Project Sail (36 page)

The walking tripods spread out, illuminating the whole chamber.

Kelly moved away from Hawthorne, helped Kost to her feet, and then dusted off her suit because it was the only contribution she could make at the moment.

Wren stopped mumbling obscenities long enough to reply to the professor, “My readings are not clear; the scanners are not effectively penetrating the outer layer. Christ, is this some kind of container?”

King scolded, “Do not speak his name in here. This is a dark place.”

Wren heard her this time and did his own scolding: “I don’t want to hear your preaching right now, I’m busy.”

Stein radioed Hawthorne, “Hey Commander, everything okay in there?”

He did not know how to answer. The object emitted energy but nothing threatening. Other than its suspension in mid-air, there was nothing remarkable about it, except for being of alien origin.

Actually, we are the alien invaders here.

“Commander?”

“Yes, Bill, everything is fine but we discovered something that is, well, appears artificial. Stand by, we are coming out in a moment and Professor Coffman will be better able to explain.”

Coffman overheard.

“Leaving? I do not think so. This object is proof of extraterrestrial intelligent life. To call this moment historic is an understatement.”

Hawthorne felt like a coward but he said it anyway, “We need to pull back and figure out what we found. You have remote equipment that can study this thing.”

“Remote equipment? I will study this personally.”

King boomed, “We should leave. It is not of man, it is dangerous.”

Wren jumped, “This is not the time for your crazy religious bull shit.”

Thomas said, “The Commander is right, we should pull back.”

“Like you know what the fuck you’re talking about,” Wren spat.

Hawthorne came to her defense, “Shut up you foul-mouthed son-of-a-bitch. The only thing you have done this entire trip is piss everyone off.”

“Yeah, and you’ve been so fucking helpful Mr. War Hero by pulling off a mutiny. Fucking kudos to you.”

“I am not leaving,” Coffman insisted, although he became a sideshow as Wren stepped up to Hawthorne and Thomas moved to intercept while King clasped her hands and prayed.

Dr. Kost shouted louder than anyone, “Stop! Just stop it!”

Their arguments ended as previously undetected cracks on the surface of the cylinder glowed burnt orange. With the light came an intrusion into their minds, a powerful flood of information that overloaded their senses, causing them to stagger and clutch the sides of their helmets in a vain attempt to ward off the invasion.

Hawthorne’s own thoughts were shoved aside in favor of images his mind could not unscramble, like a transmission hidden in electronic noise. He vaguely noticed Dr. King lean against the wall for balance as she, too, struggled to understand the assault. He and King, however, were the least affected of the group.

Wren dropped to his knees and shouted, Professor Coffman grunted and fell to the cavern floor, but even their reactions were mute compared with Thomas and Kost.

Kelly cried out and stumbled as if struck in the head by a weapon. Although still fighting his own battle, Hawthorne reached out, steadying her balance.

But Kost screamed the loudest; a terrifying cry that suggested a horrific attack.

“Help me,” she begged, “I can…I can see everything I can see everything THEY’RE IN MY MIND! GET THEM OUT!”

The cylinder’s assault ended, the cracks disappeared again, and Dr. Ellen Kost collapsed to the floor motionless.

39. Signs

Hawthorne removed his helmet and fell into a chair in the shuttle’s passenger module. The landing party—including Stein—gathered inside with Wren and Coffman hovering over Kost who lie on the floor, eyes open but motionless.

After twenty seconds, the cylinder’s emission had subsided and the group retreated after rigging the robotic rover into a self-propelled gurney.

Hawthorne’s hands trembled, he felt a chill around his spine, and wanted to blast off this moon and fly
SE 185
back to Earth, where he would happily accept his sister’s suggestion to teach flight school.

Something had happened in that chamber but he suffered the effect less than the others. For Hawthorne, the sudden blast of what he could only think of as energy caused visions to flash in his mind, images he struggled to decode, leaving him shaken and puzzled, but unharmed.

The discharge hurt Thomas far worse, immobilizing her during the event and leaving her with a severe headache. She sat across from him with her eyes closed, rubbing her temples.

Coffman seemed dazed, as if suffering a concussion, but remained coherent enough to answer Stein’s question of “What happened?” with “We do not know.”

Dr. King spoke of the “devil” and “an evil presence,” as she examined Kost. It appeared the cylinder’s assault had driven King’s nerves to the breaking point.

Wren’s condition resembled Coffman’s: dazed, as if suffering from a blow to the head. He was, however, desperately worried about Kost, kneeling at her side and pleading with her to “say something.” She answered only with grunts, as if she no longer knew how to speak.

Tommy Starr sat in the pilot’s seat, baffled to the point of silence.

Hawthorne crossed the aisle and sat next to Kelly. He put an arm around her and while he tried to provide comfort, he did it mainly because he found it comforting himself.

“Are you okay?”

“Head hurts,” she said, “like a nail in my brain. What about you?”

“Physically, I am fine, but I may have shit myself.”

The joke resulted in a flashed smile followed by another grimace. It felt good to see her smile, even if it faded fast. He did not like seeing her in pain.

She told him, “Something got in my head; I saw stuff.”

“Me too,” he admitted, “but looks like whatever hit you packed a bigger punch.”

Coffman overheard and raised a finger.

“Yes, well, I had a similar experience.”

Wren asked, “What are you talking about?”

“It appears the three of us suffered visions during the, well, I guess you could call it an event.”

“Fuck, make that four, professor,” Wren said. “I figured I was having a scary hallucination.”

“Of course it was scary,” King looked up from Kost and made eye contact with every member of the landing party. “Visions of Hell, a world of smoke and fire; this moon under a sun as red as an inferno. The beast revealed his plans for this place; we are in the domain of the serpent.”

“You saw visions, too?” Hawthorne spoke before Wren could.

“Images, yes, like memories of a picture,” King then looked to Kost on the floor with her eyes open and staring blankly. “It put those pictures in our minds as a warning to leave.”

“Shut the fuck up and make her better,” Wren pointed at King and then Kost. “That’s your patient, doctor.”

Hawthorne felt Kelly shiver in reaction to King’s suggestion of the supernatural, and that made him mad, but he felt fear, too. He was a trained astronaut and should not let superstition contaminate his thinking. But when confronted with something so alien and unexpected, so mind-shatteringly important, men often reach for the darkest—even the most absurd—explanations.

Coffman placed a hand on the wall for balance.

“We all saw images projected by that cylinder. I saw… strange buildings a mile high and built from materials I did not recognized. There were machines, some large, some flying. I cannot describe their design but as these images progressed, a force destroyed everything. The buildings, the machines, entire cities…taken apart piece by piece; deconstructed at the molecular level.”

Wren said, “Yeah, well, I figured what popped into my head were just memories from England.”

“What do you mean?” Tommy Starr asked between coughs; anxiety must have irritated his respiratory problems.

“I mean a dead world, like England; lifeless, burned to the ground.”

“You see,” King proselytized, “a planet—or moon--of fire and smoke.”

Wren’s expression twisted.

“Jesus Christ, how about details beyond stupid Old Testament bull shit.”

“That’s what I saw; a picture of destruction. This world is one big Pandora’s Box; we should leave.”

Hawthorne shared, “I did not see much either, just a glimpse, but I had the impression of watching beings of some kind, similar to us, falling apart around a big ball of light. It was like a drug-induced trip but, like Dr. King, no detail.”

“Well I saw plenty of detail,” Kelly Thomas spoke. “Sort of, well, something like clouds, swirling in the sky over a barren world, maybe this place. It felt real, almost like a direct feed movie. I felt a fresh breeze in the air and I had the sense, well I had the feeling, as if everything was, I don’t know…
new
. I’m not sure but the clouds were rolling together like a storm brewing but it didn’t feel oppressive or scary; it felt liberating.”

“The peace before the storm,” King guessed. “What this place was, or could have been, before the beast came.”

Stein said, “So now wait, you think this floating cylinder is a cage for the devil?”

King said, “I traveled to the stars hoping we might find God, but it seems we found Lucifer. What else could it be?”

“It’s not a fucking fantasy creature from your book of fairy tales,” Wren exploded. “Now if you are not too busy trying to scare us with stupid witchcraft, could you tell me what the fuck is wrong with Ellen?”

She stared at him for three long seconds before answering, “I do not see any physical signs of trauma but the burst from the
device
may have caused brain damage. Her speech skills are clearly inhibited, and possibly her mental processes. It could be that the devil himself has possessed her.”

“You call yourself professional?” Wren’s normal anger warped into frustration.

She defended righteously, “It seems that science may not be applicable here; that we have come across an ancient and evil force.”

“Pardon me,” Stein jumped in, “it could be that Dr. Kost had a knock on the head.”

“You are right, so we should return to the ship,” Hawthorne said.

Coffman protested, “Wait a second, um, Commander, we cannot leave, this find is too important.”

Wren nearly shouted, “We have to move Ellen to the ship for medical treatment!”

Coffman surrendered with the wave of his hand, saying, “We will leave the monitoring equipment at the site and see what transpires while we return to the ship for medical evaluation.”

Hawthorne knew he should at least sound authoritative so he added, “Yes, Professor, that is a good plan.”

Wren’s eyes grew wide and he said, “Hawthorne, King, you two don’t have thinkers, right?”

“Nope,” the Commander said and King added, “Such vile things.”

“You two did not see the same level of detail as the rest of us.”

Coffman said, “Say, you are right, Leo. You and I have standard communication and interaction implants,” and he tapped Wren on the shoulder with his index finger. “We fared worse than the two here without chips, but we experienced more vivid images.”

“So whatever came out of that cylinder,” Hawthorne followed the logic, “hit people with implants harder than those without.”

Coffman pointed at Kelly Thomas who still dealt with discomfort.

“The Lieutenant has a military-grade chip and appears to have suffered the most.”

Wren explained, “Greater sensitivity, more power, faster processing than the standard shit because military drones need the extra thinking help.”

“Yeah, but you’re not so smart,” Kelly defended and knelt next to her friend, Dr. Kost. “Ellen does not have implants; she can’t even see direct feed movies, she has to watch them on screens.”

King said, “And it looks like whatever came out of that abomination hurt her most. So much for that theory.”

Wren snarled, “Then let’s get back to the ship so you can figure out what the fuck is wrong with her.”

40. Decisions

Hawthorne headed for the common room but was intercepted on the stairs by Reagan Fisk who fidgeted, blinked, and appeared on the brink of a nervous breakdown.

“Commander, this is getting out of control! Since we arrived we have removed the Captain by force, lost contact with Oberon, and now we found an alien object?”

Hawthorne held a hand up to stop the young man’s babbling.

“Wait, we lost contact with UVI?”

He thought about it and realized, yes, they had sent messages home but no replies through the QE link.

“They have not responded to my daily updates,” Fisk explained.

“We have been so caught up in exploring the moon that I haven’t paid attention. I just assumed you were in contact with Oberon.”

“Commander, what do we do?” Fisk’s voice threatened to grow into a screech.

He looked into Fisk’s frightened eyes and felt a pang of sympathy. The kid was in over his head. In fact, Hawthorne recognized, they all were.

“Look, Reagan, have Warner run a diagnostic on the QE translation computer. Focus on the details, don’t let the big picture overwhelm you.”

Fisk nodded.

Hawthorne felt the need to add, “When this is over we will be heroes and you’ll earn a big raise.”

Fisk answered meekly, “I just want to get home in one piece.”

He watched the young man return toward the bridge and then descended to the crew deck and entered the common room. There sat Wren staring at a cup of coffee, biting his lip, and appearing ready to explode. Kelly Thomas also sat at the table, eating instant-stew from a plastic bowl.

Hawthorne touched her shoulder and she told him, “I’m feeling better.”

The view of G-Moon through the observation window drew his eye. The outer face remained dark but sunshine would come in a few days as it orbited back toward the red dwarf.

Phipps entered the room with his head slung and told them, “The professor asked me to monitor the, um, object. It emits bursts of radiation every forty-five minutes.”

Wren said, “But what is it radiating?”

Phipps looked at Wren and then to Hawthorne who said, “Thanks, Andy, I will tell the professor.”