The Alien Artifact 8 (8 page)

The world about them was a flat stretch, with
occasional large asteroid dents.

“
What a place?
”
Orwell finally moaned, and tried
laughing, and moved close to him, and Cronenberg watched him,
wondering what he was talking about.

“
There’s something not right about this
mission!” Cronenberg confessed, considering if he could give him
anything that he might have missed.

He realized it could be just Mars affecting
them! It was the new things and hidden dangers there! It was
exploring where nobody had been before, and the great deadly
environment and mistakes they could make being somewhere with such
an environment for so long! The region they were in was the least
explored!

It was the legendary Martian Antarctica, and
he still sensed there was something strange there! Something he had
not encountered before! Something that could only exist in such a
place, and in the depths of space, and it gave him chilling and
weird sensations, but he could not grasp what, and he wondered if
he was destined to die on the remote world.

As the shuttles completely turned silent he
watched the rest of the crew rush about observing the whole south
pole, and he increasingly felt a presence of something, somewhere,
in the chilling distance of the alien world, and it was clear that
the five other members of the crew said anything about it.

A silent vibration went through the ground
and he expected to hear a sudden explosion sound in the distance,
and he knew it was only a tremor, but it gave the world a feeling
of being unstable.

All the crew slowly vanished behind the
shuttle, over where the main shuttles were, and Orwell walked
around its edge to see what was happening, and stood with his mouth
open and Cronenberg wondered what it could be and if it was his
reaction to nothing, and he went over to him, and he then stood
with his mouth open.

All the astronauts from the shuttles, a
hundred astronauts, were standing in a group discussing something
and he suddenly realized, from their communications from their
spacesuit communicators, that it was a search for the diamonds and
he wondered how the hell they had heard of them and started
watching Orwell and he realized he had to have been behind it.

But he then knew he had not by his reactions!
But he had to have unknowingly done it!

He was surprised when two of the other
shuttle commanders looked directly at him and started discussing
something, and he gasped and realized his luck was vanishing.

Cronenberg marched in close and observed all
their spacesuits standing about a central area, where there was a
large meteorite boulder, and he anxiously started listening into
their communications.

After a few minutes he showed a glint of
humor, followed by some sadness, as he realized that they never had
any real information about the diamonds he then realized that they
could gain knowledge of what they had.

“
Are you saying that you think that
there
’s
treasure here too?
”
one astronaut that had not properly heard
them asked with amusement and astonishment, wondering what they
were really talking about.

Everyone listened, and some stopped doing
things.

“
There
’s
a page missing from
this,
”
one
of the astronauts broke in the conversation with, and Cronenberg
watched him with astonishment holding a diary.

“
Yes, and I found it,
”
one of the other shuttle
commanders, called Tom Eagle, forced himself to reply, walking out
of the crowd of astronauts, and he stood in front of them all, and
they formed into a crowd in front of him, and Cronenberg and Orwell
rushed over and stood at the side of them.

Eagle took the diary and held in up and
took the missing page out of his pocket, and continued,
“
It was on the
bottom of the bookshelf, where it was found!
”

Cronenberg wondered what the hell he was
talking about as he had not heard anything until then and he knew
that they had something, and he could sense something was coming,
and Eagle even seemed to warn him of it.

Eagle took the page and spread it out
in front of him, and all their eyes seemed to go on it at once, and
he muttered,
“
It refers to a clue that the scientist with
Anders gave! It says it is on a map that Anders managed to get from
him!”

Chapter 15

The Treasure
Hunt

Now Cronenberg entirely apprehended how
complicated and messed up things had really become, and that things
had gone far further than before, which he had originally not been
able to accept, and he started disbelieving what he had thought as
fact and what was fantasy.

He did not know if he believed there were
diamonds as when he read all his notes and checked documents
looking for the mention of a diary by the scientist he found
nothing and there was even a suggestion there was none and he
started to realize that all the information showed little of if the
diamonds existed, as there was barely a proven fact in them, and
the scientist could easily have been wrong or up to something else,
like many of the documents claimed that they wanted the rocket
vehicle.

Commander Eagle seemed to have talked every
astronaut there into seeking the treasure, even though most were
unsure what they were going to find or were even doing, and most
seemed to think he was going to take them for himself at some
point.

All the shuttles in their sectors had left as
the day went on, carrying out their first scan of Mars, as the sun
moved over their sectors of Mars, and Cronenberg had finally left
to do his, and had sat confused in his seat, examining facts over
and over, and realized that Orwell had to have let out the
information about the diamonds and the map out, and he could not
fully realize what he had intended to do and if he had even
deliberately told them to carry out some elaborate plan, but if he
had was he crazy doing it or had he made a mistake in depending on
Commander Eagle?

He was surprised when Orwell approached him,
when the rest of the crew were occupied, and started apologizing
for his mistake, and for what Eagle had done, and Cronenberg
realized that he had known the shuttle commander before they had
gone to Mars, and he recalled it and that they were both connected
to other influential people, and at the base.

“
What was your agreement?” he asked,
confused at what the situation was.

“
Well, he is a distant relative of
mine!” he replied, surprising Cronenberg, and he watched his face
and saw his resemblance.

Orwell rested against a wall, and looked at
him.

“
I told him only about there being
diamonds and we were searching for them! I figured we would have a
better chance of finding it, as for starters we only cover one
small sector of the area of Mars being checked.”

“
You’re correct there! We will have to
search through all the stuff recorded …”

“
Exactly!” he swiftly replied. “And if
we’re not able to find it on the recorded stuff we’ll not get it!
But now all of them are searching with their detection equipment,
which can’t be used on the map, and could very well spot something
…”

He realized that it was a good point and that
they could all together detect something, and their chances of
finding them alone were low, and he was sure the method the
scientist that originally found them had used to get them with the
satellite were unknown.

He thought of how long it would take to map
the entire world and rested back into his seat, and he wondered
what would happen, and if he had really blown it, giving the
information Orwell and to every astronaut there, and he realized
that Orwell could have made a mistake and that he should have had
them looking for something else, and he realized that it was Eagle
that had ruined it and he was sure he never realized what he was
doing.

He thought over what he had said and realized
that Eagle had only known the diamonds were there, and could be
found, but he had found the scientist’s diary, and Cronenberg
recalled that there had been other libraries at the base, but small
ones and were not for the public, and he recalled what he had said
and that the diary said it was on the map and he wondered what
information was in the diary and wondered if it gave how the
scientist had located the diamonds on the satellite.

Cronenberg had searched the map repeatedly
for the clue, after he had read a mention of it on Anders’s wife’s
letter and he decided to try to find it later and started searching
for information on the scientist and other scientists of that time,
on his computer, and how they might have hidden it away.

Chapter 16

The Missing
Shuttle

Cronenberg was almost asleep when an urgent
communication was received and he partially grasped one of the
pilot’s urgent voices and he rapidly realized it was something
important and started to comprehend what it was to do with!

“
Our mission has been cancelled!”
Lyndon, the pilot, called out.

“
What?” he moaned.

“
For the moment! One of the shuttles
has just vanished, and they’re starting to search for
it!”

“
Whose shuttle?” he called
back.

“
Wait a minute! I’ll ask! Whose
shuttle? It’s Commander Eagle’s shuttle!”

Cronenberg gasped and jumped up and saw all
their faces lit up, after Eagle’s name was mentioned, and he
watched Orwell slowly move over to him, and he considered what to
do.

“
Tell them we’ll search for it too!” he
announced, and he asked them to go to the location where the
shuttle was last seen.

He was amazed when he replied, “They’re at
the location we went down at!”

“
What at the exact location?” he
gasped, considering changing the order, considering them crashing
down again.

It was a dangerous mission and he just had to
go there and investigate what was happening, and he wondered why
the hell Eagle had chosen that route, and he realized that the
diamonds could be there and hidden at some place he had not
noticed.

“
It’s not the exact location!” Lyndon
replied, looking over at him, and searching his face. “It’s further
south!”

After a few minutes considering it he noticed
he knew something else, and asked, “Is there any other information,
and anything unusual you can find?”

He announced, “We’ve detected the shuttle! I
cannot discover if it is damaged but there is no communications
from it, and no information from anyone aboard! It seems dead!”

“
If you detect anything trying to take
control of this shuttle turn back! We cannot afford to crash again!
We can go there later!”

“
They want to explore what’s there – if
nothing happens – and check what’s happened!”

Chapter 17

The Second
Occurrence

In the distance he spotted the crashed
shuttle, and it rapidly expand in size, and Cronenberg saw their
crash site over at their side, and watched the hill he had stood
on, where Campbell had died, and he sensed something, even though
there was no sign of what had brought them down, as well as Eagle’s
shuttle.

When they reached Eagle’s shuttle their
acceleration automatically decreased and they flew in a circle
around the shuttle, and he spotted damage to the shuttle, and signs
that a fire had damaged it, and he saw there were no signs of
anyone, or anyone leaving it.

It looked as though it had been brought down
the same way as them but had sustained more damage, and he asked
Lyndon to try to contact them again, and was immediately replied
with there was nothing there to contact.

He struggled to grasp what was there and saw
that the whole area was just a flat area of ground, similar to a
desert region, with the hill he had stood on behind them and
another hill at the same distance in the opposite direction,
towards the Antarctica, and where Eagle’s shuttle had come form,
and he focused on the deformed sun below the window, as it went
along just above the horizon, and he gasped when the pilots
announced the other shuttles in their group were arriving, in the
distance, and he ordered them to land!

There had to be something there! He wondered
if it was the hill after all! It was exactly in the middle between
Eagle’s crash site and their crash site!

He looked for the diamonds and anywhere he
could see that looked like where they could be and realized he
could not see anything, and even wondered if they really
existed.

The shuttles were new and recently built and
they were still testing them for the first time over Mars!

Something staggered him about the mission and
he sensed something was going to occur, and had seen it
approaching, with it edging its way towards him, and he felt he
could not avoid it! He had to go through with what was going to
happen! He believed he could survive if he did everything he could
to avoid any serious and deadly mistakes!

He watched the pilots do a perfect landing
next to the shuttle, and he put on his spacesuit, and followed
Orwell out the shuttle, and marched over to the other shuttle, and
he wondered if they were still alive, as it looked like they had
landed to fast and hard, as the shuttle looked embedded in the
soil.