“Charlie, lend a hand and let’s get this thing over with.”
“Didn’t you feel that?” he asked, not even hearing Niles.
“What?”
“It felt like, I don’t know, a deep rumble, like an explosion.”
“Just help with this equipment, Charlie,” Niles said as he followed Jack inside the concrete laboratory.
Niles stood beside Jack and saw the technologically advanced weapons sitting in what looked like a large gun rack. There had to be close to a hundred of them. They were all intact and despite being covered in dust looked brand-new. Around the large room there were workstations, a much more elaborate setup than in the first gallery’s lab. There were film projectors and screens. There was what appeared to be discs of some kind, lined up and protected by clear plastic. There was a whole row of hanging alien environment suits, complete with helmets protected from the passage of time by the very plasticlike material they were made from. On the far concrete wall was a flag, and it was this that Jack and the others were staring at. It was blue, and it had the four circle emblem just like the one the senator had drawn for them in his dining room. The circles were blue, red, white, and gray. The flag was trimmed with gold tassels and it had a golden triangle in the upper left-hand corner.
“Wow,” a voice said from behind them.
Charlie Ellenshaw and Pete Golding entered the laboratory and set down the large case they had been struggling with. Appleby and Dubois followed them in and they too were kids seeing Disneyland for the first time.
“Amazing, simply amazing,” Appleby said as he saw the stored weapons of these ancient Visitors to the planet.
“Oh,” Ellenshaw said. He advanced into the room and found himself staring at a globe. It was large, about ten feet in diameter, and the Germans had covered it with a sheet of plastic. With Pete’s help, Ellenshaw pulled the sheet of thick plastic from the large globe. Both men stared at the unfamiliar terrain of a world that wasn’t theirs. “A green ocean, almost like our own. And look at the continents. They’re much smaller than ours and there are only-” Charlie slowly spun the globe. “-three large ones compared to our seven.”
Pete stepped back and looked at the ocean-covered world. He tilted his head and almost ran to the crate that he and Charlie had just wrestled inside. He pulled out his laptop. Before Jack could stop him, he opened the lid and turned it on. Collins, Niles, Sebastian, and Everett froze. They felt a momentary vibration, sharp and hard, which vanished far faster than the vibrations that had preceded it.
“Doc, you take it easy. Don’t make sudden moves like that.”
Golding ignored him. He was busy attaching what looked to be a camera to the laptop. He ran out a line and placed the small camera on the tabletop facing the globe.
“Did I ever tell you my big hobby when I was a kid, Niles?”
“No, Pete, you didn’t.”
Charlie Ellenshaw watched Pete move around like a bug on a hotplate. He smiled as he saw the enthusiasm in the computer man’s face.
“Well, it was astronomy. Mostly kid stuff. My parents bought me telescopes. I sent letters to NASA asking for pictures, things like that. Well, I had one set of pictures that amazed me and I used to stare at them for days on end.”
“You go, Pete,” Charlie said. He loved the way Golding had become excited. Ellenshaw knew that feeling of discovery and wanted Pete to take it all in.
Jack, Everett, Sebastian, and Niles turned and looked at Charlie, who smiled timidly.
“Europa, are you online?” he asked the laptop.
“Yes, Dr. Golding,” Europa answered in her sexy voice.
Appleby, the director, looked over at the MIT professor and raised his brows as the computer spoke in her Marilyn Monroe voice.
“Europa, do you see the planet’s representation in your camera lens?”
“Yes.”
“Do you recognize the surface features of the planet represented?”
Europa was silent for a moment. Pete looked up at the faces staring at him.
“Yes, Doctor.”
Pete stepped up to the large globe and pointed to a raised area mostly covered with snow. The mountain towered from the center of one of the landmasses.
“Europa, according to your records from NASA and the Hubble Space Telescope, what is the name of this mountain?”
“It is actually a volcano, Olympus Mons. Mons means mountain. It is the highest known mountain in the solar system.”
Oh, my God,” Appleby said as he stepped toward the globe and saw what Pete had noticed right off.
“Olympus Mons is calculated to be 373 miles across at its base and eighteen miles high,” Europa added, as if she were bragging about her knowledge.
Pete spun the globe and pointed at another mountain.
“In relation to the polar north and south, what mountain would you say this is?”
“Tharsis Montes, actually a mountain range consisting of three extinct volcanoes, located south of the previously mentioned Olympus Mons.”
“I can’t believe it,” Niles said, finally understanding what Europa, Pete, and Appleby saw.
“Do you mind letting us humans in on what you’re looking at?” Everett asked, angry that they were being left out of the thought process. The room remained quiet.
“Europa, what is the name of the planet you are currently examining?” Jack asked, showing that he had no patience for the amazement in the scientists’ faces.
“Mars.”
Jack was stunned. He leaned against the edge of the large table. He looked over at Everett and Sebastian and saw in their faces that they were just as stunned as he was.
“Look at the oceans,” Ellenshaw said. He joined Pete and placed a hand on his shoulder. They all stared at the world known to them their entire lives as the red planet, only now learning that it had once been beautiful and filled with green vegetation and gorgeous oceans.
“Niles, are you going to say that this is where our Visitors came from?” Everett asked, as everyone else remained silent.
“I’m not saying anything, Carl. Nothing at all.”
Ellenshaw saw something sitting in the corner. It was larger than the globe of Mars and was also covered in plastic. Charlie kicked a swastika-embossed flag out of the way and struggled with the thick plastic. He pulled on the tarp, assisted by Everett and Sebastian. As the plastic fell free they were stunned to see three more globes.
Jack looked at Compton and they both thought the same thing at the same time. Niles pulled the first and largest globe away from the wall.
“Earth,” Appleby volunteered. “Before the continents separated.”
The globe was mostly blue, totally covered in water except for the one and only landmass on one side of the world.
“The Pangaea supercontinent,” Niles said, looking from the globe to Jack. “Earth, about seven hundred million years ago.”
Collins pulled the third and fourth globes over. They looked almost alike. Both were dead-looking worlds. One, Jack saw, was the Earth’s Moon. The other was larger and far darker in color. Jack examined the globes and found holes in each. He asked Carl for help and together they pulled the Earth and Mars globes over. Jack reached out and removed a thin rod that had been attached to the large moon. He reattached it to a hole in the Earth globe. He tried the same with a rod from the smaller moon, but the rod wouldn’t fit into the hole on the other side of Earth. So he raised the metal bar on the smaller moon and the steel slipped in, where it locked. Then he tried the steel rod from the larger moon. It connected nicely to the small moon.
“What the hell?” Sebastian said, as everyone in the room stepped closer, curious what Jack was doing.
Collins went to his knees once all the rods were connected and found what he was looking for.
“I’ve always been a wiz at stuff like Rubik’s Cubes and Chinese-box puzzles.” He flipped a small switch at the
