‘They ran out of polish?’
Amy chuckled despite her deep thinking and shook her head, then sighed and bowed it. ‘I can’t figure these icons out.’
Ethan looked at the shapes and symbols adorning the circumference of the artifact and shrugged.
‘It’s hardly surprising. It took centuries for archaeologists to figure out Egyptian hieroglyphs, and you’ve only got an hour at best.’
‘The archaeologists had the Rosetta Stone to help them,’ she replied. ‘I don’t have a damned thing, and I doubt very much that Chandler’s idea of comparing these to Sumerian script is going to work.’
‘I wouldn’t rule it out,’ Ethan replied.
Amy looked up at him in surprise. ‘You don’t buy into all that ancient alien crap, surely?’
Ethan felt mildly embarrassed for some reason, but he held his ground.
‘I’ve seen quite a bit of evidence to support it, Amy, believe me. We wouldn’t be sitting here looking at this thing if alien civilizations hadn’t launched it here or left it behind. Kind of suggests that people like Chandler might be onto something.’
Amy scowled and looked again at the device.
‘We were always going to find alien life eventually,’ she muttered. ‘Just because we have doesn’t automatically mean that every crackpot theory about ancient aliens is suddenly true.’
Ethan looked again at the icons and frowned.
‘What makes you think that they’re letters or numbers anyway?’
Amy shrugged. ‘I guess it’s because there’s no other thing that they could be. Why inscribe an artifact like this at all if not to pass on a message.’
‘Yeah, but it could just as easily be a registration plate or something, right?
‘Are you always this comical?’ Amy asked him with a wry smile.
‘Just sayin’,’ Ethan shrugged again. ‘We’re assuming this thing is of huge importance because it was left here. What’s to say it wasn’t just a simple vehicle left behind by a group of camping interstellar travellers who were just passing through and…’
Ethan was cut off as a deep moan reverberated through the cavern, thundering with enough force to vibrate the air in Ethan’s lungs as he staggered sideways and sought a handhold. He leaned against the side of Die Glocke as the chamber shuddered around them and the icy black water cavitated once more, symmetrical loops shimmering in the dim light from the glow sticks marking the dock’s edge.
‘They’re getting worse,’ Hannah called as she clung to the railings nearby. ‘This cavern could go any moment.’
Ethan kept his hand on the bell, and to his shock he felt it vibrating with such force that his arm went numb and he was forced to place his right boot firmly on the deck and push off from Die Glocke while his arm was still able to react to his commands.
The tremendous noise and shaking faded away once more and Ethan shook his hand and frowned at it.
‘What?’ Amy asked.
‘Die Glocke,’ Ethan said as he shook his arm back and forth to bring it back to life again. ‘It was vibrating, made my hand go numb.’
Amy stared at his hand for a moment, then at the artifact, and then she leaped to her feet and threw her arms about Ethan’s neck as she kissed him firmly on the lips. Ethan stared at her in shock as she released him.
‘Warner, you’re a genius.’
‘I keep saying it,’ he replied. ‘Why?’
Amy was already running for the base. ‘I know how to open Die Glocke!’
XLIII
‘Are you sure this is going to work?’
Lieutenant Riggs seemed unsure of himself for the first time since Ethan had joined the team as he looked on nervously at Amy.
‘It’ll work,’ Amy replied. ‘You’ve just got to seal this side of the base off. We can’t risk letting anything inside the device reach the other side, okay? It stays in here.’
‘Couldn’t it get through the water channels beneath the base?’ Hannah asked, clearly remembering Amy’s own prior concerns about quarantine.
‘We’ll keep it away from the dock edge,’ Amy promised. ‘And the tent will seal it in.’
Ethan watched as Doctor Chandler sealed the last few edges of the transparent plastic tent that they had erected around Die Glocke, sealing it off from the atmosphere. Nearby, a small generator was being prepared by Del Toro, ready to draw out some of the air pressure inside the tent so that nothing could escape in the event of a breach: instead, air would flow in and not out.
‘And what if there’s something, y’know, alive in there?’ Hannah pressed.
Amy smiled as she pulled herself into a biohazard suit, a helmet in her hand as she sealed the last of her suit up.
‘Nothing substantial can live for thirteen thousand years, Hannah,’ she assured her, ‘but bacteria and other forms of life have been known to last for literally hundreds of millions of years before being spontaneously brought back to life in the presence of liquid water or vapor. We’re not taking any chances.’
Amy pulled the hood over her suit and sealed it shut as Doctor Chandler moved across to her, and together they helped ensure that both sides of their suits were properly sealed before Amy looked at Riggs.
‘We’re ready,’ she said. ‘Seal the tent from outside, then activate the generator. Once we’re done, get inside the base and seal the door from the inside. That’s about all we can do for now.’
Riggs seemed genuinely uncertain.
‘I don’t like this one little bit,’ he replied as he led his soldiers back toward the sally port. ‘Whatever you’ve got to do in there, make it fast, okay?’
Ethan watched as the SEALs waited as Amy and Chandler walked into the tent, and then they sealed if from the outside before switching on the generator. The air pressure inside the tent rapidly reduced, and Ethan could see the vents drawing air in instead of out, those vents lined with grills designed to stop any foreign objects or bacteria from entering the tent. Simple scrubbers cleaned the carbon dioxide out of the tent, while both Amy and Chandler had oxygen supplied via small tanks on their backs.
‘They’ve got an hour,’ Riggs said as he walked by Ethan. ‘All we have to do is keep Veer off their backs and ours.’
Ethan and Hannah hurried in pursuit of Riggs as he led the team back inside the base and the SEALs worked to seal the door behind them. As soon as it was secure, Ethan hurried up to the command center where a laptop computer was now open on an abandoned workspace, the light from the screen glowing blue through the room.
‘Amy, can you hear us?’ he asked.
‘Loud and clear!’
Amy’s reply came from within the tent, where they could see her and Chandler preparing to open Die Glocke. Amy’s voice was slightly distorted but the images were perfectly clear as she spoke to them.
‘It never crossed my mind until that last quake inside the cavern, but these symbols around the circumference of the artifact are likely not alien numbers or letters but sounds, like musical notes. We have no idea how alien forms of life might communicate but as this device seems to have sought out an aquatic environment, it seems plausible that the species that created it might have communicated by some form of ultra-sound.’
Doctor Chandler cut in as he worked.
‘Most marine species on earth use ultra-sound as a means of communication,’ he said. ‘This device cavitated at the same time as the cavern during the last quake, and likely conducts sound just like an ordinary bell. If Amy is right, then applying the correct frequencies to the artifact should open it or perhaps even activate it.’
Hannah glanced at Ethan. ‘Am I the only one thinking this is probably a bad idea? Didn’t Chandler say that the Germans activated their Die Glocke during the war and that it melted people or something? I’d rather wait until some secret government organization can open this thing somewhere really remote.’