He laughed nervously. If Mercedes could see him now, she’d be taping everything. He could picture the ads on TV: “Live from the Shrine of the First Sun! The Secrets of Atlantis Revealed! Witness the End of the World!” The way things were going, unfortunately, he soon would.
A wave of depression suddenly washed over Conrad as he sat in the Seat of Osiris. Had he traveled so far, and would humanity have to suffer so much, only to discover this was all some cosmic joke? What if the Secret of First Time was that there was no secret?
No, Conrad decided. Somebody went to too much trouble to build all this. And there were clearly some astronomical correlations he was missing. There must be a way to stop the earth-crust displacement. Perhaps he was simply the wrong man to find that way. He felt overwhelmed by a sense of helplessness. He had failed Serena. He had failed humanity. He had failed himself, period. What more could he do? This was indeed the end of the line.
Conrad leaned back in the seat, closed his eyes, and prayed: God of Noah, Moses, Jesus, and Serena. If you’re there, if you care at all for Serena and all she cares for, then help me figure this thing out before Osiris and his kind screw your kind over for good.
Conrad opened his eyes. Nothing happened.
Again Conrad leaned back in the seat, and as soon as he did, he realized it had settled into a pocket and locked in with a click. Conrad tried to lean forward to look. But the egglike capsule, while comfortable, held him back.
He felt a sequence of vibrations shoot up his spine.
The chair was squeezing him, tightening around his waist and pushing down on his shoulders, devouring him. A metallic console telescoped itself beyond his forehead.
“Yeats!”
Suddenly the console overhead came to life with a beep. It glowed an eerie blue and a panel of instruments lit up. A tremendous shudder reverberated throughout the obelisk and Conrad could feel vibrations building in the back of his chair.
“Yeats!”
A single shaft of intense white light from above blinded him.
“Yeats!”
Then another flash shot up from below, imbuing the entire chamber in light. Conrad realized it was sunlight through two shafts above and below his reclined seat. Just like the star shaft in P4. Sunlight? Where did that come from?
Conrad managed to put on his sunglasses and gaze out the shafts. They were windows and framed a lightening sky. He had opened the doors of the silo.
Another shudder, and suddenly all became clear.
This obelisk isn’t a shrine, he thought. It’s a ship. A starship.
“Dad!”
Conrad tried to pull himself out of the seat. It wouldn’t give. He tried twisting to the right. No. To the left. Yes. Now he hurled himself forward with everything he had and came out with a spark like an electrical cord from a socket. The console went dead and disappeared into the chair, the vibrations stopped, and the chair snapped forward and released its grip on him. Conrad, breathing heavily, collected himself.
For several moments he sat there on the floor, numb. But his mind was racing. He had no references for this experience in his past. Or did he? Ancient Egyptian funeral texts referred to a number of cosmic vessels intended to take the dead on celestial voyages to heaven. There was the “bark of Osiris,” for example, and the “boat of millions of years.” Egyptologists dubbed them “solar boats.” There was also Kamal el-Mallakh’s 1954 discovery of a 143-foot cedarwood boat buried in a pit on the south side of the Great Pyramid. Subsequent digging turned up similar boats in the same area—symbolic of the solar boats in which the souls of deceased kings could sail into the afterlife.
This silo, he realized, was on the south face of P4.
He remembered the markings of the three zodiac signs on the obelisk. He recalled the pyramid texts in Giza said the Sun King would ride his “Solar Bark” across the Milky Way toward First Time. To astro-archaeologists such as Conrad, the “solar bark” was a metaphor for the sun, specifically its ecliptic path through the twelve
constellations of the zodiac in the course of a year. But what if it was more than a metaphor?
This is the actual Solar Bark, Conrad thought, the celestial ship built to take the would-be Sun King across the stars to First Time. He felt a shock wave of euphoria exploding within him.
But then the stark reality of his discovery suddenly sapped his hope: the Secret of First Time lay waiting at the end of the Solar Bark’s intended destination. Yet the earth-crust displacement was only hours if not minutes away. There was no way to reset the star chamber in P4 to the date of First Time without completing the journey. The best he could do was guess the date of First Time based on the estimated light-years it would take to get to the Solar Bark’s destination. And that information was beyond his grasp.
His radio headset squawked. Conrad said, “Yeats. Where the hell have you been?”
The voice that came over was Serena’s. “Conrad.”
“Serena?” he said. “Where are you?”
“Look out your cockpit window.”
Conrad looked up and saw the silhouettes of Egyptian soldiers circled along the rim of the silo, guns and SAMs pointed in his direction. But what caught his eye was the outstretched arm of Zawas holding a gun to Serena’s head.
Serena said, “Colonel Zawas wants you to know that unless you meet us at the base of the shrine in ten minutes and hand over the scepter, he’s going to kill me. I told him you wouldn’t do it. I’m not worth it and you’re not that stupid.”
Conrad spoke into the radio. “Tell Zawas I’m coming down.”
C
ONRAD HEADED DOWN
through the vast ship to the rotunda base. Along the way, it all made sense—the crypts were some sort of cryogenic chambers for the long interstellar flight, the towers of light some sort of propulsion system.
Conrad emerged from the Solar Bark to find the entire silo imbued with the first rays of dawn. Then he looked up and noted that the dome had split open. He shaded his eyes and felt a sharp poke at his back.
“Move it,” said a voice from behind with an Arab accent.
Conrad, still blinking in the brightness, craned his neck to take a look. His curiosity was rewarded by a knock on the side of his head with the butt of an AK-47.
“Idiot!”
His head throbbing, Conrad stumbled forward beyond the rotunda.
Serena and Zawas were waiting for him. As Zawas took the scepter from his hands, Conrad looked over at Serena and swallowed hard. There was sadness in her eyes, but everything else about her was cool as ice.
“Tell me what these bastards did to you,” Conrad said.
Serena said, “Not much compared to what the world is going to suffer, thanks to you.”
“Doctor Yeats.” Zawas studied him carefully. “Your reputation is well deserved. You’ve led us to the Shrine of the First Sun.”
“A lot of good it will do you.”
“I will be the judge of that.” Zawas then held up the Scepter of Osiris before his men like some idol. There were no oohs and aahhs. These were professional soldiers Zawas had brought along for backup, Conrad thought, not mere fanatics. To them the obelisk might as well have been the head of an assassinated enemy, or a torched American flag, or a nuclear warhead. Their possession of such a symbol only confirmed their power in their own eyes.
Zawas then looked at him and said, “Now you will tell me the Secret of First Time, Doctor Yeats.”
“I don’t know. It’s not there. And it may be impossible for us to discover.”
Zawas narrowed his eyes. “Why is that?”
“The shrine, as you call it, is really a starship, intended to take the seeker to the place of First Time—the actual First Sun, as far as the Atlanteans are concerned.”
“A starship?” Zawas repeated.
“Which is why we’ll probably never know the Secret of First Time.” He stole a glance at Serena, whose sad eyes told him she had concluded as much. “The existence of the Solar Bark implies the secret is not of this earth but at its intended destination, which from what I’ve gathered is somewhere beyond the constellation of Orion.”
Serena’s voice was scarcely stronger than a whisper. “So there’s no way to stop the earth-crust displacement.”
Conrad shook his head but fixed his eyes on hers. “Nothing I can come up with.”
Zawas stepped up to Conrad and put his face within an inch of his. “You say this shrine is a starship, Doctor Yeats. You say there is no hope for the world. Then why didn’t you take off?”
Conrad looked over Zawas’s shoulder at Serena.
Serena could only shake her head in disbelief. “You’re such a fool, Conrad.”
A voice said, “Well, we finally agree on something, Sister.”
Conrad turned around as Yeats emerged from behind a pillar in the rotunda, as grim as Conrad had ever seen him.
“Give me the obelisk, and the girl, Zawas,” Yeats demanded. “And we’ll be on our way.”
Conrad, dumbfounded, stared at Yeats. “On our way where? You’re just going to hop on a spaceship and go?”
“Damn straight I am.”
Conrad realized that Yeats didn’t necessarily care where he was going so long as he went somewhere. He was hell-bent on completing the space mission he had been denied in his youth.
“Look, if we don’t go, son, then we’ll just perish with the rest of them,” Yeats said.
“You can rationalize it all you want, but I’m not biting.”
Zawas tightened his grip on the scepter and gave a cool nod to his men, who circled Yeats with their AK-47s.
“You destroyed much of my base and cost me many good men,” Zawas said. “Now you insult my intelligence.”
Conrad shifted his gaze back and forth between Yeats and Zawas, their eyes locked on each other.
“You were never interested in finding a weapon or disabling some alien booby trap, Yeats, were you?” Conrad said, incensed at Yeats’s desertion. “And you weren’t interested in helping me find my destiny. You pulled that Captain Ahab routine all these years because you knew this thing was down here.”
“I suspected it, son,” Yeats said. “Now we know. This is the happy ending we’ve been working for ever since I found you. You’re going home.”
Home? Conrad thought. It was the first time in years he had ever even considered that he had a real home anywhere, much less not of this Earth.
Zawas cut in, “Surely you don’t expect me to let you take off with the Solar Bark, do you?”
“As a matter of fact, I do,” Yeats said.
Yeats’s left arm swung up, holding a small remote control. He looked at Zawas with the coldest pair of pale blue eyes Conrad had ever seen. “I go or we all go,” Yeats said. “I’ve got enough C-4 in here to blow us all to First Time without any starship.”
Zawas’s eyes darkened. “You’re bluffing.”
“Oh?” Yeats flicked one of the buttons, and a stereophonic beeping filled the silo as a circle of red lights in the shadows began to blink. “Go ahead, take a closer look.”
Conrad watched as Zawas walked over to the nearest blinking box, bent over, and froze. Slowly he straightened and returned to his men. “Let Doctor Serghetti go.”
“And the scepter, Colonel. Give it to her.”
Conrad watched Zawas hand her the Scepter of Osiris and nudge her toward Yeats. “I’m sorry, my flower,” Zawas said.
Yeats immediately grabbed her and pulled her toward the rotunda at the base of the Solar Bark. “Come on, Conrad.”
But Conrad didn’t move. He looked at Yeats and Serena and said, “I think I’ve just figured out the way to stop the earth-crust displacement. But the answer is back at the star chamber. Not there.” He was pointing at the Solar Bark.
A bewildered look crossed Yeats’s face. “It’s too late. Let’s go.”
“No. I’m staying.” He looked at Serena. “But I need the scepter and Serena.”
Yeats shook his head. “I’m sorry, son. We need the scepter to take off.”
Conrad could feel the fury building inside. “And what the hell do you want Serena for?”
“An incentive for you to reconsider,” Yeats said, dragging her away toward the Solar Bark. “You want her, then come get her.”
Conrad, desperate to run after her, looked on as she shot a quick glance back at him, her eyes filled with uncertainty. Then she disappeared inside the giant starship.
A moment later the ground started to rumble as the launch sequence began. Zawas could only watch in furious admiration at his former teacher before shouting to his soldiers to evacuate the silo.
“What about you?” Conrad shouted to Zawas. “Where are you going?”
“For cover,” Zawas said. “If this alleged disaster should strike the planet, we are in the safest place of all. We can find survivors and rule a new world. If nothing happens, we have captured an unlimited energy source and will rule the world anyway.”
“What about me?” Conrad asked.
“You can go to hell, Doctor Yeats,” Zawas told him as two Egyptians tied Conrad to a pillar near the Solar Bark base. “Either the prospect of your death will force your father to abort his plans, or
you’ll depart this life in a blaze of glory when this Solar Bark of yours lifts off and its fires consume you.”
Conrad watched as Zawas led his men out of the silo, leaving him alone. He strained at the ties that bound his hands. And he burned with desperation as he watched the Solar Bark rumble to life and prepare to lift off with Serena and the obelisk.
Inside the Solar Bark, Serena found herself with Yeats on a circular platform surrounded by four magnificent golden columns of light. Each column throbbed with energy. Yeats, still holding the remote to the C-4 in one hand, set the scepter down with the other. Suddenly the platform began to take them up.
“Yeats, if we don’t reset the star chamber the whole earth will shift,” she said, her voice spiked with anger and desperation. “Billions will die. You can’t just take off.”
“It’s futile to go back,” he said dismissively. His gaze was locked on the chamber above them. “You heard Conrad. Whatever the Secret of First Time is, it sure as hell ain’t on earth. The survival of the human race dictates that we launch.”
She looked at him. He wore the expression of a cocky warrior, pleased with himself and sure that nobody could stop him. His jaw was set and his eyes glinted in the dim glow of four light-filled columns. It made her furious—his complete unconcern for people who were about to lose their lives.
She said, “How do you know we’ll even get off the ground?”
“What you see all around you is some kind of heliogyro system,” Yeats said. “Those massive columns are an array of four unbelievably long heliogyro blades, like a helicopter’s but on a massive scale. As soon as we leave Earth’s orbit on an escape trajectory into space, they’ll fan out and unfurl the solar sail.”
Clearly she was in Yeats’s world now, and however crazy the former astronaut was, he was the native in this terrain and she was the alien.
“Once deployed,” Yeats went on, “the sail will function like a highly reflective mirror. When photons hit the surface, they impart pressure on it, creating a force to push the sail. The bigger the sail,
the greater the force. And by tilting the mirror in different directions, we can direct the force wherever we choose.”
“Don’t tell me you actually think you can fly this thing.”
“Like Columbus sailed the
Pinta,”
he said. “I’m sure all measurements, orbit determinations, equations of motion, and velocity corrections have been factored into the ship’s navigation system.”
She said nothing as the platform locked. Yeats shoved her with the tip of the obelisk down a long corridor that ended in a metallic door with strange carvings.
“Why would they build the ship like this?” she heard herself asking. She had to keep him talking, had to buy time so she could figure out a way to stop him.
“You’ll have to ask them when we get there,” Yeats said. “But I’m assuming this ship was built as a lifeboat and designed to travel long distances with minimal power. That’s the beauty of this baby: it may be low thrust, but it has infinite exhaust velocity, since it uses no propellant. The solar sail is the perfect vehicle for interstellar travel.”
“Except that it requires sunlight,” Serena observed, “which we’ll run out of as soon as we leave the solar system. Just like a sailboat on a windless ocean.”
Yeats stopped at the door and said, “Gravity assist.”
“Excuse me?”
“That’s how we’ll coast without light,” he explained. He spoke so calmly and rationally it both frightened and infuriated her. “We’ll fly around Jupiter close enough to use its gravity to boost ourselves into a faster trajectory toward the sun. Then we’ll slingshot around the sun and pick up even more speed as we exit the solar system. At any rate, I’m sure this thing is packing an array of masers and lasers whose microwaves can generate huge accelerations and speeds in the sails.”
“You seem to have convinced yourself, Yeats,” she said. “How long will it take?”
Yeats paused. “At conventional speed, probably a year.”
A year? Serena thought. “At that speed we wouldn’t reach the next star for…”
“Anywhere between two hundred fifty to six thousand six hundred years.”
Serena didn’t even want to think how long it would be until they reached the target star. Or who would be there to greet them. “Any plans on staying alive in the meantime?”
“Yes.”
Yeats stabbed the scepter into the wall and the door split open to reveal a chamber filled with cool mist. Serena stared inside and could make out what looked like an open coffin in the rear. The mold was of a shapely woman about Serena’s size.
“Seems the builders thought of everything,” Yeats said. “Welcome to your cryocrypt.”
An alarm went off inside Serena’s head as it dawned on her that Yeats expected her to lie inside that machine. She stiffened at the door and refused to go in. Then she felt a clammy hand on her neck. There was no way in hell she was stepping into that chamber.
“You first,” she said, stomping the heel of her boot onto Yeats’s toe and jabbing him in the stomach with her elbow.
He groaned and she spun around and kneed him in the groin and clasped her hands together to deliver a crashing blow to his hunched-over back. She rose to catch her breath, but then Yeats whipped his head up, nabbing her in the jaw and splitting her lip. She staggered back into the chamber as he straightened up. He lifted his head to reveal cold, dead eyes in the dim light. His arm came up pointing his gun at her.
“Say your bedtime prayers, Sister.”
Yeats raised his boot and slammed it full force into her chest, driving her back into the crypt, which molded around her like clay. She felt a cold tingling inside her. It began in the small of her back, raced up her spine, and exploded throughout her entire body.
Suddenly everything began to go numb. She became very still, almost lifeless in the dark, but she could feel her heart pounding. Soon that started to fade. Then the crypt door shut and she felt nothing at all.