Read the first 6 chapters of SECOND EDEN below. But first, check out these interesting questions probed in Second Eden... 

A recent Science magazine feature article, "125 Questions: Things We Don't Know," polled scientists on what daunting but intriguing questions remained for modern science to answer. Here are a few that Second Eden addresses:

Is there--or was there--life elsewhere in the solar system?
The search for life--past or present--on other planetary bodies now drives NASA's planetary exploration program, which focuses on Mars, where water abounded when life might have first arisen.  

What caused mass extinctions?
A huge impact did in the dinosaurs, but the search for other catastrophic triggers of extinction has had no luck so far. If more subtle or stealthy culprits are to blame, they will take considerably longer to find. 

What gave rise to modern human behavior?
Did Homo sapiens acquire abstract thought, language, and art gradually or in a cultural "big bang," which in Europe occurred about 40,000 years ago? Data from Africa, where our species arose, may hold the key to the answer.

What are human races, and how did they develop?
Anthropologists have long argued that race lacks biological reality. But our genetic makeup does vary with geographic origin and as such raises political and ethical as well as scientific questions.

Read many more intriguing questions answered by Second Eden here... Or begin the story now...

Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6

SECOND EDEN

By

Carlton W. Austin

  

Copyright© 2004 Carlton W. Austin
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or
transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or
otherwise, without written permission from the author.
 ______________  .   _______________

"The destiny of mankind is not decided by material computation. When great causes are on the move in the world...we learn that we are spirits, not animals, and that something is going on in space and time, and beyond space and time, which, whether we like it or not, spells duty."
                                                         —Winston Churchill

                    ______________  .   _______________

SECOND EDEN

         We shall not cease from exploration

                     And the end of all our exploring

                     Will be to arrive where we started

                     And know the place for the first time.

                                               —T. S. Eliot

         We approach a condition in which

         we shall be amoral without the capacity

         to perceive it and degraded without

         the means to measure our descent.

                                             —Richard Weaver

         Any sufficiently advanced technology

         is indistinguishable from magic.

                                 —Sir Arthur C. Clarke

 

This is a book about

YOU

*      *      *

PROLOGUE

Washington, D.C.  The near future . . .

 

Peter MacKenzie knew Bo Randall would try to kill him. Wouldn’t he do the same if their situations were reversed?  They were both warriors, after all. The only question now was, did Bo, who sat beside him, stage-side at the Good ‘n’ Plenty, already know? Already have a plan? So far there were no certain indications, but for the fact that they were here, at Bo’s urgent request. 

Peter leaned back on his stool and fished another five-dollar bill from his jeans. As he did, he glanced at Bo, straining to detect any inkling of his hidden intentions. He knew Bo all too well—his explosive temper, quick as a struck match. And now he was sure that Bo knew about him and Beth.  Why else would he have insisted they get together right away? And why here, at a seedy Georgetown strip joint? On Christmas Eve?  Something was up, and it had stalked the recesses of his mind for the hour or so they’d talked and toasted and bought each other lap dances and reminisced about their days together as “Black Aces” in the elite VF-41 squadron aboard the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz.  He’d flown his F-14 Tomcat fighter to the edge and back again and again, mostly as Bo’s wingman, in the third Persian Gulf War against the Saudis and later against the Chinese in the Taiwan Straits.  He remembered how they’d been in and out of scuffles then, both on deck and in the air. Invincible. Inseparable. Like brothers. Not after tonight, he thought.  Yeah, he’ll try to kill me, all right. Like she just did. 

He rubbed his cheek, which still smarted, and winked at the lap dancer. Only moments before she’d slapped him hard against his face. He felt the marks of her studded ring outlined in pain at the corner of his grin, just next to a sensitive scar from a past encounter with another young woman of equally unsavory disposition.  Now she ignored him, gliding to the other side of the stage, her lissome form caressing the dance pole like a scowling serpent.  He leaned slightly forward. “So, tell me again, Bo.  What’s this Areopagus gig all about?”

“Just a cargo run, really,” Bo said. “We’ll pick up the probe right after it injects into Earth orbit near the end of June.  Should be back to Canaveral around the Fourth of July, give or take.  But the freight goes right over there.”  He pointed over his shoulder.  “To Goddard and Herr Professor Miles Lavisch, The Most High and God Almighty Arrogant Prick I’ve ever encountered.” 

Peter laughed. “Intimate friend, eh?”

“No, all my friends are pricks.” Bo’s eyebrow went up. “Let’s just say I know him enough not to like him. Met him when we toured Goddard. He’ll be in charge of the samples.”

“Neat trick, that. The Mars shot, I mean.” And truly he thought it was: Shoot a probe to Mars, have it land, pick up soil samples, then fly itself back home. He felt his body tense.  “There’s something I’ve got to tell you—”

Bo took a slug of beer.  "Areopagus will pick up where the Vikings left off in seventy-six.  Nothing else we’ve done since has been as good. Not the Global Surveyor. Not the Odyssey. Not Spirit or the any of the Rovers. Oh, we got nice pictures, all right. But only actual soil samples will tell us for sure if there’s life on Mars—or ever was.  What did you want to tell me?”

“Ahh, it’s not important,” Peter lied, hoping he wasn’t losing his nerve.  He didn’t know where the words came from, but somehow there they were, falling on his ears in his own voice: “When’s the baby due?”  He forced himself to look Bo in the eyes.

Bo stared at him for what seemed an eternity.  “July. Right after the mission. Funny you ask. Beth thinks that getting married and having some kids is just what you need.”

“What?” Peter felt sweat trickle down the back of his neck.

 “Look how happy it made ol’ George Bailey, there,” Bo said, inclining his head in the direction of a TV that hung behind the bar, where It’s a Wonderful Life played silently in the background.

 “Kids?” Peter snarled insincerely. “Hell, they’re the reason ‘Ol George’ tried to kill himself in the first place! He’d of been better off if Clarence the angel hadn’t saved him.” 

“Nothing changes your perspective like kids, Pete.” Bo slapped Peter’s thigh hard. “Nothing makes you want your wife more, want to protect her.... Know what I mean?”

“Why would I?” He cringed and felt suddenly weak, suddenly unwarriorlike, as he glanced down into the white foam of his beer, noticing how the bubbles kept popping away, like the ticking of a clock. “You know what I’ve always said about women—”

“ ‘If they didn’t have a pussy, men would never talk to them.’ Yeah, yeah, I’ve heard it all before.”

Then Peter thought of Beth—and all the others.  A stab of guilt surprised him, caused his stomach to knot fiercely. “You know, the guy who wrote that book was right.  Men really are from Mars. Women may as well be a different species.”

Bo shook his head and looked up. “Mars? Venus? Damned if I know. Or care. What I do know is, I couldn’t live without Beth and the kids.”

“Speaking of our fair alien friends.” Peter rubbed the scar on his chin, which still smarted, and nodded his head toward the stage, where his dancer was making her way back toward them. Earlier she’d brushed her taut breast against his cheek, lolling her nipple on his upper lip, just beneath his nose, her hair falling on his face as she nibbled his ear.  She smelled of lilacs.  He’d rewarded her appropriately enough, or so he thought. Now he couldn’t resist one further taunt and waggled his finger for her to approach, but her glare turned meaner.  She gave him the finger and jerked her head away, her body following quickly to face the opposite direction.

“Let’s get out of here,” Bo said. “I think you’ve worn out our welcome.”

Peter zipped his brown leather flight jacket and pushed open the door with his shoulder. A gust of snow-laced wind cooled his still stinging face.  He looked up at the full moon, which broke in and out of racing clouds, causing everything to flicker weirdly. Walking fast along the slushy sidewalk, he tried to maintain his well-studied, cocksure swagger, tried to muster his courage, and stayed just far enough ahead of Bo so as not to have to look at him.  His stomach floated curiously about; it was a queasiness he’d not felt since having pre-launch jitters before a combat mission. And the more he thought about it, the more he didn’t want this to be his last mission. “Could you believe the tits on that babe?”  he said finally, forcing a grin as he glanced back at Bo.

“Tucking a five-spot in her Gee-string is one thing,” Bo laughed, catching up to him.  “But you’re not supposed to touch her there, remember?”  He popped a mint in his mouth. “Want one?”

“Don’t have any Cracker Jacks, do you?” Peter managed to keep Bo in his peripheral vision.

“You and your Cracker Jacks,” Bo snorted. “It’s a wonder you’ve still got teeth, boy!” He ran his hand over his balding head, brushing the snow from the horseshoe-shaped rim of hair that circled his skull from sideburn to sideburn before putting on a black, wool-knit stocking cap. His eyebrows bent closer, darkening his already tanned face.  “It was good seeing you again, Pete.”

“Yeah. Same here. Guess it’ll be the last time....” The words caught in his throat. “For a while, I meant. Till after your mission.”

“Probably so….  I’ll be in Houston right up to launch.” 

They walked faster now, bobbing and weaving through harried crowds of pedestrians loaded with last-minute Christmas gifts, faces bent down against snow that came in blustery squalls.  Revelers in the restaurants and bars that lined the sidewalks sang fractured, besotted versions of carols; laughter poured from every open door.  But as they turned the corner, the holiday sounds quieted. 

For a moment Peter thought they were alone. But then, halfway down the block, he spotted a lone figure wearing a Santa hat and ringing a bell.  Beside him a small donation pail hung beneath a tripod. It seemed an odd place to set up shop if you wanted much in the way of donations. He stopped, picked up a handful of snow and made a ball.  The ragged scar on his chin tingled, began to itch, as it had an uncanny way of doing whenever there was about to be trouble. He brushed the frozen ball against the old wound.  Now was the time to come clean, to tell Bo the truth, but again he hesitated.  “You know, I wish I’d gone to NASA when you did.”

Bo shrugged. “What? Intelligence work can’t be that boring.”

“You’d be surprised.”

“Well, piloting CEVs—”

“CEVs?”

“Yeah, Crew Exploration Vehicles. That’s what we call the new space shuttles, which is still all they are—shuttles. Anyway, it’s not as sexy as tooling around in an armed Tomcat; I can tell you that—and it’s more dangerous. Wanna tell me what’s eating you?”

Peter threw his snowball at a passing cab, the icy sphere gliding harmlessly past the rear bumper.  How could he have missed such an easy target? As he watched the cab’s taillights recede, something in their red aura caught his eye.  Ahead, three men had circled the bellringer.  One grabbed the handle to the money pail, but Santa would not give it up.  They spun around each other like kids playing London Bridges until the other two thugs tackled him, bringing him down into the street, pounding him with their fists and what looked like a length of pipe.  “Hey! Let him go!” Without further thought, he charged after them.

“Wait, Pete!” 

The attackers looked up but didn’t stop.  There was a bright orange flash. A loud pop! Like a bursting party balloon.  The impact slammed the bellringer to the ground, and the shooter yanked the money pail free. As he did, his gun fired again, wildly, knocking out the street lamp.

Peter had seen the flashes a seeming eternity before the shots boomed in his ears. Everything had slowed down. He felt his legs uncontrollably back peddle, but he couldn’t stop. He slid into the lamppost. Close to the gunman. Only steps away. He watched as if in a dream while the gunman turned with a smooth, almost casual motion, and pointed the pistol’s dark barrel at him.

Click!...Click! Click! Click! The man flung the weapon at a storefront, shattering the glass. Flying shards stung Peter’s cheek, snapping his paralysis. He bolted after them. Slipping in the accumulating snow, he chased the thugs to the end of the block, where they ran without stopping through traffic across M Street, then down the steep hill toward K Street, deftly using their shoes like skis as they slid into the shadows beneath the Whitehurst Freeway overpass. Just before they disappeared, one of them dropped something.

Deciding that three against one in the darkness was too great a risk, Peter skidded to a stop where a glint of gold shone through a thin veil of snow. He dug out what looked to him to be something like an Egyptian ankh.

“Those bastards! For a few stinkin’ bucks and this?”  He looked around to find the streets, which moments before had been crowded with blaring horns, blinking lights and scurrying pedestrians, strangely deserted and silent.  He trudged back up the hill, panting clouds of steam, where Bo was pulling the wounded man out of the street.  Without the streetlight it was dark, but then, with an explosion of light, the moon broke through and he could see the bellringer’s long blond hair was matted with blood, which surged through a tattered hole in his greatcoat, dribbling onto the virgin snow in dusky pools.

Bo hoisted the man to a sitting position on the curb. “What’s your name, fellow?”

“Apollyon,” the bellringer said with the air of a stunned animal.  “I’m an angel.”

“Sure, Clarence,” Peter said derisively, thinking of Bo’s earlier comment, “and I’m George Bailey.”  He nodded his head toward Bo. “This here’s Ernie, the cab driver.”

“You mock me? I’m Apollyon!” the man insisted.  “Don’t you know it’s time?”

“What?” Peter decided not to try to talk logic.  “Look, we’ve got to get you to a hospital.  You’re bleeding pretty badly.”  He looked at the dark, accumulating pools of blood and thought the man would never make it. 

“Ohhh…” the bellringer groaned. A strong gust of wind swirled into a mini tornado, sprinkling his blond hair with snowflakes that glittered like sequins in the moonlight. Then he began to shudder. He heaved and bucked, as if having a seizure, before quieting down.  “Peter!” he blurted, grabbing his arm.

Peter felt the blood go out of his face.  “How’d he know my name?”  He looked at Bo, who stared back, glassy-eyed and silent.

“To everything there is a season.  A time to be born, a time to die. A time—” The bellringer coughed.  “I’m cold.”

Peter took off his flight jacket and draped it over the wounded man.

“And death and hell delivered up the dead, which were in them: and they were judged every man according to his works. Don’t you remember? Help me, Bo!”

“Who are you?” Bo demanded, his voice a mixture of anger and fear.

“Got your cell phone, Bo?”

“No, damnit, it’s in the car.”

“Well, go call nine one one.”

“No! Wait!” the bellringer gasped.  “You think I’m crazy, but you’re wrong.”

Peter knelt beside the man, holding his head up. Then he caught the man’s sorrowful eyes. For a split second he thought he was losing his mind as strange images flashed before him, images of mayhem, chaos, death.  He shook his head, trying to clear it, but had to look away.

“And I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away.” The bellringer seemed to be in a trancelike state for just a moment, far away, but then he was all too present.  “But it won’t be like you think it will,” he said with a queer grin.

“What the hell’s he saying, Bo?”

“He thinks he’s Apollyon. One of the angels in the Bible. In Revelation.”

“You, Beauregard Randall,” the bellringer choked, his head shaking, “you will begin it. You will find our chalice.” Then he turned his head. His eyes grew luminous with moonlight. “And you, Peter MacKenzie, you will witness the end as you drink the last measure of its bittersweet portion.  For I have seen it!” 

“He’s nuts,” Bo said, voice rattling. His face shone a spectral white from the cold and the snow that mounded on the ridges of his cheeks.

They tried to move the man up against the wall, but the bellringer winced.  “My wing!” he complained. “You’re hurting my wing....” His voice trailed off to a mere whisper. 

“Okay, Clarence,” Peter soothed, and tilted his head toward the street where an ambulance had just pulled up. A man wearing a police uniform got out.

“He’s shot,” Bo told the man. “Talking crazy too.  Must’ve wandered away from a mental hospital or something.”

“Yeah, a real nutcase,” Peter heard himself say uneasily as he reached for his jacket.

But the bellringer yanked it back, “Look to the moon! Look to the moon!” Then he laughed weirdly and began to sing: “When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that’s the ennnd….”

“Burt the cop is here to help you,” Bo said, picking up on the Christmas-story charade.

“We’ll take him,” the police officer replied, handing Peter his jacket. A second uniformed man joined him.  They quickly lifted the bellringer onto a gurney, jumped in the ambulance, and sped away without any lights.

Peter shivered, and he knew it wasn’t just from the cold. “Something’s wrong here. They didn’t even question us.” 

 “How’d they even get here?” Bo said.  “I never called.”

“Someone must have seen what happened.” Peter looked around, but the streets were still vacant and dark.

“Let’s get out of here,” Bo said through chattering teeth.

They walked on towards their cars, parked several blocks away, hunched over in silence against the driving snow, which seemed to reappear in spurts every time the moon went away.

Peter glanced at Bo, who, clothes now completely whitened with snow, reminded him of an altar boy, a ghost—or an angel. “That guy really spooked me.” He bent over and scooped up enough snow for another ball.

“Come on, Pete. ‘My wing,’ for Christ’s sake? Remember Y2K? A bust.  Nothin’s gonna happen. Nothing like that anyway—“

He fingered the snowball absently, waiting for a target. “That’s what they said about Titanic, ‘Nothin’s gonna happen’... That’s what we all thought about terrorism, too. Not here, not on our front porch. That was before New York postcards without the World Trade Centers.”

“Maybe you don’t belong in Intelligence work,” Bo said with a laugh that seemed to have a bitter edge. “Besides we do know he wasn’t really Clarence.”

“What the hell do you mean?”

“Clarence didn’t have his wings, remember?”

 “Very funny.  But how’d he know our names? And what was that stuff about you and me and the beginning and the end and all that?”

Bo drew the front of his coat collar up around his throat and said nothing.

“And besides, you’re forgetting the end of the movie,” Peter said archly. “Clarence did win his wings.” With all the commotion, he’d almost forgotten his planned confession. He decided if Bo did nothing, he’d let it ride for now.  He’d had enough excitement for one night. He felt wet with sweat. Still, his hands were cold and he almost couldn’t get his key into the door. He took off his leather flight jacket and was about to fling it into the car when he noticed something odd. “Hey, look at this.” He held up the satin lining.

Bo picked a small white feather off the inside of the jacket Peter had just used to warm the wounded bellringer. “Maybe he was Clarence after all,” he chuckled.

Fingers numb from the cold, Peter took the slender plume from Bo. A shiver shook his hand. Suddenly a raw gust of wind snatched the feather into the hollow darkness.

  

 CHAPTER 1

 

The space CEV Discovery II, in high Earth orbit...23:30 Hours, June 28...

  

“Jesus, i’—” a crackle of transient static garbled Bo Randall’s transmission, then “—‘s here!”

Floating lazily in the blackness of space near the aft end of the Discovery II’s cargo bay, Bo could just make out the surprised expression on Carla Pascal’s face as her lips formed the words.

“What did you say?” she asked in her post-feminist take-charge way. “’Jesus is here’? Maybe you can get him to fix that snare for you, ’cause we’re gonna need it in about two minutes.”

Bo shook his head, slightly annoyed at his smart-aleck mission specialist’s tone. “What I meant was, it’s here, it’s early, and it looks to be about five klicks too high and a couple back. We’ll have to reposition to capture it.” He pointed back over his shoulder where the ship had just traced its invisible path six hundred and twenty-five miles above a nearly cloudless, cornflower blue Pacific and where the Areopagus now lay silently against a star-studded field of black. “Grapple’s fixed now, anyway. I’m heading in.”

As he clambered along the sill of the cargo bay, heading for the airlock in the forward bulkhead, Earth rose over the edge of the bay door, completely filling his visual field.  Its stark beauty nearly took his breath away. It appeared so close he felt he could reach out and touch it. With no intervening atmosphere in space, everything at a distance looked closer and clearer. For an instant, he dreamily forgot what he was doing.  His foot slipped on the frozen edge of the sill, causing him to float into a sharp-edged bolt before he could recover his balance. That’s all I need, he thought. Rip my suit and have my blood boil away. In his mind’s eye he saw Beth at the door hearing the news. “We regret to inform you....” I wonder if she’d care?

But magnetically, the vision of Earth pulled him back out of himself. He looked homeward again, spellbound. Below, the blue waters of the Gulf of Mexico met the yellow margins of the Yucatan Peninsula with stark relief. A brilliant white cloud deck covered half its length. Farther down he saw the deep greens of the Amazon rainforest, with its stunning array of life, now partially obscured by the smoke from hundreds of fires, intentionally set by jungle nomads, which would eventually destroy thousands of square miles of precious habitat, eating away at the planet’s irreplaceable core of life.

Watching the smoke drift in waves and curls across the continent, he was reminded again just how thin the atmosphere looked from up here, how thin it really was. He remembered an article he’d read concerning a six-mile-diameter asteroid that had collided with the Earth near a small Mexican town somewhere just down below. What was its name? Chixulub? Yeah. Mayan for “tail of the Devil,” or so he remembered. According to the article, this event, some 65 million years ago, had signaled the end for half the species on Earth—including the dinosaurs.

He wondered how long it would be before another, perhaps larger, asteroid came to rip that thin atmosphere—our world, our lives—away. He thought how easy it would be for the Earth to become like the moon. It was just a matter of time. But this was the pristine present, and he would not spoil it with embarrassment over some stray vocalization.  He hit the mute switch on his communicator.

“Mighty moon,” he then said aloud.  The moon, half bathed in the sun’s yellow glow, craters clearly visible, testifying to thousands of battles with giant asteroids and comets over the eons, glowered back at him. “Yeah, old fella, it would be all too easy for us all to go the way of the dinosaurs and have the Earth end up like you, a lifeless, lonely chunk of space rock.”  He thought of Beth again—and Peter—and was glad he hadn’t confronted them about the affair. Somehow his family, bound together, even if imperfectly, was paramount to him now, as was, inexplicably, forgiveness. Guess we all have our dark side.  Just like the moon.

For he knew, as most people outside NASA didn’t, that except for data from the Clementine probe in 1994, little was known about the dark side of the moon.  Because of its peculiar orbit, which caused it to rotate three hundred and sixty degrees in the same amount of time it took to orbit the Earth, one side of the moon—the dark side—forever lay hidden from the Earth’s prying eyes.

“At least Mars has an atmosphere,” he said absently, “and maybe life. That’s what the Areopagus should tell us—if we can just get it aboard in one piece.” With one last look back at Earth, then the moon and then the Areopagus, which hovered above him like a sullen witness, he headed for the airlock.

             _______   .   _______

 

“Well, our Martian package is safely in the vault,” Bo said with relief, as he floated up through the inter-deck access portal to the main deck.

“Party time,” Carla Pascal said. She winked and did a half somersault, catching an errant penlight that drifted aimlessly about the cabin before stabilizing herself on the back of the pilot’s seat. She brushed a wisp of blond hair off her tanned face. The just-visible crow’s feet around her bunny-blue eyes deepened in a smile. “Boss, anybody ever tell you that you look like the guy who used to play Captain Piccard on Star Trek?”

Bo gave a halfhearted laugh and winked back, not failing to notice how nicely her cobalt blue mission suit highlighted her slender waist and dainty breasts. If it weren’t for Beth, he’d often thought... “No, he was bald!”

“Remember Seinfeld?” Mission Specialist Bill Quincy countered.  “More like a Kramer and George combination. But you’re right about the hair.” His close-cropped reddish beard contrasted sharply with his brown crew cut, which rimmed his baby-moon face like a halo.

“You mean Kramer without the Osama bin Laden nose, don’t you?” co-pilot Max Hudson added, smiling.

“All right, all right,” Bo relented.  “Have your fun at the old man’s expense.” Then he looked at Max. “What’s the status, Number One?”

“Aye, aye, Captain,” Max saluted and continued. “All’s well and buttoned down at the helm.”

 “I always wondered how Data’s link measured,” Carla joked. “C’mon, Captain Jean Luke, let’s celebrate—”

“What the—?”

Suddenly, utter blackness engulfed them. Bo had never experienced a complete power failure. He couldn’t even think how it was possible. There were no alarms, no flashing lights. The only sounds were the whirring of gyros and electric motors as they spun down, bleeding off rpms, on their way to a useless mechanical death.

“Complete power failures ain’t supposed to be possible,” Max Hudson said, his voice strained but even. “What’s goin’ on?”

“Certainly not something you see every day,” Bo affirmed, directing his voice toward where he thought Max should be.

“Right now I can’t see anything,” Carla stammered.

“And to answer your question,” Bo said with determined calmness, even as a trickle of sweat made its way down his back, “I don’t know.  Any ideas? Carla? Bill? Anything to do with the special hookups to the sample cases?”

“Don’t think so,” Bill answered. “But I do know this, without power to suck this dirty air through the lithium hydroxide canisters—”

“We could use the portable oxygen units...and the suits,” Carla blurted.

“Yeah, right,” Bill argued. “But this isn’t Alien, and you aren’t Rippley. And without power we’re just four space road kills.”

“Road kills? That’s quaint.” Bo forced a small chuckle. “Hit by what? A space gremlin? There’s always an explanation. We’ve just got to find it—and pronto!”

“Bo’s right,” Max said. “We’ve all just got to calm down. Think this through.”

“That’s bizarre,” Carla declared too loudly, as if they’d all been removed to a distance because of the darkness. “Even the flashlight doesn’t work! Can anyone explain that?”

Bo could hear her rapidly click the small penlight switch on and off, on and off. “Let’s get back to protocol. Start the checklists.”

“With no light, it’s going to be tough,” Max complained.

“We’ll have to do it by feel,” Bo ordered, a little annoyed at Max’s whining. “As for explanations, they’ll just have to wait. Let’s get started, shall we?”  Then something drew his attention to the windows, where moments before he’d marveled at the spectacular view of the Arabian Peninsula outside. Slowly, he drifted toward the cockpit side window. “My God! Where’d the Earth go—?”

Like a silent bolt of lightning, a searing blue radiance exploded into the orbiter, momentarily blinding him. Reflexively he jerked back, covering his eyes, which screeched with pain.

Then it began.

“Hear it?” Carla whispered.

Bo felt the sound before he heard it. Starting low on the frequency scale, the warbling vibration rumbled through his internal organs like gas, and then shifted several octaves higher, to a more piercing frequency, then lower again. It was a queer, living sound with an eerie intelligence about it. It investigated, probed, and searched; it stole innermost secrets and all sense of control. For an instant, he thought he’d lose consciousness, but then—abruptly—there was silence...and light. “Is everyone okay?” he asked hopefully, but thinking it unlikely.

With a flurry of hands, they patted themselves down, as if to make sure all the parts were still there.

“What the hell’s that?” Carla cried, pointing to the starboard window.

Bo had noticed movement outside the window an instant before Carla spoke. It pulled his head as if on a string up against the glass. There it was! Moving deliberately and unhurriedly off into the distance, devoid of exterior lights or discernible markings, a hulking metallic shape, which moments before had totally eclipsed their view of Earth, was now clearly outlined against the canvas of the placid blue ocean. Familiar with at least the rumors of any new aerospace technology, he knew instantly this was a craft of alien origin. My God! They do exist!  He was instantly glad he’d only thought it, not said it.

“Discovery! This is mission control, over! Discovery! This is Houston, do you read?” The frantic calls repeated.

Somehow Bo hadn’t even noticed the power was back. Mission control wanted to know why they had been incommunicado for the better part of a quarter-hour. It couldn’t have been that long!

“Houston, this is Commander Bo Randall aboard Discovery.”  He paused, intentionally deepening his voice, fully aware that what he was about to say could very easily be misconstrued, could very easily end his career. “We—that is, the entire crew—have just made a sighting....”

     

                         

CHAPTER 2

  

Miles Lavisch sat in his office at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, picked up the front section of the Washington Post, and reached for his glasses.

“Damnit! Where the hell are they?”

He threw the newspaper to the floor and, for the third time this day, frisked himself in vain.  No glasses.  Resigned, he decided to use his pearl-handled magnifying glass that his own mother had used for needlepoint in her declining years, which he kept in his desk for occasions just such as this. He retrieved it from his top drawer along with a hand‑wrapped Cuban Partagas double‑corona cigar from a plain brown box, nestled secretly in the far corner. Biting off the tip, he savored the bitter tobacco taste for a moment before spitting the residue on the floor. With the care of a surgeon, he dipped the corner of his handkerchief into his tea, then gently wiped down the brown tobacco-leaf wrapping of the big cigar. The tea, he’d found, imparted an added hint of piquant flavoring to his favorite smoke. He reached for the Bunsen burner he kept going at all times to heat his tea water and light his tobacco. Using its pale blue flame, he caused the cigar’s tip to glow bright orange before mouthing the tip and puffing gales of silver-blue smoke across the room.

Mildly satisfied, he spread the newspaper across his desk. He’d just begun reading through the magnifier when a front‑page headline caught his eye:

     

          CIA DIRECTOR TO TESTIFY AT DISCOVERY II INQUEST

Today CIA Director Carl Snow will explain to a special Senate investigative committee why he ordered the spacecraft Discovery II to land at Edwards AFB instead of at Cape Canaveral as scheduled and why the crew was quarantined until their deaths in a mysterious fire just hours later.

“I want to know why the CIA was involved in a NASA flight that had no defense‑related mission,” said Michael Tomlinson, Senate minority leader and committee chairman.

The spacecraft’s objective was to retrieve the Mars probe Areopagus, which had returned to Earth after a two‑year journey.

Also at issue are unconfirmed reports that Discovery II’s Commander, Beauregard “Bo” Randall, had reported sighting a UFO just before the disputed change of landing orders.  Admiral Snow has denied any knowledge of these reports and the existence of Majestic Twelve, a rumored UFO research group of which he is said to be a member.

A former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman and decorated veteran of three wars, Admiral Snow has often been mentioned as a probable presidential candidate . . .

 

“Lying bastard,” Miles grumbled.  “Just what we need, another Bill Clinton. But then, maybe Snow will tell us what the meaning of is is.”

Just then his office door creaked opened. He looked up to see his reading glasses dangling from a hand that snaked inside, soon followed by his daughter Molly’s smiling face.  Her smile, however, quickly faded as she wagged her finger at his cigar.

“You don’t mention the cigar, I won’t call you gimp,” he said, crushing the butt into an ashtray. He planted a fatherly kiss on her cheek, as she tucked the glasses into the breast pocket of his tweed jacket.  “Where’d you find them?”

“In the hallway.”

“Well, well,” he said with mild annoyance, “to what do I owe this rare pleasure?”

Molly picked up his newspaper and quickly began to rifle through it. “Uncle Malcolm said it was time I paid you a visit.”

“Don’t mess up my paper! And Malcolm should mind his own business.  I’m surprised AJ didn’t talk you out of it.”

“Allison Jamison may be my best friend, but she doesn’t set my social schedule. Besides, I think she’s rather fond of you.”  Molly kept flipping through the paper.

What are you looking for, anyway?”  He reached for his cigar, held its tip over the Bunsen burner’s flame.

”Comics,” she said flatly. “Blondie, to be specific. I’m not surprised you don’t remember?”

“Blondie?  Huh, didn’t even know they were still around.”

“Because you don’t read comics.” She bobbed her head from side to side, leafing through page after page, a delighted look on her fresh freckled face. “I’m a diehard Blondie lover. She’s a rock. She’s never changed. Not in more than fifty years. And even by today’s standards, she’s all woman.”

“So long as it’s not Dagwood you admire,” he said, exhaling a torrent of smoke. “I don’t suppose you have time for a tour?”  She looked sternly at his cigar, but he stared her down. He wouldn’t be cowed by her, especially not on his own turf.

“Can we?” she asked, waving the smoke away from her face. “The way I was treated in the lobby, you’d have thought I was with al Qaeda. Why the tight security?”

“High‑containment procedures: BL‑four protocol. And, yes, we can. It’s still my lab.”

“Long as I don’t have to salute you.”

Miles shrugged, got up and headed for a side door, waggling his finger for her to follow.  “Tight security might be a pain in the ass, but it’s necessary.  A Martian microbe newly introduced to the human population would be devastating.”

“I know.  Like Native Americans and smallpox.  Or Polynesians and syphilis.”

“A lot of people vehemently opposed this project for that very reason,” he said. “They wanted a manned probe to do the experiments on Mars while we observed the results remotely.”

“I thought that’s what you always wanted,” Molly said.

“At first, I did. Because no containment protocol is perfect. But economics won out. Sending men is too expensive.”

“Too expensive?” Molly asked, shaking her head slowly. “Depends what you think the human race is worth, I suppose.”

”To be honest,” Miles admitted, “I’m glad as hell it worked out this way. Otherwise I’d have died waiting.”

“Oh, come on, Dad.”

He felt her touch his shoulder and pulled away. It made him feel an uncertain discomfort. And in her little-girl green eyes he saw sadness—and the ever-present fear. Still, he could recall no remorse—and felt none now.

He led her down the hallway, her high-heels echoing smartly in an off-beat rhythm against the old but highly polished green and muted-gray vinyl tile floor, through a series of windowless doors, which, every so often, broke the boring expanse of sterile white walls. Finally, he reached the changing room of the pre-containment area, which was adjacent to the main containment area where the rock samples from Mars were stored, and shouldered the door open.

“Here,” he said, handing her a disposable sterile lab coat, cap and booties, the kind used in hospitals for patients in quarantine, “get into these.” He began dressing himself. “Need any help?”

Molly’s face reddened. “No, I’m fine. Really.”

An automatic set of doors shushed open. A familiar rush of air told him the area was under the normal negative pressure required to keep alien microbes from escaping.

Molly knocked on the containment lab’s transparent enclosure. “Three-inch?”

“Uh-huh. Standard Plexiglas. But you knew that. Inside is sterilized and completely robotic. Everything’s operated from the control room.”  He pointed at an elevated platform enclosed in another wall of Plexiglas that looked like the bridge of the starship Enterprise.

”If someone wants to work with a sample,” he said, stepping in front of her, “a conveyor moves the containers to specific experimental stations, where automated protocols can be performed.”  He swept his arm around the entire inner perimeter, pointing at the individual stations.  Beside each one, special gloves protruded through the Plexiglas, so a worker could manipulate the samples without venturing inside the tightly controlled room.

“Are those the actual sample cases?” Molly asked, inclining her head toward two shiny stainless‑steel boxes in the corner.

“Those are them,” he said with sweet self-satisfaction.  “The one that’s about a meter square is the surface‑sample container. It’s supposed to have the larger pieces. The box that’s about half as big has one hundred forty‑four separate compartments, each with a sample taken from about eighteen inches below the surface, every ten degrees of arc, four samples per arc, at half‑meter intervals, starting at the base of the Areopagus.”

She shook her head.  “Seems like a long way to go for so little.”

“Not if we find what we’re looking for.”

“And have you?”

“Not yet.  We got the samples from the West Coast just yesterday.  Then there was a little excitement when the larger box was dropped off the back of the delivery truck.” He saw the shock in her wide green eyes. “Our paleontologist, Paul Blalock, was responsible for that little fiasco.  Luckily nothing came undone.” He guided her through another steel door, which set off a symphony of animal chatter.

“Animals from Mars?” Molly asked, pointing at cages in a smaller room at the far end of the lab.

“If that was a joke, it was pretty lame,” he said derisively. “No, there’s a communicating air shaft to the area with the samples you just saw. The macaques, chimps, and smaller mammals—rabbits and such—are being exposed to—” He shrugged, palms up.  “Who knows what?”

Entering the control room, they had a commanding view of the entire automated laboratory area. He drew up a couple of swivel chairs.  “We can get out of these things,” he said, doffing his cap and booties. “Really don’t need the damned things anyway, since we’re not going into the main containment area. Not for now at least.”

Molly ditched her sterile clothes and sat down with her left leg stretched out, her hands clasped together, resting on her lap. “What’s the paleontologist for, anyway?”

Miles knew he made his daughter nervous, and not without reason. He liked it that way. He looked at the no-smoking sign and began fumbling around the desk drawers in search of one of the many half-smoked cigars he kept hidden around the lab, but found none. “A very vocal minority in the scientific community thinks the probabilities favor past life rather than current life on Mars, so we had to be prepared to look for fossil remains. At the last minute Blalock was sent—”

“I thought you handpicked the team.”

“I did. All except him.”   Finding a loose pack of matches, he tore off one and began to chew on it.  “He’s trained to find small fossilized pieces of bones or teeth and such—stuff we’d overlook.  What he can find in a pile of dirt really is amazing.  Too bad I hate his guts.”

“You’re not serious?”

“As a heart attack, my dear.”

Molly frowned. “I wish you wouldn’t put it like that. Given your own medical condition.”

He snorted, took out some pictures showing the surface of Mars taken from space and spread them on the desk. “See here? Mars Odyssey took these. And the British spacecraft Express took these.” He ran his finger over an area with lighter formations that looked just like dry riverbeds. “Those are clearly erosion patterns. And here, look here. That would have made great ocean-front property—a few hundred million years ago.”

“So Mars did have water in the past?”

“Still does,” he said confidently. “No doubt about it. A series of rover vehicles proved it over the past few years. Because of that, we fully expect to find microbial life in our samples, at the very least.”

“I thought the last Mars Lander—what was it called?”

“There have been a lot of them.” He spit out a lump of masticated match. “The Pathfinder and Sojourner probes a few years back. And not too long ago the Spirit, the Opportunity, and others. But they didn’t have any life experiments on board. The last one that did was the British Beagle 2, and it failed to work after landing. No, only our Vikings, back in the seventies, had the right experiments on board.”

 “I thought they didn’t find anything,” Molly said.

He shook his head.  “That’s what most people think. But in fact, the evidence for life was quite strong, just not conclusive.”

“Like that rock from Antarctica a while back?”

He watched her twist the locket that hung from a long gold chain around her neck, just like her mother used to. It was an irritating habit. He exhaled loudly. “We have to be sure. This time we will be.”

Around them an array of video screens and monitor lights blinked furiously, like a Christmas display gone wild; digital readouts, toggle switches, dials and buttons encircled the room in colorful belts.  An atmosphere of pure technology.  And he inhaled it like oxygen. He gestured with a broad sweep of his hand. “What do you think?”

“Very impressive.”

“I call it Fortress Lavisch,” he said proudly. “We’re making history here, Molly.”

“No doubt about that.”  Molly rubbed her arms as if she were cold.

“Want to be a part of it?  It’s the best gift I could ever give you.  Something to tell your grandchildren about.” He snorted a laugh. “Well...maybe not.”

Molly looked away.  He noticed the back of her neck turn red and smiled with silent satisfaction.

“I‑I’m still not—”

“Stupid girl! I see you haven’t changed.”

“Th-th-that’s not f-fair!”

“I won’t ask you again. And stop that stuttering! It’s annoying.”

She swung around in the chair so fast he thought she would lunge at him, but she just glared, almost as if in a state of catatonia. What he saw now was new to him. Not fear, not even just anger. This was hate.

Molly’s whole body shook as she spoke. “Wha-Wha-Why do you al-al—?”

“Calm down,” he said, cutting off the stutter. He hated the sound of it. “Your mother never knew what she caused by dying.”

“That was when I was seven,” Molly said icily. “I didn’t start stuttering until much later. And you know why—”

“Not that again! I never touched you—not in that way. Goddamned psychobabblists gave you that idea.  Never should’ve taken you.”

She seemed to struggle to puff out the words. “Y-You did-did more than t-t-that—”

“Oh, get a grip. No one ever believed that—no one’s going to.” A chirping warning tone sounded. A red light blinked on the console just below a small TV monitor that showed three men in sterile garments walking briskly down the brightly lit corridor.  A moment later they entered the control room.

“Molly,” Miles began, “uh, Doctor Molly Lavisch, I’d like you to meet Doctor James Haverhills, Kim Lee, and Doctor Paul Blalock.  Gentlemen, my daughter.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” Molly said, offering her hand with what seemed near-complete composure.

Relieved she’d calmed herself, Miles continued the introductions. “Doctor Haverhills is the team mineralogist. Paul, here, is the gentleman I mentioned earlier, the one who—”

“It was an accident,” Paul Blalock said dismissively, extending his hand to Molly.  “Pleasure’s all mine, Molly.”

Miles glared at Blalock, before moving on with the introductions.  “Kim, here, is our chief technical wizard.  He operates the scanning electron microscope, the X‑ray crystallography gear, the robotics—”

“And everything else around here that moves, blinks, or whistles,” Lee added.

Dr. Haverhills rocked from one leg to the other, putting his hands in and out of his pockets like a nervous groom. “Miles,” he said, looking at Molly, “if it’s all right with you, I’d like to go ahead and open the first case.  It’s next, according to the protocol.”

“By all means, Jim.”

“I’ll help you,” Lee said.

“Are they going inside?” Molly asked.

Miles saw Blalock open his mouth to answer, but quickly cut him off.  “No, we keep the inside of the main room as near as possible to the real Martian atmosphere—the same pressure and the same temperature.  Except for the UV light—”

Blalock sliced into his oration. “All experiments are automated, Molly. If we find a life form, we’ll grow more of it, then do animal tests before we risk human exposure.”

Miles felt a squeezing sensation grip his chest. “Well, daughter, how would you like to be among the first humans to view rocks from the Red Planet?”

Her eyes lit up.  “Of course, but—”

“Jim,” Miles said, trying to toughen his tone. “Are you and Kim ready?”

“Chafing at the bit,” Haverhills answered.

Miles turned to Blalock and tried hard not to smile.  “Paul, I’m afraid you’re the odd man out today.”

“What do you mean—?”

“I mean you’ll stay in the control room,” Miles said firmly.

“I will not!”  Blalock moved toward the containment area.

Heart pounding against the too-tight collar of his shirt, Miles blocked the door.

“I really should be going, Dad—”

“Stay!” Miles commanded, while he did his best to stare down the defiant paleontologist.

“It’s all right, Miles,” Haverhills said.  “Paul can go.  I’ll recheck the baseline readings on the animals. We’ll see if there’s any reaction.”

“All right then,” Miles relented, stepping aside.

Lee quickly punched a series of buttons, actuating a chain of electrical signals that released all the latches on the largest sample case.

“Where are the other team members?” Molly asked.  “I would think everyone would want to be here for this.”

Miles made hard fists and never took his eyes off the sample case.  “We are the team. Fewer people, smaller risk of exposure.  You’re here only because it’s my lab and you’re my daughter.” He glanced quickly left and right, at Blalock and Lee.

Lee worked deftly with the controls, and one by one the Martian rocks emerged from the case.  The rocks were from the size of pebbles to fist‑size pieces, mostly rust brown or reddish yellow.

“Look!” Lee blurted excitedly.  “There’s the greenish tinge from the Viking pictures!  The colors that changed over time.”

”Yeah,” Miles said, unconsciously trying to rub away a twinge of pain in his chest.  “The ones we thought might indicate some life process.  Looks similar to our lichens.”

“This is weird,” Lee said. “I can’t seem to—” He appeared to struggle to position the robot arms and hands, seemed to find it difficult to get a grip on something inside the large steel case.  “Got it now!  This one’s heavy.”

“Gauge says almost three kilos,” Blalock reported.

Looking again at the sample box, Miles surveyed the emerging treasure with delight, but he was stunned when Kim lifted out a bluish‑black rock about the size of a basketball. Slightly oblong, with a slick, shiny, glasslike appearance, it was unlike anything else in the case.

Suddenly Molly’s cell phone sounded, screeching bizarrely.  “Sorry.”

“Have to go?” Miles said, half hoping she would say no; he needed her as buffer to keep him from strangling Blalock.

Molly shook her head. She squinted at the message window. “That’s weird—says I’ve got a text message, but it’s just a jumble of letters and numbers. Never done that before.”

“Why don’t you just shut it off then?” Miles growled.

“Looks very much like obsidian,” Lee nodded toward the sample case, his hands a flurry of activity, twisting dials and flipping switches.  “Volcanic glass.”

Miles turned to Blalock. “Not unexpected. Wouldn’t you say, Paul?”

Blalock glanced sideways but said nothing.

“Wonder why it’s so totally different from the others?” Lee said.

“Strange,” Blalock finally said, “since it came from the same area.”

“A real wing-nut,” Haverhills joked. “Can’t wait to break into that one.”

“It’s beautiful,” Molly breathed.

”I counted twenty‑nine pieces,” Blalock said flatly.

“Good!” Miles said, mildly pleased.

“Dad, I’ve really got to be going—”

“All right, all right,” he grumbled, not wanting to be pulled out of the moment.  “I’ll walk you out.”

“Just to the elevators.”

“Bye, Molly,” Blalock said with a wink.

Miles jammed his clenched fists into the pockets of his lab coat. “Let’s go!”

“Dad...I’m sorry for upsetting you. Let’s not fight, okay?”

His heart double beat at the thought of her, so young, so many years ago.

“Blalock didn’t seem like the research type,” Molly remarked casually as they walked along.

“I’m going to get rid of that bastard, one way or another.”

“Oh, don’t let him upset you. It’s not worth it.” She arched her red brow. “Remember your heart?”

“Don’t mother me.” He kissed the air near her cheek, then turned and hurried back toward the lab. 

“Thanks for the tour,” Molly called after him.

He didn’t bother to turn around, only waved his hand in the air.  He walked quickly. His lab coat fluttered in his wake, his mind aflame with questions, not only about the Martian samples but also about how he could rid himself of Blalock.

 

       __________   .  ___________

He doesn’t look well, Molly thought as she watched her father round the corner. The elevator doors swished open. She stepped in, pressed the button for lobby, and waited for the cranky World War Two-era lift to respond. The doors clattered closed.  Echoing with the closing door, a chill rattled through her. Was it the ugly memories that being in her father’s presence always evoked? Or was it her genuine concern for his health. She had to admit her heart was stretched in both directions.

Before she knew it, the elevator doors banged open, and she headed swiftly for the bright sunshine beyond the glass doors when she heard the guard call.

“You’ve got to sign out, Miss Lavisch.”

She turned quickly, too eager to leave behind the bad feelings, and bumped into a man solid enough that she bounced off him.

“Excuse me!” she said. “I should watch where I’m going.”

“Oh, but I’d rather watch where you’re going.” He thrust out his hand. “Peter MacKenzie,” he said with a canny politeness.

“Molly Lavisch. Pleased to meet you.” Her face flushed hot, but she managed to take his large, warm hand before glancing away.  Still, in that sliver of a glance, she’d felt something elemental pass between them, and its magnetism drew her back to his delicious smile. His black hair, sprinkled with light gray around the ears, turned up into a slight cowlick in the front.  A shadow of a beard was flecked with red and gray.  And those hazel eyes, which seemed full of stories, spoke silently to her on some unconscious level. She realized she was staring and gave her head a tiny shake. “Sorry.”

“Believe it or not, you’re just who I was looking for. Or, rather, your father is. Professor Miles Lavisch is your father, isn’t he?”

“Yes. But why?”

”You heard about the astronauts?”

“I saw the papers.”

“The commander was my best friend.”

“I’m sorry.  My father knew some of them too.”

“I think there’s something fishy about how he and the others died,” Peter said. “I thought your father might be able to help. But Genghis Khan over there wouldn’t let me up to see him.”

“What makes you think something’s fishy?”

“They were diverted to Edwards. Bo—my friend—always said that if they were ever diverted to Edwards for no apparent reason, like weather or mechanical problems, it meant they’d seen something. Something with possible national defense implications.”

“A UFO?” she sniffed.

“It was part of their flight plan,” he said flatly. “But dying wasn’t.”

“I’m sorry I can’t help you right now. I’m late for a meeting.”

“How about tomorrow?”  Peter handed her two tickets.

“What’s this?”

“Tickets to a flying circus. It’s called Cilly’s Aerial Carnival. At Bealeton, not far from Fredericksburg. You know it?”

“Yes, I’ve been there.”

“Come watch me fly. It’s a good show. Bring a friend.”

She was just about to say yes when the elevator doors opened and an ashen-faced Haverhills stumbled out. There was blood on his white lab coat.

“Call nine one one!” Haverhills shouted to the guard in the lobby as he fell up against the wall.

“What’s wrong?” Molly asked, startled by the trembling man’s appearance.

“I don’t know,” Haverhills said, his voice shaking. “Kim’s just collapsed!”

Leaving Peter MacKenzie behind, she followed Haverhills up the four flights of stairs to the lab, where Miles met them at the entrance to the control center.

“Good thing we caught you,” Miles said.  “Something’s wrong with Kim.”

As she passed through the inner doors, her cell phone again went wild. “Crazy thing,” she said and handed the warbling device to her father before kneeling at Lee’s side.

“Tell me!” Miles commanded Blalock. “What did you do?”

“He seemed perfectly fine. Then boom! He collapsed.” Blalock appeared bewildered, but managed to support the man’s head as blood spewed from his nose in powerful, rhythmic surges. Already the front of his lab coat was drenched with blood.

“There’s got to be more to it than that, Paul,” Miles growled.

“I’m telling you,” Blalock repeated. “I don’t know. He was trying to put the black rock back into the case, and he collapsed without a word.”

The cell phone continued with its weird, shrill noises, which grew louder and more erratic as Miles moved closer to the containment area wall, near the black rock. “How do you shut this damned thing—?” Dropping the bleating device to the floor, he stomped it into silence. “Where were you, Jim?”

“In the animal room.”

She’d just begun her examination when the man began to shake, and blood gushed from his nose and eyes and ears.  She didn’t have a clue as to why, but it was clear the man was near death. “M-My G-God!” she blurted. “D-D-Did he fall?  Or h-hit his head?” She took a deep breath, held it, trying to stave off the tremors in her speech.

Blalock shrugged.

She brushed her hands through Lee’s hair a section at a time, looking for evidence of a blow.  She pulled his eyelids open. Both pupils were widely dilated. She waved her hand in front of his eyes. “Pupils unresponsive…I’m afraid….”

“You’re hiding something, Paul,” Miles accused. “Now tell us what happened?”

“Just what I said, damnit! Nothing!”

“Contamination?” Haverhills suggested in a quavering voice.

She thought Haverhills looked nearly as bad as Lee—and her father. “Onset was too sudden for any infectious agent,” she said, exhaling hard against her palate as she spoke to smooth out the words. “Looks like trauma.” She glanced at her father, then Blalock.

Abruptly Lee stopped convulsing; blood stopped spurting and instead flowed like a river.  She gently lowered Lee’s head onto her folded jacket.

Her father stared at her, red-faced. “Well?”

She knew that daunting, demanding tone all too well.  She looked at her bloodied hands, then up to meet her father’s glare. “I‑I g-guess we’ll have to wait for the au-autopsy.”

 

             

CHAPTER 3

 

ELMER P. CILLY’S AERIAL CARNIVAL, Bealeton, Virginia...

 Molly Lavisch stood with hands on hips and watched the lemon yellow Stearman PT‑17 biplane bounce and jiggle over the uneven turf, wings rocking jauntily, engine barking and popping, until it rolled to a breezy stop in front of her.

As soon as the plane’s engine stopped, her friend, Allison Jamison, AJ for short, stood unsteadily in the front cockpit, fiddling with the parachute harness, grinning stoically, her blue eyes like cutouts of the perfect blue of the sky above, her blond hair lifting in the wind from the dying propeller.  She gave Molly a thumbs‑up, and then triumphantly displayed a little white airsick bag, which appeared to have been used, before clambering with halting steps onto the wing.

The stunt pilot’s helper, a sturdy teenager with a small gold earring and his shorts showing behind his sagging jeans, reached up and helped her down onto the dry July grass, where as soon as he let go of her arm, she fell down.

“Let me help you,” Molly called, moving toward her.  But Peter MacKenzie, who jumped out of the rear cockpit right behind AJ, pulled her to her feet and with obvious relish, brushed the dust off the backside of her khaki riding pants with slow, deliberate strokes.

“Whooo,” her friend panted, “that’s the most fun I’ve had—” She rocked unsteadily, wiped her sweating face with the back of her hand.

Please don’t say, With my pants on, Molly said to herself.

“You’re next, Molly,” AJ beamed.

“How ‘bout a loop and a roll?” Peter said, not taking his eyes off AJ’s backside.

“No thanks,” Molly said sternly, tightening her arms, which she'd cordoned across her breasts. “I’m sick just thinking about it.  Besides, someone’s got to drive home.”

“Oh, my!” AJ wobbled, bracing herself on the man.

Molly noticed she went out of her way to rub her breast against Peter’s arm, and she thought she detected more than mere pleasure in Peter’s face as well.

“Sure you’re going to be okay?” Peter asked.

“Yes, Peter,” AJ said compliantly. “Thank you.”

Molly marveled as AJ worked her womanly way. She smiled up at the man, batted her eyes saucily, her lips in a pouty, star-struck smile.  What Molly couldn’t figure was why she felt the need; AJ never had a problem luring men. What she was doing was like dumping sugar on Frosted Flakes.  Molly sputtered a laugh.

“He’s a great stunt pilot, Molly.”

“Airshow pilot,” he corrected. “We fly planned maneuvers. Stunts imply recklessness.”

Molly wanted to go with him, but didn’t think her stomach could take it. But before she could speak, his attention had already passed back to AJ.

“Want to go again?” he asked, grinning like a prankster.

AJ hesitated, then spouted bravely: “To the moon, as long as you are flying. But could we rest awhile first?”

Peter chuckled and shook his head. A wisp of his almost blue-black hair curled limply onto his forehead. “Jimmy, why don’t you take Miss Jamison to the first‑aid station so she can lie down?”

“Oh, no,” AJ said, again laughing gaily.  “I’m all right. And call me AJ.” She rubbed his arm. He put his arm around her waist. “Anyway,” she added, “my friend here is a doctor.”       

“I know,” he said. “We’ve met, remember?” A sprinkling of oil outlined the pilot’s hazel eyes where his goggles had been. He wiped the residue from his forehead with the sleeve of his shirt and looked at AJ. “My solo act is up next, so I’ve got to change planes. Why don’t you two meet me afterwards by the big hangar?  I’ll buy you a drink, and we can have that talk, all right, Molly?”

“Sounds great,” AJ gushed, as he winked at her and trudged off.

For a moment, Molly stared at her friend, frozen in amazement. She had to admit, AJ’s appeal for men was obvious.  Her plaid Western shirt had ruffles, studs, and embroidery; she wore it with flare, unbuttoned to reveal more than a hint of cleavage.  Molly glanced down at her own conservative white collarless blouse, jeans that maybe were a bit too baggy, and sneakers that weren’t all the rage. The fact that she was only four-eleven didn’t help. AJ had a model’s statuesque frame.   Then she thought, Everyone tells me I’ve got Bette Davis eyes? But were her eyes even green? That for a redhead she was pretty? Isn’t that what Glen had said? What does that mean, “for a redhead”?  She stepped back and felt the all too familiar jar her short right leg made against her pelvis, reminding her of her limp, slight though it was, the result of a freak case of childhood polio from bad vaccine. What was worse, because of Peter MacKenzie, she sensed another looming contest with her childhood friend that she feared she wouldn’t win.

“Cute, isn’t he?” AJ said with a cock of her head, as they headed for the carnival midway.

“I suppose.”

“You suppose? And I’m a blond unicorn. Some doctor, too, laughing at the wretched ill.” She wiped her still damp brow with a pink handkerchief that had little brown horse heads along its border.

“Maybe it serves you right,” Molly said, feeling a bit of resentment. “For introducing me to Glen.”

“That prick,” AJ said, rolling her eyes.  “Not telling you he was married. Damnit, girl, every time I try to get you laid...”

“Go ahead. Live your Sex and the City life. It’s not who I am.  A man’s marital status is no trivial detail to me.”

“Oh, and what makes your hymen so holy? Remember, Good girls go to heaven, but bad girls go everywhere.” She opened her arms in a display like a strutting bird and cackled. “Really, Molly, you should—”

She drew her finger across her throat and arched her eyebrows. She hated how AJ always knew what buttons to push. “Let’s just say you and I have different tastes when it comes to men and leave it at that.”

“Speaking of men, how’re Frick and Frack?”

“Who?”

“Your father and your uncle Malcolm?”

“Oh, they’re fine.  Uncle Malcolm’s still teaching comparative religion at Hopkins. Sweet as ever.”

“And your father?”

She felt her face burn, and swallowed hard when she thought of him, standing there over Lee’s lifeless body, the way he used to stand over her—”Just saw him in his lab at Goddard yesterday.  It was very strange. One of his lab technicians died while I was there.”

“When I tell people you’ve got killer looks, I’m only kidding, ya know. What happened?”

Molly had to raise her voice to be heard over the heavy‑metal music blaring from the carnival rides as they drew near. “Don’t know. It was crazy. One minute the guy was the picture of health—young too. The next, he was unconscious and streaming blood from ever orifice. Then he was dead.”

“Bizarre.” AJ disposed of her airsick bag in the first trash receptacle they passed.  “What’s this Mars project anyway?”

“Dad’s analyzing the first soil samples brought back from Mars.”

AJ looked confused.

“The Mars probe? Don’t you read the papers?

“Not if I can help it.”

“The Areopagus?” Molly urged with exasperation.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Actually, it’s Greek and it means final judgment. That’s the name of the spacecraft. Let’s get a hot dog and some popcorn.”

“Food? Ugh!” AJ fluttered her hanky about her green-tinged face like a butterfly about to land on a leaf and put her hand over her mouth. “God, girl, what’s with you and hot dogs, anyway?”

“Sorry,” Molly said, with more than a twinge of satisfaction.

The crowds seemed to suddenly thicken. Concessionaires with greedy eyes barked their husky‑throated come‑ons.  Children and adults alike screamed with delight from the Ferris wheel behind the big hangar and the Madmouse and the Octopus rides, as overhead Peter’s airplane twisted through the clear summer air, painting figures with a stream of bluish‑white smoke that now settled over the field like a pungent fog.

Molly glanced up as Peter’s plane passed low and fast before pulling up sharply in front of the crowd.  She followed its upward arc, squinting into a fierce summer sun and wishing she hadn’t forgotten her sunglasses and sunscreen.  Her fair skin would be bright pink by the end of the day, with a few dozen extra freckles. Just what she needed.

As they made their way along the midway, a small boy with a candy apple in one hand and a mound of cotton candy in the other raced by.  A little girl of about the same age in hot pursuit misjudged her turn and banged into Molly with a thump, spun off, then kept running without uttering a word. She watched them disappear into the crowd and sighed.

AJ shook her head.  “I know, Molly.  But to breed rug rats, first you need a man. Oh! Looky here, old gal.”  She pointed to a tentlike kiosk in the space between two large oaks that seemed to pop up from nowhere.  Its brown sides were accented with wide, blood red vertical stripes bordered with smaller gold ones.  An ice‑cream‑cone roof supported a long, golden minaret with three bulbs at mid-length, reminiscent of a Turkish mosque.  A banner across the entrance read: Madame Lilah Blackwell—Gypsy Princess. Futures Foretold, Mysteries Unveiled, Life Readings. Good Fun. Only $5.

“Just what we need,” Molly said with little enthusiasm.

“Indeed it is,” AJ affirmed.  “A little levity.  She’ll tell you that you’ll meet the man of your dreams, and I’ll find out how I’m going to avoid losing my farm to the bank.”

Abruptly the deep purple flap of a door flew open.  Like an apparition, a slight, colorfully attired woman appeared. She looked directly at Molly. Her piercing eyes were fathomless, lightless hollows that nonetheless held a strange and powerful intelligence, which seemed to suck the very air out of her. She suddenly felt  faint.

“Come in, please,” the slender woman said.

“Let’s go Mol. This sounds like a blast.”

“You wait!” the tiny woman ordered, stepping in front of AJ.

Molly shrugged a smile and went inside, warming to the idea of a harmless lark with a good crystal ball and, as AJ had said, a little levity.

At first blinded by the dark interior, she stumbled in until the Gypsy took her arm. With improving sight, she marveled at the array of occult effects: a small ebony table, intricately inlaid with ivory figures of animals, nymphs, serpents, and strange glyphs.  On the table, beside a deck of tarot cards, sat a sculpted crystal human skull.  A few paces away, a Ouija board leaned against the wall.

“Sit,” the Gypsy said, pointing to a purple pillow with gold stitching beside the stub-legged, black table.

Molly watched as the Gypsy approached a narrow altar against the wall, where she lit two spires of incense that sent up tiny sparks, and along with them, the comforting aroma that reminded her of church when she was a little girl. The Gypsy’s gaze lingered over a faded oval portrait of Christ, which hung beside a picture of Satan’s Temptation of Eve in the Garden of Eden.  She made the sign of the cross and mumbled a prayer.

When the Gypsy turned toward her, a gold talisman slung about her neck on a long gold chain amidst a bundle of colorful scarves caught Molly’s eye. It looked like an Egyptian ankh with a splayed extremity.  She loved jewelry, collected it, had even made some for friends, though she herself wore only a single gold locket; and she could not recall ever having seen anything quite like it. The Gypsy fingered it lovingly, presently sitting on a pillow across from her.

“We won’t need these,” the dark-eyed woman said, and with one startling sweep of her arm, she cleared the table.  “Those are mere props for the uninitiated, not for those whose souls speak freely about destiny and purpose.  Give me your hand, Molly.”

Fearfully, she jerked her hand away.  “How did you know my name?”

The Gypsy eased back, one corner of her mouth drawn up in contrition. A candle in the corner of the room reflected in her large, emphatic eyes.  “Your friend said it, no?  Cast aside your doubts and suspicions.  I want to help you.”

“I wasn’t aware I needed any help.”

“We all need help from time to time.  Hear my words. Individual lives intersect for a reason. Our world is randomness, but it wasn’t chance that brought you here. And you need my guidance. Now, give me your hand.”

Haltingly, Molly offered her hand, palm up.  Before she knew it, the Gypsy pulled it to her breast, enfolding it within her own flesh.  Again, Molly’s breath left her, as what seemed an energetic, living fluid surged up her arm, filled her chest, and spread throughout her body.  She was both warmed and frightened by it.  “Who? What are you—?”

“You are sad now,” the Gypsy declared.  “You have lost a lover, no?”

A blush spread like wildfire across Molly’s cheeks and forehead.  “You tell me,” she challenged.

The Gypsy’s eyebrow lifted. “So suspicious!  Do not respond as you think your father would.”

Molly tried to pull away but could not.

“Relax, my dear. Relax.” The Gypsy’s words flowed slowly, sweetly, like cool molasses, all the while holding Molly’s gaze—and her hand—firmly.  “Fighting is no good.  I see love and a family as your heart’s desire, but you must forget Glen.  He—“

Molly gasped, her pounding heart fluttered.  “How—?”  She tried to get up, but the Gypsy pulled her down.

“Love in this world is but a faint trick of the eye. The world itself a shadowland.  Many are fooled.  There is another for you, but you must wait.  Patience is the token that buys your journey.”  The Gypsy’s eyes dropped.  “But your journey is fraught with danger.”

An uncontrollable shudder reverberated through her body as the Gypsy released her grip, dropping her hand. Her black eyes turned sad.

“Your heart is too big for this life, my sweet one. And soon you will pass from it—”

“What?”  It was as if she’d taken a physical blow. The room seemed to swirl. She felt faint and braced herself from falling over. But the voice rose again.

“Passing will not be easy, but your death is only one whimper among the wailings of a world in rebirth.  Trust your own heart and your own will, for soon you will be reborn with the Earth. But first—“

Abruptly, a radiant burst of sun cleared the darkness. AJ jerked Molly to her feet and began dragging her toward the light. “I heard what the little bitch said.”

“Molly, you must listen to me,” the Gypsy begged, dropping for just a moment the haunting accent and pointing to the picture of Satan’s Temptation of Eve. “A new Eden is upon us. And you are the new Eve! Yes, you!”

“No, no more!” AJ shouted. “She won’t hear anymore.”

Numb, Molly stumbled toward the doorway, AJ both holding her up and pushing her.

“Listen to me!” the Gypsy cried out.  “Your father—”

“Shut up, you creepy bitch.”

AJ picked up the crystal skull and raised her arm as if to throw it, but Molly grabbed her wrist. Compelled by she knew not what, she heard herself ask, “What about my father?”

The words ran together, blurred by the returning accent. She thought she heard:  “Tell him bellancarla say beware . . ..”

“Are you all right?” AJ asked as they cleared the door.

Outside, in the bright light of the July sun, Molly’s panting breaths subsided.  She felt silly, as if the whole incident was but a vulgar fabrication of her imagination. “Whew! That was one good act.”  Then she coughed a small, hesitant cough, testing to see if the strange warmth was still there. It was not. She noticed AJ looked a bit unglued too.

“Of course it was!” AJ said with quivering voice. “Just an act, I mean.”  Her hand trembled as she lit a cigarette.

“You know what’s funny?”

“No, what?”

“As scared as I was—still am—I didn’t stutter.” An unexpected laugh erupted from her, as if from a stranger. “But why do I still feel so spooked?”

“Come on, you’re a scientist. No one can tell the future.”

“I know, I know,” she said without a bit of conviction. “It’s just that...well, she didn’t seem quite, quite—”

“Human?” AJ blurted.

  

 CHAPTER 4

  

With a feeling of anxious excitement, Miles entered the outer chamber of the containment area where only yesterday Lee had died.

Lee’s replacement, Vishnu Chandra, was already at work.  East Indian, with characteristic raven hair, well oiled and neatly combed, his eyes were black as polished obsidian.  His complexion, a talcum white, seemed not to match his other features. He was tall, over six feet, and he moved with the grace of a giraffe. All in all, Chandra presented a striking figure.

Still, Miles couldn’t shake the feeling there was something peculiar about him, and he thought it singularly odd that NASA headquarters had so quickly found someone with the requisite security clearances. But eager as he was to get on with the experiments, he never bothered to question the appointment. After all, Chandra was only a technician.  Albeit one with apparent good credentials.

According to Chandra’s papers, he was most recently attached to Army research at Fort Detrick, Maryland, with USAMRIID, the armed forces premier biological warfare research center, which was now, by its own public relations propaganda, primarily devoted to cancer research, though Miles knew better.  Their cover was partly blown when the news broke that the anthrax terrorist attack used a strain of the microbe called Ames, which, it turned out, had been developed at USAMRIID.

“We’ll get the large rock out first,” Miles told Chandra. “Sterilize it. Then put it through the MRI.”

“Then the gas assays?”

“If you find cavities.” As Miles watched the technician operate the robotic arms with the same easy professionalism as Lee, he felt a profound sense of relief.  There would be no further delays. Progress would come quickly. Martian life, he was confident, would be confirmed within the samples, though not likely in the big black rock. That’s why he wanted its analysis out of the way. So they could proceed to the mother load he knew lay in the other sample boxes.

Beep! Beep! Beep! Chandra’s cell phone went wild, emitting an intermittent high-pitched screeching noise along with a series of undulating beeps and warbles.

“I see you’ve got one of those cursed things too,” Miles snipped.  But then it hit him. “Curious. The same thing happened twice yesterday. As soon as we opened that sample case. Hmmm.”

“Look at this, Professor.” Chandra handed him the cell phone.

Miles looked at the flashing display. “Same as yesterday. A constantly streaming alphanumeric string.  What do you make of it?”

“It repeats.”

“A coded message?” Miles knew if there were any electromagnetic emanations from the rock, the metal case would block it. “Put the lid back down.”

Chandra closed the lid, the cell phone stopped, and its message screen went blank.

“By God,” Miles rejoiced, “a signal is coming from that rock. Prepare it for scan immediately.”

 

          _________   .   _________

 

Miles felt a shiver of excitement. It was as if he were standing on the shore of eternity waiting for the mast of some ghostly ship of destiny to pierce the horizon. And, oh, how he longed to greet it. But, as always, there was the wait, the interminable wait. Seconds seemed like hours before the images began to emerge.

“Unbelievable!” Miles exclaimed through teeth clenching the remnants of a long extinguished cigar. “Just unbelievable!”

“In the beginning,” Chandra said in a barely audible, almost reverent tone.

If he’d heard Chandra right, Miles thought the remark surpassingly peculiar. “What’s that, Mister Chandra?”

“I said, ‘It’s just the beginning,’ Professor.”

What a weirdo.  “Well, what do you see?”

“I see just what you see, Professor, a small, rectangular object, most certainly not naturally occurring.”

 

           ________   .   _________

 

Well past midnight, Miles ordered Chandra to use the diamond-blade circular saw for the last cut into the obsidian mantle, which accidentally grazed the box’s face, causing the saw to whine and buck before stopping completely, its blade turned to a powdery pile of dust.

Miles ran his finger over the saw’s blade, which was worn smooth. “I’ll be damned. Harder than diamonds.”  He examined the box. Unbelievably, it was unscarred, not even the tiniest scratch. He glanced at Chandra, whose expression betrayed more horror than amazement.

“What’s the matter, Mister Chandra?”

The man shook his head. “Nothing,” he spouted in a razor-thin voice.

“Hmmm.” With gloved hand, Miles freed the object from its obsidian carapace, quickly surveying it from every possible angle. “Just a little box of some sort.”

“Magnificent!”

“I’d have said alabaster,” Miles ventured, “before the saw. Can’t be, though. It’s way too light. Only half a pound, I’d guess.” He continued to study the box, holding it out at arm’s length, cursing himself silently for losing his glasses again.  With the sleeve of his coat, he rubbed away the patina of dust from the face of the box.  “What’s this?” he joked. “A stop light?”

“An eye,” Chandra said, pointing to the softly blinking red light.

“An eye, huh?” Miles held the box as far away as he could, but his arms just weren’t long enough. “What do you make of these marks? Here, you take a look. Must’ve left my glasses back in the control room.” He handed the object to Chandra. “Maybe some kind of hieroglyphics?”

Miles noticed Chandra didn’t so much hold the box as caress it, his long, slender fingers gently stroking the smooth, white surface with its delicate inlays of precious stones and elaborate gold designs.

Miles needed a smoke. Impatiently, he drummed his finger on the table. “Well? Describe what you see.”

“The principal design on the face is a modified ankh—its lower extremity being bifurcated. Of course the eye is the most conspicuous feature. The markings are certainly of a language, resembling, as you say, hieroglyphics—but not hieroglyphics.  I can detect no seam. But we’ll check it under magnification.”

“If it is some kind of container?” Miles snatched the box away. “God! Are we stupid? We didn’t try shaking it.”

“What? No, Professor!”

“Guess you never celebrated Christmas,” Miles said derisively, shaking the box like a child testing a gift. “Something’s in there; I can feel it. Can we use the electron microscope?”

“If it will fit the chamber.”

“Do it.”

Chandra hesitated, his expression a mixture of shock and mystification.

“Well,” Miles said impatiently. “Get on with it!”

For thirty long minutes Miles paced the hallway, his mind whirring, while Chandra set up the scanning electron beam microscope. A million questions had to be answered.  What to do about storing the box securely? Whom to tell? And when? And another crucial question: Whom could he bring in for the language analysis? No, that one was easy. Roscha Venable, his old MIT roommate and one-time linguist at Columbia.  Roscha had since moved back to town and now was special consultant to the National Security Agency on matters of cryptology. He was the only possible choice. Roscha, you old fart—

“I’ve got it!” Chandra’s cry echoed through the lab like a commandment. “A seam!”

 

         _________   .   __________

 

Miles looked at the clock on the wall. It was 4:15 A.M. For the first time he felt fatigue.

“Judging from the way it reacted to the diamond saw,” Chandra said, “I doubt we could break it open without destroying whatever is inside.”

“So, we’d better figure out how it’s supposed to be opened. Got any ideas?”

“The workmanship is so extraordinary....  I doubt very much if it is a simple mechanical device. The seam itself is no more than a few angstroms across. And there is the question of the beacon, its power source and—”

“Yes, yes,” Miles grumbled. “Evidently whatever’s in there was valuable enough to warrant putting a homing device in the box. So you can bet it has a pretty sophisticated locking mechanism.”

“If not something more.”

“What?” Miles asked incredulously. “Booby trap? Possible, I suppose. But the question is...” He stared at the eye in the circlet atop the ankh. Its hypnotic soft red light winked rhythmically, in unison with the beacon’s transmission. At about the same rate as the human heart, he thought, feeling the throbbing pain in his head.

“Could be pressure points, Professor. Or something keyed to the magnetic field around the living fingers—”

“Preposterous!” Miles snorted with contempt. “You’re assuming that the intelligent life that made this box also had human anatomy, including fingers? That’s a large leap, don’t you think?”

“I suppose so,” Chandra admitted. “How about sound, then?”

“A password?”

“Possibly.”

For some reason, Miles saw images from the old War of the Worlds movie flash before his mind’s eye, pictures of Gene Barry running in fright as the Martian monsters emerged from their spacecraft. “But it is also possible that our aliens communicated in ways other than sound, telepathically, perhaps.”

“Certainly,” Chandra said, curiously lifting an eyebrow, “they could have been more advanced than humans.”

“Certainly very, very different anatomically, too,” Miles asserted, now thinking of the aliens in the movie Independence Day, all buglike and grotesque. “No, we’re looking at a problem of electromagnetics...some coded frequency pattern, probably in the same range as the beacon. If true, we may never open it. Hell, we can encrypt unbreakable codes even with our meager technology.” He couldn’t suppress a yawn.  “I must be getting old.” He thought how in his youth he could go without sleep for days, especially when in the thrall of some intriguing problem, such as this most certainly was.  Reluctantly, he succumbed to the exigencies of fatigue. “Mr. Chandra, I think it’s time to call it a night.”

“I’d like to stay with it, Professor, if you have no objection.”

“All right, then,” Miles relented and started for his office, but he stopped suddenly, turning to his lab technician with a purposely-arched brow and his most intimidating scowl. “You will call me before you do anything with the box?”

Chandra nodded.

      ___________   .   __________ 

“Professor! Professor! Wake up!” Chandra shook Miles’s chair. “I’ve done it. I’ve opened the box.”

Despite Chandra’s excited phrasing, his delivery was really quite calm. This made it all the more difficult for Miles to determine if he was awake or dreaming. Slowly his eyes began to focus. He looked at his watch: 6:40 a. m.. He’d been asleep only a short time.

“You say you opened the box? But how?” He looked at Chandra, who was putting the Bunsen burner under some water. “How, Chandra? Forget the damn tea—I want to know how?” For he’d really believed that there would be no nondestructive way to get inside the box.

“Serendipity, Professor.  I was setting up the equipment to display the waveform so I could begin to analyze it. I had the recorder hooked up to it, along with a signal generator. In testing the set-up, I inadvertently recorded the homing signal’s waveform inverted. When I rebroadcast it to the box, the eye stopped winking—and the box opened about a millimeter.”

“Hmm. “Miles quickly twisted the explanation this way and that, testing the veracity of his technician. “Makes sense, I guess. Uh huh.... Whenever the box was closed, the homing beacon was on and the locking mechanism was engaged. Turn off the beacon remotely and the box— Did you look inside?”

Chandra stiffened. “No, Professor. I knew you would want to be present.”

Relieved, Miles smiled and pushed the cigar box toward Chandra.

“No, thank you, Professor.”

“I think I’ll have that tea now, if you don’t mind.”

Miles leaned over and got a light off the Bunsen burner, letting the acrid smoke rise up the back of his throat and out through his nose. His body tingled with a sensation of imminent fulfillment. Such was the culmination of longing, not for the sexual, not for any mere animal appetite, not for anything so mundane, but for something uniquely human: the longing for revelation, for enlightenment, for understanding. He wanted to savor the mood, prolong it, for always the possibility of disappointment loomed: An empty box.  No, he would wait a few more minutes, sip his tea and finish his smoke.

But after that fleeting thought he could resist the pull of curiosity no longer. He butted his cigar. “Let’s go have a look.

         __________   .   __________ 

The box sat like a bejeweled clam under a sterile hood just the other side of the wall from the animal cages in the containment area.  As soon as Miles picked up the box the monkeys went berserk, rattling their cages, cringing, screaming and making an ungodly racket as they raced back and forth in their wire cells.

“Shut up!” he yelled and threw a Petri dish against the wall.  He edged up the top of the little box about half an inch and nearly fell off his chair as an intense white light flooded out from the inside of the box. “This thing must have an incredible power source.”  Ever so slowly, he raised the top the rest of the way. Then he began to chuckle softly. “No alien life form here. It’s just a book!”

“Not just a book,” Chandra said, a subtle but unmistakable edge to his voice. “Obviously a book of some import, probably of religious significance—”

Miles shook his head in disgust. “Well, of course it is!”  Lifting the diminutive book out of its cradle, he placed it on a black felt display cloth Chandra had somehow provided. “The cover material looks and feels like leather.  Same design on the cover as the one on the box, a modified ankh with eye. Though this one’s not winking.” He gingerly opened the book, not knowing if the pages would simply collapse into a fine powder of long-deteriorated material.

“Good! The pages are intact,” Chandra said excitedly.

With latex-gloved fingers, Miles gingerly leafed through the book, page by page. “Not surprisingly, the language is the same as that on the box. Pages feel like vellum.”  Soon he lost patience and using his thumb flipped quickly through the entire text. “Too bad, no pictures! That would have made things interesting, eh, Mr. Chandra?”

Something fell from between the pages.

“What’s this?” Miles wondered, as he picked up a piece of fine, silklike white cloth with borders that repeated the ankh design. A brown stain ran nearly its entire length, which he estimated to be about ten inches long. “A bookmark, perhaps? What do you think? So far you haven’t said much.”

Chandra appeared dreamy-eyed as he beheld the book. “I think it’s glorious!”

“What?”

“Perhaps a prayer cloth?”

Suddenly the lab’s door-open warning sounded. Miles checked the monitor. Blalock was coming.

“What’s he doing here so early?” Miles wondered out loud.

“What about the book?” Chandra asked.

For some reason, Chandra seemed as reluctant as he to reveal the find. “Vishnu,” he said, feeling the familiarity of a first name was more appropriate for a prospective ally. “I think for the time being—”

“I’ll hide it,” Chandra whispered. “You stall him.”

Miles met Blalock just outside his office by the control center.

“Miles,” Blalock said with surprise. “You’re here early.”

“You, too,” he said calmly. “Glad to see you’re so dedicated.”

Blalock half smirked. “I thought we’d get into that black rock today, and I didn’t want to miss it.”

“Yes.  Well...because of Lee… I thought we’d better wait. Until the autopsy results, to be on the safe side.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. Today I wanted you to attend a meeting at NASA headquarters on my behalf.” He started moving toward the door as he spoke. “You’d better hurry; the meeting starts at nine thirty. You know what traffic’s like this time of day. Just check with Larry Blumenthal when you get there.”

As soon as Blalock was gone, he went back to his office and called Roscha.

 

CHAPTER 5

  Miles Lavisch sat outside the administrator’s office at NASA headquarters in Washington, D.C., luxuriating in visions of himself accepting awards and accolades, for surely this would be the crowning glory of his already illustrious career. The world was always waiting to be astounded, and certainly he would not disappoint them.  Indeed, not only had there been life on Mars but intelligent life. He’d made up his mind about one thing: Only he would be the messenger of that seminal news. He basked in a glorious reverie, imagining himself at the White House. It was a small, informal gathering. Champagne and caviar being served on White House sterling; violins and a piano playing softly in the eves; he was about to shake the President’s hand...

“Only a moment more, Professor Lavisch,” the secretary said, her gray-streaked brown hair tied up in a bun with a yellow pencil piercing it like a toothpick through chocolate pastry.

So what if Larry Blumenthal was his boss and NASA’s chief administrator. To Miles, he was just another glorified paper shuffler and politico, and he didn’t like to be kept waiting by anyone. Especially now, only twenty-four hours after discovering the book, for there was far too much to be done.

He fidgeted, sliding from side to side on the slick maroon leather sofa, shuffling through the usual array of out-of-date magazines. He saw the no smoking sign.  This will get some action.  He took out a long, walnut-brown Partagas and with his thumb, flicked a white-tipped kitchen match to life.

“No! No! No!” the secretary said, shaking her head and pointing to the sign on her desk, which she tapped woodpeckerlike with a gnarly finger.

Miles rolled his eyes and grunted but kept the match burning near the tip of the cigar. “I won’t, if you’ll tell him I’m tired of waiting.”

“Patience, Professor. He has someone with him.”

“Try him again, damnit!” Jumping to his feet, Miles poked the burning match in her face to hold her at bay as he maneuvered around her desk toward the oak double doors that led to Blumenthal’s office.

“Professor Lavisch! I won’t be threatened like this.  As soon as Mr.Blumenthal—”

Before he could grab the polished brass handle, the doors swung open.

“Sorry to have kept you waiting, Miles.” Larry Blumenthal smiled meekly. His face, accented with two hooded, puffy eyes, was drained of color.  “Please come in.”

“You know how much work we have, Larry. What’s this all about?”

 “I know, Miles, I know. This won’t take long.” He pointed to the man who sat at the small elliptical conference table in the corner.

Miles could see that the man, even though seated, was large, both tall and heftily built, but well proportioned. His blondish-white hair was neatly trimmed and combed. His florid face shown like a beacon, with spider-web veins crisscrossing his cheeks and the bridge of his nose, which separated two deep-set, searching eyes. A black double-breasted suit and a regimental-stripe tie, which vertically divided a luminescent white shirt, fit him like the crisp lines of a manikin. On his right hand was a Naval Academy graduation ring.

“Miles, “Blumenthal began, “I’d like you to meet Admiral Carl Snow. He’s Director—”

“Of the CIA,” Miles interrupted. He switched his unlit cigar to his other hand. “I haven’t been living on the moon the last few years.”

“I dare say, no one has,” Blumenthal countered glumly, plopping down next to Snow.

Feeling somewhat flattered by the high-powered delegation, Miles extended his hand. “Pleasure to meet you, Director Snow.”

But the admiral, without standing or offering his hand in return, just nodded and pointed to a chair....

 

         __________   .   __________

 

Madras sat in his hotel room wondering why Pheras had not gotten back to him. He wondered if he’d mistakenly used his alias, Vishnu Chandra, when he’d left his message. He was so fatigued. He stared at his communicator, which lay on the coarse orange and beige blanket on the bed next to where he sat, and tried to will it to life. Nearly thirty-six hours had passed since the discovery of the Covenant, since his urgent call to his superior. He needed approval for his next move, and surely time was short before his cover was blown.  He was not used to pretending he was someone he was not, and certainly not used to taking someone’s life. Yes, it was necessary, he assured himself, but this assignment made him uncomfortable, and the guilt pressed in on him like a dull weight.

His communicator chirped to life. Lunging for it, he knocked it to the floor, then, in his eagerness, he kicked it under the bed just as he bent to pick it up. Vainly, he fished for it in darkness. It seemed to him as if some impudent force was toying with him, taunting him, egging on a growing frustration. Finally his fingers met the cool, black device, which he quickly squeezed, overly hard so as not to let it escape again, as if it were a menacing animal that had to be subdued.

“Pheras! Thank the Lord,” he said breathlessly. “I was beginning to think—well, it doesn’t matter. I’ve located the Covenant.”

“Glorious! Even when the beacon’s signal was confirmed I dared not hope...”

Merely the sound of Pheras’s voice reassured him. His faith renewed, he spoke now with greater confidence, if not greater joy. “The last copy is now accounted for.”

“Tell me about the man Lee. Your message said you’d had to cause his death.”

“Yes. He had six months at best as it was.  A fulminating cerebral aneurysm. He wasn’t due for replacement, anyway.”

“I see.... Then you have the Covenant?”

“Well, no. I wanted—”

“You must get it!”

He detected in Pheras’s voice an unmistakable—and unprecedented—impatience, unbefitting his usually benign temperament.

“If they should manage to decipher it—”

“Impossible,” he said confidently.

“Impossible?”

Madras could feel the rebuke. “For all practical purposes, yes! Given the short time frame.”

“Just the same,” Pheras continued, “if they did decipher it—however remote that possibility might be—our job would be all the more difficult. Get it now!”

“At all costs?”

“Be guided by your heart, Madras, but not blinded by it. You know what is at stake, as well as I. What about our candidate?”

“Her name is Molly Lavisch. She knows nothing yet. But indications are her father will draw her in.”

“Good. But remember, if she is to be our Eve, she must face the coming challenges alone. What is the man’s name?”

“Peter MacKenzie.” He paused for a moment, uncertain if he should pursue his thought, for some things, he knew, would always be a mystery. Nevertheless, haltingly, the question coalesced, and then poured forth. “Her virginity. Is it really so important?”

“Emphatically, yes,” Pheras replied. “If for no other reason than because it is of great importance to her. Remember, Madras, the weight of a challenge is set by the candidate who selects it. She chose this course some great while ago, though even she may not remember when or why.”

“Knowing her history—and his—it will be very difficult for her.”

“It’s not the least of the hardships she’ll confront,” Pheras declared. “Beyond that, well, any individual outcome is never certain. Now, get our Covenant and hurry home. For time is short, and I need you here.”

“I’ll get it tonight,” Madras said with renewed hope.

“Good.”

“There’s something—”

“I know,” Pheras said. “The man named Lee. Let us hope no more killing will be necessary.”