He reluctantly followed the others as they walked in silence up to the base of the pyramid, staring at its smooth surface in awe. Faintly etched in the metal were high runes.
“What do you think?” Turcotte asked of no one in particular. “I’m sure this thing controls whatever took over the bouncer and is keeping us from getting out of here.”
“Why are you in such a rush to get out of here?” Kelly asked. “This is the whole reason we came.”
“I was trained to always have a way out ready,” Turcotte said, staring at the pyramid suspiciously.
“Well, cool your spurs,” Kelly replied.
“My spurs are cool,” Turcotte replied. “I have the feeling the only thing waiting for us outside of this cave is going to be a lot of big guns.”
“This must be the guardian,” Kelly said.
They all held their place as Nabinger ran his hands over the high runes. “Amazing. This is the greatest find in archeological history.”
“This isn’t history, Professor,” Turcotte said as he walked forward into the room. “This is here and now, and we need to figure this thing out.”
“Can you read it?” Kelly asked.
“I can read some of them, yes.”
“Get to work, then,” Turcotte said.
Five minutes after Nabinger began, they were all startled when a golden glow appeared above the apex of the pyramid. Turcotte was pleased to note that he didn’t get the sick feeling that the other pyramid had produced. He was disturbed, though, when a gaseous golden tendril from the globe reached out and wrapped itself around Nabinger’s head.
“Take it easy,” Kelly said as Turcotte started forward.
“This thing, whatever it is, is in charge. Let Nabinger find out what it wants.”
The first helicopter from the Abraham Lincoln came in at one hour and twenty minutes after Gullick had landed at the Easter Island international airport. Given that there were only four flights into the airport every week — and today was one of the off days — they had no trouble taking over the airfield.
The fact that the island was Chilean and they were violating international law didn’t overly bother General Gullick either. He ignored the agitated requests from the admiral in charge of the Lincoln task force and the relays from Washington as people in charge woke up to the fact that something unusual was going on.
“I want an airstrike prepared,” Gullick ordered. “Target is the Rano Kao volcano. Everything you have. The target is under the water in the crater.”
The admiral would have ignored Gullick except for one very important thing: the general had the proper code words to authorize such a mission. On the deck of the Abraham Lincoln smart bombs were rolled out and crewmen began attaching them to the wings of aircraft.
Two hours after beginning, Nabinger had a dazed look on his face as the tendril unwrapped itself and flowed back into the golden globe.
“What have you learned?” Kelly asked as they all gathered around.
Nabinger shook his head, his eyes slowly focusing back to his surroundings. “Unbelievable! It’s unbelievable! It spoke to me in a way I couldn’t explain to you. So much information. So much that we never understood. It all fits now. All the ruins and discoveries, all the runes, all the myths. I don’t know where to start.”
“At the beginning,” Von Seeckt suggested. “How did all this get here? Where did the mothership come from?”
Nabinger closed his eyes briefly, then began. “There was an alien colony — more an outpost than a colony as far as I can gather — on Earth. The aliens called themselves the Airlia.
“As best I can determine, the Airlia arrived here about ten thousand years ago. They settled on an island.” The professor held up a hand as Turcotte started to ask a question. “Not this island. An island in the other ocean. In the Atlantic. An island that in human legend has been called Atlantis.
“From there they explored the planet. There was a species native to this planet very much like them.” Nabinger smiled. “Us.
“They tried to avoid contact with humans. I’m not totally sure why they were here. I would have to have more contact. I get the impression it might simply have been a scientific expedition, but there is also no doubt that there was a military aspect to it.”
“They were taking over the Earth?” Turcotte asked.
“No. We weren’t exactly an interstellar threat ten thousand years ago. The Airlia were at war with some other species, or perhaps their own species. I can’t quite figure that out from what it told me, but I think it is the former. The word it used for the enemy was different. And if the enemy had been some of their own I think I would be able to tell because…” Nabinger paused. “I’m getting ahead of myself here.
“The Airlia were here for several millennia, rotating personnel in and out for tours of duty. Then something happened — not here on Earth, but in their interstellar battle.”
Nabinger ran his hand through his beard.
“The war was not going well and some disaster happened and the Airlia here were cut off. It seems that the enemy could find the Airlia by detecting their interstellar drives.” He looked at Von Seeckt. “Now we know the secret of the mothership. The commander of the colony had to make a decision: pack up and try to make a run for it back to safety in their home system or stay. Naturally, the majority of the Airlia wanted to go back. Even if they stayed and weren’t spotted, there was always the chance the enemy would find them anyway.
“Of course, if they left, they would be spotted and then it would be a race through space. There was an additional factor too. One that the Airlia commander apparently considered very important. He was the one who programmed the guardian, so most of what I learned is from his perspective. His name was Aspasia.
“Aspasia knew that even if they got away, the trace of their engine would be examined by the enemy and backtracked, and Earth would then be discovered by the others. He pretty much considered that equivalent to sentencing the planet to destruction. He felt that factor by itself ruled out leaving. The regulations he worked under also said that he could not endanger this planet and the life on it.
“But there were others among the Airlia who weren’t so noble or so entranced by the regulations. They wanted to go back and not be stuck on this primitive planet for the rest of their lives. The Airlia fought among themselves. Aspasia’s side won, but he knew that as long as they had the capability to return, it would always be a threat. He also knew that even their enclave on the island, Atlantis, would eventually violate their noninterference regulation.
“So he moved the mothership and hid it. He scattered his people. Some — the rebels — had already dispersed to other parts of the planet. Aspasia hid the seven bouncers down in Antarctica and”—Nabinger pointed over his shoulder—“he moved their central computer, the guardian, here to Easter Island. It was uninhabited then. He took the last two bouncers back to rest with the mother ship.” Nabinger took a deep breath. “That is, he did that after he did one last thing. He destroyed their outpost on Atlantis so that if the enemy did come through this solar system, they would not discover that the fire-heads had ever been here. He completely wiped out that trace of their existence here on Earth and hid the rest.”
Nabinger looked at the screen. “Aspasia left the guardian on with the foo fighters under its control in case the way of the war changed and his own people came back to his sector of space. Obviously, they never did.”
The professor turned from the computer. “Others among the Airlia, those who did not agree with Aspasia, must have tried to leave their own message to their people, knowing the guardian had been left on.