Voyage to Alpha Centauri: A Novel (47 page)

At first, there was not much to see, only a continuation of the bare walls and ceiling, and of course the rails leading into the dark. The LECs had plenty of room to follow alongside the rails. The road’s floor was now level.

It did not take them long to reach the end of the chamber, and here they came to a stop before a second wall of stone blocks. What might have been a radical disappointment was, instead, cause for further excitement. First of all, they noted that the lowest level of wall blocks sat upon the road’s paving stones, dividing them in half, indicating that the road might possibly continue onward beyond the wall—if it was indeed a dividing wall and not a dead end. Most importantly, they found incised in the center block, far above their heads, a duplicate of the three-eyed god. Cut into the block immediately below it was another “arrow”.

An animated discussion followed, concluding with the advance team requesting that the nuclear scalpel be sent in to them. Not long after, the machine arrived. Within minutes, it had made its initial cut, and jubilation erupted all around when the instrument registered more empty space on the other side. Within an hour, a door was opened and a single LEC entered the inner chamber, several of the scientists following it on foot. A few steps beyond the doorway, they stopped in their tracks and gasped. The cameras entered last, and then we were able to see what greeted their eyes.

The first impression was that of a sun—a sphere of fire, a star—floating just above the floor ahead of them. They did not question how near or far away it was, because the space around them seemed to be as huge as the outer chamber. Instinctively fearing the heat of solar flames, the scientists drew back from it. However, the driver of the LEC moved his vehicle closer, and then objectivity asserted itself. He switched off his headlights, and instantly, the sun was extinguished, leaving the room in darkness. He switched them on again, and the sun returned. Now we realized that it was an object made of highly reflective yellow-orange material. It gave off no heat whatsoever.

Walking cautiously toward it, the team approached to a distance of ten meters.

“Gold”, someone said. “I think it’s covered with gold.”

Instruments were pointed at the thing and registered its composition as stone with a veneer of pure gold.

It was not as large as was first thought, only 3.179 meters in diameter. Its underside was at eye level, and the whole was supported by a thin black rod, piercing it through the vertical axis line.

Dariush stepped closer and walked all around it.

“No hieroglyphics”, he said, when he had completed his inspection.

“A symbolic AC-A, I think”, said one of the scientists.

By now, the other two vehicles had been driven inside the chamber and taken positions on either side of the sun, pointing their headlights further into the receding shadows. The vid people aimed their cameras in that direction as well.

Again, all voices fell silent, for there in the distance loomed an immense black form, an object of indeterminate shape that might have been a hundred meters distant or a thousand.

“I get a reading of radioactivity”, said one of the scientists. “Below hazard level.”

“From the sun?” asked another.

“No, it’s coming from that thing, whatever it is.”

“How far are we from it?”

Another scientist, who was standing beside the sphere, pointed his instrument and said, “My reading says it’s approximately 318 meters from us.”

“I really hope we’re not walking through the innards of an alien power generator.”

“It’s possible, but a plant as huge as this seems primitive for a race capable of building the road and the chambers.”

“Maybe their technological development was lopsided.”

“We don’t know anything about them, other than they were great road builders.”

“The Egyptians and Mayans were great builders too, and they didn’t even have electricity.”

“Well, let’s take a look. If you find any on/off buttons, don’t touch them.”

In the end, their hunger to
know
shunted aside all reservations. They climbed into the LECs, and their drivers moved onward in the direction of the object. Additional mobile vehicles entered the chamber behind them, and now a convoy was on the move. Neither eyesight nor vid could discern anything more about the amorphous mass, regardless of how close they came to it—only that it was non-reflective and very big. The thought crossed more than one mind that it would prove to be a tomb.

The vehicles in the vanguard braked before a low object that was now visible immediately in front of them, a cube of black stone, waist high, standing between them and the massive structure. Passengers got out of the vehicles and walked around the cube and approached the monolith, which was about ten meters from the cube.

It sat on the three rails, which looked improbably fragile beneath the weight they were bearing. The forefront was rounded with a point like the head of a bullet. It filled two-thirds the width of the chamber and came close to brushing the ceiling, but of its length nothing could yet be seen. Two LECs drove on into the gaps on either side, and the drivers radioed back that the thing was very long. As they continued, they also communicated with each other.

“The sides are curved”, said one.

“Black all the way”, said the other.

“Grooves on the side.”

“Same on my side.”

“Equally spaced holes, ten of them.”

“Same here. They look like vents. This is some big reactor.”

“Or one hell of a spooky machine.”

“Vertical lines, a rectangle on the side of the thing, maybe a service entry.”

“Radioactivity increasing, but still beneath hazard level. Should I turn around?’

“No, let’s keep going to the end. Meet you there.”

“We have protrusions along the sides, like tubes swelling gradually, the longer they get.”

“Same here.”

“I’m at the back end. The tubes stop here.”

“There are dorsals.”

“Dorsals?”

“Like fins between the tubes. I think there are retractable components too. Did you see the grooves?”

“I just thought they were grooves.”

“They look like wing bays.”

“Are you saying this is a. . .?”

“Yeah, it’s a space ship.”

Day 207
:

With these words, one of the greatest discoveries in millennia was immortalized. “Space ship”. The phrase sounded incredibly banal, an old cliché learned from a boy’s comic book or a bit of dialogue in a low-budget sci-fi film from the earliest era of motion pictures.

“Yeah, it’s a space ship.” I want to erase the memory of what that driver or engineer said. It should be stricken from the record. But it won’t be, and on second thought, perhaps that is best because this is mankind in action, after all, with sublime and banal forever entwined.

Thousands of photographs and scan diagrams were recorded that first day, and are now being analyzed.

No entry point into the vessel has yet been discovered. The portal, or suspected portal, is being examined minutely, but no incisions have been made in its seams. The surface material is still unidentified, and resists all instrument probes.

But we know the following about the ship:

It is 31.79 times longer than it is wide, thus it is the shape of an arrow—a rather fat-shafted arrow. There are no windows.

The only external features are the “fins” and the faint seams in the “grooves”, which could be bays for retractable wings. If there are wings inside, they are folded tightly and sealed.

The “tubes” appear to be propulsion units, since the radioactivity has its source near the rear end of the craft. The ends of the tubes are holes, plugged and impenetrable.

Nowhere along the entire surface is there evidence of damage. The “nose” or tip of the “arrow” displays no micro impact holes typically found on rocket-style, atmosphere-piercing vessels such as those once used on Earth.

The black surface continues to confound the metallurgists and chemists. They know it is a kind of unidentified metal. It is not the same material as the thin black coating on the backside of the stone gate. The ship’s skin is extremely hard, certainly harder than any alloy mankind has developed. The nuclear scalpel succeeded in penetrating the skin only a fraction of a millimeter before shutting itself off due to overloading its power system. Repeated attempts have ended in the same manner. However, minute particles were collected where the incision was made, which one might call the “sawdust” from the cut. This was taken up to the
Kosmos
labs and analyzed under our best mass spectrometers / spectrophotometers, and while they failed to determine the metal’s atomic weight, it was found that molecules of sand or glass, possibly the remnants of superheated clay, were present.

The investigation has progressed only this far, as of today. Engineers are attempting to re-rig the nuclear scalpel in order to give it greater cutting power.

Xue came to my door this evening and asked me to go for a walk with him. In an art alcove, he told me that DSI had called a meeting of the directors of all the science teams, held at their head office on deck D. Xue had been invited in as an advisor. In short, they want to know if anti-matter can be used to penetrate the ship’s exterior, if the forces that gave us half-lightspeed on our outward journey can be harnessed in such a way. Xue informed them that it was a risk. Theoretically, an anti-matter beam could act in a way similar to that of the scalpel, but because we don’t know what material the ship is made of, its matter could react negatively. It could simply explode in our faces, or dissolve into nothingness, or any number of other possibilities. The executives of DSI nodded as if they understood, then mandated the engineers to make a new tool.

“They want to produce a black hole the size of a pinpoint”, said Xue, shaking his head. “It is very tempting for me, as you can well imagine. However, as I said, the risks are considerable.”

“They could practice on the metal floor in the tower”, I offered. “It looks like the same substance.”

“Yes, I thought of that. And suggested it.”

“Will you be involved?”

“I have offered them my paper on anti-matter reduction—entirely theoretical at this point, but I believe reliable. This would give them the parameters of what to avoid. Of course, they’re smart enough to know those things for themselves.”

“Let us hope so.”

“I will probably function as the quality-control man, making sure they don’t come up with anything that would violate the physics. Also, I would need to explain a few things from your own work. Do I have your permission?”

“As long as you promise not to blow the planet to smithereens, Owly.”

He smiled. “I’ll try not to,
Nil
.”

Day 208
:

While the new tool is being developed, the exploration of the chamber continues.

Until now, there has been total focus on the ship. Today, attention has turned to the hundreds of stone blocks embedded in the chamber’s walls, a long row on each side of the ship, each block separated by a distance of 0.3179 meters.

Archaeologists have asked permission for one to be cut from the wall as a test, to see if it covers a tomb or a storage chamber for artifacts. Dariush tells me that the team cannot go forward with this until DSI gives permission and mandates the use of the nuclear scalpel. This I find supremely irritating. Why do such decisions have to pass through the fetid bowels of social infrastructure? What’s to decide? It’s plain what’s needed! I feel certain that DSI derives so much pleasure from the exercise of power that it savors the exquisite sensation of making people wait. So everyone waits.

And waits.

Day 209
:

The archaeologists, feeling somewhat frustrated, filled their idle hours by investigating the black stone cube that sits on the floor close to the ship’s nose. As expected, its dimensions are multiples of our favorite number. Interestingly, the top is subtly concave, like a shallow basin. Thirteen pencil-thin grooves radiate outward from a symbol at the center of the basin.

The symbol may not be a symbol as such, and only purely decorative. It is a circular incision with thirteen smaller circles surrounding it, their rims all touching the central one. Each of the small circles, though they are of varying sizes, is the starting point of a groove. The grooves radiate toward the four edges of the “tabletop”, cut the edges, and run down the sides, where they disappear into small holes in the floor. The cube sits upon a larger rectangle of the black metal. A second metal rectangle is embedded in the stone floor halfway between the cube and the nose of the ship, flanked by the two outer rails. Here, it would appear that the central rail was removed ages ago by the ones who originally made the chamber and/or interred the ship. Metallurgists have determined that the rails are a kind of steel, mainly iron, with carbon and another component that gives it extraordinary tensile strength.

Day 215
:

In the late afternoon, I received a voice message from Dariush in my
max
inbox:

   Hello, Neil.

I will be returning to the
Kosmos
, arriving by shuttle at 5
P.M.
, in order to consult my books. Perchance, will you join me for supper at a cafeteria or restaurant of your choice? I hope you are well and taking your medications faithfully.

I quickly sent a text reply:

   Feel okay, some days not so good. Bad dreams all the time. Taking my meds, but I wonder if they’re helping. How about Mexican, 5:30?

Hopefully, this would be adequate cover.

At half past five, I stood by the door of the Mexican bistro and beheld Dariush coming toward me along the concourse, head down, looking very weary.

We greeted each other and then went inside. The place was bereft of customers, and so we were quickly served at the bar.

I lustily consumed my tacos and “cheese” while Dariush sipped at his cup of water and stared at the table top. He picked at his basket of tacos from time to time but dropped the uneaten chips back into it without a nibble. When I was full, he turned his bloodshot eyes upon me. I could tell he hadn’t been getting enough sleep during the past few days.