Lost Sols 1: Ancient Treasure (21 page)

Dalton
and Julia walked down their passageway for five minutes until it opened up into a large room. The room was long but narrow. Dalton didn’t see anything interesting until he looked across the room at the opposite wall. The floor dropped down three feet just before the far wall. Walking to the end of the room, he saw why. There was a tunnel which exited the room in each direction and continued to an unknown location. All of a sudden the two of them heard a light tapping noise. “What is that?” Julia asked. “I think it might be a ribar.” Dalton said. “What’s a ribar?” Julia asked. “Just think of it as a large spider with the shell of a crab. When some of the domes were installed the workers found a few of them in the sand under the surface. As far as we know they’re harmless. I haven’t heard of anyone being injured by one. I think they’re more afraid of us then we are of them. Let’s take a look at this tunnel.” Dalton said.

“It looks like a subway system, but I don’t see any tracks.” Julia said. “I think you’re right. The tunnel extends as far as we can see.”
Dalton said. Looking down Dalton saw a glimmer on the ground. He bent down and picked up a large piece of glass. After studying it for a minute he could see it was slightly curved. “They used tubes to travel. I’m guessing it was pneumatic in nature. It’s the reason why we don’t see any tracks. Pneumatic travel was experimented with on Earth in the mid nineteenth century. Travel would have been accomplished primarily with compressed air, and by using a partial vacuum. With the lower gravity it would work perfectly on this planet and would have been inexpensive and easy to maintain. It makes perfect sense. Let’s see if we can find one of the cars the Martians used for transport. We’ll go in opposite directions and meet back here in fifteen minutes.” Dalton said.

Dalton
began walking down the tunnel pondering the question of the pneumatic tubes. The system was simple and brilliant. The transport system could have been used easily planet wide. He now believed what he saw in the old NASA pictures. The conspiracy theorists had always claimed images of tubes on the surface of Mars were a transportation system. They were considered crackpots and had never been taken seriously. There was no longer any question. The tubes which had been photographed were the same tubes he was walking through. It was likely the tubes in the photos had become visible due to erosion, or the tubes occasionally breached the surface by design. As he walked further down the tunnel Dalton didn’t find anything but decay. He didn’t find any of the cars the Martians used to travel in the tunnels. It was time to head back to meet Julia.

Julia had been walking for ten minutes and hadn’t seen anything unusual. The tapping began again and was coming from behind her. The noise sounded like it was getting closer and it sounded like there was more then one ribar coming up from behind. She was nervous and scared. It was dark, and she didn’t like being alone. As she continued down the tunnel she finally saw a car a few feet away.
Dalton had been right, the car was laying on the surface and barely fit in the tunnel. It obviously wasn’t designed to use tracks. She wanted to see inside and was barely able to squeeze in between the wall and the car. She arrived at the entrance to the car. What was left of a door had fallen on the ground. As she looked into the car she jumped back. Seated across from the entrance was a skeleton. The Martian had been waiting thousands of years for his stop. The skeleton looked complete, and was in a sitting position. This one was tall and had long arms and even longer legs. The skull consisted of small eye sockets and a small mouth. There was only a slight indentation where a nose should have been. She noticed a gold chain lying on the floor underneath the skeleton. She was frightened and it was almost time to meet Dalton. She felt oddly uncomfortable disturbing the peace of the dead Martian. He had been alone for thousands of years. As she was studying his face a ribar climbed out the left eye socket. She screamed and went back down the tunnel to find Dalton.

“I’ve found one of the cars
with a dead Martian inside. They were taller then I expected.” Julia said. “I didn’t find much of anything, let’s go back and see this Martian of yours.” Dalton said. Julia led Dalton to the car. “It’s amazing, you’ve found a fully preserved and intact specimen. He’s likely been here for tens of thousands of years. Let’s enter very carefully we don’t want to disturb the find.” Dalton said. Julia entered the car with Dalton following, and the car suddenly shifted. The skeleton fell to the ground and shattered. “Damn it. We could have learned so much. Let’s gather the bones, we’ll have to reconstruct him later.” Dalton said as he picked up the gold chain. In the center of the chain a golden face stared back at him. “We have so much more to learn. We’d better get back, we’re already overdue.” Julia said as the two of them began putting the bones of the Martian in their packs.

Patrick and Sarah were waiting when
Dalton and Julia arrived. “What took you so long?” Patrick asked. “We’ll meet on the ship and discuss our findings. For now, let’s get back to the pyramid. We’re probably late, and Vincent will be worried. Let’s get moving. I need to brief Vincent before he takes his team out. I’ll mark the passageways we went down.” Dalton said as he took a couple of bones from his pack and placed them in the entranceway to the two passageways his team had traveled down. Dalton wanted to stay longer but his time was up. The team exited the underground labyrinth and returned to the surface.

Hecto
r received the report from the Commander on the ground. A drone hovering high on the perimeter had spotted the terrorists on the surface again headed toward the pyramid. He still didn’t have any new weapons. He had been told the printer was not functioning due to a software problem. When he had called an hour ago the supervisor at the supply dome told him he could expect the first of the weapons anytime. Hector was tired of waiting and he had lost another opportunity. He put on his EVA suit and headed to the supply dome to kick someone in the butt.

Dalton
and his team entered the alien ship an hour late. “Where have you been? I was getting worried and was about to come look for you.” Vincent said. “You won’t believe what we’ve found. There’s an underground entrance and an entire city under Cydonia. We explored the smallest fraction of what’s down there. We discovered their method of travel across the planet. The Martians used pneumatic tubes for traveling. The tubes seen in the NASA pictures were definitely part of the pneumatic transportation infrastructure. We found a lot of dead Martians and also discovered living quarters. I think we should try and stay as long as possible. We should at least travel down each one of the passageways. Who knows what else we might find?” Dalton said. “It’s time for my team to see what we can find. Maybe we can stay for a couple of weeks if the status quo holds. I just don’t like taking unnecessary risks.” Vincent said.

After receiving directions to the underground entrance from
Dalton, Vincent led his team outside the pyramid. The entrance was easy to find and the team was underground within a few minutes. “I don’t think it really matters which passageways we go down. Take your pick. There are two passageways with bones in front of them. Those are the two which have already been explored.” Vincent said. Isabella picked a passageway and Dominic followed behind.

“Are you going to let me pick one?” Monique asked Vincent. “Be my guest. Pick a good one, we have to one up
Dalton if we can.” Vincent said. Monique chose a passageway and began walking. “It sure would have been interesting to meet a Martian. We can study their history and find out what they accomplished, but we won’t ever have the opportunity to have a conversation with one.” Monique said. “Don’t be too sure of that. You saw what happened with the Atlanteans. Who’s to say some of the Martians didn’t make it off the planet at some point in the past? Someday your wish might come true.” Vincent said.

The passageway began going uphill with twists and turns.
"This seems odd, from what we were told the other passageways were on the same level. Look, the end of this passageway was sealed at one time." Monique said. A door which had been sealing the passageway had fallen inward. Vincent walked over it and continued up the long passageway. After a few more minutes of walking the passageway opened up into a large chamber. "Oh my God!" Monique exclaimed. The chamber was large, and made of gold. Vincent immediately noticed the gold had been engraved. Looking more closely he didn't recognize anything which had been engraved. It was obviously a language of some kind. It had to be completely martian in origin. He was familiar enough with all the ancient Earth languages to at least recognize one when he saw it. This was completely different and alien to him. “My God, what have we found?” he asked.

"Look over here, there are a few images.
I’ve found four of them in this section. In the first image a Martian woman is giving birth. The second one looks like a juvenile standing over a dead animal. The third one shows two of them standing near a river or lake. I wonder if it's a man and a woman?" Monique asked. "I believe it is. There are differences between the two. The one on the left has breasts if you look closely.” he said. “Of course a man can immediately spot the breasts in an image.” Monique said and laughed. “It’s one of our talents. In the last image a group of Martians are pushing a dead one out to sea on a raft.

This room reminds me of t
he Voyager probes we sent from Earth last century. The golden records on the Voyager probes were designed to be discovered by an extraterrestrial intelligence. If aliens could figure out how to play the record it would describe mankind and our diversity and culture. Gold was used because of its longevity. We might be seeing the Martian equivalent here. Instead of sending the information into space it was left here to be found in the distant future. The entire history of their civilization is inscribed into this gold if my guess is correct.

We need to see if we can find a cipher key.
If we can translate all this information we could learn so much. If the Martians wanted this found they wouldn't make the cipher key hard to find." Vincent said. "What should we be looking for?" Monique asked. "I'll know when I see it. Just look for anything which looks out of place or is separate from everything else." Vincent replied. More images were discovered as they continued to explore the room. Some appeared to show construction projects and other images were of groups of Martians gathered together in social settings. As Vincent continued down the gold wall, a new set of images appeared. "Monique, come look at this. If I'm not mistaken this is an image of a spacecraft leaving the surface of Mars. At some point in their history the Martians were a space faring species. It's absolutely astounding." Vincent said.

Monique went to the opp
osite wall to see what else there was to discover. She found something extraordinary. "Vincent come look at this." Monique said. Both of them were spellbound by the image. "Is that what I think it is?" Monique asked. Vincent didn't reply for a few seconds. He couldn't believe what he was seeing. "They look like Neanderthals." he said. The image showed three Martians sitting on rocks around a fire amid a group of what appeared to be Neanderthals. "The Martians are all in some type of EVA suit, but one of them has his helmet off. The Martians must have been able to breathe for at least a short amount of time in Earth’s atmosphere." Vincent said. "Are we sure the image we are looking at is from Earth?" Monique said. "Look at how detailed the image is. I'd bet all the money I have we are looking at a group of Neanderthals. The trees which are depicted are from Earth. I have no doubt about it." Vincent said.

Dominic and Isabella were traveling down their passageway when Dominic saw a glow ahead.
“I wonder what that could be?” he asked. “I don’t know, I guess we’ll find out in a minute.” Isabella replied. Getting closer Isabella could see there was a line in center of the floor which was illuminated. The line continued as far as she could see down the passageway. "How could there possibly be any power here? I wonder where this goes?" she asked. "I don't know the answer to either question. Let's keep following it, and see if we can't find out." Dominic replied. The line on the floor led them into a small room. Both of them heard some sort of noise coming from the walls. Isabella saw a small rodent scurry out of the room through a hole in the wall. “I don’t know what those things are eating, but there are definitely some of them down here.” she said.

In the center of the room the floor had been raised. Inside the raised portion Dominic found a series of bright blue squares which were illuminated from within.
There were five exits which led out of the room with an illuminated line leading out of each doorway. "It looks like a power source of some kind is illuminating the lines on the floor. I bet this city has them all over the place. Somehow there is still power flowing from somewhere in this location. I wonder how it’s being generated?” he asked. “I can only think of a couple of options. The energy source would have to be either solar or nuclear. I don’t think solar panels would last due to meteor impacts and general erosion on the surface. Perhaps the Martians had discovered something new. They may have developed a technology we know nothing about.” Isabella said.

Vincent and Monique were still staring at the ima
ge of the Neanderthals and the Martians. “I wonder if the Neanderthals were hunted down by Homo sapiens on Earth due to their association with the Martians?” Monique asked. “It’s possible and quite likely. Even today humans are afraid of the unknown and attempt to destroy anything which we don’t understand. Fifty thousand years ago it would have been even worse. If Homo sapiens had discovered Neanderthals associating with aliens, it would have been a bloodbath. The Neanderthals would have been ostracized and hunted without mercy.” Vincent said.