Radecker, reluctant
to move closer to the menacing ship, asked a question from the
observation platform.
"What about these symbols or designs?"
"They appear to
have been pressed into the shells using some sort of mold. We can only
speculate as to why they are there. They might be a brand, like the
kind we use
to identify cattle," Dworkin offered.
"Or they could
be technical details for the operation of the vehicle," Freiling
countered.
"I personally
think they are some kinda heraldic device like the ones you find on a
medieval
coat of arms," Cibatutto put in.
"We
did have one gentleman down here several years ago who had
received some training as a cryptographer,
but he was not able to decipher their meaning. In short, we don't know."
As far as Radecker was concerned,
this whole
experience was quickly turning into a nightmare. For the second time
since they
were introduced, he raised his voice to these mild-mannered scientists
twice
his age. "Why is this place in such bad shape?"
Cibatutto and Lenel looked at
Freiling, who looked
at Dworkin. "Bad shape? In what sense?"
"Don't act dumb with me," Radecker
shot
back. "Look at this dump. It's dark, it's dusty, and it seems like you
haven't gotten diddly-squat done on the ship in the last twenty years."
Dworkin, in his refined and gentle
manner, offered
his new boss some background on the lab. "Since the day the cranes
lowered
this ship to where it is sitting, no maintenance workers have been
allowed access
because of legitimate concerns for security. In years past, we did
whatever
repair work was necessary, but as we've advanced in age, we've been
less able
to do this work ourselves. And then there is the unfortunate matter of
Dr.
Wells, who was, until fairly recently, Area 51's director of research.
He was a
brilliant man early in his career, but with age he became... oh, how
shall I
put this?"
"The bastard went crazy," Dr. Lenel
mumbled, speaking to the new arrivals for the first time. "Went right
off
the deep end."
Dworkin
attempted a chuckle.
"That's not exactly the phrase I was searching for, but it gives you
the
idea. In the early years, Area 51 was quite an
exciting place to work. There were over forty of us on
permanent staff, and we had several visitors each year. Perhaps you
noticed the
old sleeping quarters outside. But then Dr. Wells and his ideas became
increasingly unpopular in Washington with the very people upon whom we
depend
for funding. We've had our operating budget reduced every year for the
last
seventeen years. When Wells was removed as director four years ago, we
were
optimistic about getting things back up to speed, but actually
conditions have
become even worse. Since his departure, we have received no money
whatsoever."
"So
that's why you guys are so old," Okun blurted out, having put two and
two
together. "You haven't been able to hire anyone new."
"And
that," Dworkin said magnanimously, "is why we're all so excited about
your arrival. It represents a new chapter in the history of this
project. We
haven't seen anything concrete yet, but Colonel Spelman has given us
every
reason to be hopeful."
When
Radecker heard their story he felt sorry he'd yelled at them. "I'll get
on
the phone with Colonel Spelman this afternoon and see what I can do
about this
situation. But let's have a look at the inside of this thing."
A
steel ladder led to a hatch door twice the size of a manhole cover that
lead
down to the sewers. And a sewer is what it smelled like as the men
climbed up
into the ship. The acrid, penetrating stench of ammonia hung in the
air, like
old urine.
"The
fumes make you crazy after a while." This time,
pudgy Dr. Enrico Cibatutto led the way. They climbed the ladder and
came
through the floor of the small spaceship to examine the spartan
interior. There
wasn't much to see. The domed interior of the cabin was twenty by
twenty at its
widest point, and seven feet tall at its peak. The focus of attention
was the
command console. Two pea-pod-shaped chairs faced the windows, and,
below the
windows, a bank of instruments was mounted along the front wall of the
cabin,
in an arrangement the scientists called the dashboard. As Okun stooped
over and
followed the much shorter Cibatutto to the front of the ship, the
scientist
warned him, "Mind the pods, they're covered in a thick jelly. Like the
tar
of a pine, if you get it on your hands, it takes a lot of scrubbing to
get
off."
Okun
regarded the slimy seats in the dim light. They were long arching
structures,
sticky hammocks connected to both floor and ceiling at
forty-five-degree angles
and kept in place by means of a web of solid bars. The sight of the
chairs
reminded the young scientist that spaceships don't crash to earth by
themselves. Not sure he wanted to hear the answer, he asked Cibatutto
if there
had been any bodies.
"Of
course. You can see them later."
"So
they're, like, down here? Close by?" Goose bumps erupted over most of
Okun's body.
The
scientist laughed and stroked his short beard. "Don't worry. Not only
are
they dead, but we have them locked away in a very secure place."
Somewhat
relieved, Okun returned to the subject. "I guess the pilot is supposed
to
sit in this chair, and the gum acts as a seat belt."
Cibatutto
politely pointed out that "at several hundred miles per hour, the resin
might provide some safety, but its cohesion strength is not as strong
as, say,
a seat belt."
"Yeah,
I guess you're right."
"So,
this is the instrument console." It was a mess, showing the signs of
having been taken apart and reassembled many times. In an open toolbox,
stray
pieces of the ship mingled with hammers, soldering irons, screws, and a
dozen
notepads full of schematic drawings. Cihatutto seemed not to mind the
clutter.
Okun poked through the box for a moment, then picked up a particularly
interesting fragment.
"Cool,
an ankh."
"What's
an ankh?"
"An
ankh is the ancient Egyptian symbol of life, a hieroglyph." He held the
half-inch-tall figure up to the light and realized he had been
half-right. Like
the ancient symbol, the thing between his fingers was composed of a
central
shaft with a shorter bar crossing it like a stick-man's arms and a
rounded open
head. But this one was 3-D. Instead of two little arms, there were
four.
Likewise, the hole at the top opened east-west and north-south.
Ankh
cubed
,
he thought. For whatever reason, it struck Okun as supremely cool, and
he put
it in his pocket.
It's not stealing
, he told himself.
It's not like
I'm going anywhere with it.
"Here
we have the steering controls," Cihatutto
continued, pointing to what looked like a tightly folded bundle of
greasy bones
lying on the floor. "This mechanism goes here, in front of the pilot,
and
we think it opens outward." It had been removed from its original
position
and was connected to the console by a series of thin strands that
looked like
roots or perhaps really hairy veins. "Dr. Lenel went to medical school,
so
he's the one who sews up our patient after we amputate her a little
bit."
Indeed, the vein-roots at the bottom of the bony mechanism had been
severed and
stitched back together using medical sutures. "She looks like a
machine," he said, rapping very hard on the dashboard, "but she's
actually alive, living tissue. Look closely, and you can see the little
tiny
scars."
"What
does that thing do?" Okun was already on to the next instrument on the
dashboard, something that looked like a shell.
Cihatutto
said no one knew, but he lifted the thing out of its resting place and
held it
up to the windows. The yellowish shell plate was thin enough to allow
light to
pans through, and was laced with a network of very fine veins. There
were no
dials or switches. As the scientist put it, "She's a mystery."
Cibatutto
went on to explain that because the ship was not
functioning, it was impossible to say with certainty what the various
instruments were and exactly how they worked. Nevertheless, over the
course of
the years, Area 51's scientists had made a number of highly educated
guesses
which, in time, would be discovered to have been surprisingly accurate.
For
Okun, Cibatutto's thumbnail overview of each instrument in the cabin
was like
the opening pages of a long and fascinating science-fiction novel with
him as
the hero. He was confident he could figure all these gizmos out. By the
end of his
quick tour of the interior, he had completely lost his feeling of
disappointment about this place. His mind was exploding with questions,
possible solutions, and experiments he could run to test his hypotheses.
Radecker
couldn't get over the horrible smell of the cockpit. "Why won't this
thing
fly?"
The
question seemed to confuse Cibatutto, and once again Dworkin assumed
command of
the tour. He was standing halfway up the access ladder, so that only
his head
and shoulders protruded into the cabin. "Ah, the thorniest problem of
them
all—the power supply! If you'll follow me, I can show you the aqua-box."
"Here
is the main culprit," he said a few moments later,
pointing up to it. "Our most insoluble problem, the ship's
generator." Dworkin was standing five feet behind the main hatchway,
looking up into a square recess in one of the armored plates. The
cover, he
explained, had been torn loose in the crash, leaving the possibility
that the
device inside had been damaged or that something had fallen out. Lenel,
grumbling about something under his breath, came forward with a
flashlight to
show Okun and Radecker what was inside. Six dark green walls formed an
open hexagon
three feet across which tapered slightly toward the top. These walls
were the
color of dirty jade and appeared to be just as solid. Connecting the
six sides
were thousands upon thousands of ultrafine strands, thinner than human
hairs.
They looked like cobwebs pulled taut to form a complex geometric
pattern that
hugged the walls and left an open space in the center of the hexagon.
As the
flashlight played over these extrusive threads, it was refracted and
splintered, causing tiny dots of light to bounce around the inside of
the
chamber.
The Mothers would dig this,
Okun thought
with a nod.
Dworkin
blew a puff of air into the chamber, and, to the visitors' surprise,
the rock
walls of the hexagon reacted, fluttering like the paper walls of a
Chinese
lantern.
"No
way," Okun said, wide-eyed. "Do that again." Dworkin obliged,
and as the long-haired young scientist watched the gossamer walls
shudder under
the swirl of light dancing through the threads, a word popped out of
his mouth,
"Fragility."
"Seemingly,"
Dworkin allowed, "but watch this." He stepped away to give Dr. Lenel
center stage. Lenel turned the flashlight around in his hand, reached
up into
the chamber, and began clanging and smashing it against the walls.
Radecker and
Okun were horrified, positive Lenel was doing irreparable damage to the
device.
But a second later the gruff old man showed them no damage had been
done. The
walls swayed back and forth as serenely as they had before. Dworkin's
voice
came over their shoulders. "We've tried for years to cut off a sample
of
this material so we could have it analyzed. Believe me, as delicate as
it might
appear, it is extremely tough."
"You
should see what that sucker does when we pump some juice through the
system.
It's beautiful," Freiling put in.
Radecker's
ears perked up. "What's he talking about? Does that mean you can make
it
work?"
"Not
exactly." Dworkin told them about an experiment Dr.
Wells had organized some years earlier, in which the ship was bombarded
with a
controlled ray of electromagnetic energy. "When we pointed the beam
into
the aqua-box, we were able to bring the ship's system to temporary
life. The
instrumentation lit up, and the generator here—we sometimes call it the
aqua-box—produced a faint whirring sound. However, the power was purged
from
the system just as fast as it could be fed in."
"Sounds
like your circuit isn't closed," Okun mused. "Maybe there's a wire
you didn't connect right and the power's leaching out."
"Exactly."
The old man sighed. "We've been searching for that missed connection
for
years, but because we don't have any blueprints or another ship in
working
order, we're having to do a lot of guesswork. It's rather like
searching for a
needle in a haystack with the lights out."
Radecker
interrupted. "Wait a second. Let's back up so I can get this straight.
You
guys brought some kind of generator down here and pumped power into the
ship
and it
worked
for a second?" He didn't wait for an
answer.
"Well, I'm not a scientist, but why don't we just get a
bigger
generator and pump in
more
power?"
"Because
our power isn't like theirs." This time Lenel answered. "The most we
can do is raise a spark. Even for that we have to use so damn much
energy we
overheat the circuits and the ship gets hot as an oven. If we gave it
more
charge, we'd just burn her up."
Okun
listened to the explanation, wagging his head deeply. "And I bet you
guys
tested a whole range of levels."
"Yes,
of course. The minimum application of
EM radiation required to wake up the system is five
thousand volts. We
tested up to two hundred thousand volts and found no difference other
than the
resulting temperature of the ship."