EarthUnder (The Meteorite Chronicles Book 1) (18 page)

From here it was off to Vienna for our last decoy visit before we headed for Hawaii. While traveling across the planet, I asked Mina a few questions about the technology behind the Vug. My query was why when we could step through stone was the Vug needed for travel. Jasmina responded that this was a very good question.

Mina explained with eloquence, “The Vug is a scrubber; it protects living tissue from radiation saturation. We can traverse Earth, but there is naturally occurring radiation throughout the planet. Our biological tissue absorbs this radiation during travel through the Gray. The Vug is designed for long-distance travel and protects our bodies from absorbing that radiation. Over time, the Terans have incorporated additional technology into the Vugs for our convenience and ease of travel. The atoms we impact on the leading edge of the Vug are absorbed by the Vug and immediately replaced behind our path of travel. This way there is no displacement of material or impact inertia. This allows us to pass through soil, stone, or water without causing any structural disruption.” I asked her if she knew how much the Teranor might know about our thoughts and movements. Her reply was completely unsettling. She admitted, “I don’t know this answer.”

Her response gave us both intense cause for concern. This made her more human to me. The playing field had just become more level. We were going to have to lean on each other and act on instinct. Suddenly my gut feelings held more value than ever before. As we sped along I thought ahead to what we might encounter. In my mind, I was pondering the possibility of Teranor being posted at every center for meteorite study in order to stop us from our planned effort. Could there be traps waiting for us everywhere? How could we trust that we would not be face to face with Teranor anywhere we went? How could I know whom I was dealing with and how would we get the word out to the people of Earth? As I stood thinking, Mina glanced at me and said, “I hear your thoughts and I have the same concerns.”

“Oh no, really?” I squealed with embarrassment and questioned, “You always hear what I think?”

“Yes,” she replied. “One of the things I admire most about you is that you always seem to think the right thoughts at the right time. And so often I agree with your feelings.” She went on to say, “I trust your gut feel on this as well.”

The next stop would hopefully cause enough confusion to give us time with Gary. We would have to make a bigger appearance in Vienna, something that would get our pursuers to take notice of our direction. Maybe we could get into the probe room and fire up the equipment with some bogus specimens that we could leave behind on the stages so the Teranor would be left puzzled.

“Mina,” I inquired with reservation, “in your years of searching for meteorites, have you stashed any unusual specimens that we might use to install in the probe and leave behind?”

Mina answered with a “yes” as she waved her hand to change our direction. In minutes we came to a halt and stepped out of the Vug and onto the desert hardpan. Next to us was a massive stone cavern that rose out of the desert floor like a giant cornucopia of black sun-baked rock. We walked into the vacant cave, our footsteps echoing into the depth of the darkness. Mina closed her eyes for a moment, and great wooden cases appeared along the sides of the cave. “These are my finds from all of the years of searches for stones from the sky. You tell me what you wish to use and I will retrieve it.”

Stunned, I recovered from my daze to reply, “Ok, can you find us five different individuals of planetary basalt? They can be from Mars or the moon or any other planetary body in our solar system.” Mina returned with a sack full of priceless research specimens, pieces of exactly what we needed. It was agonizing to do the unthinkable, but we took a rock from the floor of the cave and proceeded to break fragments from each of the glorious, fusion-crusted, fresh-fallen stones. I could see at a glance that Jasmina had brought mare basalt and a regolith breccia from Luna, our moon, and a Shergottite and two Nakhlites from Mars. This was a perfect cross-section of samples for the plan. As we walked out of the opening of this dry, cool, “mouth of the desert,” I stopped for a glance back into the cave. Mina responded by telling me that the cave was nearly full and that they would all be mine if I wished. This was a generous gesture, but I reminded her that one cannot eat rocks. We both laughed a bit as we stepped into the Gray and then the Vug. With us, we carried five perfect decoy specimens that should confuse anyone who would find them in the stages of the probe in the lab in Vienna. What we needed to do now was get to Vienna, find our way into the lab, get into the probe room when nobody was in there, load specimens into the stages, and begin to fire up the ion microprobe (called SHRIMP for Sensitive High Resolution Ion Micro Probe). The hope was that by us making a false stand here at the SHRIMP and hastily leaving behind these specimens, the Teranor might be thrown off our trail for a couple of days while we make the run for Hawaii.

We dropped through the Gray and into the Void and began to traverse the planet from below the surface. As we rocketed through the distance there appeared to be a massive gathering of Terans below.

“We are asked to stop for a moment,” Mina informed me. The Vug looped around in a half circle. It began to lower us into what must be the center of the gathering. At the core of the sea of bodies stood a number of Elders, their silver hair and yellow skin shining in the fluorescent light like a full moon in a star-filled night sky. The younger Terans appeared in varying shades of azure to violet. The Vug came to rest in the midst of the Elders. We stepped out of the Vug, which then rose above us a few meters. There were no words spoken, only intense eye contacts. I could feel a flow of energy passing through me and could hear a low susurration. I could only hear the whispers, not the actual words. It had to be something of critical importance to our mission for this many Terans to get involved. Soon everything became silent and still, and the Vug lowered to take us away. As we sped through the Void Jasmina shared a few things with me.

“First,” she started, “we have been given a number of powerful gifts to aid us in our plight. My people have rallied to assist us in any way they are able. Both you and I can now see the Teranor. The Elders have given us the ability to see a red halo around the Teranor, and we now have the ability to repel them if it is needed. We are both shielded now and our movements cannot be seen or tracked. We have the ability to appear and disappear at will in the presence of humans and Teranor. We have both also been given destructive power: we can stop, maim, or kill anything with a look or a hand gesture. There are many millions of Terans who are watching us now and sending us their power and energy. There are other abilities that will emerge as needed; suffice it to say that my people feel that we must not fail this quest.”

There were lines in Mina’s face I had never noticed before. She had the look of deliberate intent. The perpetual smile in her eyes was gone. Her movement was less melodic and more rigid. She stared ahead as if she was looking directly into the future at exactly what was coming. I on the other hand had no clue of what was next. But I knew to expect just about anything; after all, we were buzzing around in a bubble underground, flying through solid rock, with no propulsion system, no steering wheel, and no brakes. Mina’s briefing of our commune with her people seemed to suggest that we were preparing to do battle. Well, the bad guys did always have guns so it felt good to have something to work with. Deep down inside I could feel the urge to try out the new powers. I kept thinking how cool it would be to simply wave my hand and send someone flying. As we sped along I looked over at Mina to see that she had the same smile on her face that I had on mine. We must have been thinking the same thing. It felt powerful knowing that we had options, that we didn’t always have to run, couldn’t outrun the bullets. Mina nodded without a glance in my direction as if to agree with what I was thinking.

Soon we would rise through the Gray and make our way to the Natural History Museum in Vienna. We would need to make several appearances and somehow leave in a huff that would force us to leave these specimens behind. It occurred to me that as soon as we made an appearance the Teranor would figure out that we were now shielded. It wouldn’t take them long to go on high alert from surmising that they could no longer track our movements. It felt strange to me that the bad guys were all on my side of the two worlds—above and below. Then again, I have always said that the only thing I fear in life is my fellow man. It would be interesting to see who glowed red. “Mina, what if we get back to the surface and virtually everyone has a red aura?” Mina shot me a look like I was eighteen again. Her serious demeanor implied that we were in for some difficult encounters ahead.

In minutes we were rising to the Karl-Renner Ring, which encircles the inner core of old Vienna. Jasmina placed the Vug just inside the stone wall at the base of the Parliament building near the Vienna Natural History Museum. We stepped out of the Vug and the stone wall and onto the steps at the outside base of the magnificent marble structure of the Parliament. Grand architectural structures surrounded us: the Rathaus and the Hofburg as well as the Staatsoper and the Natural History Museum. As I looked around and walked with Mina, I could recall being here with her many times in the past. Mina looked down as she smiled as if to say “yes, many times.” We were walking along the ring when a group of people came right for us. I was looking for red, but saw none. They were busy talking as they approached.

Mina stopped me by the hand and we stood as they advanced. Like children playing “chicken” in a school yard, we stood our ground while the group grew nearer. In an instant they strolled through us! Not between us, through us. I felt the strange wringing sensation as they walked directly through our bodies. It was as if water had been soaked up by a towel and then wrung out again. There was the slightest pulling sensation as they passed through the other side as if they were almost stuck inside us. We had held hands while this occurred and there seemed to be a tug at our clasped hands as if we were delicately pulled apart. This was part of our shield; we were ghosts. This was fun stuff! We had to stand there for a bit while I wrapped my head around what had just taken place. Mina seemed as amused by this new ability as I was. I wondered if this meant that bullets could fly right through us as well. That would be a huge benefit. Turned out she was amused by my thinking.

Mina interrupted my thoughts with, “Yes, Bryce, bullets can go right through us now without damage, but only when we are in this state of being. We did this in order to walk out of the walls of Parliament and to try on our new abilities. We will most assuredly see red when we begin to move through the museum. It might be a good plan to cover some ground within the museum to see how many Teranor we might encounter before we make our first appearance. We will want to make our presence known eventually, and when we leave it must be under duress in order to convince those after us that we had hoped to complete our mission here. If we don’t see red, then we will need to remain here until the Teranor begin to close in on us.”

Things are going to get dicey; I am sure that Mina is thinking the same as I am: what tricks do the Teranor have and can we counter them? Soon we arrive at the museum and walk through the marble walls into the great hall filled with arches hanging over grand marble stairways leading to various wings of the museum. Wading through rooms filled with dinosaurs and taxidermy, butterflies and minerals, we made our way to the meteorite display. It was rewarding to see specimens on display that came from my efforts. I was distracted by the specimens while Mina was watching for red. Totally distracted I called out, “Come on, Mina, check out the great rocks! Nobody can see us anyway. Just look at these killer specimens!”

Mina settled down and joined me in enjoying the displays. We made our way around the entire exhibit before going to the reception desk to ask for the curator of the meteorite collection. We both went into the restrooms and turned opaque again before leaving our respective rooms. As we came together and walked across the rotunda, I could see the curator was just arriving from outside the museum. We could see from the distance that he had no aura of red and I hailed him with a raised hand to stop him before he moved on to the lab. We could see the surprised expression on Kilian’s face as he stopped.

After a happy greeting we followed him to his office and pulled the glorious array of specimens out of hiding to lay on his desk. Kilian, the curator, seemed calm until we began to remove the wrapping from each fragment. His response was a long-winded “oh” with the reveal of each individual specimen. There was little doubt that we had his attention as he pulled a hand lens from the lanyard hanging around his neck and gloves from the desk drawer. He could recognize from across the desk what we had brought for his enjoyment. As he pored over each piece he asked us what we were hoping to do with these specimens. I replied that our hope was to have them identified and classified. I told Kilian that we held the main masses of each; we knew the location of each find, the name of the finder, and the weights of each piece. Kilian was delighted to hear that all of these large repository specimens were to be donated to the museum for research and classification. Then we pushed the envelope as far as we could by asking if he might be able to get time on the SHRIMP for a cursory look while we were there visiting. I knew this would be a stretch, but really all we wanted was for the specimens to make it into the probe room before we were forced to flee the onslaught of Teranor.

Kilian’s response was a very wry, squinting look. He rubbed his beard and sighed with a deep breath, then sat back in his high-backed leather office chair. With a heavy Austrian accent, Kilian agreed that this could be done. He admitted that he had time reserved on the probe for that night and this was why he had come back to the museum so late in the day. Kilian asked for some time to prepare the stages and offered to set us up with a meal in the cafeteria. This sounded great to me; the tables in part of the dining area were set around a balcony just below the domed pinnacle in the roof of the museum, and the view from these tables was spectacular looking down through each floor of the museum through the rotunda.

A docent arrived in Kilian’s office to guide us up to the cafeteria; Kilian gave her his card and asked her to make certain that our meal was charged to his account. As we left the office the curator was busily gathering up the specimens onto a tray to carry them off to the lab. We took a freight elevator to the top floor with our docent guide, who left us on our own at a reserved table in my favorite spot. We were sitting for only a moment when a server came to offer us a beverage. As we waited Mina reached across the table to clasp my hands and asked me if I recalled the last time we were here. It caught me off guard, but her question opened my mind and in a flash I could see us sitting here in another time. The moment held weight. I began to recall details when the server returned with ginger tea for us both.