Odyssey Rising (4 page)

Theo knew enough about the basic process of archaeology and wondered if his father or the science team back on the Ark would be able to re-construct a skeleton from five samples. Doubtful but a guy could hope for miracles.

Theo also knew that the Wet Willy probe had applied a laser tag number to each of the skeleton’s bones. How the bones were found, their order, their position all meant something. Five were found. Though the largest bone they had found on the planet’s surface was just a hair under four feet long, the curved ivory white, calcium phosphate objects almost all appeared bigger than life. It was history and the future, all weighed down in a series of ivory white objects, the kind which had never been found anywhere but on Earth.

Theo was anxious and a little disappointed. He was out in the hallway waiting with the rest of the crew. Harry Wolf was sniffing shoes.

In the laboratory, Ed Lorre did a scan. An x-ray. The first object was weighed and its temperature was taken. Since leaving the surface of the planet, the object had not changed. All readings were again unchanged.

Back at the Ark, Doctor Starling watched and monitored the examination. His image was up on a computer screen in the lab where Theo and Ravi could both see him.

By his side Captain Barton peered over Ed’s shoulder and asked, “They are bones, right?”

“The objects are made mostly of dried collagen, magnesium and calcium phosphate,” Ed Lorre said.

“Can someone please confirm or deny or disprove what we’re looking at? Is it animal? Mineral? Human? Alien? Someone tell me. Seriously guys, what kind of creature could we be dealing with here?” Captain Barton asked.

“Hopefully a dead one,” Sam joked.

“What do you think Doc? Could it be human?”

Doctor Starling answered, “That is a wonderfully intriguing question. If I were truly a betting man like you and the rest of the crew aboard Odyssey, specifically, I would have to say the odds are not at all in our favor. But since I’m not much of a gambler, I would have to say that these objects require more examination and it is wishful thinking for us to imagine what they may be a part of. We don’t know enough about the objects or GidX7 or how life may – and I stress – may have evolved down there.”

While Sam took a few more photos, Ed placed the object under the microscope.

To get a high-definition view, Ed and Captain Barton went to the corner of the lab where there was an office encased in clear glass with a bank of three computer screens. The magnified object was up on all three of them.

The first bone was magnified. It was mostly ivory white with dark lines. When the magnification reached a power of eight, everyone noticed microscopic dots, almost a maze of black and white.

At a power of sixteen, there was even more detail. The dots were plentiful, at least a hundred of them clustered together in a larger uneven oval.

Each of the microscopic dots was round, almost a circle and in the center there was an “S”-like groove running through the center of the circle that created dark and light shadings.

At a power of thirty-two all could see that the dots had dozens of barnacle like suckers around the perimeter of the dot. The suckers were round and pale brown and the rest of the dots were the consistency of milk.

At a power of sixty-four, the dots and the dark and light shadings came into focus in more detail and suggested the Yin-Yang symbol. While not an exact match, it was the logical name and logical symbol that came to anyone who observed the dots at that magnification. Whether the unusual dots were more yin or more yang or an equal balance of both was a mystery Doctor Starling and his scientific staff planned to solve.

“No temperature, no movement, no signs of current life,” Ed Lorre said.

“What are those dots?” Captain Barton asked.

“Don’t know yet,” Doctor Starling said. “Just give us an hour, maybe two or four. Just give us some time. We have to run several tests to know what we’re really looking at.”

In the lab, Sam was sweating big beads inside the hazmat suit. His perspiration was all over his skin, welling up in the cracks of his suit. Sam was sweating so much that he was having trouble getting any good photos. Through an opening in his suit between his neckline and his shoulder blade, Sam scratched and scratched. The sweat had gathered in an annoying pool and it was driving him crazy. When he was done scratching his neck, several drops of his sweat remained on his glove.

In the span of four heartbeats, Sam’s sweat fell from his glove and landed on the bone. He didn’t even notice he had added his own salt water to the bone.

Sam stepped right into his own sweat that had fallen from his glove to the bone to the floor. He took a few last photos and decided to end his sweating misery.

Sam poked his head into the office, “I’ve got my shots. Thrilling stuff. If there’s anything else, don’t wake me up until morning. Beauty sleep, you know.”

“Yeah, it shows,” Larson Jensen commented.

“But seriously, don’t hesitate to wake me up again. This is one big step for mankind and an even greater one for air-conditioned hazmat suits. Can’t some tech head back on the Ark get working on that?”

“Just for you, Mr. Sam,” Larson Jensen said. “Just for you.”

Sam left the lab and threw off his hazmat helmet and visor as quickly as he could. His hair was dripping wet with sweat.

Outside the lab, Sam went to be with his classmates.

Immediately, Harry Wolf licked and licked at Sam’s feet, right where he had stepped in his own sweat – the sweat that had fallen from the bone. The dog’s pink tongue was naturally speckled with a few gray textured creases. Harry Wolf used it as a tool of investigation. The dog had found something of interest on the bottom of Sam’s shoes.

Sam played with Harry Wolf and actually let him slither his tongue around Sam’s sweating hands.

“Sometimes I love this dog and sometimes he is a real pain,” Sam said.

“Down boy,” Theo said while the dog’s tongue licked at Theo’s outstretched hand in command mode.

“Harry means no harm,” Ravi said.

“He’s very excited tonight,” Sam said. “Must be the skeleton. Sick ‘em Harry. Sick ‘em good. You want food, boy? How about ribs?” Sam said. “You get it? Ribs!”

“Don’t listen to Sam, boy,” Theo said as he placed his hand onto the muzzle of Harry snout. “You hear? Leave the bones alone, boy. They are not food. You hear? Not food.”

Again, the dog’s tongue was a wonder of wetness and exploration all over the skin of the young men.

“Oh, totally gross,” Ravi said.

“Well, see you guys in the morning,” Sam said. “I’m getting the rest of my beauty sleep. If anything else exciting happens, don’t wake me…unless, like the skeleton does a dance or begins to fly or some little green alien girls finally materialize and shout surprise, we’re here to kiss your most gifted artist – which would of course be me – and I guess wake me only if they’re kind of hot looking. Okay?”

“You’re unbelievable,” Ellie said. “Even in a time like this.”

Sam chuckled. “I know. I have a one track mind!”

Ellie let out a frustrated sigh. “Oh, when, oh when do we get home?”

Ravi checked an app on his communication device. It had a running countdown to their scheduled return. “Thirty two days and about six hours and thirty-five minutes. Give or take a few minutes,” Ravi said.

Before the classmates continued with their conversation, a red alert alarm started to blare.

A voice repeated, “Code Red 1A. I repeat Code Red 1A.”

“What the heck is going on?” Sam asked.

“Hazmat lockdown,” Ravi said with a look to Sam. “Don’t you know you’re Code Reds yet?”

“Sure. Sure. I knew that,” Sam defended.

“A Code Red 1A automatically locks the lab. Air has stopped circulating and an emergency tank of oxygen has kicked in,” Ravi added.

Sam looked to Theo for confirmation.

“The little runt is right,” Theo said.

“But why? What’s the cause?” Sam asked.

“Not sure,” Theo said.

“It might have something to do with the bones Theo discovered,” Ravi said.

“Hey guys, the protocol also says no unnecessary crew interaction and only essential crew duties are allowed to continue,” Ellie said.

“So?”

“That means we have to head to our quarters and stay there until the Code Red is over,” Ellie said.

“She’s right,” Theo said.

“This really sucks,” Sam said.

As the classmates headed back to their private sleeping quarters, they were left to wonder how a bunch of small and harmless bones may have caused a Code Red 1A lockdown. They were about to find out.

CHAPTER 5

In his personal quarters Theo longed for the Ark, his permanent space home. Even if it was just a bigger tin can than his present one, at least the Ark had a real rock-climbing wall.

With thoughts of a better home, a restlessness excitement kept Theo wide-awake. While privately excited by his skeletal discovery, at the end of another long, hard day, all he wanted was a really hot shower and a breath of fresh air. They were luxuries he may never get again aboard Odyssey or even back on the plush fourteen-level Ark.

Theo knew his discovery had the potential to prove many things long wondered about and never understood, never proven.

Firstly, Theo knew we could now say that Earth was not alone and he also wondered if we knew less about the origins of life than we ever imagined. He also wanted to know what the creature looked like and were there others down on the surface, others that were roaming free?

On the other hand, Theo told himself it was just a bunch of bones. People, apes, dogs, fish, all animals had them on Earth. From a biology class, Theo remembered that two hundred-something bones made up his own body. This skeleton only had five and Theo knew it had to have dozens more.

Theo’s sleeping quarters, his home away from home, was just a tiny rectangle of darkness. The touches of home were some photos of Half Dome at Yosemite and of the shadow hills of Palm Springs. He had his e-books on his computer tablet, his virt-sim games and a couple of changes of clothes.

At Theo’s feet, Harry Wolf was curled into a comfortable gray ball. The Siberian Husky was an energetic companion and robust eater who slopped up any scrap or crumb of food Theo or any other resident of Odyssey was willing to give up.

Theo tried to go to sleep. It was hard. His mind was not calm. How could it be? He had just seen a set of five alien bones of unidentified origin.

As Theo calmed his breath, he told himself that the first earthbound explorers wanted to prove that the world was not flat. Those old adventurers wanted to know if the world was really round and complete in itself. Now that he could see entire worlds through any of several observation deck windows whenever he wanted, with all of their shapes and curves, Theo wondered what the science keepers would prove now.

Theo checked his Communication Device.

His most recent messages to the Ark and Earth had not been sent and were still in the queue. The message’s wait time was still stuck at six hours. Nothing had changed. No messages were being sent or received. He figured chatter about his skeletal discovery was eating up all available computer band-with.

Since Theo couldn’t sleep, he decided to exercise. The best exercise he could get on Odyssey was a virt-simulator in his bedroom that offered a killer simulation of hyper-boarding off the virtual cliff of El Capitan in Yosemite National Park. When he closed his eyes in preparation for the virtual challenge, he could almost taste the breeze. The virt wind fan was on. While it was only a simulation, after thirty minutes, his calves and core muscles still ached with exhaustion.

After his virt sim exercise regime, sleep mostly evaded Theo that night. In his private bunk, he closed his eyes and tried to dream of a better tomorrow, but there was a kind of beating that pounded in his body. The sound was like a drumbeat. It pounded on and on and on and the pounding kept Theo up most of the night.

Reclining on his bed, staring up at the stars through the small observation window, Theo sent a text message to his father and they spoke voice to voice.

“Are the dots growing?” Theo asked.

“Yes, they’re alive now,” Doctor Starling answered. “They most likely were in hibernation when they arrived. They needed a catalyst and they found it.”

“Do you know what that was?”

“Most probably something as simple as sweat,” Doctor Starling said. “At least we think that was the trigger for re-generation.”

“What are they?”

“Unsure, they don’t have any DNA. They don’t appear to be a virus or bacterial or even a fungi, at least not a kind that we are capable of classifying. We should know more in the morning.”

“What’s the plan?”

“We’re going to see if there’s airborne transmission to the second rabbit,” Doctor Starling said.

“Why?”

“To see if there’s any adverse health effects and to see if they’re contagious and if so how transmittal can happen. By morning we should know much more,” Dr. Starling said.

“You’re talking like it could be the common cold,” Theo said.

“I wish this organism was a known entity,” Doctor Starling said. “But remember the unknown is not to be feared.”

“—it’s to be understood,” Theo completed one of his father’s favorite saying.

“Exactly.”

Theo asked, “Can I do anything to help?”

“No. Just have patience and stay in your quarters for now. Odyssey is in a precautionary shutdown. But don’t worry, it’s all just a part of the normal protocols.”

“Sounds like a quarantine to me,” Theo said.

“Just a necessary precaution,” Doctor Starling said. “These are very exciting times. You should be proud. Very.”

Listening to his father, Theo realized the skeletal bones he had discovered had already become an afterthought.

Theo asked, “What about the bones? What are they from?”

“We need more reference points,” Doctor Starling answered.

“Meaning what?” Theo asked.

“We need more bones to be able to develop an accurate skeletal model.”

“Are they sending another shuttle?”

“Soon.”

“Will you be on it?”

“Yes,” Doctor Starling said.

“So we won’t see each other back at the Ark,” Theo said.

“Not for a while,” Doctor Starling said. “But I will stay in constant contact. Okay?”

“Are you disappointed?”

“About?”

“Not being here on Odyssey,” Theo said.

“A long time ago I accepted the crazy cards that life deals us,” Doctor Starling said, “and you and your brother should too.”

“But are you disappointed?”

“Why would I be disappointed?”

“Because it wasn’t you who made the discovery,” Theo said.

“You have made me really proud. And at least we kept the discovery in the family,” Doctor Starling said.

Theo let a small smile crease his lips as he said, “If you were here, would you be going down to the surface of the planet?”

“Don’t worry about that planet,” Doctor Starling answered. “It’s not going anywhere and take care of your brother, okay?”

“Of course,” Theo said.

“And I’ll be posting a Communication entry very shortly for the community. This is history in the making. It really is and you are a vital part of it. You understand?”

“Of course,” Theo said.

“Good. God speed.”

They were finished speaking and Theo went back to thinking about the events of the day: how could something so small and so alien be so important to his father?