Area 51

CHAPTER 33

“It’s going to get worse before it gets better,” Turcotte said.

“What now?” Kelly asked.

“Our satellite link shows we’ve got company up ahead too. Looks like a bunch of interceptors waiting for us to hit their kill zone.”

“So what’s the get-better part?” Kelly asked.

“Well, it always gets better after it gets worse,” Turcotte said. “Either that or you’re dead.”

“Great philosophy,” she muttered.

A covey of F-16’s from the Abraham Lincoln waited over the Pacific, circling on the flight path the target was projected to follow. That is, until small glowing orbs suddenly appeared and all craft lost engine power.

General Gullick closed his eyes, hearing the panicked reports from the pilots as their engines flamed out. He took the headset off and looked at the pilot. “Where are we headed?”

“I’ve projected out the flight path of Bouncer Four,” the pilot reported. He nodded his head at the screen. A line went straight from their present location over a thousand miles west of Colombia, due south.

“Antarctica?” Gullick asked. “There’s nothing out here.”

“Uh, actually, sir, I checked. There is an island along this route. Easter Island.”

“Easter Island?” General Gullick repeated. “What the fuck is on Easter Island?” He didn’t wait for an answer. He immediately got on the radio with the admiral in charge of the Abraham Lincoln task force. That resulted in a five- minute argument, as the admiral’s priorities were somewhat different from Gullick’s. He wanted to recover the downed aircrews. A compromise was reached and the majority of the task force turned to the south and steamed at flank speed for Easter Island, while several destroyers stayed behind to pick up the crews.

Turcotte watched the dots of the waiting aircraft disappear off the screen. He felt the anxiety level in his gut kick up a notch higher despite this apparently positive development.

“Talk to me, Professor. Tell me more about Easter Island.”

“There are two major volcanoes on the island,” Nabinger said. “Rano Raraku in the southeast and Rano Kao. Both have lakes inside the crater. On the slopes of Raraku are the quarries where the stone statues were cut and fashioned out of solid rock. Quite a few statues have been found there in various stages of creation. The inhabitants shaped each statue lying on its back, then cut down on the spine until it was free. Then they hauled it to its site, where it was raised onto a platform.

“It is interesting to note,” he continued, “that the main road leading away from Raraku is lined with statues and there are some who think this was a processional route.”

“To worship the fire-heads?” Kelly asked.

“Maybe. There are some who think the statues were simply abandoned there when the people rose up against the priests who oversaw the making of the statues. Those people put a tremendous, almost unbelievable, amount of resources into the creation and moving of those statues. It had to severely strain the economy of the island, and the theory is that eventually the common people revolted.”

“So Raraku is the place to look?” Turcotte cut in.

“Maybe.” Nabinger shrugged. “But on the rim of the other significant volcano, Rano Kao, over a thousand feet high, is where the ancient people built the village of Orongo — their sacred village. The lake inside the crater is almost a mile in diameter. Offshore of Kao lies a small island called Moto Nui, where birds — terns — nest. In ancient times the cult of the Birdman occurred every year in September, when young men would go from the volcano rim, climb down the cliffs to the sea, swim to Moto Nui, recover a tern egg, and the first man back was birdman for the year.”

Turcotte rubbed his forehead. “Okay, okay. They have birdmen. They have volcanoes. They got big statues. They got strange writings on wood tablets. But what the hell are we looking for? Has anything strange been found there that might suggest this guardian?”

“No.”

“Then what are we—” Turcotte paused as the pilot called out.

“We’ve got company!”

They looked out as six foo fighters bracketed their craft.

“I don’t like this,” Scheuler muttered. The foo fighters were making no threatening movements, hanging in position as they flew south.

“How far out are we?” Turcotte asked.

“ETA at Easter Island in two minutes.”

The foo fighters were slowing and closing in around their craft, forming a box on all sides.

“I don’t think we’re going to have any choice about where to look on the island,” Kelly said. “I think the guardian has decided all of that for us.”

“We’re going down,” Captain Scheuler announced unnecessarily, since all inside Bouncer Four could see the island below growing closer. The bouncer was being slowed by whatever force had taken over the controls.

“We’re heading for Rano Kao’s crater,” Nabinger said, pointing at the moonlit surface of the lake in the center of the large volcano.

“This thing waterproof?” Turcotte asked Scheuler.

“I hope so,” was the optimistic reply.

“Everyone hold on to something,” Turcotte called out as they descended below the edge of the crater’s rim. They splashed into the lake without much of a jar and then were enclosed in total darkness. For half a minute there was silence, and it was impossible to tell which way they were moving. A point of light appeared ahead and slightly above them, growing closer.

The light grew brighter, filtered through water, then suddenly they broke out into air again, into a large cavern. The bouncer lifted up above the surface of the water, which filled one half of the floor, and settled down on dry rock on the other half.

“We’re shut down,” Scheuler announced as the skin of the disk grew opaque. He tried the controls. “It won’t power up.”

Four thousand feet above Easter Island, General Gullick watched helplessly as the bouncer disappeared into the waters of the crater.

“Can you set us down on the airfield on the island?” he asked the pilot. “Sir, that’s a public airstrip. If we land there, the secret about this aircraft will be out.”

Gullick’s laugh had a edge of mania to it. “Major, there’s a lot of things that aren’t going to be secret come daybreak if I don’t get on top of all of this, and I can’t do it up here. Land.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Let’s see what we have,” Turcotte said, heading for the ladder leading to the top hatch. He climbed up and unfastened the seal, flipping the hatch open. He climbed out onto the upper deck of the bouncer and looked about as the others gathered around him.

“I’d say go that way.” He pointed toward a tunnel on the land end.

“After you,” Kelly said, with a sweep of her hand.

Turcotte led the way with Nabinger at his side, the others following, with Kelly bringing up the rear. The tunnel was lit by lines of light that seemed to be part of the ceiling.

The floor sloped up at first, raising faint hopes that it might go up to the surface, but then it leveled out and turned to the right.

They entered a cave, somewhat larger than the Cube.

Three walls were rock, but the far wall was metal. On it was a series of complex control panels with many levers and buttons. What caught everyone’s attention, though, was the large golden pyramid, twenty feet high, that sat in the center of the cave. Turcotte paused. It was similar to the one at Dulce, but larger. There was no glow above it, and Turcotte didn’t pick up any of the negative feelings he’d experienced in Dulce.

He reluctantly followed the others as they walked in silence up to the base of the pyramid, staring at its smooth surface in awe. Faintly etched in the metal were high runes.

“What do you think?” Turcotte asked of no one in particular. “I’m sure this thing controls whatever took over the bouncer and is keeping us from getting out of here.”

“Why are you in such a rush to get out of here?” Kelly asked. “This is the whole reason we came.”

“I was trained to always have a way out ready,” Turcotte said, staring at the pyramid suspiciously.

“Well, cool your spurs,” Kelly replied.

“My spurs are cool,” Turcotte replied. “I have the feeling the only thing waiting for us outside of this cave is going to be a lot of big guns.”

“This must be the guardian,” Kelly said.

They all held their place as Nabinger ran his hands over the high runes. “Amazing. This is the greatest find in archeological history.”

“This isn’t history, Professor,” Turcotte said as he walked forward into the room. “This is here and now, and we need to figure this thing out.”

“Can you read it?” Kelly asked.

“I can read some of them, yes.”

“Get to work, then,” Turcotte said.

Five minutes after Nabinger began, they were all startled when a golden glow appeared above the apex of the pyramid. Turcotte was pleased to note that he didn’t get the sick feeling that the other pyramid had produced. He was disturbed, though, when a gaseous golden tendril from the globe reached out and wrapped itself around Nabinger’s head.

“Take it easy,” Kelly said as Turcotte started forward.

“This thing, whatever it is, is in charge. Let Nabinger find out what it wants.”

The first helicopter from the Abraham Lincoln came in at one hour and twenty minutes after Gullick had landed at the Easter Island international airport. Given that there were only four flights into the airport every week — and today was one of the off days — they had no trouble taking over the airfield.

The fact that the island was Chilean and they were violating international law didn’t overly bother General Gullick either. He ignored the agitated requests from the admiral in charge of the Lincoln task force and the relays from Washington as people in charge woke up to the fact that something unusual was going on.

“I want an airstrike prepared,” Gullick ordered. “Target is the Rano Kao volcano. Everything you have. The target is under the water in the crater.”

The admiral would have ignored Gullick except for one very important thing: the general had the proper code words to authorize such a mission. On the deck of the Abraham Lincoln smart bombs were rolled out and crewmen began attaching them to the wings of aircraft.

Two hours after beginning, Nabinger had a dazed look on his face as the tendril unwrapped itself and flowed back into the golden globe.

“What have you learned?” Kelly asked as they all gathered around.

Nabinger shook his head, his eyes slowly focusing back to his surroundings. “Unbelievable! It’s unbelievable! It spoke to me in a way I couldn’t explain to you. So much information. So much that we never understood. It all fits now. All the ruins and discoveries, all the runes, all the myths. I don’t know where to start.”

“At the beginning,” Von Seeckt suggested. “How did all this get here? Where did the mothership come from?”

Nabinger closed his eyes briefly, then began. “There was an alien colony — more an outpost than a colony as far as I can gather — on Earth. The aliens called themselves the Airlia.

“As best I can determine, the Airlia arrived here about ten thousand years ago. They settled on an island.” The professor held up a hand as Turcotte started to ask a question. “Not this island. An island in the other ocean. In the Atlantic. An island that in human legend has been called Atlantis.

“From there they explored the planet. There was a species native to this planet very much like them.” Nabinger smiled. “Us.

“They tried to avoid contact with humans. I’m not totally sure why they were here. I would have to have more contact. I get the impression it might simply have been a scientific expedition, but there is also no doubt that there was a military aspect to it.”

“They were taking over the Earth?” Turcotte asked.

“No. We weren’t exactly an interstellar threat ten thousand years ago. The Airlia were at war with some other species, or perhaps their own species. I can’t quite figure that out from what it told me, but I think it is the former. The word it used for the enemy was different. And if the enemy had been some of their own I think I would be able to tell because…” Nabinger paused. “I’m getting ahead of myself here.

“The Airlia were here for several millennia, rotating personnel in and out for tours of duty. Then something happened — not here on Earth, but in their interstellar battle.”

Nabinger ran his hand through his beard.

“The war was not going well and some disaster happened and the Airlia here were cut off. It seems that the enemy could find the Airlia by detecting their interstellar drives.” He looked at Von Seeckt. “Now we know the secret of the mothership. The commander of the colony had to make a decision: pack up and try to make a run for it back to safety in their home system or stay. Naturally, the majority of the Airlia wanted to go back. Even if they stayed and weren’t spotted, there was always the chance the enemy would find them anyway.

“Of course, if they left, they would be spotted and then it would be a race through space. There was an additional factor too. One that the Airlia commander apparently considered very important. He was the one who programmed the guardian, so most of what I learned is from his perspective. His name was Aspasia.

“Aspasia knew that even if they got away, the trace of their engine would be examined by the enemy and backtracked, and Earth would then be discovered by the others. He pretty much considered that equivalent to sentencing the planet to destruction. He felt that factor by itself ruled out leaving. The regulations he worked under also said that he could not endanger this planet and the life on it.

“But there were others among the Airlia who weren’t so noble or so entranced by the regulations. They wanted to go back and not be stuck on this primitive planet for the rest of their lives. The Airlia fought among themselves. Aspasia’s side won, but he knew that as long as they had the capability to return, it would always be a threat. He also knew that even their enclave on the island, Atlantis, would eventually violate their noninterference regulation.

“So he moved the mothership and hid it. He scattered his people. Some — the rebels — had already dispersed to other parts of the planet. Aspasia hid the seven bouncers down in Antarctica and”—Nabinger pointed over his shoulder—“he moved their central computer, the guardian, here to Easter Island. It was uninhabited then. He took the last two bouncers back to rest with the mother ship.” Nabinger took a deep breath. “That is, he did that after he did one last thing. He destroyed their outpost on Atlantis so that if the enemy did come through this solar system, they would not discover that the fire-heads had ever been here. He completely wiped out that trace of their existence here on Earth and hid the rest.”

Nabinger looked at the screen. “Aspasia left the guardian on with the foo fighters under its control in case the way of the war changed and his own people came back to his sector of space. Obviously, they never did.”

The professor turned from the computer. “Others among the Airlia, those who did not agree with Aspasia, must have tried to leave their own message to their people, knowing the guardian had been left on.

“Now I know the why and how of the pyramids. They were space beacons, built by rebels using the limited technology they found and the human labor they could exploit to try to reach out to their own people if they ever came close enough.

“And the bomb the rebels took. Aspasia knew about that, but he couldn’t go in and take it away, not without letting the humans know of his power and existence or without having the rebels set it off.

“You see, the rebels, there weren’t many of them. There were never more than a few thousand of the Airlia on the planet at any one time. And they went other places and worked their way in among the humans. Jorgenson’s diffusionist theory is correct. There are many connections between all those ancient civilizations, and there is a reason they all started at roughly the same time, but it wasn’t because man crossed the ocean. It was because Atlantis was destroyed and the Airlia spread out across the planet.”

“I saw a pyramid just like the guardian but smaller, down on the lowest level in Dulce,” Turcotte said.

“Yes, that was the computer the rebels hid,” Nabinger said. “Not as powerful as the guardian but still far more advanced than anything we could comprehend. Gullick and his people must have just recovered that this year when the find was made at Jamiltepec in Mexico.”

“And Gullick turned it on,” Turcotte said, all the pieces falling into place.

“Yes,” Nabinger said. “And it didn’t work the way Gullick thought. He was no longer in control — the rebel computer was in control of him. It wanted the mothership. That was the thing the rebels wanted more than anything else: the only way to get home.”

Von Seeckt turned to Duncan. “I told you we must not try to fly the mothership. General Gullick and his people might have brought the wrath of this enemy down upon our planet!”

“I don’t think Gullick really knew what he was doing,” Turcotte said, rubbing the right side of his head.

“The threat the Airlia faced was thousands of years ago,” Duncan noted. “Certainly—”

“Certainly, nothing!” Von Seeckt cut her off. He pointed at the screen behind him. “This thing still works. The foo fighters this computer controls still fly. The bouncers still fly. What makes you think the enemy’s equipment isn’t still functioning out there somewhere, waiting to pick up a signal and go in and destroy Earth? The Airlia turned the mothership off because they were obviously losing their war!”

Lisa Duncan nodded. “This is beyond us. We have to bring the President here.” The golden glow suddenly went white, then a three-dimensional picture appeared. It showed the early-morning sky and a phalanx of small dots moving across. “What’s that?” Duncan asked.

“You might not get the chance to talk to the President,” Turcotte said. “Those are F-16’s coming this way.”