The Martian Pendant (34 page)

The gnome-like priest was given a chance to redeem himself. He had to find and destroy the Martian mandible, and by that means, remove the key piece of evidence supporting her theory that
Homo sapiens
had its origin on the red planet. Without that connection, the publication of Diana’s dissertation, it was thought, would be a total failure, because it would reveal nothing not already known.                                                     

Isotopes                                                                            

Diana realized that to establish the age of the Martian discovery, a new method of isotope dating would have to be found. Using the lab in her spare time, she studied the periodic table, and researched the nuclear physics literature for the answer. She knew there must be a naturally occurring radioactive isotope with a half-life long enough to date something to around a million years.

After some effort, she uncover
ed two isotopes that might be useful for her project. Argon-40 had a useful half-life, and decayed from potassium-40, a common element not only in organic substances such as vegetation and animal tissue, but also in some soils and volcanic rock. Argon is a gas, escaping into the atmosphere unless sealed into igneous rock under certain conditions. Obviously, that was one possibility, especially since much of the broken strata surrounding the spaceship was of that origin, due to its proximity to the volcano, with many lava flows over the millennia. No unbroken igneous rock had been uncovered in the layers surrounding the ship while she was at the dig, and no report of it being exposed by further excavation had come to her attention. This had led to her temporarily putting the argon--potassium method on hold.

She recall
ed her previous inquiries into iron-60, which decayed with a half-life of between one-and-a-half to two million years, depending on the calculations used.

Fe-60 had never been found on e
arth, its presence elsewhere in the universe detected only by astrophysicists using x-ray spectrometry. They postulated that the energy released by its decay to cobalt-60 had melted space dust and other rock to form the asteroids orbiting out beyond Mars. Calculations pointed to the isotope as having disappeared on earth several million years ago at the latest. Diana knew that if Fe-60 could be found in her Martian fossils, her problem with proving the origin of the mandible would be solved, for that very reason. It was a long shot, but she had a feeling that it was a winner. Armed with the idea, she approached the grad students in astrophysics at Caltech. She was met with skepticism at first, but her persistent and earnest approach finally won them over enough to run tests on the mandibular drillings she had kept from confiscation.

As expected, there was no residual radiation detected by mere scintiscanning of the du
st of the fossil, but when the x-ray spectrography results were analyzed, iron, exactly duplicating the theoretical characteristics of Fe-60, was detected. The Department head, when told of the findings, was amazed, and envisioned fame at being the first to have detected its existence on earth. Diana had told them that the specimen was from Africa, but not that it had been found in the spaceship. Needless to say, they were all disappointed when they were informed of the source of the sample. Iron-60 had indeed been found, but it wasn’t from our planet. Obviously, no one in that Department was a paleoanthropologist. 

Diana now had her proof. The presence of the isotope in the mandible firmly established the spaceship crew as being extraterrestrials. But that was only the first step, and she was puzzled. Even w
ith virtually identical anatomy, could the presence of Fe-60 alone be used to further confirm the connection between the space aliens and modern humans? She thought so, and decided that further evidence was unnecessary.

To
complete her dissertation, she lacked only her original photographic slides, which had been locked away with the other material by the Federal government as top secret. She needed to make new slides, which necessitated flying to Chicago to again photograph the fossil mandible, in juxtaposition with specimens of modern man. Those photos, combined with her Fe-60 data, would establish beyond a doubt that, along with modern humans, Martians were
Homo sapiens
, and since they had arrived on earth a million or more years ago, as shown by the isotopic findings, they, and not the various primitive hominids found in Africa, were our ancestors.

Diana left Bobby in his grandparents
’ care in Hollywood, and flew to Chicago. Again she was met by Max at Midway Airport, and they sped to the Department at the U. of C. The sun had set, requiring bright lights in his office for her to use her Hasselblad camera.

About the time she had left L
.A., Celestre and two other men disguised as priests and furnished with forged passports, had landed in New York on an Alitalia flight from Rome. Their plane to Chicago was delayed, and coincidentally landed just after Diana’s. They hired a cab, the driver directed to take them to the University. With maps furnished them in Rome, they found the Anthropology Department without difficulty, despite the gathering darkness.

“Hi, beautiful,” Max said, when he opened the safe and produced the jawbone. “It’s great to see you.”

“Max, stop that. We don’t have time for such silliness. I have a feeling we must quickly take those juxtaposed photos ASAP, and get out of here with my camera and the fossil mandible.”

Hurriedly, she took pictures
, as she had for her preliminary paper, and put the camera in her shoulder bag, telling him to pick up the Martian fossil. Just then, they heard the door to the outer office open. She cursed herself for not having locked it behind them.

“Max, quick, we have to hide. They
’re after the mandible, and they’re probably armed. When they can’t find their prize, with any luck they’ll leave.”

He
found a convenient storage closet, and they were able to hide behind a stack of large boxes. The light had burned out, probably saving their lives. In his haste, however, he had left the specimen on the table.

Directing the search, Celestre
, loudly speaking in Italian, said, “The safe is open, and empty. But look, isn’t that our jawbone on that worktable there? This is too easy!”

Directing the other two to set a fire using a container of lab alcohol, he exclaimed, “Let’s get out of here. Our next stop is the
Library of the Chicago Anthropology Society, where many copies of her paper are kept.”

As soon as he heard the door slam, Max came out from behind the boxes, and reached out to open the door of the little room.

“No, Max, don’t! Not before checking. Is the door hot?”

“Ow,” he cried as he touched it. “Looks like we’ll have to use that window!”

She had already begun to pile the boxes up in order to reach the opening. “We’re on the second floor, so it may be rather too high to jump.”

Climbing up to the window, she tried to open it, to no avail. Max tried
also, but it wouldn’t budge. “Here,” she said, “use this piece of wood! It’s heavy enough to break the glass, at least.”

Max did break the pane, giving them fresh air
and saying, “I’ll knock all the glass out of the frame, so we can climb through without gashing ourselves.” Then, looking out the window to the sidewalk below, he saw a bent form looking on, apparently enraptured by the flames beginning to flare from the office windows.

“Good Christ!”
he shouted to Diana, “it’s that gnome of a priest from the African dig.”

“Celestre! Although my Italian is rudimentary, I thought I recognized that voice. But I had no idea he was an arsonist too.”

Seeing Max in the window simultaneously with the sounds of approaching firefighters, the priest loped across the street and disappeared into the gloom under the overhanging elms, joining his waiting men. A ladder was placed at the window after Diana hailed a fireman, and they soon found themselves among the gathering spectators, Diana holding her shoulder bag tightly.

The international reach of the Mafia proved Celestre’s undoing. Manzone, newly stationed by his Sicilian Family in Chicago, was able to gain the ear of the local Consiglieri, Don Gasparri.  Because of the priest’s turncoat activities, a trap was arranged outside the
Library and very soon, three bodies were floating in the Chicago River.

The authorities attributed the triple murder to some form of gang violence, and it wasn’t until Max and Diana came forward that the identity of Celestre and the organization he represented became known. No trace of the fossil mandible was found.

While local Catholic officials had no knowledge of the reason for the trio entering the U.S., it was an easy step for the investigators to find, through customs records, that the Vatican had arranged their entry, supposedly for a religious meeting in Chicago. It was obvious from their burglary and arson at Max’s office that the Martian fossil had been their objective. The fact that they had been killed outside the archaeological library confirmed that their aim was to remove any remaining traces there of the Martian discoveries.

The next day, after the background on the dead Sicilian surfaced, the newspapers played up his connection not only with Rome, but also with the Mafia, a combination few understood.

TWENTY-
FIVE

The Dissertation                                     

Despite being totally in love with Dan, Diana decided that their wedding would have to wait until she finished her dissertation. He objected vigorously. “By your own admission, in the beginning your Martian thing blinded you to our love. Isn’t our future together the most important thing now?”

“Danny, I agree. Our love is certainly more important than any of that. I need you now more than ever. But I can’t just drop my professional goals, everything I’ve worked for the last couple of years
, just to certify our union with a wedding. And you don’t know my mother in London. She’s been dreaming for years about my marriage. It will take months of planning the arrangements. Finishing my dissertation will be child’s play compared to that.”

When she smiled up at him and snuggled closely, his impatience immediately dissolved. Unbuttoning his shirt collar and kissing him on the neck, she said in that husky voice, “Danny, won’t this sort of thing help our love survive my dissertation?”

“There’s no doubt about that, if you keep your kisses coming.” Then, with an ironic chuckle, drawing her even closer, he whispered,  “But what worries me are your mother’s plans. Can our love survive those?”    

*    *    *

It took Diana only two weeks to put her research together to the point of beginning to write the dissertation. Much of the work was derived from her previous presentation, using the photographic slides of the ship and the comparative anatomy. Her research on iron-60 and argon-40 was entirely new. Anticipating that its absence on earth didn’t necessarily mean it wasn’t present a million years ago, she obtained fossil remains of that era and earlier, all specimens proving negative for the isotope. If the Fe-60 studies were not enough, the advanced technology of the space vehicle in which the remains had been found was proof of their being aliens.

The work impressed everyone, and Max, her chair and main sponsor, was overjoyed that such a
work would be credited to his Department. Diana had secured the sponsorship of an old professor, and also the head of the Oriental Institute to be her committee members. When they met, her work was unanimously approved. Max, as usual, wanted a share of authorship in the work, but of course, was voted down. As they pointed out, his name would be cited in the bibliography, and acknowledged by Diana in the credits, but it was her dissertation, after all, and not anyone else’s. Her original plans were to give the paper again in Chicago, but the committee decided it was too important not to present nationally, or even internationally.

In December, while awaiting word from the National Anthropological Society, her father, Sir Robert Howard, a member of the Royal Society in London, was able to arrange for the presentation of her paper
at the yearly meeting of that prestigious body. She hadn’t been home for over a year, and the reunion at Gatwick Airport, after a rather turbulent flight over the Atlantic, was one of happy affection. “Father, mother,” Diana said smilingly as her parents joyously hugged Bobby. “You remember meeting Daniel Stuart here. I’ve written you about him, and extolled his virtues over the telephone, and here he is again in person.”

Her father, grayer and thinner than when they had parted months before, was
the first to seize Dan’s hand. “May we call you Danny now? Diana is always extolling Danny this, and Danny that. It is indeed a pleasure to see you again, son.”

Lady Howard, still slim, and with her silver hair stylishly short, hugged Dan warmly. “We Americans just can’t settle for a handshake, however warm, right?
"

“Oh, come now, Sylvia,” Sir Robert said, “The handshake is all-important among
American men. Am I correct, Danny?”

“Yes, sir, especially where it comes to the historic enmity between the Stuarts and the Tudor Earls, like you Howards. Our extending an empty right hand is a flag of truce, eliminating any weapon that might be concealed there.”

Bobby laughed at that. “Well, that wouldn’t remove a threat from a lefty, would it?”    

Sir Robert chuckled, proudly hugging Bobby. “He’s entirely right, you know, shaking hands arose during medieval times when men always carried weapons. Our grandson is now thinking like a Yank.”

Lady Howard smiled broadly and said, “I should think so. He’s three-quarters American, as you well know.”

After they arrived at the Howard
mansion, the discussion was all about Diana’s upcoming presentation before the Royal Society. “You have no idea of the strings I’ve had to pull, and the favors called in, to place you on the schedule of speakers,” Sir Robert said. “Needless to say, the subject is still highly controversial. It seems that the conspiracy theorists are out in strength here in Britain, much of it fomented from the pulpit, I believe.”

Diana’s mother affirmed that. “Just last Sunday, the Vicar brought up the subject, fearing that the very foundations of the Bible will be shaken if our Diana’s theory proves correct.”

“Mother! Theory? And the other word you should use, in fact, is
when
, not
if.
”

Sir Robert agreed. “That really is the key word here. England has fallen behind the States in one important respect. Creationists. With their ‘Science,’ which in some
states has been given an equal footing with Darwin, they are bound somehow to confuse the issue. Wasn’t that what the professor you wrote about was concerned with when you gave your paper in Chicago?”

“Rather,” Diana replied, “There are always religious naysayers of different persuasions with any new theory, whatever the proof. My concern is about the members of the Royal Society. Most of them are your age, father, but unlike you, they will be
much more conservative in their thought. ‘Reactionary’ would be more accurate, in my opinion.”

“We will see, my dear,” her fat
her retorted, “we may seem hidebound to a person of your age, but the history of the Royal Society has always been one of acceptance of scientific advances. Look at Newton, Boyle and Darwin. And the Royal Family has rewarded many of those accepted by the Society with knighthood. Think of it. You have proven that the find in East Africa dates to a million years ago, and that not only are the fossil remains identical to those of modern man, but that they hail not from earth, but elsewhere, most likely Mars. The only thing not actually proven is their planet of origin. Were that book with the diagram of the solar system still available, you would have your proof. I’ll wager that when their language is deciphered, we will have further confirmation that our original home was the fourth planet from the sun, and not the third.”

Just then,
Hughes the butler announced that supper was served. After leading his guests to the dining room, when they were seated, Sir Robert raised his glass. “This is a celebration not only because of the reunion of our family of the last thirteen years, but also to include a new family member. Welcome, Danny!”

*    *    *

All the trappings of the holiday season festooned London the night of Diana’s presentation. The sky was clear, following a slight dusting of snow the night before, and the stars and planets shone brightly, despite the city’s lights. Before entering the hall with her family and Dan, she couldn’t help holding her pendant in her fingers, picking out the red planet shining down from above.

Diana’s paper,
From Mars via Africa
, was again scheduled to be the last presentation of the night. For her, the wait was an eternity, and, preoccupied by the task ahead, she missed much of what took place during the meeting. When her turn came, she was so excited by the adrenaline rush, she nearly dropped her slides while handing them to the projectionist. Ascending to the podium, she was introduced by the Chairman, the eminent Neurologist Sir Charles Head, after which she confidently began her talk.

She outlined the current anthropological concept
that the human race had developed in Africa from ape-like pre-hominids, whose fossil remains had been found in the Great Rift Valleys of Tanganyika and Kenya. She then drew a timeline, beginning about a million years BCE, marked by the alien landing in East Africa of a relatively few humans, and their subsequent migration and multiplication, spreading over the Afro-Eurasian land masses. She brought out the known demise of the Neanderthals, suggesting how the proliferation of an alien race, along with their imported diseases, must have suppressed the natural evolutionary progress of earth’s pre-existing hominids and pre-hominids.

The photographic evidence was then presented. First, the spaceship was shown, beyond any doubt the product of a more advanced culture, even for 1958. Next were the slides juxtaposing the skeletal remains, demonstrating that the aliens’ anatomy was virtually identical to our own. At that point, there was an interruption in the audience, abuzz with their reaction. Anticipating that, she caught their attention by showing the slides comparing--point by point--the anatomy of the fossil mandible with a modern human specimen. That absolutely confirmed that the specimens were identical, and by extension, that the aliens were of the Genus
Homo
, Species
sapiens
.

The Chairman
then fielded a number of questions, all related to whether the uncovered hulk contained any other evidence that the specimens were not of our world. Diana smiled at that. “Gentlemen, you have anticipated my next point. Let me explain.”

She then went into the phenome
non of the radioactive isotope iron-60, its role in forming our solar system, and possibly star systems elsewhere in the universe. She emphasized that it had never before been found on earth until x-ray spectroscopic analysis at Caltech had shown that the alien mandible contained that very isotope.      Anticipating the next question, she outlined the analysis of several pre-hominid and animal fossil specimens thought to range from two to three million years old, none of which contained Fe-60.

“So you see,” she continued, “
this evidence by itself shows beyond any doubt that the fossil is from somewhere other than our planet. There is still the matter of dating the landing. The actual time of that can’t be answered by the isotope the alien fossil contains, however. What is needed is something that is common in the earth’s crust, and which can be calibrated to the rock surrounding the ship.”

She e
xplained that the method using potassium-40, which decays into argon-40 gas, led to an accurate dating of the spaceship’s arrival, found in the igneous rock from the nearby volcano that surrounded the ship. A comprehensive study of the strata indicated an average age of 1.1 million years; no sample analyzed proved younger than a million years old.

Concluding with a summary of her findings, she said, “The age of the volcanic rock found at the site of the landing fixes the event to approximately a million years ago. The technology embodied in the spaceship, far in advance of anything found on earth even today, proves its extraterrestrial origin.

“The fossil specimens found on the ship, while virtually identical to
Homo sapiens
, are not of this world. This is proven by the remains from the spaceship that contain Iron-60 in their bones, an isotope never found naturally on Earth.

“The logical home of the alien race was obviously the planet Mars, due to its relative proximity to us, and evidence that the planet in the remote past had surface water, suggesting at one point that it supported life as we know it
”. She finished by saying, “I wish to thank you for allowing me to present this material to your august body.”

As in Chicago, the audience was at first
stunned, at a loss for words. Then the moderator called for comments or questions. Everyone present had read Diana's preliminary paper, and most had been convinced that her data presented the true facts. Until then, what had remained was only to present absolute proof that the fossils found on the ship were truly alien. Still, after her presentation, there remained perplexing questions.

“Thank you, Miss Howard,” an elderly Fellow said.
“A fascinating presentation, for which I congratulate you. Everything seems to fit neatly as far as it goes. But there is one glaring problem. It is rather illogical that men with such a high degree of technology, after landing successfully, would continue their journey as primitives. For all your scientific data, this single fact would seem to cast doubt on your entire theory. Perhaps you will show us how the aliens went on to populate the world with weapons and tools likely no more advanced than the Neanderthals.”

Taking the microphone, Diana replied. “The answer concerning primitive weapons is the easy part. Pre-humans, wherever they may have developed, had to fashion their weaponry and tools from the materials available and with whatever ingenuity their minds possessed.
Both pre-hominids and Neanderthals made their start in that way. As you observed, it is more difficult to explain the incongruity of an advanced race being reduced to stone-age status. As you will see, however, the findings aboard the ship serve to explain that nicely.”

After a word with the projectionist, she pointed out a photographic slide
of the main deck of the ship. “As you know, the passengers on that space vehicle must have been in a state of hibernation during the lengthy voyage to our planet. Look at all these sleeping capsules. We shall call them pods. Note that every pod that is clearly seen is empty. You must believe me that all on that deck had been vacated. Now here on this next slide, you see a more limited number of pods, actually only twenty-four. These are the quarters just behind the control room. We call this the command deck. There was also a solitary pod in what must have been the Captain’s cabin. And while all of these pods had been previously opened, half contained skeletons in recumbency. This makes it clear that something killed them while they slept, probably noxious volcanic gas or carbon dioxide, which still collect on occasion in the depression in which the alien vessel landed.