"What did they think?" Hawkins asked.
Pencak got up and walked over to the coffee machine and poured herself a cup. Fran caught Hawkins's eye and mouthed, What do you think? to him. In reply Hawkins shrugged and tapped his ear, indicating, Listen.
Taking a sip of her coffee, Pencak continued. "The Russians are a strange people. We look down on their technological and scientific capabilities, but they did quite well for themselves working under an intolerable system that did not promote innovative thinking.
"The Russians have always been very interested in Tunguska-especially in the years since the Great Patriotic War. In 1946, after seeing what happened at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Gregori Kazakov said that the explosion at Tunguska must have been nuclear and suggested that it had been caused by the nuclear engine of a spacecraft exploding. He said that traces of metallic iron found in the area were fragments from the skin of the spaceship. Other metals found there were from the ship's wiring. He based his theory on the fact that a spacecraft exploding in midair would leave no crater and form the effect that was noted in the area.
"In 1959 Professor Felix Zigorski, an aerodynamics expert from the Moscow Aviation Institute, also said the explosion must have been nuclear." She looked over at Lamb. "As you probably know, Felix was the head of the Russian team that went with us to the site in '65. Later on he was one of the men in charge of training their cosmonauts. He continued to claim, until his death four years ago, that there was no doubt but that extraterrestrial spacecraft have been active in the skies over Russia.
"Korkorov, a Russian aircraft designer, introduced a new angle on the Tunguska incident. He examined eyewitness reports of the object that had been moving across the sky and concluded that it had to have been under intelligent control. His calculation based on the reports show it slowed to around point six kilometers per second prior to the explosion, indicating an attempt to perhaps land-a meteorite would have continued to accelerate and been going much faster than that. Also, he laid out the route according to the various accounts and it appears, if the accounts from 1908 are to be believed, that the object actually made a significant course change prior to exploding."
"I'm a little confused," Hawkins said. "What does an explosion in 1908 have to do with these craters that you say are at least five thousand years old?"
Pencak regarded him for a few seconds. "I would say the likelihood that whatever is in the Rock has tried to communicate with Tunguska ties them together. Obviously, they are all part of some sort of alien system. I suppose we will find out what kind of system when we complete the tunnel and come face to face with whatever is down there."
"Unless we communicate with it first," Debra said.
"That's another thing that makes me think we are dealing with aliens," Pencak commented.
"What's another thing?" Hawkins asked, the confusion plain in his voice.
"The frequency the initial transmission from the Rock was sent on. Fourteen twenty megahertz, correct?"
Lamb flipped open a file folder to check. "Right."
"Zigorski investigated material he called 'angel's hair' found at the sites where UFOs were reported in the former Soviet Union. These were metal needles about twenty-one to twenty-three centimeters long, wrapped together in a strange pattern. The needles were extremely thin and usually disintegrated or were blown away shortly after the sighting. Needles twenty-one centimeters in length, if used as antennas, would be broadcasting and receiving on a frequency around fourteen twenty megahertz."
"When and where were these needles found?" Lamb wanted to know.
"Zigorski investigated several reports all over the Soviet Union in the late sixties and early seventies."
"Maybe it was chaff used by their Air Force," Hawkins suggested. "Designed to throw off radar tracking at various frequencies. Maybe the UFO itself was an experimental aircraft. Like our Stealth fighter that was spotted out West for several years before the Air Force went public."
"Possibly," Pencak acknowledged. "I don't know. But I find it very interesting that it is the same frequency as that used by the Rock. Also, angel's hair has also been found at reported UFO sites in the United States."
"So now we have UFOs," Batson commented. "And prehistoric nuclear explosions combined with one in 1908 in Siberia. Come on, people. Let's get real here."
Lamb stood. "All right-that's enough for now. We have a lot of theories but no real answers. I've requested permission for us to transmit to the Rock. I haven't received an answer yet, but if it's a go, I want you people to give me a message to send. It has to be nonthreatening and non-informative. Basically we need to know if we can communicate with it. Is that clear?"
"Clear," Hawkins answered for the team.
TUNGUSKA
After Pencak was escorted away by a marine to get some sleep after her long journey from America, the team was left to consider the information and theories she had imparted. Hawkins looked around the room, trying to judge by the expressions where each stood. Levy maintained her wide-eyed, deep-in-thought look. Fran's face intimated nothing. Batson was shaking his head to himself slightly. Lamb was looking at a file folder with a secret cover sheet he'd just been handed by the marine, ignoring everyone.
"Any comments?" Hawkins asked.
As he'd expected, Batson was the first to voice his opinion. "I don't buy it."
"What don't you buy?" Lamb looked up from his papers.
"The conclusion Dr. Pencak has drawn from the available data. To begin with, a lot of her analysis is flawed." Batson walked over to the map on the wall. "She's linking together these sites because of the transmission. Then she's explaining the craters at or near the sites as having been caused by nuclear explosions. But it is just as likely that they were caused by meteors, based on the scientific studies made of each site. I should know that-geology is my field of expertise and I've studied several of those sites."
His finger slid across the map. "Campo del Cielo is estimated to have been formed a good twenty thousand years before Meteor Crater in Arizona. And Ries Basin and the Vredefort Dome complex well before that. We're talking a span of many millennia."
"Thousands of years to us might seem like just a few years to an alien culture," Levy quietly replied.
Batson snorted in irritation. "If you think that way, then you can say any damn thing you want to. If extraterrestrials had built something on Earth so long ago, don't you think we would have had some sort of contact with them before now?"
"Maybe we have," Levy said. "The data on that is incomplete. Certainly there are a multitude of reported sightings of-"
"Hold on." Lamb held up a hand. "Let's not get too far astray and start discussing whether UFO's exist."
"I agree," Batson said. "I think everything we need to know to understand what is going on is here right in front of our noses but we aren't looking at it from the proper perspective. People always have a tendency to make problems much more complicated than they really are."
Fran spoke for the first time. "So what perspective should we take, Don?"
Batson shrugged. "I'm not sure. Let's assume the six locations are connected, but not in the way Dr. Pencak said they were."
"You mean no aliens?" Fran asked. "But who would have put something in the Rock, then? We're back to square one."
"Not really," Lamb interjected. He flipped open one of his ever-present file folders. "I think for the first time we may have a line on who is behind all this."
Hawkins frowned. As usual they hadn't received all the necessary information up-front. "What have you got?"