The Alien Artifact 8 (11 page)

Once on the ground he used the last of his
energy to escape from the hill, but he collapsed against a pile of
boulders, with his eyes still on the hill, and he grasped what the
incredible force behind it was like.

To his shock he spotted all the scientists
and others still running and escaping for their lives – and they
were further out than him – and he rushed away on his weakened
limbs and ran away from the site as fast as he had ever tried to
run, and he even thought of removing the lower part of his
spacesuit to get away!

When he heard the explosion he just dived
straight over some boulders, to an area behind them, and covered
himself by burrowing himself below the boulders, and covered his
ears as the blast intensified and he felt the blast hit the other
side of the boulders, and he gritted his teeth as he waited for the
powerful impact to kill him!

Chapter 24

The Artifact

Once the dust cloud slowly vanished, with no
sign of anything else occurring, they all started returning to the
remains of the hill, and mainly in rubble heaps across their
front.

Cronenberg watched the dead and injured being
taken away in undamaged shuttles, and he wondered what was going
on, and swiftly approached scientists he knew.

“
What did you do?” he moaned to one,
and he just laughed back, feeling his arm trying to find how
damaged it was, from a rock that had hit it, as they went back to
where the alien energy sphere had been.

A horrendous sensation struck him as he
felt energy from something pulsating through the ground
–
the same energy
that he had felt from the energy sphere, going through the ground,
but it had far more power and energy to it. He was so startled that
he was not able to exhale properly and he checked his oxygen
supply, and wondered what they had done to the energy
sphere.

“
They never did anything!” one
scientist replied, and stared at him.

“
What happened then?” he replied
firmly.

“
Nothing! They were trying to dig it up
and we were setting up equipment, and massive energy surges
appeared, and the ground everywhere started shaking, and we
detected something was going to occur, and we had to run out and
escape as the hill started collapsing everywhere …”

When they approached where the center of the
hill was they all started slowing and examining there and
Cronenberg saw it was different from everywhere else, and as they
moved closer saw all the rubble had been pushed away from the
central region by some force, and that the energy sphere was there,
hovering over a black artificial object, which had been buried away
under the rock, and that it had clearly used the force to free
itself from beneath the hill, and they all approached it cautiously
now seeing the dangers of it, and that it had clearly taken the
whole hill down on top of them, killing and injuring people
there.

Though as they approached it he sensed that
it had not purposely killed anyone and had done its best to avoid
it!

At the
edge of the energy bubble
, altering wildly, gleams of
light shone like bright miniature stars were being held there
motionlessly, and some scientists filmed it and studied it, and
started recording information about it, and he heard one of the
scientists give the exact time the disturbance started and he was
surprised that it was the exact time that he had removed the
diamond at the top of the hill, and he realized that it had been
directly above it.

Chapter 25

The Strange Black
Object

For days he watched the archeologists at work
removing the black object beneath the energy sphere, and he watched
them discover it was made of something they could not recognize,
and none of the scientists had any proper theories what it was, as
there were no clues anywhere to anything, and the energy sphere
refused to give any proper communications, and most of the things
it gave were beyond their understand, and it became clear to him
that every time he appeared it started to give communications,
which he originally thought he was imagining, and then he thought
it was the scientists doing something that they wanted to do when
he was there, and then the scientists started questioning him about
it!

They questioned him about everything they
could and never got anything, and the only proper theory put
forward, by a leading scientist, was it had connected itself to him
for some reason, and perhaps because he found it and perhaps it
trusted him, and it had allowed him to find it, and he was the
chosen one to make communications with, even though it answered
them while he was there, and they tried occasionally to discover
why, without much success, and they could not grasp something.

The work continued for days, and they
all accepted that there was an existing danger from it, and its
form altered
–
and shrank to nearly fifty feet across from every side
–
and was
suspended over the artifact, in a large cavity that was dug around
it.

The entire top region was covered in
equipment and scientists studying the alien object and energy
bubble above, trying to find what connected them, as there had to
be some form of communication between the two, but they never found
anything and it was agreed that it was either undetectable to them
or it connected when the object was activated in some way, and some
thought that the energy sphere had to be created by the object
below as nothing was found that could give its vast powers.

Detection equipment was everywhere all around
it and at the end of cables entered into areas of its field, where
they found it could now be entered further, and the scientist
reacted immediately when they received results, and one time they
found that digital numbers were frozen on an atomic clock entered
into its field, and even created multidimensional forms through the
air, and they studied the suspension of partially transparent
layers, and saw them vanish somewhere.

Paranormal scientists were even brought in
and were left staggered and bewildered at what it was, and there
was in fact little that was identifiable, and even after immense
amounts of experiments little was found, but vast amounts of
research and recordings were done, which might be used to find a
solution to its identity one day, and they were sure if they could
grasp some clue about its identity that they might be able to start
solving their unanswered questions.

One day Cronenberg got up early in the
morning with his shuttle crew, as they were to return to the base
for the first time in a long time, and he was surprised to see the
scientists monitoring the equipment in large shuttles there, and
had just been woken up and had started checking information on what
was happening, and he was about to announce that they were due to
continue their mission of mapping Mars when he spotted that they
had raised the object below the alien sphere.

The size of the cavity beneath the object
below the energy sphere had been increased and they had removed the
giant block and raised it up over the Martian landscape.

Cronenberg and his shuttle crew stood by its
side examining the object with amazement.

“
It must weigh tons …” Rosenberg
gasped, checking the equipment that they had used to lift it over
the ground.

“
Well, they
’
ve virtually carved the entire block
out!” Mitchell continued. “It was not as deep downwards as they
expected, and they
’
ve tunneled under and around it to get it up.
It’s incredible! It resembles a black version of the flying saucers
they use to claim to see years ago on the Earth!”

“
What the hell is it though?”
Cronenberg replied, making all of them gasp, and look above it to
the energy sphere floating over it, and he felt the surface of it
and felt a firm vibration from something, showing it was
functioning.

“
It’s like there is something missing
from it!” he replied. “It’s as though it’s somewhere else at the
same time – and we are only seeing this part of it …”

“
That could explain why they got so
little information from it!” Orwell answered firmly.

Chapter 26

The Gateway

Cronenberg
sensed something strange that he could not grasp, when he returned
to the alien energy sphere, with his shuttle crew, and he tried to
get what it was but failed!

Before he
had left on his mission he had returned to
the energy
sphere and he and the rest of the crew had immediately seen the
energy sphere had altered completely, and its outer fringes had a
sphere of energy accelerating around it at an incredible speed, and
the ground below vibrated furiously, and he felt there was
something about to happen.

He shuddered as he studied its powerful
sphere shape, with no blemishes or openings, vibrating with
colossal powers.

The abnormal antics of the scientists
also captivated him
–
mystifying him with the depth of their
nervousness – and their fear of something colossal! They
repetitively studied their highly advanced equipment and an immense
sophisticated laser, with alarm, and he realized it was all new
stuff there, and that it had just been brought in from the Earth,
and was of a highly confidential nature, and he and the others with
him knew it was there for a reason, and whatever that reason was it
surely was dangerous, and he finally talked a scientist into
getting a leading scientist to come over and explain what was
happening.

“
We have
successfully communicated with it!” the leading scientist
announced. “There was a first contact scenario put together to
handle first contact situations, and one of the outcomes was an
alien source code, designed to communicate with any
extraterrestrials through communications, which has been vastly
improved, and we used it to make communication with it.

“
Well,
special equipment here was used and we found out a few things! Even
though we never got what the energy sphere and artifact was we
discovered how to activate it!”

“
Activate
it!” Cronenberg gasped.

He and the
other astronauts stood stunned with their mouths open, realizing
the true situation!

“
You’ve
the technology to properly communicate with it ...” Cronenberg
moaned. “What will activating actually do?”

“
Perhaps
make a first contact situation occur!” he replied, making them gasp
more, and wonder what the hell they were going to contact and how
dangerous it was, and Cronenberg gasped when he realized that the
thing was attached to him and he might be made to make
contact.

“
Another
classified element of it is we communicate with it
telepathically!”

“
So
what’s happened?” he replied, anxiously waiting for a reply, and an
answer to what was occurring.

“
We’ve
just started, and we needed you here to go further!”

They watched
scientists activating equipment in front of them, with the energy
sphere in front of them, and the artifact below resting over the
ground.

A swift flash of light exploded out and
a highly advanced strange laser beam blasted into the energy
sphere
–
silencing all the scientists all around them.

In the blinding light, with him shading his
eyes, he saw something was going to happen and he prepared himself,
and watched it trigger it to unlock and open the flying saucer
shaped black artifact below it and with a deafening bang he watched
it split in half and the top half lift upwards into the air, until
it was a certain position above the bottom half, which if the area
between the top and bottom was filled in would make the whole
artifact a perfect sphere, and they watched an energy field in the
gap become visible.

Cronenberg with surprise watched the alien
energy sphere above it shift down and enter the energy field, and
fill the gap between the top of the artifact and the bottom, and it
became a black central region between the top and bottom, and he
knew it was complete and detected it from it, and from its central
region where the energy sphere was.

It left them staggered, at what it was, could
be, and the sheer power of it, and he watched the scientists
communicating with it, and some rushed away to do things.

The whole artifact looked a perfectly
symmetrical black sphere, and scientists and archeologists shifted
a ramp over to it, which had been used to climb on the artifact,
and they lowered it to where the alien energy sphere was in its
central region.

What surprised him was they were now able to
go right up to the energy sphere region, and they knew they could,
and they started putting equipment there, and he spotted scientists
removing what looked like a highly advanced probe of some sort and
taking it to it and he realized that they intended to send it in
and investigate what was there.

While the
scientists were away Cronenberg and the shuttle crew decided to
take what might be their only opportunity to check it and they
marched up the ramp to examine it, and stood in front of the region
the alien energy sphere was, and examined it inches away, and its
now motionlessly perfect surface, and he tried to detect anything
from it but could not, and realized that it had to be what had
taken the shuttle down, and he recalled his original thoughts of it
when he had sensed it in the shuttle going towards the Antarctica,
and he realized it was it!