The Unearthing (3 page)

“Only at a specific depth in the soil,” James answered, “It looks like a local meteoric impact.

“Yeah, but the patterning suggests the KT boundary,” Peter said.

“You noticed that too, huh?” James asked, “The Prof shit when he saw it. He wants me to drill new samples and re-run the geological survey.”

“I can see why.”

In geology, the KT boundary is a marker of a time at the end of the Cretaceous when the Earth was subject to massive meteoric bombardment, including the so-called “Death Star” impacts that most probably wiped out the dinosaurs. The hallmark of the KT boundary was an uncommonly high concentration of iridium in the soil of the era; iridium being an element common in space, but exceedingly rare on earth.

“I don’t believe it’s the KT myself,” James said, “I think it’s just an anomalous iridium layer, probably from a local nearby meteoric impact.”

“That would make more sense to me,” Peter replied, “It’s something to keep an eye on. We’ll look for other signs of a nearby impact when we do seismography.”

“Yeah, the Prof wants to see you about that,” James told him, “He wants the cannons set up for as wide a scan as possible.”

“Why?”

“He wants to completely rule out the KT boundary’s significance to the dig, and see how big that thing is.”

♦♦♦

Peter made his way across their narrow, dusty compound to Mark Echohawk’s trailer. He was a couple of years older than James and was tall, dark haired and athletic. Coming from a poor neighbourhood, he’d exploited an athletic scholarship to get himself into the UCLA Anthropology department. It didn’t take his teachers long to realize this jock in particular was more interested than working in the field than playing on one. It wasn’t long after that Mark Echohawk, dean emeritus of UCLA’s newly-expanded archaeology department, took an interest in the young Peter Paulson.

Peter found Echohawk in the camper’s kitchenette brewing a pot of coffee. He favoured an old-fashioned percolator urn-style coffee maker over the more popular—and faster—drip-brew coffee makers. He was waiting patiently for the “Ready” light on the urn to turn red, a large glass mug in his hand.

“Hi Mark,” Peter said. He was the only one of Echohawk’s students to call him, privately, by his first name.

“Hello Peter,” He said, reaching for the tap on the coffee urn the instant the light flashed red. “Want a cup?”

“Hell yeah,” Peter said, sliding into the horseshoe-shaped booth. If there was one thing the Prof did exceptionally well besides archaeology it was brew a pot of coffee. Echohawk put milk, brown sugar and a bottle of cinnamon on the table. Peter began fixing his coffee as Echohawk sat down. Peter, almost twenty-five, watched the sixty-odd year old Echohawk fix his own coffee. Peter had studied under Echohawk for years now and had been fortunate enough to go into the field with him twice. This was their third expedition together and Peter, close to graduating and beginning his own career as an anthropologist, considered Echohawk both a friend and mentor.

“You read the geosurvey report?” Echohawk asked.

“Yeah,”

“What do you think?”

“I think we have to run some scans and dig.”

“Why?”

“The iridium layer,” Peter replied, “It could be anomalous, but I’ve seen enough spectrographs of the KT to know when I’m looking at it. So either the structure was buried at the end of the Cretaceous or else it was built in a pit dug out that far down and then at some point later on it was very,
very
meticulously buried.” Echohawk nodded. He’d come to the same conclusion. Neither of them liked the implications.

“That’s why I want to start off with an extended Doppler seismology scan,” Echohawk said, “To see if it was buried deliberately or not. I also want to find out if the pyramid was part of some sort of temple complex. Something that size, chances are it wasn’t a stand-alone structure. Chances are there’s other structures buried nearby and I want to see if we can’t locate them as well.”

“We should follow up with a hard dig,” Peter said, “Use PET scanners to see what’s between us and the bottom and just strip out as much earth as possible. We may even want to consider getting an orbital deep radar scan of the surrounding desert.”

“One thing at a time,” Echohawk said, “Set up the Doppler cannons for as wide a scan field as possible. Then, we determine the next step.”

♦♦♦

It took most of the rest of the afternoon to set up the Doppler seismology cannons for the scan. Doppler seismology scanning had been a beneficial addition to field archaeology years earlier. Using special cannons, slug weights were fired into the ground. The seismic vibrations, Doppler waves, resulting from the blasts were picked up by echographic equipment similar in nature to ultrasound scanners. The resulting information was fed into computing systems that compiled three dimensional images of objects buried beneath layers and layers of earth. The use of multiple cannons fired simultaneously and networked into a central computer would generate a detailed image of an object and anything surrounding it for kilometres. Doppler seismology had proven to be most beneficial in palaeontology, helping discover entire dinosaur burial grounds. But the technology had also been used in archaeological digs in Egypt, Iraq and India. Its greatest success to date had been the discovery of an entire lost city in China’s Gobi desert.

When James and Peter returned from setting up the cannons, the sun was well on its way towards setting. Three canteen trucks, one cooking hamburgers, fries and pizza, one serving ice cream and one serving just about everything else, had established a beachhead on the edge of Echohawk’s camp. James left to get their suppers while Peter reported in with Echohawk. The rest of the expedition were seated at picnic tables eating, or were working diligently in the lab building preparing for the Doppler scan and running final analyses on the soil samples taken earlier that day. They ate their fast-food suppers and then joined Echohawk in the lab with Paul Santino.

“Gentlemen,” Echohawk said, “We’re ready when you are.” James sat at one workstation, Peter at another.

“Tracking and recording are online,” James said.

“Echography imaging systems on,” Peter said, “We’re compiling a scan of ambient seismic activity.”

“An ambient scan will allow us to get an accurate image of the artifact,” Echohawk explained to Santino, “By sampling the seismic ‘noise’ made from foot and vehicle traffic and natural shifting in the ground, the scanner will then be able to filter out that background activity and focus entirely on the shockwaves set off by the cannons firing.” Santino nodded and continued to watch the display screens in front of James and Peter.

“We’re ready Prof,” James called.

“You may fire when ready,” Echohawk said with amusement.

“Thirty second blast warning,” Peter said, toggling a switch. Two short blasts of a siren erupted in response, followed by a long wail which cycled higher and higher in pitch before dying out

“Cannons armed,” James reported.

“Final countdown,” Peter said, reaching for an isolated console, “Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two and one. Fire!” James unlocked a sealed button on the computer console and pressed it. There was a deep muffled rumbling noise and the slightest of tremors passed through the ground. A sound like distant thunder rolled through the compound and instantly every screen on the monitors before them flared to life, recording the progress of the shockwaves set off by the multiple cannons firing. A distinct image was forming on the main screen where the Doppler compilation was being done. It showed the pyramid as seen from above, resting atop a large circular dais. From there the image became strange, almost incomprehensible: The dais was sitting on top of the crest of an arched dome, kilometres across. The dome was covered by an irregular network of pits and canyons and large constructs that looked like clusters of buildings. The dome itself was so huge that its periphery could not be seen on the scan image.

“What the hell was that?” Echohawk asked, rising.

“I don’t know,” Peter said, “I don’t understand what we’re looking at.”

“Show me three-D of the scan,” Echohawk said, “James, how far did we scan?”

“We set up the seismology to scan everything within a ten kilometre radius of the pyramid,”

“Can we compile further out?” Echohawk asked, “Extrapolate based on what we have so far?”

“It won’t be well defined,” James said, “But there’s enough seismic activity for the Doppler imager to compile an image another ten K out, with about fifty to sixty per cent accuracy.”

“Do it,”

“I have the three-D Prof!” Peter called. Echohawk leaned over Peter’s workstation and stared in disbelief.

“The view is along the Y axis,” Peter said, “We’re looking at it from the horizontal now.” The pyramid appeared onscreen with scale measurements below the image. The Laguna Pyramid was almost twenty meters tall and nearly twenty-five meters wide at the base. Hardly a large pyramid by any standards, but it crested the ridge of a massive dome. At its summit the bowl of the dome was six kilometres wide and stretched down beyond the scope of the initial Doppler image. About two kilometres down along the surface of the dome was a ring of pyramids spaced evenly one every half-kilometre around.

“I’m recompiling all images now,” James called from his workstation, “You aren’t going to believe this.” The image onscreen shrank to accommodate its full scope. The dome was not a complete sphere but part of a mountainous arch that curved down, down, into a massive disk. They were looking at the upper half of a colossal structure; one whose presence they could not even begin to understand. Their compiled image was twenty kilometres in diameter, a circular disk with an arching dome. Said dome was seven kilometres high and fifteen kilometres at its base. Most incomprehensible was that the gargantuan object was right now buried beneath their feet.

“I think we need to call somebody,” Echohawk said, stunned.

TWO

EXCAVATION

“I won’t believe it until we’ve had the seismography equipment checked out and another set of scans done,” Echohawk said during the next morning’s meeting, “In fact I wouldn’t object to replacing the Doppler equipment altogether. Is it possible that something in the local geology is setting up some weird harmonic that’s messing with the equipment?”

“Not likely,” James said, “Prof, Peter looked at the Doppler equipment while I went over the geosurvey again, last night: the equipment checks out fine and the only anomaly in the soil is that the area has significantly lower fallout levels than most of the rest of New Mexico. White Sands was a nuclear target during War Three and most of New Mexico has measurable fallout. There’s almost none in the area surrounding the Laguna Pyramid.”

“Then there’s the iridium in the soil from around the Pyramid?” Peter added.

“That’s the other problem with the dig,” Echohawk replied, “If the artifact was deliberately buried then the spread of iridium through the soil would not be consistent from one sample to the next. There is a very distinct spread to the iridium layer we have, and from what we can see it’s in the right place to mark the KT Boundary. So according to the current evidence not only was the object buried naturally, it was here well before the end of the Cretaceous.”

“That would mean the object was built more than sixty million years ago.” Peter insisted.

“I know,” Echohawk said, dryly.

“But that would be impossible,” James said, “Unless there was an advanced civilization here on Earth sixty million years ago. No evidence has
ever
been found to even suggest that.”

“James until a few years ago there wasn’t any evidence to suggest there was life beyond Earth,” Peter said, “Then the Clarke probe brought back those water samples from Europa.”

“The point is we don’t know what it is we’re dealing with,” Echohawk said emphatically, “And the only way to find out is to dig. We’ll start a full excavation today. I’ve asked the Society to book us some time with the orbital labs so we can get a deep radar probe of the area and find out for sure if that thing’s really as big as the Doppler seismology says.”

“When do we expect the sweep?” Peter asked.

“There’s no telling,” Echohawk replied, “The labs aboard Concord 3 are very busy right now; even with the Society’s dedicated time slots for lab use on-station, there’s so many other projects ahead of us it’s doubtful how soon we can get access.”

“Well between now and then we have some earth and stone to start moving,” Peter said, “We should use MRIs and PET scanners to make sure we can dig through quickly. Anything of significant interest between us and the Pyramid will show up on a scan.”

“I agree,” Echohawk said, “And this dig will be slow enough as it is. The real question is whether or not we go public with what we have so far and if not, just how long we can expect to keep it a secret.”

♦♦♦

A limited press release was issued by the WAAS. It said in part that a structure of unknown origin had been found on land belonging to the Laguna Band and that a team of researchers was currently undertaking its unearthing. Aside from a few details about the size and composition of the structure, little else was added. Some people were curious and came to see but no more so than would be expected on most digs. Only Santino, Echohawk and Echohawk’s senior assistants knew the truth.

The dig was progressing well enough; the PET and MRI scanners allowed them to dig more quickly and less gingerly. They had excavated much of the Pyramid in a widening circle. Laser cutters on loan from the Society allowed them to clear away the heavy stone deposits, but the job was nonetheless becoming more difficult. During extensive excavations, it was often possible to “level” a dig laterally so the maximum width of a work pit could be maintained. But with a pyramid, the deeper one dug the wider one had to make their pit. The wider they had to make their work area the more soil they had to move from the surrounding land. Consequently the dig was starting to slow down. Where they had taken a week to reach their current depth, it would take them twice as long to expose the rest of the buried pyramid. And that was without considering what lay beneath that. If anything of significance presented itself in the soil between them and the base of the pyramid, they would have to excavate that object before continuing.