Chapter 5
“Look, he’s moving!” Jennifer pointed at the screen.
Sure enough, Mark rolled to his side and then out of the view of the camera.
Heather jumped to her feet. “Come on. Let’s get down there.”
The two girls moved down the steep hillside as rapidly as they could. The thick brush clutched and tore at their jeans and shirts, scratching arms and legs, and kept their progress to a crawl.
“Mark. Mark, can you hear us?” Heather yelled as they got closer to the spot where he had disappeared.
“I’m okay.” Heather and Jennifer both gasped with relief at the sound of his voice. “I’m right here.”
Jennifer peered over the rims of her glasses into the thick brush ahead. “‘Here,’ where? I don’t see you.”
“You won’t believe what I’ve found. Be careful, there’s a drop-off right in front of you. Go around about ten feet to the right of where you are, then loop back toward me.”
Heather shook her head. “Mark, you aren’t making any sense. I don’t see you.”
“Just trust me. Go right about ten or fifteen feet, then down the hill until I tell you to turn, then back to the left again.”
Heather bit her lip. “What’s with the mystery? Do you have any idea how badly you scared us? We thought you fell off the edge of a cliff.”
“Off the edge of reality.” Mark’s cryptic reply didn’t curb her annoyance.
Jennifer was already moving in response to her brother’s directions, and Heather fell into step behind her. As they moved down the slope, Mark’s voice brought them to a stop.
“Okay, far enough. Now come toward my voice. Watch your step.”
Jennifer squinted, trying to see where her brother was hiding.
“Here, take my hand,” Mark said.
Both girls screamed as a disembodied hand reached out toward them, followed by Mark’s head. The rest of Mark’s body materialized as he moved toward them, a huge grin on his face.
“Sorry. I tried to warn you.”
“What the hell just happened?” Heather gasped.
“You have to see this for yourselves. Oh, and don’t worry about the optical illusion. It won’t hurt you.”
Mark turned and stepped back the way he had come, his body disappearing into space before them.
“Come on,” he called back to them. “Take the plunge.”
As Jennifer started to reply, Heather took a deep breath and stepped toward where Mark had vanished. Reaching out to move one of the thorn branches away from her face, her hand disappeared into nothingness, the branch having no more substance than the air she was breathing. Despite her resolve, a startled cry escaped her lips as her entire body moved forward into darkness.
Mark’s strong hand gripped her arm to steady her as her eyes struggled to adjust to the dim light. She was in some sort of large cave entrance. Looking back in the direction from which she had come, it was as if a mesh screen had been pulled down across the opening, leaving everything outside dimly seen, as if through a translucent film. Jennifer stood just beyond that screen, hesitating, unable to see what lay beyond no matter how hard or long she stared.
“Jen, quit fooling around and come on in,” said Mark. “It’s not going to bite you.”
Her mouth twisted. “Unlike you two, I prefer knowing what I’m getting into, especially when it appears to violate several known laws of physics.”
“Jen, for Christ's sake. It’s just some sort of hologram.”
“And that doesn’t set off any alarms in your brain?”
Heather turned to look back into the cave again, and a gasp escaped her lips. “Oh my God!”
A dim red glow illuminated the cavern, the sides of which appeared to have been carved by a massive impact. The texture of the stone looked like it had melted and flowed before solidifying again. It was roughly fifty feet wide and nearly as tall. However, it was not the melted rock that made her heart pound.
At the back of the cavern rested a huge, saucer-shaped object. There was no longer any doubt about the source of the hologram or the soft red glow.
“Jennifer, get your butt in here,?? Heather called without turning around.
There was no adequate description for the scene before her. The smooth and graceful lines of the ship were clearly visible in the magenta glow, a glow as beautiful as it was otherworldly. Heather was not sure what it was about the lighting that left no shadows. There appeared to be no single source for the light, almost as if the illumination radiated from the air itself.
“It’s beautiful,” she breathed.
“Isn’t it?” Mark said. “When I fell through that opening, I just lay here for a couple of minutes trying to get my mind wrapped around it. I thought at first I was hallucinating.” He walked slowly toward the ship.
Heather turned back to the entrance of the cave and saw Jennifer standing just inside, unable to move, unable to speak. Heather moved over and put her arm around her friend's shoulders, a broad smile on her face.
“It’s all right, Jen. You can breathe now.”
“My God, Heather. You know what this means? We must have stumbled into the restricted area where they’re storing the Rho Ship. We’re in big, big trouble.”
Mark’s voice echoed in the cave. “No way. There’s nobody around, no security, no instruments. And look. The ship shown on TV was cylindrical. This ship is more like a jelly donut. Or a giant bagel without the hole.”
“Must everything be food related with you?” Heather laughed, although it sounded nervous instead of mirthful in the empty confines of the cave.
Mark had reached the closest edge of the spaceship, moving under the curved edge until he could run his hand over the surface. Heather followed him, anxious to feel the skin of the thing.
She touched it and jerked her hand back as if she had received an electric shock. She hadn’t, but the feel was like nothing she could have expected.
The ship just felt…wrong somehow. It was almost as if she hadn’t really touched anything, but that her hand suddenly wanted to go in another direction. It was like the repulsion she felt when she tried to touch the same poles of two magnets together. Slippery, or even frictionless, did not begin to describe the substance of the hull.
As if reading her mind, Mark took a small coin from his pocket and tossed it against the ship. The coin ricocheted soundlessly off the hull.
“I don’t really think it’s a good idea to go throwing things at it,” Jennifer said, moving up closer. “It clearly still has a working power source and technologies we can’t even begin to imagine. What if the owners are still around? Do you think we should be attracting their attention?”
Mark paused. “I doubt we’d still be alive if they were around. I explored this cave a bit before you guys got down here. It looks like the ship crashed right into the side of the ridge here, melting its way in as it hit. From what I can tell, the impact didn’t even scratch the hull, but there’s something you should see.”
Signaling for them to follow, Mark led the way around the right side of the ship, staying under the outer edge of the hull where it curved up away from the ground. The three ducked down, squeezing between the cavern walls and the hull of the ship. After about ten feet, the space widened to where they could all stand once more.
Mark pointed upward. “Something sure did more than scratch it.”
In the otherwise symmetrical hull, a perfectly cylindrical hole had been cut upward through the ship’s interior, all the way out the top side. Punctures should show bending, spalding, or melting effects on the surrounding materials. This hole showed none of these. It was like a cookie cutter had punched through dough, leaving behind clean, bright edges all the way through, level after level, all clearly visible in the magenta glow.
“It looks like they came out on the short end of an encounter with something.”
Jennifer moved up beside them. “Three guesses for what did this.”
Heather’s eyes went wide. “The Rho Ship.”
Mark nodded. “That would be my guess. Here, give me a boost up.”
“Have you completely lost your mind?” Jennifer asked. “For all we know, we’ve already received a deadly dose of alien radiation.”
“Then it won’t matter if I get a little more. Come on, give me a leg up.”
“Now just wait, Mark. For just once in your life, think a minute before you charge in.”
Mark rolled his eyes. “Okay, Sis. I’m listening.”
“This is too important to just go poking around by ourselves. We need to report this to someone so the government can investigate it. This is a scientific find of historic importance.”
“So? The government already has a ship.” When Jennifer’s glare darkened, Mark rolled his eyes. “Sis, do you know what the government’ll do when we tell them about this one? They’ll take this ship and haul it off for study. While that may all be very well and good, it will mean that this is the closest we’ll ever get to looking inside something from another world. Are you really willing to give up that chance? How about you, Heather?”
Heather shook her head. “Jen, I want one good look inside before we give it up.”
Jennifer’s frown deepened, but she nodded reluctantly. “I guess a look won’t hurt anything.”
As Mark’s exultant whoop echoed through the cavern, Heather’s gaze drifted up to the hole five feet above her head. As badly as she wanted to peek inside, a small spider of worry skittered across her mind. Breathing a prayer that her worry was nothing, Heather linked hands with Jennifer, boosting Mark up so that he could grasp the edge of the hole. With a powerful heave, he pulled himself inside.