider things from my perspective. I have an entire planet to survey. It may take decades, even whole lifetimes to explore Olympus Mons and the other volcanoes, the polar caps, and the Vallis Marineris. And I’m gonna do just that. All of it.” 

“No harm in that,” Gus said teasingly, “providing we decide to leave you behind.”

“Oh, you won’t have to do that, Commander. I’m hoping to be included on the third mission back here,” Kris said. She glanced at Dawn. “If I don’t make the cut, I think I’ll go crazy for the both of us.”

Smiling, Dawn knew humans were now pretty much guaranteed a lifespan of around one hundred and twenty years, but who knew what discoveries were on the horizon? In the future, would they be able to live for centuries, maybe even millennia? “Well, if you hang around long enough,” she told Kris, “you might be able to come back many times, or stay here for decades or even for hundreds of years.” 

Kris laughed. “Lord, I can see it now – my little, shriveled, five hundred-year-old body attempting to hike in the Vallis Marineris.”

All of a sudden, Dawn felt wistful. “Wouldn’t it be grand, though? If only we did have all the time in the world.”

Everyone grew silent, lost in their thoughts. The ride became increasingly bumpy, even teeth-jarring at times, but Dawn didn’t mind. Glancing around, she reflected on the landscape, struck by the similarity between Mars and the southwestern U.S. Here was comparable terrain, tinged with the same reddish hue of iron oxide and rugged topography. 

In her graduate school days, she’d assisted with an excavation of Sinagua ruins on the Colorado Plateau of Northern Arizona. There, against a backdrop of extinct, volcanic hills, Dawn helped uncover evidence of native people who had lived over eight hundred years ago. For decades, the Sinagua survived in the shadow of the San Francisco Peaks. They farmed corn, beans, and squash near the box canyons and red-hued cinder cones, until the start of the eruption cycle of Sunset Crater during the winter of A.D. 1064-1065. 

What had the ancient Sinagua people thought when the mountain exploded, raining ash and fire on their homes? Did they believe the world had ended, that their gods were filled with anger? 

Because they’d left no written records, no one would ever know for sure. But people of the twenty-first century could guess what they were thinking, for they were also human beings. The prehistoric people of Arizona were not so far removed from them in time they couldn’t imagine their feelings. After all, the eruption had happened less than a millennium ago. In geologic time, not much more than the blink of an eye. And, in historical time, not so very long ago, either.

But now, in the shadow of Olympus Mons, Dawn considered the antiquity of this place. When had the Martians placed the monolith in the ground? Hundreds or thousands, perhaps
millions
of years ago? Would human scientists be able to understand what had happened to them? And what about the laser beacon? What did it mean? And what would they find when they traveled to its place of origin?

The two Rovers pulled up to the monolith site. Dawn used a magnetic locator to comb the area for additional artifacts. To her surprise, she found a second monolith not far from the first. 

During the next few hours, the astronauts unearthed the new monolith, and then carefully recorded and deciphered a second alien message. Afterward, excitement grew to a fever pitch. While the previous news about Earth’s possible exploration by six Martians was still the talk of the Solar System, the new message contained something even more intriguing: a map of the interior of Olympus Mons. It indicated that a passageway, long hidden beneath the sands of a southern slope, led to a series of tunnels and chambers. 

What could be inside those chambers? On the morning of the third day, Dawn pondered the images before her, taken by ground-penetrating radar and the muon probe a few hours after the second monolith’s discovery. It confirmed what had been suspected: there was something artificial inside the extinct volcano. But what exactly was it? A museum complex or a library – or both? Had the Martians stored the highlights of their civilization there, hoping that someone, someday, would find their treasures? 

Dawn realized human conjecture about the purpose of the chambers was probably, at best, but a vague approximation of the truth. At this point, she could only guess at their function. After all, the Martians were an alien race. Maybe they were as different from humans as whales were from bacteria.

But six of them might have visited the Earth. When? Why? The questions played over and over in Dawn’s mind, yet she had no immediate answers. 

In frustration, she looked around, studying the barren landscape. Then she kicked the ground, sending up a cloud of red dust. There was nothing here, nothing beneath her boots. The lack of Martian artifacts struck her as peculiar. Other than the monoliths, no one had found anything new. 

There were no parallels with Dawn’s archaeological experiences on Earth. Where were the garbage piles and kitchen middens? The ancient tools, potshards, and weapons? The telltale remains of everyday life? Had they been scoured away by fierce windstorms over previous Martian epochs? Or had they been purposely hidden inside the recesses of the volcano? 

She shook her head at the lack of answers and then went back to work. Under her direction, the crew looked for the door leading to the nearest chamber. The next hour ended in disappointment as they sunk a few test trenches to the layer of gray, volcanic bedrock. Not much was found elsewhere, only permafrost and a few rocks which Harry and Kris found interesting. 

And then, on the fourth try, a heart-stopping moment occurred; they discovered stone steps leading to a door! The whine of the robot digger cut off as Gus gave it the voice command to stop. Silently, he watched as the digger rolled away from the stairwell. The rest of the crew stood behind him, looking exhausted. Even with the robot, there had been plenty of physical work to do here; hauling away the sand and rock blown in during countless dust storms. They’d spent the better part of a day sweating beneath their spacesuits, shoveling away a ton of dirt. 

“I think this is it,” Dawn said excitedly as everyone moved forward. 

Gloved hands pressed against metal, scraping away years of accumulated dust, exposing the top of the door. Only the lower part remained hidden, perhaps no more than a half-meter was still covered by dirt. 

Gus put his boot to the shovel, and the ground came away easily here. Soon, he had exposed some stone floor tiles leading to the base of the door. And then, he hit a spot directly in front of the doorway. Immediately, the door swung backward. Motes of dust stirred as ancient air rushed from the mysterious room beyond. As soon as the atmosphere settled, the crew peered into the darkness.

“Damn!” Kris’s expression betrayed her dissatisfaction. She stood with Harry, who held a drill. On the ground rested other equipment: an airlock system, collecting tanks, and a remote-control video camera. They’d been planning to capture some ancient air for study, then place the camera inside the sealed chamber for an initial, noninvasive examination. 

Forget it
, an equally disappointed Dawn wanted to tell them. It was too late; the air was gone. 

For a moment, Dawn stood still, feeling torn by ambivalent emotions; while she desperately wanted to enter the monument, she was also reluctant to disturb a silent reliquary of the past. Suddenly, she felt as though she could feel the spirits of the aliens, their watchful presences. And she did not wish to trespass on their world.

But then again, they wanted you to explore their monuments
, she told herself.
Otherwise, why did they create the monoliths and send the laser beacon? You’ve got to see what’s inside
. 

She walked into the shadowy chamber and turned on her flashlight. Because the powerful beam trailed off into nothingness, she could tell the room was huge. Texas-sized, as Gus would say.

With a small smile, she looked back, searching for him, but five flashlights danced behind her, blinding her. 

“You see anything?” she heard Gus ask.

The question jogged her memory, and she recalled a story about the Egyptologist Howard Carter, the discoverer of Tutankhamun’s tomb. Since the passageway to King Tut’s tomb had been filled with debris, it had taken days to clear it out. Then, with his benefactor Lord Carnarvon at his side, they finally reached the actual doorway. Carter broke the seal – the jackal god Anubis triumphantly standing above his nine defeated foes – and then drilled an opening in the upper corner of the door.

Dawn reminded her fellow crewmates about Carter’s discovery. Almost immediately, she heard Jean-Michel’s voice over the com-link, reading Howard Carter’s actual words: 

“Darkness and blank space, as far as an iron testing-rod could reach, showed that whatever lay beyond was empty. Widening the hole a little, I inserted the candle and peered in...  At first, I could see nothing, the hot air escaping from the chamber causing the candle flame to flicker, but presently, as my eyes grew accustomed to the light, details of the room within emerged slowly from the mist, strange animals, statues, and gold – everywhere the glint of gold.

“For the moment – an eternity it must have seemed to the others standing by – I was struck dumb with amazement, and then Lord Carnarvon, unable to stand the suspense any longer, inquired anxiously, ‘Can you see anything?’”

The Frenchman paused and then asked, “Do you remember the rest, Dr. Stroganoff, or should I patch it through to you?”

“No, let me do this on my own.” Dawn slowly walked forward, then halted and stared as her flashlight caught the distant gleam of amber.

She gave a little cry, as much from the sheer beauty of seeing the dazzling, golden path as from the thrill of discovery.

“What is it?” The voice was Lex’s. 

Whirling about, Dawn saw five dark shapes outlined against the blazing light of the doorway. Her crewmates had all held back. Only Dawn stood in the middle of the mysterious chamber, only she knew what rested beyond the gloom.

“Can you see anything?” Gus asked, echoing Lord Carnarvon’s words.

Spontaneously, Dawn nodded her head. And then, she recalled the words of Howard Carter. 

“Yes,” she said, in a voice filled with awe. “Wonderful things.”

***

They walked and walked, for what seemed like forever, following the pavement of amber-colored tiles. The glinting trail had started in the midst of the cavernous chamber, winding around in a spiral until it straightened out and meandered on. 

Dawn led the way down the path, feeling a bit like Dorothy on her way to the Emerald City. What lay ahead? Would a wizard be waiting for them at the end of the golden road?