The Alien Artifact 8 (10 page)

Chapter 20

The Alien Sphere

A loud screech
ripped through him and he nearly leapt off the floor, and he stood
dazzled by the bright light blasting into his eyes, and he had to
recall what had just occurred, and that he had sleepily just
staggered straight into the blinding light, in an immense cavity,
situated at the center of the bottom of the hill, and he tried to
grasp what was in front him!

The thing
resembled a magical sphere, and he tried to grasp what was really
there, and why it was there!

In the blinding
light he could not grasp if it was just energy or what, and he saw
a blast of stars exploding by him, as though he was shooting
through space in some strange galaxy, and he gasped again, and
wondered if it was causing him to imagine things.

Its formation
seemed to constantly change, as though unstable, and he watched it
shift around a central region, of the cavity, as though trapped in
something, and some force field, and for a moment something seemed
to form in it that seemed alive, and its formation kept altering,
as though its energy was constantly altering and trying to control
itself, and altered and whirled within occasional hideous energy
surges – while it kept consistently stopping itself from
vanishing.

It looked like
something had been caught in some energy field there and had
altered itself to survive, and he was staggered at the power the
field had and what was caught in it!

It surely had
to be artificial, but he could not prove it, and nothing was normal
or familiar, and the cavity looked natural, but unusual, and he
tried to establish if it had alien origins but could not, and he
believed if it was it was of a highly advanced species of some
sort.

For a few
seconds he was sure something formed in it and looked out at him,
and into to his very soul, and for a second recognized something,
and he tried to place it and realized that it had reminded him of
what had landed their shuttle, and had made them crash, and for
some reason he felt it had not deliberately caused them to crash
and he wondered if it was trying to communicate with him or state
information like a computer.

Surely the
sphere could not create such a thing!

But he was sure
it was something artificial and decided to leave it until he had
slept and he considered staying in the cavity, and he realized that
there was air around, which could be breathed, and for some reason
he unlocked his faceplate and opened it and breathed air there,
which was fresh and he wondered where it had come from, but could
not find anything anywhere, and he decided to leave and closed his
faceplate and went back into the tunnel, and back to where he had
been sleeping, considering if it was sort of entity/life form
combination, trapped there, and he wondered what the scientists at
the base, and the Earth, would think of it, and he realized he
would be famous and remembered in history books for the discovery,
and the biggest discovery ever find in outer space, and he wondered
what would happen to the energy bubble – and if they could remove
it what would happen? Surely they would fully check the energy
bubble before it was taken to an inhabited region of the Earth!

Chapter 21

The Scientists

The cavity was full of scientists,
technicians, and archeologists going in a circle around the energy
sphere, crowded around it, in groups loudly and excitedly
discussing hundreds of scientific details, not going passed a white
painted line circle going around its sphere, where alterations to
things had occurred, and Cronenberg went behind them and took a
seat at a table beside some scientists, and with the astronauts of
his shuttle, and he watched the astronauts startled faces, still
recalling his arrival back at the base, and his description of it,
and they had immediately sensed that it was something immense of
alien origins, of a highly advanced civilization, and had only been
slightly surprised that he had gone to the hill.

Who had the gunman astronaut been? Who had
wanted to kill him? He even wondered if someone had known of the
alien sphere, and had tried to stop them finding it for some
reason!

What had astonished him was that none of the
astronauts had actually left the shuttles, and they were positive
of it, and he had even proven nobody had sneaked away by recordings
of them on the shuttle recordings, and it had left him
bewildered.

He had been told confidentially that there
had been occurrences at that region of the Antarctica before their
shuttles had been brought down, and they had been highly classified
occurrences, and Anders crash had been recorded, but they had not
found their remains and wreckage.

The events of that week were incredible and
he saw the whole base react to the alien discovery, and the
information had appeared all over the media there, and it had
finally reached the Earth, and he had even become famous there for
finding the discovery, and had returned to see it with the other
astronauts, and they had told them of the occurrences that had
taken the shuttles down, which the scientists believed it had been
responsible for the occurrences, and they believed that the sphere
had something wrong with it, which nobody fully understood, and
that it had not been able to take the shuttles where it had wanted
and had landed them where it was safe to land, and that the rocket
vehicle Anders and the scientist had been in had been too hard to
land properly, leading to its crash.

They believed it had tried to take them to
where it was to have them find it, and he was positive of it now,
and also going by the accounts the scientists there gave of things
that had happened since they had entered the cavity, and it later
enlarged the tunnel into the hill, and the appearance of strange
things!

They believed it was trying to make contact
with them, but nothing had been established, though it had
communicated with many of them, as he had done, but they had been
confused by it and had not achieved much and it revealed little,
but he was surprised that the astronaut with the gun had been seen
the night before and he had questioned the scientists that had seen
him and they gave him a photograph of him and he had identified it
as the astronaut, and they were sure it had used the generated
astronaut copy to get him to go to the cavity to the discovery,
which he surely would not have gone to if he had not been
chased!

But he also thought it generated it to do
things and they were there for some other reason, and nobody had
given a full and proper explanation of why, and they never fully
got the alien sphere’s actual function, or if it was just an
advanced life form and what it was really like, and what it was
doing there and what environment had it originated from, and what
it really wanted, other than the fact it had wanted to be
discovered!

The scientists were mainly involved in trying
to monitor and analyze everything they could about the sphere!

Chapter 22

The Cavity

A panoramic spectacle view of the Martian
landscape stretched out all the way around Cronenberg as he rested
on the top of the hill, almost over the cavity, and he watched the
fascinating rugged golden shapes of the world beaming in bright
sunlight everywhere, and in the thin blue sky he studied stars, and
where all the vehicles and shuttles were below, and below where the
archaeologists were working away, checking if there was anything in
the ground everywhere, and he heard their excited conversations,
talking of the discovery, which had to their ultimate find, and
perhaps the best find in centuries.

He liked archeology, especially there, and
liked exploring the past and the occurrences that had taken
place.

The world below now looked like it had been
frozen in time, and was a fantastic surreal prehistoric times
world, and he recalled why he had even wanted to be a
paleontologist. It conjured up great visions of the original
primitive worlds of the universe, with its astounding untouched
magnitude.

While he moved
over and rested against a large boulder he occasionally examined
clouds of dust from the stone and debris, the archeologists sifted
through, and he still listened for anything of interest to him, and
he watched the sky in a place that he had not examined before and
wondered what existed there and what other strange worlds there
were to explore, and he started to realize he was starting to like
the world more than his own, and that he would miss being there if
he left, and the stars on the Earth would not be the same.

The cavity had fascinated everyone there and
he watched them dig away the hill, enlarging the tunnel out, more
and more, to allow them to get proper large equipment in.

An image was still in his mind! Something
about the astronaut with the gun fascinated him, as if it had tried
to kill him, and he wondered if it meant the alien sphere was a
killer life form, and was it waiting for its chance to do
something?

He could not grasp why it had not shown it
intended to do harm, but he was sure it used the astronaut to get
him there!

What had eaten Campbell and the other people
at the base though, and yet the alien sphere could not reach the
distance of the base and he began to suspect there was something
else!

The entire outside of the cavity and the
boulders there were destroyed and their remains removed, and
everything there and further out was being checked by
archeologists, as they searched for the remains of anything that
could give them the slightest clue to the energy sphere’s origins
or anything else.

It was incredible that with the entire
incident he had forgotten about the map and the diamonds, and he
was amazed that he was actually sitting on the spot where he had
intended to look for them, and he still had not done it!

He looked over to where the other hill was,
where he had climbed up when they had crashed there, and looked
over at where the shuttles had been, where Eagle’s shuttle had
crashed, and the shuttles had landed, and examined all the mess it
had left.

Eagle and the other astronauts had now
entirely lost interest in the treasure map, and that made him
happy, and he recalled Rosenberg knowing of the map, when he saw
Cronenberg taking it out Anders pocket, and he was sure it was him
that had told them of it, but he had not gone near Eagle
anywhere.

He spotted where Anders’s rocket vehicle had
come down, and where their shuttle had been over at its side.

He removed the treasure map and studied it,
and the entire region about him, sure that it had to be out there
or about him somewhere, and he was surprised at how bright the map
was there and how details on it became visible, which were not
visible before, and he studied it with some surprise, and in an
entirely new light, seeing the entire area and map properly, and as
not the vague jumbled muddled scrap of paper as it had been, but as
the scientist had made it, as he knew what he was like now, now
that he had all the information of the scientist, and how he did
things!

To his surprise he spotted a mark, like a
vague small hill with a cross marked on it, and it was surely the
hill he was on, and he started searching about the hill for the
place, and for anything that looked like it, and went to a slightly
higher point behind him and he measured the hill and mark on the
map and saw the place close to him, to his surprise, and he
searched where it was marked at, and spotted a bright gleam nearby
and rushed over to it.

Chapter 23

The Awakening

Cronenberg stopped dead, confused,
bewildered, and he rushed down the hill, gasping hysterically for
air, thinking of the diamond in his spacesuit pocket, and in the
deep silence of his spacesuit it sank in that something else was
occurring simultaneously with his incredible discovery, and the
discovery of the first diamond on Mars and with an immense size he
had never seen before!

Saliva poured down his mouth, and he had to
calm himself, and rest, to see what he was missing!

When he had rested he examined everything
over at the cavity entrance and watched scientists rushing out, and
falling about, and technicians and archeologists swiftly removing
expensive equipment, as though something deadly of immense
proportions was occurring, and he tried to recall what they had
been doing.

He stood baffled with his mouth open, as he
had not even seen them react anything like it before!

What the hell was going on? He did not know
what to do? Would he lose what he had found?

The diamond had astounded him! It was just
lying out in the open, shining in the sunlight, embedded in a
strange form of Martian rock, which he used a tool to hack out.

He sat down, still exhausted, thinking of all
the things he could use the cash on back on the Earth and slowly
started realizing the ground was vibrating and dust and stones were
shifting about him, and the intensity of it was increasing, and he
started to see something unbelievably dangerous was going to
happen, and large boulders at his side started rolling about the
hill, and as he stood he started falling about as though in an
immense earthquake, and saw and heard boulders rolling down and
smashing into things on the ground, and he ran down at full speed
as he saw the ground starting slide down and form a landslide.

The bottom of the hill was now being smashed
with more and more large boulders, and everything was collapsing
about him, and he searched everywhere until he saw a place that was
free from the destruction and he swiftly took the safest route
across to there, and fell over, over and over, and kept immediately
rushing back on his feet.