The Deadliest Alien Artifacts (Story Collection) (9 page)

“
It
might not work! Why release it for nothing is the argument against
it! We have already gone over the borderline of giving highly
classified material ...”

“
We’ll
give our word not to reveal it anywhere unless we have to!” Bryson
replied. “We have also been given classified material in our past
projects, and we helped create some! For instance at the last
castle exploration ...”

“
There
is little to it anyway!” Parker moaned. “In the nineteen seventies
they had a first contact scenario that they gave to scientists and
others to handle, and one of the outcomes of the project was The
Alien Source Code, which was designed to communicate with any
extraterrestrials through communications, which was later improved,
and was to be also used in physical communication.

“
All the
old stuff is out date ... But it has been vastly improved,
especially since the Pacific island incident, and, of course, your
encounter at the castle! With the incredible advances in computer
technology!”

“
Well,
there’s a version that does not need special equipment for it! It
was made into software and is to be used if a sudden encounter
occurs again, and we were to use it to communicate ...”

“
You
have the technology to communicate with it ...” Mortimer replied
cheerfully.

“
And
perhaps make a first contact situation occur!”

“
So
what’s happened?” Bryson replied, anxiously waiting for a reply,
and answer to what was occurring.

“
We
haven’t found a way to communicate with it! It has not replied to
anything we have done, which we have gone by the instructions
with!”

Bryson laughed
and replied, “So we are trying to find a way to talk to it!”

“
Correct!” Parker replied firmly, hoping for an
answer.

“
Thanks!” Mortimer answered firmly. “Since you have given
what you know ... I’ll add what I know! I believe that what’s
active there is the equivalent to our subconscious mind, while it’s
in a type of sleep or suspended animation state, which acts as its
defense and carries out various other functions. I think it brought
the airplane down and for some reason wanted us here, especially by
showing the structure to you on your scan of the
island!”

“
So
we’ve to contact its subconscious?” Bryson replied.

“
Right!”
Parker replied. “Another classified element of The Alien Source
Code is that we can send it or communicate with it telepathically,
using some of our equipment!”

“
I think
it has a physical presence!” Mortimer replied. “As the alien in the
Pacific island spacecraft had! And the entity at the other castle
had! We’ll have to find it as we did before. And we’ll find it down
the tunnel from the tower, and we’ll have to use ropes to reach it
at the bottom! Unless there’s a way of making a hole through this
wall here!”

II

The Bottom of the
Tunnel

Bryson was blinded by the black abyss below
him as he was lowered down through the tunnel, from the last stone
steps from the tower above.

He gripped the rope hard, but spun round,
and fixed his foot against a wall to stop it, and looked up to the
top of the tunnel and through the hole there, and listened to two
archeologists over him still conferring and arguing on what way to
lower him.

They had found little there so far and had
taken a long time arranging the exploration of it, and Bryson had
been unchallenged with his insistence in going down, and the
archeologists had agreed to help and to follow him.

It was incredible that they had weak lights
again, after all their technology advances, and making lights the
way that they wanted them, and he could see nothing in their dim
light and occasionally stopped and checked his light as he fed the
rope away and lowered himself.

A deep thud echoed down from the top as the
scientists at the tower gathered there to look down and he wondered
why he was lowering himself so slowly down when they could easily
lower him faster, making the task easier.

It was their ultimate discovery and
expedition and he wished it to be done right, and as one of his
adventure expeditions and to give the full discovery everything
that it deserved. Yet he was mainly confused as to what had been
discovered and would be found, especially after being surprised at
so much in the past with such things, and being given such little
facts.

The ebbing radiance of the torches clearly
was not enough to allow them to see much, and he realized how tired
they all had become and that they had not even bothered getting
someone to get another light!

A bright radiance of a large star beamed
down through a gap at the top of the tower and he watched its
reflections from things with his dreamy sight, with it probing
amidst the abyss below, scattering beams in clusters.

Some of dust entered his throat giving him
cough sensations, but he speeded up and unleashed the rope allowing
him to fall down and to inhale better air.

What was the outcome of all this? Would they
even find a treasure? What would it being doing with treasure?

Hazy echoes off his deep breathing broke the
extraordinary silence and he examined the artificial walls around
him as he shifted downwards, and he started to find the stale air
harder to inhale and he frequently gasped for air, while dangling,
with hideous expectations of plunging into some mind-bending
hideously dangerous vortex.

The walls interested him and he was sure
that there was a way to alter them, and that they could rearrange
the castle/starship walls to allow them to enter below, making a
door into the tunnel through the room wall, and he realized that it
might be done by a different method and that there might be a
control center where all the structure rearrangements were carried
out.

What if it had not been the precise spot of
the disturbance and that they had detected it wrongly? Where would
it be?

Yet he
just accepted it, and the
frantic reactions of the two
archeologists to increase his speed.

A distant rumble above released debris
and he realized how dangerous the area the two archeologists were
on might be, and that it might not be able to support their weight,
and he recalled Merton hanging from there by his fingers when he
had saved him! It had been damaged with age and h
e imagined it and them crashing down on
top of him, and considered if he could survive!

In an instant the rope jerked and wildly
oscillated and he spun uncontrollably around and a surge of
blackness engulfed him.

It mystified him! He thought of ancient
devil and black magic worshippers concealing something below,
beyond their comprehension, hidden away from mankind!

He tried straining his eyes to see further
down, but there were no features of anything. Its tunnel shape
vanished into darkness!

When he finally hit the ground he never
fully realized where it was, and in the turmoil he fell over
sideways into rocks.

He got himself up with the help of the
rope and released the rope
’
s tightened grip around his body, and
shivered at what was there and how dangerous it was.

He
cleaned away dirt and casually gave looks
around him at the debris from the above steps piled there, and
wondered how they could shift it and what was under it, and he
realized that the others were about a room below just feet away
from him through the wall in front of him, and they would be
monitoring him with their equipment, and he fitted a small camera
to his jacket and switched it on, for them to see what was
there.

He switched on his communicator and started
talking to Mortimer, who was standing at the other side of the wall
staring at the wall.

“
As you can see there is far too much
rubble over the bottom to see anything, and the tunnel in front of
you is packed with debris from the collapsed stone
steps!
”

“
What do you think we should
do?
”

“
Well, if there is nothing in the
castle/starship for altering and removing parts of structures like
the wall there we
’
ll have to hoist up all this rubble and clear
it away!
”

“
We
’
ll get onto it!
”
Parker replied, from beside
Mortimer.
“
I
’
ll have the archeologists start removing that
rubble below you, and I
’
ll send out some people to look for a way to
remove the wall!
”

III

The Search for the Lost
Artifact

Bryson examined equipment about the top of
the tunnel, below the tower, and heard the archeologists finish
clearing out the debris and watched the others near him hoist it up
and get ready to remove it from there to nearby rooms.

From the edge he saw the powerful lights at
the bottom, and the now empty shaft there, and he realized that
they would now begin digging into the ground below the castle.

Dreamily he observed the twilight sun rising
up over the castle, diverging its golden rays amongst it.

He moved out into a corridor when he
heard a voice further along from there and he saw one of
Parker
’
s
scientists and wondered what he was doing there, and realized he
had something for them and waited until he reached him.

“
We
’
ve been able to locate where they altered the
structure and we
’
ve started work on removing that
wall!
”
he
announced excitedly, and Bryson watched him enter the bottom of the
tower and look down at the bottom, and investigate everything
there.

Bryson was sure that he was looking there
for problems or dangers to them, if they removed the wall.

“
Is everything going as
planned?
”
he asked Bryson.

“
Yes! Especially if they remove that
wall down there! I don
’
t think they would be able to remove it
through the tunnel!
”

“
What do reckon is down
there?
”
he
asked, gasping.

“
I don
’
t fully know! I think we can leave
this island if we help it! It landed us on this
island!
”

Bryson watched him agree, and they went down
to the room next to the tunnel to see Parker.

The room had been altered all over it and
clearly to leave a gap at the wall where the tunnel was behind, and
Bryson knew that they had solved removing the wall.

Bryson was surprised when he heard someone
say something and turned and saw the wall was gone, and that a
scientist resting there had fallen through into the tunnel, where
the archeologists there stood staggered, looking into the room.

It was incredible technology and they had
made the wall vanish and Bryson wondered if the entire castle was
reformed energy, and was staggered at the uses of it and things
that they could build!

He had thought that the wall would have
turned to sold brick walls like the top floor of the castle, and
realized that it was a different formation of what they used, and
that they had replaced the top floor section of the starship with
solid stone with it.

The archeologists dropped their tools and
climbed through and the scientists entered and started checking
what was there.

Bryson was amazed when one of the
archeologists started confessing to having found something there,
without telling them and they all started trying see into it, and
the archeologist climbed back in and removed some debris from the
ground and pointed at some black material below, at the deepest
point that they had dug down to, and the scientists started
examining it.

Bryson was the first to touch it and he was
staggered to feel some form of extraordinary energy pulsating
through it, which he sensed had more magnitude than he had
encountered.

It left him staggered realizing what it was
and he watched them starting to clear away the rubbish from it, and
all the scientists started joining in and helping hoist the rubble
out, and the artifact slowly appeared from beneath the ground,
while the others in the room monitored what was occurring there,
and any reactions from it, and they slowly revealed its perfectly
symmetrical black sphere.

IV

The Alien Sphere

The black alien
sphere rested below the castle shining in bright light, beamed from
spotlights all around it, with the equipment of the scientists
surrounding it, with most of it monitoring and exploring what was
there.

Bryson watched
it in the pit below the castle with amazement, astonished that a
fifteen-foot perfect symmetrical black sphere could be what it was,
and have the power it had. Yet its powers existed beyond the
universe, in outer dimensions and time zones, which they had
detected.

“
You
have the technology to communicate with it?” Mortimer asked Parker
curiously.