Voyage to Alpha Centauri: A Novel (46 page)

A number of interim conclusions have been reached by soil and geology experts:

Though the figures are not absolute, it is estimated that the road was last used circa fourteen hundred years ago by Nova reckoning, the figures adjusted for the different length of its year and the character of the planet’s seasons, based on a theoretical 3.5-cm rise of soil deposits per century. This translates into somewhere between two thousand and twenty-one hundred years ago by Earth time.

When the road was actually built is anyone’s guess.

Measured from side to side, the stone pavement is 31.79 meters wide—which is also the towers’ diameter. Its borders remain perfectly aligned along the entire length of the exposed section.

There can be no doubt that it was designed to bear heavy loads. This is further indicated by a discovery that came late in the first day, when the excavator machine had exposed nearly twenty meters of road in the direction of the cliff: traced along its bed are three parallel “tracks” of mineral deposits, which the station metallurgist has sampled and examined. It is iron oxide. He believes it is the remnant of completely oxidized rails. These lead straight toward the cliff base, which is still buried under soil and debris fallen from the mountain over the centuries.

No one has attempted to dig deeper at the cliff face beneath the winged creature, since the archaeologists have decided upon another methodology. The excavator will continue to expose the road until it is very close to the cliff, a few meters away, and then the remainder of the work will be done by the archaeologists, using more delicate tools.

Tomorrow excavation resumes.

Day 200
:

Unfortunately, another death occurred today. One of the geologists working at AS-VT, a young woman, went for a stroll down the embankment in the direction of a pond three kilometers north of the station. This shallow body of swampy water is the last remnant of the lake that once filled a great part of the valley There are very similar geographical features south of the road, and it is now believed that the embankments once separated two large bodies of water. In other words, the road was a causeway. That it was sunken, not raised as one would expect a causeway to be, is further indication that it must have been used for bearing unimaginable weights, and thus it needed the mountains’ rock bed to support it. An ordinary raised causeway, even one greatly reinforced by alien engineering, might not have provided enough support.

I regret to say that the victim died of snakebite. Her body was found by the shore of the pond. She was wearing a swimsuit at the time of her death. She had neglected to bring antidotes and a communicator with her. Since the distance back to the station was too far to run, she may have panicked, shouted for help, and then quickly become delirious. Brain hemorrhage and asphyxiation followed shortly.

Excavation has been suspended until after the funeral.

Day 201
:

A memorial service and burial at Base-main this morning. Many scientists and other personnel had flown in to grieve and give eulogies. The deceased woman had been popular among her colleagues. I watched a half-hour biography program on my
max
last night. Poor girl. If she has family back home on Earth, they will not hear about her death until 4.37 years from now.

Now the cemetery beside the flag is crowned with three aluminum obelisks, each surmounted by a blue orb symbolizing our home planet. Stron’s and the soldier’s were the first ones. Let us hope there will be no more.

Day 202
:

A new detail has come to light. As the excavation resumed and several more meters of soil were removed, it was noticed for the first time that the roadbed sloped downward, a fact that had been overlooked during the previous work, so gradual was the grade. Only when the machine’s driver looked back did he see that he was slightly lower than he had been at the beginning. Surveyors scurried down into the trough and took readings with their instruments. The resulting data showed that the slope had been there all along. Further readings taken at sample spots (5-km, 3-km, 2-km, 1-km, and 0.5-km distances from the cliff) revealed that, for a good deal of its length, the road’s ratio of decline had been a constant 0.3179 meters of drop for every 31.79 meters of length—need one be surprised? At a distance of 0.6358 kilometers, however, the angle of descent increased, and continued to increase.

By late afternoon, the excavator was only twenty meters from the cliff, and the roof of his vehicle was well below the forest floor. I could see there was growing excitement among the station staff gathered along both sides of the pit, and plenty of us held our breath on the
Kosmos
, where I think a majority of those on board had crowded into the panorama rooms to watch the real-time 3D. I had a good place near the screen on deck B, and noticed Dariush standing at the edge of the excavation, as close as he could get to the mural.

When the machine’s scoop and suction arrived at a point only ten feet from the cliff face, the driver began to work more slowly, in order to avoid damaging anything that might be buried there. By then, the archaeologists were peering at his every move and shouting cautions and directions. When the scoop had removed all soil and debris to within a foot, they called the excavation to a halt.

Everyone stood still and gazed downward, and a few seconds later, the media people got their cameras positioned so that we could see too. The pit looked to be about thirty meters deep. The road had proved to be a colossal ramp. But, why a ramp? And where did it go? Would this phenomenal feat of engineering end only at a blank wall?

The excavator was removed, and two mobile hydraulic platforms were driven down the pavement to the base of the excavation. The platforms were raised to the level of the mural, and a horizontal walkway extended between them. Five archaeologists boarded it and knelt down, their faces close to the head of the three-eyed god. Without delay, they began to brush a patina of dried earth from the hieroglyphics, the winged creature, and the line leading to the three solar symbols. The hydraulics lowered them as they scrubbed and dusted their way downward.

At last, they reached the lowest level that Paul and Vladimir had unearthed, the row of eighteen planets. Now their activities proceeded in studied earnest. Carefully, they used trowels to scoop away the mixture of soil and rock, centimeter by centimeter it seemed, with a suction tube taking away the debris. The incised vertical line was more and more exposed as they worked on.

At every stage of descent, two assistants worked on either side of the archaeologists’ platform, breaking up the thicker layer of soil covering the cliff, with additional suction tubes removing the material. In this way, the entire cliff face was exposed little by little, lower and lower. It must have taken hours to accomplish this, but I had lost all sense of time.

There came a moment when the team on the walkway stopped as one man, and then they all leaned forward with their heads close to the rock.

“The line has ended at a fracture”, called an archaeologist to no one in particular. “It looks horizontal.” He measured it with a bubble level. “Yes, it’s level. It’s an artificial seam.”

They dug away more soil, and one of them cried out, “Stone blocks!”

Three hours later, the entire cliff face was exposed, and there we beheld what could not have been detected by instruments alone: cut into the mountain wall was a gateway, as wide as the road, and as high—31.79 meters square.

It was filled with close-fitting rectangular stones, exact duplicates of each other, their joints so tight it would be impossible to pass a razor blade between them. There was no mortar.

The bottom row of blocks sat upon the end-blocks of pavement, indicating that the barrier was added after construction of the road, possibly ages later.

Incised in the central block in the middle of the wall, equidistant from left and right, top and bottom, was a simple arrow shape with pointed head, feathered hilt, and a shaft, which, when measured, proved to be 3.179 meters long. Why, of all things, an arrow? It points to the north, so there may be important findings to be had in that direction—perhaps another entrance or a city?

Silence fell on us all, above and below.

Day 203
:

Committee meetings are underway, though their discussions and decisions (if any) have not yet been reported. Dariush has been involved in some of the meetings. He tells me that various possibilities are being assessed: Should the wall be penetrated by removal of a single block, which would open up a portal sufficiently large for a man to go through? Or should a larger “door” be opened by cutting into it with a nuclear micro-blade, permitting machines and technology to enter? How thick is the wall? How dangerous is it? Would it collapse? Had it been rigged to destroy robbers? Is there more than one layer of stone? Instrument readings tell us nothing here, since the beams are deflected for reasons we do not understand. It may be that the backside of the wall is lined with a metal unknown to us. A test bore into the base of one of the towers has revealed that its circular floor, situated beneath tons of rubble, is an unknown metal, exhibiting no oxidation, black in color, and impenetrable by all our instruments. It may be that the gate wall is reinforced with the same element.

We wait. The mountain also waits, resisting us with its implacable face.

Day 205
:

At sunrise, the cutting began. Elevated to the top row of blocks, the remote-control nuclear scalpel sliced into the wall at the point where the vertical seam met the horizontal seam at the gateway’s upper right corner. Electronic feedback from the machine revealed that the block was 0.3179 meters thick, beyond which was a very thin layer of metal coating the backside of the stone. The beam penetrated both and then encountered no further resistance. There were no adverse effects.

The blade cut slowly downward, following the vertical seam until it reached the seam of the block below it. Then the blade shifted ninety degrees and moved left along the horizontal joint toward the wall’s center. At the end of the block, it turned and went upward to the “roof” or “lintel” of the gateway, turned again to the right, and completed the rectangular incision. There the machine was halted and withdrawn.

The hydraulic lift was elevated to that level and suction apparatus affixed to corners of the block. The hydraulic reversed, rolling backward up the ramp, drawing the block outward. There was a low scraping sound of stone grinding on stone, and then the block was free of the wall. The hydraulic’s engine wheezed under the tremendous weight, but the machine managed to continue its reversal away from the cliff. It drove slowly up the ramp in the direction of the station, where the block would be deposited for examination. Watching the whole event on a panorama screen in 3D real-time, I noticed that the reverse side of the block was non-reflective black—perhaps the same mysterious metal of the tower floors, if metal it was.

The panorama hall was filled with silent people completely absorbed by what was happening below. The staff on the ground had held back until the completion of the procedure, no doubt fearing booby-traps set for grave robbers. Now, curiosity swept aside all hesitations, and the scientists and engineers crowded forward to the edges of the pit. The gaping orifice in the face of the mountain was an open door, rather a window. It was lightless, as if darkness itself had become tangible.

Remote-controlled probes were sent into the space through the window. Shortly after, they returned their readings, which were digitally broadcast across the base of the screen and duplicated by a narrator’s voice reading aloud the same data.

The interior atmosphere was normal air. It was dry, registering near-zero humidity. Though stale and saturated with mineral dust particles (probably stirred by the inrush of outside air when the window was opened), it was free of any chemical or bio toxins that our instruments were capable of detecting. There were also minute quantities of biological “dust”, but this was dead. Samples were taken by the probes, and then they were withdrawn for intensive analysis in the station lab.

Now the remote-controlled vidprobe was inserted and its high-power lights turned on. The image of the hidden world beyond the wall suddenly filled the screen.

At first glance, it was a cave, which had been expected. Then as our eyes adjusted, we saw that it was not a natural cave. It was a hall made by intelligent engineering, with square, featureless walls and ceiling cut from the living rock. As the cameras rotated in all directions, we saw many other things at once:

The hall was enormous, as wide and as high as the gateway itself. Its floor was merely a continuation of the stone roadway that led into it, with the difference that three raised tracks or rails were visible, leading deeper into the mountain. Though the probe’s light system was capable of illuminating hundreds of meters ahead, its beams dissolved into nothingness when it focused in that direction. A beam for measuring distance was fired into the gloom, and it reported that the length of the chamber was 3.179 kilometers. No obstacles had been encountered in its trajectory; it had hit a square wall of stone and bounced back. At this early stage, therefore, we could only conclude that the chamber was empty.

Day 206
:

The chamber is not empty. It is difficult to write about what has been found, for the lucidity of language collapses before what it must describe. I will therefore attempt a sequential account, and perhaps my powers of description will improve as I go along.

Early this morning, the nuclear scalpel widened the window by two more blocks and then cut downward all the way to the road. By noon, an open door had been made in the wall, and in the early afternoon, the first exploration vehicles entered—three LECs with combined tread and hover capabilities. The entire archaeology team and the linguistics team (including Dariush) rode on the vehicles, as well as a few media people, who would send back images of what (if anything) lay deeper in the chamber.