survivors to either sustain life or to grant eternal life. The Mali tribe has Nommo, who is continually crucified to a tree, his body and blood taken into the earth, creating seeds that feed the people the next spring. There are so many more—Tammuz, Odin, Mithras, Quetzalcoatl, and of course, the original savior-god, Osiris, who was murdered, cut into pieces and sent to the underworld before he rose up and is now situated in heaven—not coincidentally at the destination point for the worthy in the afterlife.”
Temple nodded, but saw that his guests’ eyes were glazing over. “Okay, flash forward a couple billion years—or a half million, depending on how radical you want to take all this. In the more distant history, a huge planet—we’ll call it Tiamat—collided with another body out beyond Mars, and the collision created the Earth and also the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. The moon—one of Tiamat’s satellites, remained with the Earth, basically forming a dual planetary system. Tell them Diana, about the moon.”
She stood up, took a deep breath.
But Orlando cut her off. “You’re not going to tell us that we never went there, are you? All that Hanger 18 crap? Because, I’ll tell you—I RV’d a lunar mission once. And it was real, not filmed on any stage.”
“Oh, we went there all right,” Diana said. “But I’m guessing you didn’t see much more than that—a visit and a landing, or you wouldn’t be talking so calmly about this.”
“Maybe…” Orlando said, glancing at Phoebe. “I didn’t ask the right questions, those kinds of questions.”
“It’s okay,” Temple said. “If you had, you would have either gotten the shield or some unwanted visions, things that have made other psychics give up ever working for us again.”
“Okay… I’m not sure if you’re joking or not, but sorry, continue. What’s wrong with our moon?”
Diana took a breath, then started. “Our moon, by all theories, shouldn’t be there. It’s a celestial freak of nature. It’s too large—the ratio between satellite and master the largest in the system, and dynamically impossible to explain. It’s one-quarter the diameter of Earth. The next largest satellite circling a planet is Titan, but it’s only one-eightieth of Jupiter’s diameter.” Diana took a breath. “No theory explains how it could have been ‘captured’. Also its orbit should be elliptical like most captured satellites, not perfectly circular. And for that matter, it shouldn’t be in a perfectly synchronous rotation.”
“A what?” Phoebe asked.
“Our moon is at the perfect distance and rotational speed so that it always shows us the same face. That’s a near impossibility to achieve through chance.”
“So…” Orlando left the question out there. But Diana ignored it.
“For centuries astronomers and stargazers have been reporting unusual things up there—just on the side that we can see. Strange lights, pulses. Objects that seem… geometrical and show up where nothing existed before, like a twelve-mile ‘bridge’ over the Sea of Crisis viewed in 1958. Other strange anomalies include seven obelisk-shaped spires six-hundred feet tall near a gigantic rectangular depression in the Sea of Tranquility.” She took a sip of water. “The seas themselves, the enormous dark areas you can see with the naked eye, are plains of fused soil requiring temperatures greater than forty-five hundred degrees to produce. NASA speculated that ancient cosmic bombardment must have occurred, the equivalent of billions of H bombs.” She rubbed her hands together, continuing without focusing on anything but the table top.
“There have been unusual radio signals coming from the moon, reported early on by Marconi. Nicolas Tesla—more on him later—speculated that someone was up there, and we should be prepared. And the craters themselves—they often defy theoretical models.”
“Like how?” Orlando asked. “I’ve seen pics, they seem normal to me.”
“From down here, maybe. But their depth is wrong. For example, a one-hundred-fifty mile wide crater was found to be only three miles deep. Something that huge, causing such an impact, would have gone much deeper, unless the mantle was some kind of tougher material than anything we could expect. And… the bottom of the crater was found to be convex, instead of the other way around.” Diana shook her head. “So many anomalies, and I’ve barely started.”
Temple refilled her water. “Go on, quickly. Get to the good stuff.”
She stared at her glass, the swirling liquid. “Since the beginning of the lunar program, there have been miscalculations, problems and… unusual missteps. The first few missions overshot the moon as mission control discovered to their surprise that they had miscalculated the moon’s gravitational pull, expecting a much greater mass, given the moon’s size. After adjusting again, early landings struck harder and faster than planned—and created a metallic ringing upon impact. And speaking of landing, the original craft and crew were prepared to be caught in a deep sea of dust, as should have been the case, given the moon’s extreme age, its lack of atmosphere and its direct exposure to dust-producing solar rays. But there was relatively little dust, less than an inch.”
Diana pushed a button and all the main screens went black, then started up with a presentation. “What I’m about to show you,” she said, “are photographs captured by the early Apollo missions. There are a lot of these pictures, and they tend to be overwhelming after a while. None of these have been seen before by anyone outside of NASA—and only there to a select few.” She tapped a key on her laptop and the screens went black as she talked. “From the beginning,” she said, “there have always existed
10.
After breezing through the shortened security checkpoint, where the crowd impatiently waited out the rain, Caleb bypassed the museum entrance and opted for the stairs up to the top of the fort section and base. He ran through puddles, his face turned against the driving rain. Before the entrance, he glanced up at the dizzying height of the pedestal, and again had a flashback to Alexandria, a vision two thousand years old, with Roman galleys assailing the structure’s base under churning storm clouds, a brazier of fire lit high above, and the huge mirror blasting a light through the gloom.
Inside, he emerged directly into the center of the structure, with metal mesh floors and a steep staircase bending around the central shaft supporting Liberty’s frame. He had a moment of vertigo and had to grab a railing.
“Tough climb,” said one of the park attendants, sitting at this ground level station and working on the newspaper’s crossword section. He was in his sixties with a gray mustache and spindly fingers. “Take the elevator if you like, gets you to her feet at least. Then you still gotta climb. You have crown access?”
Caleb flashed him his pass. “Yeah, I think I will travel in style as long as I can. But first, tell me. What do you know about the cornerstone?”
“Masonic dedication, all that Dan Brown stuff? Why, you think there’s some secret treasure stashed inside there?”
Caleb choked on a laugh. “Um, actually I’m a professor at Columbia. Just thought I’d do some research for a history class.”
“Yeah, it’s down there at the base. Hard to get to, especially in a storm.”
“And the box?”
“Sealed up good, from what I heard. But I’m sure there’s a way into it. I’d have to check with the director. Don’t get much questions about it, actually.”
“Is he here? The director?”
“At the administration office you passed on the way off the ferry. You should’ve probably set up an appointment.”
“Yeah, this was kind of last minute.” Caleb stood there, dripping, trying to decide what to do.
“So, you wanna go up, get your money’s worth? Least it’s not too stifling hot up there like normally. Usually a couple people fainting every day. Keeps me busy.”
Caleb started for the elevator, deciding to at least check out the crown while he had the chance. And he didn’t know how close Nina was. She might not have recognized him in his tourist disguise, but she would know where he was going. “Oh,” he called back. “One more thing. What’s below the base?”
