The Reply

CHAPTER 10

Viking II had traveled an elliptical path of over 422 million miles to Mars after being launched in 1976. In the twenty-plus years that had passed since it went into orbit, it had relayed data from its lander and used its outdated orbital sensors to gain information on the Red Planet. It should have gone off-line a decade ago, but the numerous failures in other Mars probes had forced NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) to try to eke every extra day of service out of the aging probe. Days past its projected life had turned into months, months into years, and over a decade past its launch it was still functioning. It had finally been shut down the previous year when Pathfinder had arrived with great fanfare.

Now it was receiving the radio messages telling it to wake up; there was one more task to accomplish, a task more important than any it had done before.

As the electronic instructions were routed through a computer more antiquated than that in any high-school library, the machinery began to come alive. The maneuvering thrusters on the Viking II Orbiter fired and the satellite circling Mars slowly changed paths, its orbit disturbed for the first time in over two years.

At JPL, the place where the commands firing those engines were being generated, there was great concern about the status of the Viking II Orbiter. Mars was cursed, at least that was the firm opinion of Larry Kincaid, the director of all JPL Mars missions once they left the orbit of Earth. He still felt that way even after the success of Pathfinder. Driving around looking at a couple of rocks wasn’t something he considered a great success. True, getting Pathfinder down in one piece had been something to feel good about for a while, but this achievement was overshadowed by the long and troubled history of Mars missions.

Kincaid had been at JPL since 1962, starting as a junior flight engineer. He’d been present in the control room for the first Mars-probe launching, Mariner 3, on November 5, 1964. He’d watched the reactions of the other scientists as the spacecraft’s protective shroud failed to jettison after leaving Earth’s atmosphere, causing complete mission failure.

Mariner 4, launched just twenty-three days later, made it close to Mars but its low-resolution camera sent back little useful information.

Kincaid also knew the history of Russian spacecraft sent in the direction of Mars. The Soviet Mars 1 probe failed to make it out of Earth’s orbit. Mars 2 and 3 made it to the red planet, but the probes they dropped went dead immediately. Mars 4 missed the planet entirely. Mars 5 made it into orbit, but the pictures it sent back were even poorer than Mariner 4’s. Mars 6 made it there also, but its lander sent back some very confusing data on the way down before going dead. Mars 7 missed the planet.

All in all, a Mars mission had been the one place in JPL new engineers did not want to be assigned. Even with all the hubbub over Pathfinder’s Rover running around, the cursed history of Mars exploration affected even the rational scientific types who came to work at JPL.

Of course, that had all changed with the message from the Guardian Two computer at Cydonia. Now everybody wanted to know everything there was to know about Mars, and that region in particular, and there really wasn’t anything to tell or show them other than the distant images taken from orbit and from the Hubble.

Unfortunately, the Hubble couldn’t see much. Even at the best refraction possible the Hubble could show Mars only as a four-inch sphere. Not exactly enough to show details, particularly about the Cydonia region. And Pathfinder and its Rover were stuck where they had landed, much too far away to do any good. Thus the fallback to the only current orbiter around the planet: Viking II.

Kincaid oversaw the action as his crew began moving Viking II so it could take a look at Cydonia, but his mind wasn’t on it. He was wondering how much these aliens having a base at Cydonia had to do with all the disasters that had plagued the American and Russian Mars missions. As an engineer he was not a big believer in coincidences, particularly when it came to mechanical objects. The various malfunctions and failures that had plagued the American and Russian Mars probes went far beyond statistical possibility due to random chance.

Kincaid had known that for years, he just hadn’t known why. He’d heard the other whispers around JPL and NASA over the years. The strange lights that had shadowed Apollo 11. The disturbing fact that no space shuttle was allowed to downlink a live video feed — it had to be sent through a special NSA office at NASA where it was viewed first and, perhaps, edited. The questions about the fuel tank failure on Apollo 13. So many inexplicable occurrences had taken place over the years in the space program. Kincaid was not a religious man who believed they were all acts of God. He was a scientist and he believed that there was always a cause that could be explained. Now it was obvious, though, that they had been missing some of the important data that was needed to formulate the explanation.

Kincaid could see the status of the Viking II orbiter on the large display board in the front of the room as the rockets began moving it. He could also see the status of the other current Mars mission besides Pathfinder: Mars Global Surveyor. It had been launched in November of 1996 and reached Mars in September of 1997. The only problem was that Surveyor had been hit by the same gremlin as the other missions. A solar array had never completely deployed and because of that, the aerobrakes had not worked properly when it arrived at Mars, the craft thus failing to attain a stable orbit around the planet. It was up there and they had been doing the best they could over the last several months to achieve a working orbit, but they were still several months away from accomplishing that. So far they had been satisfied with not completely losing the craft either by having it shoot off away from Mars or really screwing up and putting it into Mars’s gravity well and having it impact with the planet.

No one had looked past Viking yet, but Kincaid knew they eventually would, and when they did, he had no doubt that Surveyor’s mission profile would be changed and the powers-that-be would want Surveyor sent over Cydonia, even if it meant losing the orbiter completely on a one-shot deal. And it would be Kincaid’s job to make the change.

Surveyor had a payload of six scientific instruments designed to check out the planet’s surface. It also carried a powerful camera that would be able to photograph the surface in greater detail than ever before. And it held more than that. Kincaid glanced over at a mirror that lined the left side of the control center. He knew there was someone behind it watching what was happening, and not just someone from JPL. There had been a stranger there for every major launch and mission since Kincaid had been at JPL, and he had no doubt the current situation had brought the stranger back again.

“All right, people,” he called out, catching the attention of the duty crew. “Let’s get our heads out of our asses and think. Let’s get beyond Viking II. I want a projected TCM for Surveyor that will put it over Cydonia, initiating correction one hour from now through next week.” Kincaid could see the grimaces on the faces of his crew. A TCM was a trajectory correction maneuver, and it required considerable math to figure out how long and what kind of burn would be needed to change the craft’s current path to the desired one, especially difficult with Surveyor because of its current erratic orbit.

He knew that if his last order bothered them, the next one was going to burst some blood vessels, but it had come straight from the NSA and he was under strict orders from NASA to comply. Once more Kincaid glanced at the mirrors on the wall and wondered who was behind them and who had made this strange request.

“I want the IMS extended, turned on, and focused on Cydonia. At the range the probe currently is at, we should get some good shots back every so often when it comes close. Not as good as what Viking will get directly overhead, but it will give us an idea what’s going on, plus be a backup for Viking.”

His senior payload specialist’s mouth had dropped open at the first sentence, and the man had remained speechless while he assimilated what he was being told to do. IMS stood for Imager Mars Surveyor. It was a stereo imaging system that was loaded into the orbiter. It consisted of three subassemblies: a camera head, an extendable mast designed to rise up once the craft was in stable orbit, and two electric cards, one of which controlled the camera and arm motors and the other that processed the images.

“Jesus, Kincaid,” the man finally blurted, “you can’t open the payload with the probe still spinning like it is!”

“Why not?” Kincaid asked.

“It’s not designed to work that way.”

“I know how it’s designed,” Kincaid said. “I know as well as you do. And I don’t see any real problem with extending and turning the camera on early and taking a look-see. Just because it wasn’t designed to work that way doesn’t mean we can’t do it.”

“But we’d have to extend the able mast,” the payload specialist continued. “I don’t think we can do that with rotation like it is.”

Sometimes Kincaid wondered about the new breed of engineer they were getting here. He had severe doubts as to whether they would have been able to improvise and gotten Apollo 13 home, as those whom Kincaid had worked with three decades ago had.

“You don’t think?” Kincaid repeated. He turned to a mock-up of the probe on his desk. “I think you can. If you open this panel the camera will extend. Right?”

“Right, but—”

“But the centrifugal force multiplies as the mast extends,” Kincaid finished the sentence. “We do have control over the mast, don’t we? We don’t have to extend all the way. Just enough to clear the door panel.”

Kincaid didn’t wait for any more argument. “Get working on it. You all seem confused by something. I’m not asking you to do this. I’m telling you to do it. I want a picture from Surveyor of Cydonia within two hours.”

Area 51 was the unclassified designation on military maps for a training area on the Nellis Air Force Base. At least that’s what the military had maintained for years. In actuality Area 51 had housed a top-secret installation burrowed into Groom Mountain featuring the longest runway in the world along the bed of adjacent Groom Lake.

While a few of the facilities were aboveground, the majority were built into and below the side of the mountain next to the runway. The location had been chosen by the original Majestic-12 committee after the mothership had been found hidden in a nearby cavern. More hangars had been hollowed out over the years to house the bouncers, small atmospheric craft, two of which had been discovered with the mothership, the other seven recovered from a cache in Antarctica.

Over the years Majestic-12 had trained select Air Force pilots in the art of flying the bouncers. The secret of entry into the mothership had eluded MJ-12 until earlier in the year when members of the committee had been mentally taken over by the rebel guardian computer uncovered at a dig in Temiltepec and brought back to MJ-12’s other secret site at Dulce, New Mexico.

When MJ-12’s secrets were finally exposed, Area 51’s shroud had been torn asunder. The media had now descended upon the site, gobbling up images of the massive black mothership resting in its newly dug-out cavern and the bouncers being put through their paces by Air Force pilots. What had once been the most secret place in America was now the most photographed and visited.

Major Quinn had been operations officer at Area 51, but he had survived the purge of MJ-12 personnel because he had not been on the inner circle taken over by the guardian. He was the one man left who knew all the inner workings of the Area 51 facility and the Cube, the acronym for C3, Command and Control Central.

The underground room housing the Cube measured eighty by a hundred feet and could only be reached from the massive bouncer hangar cut into the side of Groom Mountain via a large freight elevator.

Quinn was of medium height and build. He had thinning blond hair and wore tortoiseshell glasses with oversized lenses to accommodate the split glass he needed for both distance and close-up viewing.

He sat in the seat in the back of the room that gave him a full view of every operation now in process. In front of him, sloping down toward the front, were three rows of consoles manned by military personnel. On the forward wall was a twenty-foot-wide by ten-high screen. It was capable of displaying any information that could be channeled through the computers.

Directly behind Quinn a door led to a corridor off of which branched a conference room, his office and sleeping quarters, rest rooms, and a small galley. The freight elevator opened on the right side of the main gallery. There was the quiet hum of machinery in the room, along with the slight hiss of filtered air being pushed by large fans in the hangar above. Quinn had been down here for four straight days, dealing with the unfamiliar responsibility of opening the facility to the world’s media and integrating members of UNAOC onto the staff.

Now that the bouncers fell under UNAOC control, as did all pieces of Airlia artifact, every foreign country that boasted an air force had sent its best pilots to be trained on flying the bouncers. The U.S. Air Force was quickly putting in place courses at Area 51 to do just that. Quinn also had to schedule in the hordes of scientists demanding access to all the scientific data the computers in the Cube held, along with giving them direct access to the mothership.

All in all Quinn was one busy man, in what had suddenly become a very sensitive position. It was a long way from just two weeks ago when his major concerns had been doing General Gullick’s bidding and maintaining security of the facility from those who continually tried to pierce its former veil of secrecy.

Quinn looked down at the small laptop screen in front of him and did a status check. The mainframe quickly informed him that five bouncers were being test-flown at the current moment; Bouncer 6 was overseas, visiting Moscow as part of UNAOC’s program to spread the wealth around; Bouncer 7 was traveling around the United States; Bouncers 8 and 9 were in Europe; and a mixed group of Russian and NATO scientists were exploring the mothership.

“Sir, we’ve got an inbound chopper clearing perimeter,” one of the men in the room called out.

Quinn frowned at the unnecessary disturbance. They had dozens of aircraft flying in and out every day now. The airspace was no longer restricted and the base was open. “And?” Quinn asked.

“It’s coming in under an ST-8 classified authorization code.”

“What the hell is that?” Quinn had had the highest possible classified clearance while working for Majestic and he had never heard of ST-8.

“I don’t know, sir. I can’t access it from my position.”

Quinn quickly cleared his screen and entered his code word. He typed in the classification. His screen cleared and a message appeared:

“Shit,” Quinn muttered. What that told him was that he couldn’t even inform his own chain of command and he had to do whatever those on the helicopter told him to. “Put the chopper onscreen.”

A black UH-60 helicopter appeared over the runway. It landed and rolled forward. The side doors opened and a woman got out. Quinn unconsciously leaned forward. She was tall, over six feet, and slender, but what he noticed most was her shockingly white hair, cut tight to her skull. Her eyes were hidden by wrap-around sunglasses. She carried a metal briefcase in her left hand and wore black pants, and a black jacket with a black shirt with no collar underneath.

“Bring her to conference room,” Quinn ordered, standing up and going out the rear door. He walked into the room and sat at the end of the table. He didn’t have long to wait before the door opened. The woman walked in, coming around to the left of the large table. Quinn stood to greet her.

“I am Oleisa,” the woman said. She put her briefcase on the table.

“Major Quinn,” he said, extending his hand, but the woman ignored it, taking her seat. Quinn hurriedly followed suit. “I looked up your clearance and it said—”

“To do whatever I tell you to do,” Oleisa smoothly cut him off. “I require you to detail a bouncer with your top pilot to be at my disposal from this moment until further notice. That craft is not to be used for any other purpose.”

Quinn inwardly groaned. He saw a carefully prepared schedule crumble. “Who do you work for?”

“That is not a concern of yours,” Oleisa said.

“I’m in charge here and—”

“You are a caretaker,” she said. “You are not in charge. You are to do what you are told. A bouncer with pilot at my disposal. I also require a secure satellite communications link dedicated to my use.”

On Easter Island, Mike Turcotte and Lisa Duncan were greeted by Kelly Reynolds and Peter Nabinger as they entered Reynolds’s tent. The other members of the media were at the UNAOC Operations Center, waiting to see if there was to be another message from Guardian one in reply to Guardian two latest.

Turcotte and Duncan had landed several hours earlier and been briefed on everything that had occurred. Their report on the find in Ethiopia had been relayed to UNAOC during their flight back, but it seemed to have been submerged in the excitement over the second message from Mars.

Duncan’s guess as to the ruby sphere’s purpose had been savaged by UNAOC scientists who were trying to pick up the work that had been started by the Terra-Lei scientists. Turcotte didn’t think UNAOC would have much more success than Terra-Lei, considering that the latter had had over sixteen years to work in the cavern. The initial consensus of the scientists was that the ruby sphere was some sort of mining device. Turcotte thought that was simply wishful thinking on the part of men and women who weren’t used to dealing with things that were beyond their level of education and experience. For all they knew, Turcotte figured the ruby sphere could be some sort of religious object, much like a crucifix in a church. He hoped it was something like that and not what Duncan had guessed.

A storm was passing by, and the patter of rain on canvas drowned out the sound of the surf. Turcotte could feel a thin line of water running down his back. He’d enjoyed the walk in the rain from UNAOC operations to the tent. He glanced at Lisa Duncan. Her khaki clothes were dark with water, her hair plastered against her head. She caught his glance and raised an eyebrow in inquiry. Turcotte quickly turned his attention back to the others.

“What do you think?” he asked Nabinger, who was looking at photos of the cavern and the ruby sphere spread out on one of the cots.

“I have no idea,” Nabinger replied. He focused on a picture of the Airlia console. “I can’t read the high rune writing like this. It looks like what’s down in our cavern here on the island, and you can’t read all the high runes on the control console until it’s powered up and backlit.”

Turcotte grabbed the pictures and shuffled through them until he came upon the one that showed the black stone. “What about that?”

Nabinger looked at it for a moment, then took out his notebook. He pulled a pencil out of his pocket. “Give me a minute,” he said.

The others in the tent waited for five minutes, listening to the sound of the rain and the water running down the outside of the tent, before he looked up. “Some of this isn’t high rune.”

“What language is it?” Kelly Reynolds asked.

“The nearest I can make out,” he said, “is that some of this is in Chinese.” “Chinese?” Turcotte was surprised. “How the hell did Chinese writing get in a cavern in Africa with Airlia artifacts?”

“I don’t know,” Nabinger said. “The high rune part is, as usual, hard to make out, but as best I can figure it says something like:

“This,” Nabinger said, “is very similar to what I got off the pictures of the high rune stones left with the mothership and the rongo-rongo tablets from here.”

“I don’t get it,” Duncan said. “What does this cavern in the Rift Valley and the ruby sphere have to do with the mothership?”

“And with China?” Nabinger added, looking at the photo of the black stone. “I don’t like that all-things-consumed part,” Turcotte said. He looked at Duncan. “Sounds too much like your doomsday-device idea.”

“Curiouser and curiouser,” Nabinger said, staring at the photo. He turned to Kelly Reynolds. “Do you have that satellite phone the network gave you?”

She handed it over, but not without comment. “I wouldn’t worry too much about the ruby sphere. We’ll have all the answers soon.”

“Why do you think that?” Turcotte asked.

“Aspasia’s coming.”

“What, he’s rising from the dead?” Turcotte said.

Kelly ignored him and addressed Duncan. “Do you think Aspasia and the other Airlia with him have been in suspended animation?”

“It’s a possibility, but we can’t be sure of anything right now,” Duncan said. She turned to Nabinger. “You’re the language expert. How do you read the message sent from Mars?”

Nabinger looked up from dialing. “The same as you. After all, it’s not in high rune but English encoded in binary. I don’t think it was Aspasia who sent the message, but rather the Guardian II computer, and now I think it’s implementing a program to bring Aspasia back to consciousness from whatever state he’s been in.”

“Do you think they can do that?” Duncan asked.

“That’s the way I read the message,” Nabinger said with a shrug. “Hell, they built the mothership and the bouncers. I’m sure suspended animation is not beyond their technical capabilities. I’m amazed that no one thought of it before as being what happened to the Airlia.”

“No one thought of it,” Turcotte said, “because we never found any sign of the actual aliens here on Earth.”

“Now you know why,” Nabinger said. “They’re on Mars.”

“How’d they learn English?” Turcotte asked.

“Probably from intercepted radio and TV transmissions,” Nabinger said. “It wouldn’t take a computer like the guardian long to decipher our language.”

“It’s fantastic,” Kelly said. “Imagine, not only will we soon meet our first extraterrestrial life, but life that was present on Earth over five thousand years ago! How do you think they got to Mars?” Kelly asked. “Another mothership? Or some other craft?”

“If they fly a mothership back here from Mars,” Turcotte said, “wouldn’t that bring the Kortad?”

“Maybe they have contact with their home planet,” Nabinger said. “The war is probably over. It’s been five thousand years.” He put the phone to his ear and turned his back to the conversation for the moment.

“There’s a lot we don’t know,” Turcotte said.

“But we’re going to find out!” Kelly was pacing about the tent. “It’s just fantastic. Here we were, hoping that at best we could access the guardian computer. Now we have the people who built the thing coming!”

“That was our best hope,” Turcotte acknowledged. “What about our worst fears?” “Oh, you’re always so pessimistic,” Kelly said, thumping a fist into his shoulder.

“Didn’t your dad teach to always worst-case things?” Turcotte asked. He knew that her father had been a member of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the forerunner to the CIA, during World War II.

“Oh, give me a break,” Kelly said. “Aspasia saved mankind by defeating the rebel Airlia five thousand years ago and leaving us alone to develop. The facts speak for themselves.”

“Then why’s he coming back now?” Turcotte wanted to know. “Isn’t that interference?”

“Because we’re ready now. We weren’t five thousand years ago. He tells us that in the message.”

“Don’t you think…” Turcotte began, but he could see the enthusiasm in Kelly’s eyes and he just couldn’t bring up the negative strength to fight it. He had vague feeling of unease, not the thrill of anticipation of first live contact with an alien race like she did.

He noticed that Nabinger had gotten off the phone and was looking at a pad on which he had made some notes. “What’s up?” Nabinger seemed quite preoccupied.

Nabinger looked up. “I got a contact I can fax the Chinese writing to and get a translation. I also had a message on my answering service. Someone’s found a place with more high runes.”

“Where?” Turcotte asked.

Nabinger smiled. “China.”

“China?” Turcotte repeated. “Well, isn’t that nice. What a coincidence.”

“Yep,” Nabinger said. “It’s not surprising that the Airlia were there too. Remember, they did have the bouncers to fly. They could go anywhere on the face of this planet in a matter of minutes.”

“How come we haven’t heard anything from China before now?” Kelly asked.

“Same reason the Russians just offered up their crashed Airlia craft,” Nabinger said. “Probably keeping it secret for their own reasons. Or, even more likely, the Chinese don’t know they have Airlia artifacts. Traditionally, the Chinese are very reluctant to do any sort of archaeological work.”

“Remember the third foo fighter did a flyby over China,” Turcotte said. “You can be sure the guardian knows something we don’t.”

“The guardian knows a lot of things we don’t,” Nabinger said.

Turcotte looked at him. “There something you aren’t telling us?”

The professor shrugged. “Hell, I got hit with so much when I was in contact with the guardian, there’s a lot that I don’t know I know.”

Turcotte wasn’t satisfied with that answer, but he didn’t think now was a time to push Nabinger, especially with the way Kelly was acting. He went back to thinking about China. “One of those foo fighters overflew the Great Pyramid, where the rebel Airlia left an atomic weapon. Another overflew Temiltepec, where the rebels left their guardian computer. What do you think could be in China? Who left you the message?” Turcotte asked.

“An archaeologist named Che Lu. I know of her. She’s head of archaeology at Beijing University.”

“Well, whatever she has can’t be that important now,” Kelly said. “Hell, we’ll have the man himself here soon to speak for himself.”

“The man?” Turcotte asked.

“Aspasia.”

“Why do you call him a man?” Turcotte didn’t wait for an answer. “He, if we can call it a he, is an alien. Not a human. Not a man.”

The tent went silent for a few seconds, Kelly staring at Turcotte in surprise, her face turning red with anger.

Before she could retort, Lisa Duncan spoke. “How would high runes in China fit into all this? I think we need to back up and take a hard look at things with a new perspective. Especially now that we have what appears to be Chinese writing in Africa next to high runes near the ruby sphere. What’s the connection?”

“The high rune language”—Nabinger laughed —“well, we call it a language now, but actually no one knew it was until just a month ago. I’d been studying hieroglyphics, the earliest known form of writing, for many years, particularly that in the three pyramids at Giza, and I noticed that there were some markings that didn’t fit traditional hieroglyphics.

“I expanded my search and found examples of that writing at other places on the face of the planet, although I didn’t have access to data from China. But all the examples I did find seemed to come from the same root language. And the dating of the various sites indicated a written language that predated the oldest recorded language that is generally accepted by historians.

“The problem back then was trying to answer the question: How could the same written language be in places so distant from one another in an age when man was frightened of sailing out of sight of shore? Because it made no sense, no one bothered to pull together all the various high rune artifacts and sites to build a working base for deciphering the writing. Of course, now that we know the Airlia were here, it makes perfect sense.”

“Sort of like this Face on Mars thing made no sense to NASA,” Turcotte asked, “but now it does?”

“Right,” Nabinger said. “It was a question of accepting the data and ignoring the limitations of man at the time. Anthropologists have always argued how civilization began in such remote places as Egypt, China, and Central America, all at roughly the same time period. The popular theory was the isolationist theory of civilization. Isolationists believe that the ancient civilizations all developed independent of one another. They all crossed a threshold into civilization about the third or fourth century before the birth of Christ. Isolationists explained the timing by arguing natural evolution.

“Of course, now we know this most likely isn’t true. The Airlia did have some effect, and that is most likely why civilization prospered in those distant places at the same time.” Nabinger’s eyes became unfocused as he retreated inside his own thoughts. “From what I saw in the guardian, I believe that there were humans on Atlantis where the Airlia had their home base and that some of those humans escaped when Aspasia destroyed Atlantis to stop the rebels. These humans dispersed and were the ones who began civilization at various places and gave us the myth of that island.”

“Then the Airlia did interfere with our development as a species,” Turcotte said.

“They certainly must have had some effect.” Nabinger opened his eyes. “After all, they were here for over five thousand years. Atlantis had to be the place where their effect was the greatest. This one-starting-point theory is called ‘diffusion.’ Basically it means that all those civilizations were started by people from a single earlier civilization.”

Turcotte leaned forward. “Let me ask something. How did the rebel computer get into that temple in Temiltepec? And the atomic bomb inside the Great Pyramid? Wasn’t that the work of the rebel Airlia, not humans fleeing Atlantis?”

“I don’t know,” Nabinger answered. “It would seem likely.”

“Well, if Aspasia went to Mars to snooze for a couple of millennia, then where did the rebel Airlia go?”

“I assume they died out,” Nabinger said, but it was clear he had not really considered it.

“Maybe they’re snoozing somewhere too?” Turcotte said. “Maybe they’re snoozing in China?”

“Oh, give me a break,” Kelly said.

“Maybe the guardian is worried about that and level in Dulce. Maybe they recovered the bodies of rebel Airlia in the temple at Temiltepec along with the rebel computer? Maybe that’s why Guardian I had the foo fighters take the lab out. Maybe Majestic was trying to thaw the aliens out or jump-start them or whatever?”

“Maybe, maybe, maybe,” Kelly repeated. She was pacing back and forth, the plywood floor squeaking under her boots. “Why don’t we stick with the facts?”

“Which ones?” Turcotte asked. “If any of the rebel Airlia are still around somewhere, what if they’re coming awake also? What if these two sides pick up where they left off five centuries ago? What if this Che Lu professor has stumbled onto something significant and dangerous? Based on this marker we found in the Rift Valley, there’s a good chance whatever she’s onto is linked to the ruby sphere we found, which seems to be linked to the mothership, according to what Peter just translated.”

“I don’t know what is in China,” Nabinger said. “But it could help me decipher the Airlia Earth coordinate system if I can pinpoint the location.” He had an atlas in his hand and was searching through it. “All Che Lu said was she found some high runes and she was going into the ancient Chinese tomb of Qian-Ling to investigate further. I’ve heard of Qian-Ling.” He proceeded to briefly fill them in on the mountain tomb’s background.

“The runes she found could be a whole lot of nothing or just copied religious text, as is much of what is in the Great Pyramid. They could…” He paused, his finger moving over the glossy page that showed a map of China. “Holy shit!” he exclaimed. He spun around on the stool and reached into his battered leather backpack and pulled out the spiral notepad with his high rune notes.

“What is it?” Turcotte asked.

Nabinger was thumbing through the pages of his notebook, the paper filled with hand-drawn high rune symbols. “You aren’t going to believe it. I don’t believe it myself.”

“What?” Lisa Duncan and the others crowded around.

Nabinger stopped turning pages. He looked from the map to the paper several times, then up at the others. “It’s been right there all this time and I never saw it. Hell, I never looked. And even if I had looked I probably would—”

“What was right there?” Turcotte was losing patience.

“The word,” Nabinger said.

“Word?” Duncan repeated.

“The symbol.” Nabinger tapped the map. “It’s been there for centuries.” His eyes were focused on something outside of the tent in his mind’s eye. “It makes sense, though. We would have been able to see it only in the last fifty years or so since we went into space. And then no one would have thought to look because we didn’t know about the high rune language. Brilliant! Simply brilliant.”

Turcotte looked at the others in the room, then back at the archaeologist. “What is so brilliant? What symbol?”

“This.” Nabinger’s finger was resting on a section of the map.

The others peered. “I don’t get it,” Turcotte said. “China? That town near your finger? What?”

“No,” Nabinger said. “The Wall. The Great Wall. Look at this section here in Western China, north of the city of Lanzhou.” He looked at the others. “The Great Wall is the only manmade structure that can currently be seen from space with the naked eye.”

“What about it?” Turcotte asked, although he was beginning to get the idea and the magnitude of it stunned him.

Keeping his finger in place, Nabinger used his free hand to pull his notebook next to the map. “Look at the Wall here and look at that symbol.”

They all saw it right away. The two were identical.

“It can’t be….” Turcotte began, but his voice trailed off. There was no denying it. A three-hundred-mile section of the Great Wall of China had been built in the form of a high rune symbol to be seen from space.

“What does the symbol mean?” Turcotte asked.

“As near as I have been able to translate,” Nabinger said, “that is the Airlia high rune symbol for HELP.”