On the screen a cross-section of the planet appeared, complementing what Ahana was saying.
“The inner core is solid, while the outer core and mantle Ire still molten, with the crust forming a surface on which life has evolved. Despite a radius of only thirty-five hundred kilometers, the inner core contains a large percentage of the planet’s mass. And despite the high temperature, it is solid. There is only one material that could be solid under such tremendous pressure and heat: diamond. Unlike the small diamonds closer to the surface that you are familiar with, this inner diamond field has to exist on an unimaginable scale; a massive crystalline structure of diamonds that could not only absorb the energy but also deal with the electrical field around it.
“What is important to note is that diamond is an excellent conductor of heat but not of electricity. Because a slowly circulating molten outer core that produces electricity and heat surrounds the inner diamond core, a tremendous amount of energy is generated inside the planet with the heat conducted but the electricity circulating, forming a powerful magnetic field.
“While life went from single to multicellular organisms, the single continent of Pangea, surrounded by a worldwide ocean, did the opposite, slowly breaking apart due to the tectonic stresses from below.”
The image of one mass splitting into forms that roughly approximated the current seven continents appeared on the screen.
“The Earth’s crust is only a thin skin that constitutes less than point two percent of the planet’s mass. The crust under water averages about five times less thickness than that beneath the land, which is why I believe most of the large gates have occurred over water.
“Several million years ago, between several of the continents in the center of what we know as the Atlantic Ocean, a long line of magma boiled up from the inner Earth, met the cool water and, in that fiery intersection, built a ridge higher and higher. The mid-Atlantic Ridge grew because the tectonic plates that intersected beneath it were pulling away from each other. More and more molten rock boiled forth, the wider the split between the North/South American plates and the Eurasian/African plates grew.
“In the center of the Atlantic, about twenty degrees north latitude, the split was even more pronounced because there was an intersection of four plates pulling away from each other, both east/west and north/south. This widening process-no more than a couple inches a year but multiplied over millennia-pushed so much magma through that the hardening lava actually rose above the surface of the water, producing islands, which over more time rose high enough to possibly connect to each other and produce a land mass worthy of being a continent itself-a continent we call Atlantis. It might not have been a continent, but rather a collection of islands, but either way. there was definitely land in the middle of the Atlantic.
“Remember, though, that it was a land built over a crack in the Earth’s crust with no firm attachment to the planet other than the line of magma that still boiled though many miles under the surface. This made it very different from the other continents, which were anchored on top of one hundred kilometers of cold rock that made up the tectonic plates and the thickest part of the crust.
“We have to assume that because of the extremely fertile volcanic soil that covered Atlantis and the bountiful ocean that surrounded it, the pieces were in place for humans who could reap the food supplied by both sources to develop quickly. It also benefited from the warming effect of the Gulf Stream, making it temperate year round. I believe the first civilization of mankind arose on Atlantis.
“It did not last long before the Shadow appeared. I think the Shadow attacked Atlantis because it sat on top of this crack, almost a direct pathway to the power inside the planet. The thing that made the land so bountiful also doomed it.”
Dane thought about that. He thought the explanation was off in some way he couldn’t quite put his finger on.
‘’The Ones Before helped the Atlanteans in their battle against the Shadow. We’ve seen how the minds of special people, people like you, can re-direct power, although the cost is high, resulting in transformation ill a pure crystalline skull.
“The ancient ones of mankind fought a war that spread around the globe until the very existence of life was threatened. And in the climactic battle, the ancient ones, with the aid of the Ones Before, stopped the Shadow-but at a high price. Their home of Atlantis was destroyed in a cataclysm of fire and earthquake. The resulting tsunamis touched every shore on the planet with such devastation that the legend of the Great Flood was written of both in the Tibetan Book of the Dead and the Old Testament of the Jewish people on the other side of the world.
“The survivors, in a handful of ships, scattered to the four winds and planted the seeds for future civilizations to arise thousands of years later, what we call the modem world. The Atlanteans stopped the Shadow but lost their civilization and their home in the process. This is something we would like to avoid.
“Since the destruction of Atlantis, the Shadow has kept a presence on our planet via gates. Sometimes these gates expanded, such as in A.D. 800 when the capital city of the Khmer Empire in Cambodia was swallowed up by such a gate-the one at Kol Ker which you entered. But always the gates shrunk back in size or even disappeared for years on end. So infrequent were the Shadow’s actions that man knew so little of it, that places where gates sometimes opened were viewed more as mystical places, such as the Devil’s Sea off the coast of Japan or the Bermuda Triangle. Even Atlantis faded into the fog of myth.”
There was a pause in the recording. Dane glanced out of the cockpit. They were still over the Pacific, heading to the West at supersonic speed.
“A major problem is that we are not sure exactly who the Shadow is or where they — or it-come from. We know you found human bodies inside the Valkyrie suits, but that could simply mean the Shadow has recruited humans to do their dirty work. If the Shadow is human, another Earth time line attacking our time line, the issue is how did they attain such a mastery of nature? It is obvious that the Shadow is an enemy that has a grasp of the true nature of physics that is far ahead of ours.”
Dane rubbed his forehead as he scrolled down the screen, looking at formulas and data Ahana had placed in the computer. He knew he needed to understand as much as possible, but he was finding some of this hard to absorb. Especially as Ahana now tried to give him a primer on the cutting edge of physics.
“Muons are part of the second family of fundamental particles which we know little about. Most of what we deal with in our world is in the first family, consisting of electrons, up-quarks and down-quarks. The second family consists of muons, charm quarks and strange quarks. And all these things are not single dots, according to string theory, but there a tiny, one-dimensional loop that is vibrating, which gives it several characteristics, which allows us to merge relativity and quantum mechanics.”
There was another short pause, then Ahana’s voice came through again.
“Let me explain this to you more simply. We have a problem with our theories of physics. Relativity explains things ell for large matter but doesn’t work at the smallest levels. Quantum physics works well at the smallest levels, but not at Quantum physics works well at the smallest levels. But not at what we call a unified-field theory that explains everything. We think string theory is it.
“Power is the key to all of this. We know the Shadow likes to draw power from this side, whether it is in the form of radioactivity as they did at Chernobyl, or from the planet itself along the tectonic plates, one of the greatest, if slowest, powers on the planet, as they recently tried to do through the Nazca Plain.