The Secret of the Desert Stone (4 page)

Dr. Cooper brought the rover to a halt, and they stepped out onto the barren landscape to have a look.

Jay scanned the Stone's top edge with some binoculars, the magnified image quivering from the excitement coursing through him. “I think I see some ice up there. Guess that puts the summit above the freezing level.”

“Any features of any kind?” Dr. Cooper asked.

“Nope. That top edge is so straight it looks the same with or without binoculars.”

Jacob Cooper shook his head in awe. “Any thoughts, Dr. Henderson?”

Jennifer Henderson seemed transfixed as she stared at the stone.

“Dr. Henderson?” Dr. Cooper asked again, a little concerned.

She looked at him startled, as if awakened from a spell. “What? Oh. No, Dr. Cooper. It reminds me of basaltic columns such as Devil's Tower in Wyoming, . . . but this is nothing like that. I don't see how this can be a natural occurrence.” She allowed some of her fear to show as she added, “And I'm not sure we should approach any closer.”

Dr. Cooper respected her concerns. “Lila, get out the Geiger counter. We'd better check for radiation.”There was no response. “Lila?”

Lila was standing by herself a short distance away, motionless, gazing upon the Stone as if seeing a vision.

Her dad approached her quietly. “Lila? What is it?”

She heard his question and looked his way, but could not think of an answer—at least, nothing that would sound scientific. Scientific observation was done with the eyes, with the ears, with tools and instruments; she was
feeling
something with her heart, something she had no words to describe. Great symphonies made her feel this way. Beautiful sunsets. A Bible verse spoken or read at just the right time.

“I don't know, Dad,” she said at last, her voice hushed. “It's just . . . it's just wonderful, that's all.”

Dr. Henderson disagreed. “I think it could be dangerous!”

“I'm not afraid,” she countered. “I want to get closer. I want to touch it.”

“Same here,” said Jay, bringing the Geiger counter. He turned it on and twisted the dials. “No radiation. I guess it's safe.”

“If it is a
boloa-kota,”
Mobutu said, “it can never be safe!”

“Well . . .” Dr. Cooper stared up at the Stone, scratching his head. “While we're this far away, why don't we take some readings with the transit and get some dimensions?”

They worked as a team, pacing, measuring, peering through an engineer's transit and calculating. By late afternoon, they had some numbers.

“The side facing us runs roughly north and south,” Jay said, reviewing his notes. “We don't know about the other sides yet because we can't see them from here, but anyway . . .” He scribbled, then erased, then scribbled again. “If I didn't make any mistakes, the side facing us is right around 20,380 feet long and 9,348 high. That's, uh . . .” he tapped out the figures on his pocket calculator, “. . . 3.86 miles long and 1.77 miles high.”

He handed his notes across the hood of the land rover to his father. Dr. Cooper whistled his amazement as Dr. Henderson came alongside to study Jay's scribblings. She could only shake her head as she read them.

“Well done, Jay,” said Dr. Cooper. “Now we're ready for the next step.”

“Which is?” Dr. Henderson asked.

“We've found out all we can from a distance. Now we're going to have to walk right up and touch it.”

“We could be waking a sleeping lion,” Mobutu cautioned.

“I don't disagree. But I would find it more unbearable to remain here, not knowing, not learning. We still have about three hours of daylight.”

Dr. Henderson shifted her gaze toward the Stone, its surface flat, smooth, and unblemished, its color a dull, volcanic red. She didn't bother to disguise her dread even as she agreed. “So let's go touch it—but keep the motor running.”

The Stone looked like a monstrous wall directly in front of them and continued to loom larger and larger as they approached. After they had driven
kilometers, the south end was fully to their left, the north end was fully to their right, and the top edge was almost straight above them. It made them dizzy to look up at it.

“Perfectly vertical!” Dr. Henderson exclaimed.“Perfectly flat!”

“Hey,” said Jay, “I think I see the base!”

They had just come over a small rise. Dr. Cooper eased the rover to a halt. A half mile ahead, they could see the desert road coming to an abrupt end where the Stone now lay across it. But it wasn't just the road that ended here. The whole desert—sand, stones, brush, rock formations,
everything
—ended here as well. Abruptly, cleanly as if cut with a knife, the desert was now divided by a laser-straight wall of reddish stone that seemed limitless as it stretched north and south and soared into the sky.

Dr. Cooper looked north through the binoculars, then south. “The Stone is butting up against sheer cliffs at either end. I don't know if we'll be able to drive around it. It may even be impossible to hike around.”

“The Stone is in the path of His Excellency!” Jay quipped, recalling Nkromo's angry words. “Makes me wonder what's on the other side.”

“Nooo,” Mobutu cautioned with a wag of his head. “You don't want to go over there. It's the land of the Motosas, a desert tribe of cannibals and headhunters. They are ruthless and bloodthirsty, a real problem we've been trying to eliminate.”

Dr. Cooper considered that a moment. “Well, it seems you now have a wall to keep them contained.”

Mobutu only scowled and said nothing further.

“Shall we proceed?” Dr. Cooper asked.

“Hard hats, everyone,” Dr. Henderson cautioned. “If any debris or ice breaks loose, it'll fall straight down on top of us.”

They grabbed their yellow hard hats and put them on. Then Dr. Cooper put the rover in gear and let it tiptoe steadily forward, the idle of the engine and the quiet crunching of its tires over the sand and rock the only sounds. Finally, about fifty feet from the face of the Stone, he braked to a stop and turned off the engine.

Now there was a silence so absolute they could hear the blood rushing through their ears, the
tick, tick
of the cooling engine, and the little creaks and groans of the rover anytime somebody moved.

They looked at Dr. Henderson. This was her moment.

She stepped out of the rover and walked carefully, almost tiptoeing, toward the vast, reddish wall in front of her. The others followed: Jacob Cooper just a few steps behind, Jay and Lila a few steps behind him, and Mobutu a considerable distance back. Dr. Henderson paused several times to look straight up, but kept putting one foot in front of the other until cautiously, furtively, with outstretched hand, she touched the face of the Stone.

Nothing happened. The “sleeping lion” kept sleeping, at least for the moment.

As the others watched, eager to hear her verdict, Dr. Henderson brushed her fingers lightly over the surface, then studied it carefully, scanning back and forth, up and down. They could see she was getting agitated. Reaching into her tool belt, she took out a magnifying glass and studied the Stone's surface very closely, her nose only an inch away.

When she finally turned to look back at them, her face was filled with wonder and fear. “It appears to be
man-made!”

Man-made? They stood there gawking at the Stone, waiting for belief to set in.

“Oooohh . . .” With a timid, trembling cry, shaking his head in fear and denial, Mobutu backed away.

“All
right!”
Jay blurted, clenching his fist happily. A rock this size was intriguing, of course, but a
manmade
rock this size meant a real mystery!

Dr. Cooper hurried forward and touched the Stone himself.

“You see it?” Dr. Henderson asked him excitedly.“See the tool marks? Someone cut this thing out. They
carved
it. This isn't a natural occurrence at all!”

Jacob Cooper could see what Dr. Henderson was talking about. Though the marks were very fine and indiscernible from a distance, the surface did betray some kind of highly skilled handwork. He stepped back several paces and looked straight up the immense wall. “That could explain the symmetry, the unnatural, square shape, the straight lines and ninety-degree corners.” He returned to touch the Stone's surface again and study it closely. “Ancient stonework . . .” he muttered. “Stonecutting that would have made Solomon proud.” He looked straight up the wall, his chin almost resting against it. “This thing was
designed.
But it would have taken years, even centuries to complete! Mr. Mobutu!”

Mobutu answered from a safe distance. “Yes, Dr. Cooper?”

“Tell me again how the stone appeared. You say it's been here a few weeks and no one knows how it came to be here?”

“That's right, doctor. When we all went to bed, the desert was the same as it has been for centuries. When we got up the next morning, this object was here, just as you see it today.”

Jacob Cooper slowly wagged his head, at a total loss. “Who could cut out such a huge stone and place it in this desert overnight?”

“And what did they cut it out of?” Dr. Henderson asked. “Imagine the size of the quarry, or the hole that must be left after the stone was removed . . .”

“Maybe it's a meteor,” Jay suggested, touching it.“It just fell here from outer space.”

“The most gentle meteor in history to touch down so lightly,” his dad replied. “No crater, no fire, no signs of an impact.”

Lila came close and rested her palms against the smooth surface.
Yes,
she thought.
There's that feeling again. It's like a grand symphony, like a loving embrace, or a warm fire on a cold night.

Jay was still theorizing. “Maybe some ancient civilization figured out a way to make this thing materialize here from another dimension.”

Dr. Cooper built on that idea. “So maybe it's an illusion, a kind of holographic phenomenon . . .”

Lila pressed her ear against the red surface as if listening for sounds. Like finding a familiar face in a crowd, like finding your way again after being lost— that's how the Stone made her feel.

Dr. Henderson became sarcastic. “Or maybe it was planted here by extraterrestrials. Come
on.”

Dr. Cooper had to laugh, if only to relieve his frustration. “I think we'd better gather some more data before we go any further with theories!”

“Maybe
God
put it here!” said Lila, her face still against the Stone.

Jennifer Henderson only sniffed at that, but Dr. Cooper and Jay paused and looked at her.

“What makes you say that, Lila?” her dad asked.

She hesitated to answer, then finally said, “It just
feels
like God put it here.”

“Well,” Dr. Henderson laughed, “that's as good an explanation as any I've heard so far!”

Lila broke away from the Stone's surface and glared at her. “Who else do you know who can create something out of nothing, overnight?”

Dr. Henderson was ready to argue. “Young lady, this object was not created out of nothing! It's basalt and silica, the very rock and sand you're standing on! Here, just look.” She removed a small pick from her belt and struck the surface to break off a sample.

The steel tool bounced off with a metallic ring but didn't leave a mark. Indignant, Dr. Henderson struck the surface again, but with the same result.

“Basalt?” Dr. Cooper asked with one eyebrow raised.

“We'll wait for that core drill,” Dr. Henderson answered, unruffled, putting the pick back in her belt.

Jay was intrigued and touched the Stone, holding his hand against it. “What if God
did
put it here?”

Dr. Henderson lowered her voice, but she was angry. “Well, that would make a nice tale for the Togwanans, wouldn't it? They're superstitious. They resort to religion and spiritualism to explain things they don't understand. Let's just tell them God put it here, and we can all go home a little sooner!”

Dr. Cooper tried to calm her. “Dr. Henderson, belief in God doesn't rule out scientific method and research. No one's saying that.”

“But scientific research doesn't rule out God either,” Lila added.

Then Mobutu jumped in, and he was angry. “People, you were not hired to discuss religion! You were hired to explain why this stone is here and to find a way to remove it!”

“We have to consider all theories,” Dr. Cooper informed him.

“So let's get on with the
scientific
research,” said Dr. Henderson, really dwelling on the word
scientific
to rub it in.

“Well, okay.” Jay was ready with another possibility. “If this thing really is man-made, then it has to serve some purpose. I'll bet there are rooms and passages inside, maybe burial chambers like in the pyramids. If we can get inside those rooms, that would tell us something.”

“The seismic equipment will tell us if there are any cavities inside,” said Dr. Cooper.

Dr. Henderson sighed in frustration. “In order to use it, we'll have to get on top.”

They all looked at the vertical, featureless, red wall before them. Climbing was out of the question.

“Mr. Mobutu,” said Dr. Cooper, “what's the latest on that airplane?”

FOUR

A
t Nkromo International Airport the next day, Mobutu introduced the Coopers and Dr. Henderson to a single-engine, high-winged Cessna, apparently one of Idi Nkromo's private fleet of aircraft. It was big enough to haul four people and a limited amount of gear. Mr. Mobutu, already afraid of the Stone, was even more afraid of flying, so he kindly offered to stay behind.

Jay and Lila climbed into the backseat and fastened their seat belts. Dr. Cooper took the pilot's seat up front, and Dr. Henderson sat in the seat to his right.