Stellarium (Origins): A Space-Time Adventure to the Ends of our Universe (14 page)

Frank was unable to hold back his
tears, or his sobs. He experienced mixed emotions. He was sad to know that his
children had grown up without him around. He hadn’t been there for all of their
firsts... the first boyfriend or girlfriend, the first fight at school; he
hadn’t been there to teach them how to drive, and he hadn’t been there to
celebrate their acceptance at such a prestigious university. At the same time,
Frank was happy that they were all doing well, that they had grown up into
well-developed individuals who were on the right path. He was happy to know
that he would be able to speak with them soon.

“What about my wife? How is she
doing?” Frank asked.

“Your wife was very happy to hear
the news, as well, but she won’t be able to come here to talk to you. Your kids
will catch you up on everything soon.”

In that moment, Allison started
preparing for her turn. She already had tears in her eyes from listening to the
news about Frank and Russell’s families.

“Allison, unfortunately, I don’t
have any good news for you. I need you to be strong,” Jones explained.

She imagined what he was
referring to.

“Your mother died eight years
ago, peacefully, at 92 years of age. She passed away calmly while she was
sleeping, at the nursing home where she had been living for more than ten
years.”

Silence took over the radio, the
ship, and the control room. Everyone remained quiet out of respect for the
astronomer’s feelings.

She wept silently. She wasn’t
just sad that her mother had died, but that she hadn’t been able to be there
with her when it had happened. Nor had she been able to tell her mother about
her first experience in space, which she had promised to do at that last
Christmas they spent together in 2035.

Now, it was 2051, and so much had
changed in the world. They would need some time to process the news.

“Jones, have you heard anything
from Dr. Hardt?” Allison asked, still a bit emotional.

“Dr. Phillip Hardt? Yes, he’s
doing well. We haven’t informed him of this situation yet, but I can do so.
Allison, he’s 90 years old; he’s retired, and doesn’t teach anymore.”

“Please tell him that I’d like to
go visit him when I get back,” she said.

“Certainly,” Jones replied.

And with that, the transmission
was over. The astronauts talked about the news with each other. They
immediately tried to comfort Allison. Then, they relaxed as they talked about
Frank’s children and the fact that both of them were studying at their father’s
alma mater.

After hanging up, as he walked
through the hallway toward the room where his team was busy calculating all of
the possible rescue routes, Jones was interrupted by a young woman.

“Dr. Jones, my name is Laura
Williams. I’m the director of the data management department. My team is
responsible for analyzing, archiving, and maintaining all images and videos
collected by all of NASA’s space programs.”

“Hi, Laura. Nice to meet you. I’m
sorry to be in such a rush, but I’m working on an urgent matter and I need to
get back to my control room.”

“Just a second, Dr. Jones. My
team is downloading all of the data from the Orion-II. That’s what I want to
talk to you about.”

With that, Laura immediately had
Dr. Jones’ attention. She invited him into her team’s room, and he accepted.

The room was far from normal.
There were several stations with large monitors. They had access to NASA’s
entire archived collection. She had a small, select and discreet team. She was
also in charge of deciding which images would be shown to the public, and which
ones would be kept confidential.

“Jones, we’ve already downloaded
all of the photos. We’re starting to download the videos now, which is going to
take a few days. We’ve reviewed lots of images of the planet Sater, which is
what I wanted to talk about. We’ve found some very interesting stuff. One, in
particular, seems to have no explanation. Elizabeth asked me to go get you. You
must understand that, in cases such as this one, she’s the only one we inform.”

“Of course. Let’s see those
pictures,” Jones said.

“The first one projected here is
one of the most fascinating. It truly seems that there was a civilization on
this planet. Look at how those ruins make up a city-like structure. You can
even see something that looks like a bridge.”

“That’s fabulous!” Jones
exclaimed as he adjusted his glasses, finding it hard to believe what he had
just seen.

“We have several of these photos.
It seems that there were a number of cities. I’ve never seen anything like it,
but I think there was a civilization that lived on that planet in a very
distant past.”

“Given your past experience,
Laura, how old do you think those ruins are? Somewhere around 1,000 or 2,000
years old, right?” Jones asked.

“No, no. They’re much older than
that. Look, on this monitor, here, we have satellite photos of archaeological
sites here on Earth. As you can see, the ones on Sater appear to be much more
deteriorated. You could be walking on that surface and not even realize that it
used to be a city. We can only identify these types of ruins from an aerial
photo, which allows us to see construction patterns and thus conclude that they
resemble the organizational pattern of a settlement. I would say that these
ruins must be at least 100,000 years old.”

“And you said that there are
several of them?”

“Yes, we found the same patterns
in various locations. Let me show you something very interesting,” said Laura
as she searched for another image in the archives.

Then, she displayed a few photos
of what appeared to be pyramids. They were in a mountainous area; you had to
really focus in order to identify them, but they were there. They were only
able to see those pyramids thanks to the persistence of one of the analysts,
who had spent a significant amount of time on that particular photo.

“That’s incredible. That is,
without a doubt, the greatest discovery in the history of mankind. Not only was
this planet previously inhabited, but it had pyramids like ours,” he exclaimed,
admiring the image.

“We can’t say that we found life
in outer space, because this planet seems to be dead, but this is the first
evidence that, in the past, life existed on another planet. And imagine if
those pyramids contain the same things that the ones here did? Clearly, the
Stellarium-12 mission will go down in history. It has opened our eyes up to
much more than we imagined,” Laura said.

Jones stared at the images,
stunned and pensive.

“Dr. Jones, even though I just
showed you all of this, it’s not the reason that I went looking for you. I have
one last photo here... and this one is really unsettling. We’re not sure how to
interpret it... I spoke briefly with Elizabeth, and she asked me to have you
analyze it.”

“Okay, let’s take a look at it.”

Laura turned on the projector and
immediately pulled up the photo she had referred to. She turned off the lights,
and a plain appeared on the huge screen. At first, the image didn’t seem to
contain anything too strange or even interesting.

“Can you tell what’s different
about this photo?” she asked Jones.

“Hmm…there seems to be something in
the lower right corner. Are they more ruins?”

“I’m going to zoom in on the
photo and focus in on that area. Take a close look, Dr. Jones. I was personally
responsible for analyzing this area on the image. I noticed the same thing as
you, but I was frightened by what I saw when I zoomed in on this spot.”

Jones looked on in disbelief. He
adjusted his glasses, looked at the computer from which the photo was being
projected, and grabbed the remote. He zoomed out, then back in. He studied the
image in detail, followed by…“Is this a joke?”

“Certainly not, Dr. Jones. I
wouldn’t do a thing like that. Especially when it has to do with something so
important.”

“Has anyone else had access to
this image? Is it possible that it could have been edited or manipulated in any
way?” Jones asked.

“No. The data on the Orion-II is
encrypted and, once the images are downloaded, they are dissected by our
computers. We make copies to be used for publicity, where we eventually make
edits such as changing the format or the size of the image. But not this one.
We are looking at the original photo, without any edits.”

“And there’s no way that this
could have been produced on the ship? In other words, right when it was taken?
Some kind of manipulation?” he asked, still unable to believe his eyes.

“Dr. Jones, this photo was taken
by the probe and transmitted to the computers of the Orion-II. The crew has
access to those photos, but they can’t edit them. And according to the ship’s
records, they never even opened this one,” she responded.

“So, the astronauts don’t know
about this photo? They haven’t seen it yet?”

“No, they haven’t. By the way,
there’s one more thing: unlike the city ruins, which appear to be more than
100,000 years old, these here seem to be much older, possibly even millions of
years old. I believe that this region was an archaeological site for that
civilization. There are more recent ruins around the main finding, which I
think were built later, to preserve the center. I believe that the people who
lived on this planet also found these ruins, and that they studied them and
preserved them like we did, for example, with Stonehenge… although that example
is only thousands of years old.”

“What a puzzle,” Jones exclaimed.
“I need to think it over. I’m going to call Elizabeth to talk about it, but,
for now, classify this image as confidential. No one else is allowed access,
understood?”

“No problem,” she replied.

“Ms. Williams, have you found any
other images like this one? I mean, anything as unsettling as this?” Jones
asked.

“This was the only one we found.”

“Great. Let’s not tell anyone.
Not even the astronauts should know. We can’t disclose or discuss something
like this before we know more, okay?”

“Rest assured, Dr. Jones.”

“Thanks for seeking me out. I
need to get back to the control room now. As you know, we’re trying to find a
way to get the crew back to Earth. But please call me if you find anything
else.”

They both remained silent for a
moment. The lights were still off. They both stared at the unsettling image
projected on the wall. It was a beautiful plain, with lots of rocks distributed
all around. In one area in particular, there was a large rock structure. At
first, the structure appeared to be the remains of a city. However, upon
zooming in and focusing in on that construction, the viewer was presented with
something bizarre. At the center of the ruins, there was an area with some very
weathered rocks. From up above, those rocks formed a line of text, which had
apparently been designed to be read from space. Even more, those rocks would
have been placed there thousands, if not millions of years ago, before a
civilization could have even formed there. With the passage of time, they had
become quite destroyed, but even so, even in that state, when looking down from
the space, the stones clearly read: “S.O.S. ORION.”

Jones left the room and went to
meet up with his team, attempting to hide his confusion. He decided to focus
solely on the rescue mission. He would leave that enigma for another day, once
the crew was safe.

Image 15
- Pyramids found on Sater.

(credits and details on the final page)

Image 16
- Stonehenge, southern England.

(credits and details on the final page)