The Rock

THE CHAMBER

Hawkins rolled to his right. Off the cot, into a kneeling position on the floor. The muzzle of the pistol he'd retrieved from under the pillow was centered on the figure standing in the darkened tent. The intruder froze, eyes fixed on the large black hole pointing between his eyes.

"Sir, Mr. Lamb sent me to inform you that we've broken through in the Rock."

Hawkins forced himself to relax, sliding his finger off the trigger. The marine hurriedly left, glad to be out of sight. Throwing a shirt over his sweat-soaked chest, Hawkins made his way to the shaft building, trying to clear his mind of a jumble of sleep-induced dark thoughts. He vaguely remembered cloudy visions of Richman, screaming for help, and running toward his executive officer, firing a weapon from his hip, but never able to get any closer and the cries growing weaker and fading, then reemerging from another direction in a never-ending cycle.

Hawkins squinted at the horizon as he walked on the sandstone top of the Rock. The sun was sinking in the western sky, giving slight relief from the blistering heat of daytime. The view from the top of the Rock was magnificent-the Olgas on the far eastern horizon and the Gibson Desert stretching out in all other directions-but Hawkins's eyes didn't see the beauty.

He met Fran, Debra, and Pencak as they went into the metal building. No words were exchanged as they entered the steam bath inside. Batson was already up on the platform, along with Lamb. The silence was unsettling-even though they'd been at the Rock less than twenty-four hours, they'd all grown used to the sound of the drills and explosions. Now only the rhythmic mutter of the generators filled the air. The President's aide turned as they clambered up the stairs.

"We're running a fiber-optic cable down there." He pointed at a small TV screen perched on the platform. "We should get our first view shortly."

"Another thirty feet," Tomkins advised as the twin cable ran over his gloved hand and disappeared into the hole. "One's the fiber-optic line, the other is the light." He gestured down with his free hand. "We punched through into something open. The drill suddenly dropped a good five feet. I ran it down from there and we hit something solid ten more feet down. It's at the depth the EMR sounding told us there was an open area."

The winch stopped and Tomkins let go of the cables. He moved over to a control panel and glanced at Lamb. "Ready, sir?"

"Go ahead."

Tomkins threw a switch. The TV screen went from dark to a hazy black-and-white picture. Tomkins fiddled with the controls and a smoothly cut rock wall came into focus, approximately ten feet from the cable end.

"That's not natural," Batson murmured.

"I'm rotating," Tomkins announced.

The view shifted, the rock wall coming slightly closer and then moving out again, suggesting an elliptical shape. It grew farther away and then suddenly ended.

"The black Wall," Fran whispered to Hawkins. He peered at the screen as the scene continued to shift. The black Wall extended directly across the chamber, looking as if cut in half, although there was no guessing what was on the other side-or if there was another side. Hawkins could tell why Richman had been vague in his description. Even in the two-dimensional screen of the black-and-white TV it was obvious there was something very strange about the texture of the Wall.

"It's empty except for the Wall," Tomkins noted.

"Let's go," Batson said.

Lamb looked at Hawkins, who nodded. "How do I get down?"

Tomkins pointed at a small, waist-high cage that was suspended by cable on a winch. Hawkins stepped into the cage. Lamb handed him a small radio that was hooked into the cable and Hawkins put the headset on, then grabbed the cable for support.

Tomkins maneuvered the levers on his control panel and the cage swung out over the narrow hole. Hawkins glanced down once, then looked at Tomkins and gave him the thumbs-up. With a slight start the cage slowly settled into the hole. Hawkins watched the lip rise up and then he was completely surrounded by rock pressing in on all sides. He looked up and watched the opening grow smaller and smaller. Down below, the faint light from the fiber-optic cable made a small pinprick of brightness at the end of a long, dark tunnel.

The cage was surprisingly stable, so Hawkins released his grip on the cable and relaxed. It was a tight fit-if he'd wanted to, he could have touched either side of the tunnel by just moving his arms a couple of inches or so out of the cage. Because of that he knew they were going to be limited on the equipment they could bring down here. After what he estimated to be about a minute the light below appeared to be closer than the one above. The temperature dropped rapidly as he went down. The descent slowed and Hawkins watched the end come up. He slid into the chamber and the basket touched the floor with a slight jar.

"I'm down," he announced into the boom mike.

"Is it clear to send the others?" Lamb wanted to know.

Hawkins looked around. This part of the chamber looked as if someone had taken a football and sliced it first horizontally with the rock floor and then vertically with the black Wall. The rock walls were smoothly cut, almost polished. There was nothing to indicate how they'd been made-no blast marks, no sign of drilling. The small pile of rubble from where the drill had bit through was the only thing that marred the antiseptic atmosphere of the chamber. The air was clear and the coolness was a welcome relief from the heat above.

Hawkins peered at the black Wall. It seemed to shimmer in the glow of the optic-cable light. His skin felt tight, the hairs standing up, as if he were close to a powerful electrical field. This close, he could very much understand Richman's lack of clarity about the Wall. It certainly did not look like anything Hawkins had ever seen.

"Looks all right. I'm clearing the cage."

Hawkins took off the headset and put it on the floor of the cage and watched as it rose from the floor and disappeared above. He took the opportunity to walk up to the black Wall. Standing right in front he felt very uneasy. He had no desire to touch the glistening black material. Hawkins had a feeling there was something on the other side-maybe even someone. Hawkins wondered if it was a sophisticated version of those one-way mirrors that police used in interrogation rooms. He didn't like the idea that he might be under observation. Beyond that, though, he sensed a tremendous power and energy inherent in that wavering black surface. The air had a charged feel to it, as if a powerful electric current was running close by.

Hawkins started as he caught movement behind him. The cage settled in and Lamb stepped off and the cage started back up immediately. Lamb stepped up next to Hawkins and stared at the Wall, wordlessly. Batson was the next to arrive and he checked out not only the black Wall but the stone too.

"I don't know what cut this chamber out of the rock, but these walls are smoother than anything I've ever seen done in a mine. Maybe a laser with a hell of a lot of power, but I haven't heard of anything yet made that's powerful enough to do this." He looked about. "And there doesn't seem to be any access to even get machinery in here." His voice dropped almost to whisper. "It's like it just appeared here."

"What do you make of this?" Lamb gestured at the black Wall.

Batson shook his head as he stepped up to it. "It's not rock. At least not any rock that I've ever seen. It might be some sort of metal," he said dubiously. He started to reach out his hand.

"I wouldn't do that!" Hawkins snapped.

Reluctantly, Batson pulled his hand back. "It almost looks like it's permeable."

"Yeah, but if it is, we don't know what it's permeable to, nor do we know what's on the other side."

Fran had arrived by now, holding a portable video camera. She started to film the entire chamber. Levy was next down, followed by Pencak and then Captain Tomkins.

The basket went back up and Hawkins turned to Lamb. "What now? We know we've got what appears to be the same thing that the Russians have at Tunguska, but that doesn't do us much good."

Tomkins was tying in a power line that he'd brought down with him and hooking in some small portable lights. Lamb didn't answer Hawkins right away as he continued to stare at the black Wall. Finally he turned to the members of the team. "Anyone have any ideas what this is?"

There was a brief silence, then Pencak spoke. "I'd say it was a door."

Lamb frowned. "A door? To what? The other side?"

"Of course the other side," Pencak replied. "The question is, what's on the other side? Or more appropriately, where is the other side?"

"What do you mean, where?" Lamb asked, but Pencak ignored him.

Hawkins rubbed a hand through his hair. "Maybe it's some sort of force field to protect the equipment that made the transmission."

"Maybe it is the equipment that made the transmission," Fran threw in.

Lamb turned to Tomkins. "Can we rig some sort of device to touch this Wall?"

Hawkins noted that there now seemed to be an unspoken agreement among all in the chamber that no person was going to make contact with the Wall.

"Yes, sir. I've got some remote arms that we ought to be able to break down and get through the shaft."

"All right." Lamb turned to Hawkins. "We're going to-"

Fran's yell cut him off and Hawkins stared in amazement as the black Wall flickered. Patterns of searingly bright light flowed across the surface for almost five seconds, then suddenly stopped. It went back to black for two seconds, then glowed bright white for a split second and Richman tumbled out, sprawling to the floor, blood pumping from his right shoulder, his MP5 gripped tightly in his right hand. Just as quickly, the Wall turned black again.

Hawkins sprinted to his executive officer and knelt beside him. Richman was conscious, looking up at Hawkins with disbelieving eyes. The muzzle of his submachine gun wavered uncertainly about the chamber, his finger pulling fruitlessly on the trigger with the bolt closed on an empty chamber.

"Are you all right?" Hawkins asked as he carefully extracted the weapon from Richman's hands and then put pressure on the wound.

Richman looked about in confusion as the others in the chamber gathered around. "Where am I?"

"Australia," Hawkins replied. "Ayers Rock."

Richman lifted his head and looked at the black Wall and then back at Hawkins. "I don't understand."

"What happened, Lou?" Hawkins pulled a dressing out of the case on Richman's combat vest and tore it open. "The last transmission we heard from you was that you were moving. You went off the air in the middle of it. We thought you were dead."

Richman shook his head. "I don't know what happened. They were closing in on me. I didn't have any choice. If I'd stayed, I'd have been dead." He lifted himself up on his good elbow and nodded his head toward the black Wall. "That was the only place I could go. I ran into the Wall-I didn't even know if I could go through or if I'd bounce off. But that was in Russia!"

The chamber went silent as everyone's eyes shifted from Richman to the black Wall and then back. Pencak was the first to break the silence. "You went into the black Wall in Tunguska and you came out here?"

Richman shrugged, the move bringing a grimace of pain to his face. "Yes."

"But you went off the radio over eight hours ago!" Hawkins said. "Where were you in between?"

"Eight hours! But I just went through!"

"Tell us what you do know," Lamb snapped.

Richman glared up at the presidential advisor. Hawkins wrapped the bandage around his XO's shoulder and whispered in his ear, "It's all right. Go ahead, Rich."

"But I can't tell you anything more than I have. I ran into the Wall-it was like suddenly stepping into molasses-everything slowed down. Once I touched it, there was no way to pull back. It sucked me in. It was all bright for a second and then dark. Then it was bright again and I was falling out here. I don't know where the eight hours went. For me it was-"

"Hey!" Tomkins's yell startled everyone. Hawkins looked up and was surprised to see Levy standing next to the Wall, reaching out with her hands.

Fran stepped forward. "Debra! What are you doing? I don't think you should-"

She stopped in mid-sentence as Levy stepped into the Wall. Her body started to melt into the black. Hawkins was on his feet and moving. Levy was halfway gone when he grabbed her right shoulder and pulled. To his amazement the effort seemed to have the opposite effect. He was drawn in, feeling the black surround him like a warm, wet blanket. He was blinded by a flash of white and then was gone.