The Pyramid Builders (18 page)

Hemon and Sasha walked into the building the next morning holding hands. Sasha was blushing and smiling. Christopher watched them approach and smiled. He glanced at Jillian and saw her smiling as well. Dolly stood, “Good morning! I hope you had a restful evening.”

Hemon slowly shook his head, “Not really, I tried to tell her I’m too old for her, but she won’t take no for an answer.” Hemon looked at her and smiled, “I’m glad she didn’t.” Hemon looked at Dolly, Chris, and Jillian, “I think you brought me here to assist you in your plans against the Moet. I will agree to help you on one condition.” Dolly looked at Chris and raised her eyebrows. “You must persuade her father to allow her to marry me. If you can do that, I’ll help you.”

Dolly looked to her right and Jeff stepped up to the table, “Do you think you can make that happen?”

“I’ll just tell him that a very rich man wants her as a wife.”

Hemon looked at Jeff, “That’s not true. I am not a wealthy man.”

Dolly looked back and said, “You are now. You’ve just been given ten million dollars to plan your wedding. If you need more, let me know.”

Hemon and Sasha stared at Dolly, “Are you serious?”

“Yes, I am. I need you to give us your complete loyalty and attention on this effort. I think you will help us immensely.” Dolly turned back to Jeff, “Give her father three hundred thousand to prepare his family, and anyone else he cares to bring, for travel to Sydney.”

“Better make it five hundred thousand.”

Dolly shook her head, “Make it an even million. Use my account to pay for it.” She looked at Hemon and Sasha, “You can use the ten million for the wedding.”

Jeff laughed and turned to leave.

Hemon looked at Sasha and saw her amazement. He smiled and said, “Ok, what is it you want to know?”

Jillian looked across the table at Hemon, “We have been discussing the best way to handle the Moet threat and we’re considering going to the planets that are fighting them for help.”

“You’re talking about approaching the Sheera or their allies?”

“Yes. We’re also going to go to the other construction site in Bolivia at Puma Punku and see if the one trained by the Sheera there left something for us like you did.”

Hemon smirked, “I don’t think you’ll find anything there and I wouldn’t count on the Sheera or their allies for help.”

Jillian looked at Chris and Dolly then said, “Why not?”

Hemon took a deep breath and shook his head, “I chose not to mention this on the tablet because I didn’t know if the Sheera would ever return. It’s also the reason I’ve always refused to have a relationship with anyone since they left.” He looked at Sasha and then turned to Jillian, “The night the Sheera left, I managed to take two gravity guns. You have one of them. I left their ship and went to my tent to hide them, but found my younger brother in the tent sleeping. I made him leave the construction activities in the afternoon complaining of a very upset stomach. He was really sick and I didn’t want to wake him, so I went and slept in his tent.

The Sheera had left during the late afternoon in one of their small runabouts to gather their cutting tools from the quarry. Later that evening they returned to load them on board their ship. I snuck outside my tent to see what they were doing; I stayed on the ground so they wouldn’t see me. Just before they lifted, Yelt left their ship and came over and stood outside my tent, raised a hand weapon, and fired a bright beam at my brother thinking it was me. My brother and the tent burst into a very hot blue flame, and in less than ten seconds nothing was left but a scorched place on the sand. Yelt entered his ship and they left. I don’t know for certain, but I suspect the other assistant at Puma Punku wasn’t as lucky as I was.”

No one said anything while they considered what Hemon said.

“I was initially outraged at what they did. Later, I thought about what happened and there are several things that really bothered me. First, why did they take the time to go retrieve the cutting tools if they had to rush to escape the Moet? Second, why would they kill the ones that they trained? Third, just what was the Pyramid really intended to do?”

Dolly leaned forward in her chair, “They didn’t want us to advance too quickly.”

Hemon tilted his head and gave Dolly a salute, “That’s how I see it, and that doesn’t make sense if they were there to protect us. I’m not at all sure just who the bad guys are here. Both parties have demonstrated a total disregard for our survival.”

Christopher scratched his chin and said, “So you don’t think we can receive help from either one? We’re alone on this one?”

“How could you see it any other way? If they did help us, what would the price be? The Sheera must have had an agenda that they didn’t share. I now suspect that so called screen would have made our planet a prison.”

Jillian turned her head and looked out the window for a moment, then said, “Why did you wait so long before you made your tablet known?”

“I kept hoping that humanity would give up its warlike ways. How can I give that kind of technology to a nation that would then conquer the planet? It was after the last nuclear exchange when the world formed a government, that I felt safe enough to reveal it. Even then I’ve been worried, but time is short. I decided it was now or never.”

Dolly looked at Chris and Jillian and they nodded, “Come with me, Hemon. I want to show you something.” Dolly stood, and the group followed her out of the building and boarded a transport. She lifted and flew across the Sydney spaceport, landing next to a giant steel building. Hemon could hear the construction noise coming from inside more than a hundred yards away. He followed Dolly through a heavily guarded door and entered a giant room. He looked across the room and saw a huge starship. He stopped and immediately saw the front third of it was burned away. He looked at Dolly, “This is not a Moet ship.”

“How do you know that?”

“Their ships are grey.”

“You’re right. This ship was killed in a battle where a Moet ship was also destroyed. We’ve been taking it apart and examining it for anything we can use in our defense.”

“What have you found?”

“If the Sheera are part of the Alliance that this ship comes from, they are not very smart.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because they have the gravity guns and this ship doesn’t use gravity to propel it. Their reactors are nowhere near as powerful as ours, and their force fields are a hundredth the power of what one would be using our reactors.”

Hemon smiled, “That explains them training an assistant. Someone had to tell humans how to use their tools.” Hemon turned to look at Dolly, “What about the weapons?”

“They have fifty high powered beams on that ship. It appears, according to Dr. Morrison, our Chief Engineer, that the beam could only fire for four seconds and then the ship would rotate and fire another set of beams. It was those beams that killed the Moet.”

“And?”

“We can power them fifty times stronger and for a full minute.”

“It still might not be enough.”

“Why do you say that?”

“You say this ship was killed. How many actually attacked?”

Dolly looked at Jillian and Chris, “Well, we don’t know. So you could be right.”

“I also suspect that the gravity guns were not developed by the Sheera. Nowhere in their transfer of information to me was any detail on their operation. I think they were discovered and used but they were never really analyzed to understand their operation.”

Jeff said, “They might be a Jenze artifact.”

Hemon nodded slowly, “You’re probably right. However, it appears to me that you have begun using this technology; am I right?”

“Yes, you are. It really wasn’t that difficult to discover its properties.”

“Then what does that say about the technological development of this so called Alliance. It appears they are functioning on technology they know nothing about. There must be a reason for that.”

Chris looked at Hemon, “They built that ship. They must know something.”

Hemon looked up at the giant silver ship and said, “When the Sheera showed me their technical information, I saw a combination of elements that would make a substance for a reactor. None of the elements were radioactive. They suggested that the substance had the possibility of being tremendously stronger, but they had not been able to find the elements or process needed to create it. I assume you used the eight elements that I carved on the tablet?”

“Is that the process they were referring to?”

“Yes, but like the Sheera, I have no idea what other elements would be needed, nor how to get them to combine. It would take someone much smarter than I am to even know where to start. It would necessitate the ability to actually visualize how the molecular pattern would combine.”

Dolly stared at the floor and didn’t say anything. Chris watched her and started shaking his head, “You’re not going to ask him, are you?” Jillian saw a sadness in Dolly that she had never seen before. She looked at Chris as he continued, “You will only hurt yourself. He can’t help us.”

Hemon looked between Dolly and Chris, “Who are you talking about?”

Dolly sighed heavily, “My brother, George.”

Jillian said, “Who?”

Dolly stood straighter, “My brother George is as much smarter than me than I am to a chimp.”

Chris shook his head, “But he lives in another world. His mind isn’t present.”

“That may be true, but if anyone on this planet can see the answer, it would have to be him.” Dolly turned to Hemon and smiled, “You and I are going to see him while Jillian and Chris oversee the arming of the Cheops.”

“The Cheops?”

“That’s the ship they used to see the light that told us about you.”

“I’ll go, but Sasha goes with me.”

Dolly smiled, “Great. Get some things together for a trip to the outback.”

“Dolly, don’t do this.”

“Chris, I’ll keep control. You take care of the Cheops.”

Dolly looked at Hemon and Sasha, “Come with me.”

Chris watched them leave and Jillian asked, “What’s so wrong with her going to see him?”

“George is so brilliant that his intellect has sucked his personality and consciousness into it. His body just acts independently of thought. He lives in a shack with a couple of red kangaroos.”

“What’s so dangerous about that?”

Chris turned and looked at Jillian, “Dolly is almost smart enough to lose herself in her own intellect. She’s close. Last time she visited George she almost lost herself. We can’t afford to lose her.”

“Do you think you can stop her?”

“No, but I know someone who can.” Chris hit his communicator, “Jeff, you need to get back here now.”

L
’grae waited, and began hoping that the Moet had lost the trail. It had been two rotations since the destruction of the Moet Battleship and nothing had appeared on the passive scanners. His navigator looked up from his board, “How much longer are we going to stay?”

L’grae shrugged, “I don’t know, but we aren’t leaving today. They’re close.”

“How do you know?”

L’grae shook his head. Six hours later four Moet Main Battleships entered the system close to the star. The Navigator looked at L’grea, and he shook his head and shrugged. “I just felt it. Turn off all systems.”

“What about environmental?”

L’grae said, “All systems but one passive scanner!”

The Moet spread out and began scanning the system. The Ships Master watched his display, “Does anyone detect anything?”

After ten minutes the other three ships replied, “No. There is nothing on our scanners.”

The Ships Master leaned to the right in his command chair and put his chin on two of his hands. Where would I hide if I were here? He looked at his display and saw there were sixteen planets in the giant system. There were also more than two hundred moons around those planets. He thought about the problem and finally ordered, “We’ll take four planets each and begin our search. Make sure you scan the craters on the moons.” The huge ships moved out and began their search.

The Watcher was moving rapidly through the various groups of ships that were looking for the attackers. Two had been found and destroyed, but six were still missing. He checked in on the four ships after ten hours and asked, “Are you sure one of the attackers entered this system?”

The Ships Master turned one of his eyestalks to the communication panel, “No, I’m not certain.”

“Then why did you go there?”

“I’d come here if I were trying to hide.”

“Was there a trail leading to that system?”

“There was a trail not far away.”

“So you don’t even know if a ship is there?”

The Master shrugged, “It’s where I’d go to hide.”

“How long have you been searching?”

“Twelve dais.”

The Watcher was frustrated, “If you don’t find it in three more dais, look elsewhere.”

The Master stared at the Watcher who had never commanded a Ship of the Dynasty and felt his anger. “Is that a command?”

The Master saw the Watcher swell to twice his normal size. He knew he had pushed this one too far, and it was never a good thing to anger a member of the Royalty. He said quickly, “We’ll leave as soon as we scan the last four planets, which should be in two dais.”

The Watcher caught his anger and left the display. The plotter looked at the Ships Master, “We haven’t even started to look at all the asteroids and comets moving through this system.”

“How many are there?”

“More than ten thousand.”

The Ships Master knew that the attacker was probably hiding on one of those rocks. He should have started with them. Now that he thought about it; that is what he would have done. He would have expected the planets and moons to be scanned. Ten thousand scattered all over this huge system would take longer than scanning the planets. He shook his head, “Open a frequency that the attackers use.”

L’grae knew he didn’t have much longer. He was going to be forced to turn on the environmental controls in less than eight dais. Then he heard over the passive scanner, “You’re lucky this time. I am being forced to leave, but next time I will search until I find you. Your time to live is short.”