Authors: Allen Charles
CHAPTER
56
Inside the fragment.
Zardooz wakened from his half snooze with a shudder. Something was not right. He felt it in his gut, and he had trusted that feeling for all his life as he climbed the tenuous and sometimes deadly rungs of power of the Iranian Empire. He scanned the monitors and saw that the RABI was right on course. Nothing there. He got up and checked Arjmand who was now sleeping peacefully in the normal pseudo gravity. He returned to the control room and looked around carefully. Nothing.
The only place he had not looked was in the disabled outer corridor where he had turned out the lights once the RABI had started its boring job.
He flicked the lighting on and examined at the monitor that showed the corridor. He could see nothing out of order right to the blown out doorway open to space.
“Wait a second! What’s that?” There was variation in light and shadow that simply could not be in the vacuum of space. It happened again.
Suddenly the image went black as what appeared to be a hand closed over the camera lens. He now heard the friction of scraping against the camera housing. Someone was in the corridor. But who?
In the corridor, the President, Fuller and Shaw were exploring the apparent cavern they had spotted before landing on the fragment. They saw it was man made immediately on entry and were working their way into the cavity when they hit the obstruction of the air lock just as Zardooz hit the lights. Being right under the camera they were not in view when the lights came on and gave them a fright. They reasoned that their motion had cause the activation, until Shaw spotted the camera and saw the red light on it.
“We’re on show guys!” He said across his comms and pointed at the camera, at which the President instinctively reached up and covered the lens with his hand.
“We now they know we are here, if they didn’t before...” said Fuller.
“Oops. What now?”
“I guess we tell them who we are, see it they identify and let us in.” Replied Fuller. “Go ahead and talk to them. If they don’t know who YOU are then they are aliens.”
The President took his hand off the lens, stepped back and looked straight into it. There was no way to transmit sound in the vacuum, so after a few moments he stretched up and pushed his faceplate against the camera housing, assuming that there was an audio pickup hidden somewhere. “Hello in there! If you can hear me, please flick the lights off and on.”
The lights went off, then on.
“Can we have a system that one flick means “yes” and two means “no”?”
One flick.
“Can you let us in?”
Two flicks.
“Is it a mechanical problem with the air lock?”
Two flicks.
The President paused to think for a moment. “Do you know who I am?”
One flick.
“Is there a political reason you will not admit us?”
One flick.
The President felt a tap on his shoulder and looked around, disengaging from the camera. Out of view of the lens, Fuller showed him a fire extinguisher tag written in Farsi. “Iran.” Was his only word.
“Oh shit!” said the President. “This must be the secret base that Zardooz and Arjmand ran to. Of all placed for us to have to spend our lives, why this?” The President thought through his options and went back to the camera. It had to be Zardooz or Arjmand on the other end. Knowing Arjmand’s profile, he worked the probability that it was Zardooz.
“Mr Zardooz.” he said calmly, wondering if indeed it was Zardooz, what his shorts contained now. “The war is over. There is nothing left except a few survivors. Let the differences go. Allow us to enter and we will share with you for the good of all.”
There was no reaction. The President knew he had it right. Arjmand would have done a light show.
“Mr Zardooz, we know it is you. we tracked you from the moment you left to launch the missiles. We tracked you to this location when it was Earth,” the President bluffed, “and we tracked this fragment as originating from your secret bunker in Iran. It was our initiative that blasted away the anti-matter coating this fragment and the power of the United States that stopped the tumbling. We will enter the fragment. It can be as you friend or your enemy. One flick for friend, two for enemy, or nothing and we will take our chances. Be aware, Mr Zardooz, that this fragment is going to Alpha Centauri and there are no bus stops for you to get off on the way. Do we chase you like a rat, Mr Zardooz, or do you join us and live? Decide now.”
Once again there was no reaction from the interior.
The group withdrew from the tunnel and returned to the transport. They called the council together to discuss this astounding new development. Of all people, of all nations, the very cause of the extinction of humanity was beneath their feet and the war was apparently alive and well.
The group sat around looking at each other with glum expressions. Janine broke the silence, “Isn’t it just too much! We have the ultimate catastrophe in human history which a few of us survive and then it topped off with the survival of the very cause and we end up on top of them! Lord! What are the chances? Who wrote this script? I just don’t believe this is random! Impossible!”
The President continued. “Yes, I guess when you put it all down in one place the probability of these events is a bit far fetched. I too agree that this is not random.”
“So is it God doing it?” asked Felicity.
“That kinda sucks.” answered Shaw. “What is His point in destroying everything and then putting us in this situation? Are we Noah’s Ark all over again?”
“Naw.” yawned Hanes. “No animals on board.” This got the mood lighter with a laugh. “And Noah didn’t have his worst enemy hidden away in the hold of the Ark.”
“Beg to differ,” interjected Shaw. “I read in comparative religion that the detailed interpretation of the Bible by the ancient Jewish sages says that a race of giants who lived very long lives numbering in the centuries, existed before the Flood. One of these giant called Og clung to the outside of the Ark and actually survived to the times of Moses, but became the enemy of the descendants of Noah, so Noah had one just like us.”
“But we have no animals?”
“Au cointraire, again,” Replied Shaw.
“Sheesh! Your French sucks Gerald!” scolded Felicity.
“So what? Show me France? Show me a Frenchman? Who will care? Anyway, about the animals, we already have hydroponic garden kits in the hold that were going to Space City and in the computer we have the genome mapping of virtually every living thing, male and female... and mushrooms which do have a third sex. Kinky huh?”
“So we really are Noah’s Ark in a way. How do we deal with our giant pain in the ass?” queried the President.
Fuller raised his hand for silence. “We saw the reaction from presumably Zardooz. Of all the ruling elite of Iran, he was always the most inscrutable, the invisible man, but he wielded immense power through his secret police. When I came back on board I did some quick research on him, whatever our on board computers had in storage. There was not much, but the little I found lends credence to Tom’s opinion that it is Zardooz we are dealing with and he is a pretend fundamentalist who was driven by money and the need to survive. The limited profile says that he is a moderate in Iranian terms and would be inclined to negotiate rather than confront if the risks do not justify the gains. It said that had he been born into any other society he would have been a nice guy.
My conclusion is that he has something up his sleeve and is therefore not negotiating. He has something to gain. Following that line, whatever it is must have preceded our entry on the scene. We need to get our feet on the ground and look out. He is up to something.”
Janine stood and activated a surface map of the fragment. “Now that we know where the fragment came from, while you boys were out playing I accessed the last planetary photography for that exact area and superimposed it over our fragment scan.” She waved her hand through another control dimage and a photo dimage of the region ghosted on top of the harsh fragment representation. Another gesture zoomed in on the north east corner so they could see the fronds of the palm trees. “Eyes peeled everyone. This was supposed to be a totally deserted and untouched area. We are looking for any anomalies. Vents, unusual vegetation patterns, pathways, anything.”
The image began a slow glide as at an altitude of about two hundred feet. No detail escaped scrutiny.
“Stop it there!” Demanded Felicity. Janine reacted and the image froze. Felicity went closer and peered at one palm tree. “Can you zoom on that tree?” she said, pointing to it.
Janine worked the dimage and the tree grew and moved off to the side a little. Janine edged the image across and they all began to see what sharp eyed Felicity had picked up. Unlike all the other trees, this one had a much greener central growth, the others all a dust yellow green specifically due to the dust. As the tree came into focus they could see that the core branches were artificial. In fact the whole tree was artificial. Now they could see the holes of the vents that the branches disguised from the ground, but not from close scrutiny above. The inrush of air kept the inner branches clear and had revealed the vent.
Janine marked the position with a red circle then turned off the photo overlay. The fragment surface was ordinary and homogenous with no special features, other than a small mound where the tree had stood. She zoomed in on the mound and they all looked carefully.
“There is a slight indent in the top, like a crater.” Janine remarked.
“Think about it,” added Fuller, “this was clearly a ventilation point. There did not appear to be any access points in the photo scan so I think we can safely assume that other than a hole down into the working, there is nothing here threatening to us. Good catch Felicity. Let’s move on.”
Janine activated the overlay and travel again and they settled back. Nothing extraordinary revealed itself for long minutes.
“Bingo!” Shaw startled everyone. What had he seen that everyone else had missed?
“No you didn’t miss anything guys. I just had an idea how to speed this up. Based on Felicity’s find we need to zoom out and look for other palm tree vents using the color differential. If we find more, they will give us a rough topography of the underground installation and we can focus our search within and around the vented region.”
Janine gave him a smile of approval and immediately implemented the move. The image pulled away like a ride in a hot air balloon. She stopped it abruptly when the pattern that Shaw had suggested became obviously apparent. In the scatter of palm trees the artificial vents now stood out.
The President shook his head in despair. “How did our aerial analysts miss this. You guys saw it in seconds. This whole mess could have been stopped.”
“No use crying over it now Tom. We had a specific, tiny area to examine. Your guys had millions of square miles. There’s just no comparison. We were looking for the black jelly beans in the jar. They were looking for the needle in the haystack.” Janine comforted him and patted his back.
“Yeah!” he sighed, “I guess you’re right.”
Janine went back to the map and played join the dots around the palm tree vents. The resultant area put the tunnel approximately in the middle with the whole region being heavily located to the north east quadrant of the fragment. Assuming that the venting addressed a radius around each vent and that the access tunnel provided a central vent, she drew slightly overlapping circles around all the trees with a larger one around the access tunnel until all the area was covered by the reach of a ventilator.
“This,” she said indicating the total area, “is our search area.”
Shaw moved forward and looked hard at the area, mouth screwed up in concentration and hand on chin. “I do believe,” he said very slowly, “that we have a pattern defined by need here. If there are any observation points they need to be away from the fake trees so the trees can be under scrutiny.” He traced the circles with a finger. “They would want minimum number of observation points for maximum coverage to avoid detection. Give me a minute.” He sat down and closed his eyes in intense concentration as he worked complex geometry in his head as you or I would add two and two, and sometimes get four.
He stood abruptly, nearly forgetting himself in the miniscule gravity effect. “Here, here,” he pointed and Janine added blue marks. “Here and one more here. OK, now let’s zoom in around these areas.”
Janine obliged and they all looked, the search now a bit of a competition. Again, Felicity’s sharp vision pinned the tail on the donkey. “There!” She called out. The slight shadow was hard against the blue dot Janine had put down earlier. Janine pulled in on the shadow and moved the perspective. The irregular mound resolved into an artificial roof disguised as a sandy atoll with a three sixty degree all around overhang. From a little side movement the sharp shadow of a view port that had maybe a one inch exposure, stood out. Easily accommodating a rotating camera for constant surveillance.
“Look at the ground next to the camera port.” Felicity pointed to a discolored patch of sand that now looked out of place and just a tad too regular in shape. There was nothing like it close by.
“Access door!” said Fuller, “Janine, show us what we have on the fragment for this one please.”
The overlay faded again and the drab fragment surface materialized. There was an inverted bubble of lava like rock where the access door had been, but where the observation port had been was a deep shadow and a glint of metal. Close in the remains of a camera or support shaft could be seen.
“Here’s my thinking,” went Fuller. “You’re an underground facility designed for nuclear fallout and direct blast. What do you need after the war is over?”