The Rock

PENCAK

Fran forced herself not to let her shock show as Dr. Pencak was introduced by Lamb. They'd been briefed that the older woman had been severely injured as a teenager in a car accident, but Fran had never seen anyone so scarred. Surely modern plastic surgery could have corrected some of the deformities, Fran thought as she viewed the older woman.

Pencak took a seat and her single gray eye took in each of them, one by one, betraying no emotion. She laid her finely engraved cane with a large silver handle across her knees. "So. You went through quite a bit of trouble to get me here. What do you wish to know?"

"You were briefed on the transmission?" Hawkins asked.

"Yes. But my name was not among those on the message. So why am I here?"

A voice snapped across the room. "You know why." Fran was surprised at Batson's testiness. He seemed uneasy with Pencak, and the information Levy had uncovered just prior to Pencak's entrance had upset him. "One of the reception sites was very close to, or actually in, Meteor Crater."

Hawkins stood and gestured at the geologist, trying to calm things down a little. "Don says you're the world's foremost expert on Meteor Crater. Is there something there like what we have discovered so far in Ayers Rock?"

"From what I've been briefed, you haven't discovered anything in Ayers Rock yet," Pencak replied calmly. "All you have is a radio transmission and sonar and EM reading of an anomaly in the Rock indicating there may be an open space down there."

She waved her withered hand as Hawkins started to reply. "No, no, young man. Don't get all excited. You have a problem and you are approaching it in the manner almost everyone in the population approaches problems. That's by butting the top of their head against the wall they perceive the problem to be and hoping that sooner or later they will break through and the solution will be on the other side."

She graced Hawkins with a twisted smile. "But that's not the way it should be. You need to use what's inside your head. Let me see your analysis of the reception sites."

Lamb put the overlay on the overhead projector and turned it on. Pencak looked at it for a moment and then picked up an alcohol pen. She circled the site in North America.

"Meteor Crater. My home. You have all the numbers about size and depth and all that gobbledygook. All I can tell you is that there is nothing in the crater to receive the transmission from Ayers Rock. Nothing at present in the crater, that is. The bottom has been extensively swept over with various types of sensing devices-all searching for the core of the meteor that supposedly made the crater. It has never been found. Nor has anything like what you think you have in Ayers Rock."

She waved the dead hand again, once more cutting off Hawkins. She tapped the projector. "Despite its name it is not certain that Meteor Crater was created by a meteorite hitting the earth. That is simply the most widely accepted theory. There are others."

She circled the site in South America. "Campo del Cielo, Argentina. Actually, there are several craters there. All very close together. The theory is that several meteors hit, or one broke apart prior to impact and produced the same effect.

"Ah-Ries Basin." She put an X over the site in Europe. "Very interesting. Very large. Diameter almost fourteen miles. They've found boulders over thirty-five miles away that were ejected from that crater. Some think Ries was formed by volcanic action. Others by multiple meteor strikes." Pencak idly rubbed the dead side of her face. "People are so secure nowadays. They think it has all been solved. All the riddles of the world. Many even think most of the puzzles of space have also been solved."

She tapped the overhead. "Ries Basin hasn't been solved conclusively either. By the present school of thought sixty percent of researchers regard meteors as the agent that formed Ries Basin; forty percent volcanic action. Correct, Dr. Batson?"

Don was startled to be called on. "Well… yes, that's true."

"Thank you. The bottom line is neither answer fits exactly." The marker crept south to Africa. "Vredefort Dome. Here the experts are very confused. The topography and the geology fit no existing pattern. No crater there, but the earth around the dome appears to have been buckled and in many places literally inverted by some massive force a long time ago. Unexplainable?" She laughed. "Of course not. The accepted theory is multiple meteor strikes.

"Funny, isn't it? Multiple meteor strikes. Throughout recorded history we have never had even the slightest mention of a single large-scale meteor strike. But here they are saying several major strikes occurred at approximately the same time on the cosmic scale."

Pencak pointed down at the tent floor. "Do you know that less than twenty miles from here there's a place called Henbury Craters? Twelve craters of various sizes. The explanation was a shower of meteorites. All landing within a half mile of one another and a hair's breadth away from this very spot, when you consider the surface area of the Earth."

Pencak sighed. "Ladies and gentlemen, this is the point at which I am usually asked to shut up and the class professors give their students the information they need to ingest to get an A on their next test."

"This isn't a test," Hawkins said quietly. "We need to know what the connection may be among these sites. What you think the connection is."

Pencak regarded him for almost half a minute and then nodded. "All right. I think there is little doubt but that meteors have occasionally hit the Earth over the course of millions of years. But most of those strike sites have traces of the meteor somewhere in them. Others occurred so long ago, or are so massive, that it is impossible to tell. Indeed it was only when we were able to look back down on the Earth from space that we were able to see some of the patterns.

"There are those who believe that a massive meteor once hit Earth near what is now the east coast of Hudson Bay. There is a four-hundred-mile-long indentation in the Earth's crust, called the Nastapoka Arc that suggests an impact. This might even have been the meteor that scholars have postulated helped cause the extinction of the dinosaurs. But that occurred much longer ago than the sites we are concerned with here.

"Our atmosphere eats up well over 99.9 percent of all meteors that come close. Those that get through have to be rather large and on a very direct azimuth; otherwise the atmosphere bounces them back into space.

"That latter occurrence happened back in 1972, although most don't know about it. On August tenth of that year a meteor traveling at about ten miles a second and estimated to be about fifteen feet in diameter and weighing almost a ton hit Earth's atmosphere. The first visual sighting was over Nevada, although I would assume that NORAD in Colorado Springs had been tracking it for a while.

"Ninety seconds after being seen over Nevada it was over eastern Canada and then bouncing back out into space. A meteor of that size-if it had had the slightest change in trajectory and actually hit the Earth-would have had the explosive force of about twenty kilotons. If it had landed on Las Vegas you could have said good-bye to the entire city and an area twenty miles around it.

"The government kept word of this secret for over two years and then released it in a manner calculated to generate as little attention as possible. Think about it!" Pencak leaned forward and Fran found herself drawn in by the older woman. "Las Vegas came within a hair-at least by astronomical measurement-of being obliterated and nothing was mentioned for two years.

"So what else hasn't been said? The sad thing is that when we can't explain something by knowns, we throw out the possibility of the unknown. We ignore it." Pencak then proceeded to outline the same theory about the physical evidence concerning Meteor Crater that she had for the class the previous week. That made Hawkins sit up and take notice.

"You're saying that the most likely cause of Meteor Crater was a nuclear explosion?"

"It is the only thing that fits all the evidence-the intense heat; the silica; the fused quartz sandstone; the lack of meteor fragments; the shape of the crater-all of it. The same is true of Campo del Cielo, Ries Basin, and Vredefort Dome. All explained away so glibly as the result of meteor strikes, yet there isn't sufficient evidence to conclusively demonstrate it."

"Vredefort Dome is not a crater," Don Batson pointed out. "How can you link it with the other sites?"

"The Dome itself is not a crater," Pencak agreed. "But what do you know of the Bushveld Igneous Complex?"

"It's one of the richest, perhaps the richest, mining areas in the world, most particularly for diamonds."

"And what forms diamonds?" Pencak asked.

"Intense heat and pressure," Batson replied testily.

"And what is the shape of the Bushveld Complex?"

"An elongated circle," Batson replied. "But that doesn't mean-"

"Patience, young man. How was the Complex formed?"

"Well, that's not quite certain. Some suggest massive lava flows along with strong magnetic effects in the area." Batson shifted uncomfortably in his seat, used to being on the other side of the questioning.

"And the Dome?" She turned her attention from Batson when he didn't answer. "It's been called one of the most unique geological structures in the world. About sixty miles southwest of Johannesburg a ring of hills rises, surrounding an almost flat plain. Research has shown that the subsurface rock of the plain has been upturned to a depth of almost seven miles, thus forming the Dome. Imagine the forces involved to do that! Again, no one can quite explain this phenomenon occurring naturally."

"But how could all these formations have been caused by nuclear explosions?" Fran wanted to know. "How old are they?"

"Estimates vary from site to site. Anywhere from five to thirty thousand years old; some perhaps much older. That sounds like a large span of time, but when you balance it against the age of the Earth, in astronomical terms, it's almost the blink of an eye."

Fran shook her head. "Then I repeat my question: How could these craters and formations have been caused by nuclear explosion? That doesn't occur spontaneously in nature."

"No, it doesn't," Pencak agreed. "My theory is that the explosions were caused by some extraterrestrial life-form."

"What!" Batson could no longer sit still. "You're saying Earth got nuked thousands of years ago by aliens?"

"Putting it in layman's terms-yes."

Fran looked at the other members of the team. Debra was just staring at the old woman, as if soaking in her words. Don was shaking his head angrily. Hawkins was looking between Pencak and Lamb, whose face indicated his obvious disbelief. Fran wasn't sure how she herself felt.

Pencak explained herself further. "Originally, I'm not sure whether the explosions were deliberate-by which I mean weapons; or accidental-perhaps mishaps aboard nuclear-powered spacecraft. Based on the events you have witnessed here, though, I now believe the majority of the explosions to have been deliberate."

"But"-Hawkins paused and shook his head-"I'm just a dumb soldier. I don't quite understand this."

Pencak gave her twisted smile. "I'm sure you are anything but a dumb soldier, Major, or else you would not be here. I don't understand it either. Mind you, I am not saying I am certain that these craters were formed by extraterrestrial life-forms or even that they are the result of nuclear explosions. It is simply the solution that most closely fits the facts.

"Look at it logically based on the additional information you now have: You have an unknown entity-whether organic or purely mechanical-inside this Rock that is communicating with you using the data off the record on Voyager 2. The probe was out of the solar system proper when it disappeared. No one on Earth could have caused the destruction of the probe."

She tapped the overhead. "This entity attempted communication with these sites-perhaps there was a series of colonies at each of those locations thousands of years ago. Or more likely just research facilities. Perhaps what is in the Rock is simply an automated relay site, left behind by a race that might not exist any longer."

Fran glanced at Levy, thinking about her touchstone theory.

Pencak waved her good hand about. "It's a good place to hide a site, don't you think? In the middle of the world's largest rock in the middle of one of the world's harshest deserts. The Aborigines certainly have numerous legends about Ayers Rock, don't they? It has long been theorized that many ancient legends might be based on the reality of extraterrestrial visitors."

Pencak shrugged, her one shoulder lifting and the other remaining dead. "I don't know the answer. I can only offer possibilities. I would suggest that the Henbury Craters that are so close by here may be the results of near misses caused by weapons that were meant for Ayers Rock. Maybe there was an interstellar war a long time ago and these were military bases."

Fran saw Hawkins swing his gaze to Lamb at that last sentence and then back to Pencak. She knew what he was thinking-if Lamb had had an idea that this was true, that explained the obsession with secrecy. Had Lamb given them the entire message? What did Lamb really hope to find in the Rock?

"Excuse me." Debra spoke for the first time.

"Yes, dear?" Pencak twisted in her seat.

"You've talked about only five of the six sites. You haven't said anything about the one in Russia. Is there a crater there?"

Pencak stood up. "Ah, yes. Russia. That is the one I've been thinking about ever since Mr. Lamb briefed me. Could you put the overhead with the Russian site on the screen, please?"

Lamb sorted through the slides and then slid the correct one on top of the glass and turned on the power. A map showing the central part of what used to be the USSR was lit up with a circle drawn in the south-center.

Pencak walked up to the screen. "You have narrowed this down to a diameter of what?" she asked Lamb.

"Four hundred kilometers."

She ran her finger along the map, below the top edge of the circle. "The Trans-Siberian Railway runs here along the southern edge of your circle. North of that-stretching for thousands of miles up to above the Arctic Circle-is the Central Siberian Uplands, one of the most least populated and most desolate places on earth. To the south, Mongolia and the Gobi desert."

She looked at Lamb. "I believe I know the exact spot that message was sent to."

"How do you know?" Lamb demanded.

"Because there is only one place out there that makes any sense."

"Where?" Hawkins asked.

Her finger stabbed the screen. "Here. Tunguska."

She nodded at Lamb. "You thought perhaps the Soviet facility at Semipalatinsk?"

Lamb was startled. "No. That's farther to the west."

"Yes." She pointed a few hundred miles to the left of the circle. "Semipalatinsk is where the Soviets used to test high-energy lasers and charged-particle weapons," she explained to the others in the room. "Also, quite a bit of underground nuclear testing went on there. I imagine it is still open for business by the new people in charge. But, no, I believe the message was aimed at Tunguska."

"What's at Tunguska?" Fran was impatient with Pencak's sparring with Lamb.

"It's not so much what is at Tunguska-it's more what happened at Tunguska and what may have been there," Pencak replied cryptically.

"Please tell us," Debra asked.

"This is crazy," Batson said. "I don't think we need to sit here and-"

"We need to explore every possibility," Hawkins quietly interrupted. "If you don't want to listen to it, you can leave."

"I'll listen," Batson grudgingly said.

"Go ahead," Hawkins said to Pencak.

Pencak sat down with a sigh and was quiet for a moment. When she started, her gravelly voice was very low and Fran had to lean forward to hear her over the rumble coming from the mine tent a hundred meters away. "The Trans-Siberian Railroad was completed in 1906. Four thousand miles long, it opened up perhaps the loneliest place on earth. Siberia is half again as big as the United States and in the first decade of this century the population in that area was well below one million people.

"In 1908, on June thirtieth, a little after seven in the morning local time, passengers on the railroad saw something sear across the sky and disappear below the horizon to the north. There was an explosion. Thirty-seven miles from the epicenter, at the trading station called Vanavara-the nearest populated location-the shock wave knocked buildings down and people in the open were dosed with radiation. At the site itself trees were obliterated for miles around and blown outward in a concentric pattern for dozens of miles. Herds of reindeer were blasted.

"In London, five hours after the explosion, instruments picked up the shock wave in the air-that was after it had already traveled twice around the world. They thought nothing much of it until that night, when there was a strange glow, bright red in the eastern sky. For two months afterward the night sky over England-indeed all of Europe-was much brighter than normal.

"Yet no one immediately made the connection with what had happened in Tunguska. The site itself was not formally investigated for twenty years. You have to remember that that was a turbulent time in Russian history. You also have to understand the remoteness of the Siberian tundra. It is the most godforsaken place on Earth. Miles and miles of pine trees growing in permafrost. You can travel for thousands of kilometers without any noticeable change in the terrain or any relief from the monotony. It is horrible!"

Fran was surprised at the rise in Pencak's voice and her strong emotion. "You sound as if you've been there."

"I have. I visited Tunguska in 1965 as part of an international team investigating the site. Although it was fifty-seven years after the explosion, the actual area still had not recovered. You could see the old deadfall blown outward with the new trees struggling to grow among it."

She sighed. "Ah-again they say it was a meteorite that caused the explosion. This time, though-no crater. So they say it exploded in the air instead of in the ground. The ice in the meteor head overheated and caused it to blow apart just before impact.

"Fools." Pencak shook her head. "Any ice would have been gone shortly after entering the atmosphere. Amazing how they will try to jam the data into the solution rather than find the solution that fits the evidence."

"What did you find?" Hawkins asked.

"We found the signs of an air-burst nuclear explosion. I would say the equivalent of a thirty-megaton blast. That is ten times the size of the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima.

"We found traces of the radioactive isotope cesium one thirty-seven in the ring structure of trees on the outskirts of the blast that corresponds to the year of the explosion. We found no sign of a crater. In fact, the trees at the very center of the blast were found still to be standing-the shock wave propagated outward from there, knocking the trees down in concentric rings. It was impossible to do any sort of soundings in the ground with the instruments we had available because of the permafrost.

"But despite all that evidence my colleagues agreed that it was a comet. All the non-Russian scientists, at least. The Russians themselves said nothing. They had their own theories."

"What did they think?" Hawkins asked.

Pencak got up and walked over to the coffee machine and poured herself a cup. Fran caught Hawkins's eye and mouthed, What do you think? to him. In reply Hawkins shrugged and tapped his ear, indicating, Listen.

Taking a sip of her coffee, Pencak continued. "The Russians are a strange people. We look down on their technological and scientific capabilities, but they did quite well for themselves working under an intolerable system that did not promote innovative thinking.

"The Russians have always been very interested in Tunguska-especially in the years since the Great Patriotic War. In 1946, after seeing what happened at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Gregori Kazakov said that the explosion at Tunguska must have been nuclear and suggested that it had been caused by the nuclear engine of a spacecraft exploding. He said that traces of metallic iron found in the area were fragments from the skin of the spaceship. Other metals found there were from the ship's wiring. He based his theory on the fact that a spacecraft exploding in midair would leave no crater and form the effect that was noted in the area.

"In 1959 Professor Felix Zigorski, an aerodynamics expert from the Moscow Aviation Institute, also said the explosion must have been nuclear." She looked over at Lamb. "As you probably know, Felix was the head of the Russian team that went with us to the site in '65. Later on he was one of the men in charge of training their cosmonauts. He continued to claim, until his death four years ago, that there was no doubt but that extraterrestrial spacecraft have been active in the skies over Russia.

"Korkorov, a Russian aircraft designer, introduced a new angle on the Tunguska incident. He examined eyewitness reports of the object that had been moving across the sky and concluded that it had to have been under intelligent control. His calculation based on the reports show it slowed to around point six kilometers per second prior to the explosion, indicating an attempt to perhaps land-a meteorite would have continued to accelerate and been going much faster than that. Also, he laid out the route according to the various accounts and it appears, if the accounts from 1908 are to be believed, that the object actually made a significant course change prior to exploding."

"I'm a little confused," Hawkins said. "What does an explosion in 1908 have to do with these craters that you say are at least five thousand years old?"

Pencak regarded him for a few seconds. "I would say the likelihood that whatever is in the Rock has tried to communicate with Tunguska ties them together. Obviously, they are all part of some sort of alien system. I suppose we will find out what kind of system when we complete the tunnel and come face to face with whatever is down there."

"Unless we communicate with it first," Debra said.

"That's another thing that makes me think we are dealing with aliens," Pencak commented.

"What's another thing?" Hawkins asked, the confusion plain in his voice.

"The frequency the initial transmission from the Rock was sent on. Fourteen twenty megahertz, correct?"

Lamb flipped open a file folder to check. "Right."

"Zigorski investigated material he called 'angel's hair' found at the sites where UFOs were reported in the former Soviet Union. These were metal needles about twenty-one to twenty-three centimeters long, wrapped together in a strange pattern. The needles were extremely thin and usually disintegrated or were blown away shortly after the sighting. Needles twenty-one centimeters in length, if used as antennas, would be broadcasting and receiving on a frequency around fourteen twenty megahertz."

"When and where were these needles found?" Lamb wanted to know.

"Zigorski investigated several reports all over the Soviet Union in the late sixties and early seventies."

"Maybe it was chaff used by their Air Force," Hawkins suggested. "Designed to throw off radar tracking at various frequencies. Maybe the UFO itself was an experimental aircraft. Like our Stealth fighter that was spotted out West for several years before the Air Force went public."

"Possibly," Pencak acknowledged. "I don't know. But I find it very interesting that it is the same frequency as that used by the Rock. Also, angel's hair has also been found at reported UFO sites in the United States."

"So now we have UFOs," Batson commented. "And prehistoric nuclear explosions combined with one in 1908 in Siberia. Come on, people. Let's get real here."

Lamb stood. "All right-that's enough for now. We have a lot of theories but no real answers. I've requested permission for us to transmit to the Rock. I haven't received an answer yet, but if it's a go, I want you people to give me a message to send. It has to be nonthreatening and non-informative. Basically we need to know if we can communicate with it. Is that clear?"

"Clear," Hawkins answered for the team.