The Reply

CHAPTER 13

The Guardian II computer was a golden pyramid twenty feet high by twenty across at the base. It was four hundred meters under the surface of Mars, in a cavern hollowed out of solid rock. The route back to the surface had been sealed five thousand years ago with only links to the sensors secreted on the planet’s surface left in place.

For the past several hours Guardian II had been running a self-diagnostic of itself and all the systems under its control. The priority was power. The cold fusion reactor also buried under the Martian soil was down to fourteen percent output. That was not enough to implement the other programs that had to be run.

The decision was made with simple logical computation. The majority of that fourteen percent was routed to the surface to run the alternate power program.

At the JPL control center, a large red digital clock gave the time remaining until Viking would complete its orbital pattern shift and then go over the Cydonia region. There were less than three hours on it.

In the meanwhile Kincaid’s people had accomplished what they said they couldn’t do: extend Surveyor’s able mast with the IMS on the end of it and orient it toward Mars — at least it was oriented twelve percent of the time, as Surveyor tumbled around in space in its erratic orbit. That percentage was slowly increasing as the engineers worked their programs to rotate the IMS in conjunction with the spin of the craft. With some luck and some time they might even be able to keep the IMS oriented on Mars full-time.

One of the large screens in the front of the room showed a slowly moving image from the IMS. The Face stared back at Surveyor, with the large pyramid just off to the side, the entire thing moving across the screen as the camera rolled. It was a very distant shot at a hard angle, but there was no denying that the image very clearly looked like an elongated face.

Every time Larry Kincaid looked up and saw that image, he felt a shiver run through him. To know that somewhere among those apparent ruins, aliens were coming out of their long hibernation — aliens that had traveled among the stars while man was still living in grass huts and caves — made him feel very small in the universe.

Kincaid was checking some of the new data his flight engineers had come up with for Surveyor when a sudden explosion of commotion in the front of the room drew his attention up.

He immediately saw the cause for the excitement. The massive pyramid in the midst of the Cydonia ruins was opening. The four sides were separating, like a flower blossoming for the sun. A dark center appeared in the center as the sides slowly split.

Kincaid knew the dimensions of that pyramid and the sheer magnitude of the engineering required to do that staggered him. He leaned forward, waiting. After five minutes of slow movement the sides reached vertical, revealing a perfect black square. Kincaid’s eyes, and those of people all over the world whose TV shows were interrupted with the live feed, were straining to see what was inside.

Suddenly there was a sharp glistening of light all around the upper edge. The light grew stronger as the sides started over toward the planet’s surface, the inner sides reflecting the distant sun. After fifteen minutes, and twelve rotations of the IMS, the four panels finally reached the ground. The bright light they reflected was almost blinding the IMS’s image.

“What the hell is that?” One of the flight engineers asked the question people all over the planet glued to their TVs were asking.

Kincaid knew what it was, but the sheer size was unbelievable. “Solar panels,” he said. Solar panels were used on most of the probes and orbiters to supply power, so Kincaid had more than a passing knowledge on the subject. He pulled a calculator out of his pocket and began punching in numbers.

“Jesus,” he muttered when the last figure came up on his screen. Human solar panels that big would produce enough power to run New York City, and Kincaid suspected that the Airlia probably had better-engineered panels. “What the hell is going to need that much power?” he asked out loud, but no one in the control room had an answer.

He looked up at the four large, shiny triangles that now lay where the pyramid they had formed once stood. Squinting he could just make out something in the center, underneath where the apex of the pyramid would formerly have been.

“Is this the best resolution the IMS can get?” he asked.

“Yes,” one of the technicians answered him.

“Any idea what’s that dark thing in the center of the panels?” Kincaid asked. “Not yet. It’s hard to make out, given the light contrast from the panels and Surveyor’s distance. We should know when Viking goes over.”

Duncan held a piece of paper she’d just received from a runner from the Navy communications center on the island. “We’ve got authorization to go into China and find out what Che Lu is uncovering in the tomb.”

“From who?” Turcotte asked.

She read the paper. “The National Command Authority under an ST-8 security clearance.”

“I’ve never heard of that clearance,” Turcotte said.

“We are instructed to get in and out without causing any international incident,” Duncan noted.

“Easier said than done,” Turcotte said.

The others were all gathered around the small TV, taking in the spectacle of the Airlia solar panels.

Duncan was thinking about the problem. “We know that China is not going to let us come in. We aren’t even going to bother to ask. We’re going to have to go in on the sly and get out without being noticed.” She looked at Turcotte. “And that, Mike, I believe, is your department. According to this we’ll be met at Osan Air Force Base in South Korea by a CIA liaison who can help us get to the tomb and link up with Che Lu.”

Turcotte stood. “Let’s get moving.”

“No,” Kelly Reynolds said, standing in their way, her feet planted wide apart. “I don’t think we should do this.”

“Kelly—” Nabinger began, but she cut him off.

“It will only cause trouble. Aspasia will be here soon. Why can’t we wait? If this tomb holds Airlia artifacts, then they belong to him. If it’s where the rebels are, then we shouldn’t disturb it. Again, that’s his problem.”

“Like the fight between the rebels and Aspasia wasn’t the problem of the people of Atlantis?” Nabinger asked.

“Peter’s right,” Turcotte said. “We can’t sit around and be spectators. We’re involved.”

“Don’t you see?” Kelly asked, grabbing the front of Turcotte’s camouflage shirt. “Don’t you see that you’re doing the same thing you did in Germany? People are going to get hurt for no reason.”

Turcotte’s face went hard. He grabbed her hands and held them inside his. “This is different.”

“Stay here with me and wait,” Kelly pleaded, looking from Turcotte to Nabinger to Duncan.

“We can’t,” Lisa Duncan said. “We have to do our jobs just like you have to do yours.”

“If I had done mine after we got Johnny out of Dulce,” Reynolds said, “he wouldn’t be dead. Instead I went along with you while you did your jobs, as you put it. I’m not doing that again.”

“We’re not asking you to,” Duncan said. “This will be a classified military operation. All I ask is that you not report anything about it.”

“I can’t do that,” Reynolds said.

“Kelly”—Turcotte slowly removed her hands from his shirt and let go of them— “if you report this, the Chinese will know we’re coming and people will die. Namely us.”

“If it’s the only way to stop you, I will report it,” Reynolds threatened. “You’re not going to stop us,” Turcotte said. “We’re going in no matter what you do.”

“Damn it!” Reynolds exclaimed. “Why? Why does it have to be the U.S. against China? The Russians and the ship they hid? The South African corporation and what they hid? Why do we fight and lie among ourselves? We won’t be ready, like Aspasia thinks we are, if we keep doing this. Human against human.”

“It isn’t about human against human,” Turcotte said. He stepped around her. “It’s about finding out the truth on our own.” He walked out of the tent, the others following, leaving Kelly Reynolds alone and listening to the sound of the storm batter the tent.

Inside Qian-Ling, Che Lu and the remaining students had backtracked their way to the doors they had come in. In the dim glow of the flashlight she could see that the doors were indeed shut, and even with everyone pushing they couldn’t budge the metal.

A quick check of the meager supplies they had brought in revealed they had enough water to last perhaps four or five days at best if they were very conservative.

Light was perhaps the biggest problem. Among the seven of them they had eight flashlights. Che Lu estimated even using only one at a time, they had less than sixty hours of light left.

“All right,” she said to the frightened students who were huddled together around the one lit flashlight like moths around a fire. “We cannot get back out this way. Perhaps Lo Fa will come back, but I do not think so. We are on our own.”

“Who would do this to us?” one of the young girls, Funing, wailed.

Che Lu had considered that and accepted the obvious answer. “The army.” “But why?” Funing asked.

“Because someone ordered them to,” Che Lu said. “Someone in Beijing must have realized that they shouldn’t have issued us the permission to go in, and this is the easiest solution.” She kept to herself the disturbing news Lo Fa had passed to her.

“We’re going to die!” Funing cried out.

“We’re not dead yet,” Che Lu snapped, “so quit your crying. I’ve been in worse situations than this.” She pointed down the main tunnel. “There were two side tunnels. They have to go somewhere. From the ancient records there are supposed to be miles of tunnels in this tomb. We can find another way out.”

“But what about what happened to Taizho?” Funing cried. “We could walk into the same thing!”

“We will be careful.” Che Lu took a bamboo pole that one of the students used as a walking stick. “Tie a cloth to this. Then we hold the pole out in front of the first person like this,” she demonstrated, “with the cloth hanging down. That will trip any beam like that which killed Taizho.”

“And if there are beams in both side tunnels?” Funing asked.

Che Lu was growing weary of the girl. “Then we truly are trapped and then we will die,” she said. “But we don’t know that right now and we won’t until we act. So get to your feet!”

“I will take the pole,” Ki said, surprising Che Lu.

“Thank you,” she said.

“Let’s go,” Ki said, and headed down the tunnel toward the intersection, one of the other students slightly behind him, holding the flashlight. The rest of them followed, single file, like blind ducks in a row.

“Look at this,” Nabinger said, holding a piece of paper the driver had given him. They were in a HUMMV, being driven to the airstrip where a plane Duncan had requisitioned waited for them. The squeak of the windshield wipers added to the unhappy mood inside. Nabinger was in the front seat next to the driver, while Turcotte and Duncan were in back. “What is it?” Turcotte asked.

“The translation of the Chinese characters on the stone that my friend just faxed back to the Naval Operations Center.” Nabinger read it to the others. “It reads: Cing Ho reached this place as directed. He did his duty as ordered.” “Who the hell was Cing Ho?” Turcotte asked.

“I’ll have to look it up once we get airborne,” Nabinger said, turning back to the front.

Turcotte felt a nudge in his side. He turned to Duncan, who leaned close so she could speak to him without being overheard. “I’m sorry about what Kelly said. About Germany. She said that to get to you. To stop you from doing the right thing.”

“You know about Germany?”

“It’s why I chose you to infiltrate Area 51,” Duncan said.

“Because I was part of a fucked-up operation that got a bunch of innocent civilians killed?” Turcotte asked.

“Don’t be an asshole,” Duncan gently said. “You didn’t kill any of them. And you stopped the man who did as quickly as you could.”

“I was there.”

“Give me a break, Mike,” she said. “More importantly, give yourself a break. I picked you because you refused the medal they offered you for the ‘fucked-up operation,’ as you called it. Because you took personal responsibility.”

The brakes squealed as they pulled up to the stairs leading up to their plane. As Turcotte started to get out, he felt Duncan’s hand on his shoulder, causing him to pause.

“And remember,” she said, “the facts show I chose the right man.”

Major Quinn had been working on his laptop for the past three hours, weaving his way through the various codes and numbers that made up the Department of Defense satellite communications system. He had finally found what he was looking for, but the information did more to confuse the situation than clarify it.

The strange woman, Oleisa, was making satellite communications back to a ground station located somewhere in Antarctica. A station that, other than having a routing number, did not exist in any government records, classified or not, that he could find, other than a reference to an organization named STAAR.

Quinn leaned back in his chair and thought for a moment. Then he typed some new commands into his control console, accessing the security camera that was in the part of the hangar Oleisa had taken over. He wasn’t surprised when the screen came back blank and the computer informed him that that camera had been taken offline.

“All right,” Quinn said to himself, enjoying the challenge. “There’s got to be a mention of STAAR somewhere. And I’m going to find it.” He turned back to his laptop and began typing. Then, suddenly, he paused. Antarctica. There was a connection between that continent and Majestic-12. And there was someone who knew about that connection: the-only surviving member of the original twelve members of the committee.

Quinn knew where he had to go now: the base hospital at Nellis Air Force Base where that man, Werner Von Seeckt, former Nazi and SS scientist, was being kept alive by machines.