The Unearthing (52 page)

“What the Ship does is remove itself from time relative to the points of origin and destination,” Andrews explained, “Essentially it enters into time warp. The Ship still experiences the time it takes to travel between those two points, but for all intents and purposes it reaches its destination instantaneously. The equations the Ship described are actually quite sound.” But their fellow members of the SSE still didn’t quite understand what they were saying. N’banga intervened:

“Imagine if you will that passengers and crew boarded the Ship on Earth for a voyage to Andromeda, the nearest galaxy,” He said, “To an observer who was monitoring both Earth and Andromeda, the Ship would appear to travel between the two places instantaneously, appearing at Andromeda the exact moment it disappeared from Earth. However, relative to the Ship time would elapse normally between point of origin and destination. It would still experience the full measure of time as it travelled between the two points.”

“How could the crew survive such a journey?” Peter asked.

“In hibernation,” Andrews said, “More precisely, in perfect stasis.”

“Stasis?” Bloom asked. She’d heard the term bandied about during her time at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory when they would talk about deep space exploration. She never quite understood it.

“An advanced form of suspended animation,” N’banga said, “In which the crew of the Ship are essentially frozen in time, becoming non-event masses with no quantum probability. Time stops for them. They experience nothing; do not age, do not even technically
exist
until the Ship removes them from stasis as it reaches its destination. Neither the passengers and crew nor the people at point of origin or destination would be aware of any passage of time. For them the trip would be instantaneous. Given the time it would take to cross the galaxy or to cross extragalactic space the Eoulf’s solution is quite ingenious and practically applicable; especially if you have a power source as unlimited as the Ship’s.”

“About that,” Bloom said, “The Ship described its power source as a torroidal black hole. What exactly is that and how is it possible for the Ship to even contain a black hole?”

“Essentially a torroidal black hole is a black hole which has been stretched into a ring shape,” N’banga said, “By rapidly spinning it on its polar axis until it starts to flatten and expand, its own gravity field pulls it into the ring shape. The outside ring would have one magnetic polarity and the inside ring, another. The energy released from a spinning, ring-shaped or torroidal black hole would take the form of vast amounts of Hawking radiation and could then be collected and focused, probably in the chamber you observed, Colonel Bloom.”

“I thought that it was impossible for a black hole to be anything other than a point,” Benedict said.

“It is,” N’banga replied, “At least, it is, according to everything
we
understand. But some theorists still insist that a torus-shaped black hole is possible. Such a captured object would be able to generate nearly limitless amounts of energy; certainly enough to provide the Ship with the power to warp time away from itself and just as easily accelerate the Ship to one hundred times the speed of light. However, even I am forced to admit that I have no idea how any of this is possible. The technology behind the Ship must be millions of years ahead of us.”

“Thank you,” Bloom said.

She turned to Doctor Kodo. “Doctor, you said that something important was discovered in the biology archives.”

“Yes,” Kodo said, “And I’m surprised we didn’t figure it out, sooner. We know that the Ship came to Earth in the hopes of making contact with intelligent life and bringing that life into the League. We all knew that the crew of the Ship was so keenly impressed by the variety of life on this world that they began an extensive exercise to catalogue the life they found.” Kodo took the remote from Doctor N’banga. He keyed up an image he’d taken from within the archives.

“The Ship came to Earth with the goal of making first contact with intelligent life,” Kodo said, “And, they did. About seventy million years ago.” Onscreen, was a reddish-green, bipedal dinosaur. Its snout was short to the point that mouth and nose were very nearly separate structures. It had narrow shoulders, wide hips and thick legs, standing on its toes so that its ankle acted as rocker and spring. The creature had a short stump of a tail, which apparently served to help it keep its balance. The large eyes faced forward and the brainpan of the skull was large, ovoid in shape and sat on the end of a thick, elongated and powerful neck. Its tiny hands were articulate, with opposable digits at either end.

“Ladies and gentlemen meet the Hthaask,” Kodo said, “They evolved from omnivorous scavengers. When the Ship arrived, the Hthaask had an advanced civilization that used metallurgy, vegetable and alcohol-based fuels and geothermal power. The Hthaask hadn’t yet developed space flight but they had already built large cities and had advanced computronics. They were even sending radio messages into space the same way SETI used to.”

“But…why is there no evidence of this?” Bloom asked, “Where are the ruins of their cities? Where are their machines?”

“According to the Ship, most of the Hthaask culture was based on biomechanical and biodegradable technology, including their cities,” Kodo said, “Their civilization wasn’t based around fossil fuels, the way ours is. In fact there
were
no fossil fuels back then. That we can’t find evidence of their metalwork and other undegradable products could owe much to simple geologic reformation. If they had nuclear fuel we’d never know it today as it would have long ago degraded into baser elements. We’ve dug up much of the earth in archaeology and in mining and construction…we may have stumbled across their technological remains and never known. Over the last sixty-eight million years, the Cataclysm and natural geological events have eroded away what the Hthaask had left behind as monuments.”

“How ironic,” Andrews said dryly, “That the first civilization to grace this world was so much more in tune with the environment, while ours has done so much to destroy the environment by mining and burning our predecessors’ remains. They were killed by the environment, and we have done a wondrous job of killing the environment, by using their remains.”

“It’s been a Human conceit since the dawn of our civilization that we were the first intelligent life form on this world,” Kodo said, “And that ours is the pinnacle of technological success. It appears that neither is the case.”

♦♦♦

Bloom was still reeling from Kodo’s statements when later that night Major Benedict came knocking on her office door.

“Colonel,” He said.

“Hello Major. Have a seat.” She fixed herself a coffee and sat back down at her desk.

“I won’t pretend to know how you found out about my little black op,” she said, referring “But the fact that you aided me in it tells me you’re either working for Justice, investigating me and those above me or you’re working for the same people I am.”

“I imagine that I’m working for the same people you are, Colonel,” He replied, “Though I think I’m working from a position a little higher up the food chain than you are.”

Bloom arched an eyebrow at this. “What do you mean?”

Benedict grinned. “Ladies first,”

“Not too often I get called a lady; I’ll try not to take it personally. Major, I am working under a G-1 security clearance on this one, so I don’t have to tell you that anything I reveal will get me court-martialled with the highest applicable punishment,” Bloom said, her eyes narrowing seriously, “G-1 security violations are considered to be capital offences. So let’s be perfectly clear on this: I am about to trust you with my life. Therefore if anything I say to you leaks and you
will
find yourself eating the business end of my sidearm. Understood?”

“Perfectly,” Benedict replied, dryly. Bloom nodded, sipped her coffee and then continued:

“I am working for a branch of the DIA commonly referred to as Area 51.”

“The Groom Lake Facility,” Benedict said, “Officially denied, not on any books and considered the Military’s Worst Kept Secret since William Jefferson Clinton signed papers essentially saying that the US did not have to acknowledge that it existed. It’s such a badly-kept secret nobody bothers to watch it except the kooks. That’s why it’s the best place to run black flags, right out in the open; I’ve put in my time there as well.” Bloom couldn’t hide her surprise.

“Really,” She said.

He nodded. “About six years before I was assigned Concord Three. They had me examining thruster components from the Bug.”

Bloom nodded. “That little bee I took from the hive is going to answer a few million questions for them. Probably give them about a billion more. I’ve been working for the DIA the whole time I’ve been here at Arapaho, feeding everything we give to the World Ship Summit to my handler before I send it on to Geneva.”

“I’ve been running a similar filing process with our handler the whole time I’ve been here as well.”

“
Our
handler?” Bloom repeated.

“The Chairman Joint Chiefs,” Benedict said, “That
is
who you report to, isn’t it? You’re still not reporting directly to General Harrod, are you, ma’am?” Bemused, Bloom shook her head.

Benedict continued: “In any event, where you report to the Cee-Jay-Cee in his capacity as titular head of the DIA, I report to him on a much higher level. You mentioned G-classifications, before. I’d qualify as a G-Zero classification, if such a level of classification even officially existed. Fact is we both work for the same people; you just don’t know it yet.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I don’t expect you would Colonel,” Benedict said, “But you’re a good person in a bad situation, the same as me. You wouldn’t do anything to betray our Government any more than I would. But we don’t, strictly speaking, work for the US Government right now.”

“You mean the World Council?”

“No; let me explain: Groom Lake, for all intents and purposes is a facility of the United States government. And although it was set up for that purpose originally – witness the Ghostrider Project, commonly referred to by its biggest mistake The
Philadelphia
Experiment – The US government hasn’t actually run Groom Lake since the end of War Two. At the time that Bug was found in the Alberta Badlands, an international body was formed, led and staffed by members of three governments, yet reporting only to themselves. The organisation is known as the Committee and is run by members of the American, British and Canadian governments. Their job is benefit their respective governments by cataloguing acquiring and studying alien artifacts like the Bug, like the UO from Roswell, and--”

“And like the Ship,” Bloom rasped.

“Exactly; the founding members of the Committee occupied the same positions in Government that its current members hold. The Canadian Minster of National Defence, the Canadian Natural Resources Minister, the Canadian Solicitor General…the British Ambassador to Canada, the British Defence Minister, the head of MI-6 and from the US, the Curator of the Smithsonian Institute, the White House Chief of Staff—”

“And the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,” Bloom said.

Benedict nodded and continued: “An advisory council of past members of the Committee and certain captains of industry also occupy the sphere of power. Beneath them there are two levels of subordinates: Tier One personnel like myself, aware of the Committee, aware of who the players are and a second level referred to as the double-blinds, who think they are working for their respective governments. People like you, like General Harrod and like our dear departed friend Colonel Jude, are double blinds.”

“But…you were with me aboard Concord Three,” Bloom said, “Before the Ship was unearthed.”

“That’s right,” Benedict replied, “I’m only called to work for the Committee at certain times. When your late ex-husband first started digging up the Ship and ordered the orbital scan, the DIA became aware of it. The DIA’s standing orders from the Pentagon are to send in a black ops team to acquire or destroy alien artifacts upon discovery. They’re also expected to run a complete sanitization of the site; eliminating any witnesses. The Committee became aware of this because General Harrod, the head of the DIA, reported to his superior officer, the Chairman Joint Chiefs. The Committee didn’t want to risk something as significant as the Ship being destroyed and the Chairman couldn’t simply rescind standing orders. The Committee hadn’t stationed me aboard C-3; but the fact that I was there made the job a lot easier. I was activated aboard Concord Three, to sabotage Harrod’s mission. At least I would have if you hadn’t beaten me to the punch. When you sent that pirate Grid link to INN you actually did a lot to help. I doubt you’ll be surprised to learn that the black ops team sent in by the DIA to the Ship was commanded by Colonel Jude.”