The Second Ship (3 page)

Chapter 4

Mesa. The Spanish word for “table.” Why they had come to call their favorite ridgeline retreat The Mesa, Heather couldn’t remember. The high finger of land that extended out between two deep canyons bore no resemblance to a table, or even the top of one.

In most respects, it was similar to hundreds of other places in this red rock region of the New Mexico highlands, a place where it appeared the land had split and cracked on three sides, falling away into steep canyons hundreds of feet deep, carved from the rock by the effects of water and wind over the millennia.

Their mountain bikes had carried them to this remote hideaway they’d visited on dozens of other weekends. But it was not rock climbing or hunting for mythical, lost gold mines that brought them to The Mesa this first Saturday of the school year. It was the contents of the large box strapped to Mark’s bike.

After Heather slid to a stop and dropped her kickstand, she pulled off her bike helmet and slung it over her handlebars, glad to feel the fresh air blowing through her hair. Mark already had the box unstrapped and was lovingly carrying it out beyond the trees into the clearing.

Here, the ridgetop was flat and treeless for a quarter mile before dropping away steeply into the canyon beyond. It reminded Heather of the fingernail on a giant hairy finger pointing southwest. Perhaps Cortez himself had used it as a guidepost back to Mexico.

“Here, give me a hand with this,” said Mark, unwrapping the packaging that cradled his prized airplane.

It was a beautifully painted model of a Piper Cub aircraft, complete with engine and remote control. They had built other model aircraft before, but this was the most detailed kit to date. It took them most of the summer to build, and so far they had only flown it in the park near their house. This would be its true maiden voyage outside that protected training ground.

As Mark held the small funnel, Heather filled the fuel tank, careful not to spill any of the fuel on the ground.

Jennifer moved up beside them, fumbling with the control unit and a small handheld TV. It had been her idea to attach the tiny micro-camera to the aircraft, a camera that broadcast a short-range color signal that could be picked up on a selectable frequency by the TV. True, the picture was not high resolution and required line of sight between the camera and the receiver, but it was still a fun addition to the project.

Heather had routed the signal through her PDA. That way they could save a couple of minutes of the video on a CompactFlash memory card and replay it later. Their fathers had helped too, with little hints here and there to get the teens past sticking points. But, for the most part, this was their own work.

Getting the thumbs-up from Jennifer, Mark turned toward Heather. “How’s the wind speed?”

She held up the small anemometer, its four little half ping-pong ball cups whirling in the gentle breeze. “Holding steady at four knots. Looking good.”

“Okay then, here we go.” Mark spun the small propeller, and the engine coughed to life on his second attempt.

Jennifer moved the throttle control, and the engine revved up and down as she played with it, the sound cutting through the quiet rim country like a bright flashlight in a cave. She moved more controls, getting the thumbs-up from Mark as he checked to see that the control surfaces on their aircraft responded correctly to the commands.

“How’s the video feed?” Jennifer yelled above the whine of the engine.

Heather grinned. “Looks good, at least when Mark keeps his face out of it.”

Mark shook his head. “Very funny. Are we ready?”

Jennifer held up five fingers, lowering them one at a time as she counted backward out loud. The engine gunned as Mark released the small plane, sending it shooting out and up. Jennifer brought it banking around in a circle above them, gradually getting a feel for the thing, before putting it through some climbs and dives.

After a couple of minutes, Mark moved up beside her. “My turn, Doc.”

Jennifer arched an eyebrow at her brother, but handed him the control box, keeping the long antennae out and away from his body.

She moved over by Heather. “How’s the video?”

Heather shrugged. “The signal is strong and clear, but the way you guys are looping the airplane around, all it’s doing is making me airsick. Here, you take the TV for a minute and see if you can make out anything.”

Jennifer eagerly took the small set from Heather. “Hey, Mark. How about flying it flat and level for a bit so I can see how useful this is going to be?”

“Now we’re getting somewhere,” said Jennifer, staring down at the screen. “Keep going straight out for a bit. Oh cool. We just passed out over the rim.”

“Not too far now,” Heather cautioned.

Suddenly the small plane jerked sideways and down.

“Oh crap,” Mark said. “A gust of wind has it.”

He struggled to regain control of the small plane, his thumbs working the twin joysticks on the control rapidly. For a moment, it seemed that would work. Then, just as the red Piper Cub tried to climb back over the ridgetop, it spun wildly, plummeting out of sight.

“Damn it,” Mark yelled, setting down the control and running toward the rim, Heather close on his heels.

Reaching the spot where their airplane disappeared, Mark and Heather halted. Luckily, at this point along the rim, the slope, though steep, was not a cliff face like it was farther to their right. On the bad side, the steep slope was covered in thick, thorny brush. Scanning it from the top of the ridge, they could see no sign of the place where their pet project had impacted.

“Christ,” Mark moaned. “We might never find it down in that.”

“We’ll find it,” said Heather, although her heart sank. “It won’t be fun though.”

Jennifer arrived, clutching the video unit. “Hey, guys, take a look at this. I have the last thirty seconds of the crash on playback.”

Mark and Heather crowded behind Jennifer, peering over each shoulder as she pushed the play button on the PDA. The video spun wildly, then steadied momentarily. Jennifer paused the playback.

“You see that spot?” she asked, pointing to a lone pine tree amidst thick brush. “Can you recognize that tree anywhere down there?”

Mark walked back to the edge and scanned the slope below. “Yeah. I think I see it.”

“Okay. Now watch the end of the video. I’ll play it in slow motion.”

Stepping through the remaining few seconds of the video frame by frame, they watched as the view spun back and forth between sky and ground. The last several frames of video showed the plane falling into the brush, perhaps a hundred feet up the slope from the pine tree.

“What is that?” Heather asked, pointing at the dark screen.

Mark squinted down at the screen. “What? That’s just darkness after the crash.”

“No. There. That pale red glow at the corner.” Heather pointed to the upper-left corner of the screen.

Jennifer adjusted her glasses, leaning closer to the small screen. “I don’t know. It must be some sort of artifact of the impact. The camera must have shorted out.”

Mark stood. “Well, I guess there’s no use procrastinating. I’ll climb down and get it.”

Glancing down the slope toward the thorn brush, Jennifer shook her head. “Not fun.”

“You sure you don’t want to flip for who goes?” Heather asked.

Mark laughed. “Nice of you to offer, but no. I’ll go. After all, I was the pilot when it crashed. Besides, how manly would I look if I made you two get all scratched and cut up? I couldn’t deal with the humiliation.”

“Okay then,” said Heather. “Pay the price for machismo. We won’t argue.”

Mark climbed down the rocky crest of the rim and into the brush beyond, working his way as far as possible along a narrow goat trail before plunging into the thorn brush below. The girls watched from above as he pushed forward, thrashing his way into the bushes, cursing, occasionally pausing to pull out a thorn.

As he neared the identified crash site, Mark gave a startled yell and pitched forward, disappearing from view. From their vantage point, high above, Jennifer and Heather had a clear view of the slope. Of Mark, however, there was no sign.

“Mark! Are you all right?”

As Jennifer continued to yell, Heather made up her mind, moving rapidly over the rocky edge, toward where she had last seen Mark.

“Wait,” Jennifer yelled, scrambling toward her with the video unit in her hand. “Look at this.”

“Jen, we don’t have time to look at more of the recording.”

“It’s not the recorded part. This is a live shot from the camera.”

“What?”

“The camera is still sending. I didn’t notice it because it was mostly dark. Look at this, though.”

Heather’s mouth dropped open. There in the darkness on the screen lay Mark’s prone form, his skin dimly illuminated by a red glow.

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.