The Unearthing (4 page)

Echohawk’s team first exposed all four sides of the Pyramid and from there dug down another four meters. The Pyramid was now peeking out of a pit eight meters deep, itself nearly ten meters wide to a side at that level. Their work pit was a further twenty meters wide at current depth. Actual digging had stopped while James and Peter began another round of tests on the ground, using the PET and MRI scanners to ensure there was nothing archaeologically significant between them and the base of the Pyramid.

“How’s it looking?” Echohawk asked, as he approached his two assistants.

“If the Doppler seismology reading was right,” James said as he and Peter calibrated the MRI scanner, “We’re about nine, maybe ten meters from the base of the Pyramid. The ground is starting to become solid rock at this point, so we might consider precision blasting to widen the pit and bringing in more laser cutters to get past the rock deposits.”

“I’m not crazy about using explosives,” Peter advised Echohawk.

“Neither am I,” the elder archaeologist concurred, “But I’m inclined to agree with James. I’ll call the Society and have them send us an explosives engineer. We need to uncover the Pyramid, at least.”

“Yeah, but then what?” James asked, “Prof…this thing isn’t some Mayan ruin. The Pyramid is
metal
. And if it really is sitting on a structure twenty kilometres wide, what the hell is it and what do we do with it once we have access?”

Echohawk shrugged. “We go inside and have a look around.” He said.

♦♦♦

Nightfall brought the day’s work to a close, the pit a little wider, a little deeper. The last of the work crew left the dig site behind and only James, Peter and Echohawk remained, staring at the Pyramid under floodlights. James and Peter were sore, sweaty and filthy from their day in the work pit. Echohawk had done his share, but had to balance his time in the work pit with his time coordinating the other tasks involved in the dig: analysis of recovered soil and stone, coordinating the expansion of the dig site, the logistics of hauling away the earth burying the pyramid and keeping the World Aboriginal Archaeological Society abreast of the ongoing efforts. Experts from around the globe were already beginning to weigh in on the artifact and its origins. Echohawk had to sift through their reports to find nuggets of use to the dig.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like this,” Peter said, tiredly.

“Neither have I,” Echohawk replied, “Although I’ve had worse digs. Try cutting through stone like what we’re chopping up with jackhammers and weak explosives. We didn’t always have laser cutters and sonic pulverisers, you know.”

“I keep hearing that with Doppler seismology, MRI, PET scanners and deep probe radar that the days of digging are over,” Peter said, “And it’s all bullshit. We’ll never stop digging in the dirt to find things.”

“I hope you’re right,” Echohawk said with a smile. They turned and began making their way from the site. Echohawk stopped and clasped his left ear as it suddenly started to vibrate. He’d been wearing a communications headset so long that day that he’d forgotten he still had it on. He toggled a small switch on the earpiece and began speaking.

“Mark Echohawk,” He said, “What? Really? That’s excellent. We’re on our way to the lab now. We’ll linx in directly from our main computer console. Thanks!” Echohawk ended the linx and began pacing from the work pit a little faster.

“What’s up?” Peter asked, jogging up beside his mentor.

“That was Professor Todds,” Echohawk said. “We got our operation time with Concord 3. The orbital scan of the area is going to begin in a few minutes.”

♦♦♦

Early in the twenty-first century Space Station Unity, the International Space Agency’s crown jewel, went into operation. The costly venture helped open the door for other international efforts in space, including the Bova Manned Mars Mission, the Clarke series of robot probes to Jupiter and its moons and an international commercial venture by the Netter Consortium to build an orbital hotel. The privatization of civilian space ventures paved the way for cooperative international scientific missions. After long decades of use, Unity Station was retired. But by then the fledgling World Space Agency was already planning the second generation of International Space Stations. This time four stations were to be established around the globe. Later, two more would be added to the planned project. Six Concord stations were commissioned: five in geostationary orbits: Concord 1 hung in the sky over Europe; Concord 2 over Asia and Eastern Europe; Concord 3 over North America and Concord 4 and 5 over the North and south Poles, respectively. When Concord 6 was completed it would follow an orbital flight path between the Equator and the Antarctic Circle, covering the needs of the Southern Hemisphere. At the present time only three of the six stations were operational; the other three in various stages of construction. Concord 2, 3 and 5 were fully staffed, while work continued on Concords 1, 4 and 6. The first five stations would have been up and running had a major electrical fire aboard Concord 1 and a near space collision aboard a fortunately empty Concord 4 not set back the schedule.

Like all operational Concord space stations, Concord 3 was staffed by members of the World Space Agency. Following regional preference guidelines, the cosmonauts aboard Concord 3 came primarily from the North American Union; American, Canadian, Mexican and Cuban cosmonauts handled all aspects of the day-to-day running of the station, including a constant stream of research projects from both military and civilian interests. The station’s command module was large but cramped; every available surface used as a workstation, including a spherical island moored to the inner bulkhead by a large support column through the center of the room. A half-dozen officers occupied the module at any given time, everyone there running or monitoring part of the station’s vital functions. The science system module was directly below the command module and looked much the same, though it was devoted to running the two arrays of scientific equipment at either end of the station; one array faced the earth, the other the stars. Between the command and science modules was the command office for Concord 3. The command office consisted of three separate suites: One for the station’s chief clerk; one for the officer of the watch and one for the station commander. At this time, only one office was occupied: that of the station commander, Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Margaret Bloom.

Lt. Colonel Bloom’s office boasted a large blister window of a transparent metallic alloy. The view from her office was across the breadth of the space station to the Earth orbiting beyond. In the three months she had been skyside at C-3 Bloom had grown used to the view and then become tired of it. She had three months more to go before returning to Earth and her true love: flying. At fifty-five, Bloom only had ten years left before her flight status was permanently revoked. She had crystal blue eyes and short, blonde hair. She had strong Germanic features and her active lifestyle had kept the age from her features. She could pass for thirty and give women even younger a run for their money with men their own age. A former fighter jock and now an Air Force test pilot, she loathed the idea of giving up the stick. The hazardous nature of her work necessitated that every 18 months she take a six-month ground or non-flight assignment and each time she spent six months grounded it was to her six more months that she wasnnthst in the cockpit. The last thing she’d piloted had been the shuttle that had brought her up here. The next would be the shuttle home. The ten years she had left to fly seemed painfully short after almost four times as many years of flying behind her.

Bloom studied the watch report on the electronic notepad before her. All the standard statistics about what was just another day at the cracker factory. She signed off on it, planning to take a break from the monotony long enough to have a coffee and a cigarette. Not that there were any places aboard a space station that one could legally smoke. Bloom wondered how the tobacco companies were still staying afloat. For a change of pace she put down the watch report and began going over the requests for access to the station’s scientific equipment and arrays. Normally Bloom didn’t pay much attention to the scientific research being done; if it was civilian it only concerned her if it was a potential threat to the station. If it was military Bloom was required as station commander to supervise. Most of the time the requests for authorization crossed her desk, she signed off on them and they were forgotten. However when the requisition from the World Aboriginal Anthropological Society crossed her desk Margaret Bloom became personally involved.

Bloom finished up on some unrelated paperwork and made her way from the office module into the command module. The communications hub dominated the lower hemisphere of the workstation island in the center of the module. She pushed and floated her way to the com operator’s station.

“Colonel?” the communications officer asked, as Bloom drifted to his station.

“Lieutenant I need a direct linx to the communications spar for the ongoing deep scan in New Mexico.” The lieutenant worked his console’s controls and a few seconds later the linx was established. Bloom slipped on a headset and oriented herself to face the two-way screen in the center of the operator’s station.

♦♦♦

In Laguna, Echohawk James and Peter took their seats around the main computer station in the lab. The computer was linked in to the World Grid and would shortly be receiving preliminary data from the deep scan being done aboard Concord 3. The actual full compilation of the data would be done on the station and then transmitted down to the Laguna site for analysis. The data being transmitted now to Laguna would be basic, but would be enough to form preliminary images of the object buried beneath them and confirm its size and age, if not its composition.

“We have an incoming linx from Concord 3,” James reported, “It isn’t the data dump, though. It’s a communication linx…for you, Prof; from the station commander.” Peter and James both looked questioningly at Echohawk, who shrugged and arched an eyebrow. Echohawk slipped on a headset with a video boom and lowered the mini screen over his eye. He toggled a switch on the side of the earpiece and nodded to James.

“Put it through to my spar,” He said, “I’m online.” James focused a minicam onto Echohawk and then transferred the signal over. Instantly the viewer over Echohawk’s eye filled with the image of Lieutenant Colonel Margaret Bloom.

“Hello Meg,” Echohawk said, “What a pleasant surprise!” Bloom smiled.

“Hello Mark,” She said, “How have you been?”

“I’m fine. How about you? Finally get tired of test-piloting orbital relay fighters? I’m surprised to see you at a desk even if it is in orbit.”

“I’ve been good,” Bloom replied, “And no, I’m on a six-month ground-time rotation. They wanted me back at Engineering and Design but I was so fucking sick of E&D I’d put myself on the candidate list for a command rotation skyside.” Bloom was happy to speak with Mark again. It had been too long, she reflected, since she’d last seen him. But they both lived their own lives and they both knew it was best that way. But seeing his face onscreen Bloom knew she wanted to get together with him again as soon as she could.

“Have you heard from Laura?” Bloom asked to break the silence.

“Same time every week,” Echohawk replied, “She writes me a linx, tells me how she’s been doing and what’s going on in her life. I always write back and offer her advice when she asks; same as you.”

“And she never takes any advice,” Bloom said, wryly, “Same as you. She gets that from your side of the family, you know.”

“I know. And I’m proud of it; same as you.”

“Mark I have to say I was surprised to find you back in the field,” She said, “I thought for sure you’d given it up for the classroom.”

“They made me an offer I couldn’t refuse, Meg,” Echohawk said, “Have you read up on the details of our request?”

“Honestly, I hadn’t. Usually the station’s clerk reads through the bulk of it and summarizes the requests in three sentences including one for the applicant’s name.” Echohawk smiled.

“Reread the application,” He said, “And you’ll understand why I’m out here. You’ll also see why we ordered the scan.”

“Mark…do you have any idea how busy it is up here? There’s a hundred projects just like yours going on each day; those are just the civilian operations. Then there’s the Government stuff and then the military. There are projects ongoing I’m not even supposed to
know
about. Then, I have to oversee the day-to-day operations of running this station. I don’t get a lot of time to read requests and reports.”

“I think you’ll want to read this one and not just for my sake.”

“Is it that big?”

“You just said a mouthful.”

♦♦♦

History records that early in the twenty-first century international organizations decreed that Internet service was a public utility, much the same way that telephone or electrical services were. They renamed the Internet the
World Grid
and unknowingly ushered in a new technological era. Television, telecommunications and the services of the Internet were gradually combined into one vast, single medium. Extremely high bandwidth was required to transmit the Grid’s information to the world, so fibre optic trunk lines were established solely to provide Grid access. And the World Grid delivered everything: View-On-Demand television programming replaced broadcast TV’s schedules; people began to watch what they wanted, when they wanted; long-distance calling became a thing of the past because of real-time voice chat; telephones gave way to streaming video communication and the host of services once provided by the Internet were still all available on the new World Grid.