‘Ugh’ I grunted, as I sat up. ‘Hello, Tony, glad to see you. Who’s with you?’
‘I am,’ Chief Engineer Stewart MacLean said, coming over. ‘Have you looked at what you found here? It’s incredible!’ His voice was filled with excitement as he turned, moving his flashlight over the room. We all stared. I thought of Howard Carter’s astonishment when he first saw what was in Tut’s Tomb. It was nothing to what I felt as the moving light revealed an incredible sight. We hadn’t found mummies, or gold, or fabulous treasure. We’d found machines! They were unbelievably like the machines you can find in any factory or shop anywhere on earth. For a while, we just stared in shock.
‘Stew,’ I gasped. ‘Can you figure out how they work? If they work? We have to report this right away!’ I realized I was babbling and took a deep breath. “This is more important and incredible than anything we have found in all our space explorations so far!” I radioed in and told the Big Brass and Big Brains, and was gratified at the exclamations and babble I heard. Then the Commander told us to go ahead and see if we could figure the machinery out, and signed off. Stew worked at it, and eventually he found one machine that turned on lights. Meanwhile, I climbed on up, to see what else was different about this pyramid.
I have come to you without permission, secretly, because of your discovery in the ice of the Antarctic. I have pictures of everything we found in that pyramid, and there are so many similarities to what you found in that pyramid I can only surmise that they were built by the same people. I tried to tell the Big Brass, but they shut me up, and told me to go home. Next thing I knew, I had been given my discharge and pensioned off. Opening my briefcase, I pulled out a thick folder. I opened it and started laying out the eight by tens, laying them out on the coffee table. I looked up at him and asked if he recognised any of them, then waited.
He stared, and leaned closer to look, finally picking up four. “You took these in the pyramid in the moon?” he asked incredulously. “They are exactly like pictures I have from the Antarctic pyramid. It was carved on the outside like the bottom triangle on the plaque, large and small triangles. This is unbelievable!”
Sir Wilfred got up and went to his desk. Opening a drawer, he brought out two thick folders, and came back. Opening the first folder, he laid out four photos, then placed the four of mine he had chosen beside them. They were almost identical. For the next hour or so we studied and compared pictures. Then they sat back and stared at each other.
“All of those machines, and diagrams, were in the moon pyramid?” Sir Wilfred said, his voice filled with awe. “What was it like when you got to the top? You did go all the way up, didn’t you?”
“Yes, I did. The room just before the last had star charts on the walls, and tables with computer stations around the floor. We never did manage to get any of the computers working, though. That was when I first started to feel the confusion and fear, like with the plaque. I was able to fight it off, enough so that I was able to climb up to the final room. It was the observatory. In the centre of the room was a huge telescope, with machinery to turn it as needed. There was a station to one side, with a console with buttons and levers on it. When I radioed down to Stew, he looked for the signs I described, and found a machine with the same symbols. He worked at it for some time while I kept fighting off the confusion and fear, and then, with much creaking and groaning, the top of the pyramid opened. It didn’t open completely, but enough so that I could see the stars.
“That was when the fear and confusion really grabbed me, and I was frozen there. Tony Wills finally had to come and pull me away, back down to the lower chamber. It took some time for me to recover, and then we all went back down, and out to the surface, where the Big Brass and Big Brains were waiting. That was the last time I was allowed near the pyramid, and as I said, when we got back to earth and I was debriefed, I was discharged. But I want to know – were your pyramids the same inside?”
Sir Wilfred nodded. “They were, although we couldn’t open the top of the one in the Antarctic, because of the ice above. We found the rooms with the star charts, each one with different charts, and all three of them different from the moon pyramid. The one in the jungle on the mountain in South America was carved like the right side of the plaque, and the one in the hidden valley in the Himalayas was carved like the top triangle. But what now? If the military and the top scientists are keeping the moon pyramid secret, do I dare to reveal what I found? And what about you? If they find out that you told me about it, will you not be in trouble?”
“No, i don't thin so. I was not told not to talk about it. They put a clamp on radioing information about it to earth, but we weren’t allowed to talk to earth anyway. They never said anything about it at all when I was discharged. Of course, they didn’t know that I had been taking my own pictures as I went. My flashlight was one I had altered, so that a slight extra push on the switch took a picture. It’s so slight, and the camera’s so small, that there is no way anyone can tell when I do it. I knew, of course, that they would confiscate all the pictures we took, and I wanted my own. That was my discovery, and I wanted a full record for myself. So, no, they can’t legally do anything, and since they were so quick to kick me out, they have no control over me anymore.”
“Fine, then. I think we should start working together. We can combine the better pictures, and the descriptions of our discoveries, first as an archeological/astronomical article for the Scientific Institution News. Then, later we can collaborate on a book. Do you agree?”
nice job lillian
ReplyDelete