Kyle took the far left while Lysa worked on the opposite side. They were moving at an angle and would eventually meet at what they believed was the entrance to the structure below the surface. In only a few days of work, they managed to clear away over a ton and a half of rock.
With only another half ton or so to go. Kyle tried to remain positive. The good news was they didn’t have to start from the top. The way the rocks had piled up meant they could work from their current location without fear of toppling a landslide… at least not right away. If they didn’t locate anything in the next day, they’d have to re-evaluate their situation.
And that will mean putting up a scaffold, I think. Something to get us high enough up to tear down additional stones. The work sounded grueling and it would be. Getting to something they scanned tended to be the least glamorous part of any job. If not for the excitement of what they might find, he might’ve been disheartened.
“Hey,” Lysa’s voice piped through the speakers in his helmet, “can you stop for a minute?”
Kyle turned off his blaster, turning to her. She leaned over, staring at something intently. “You okay? What’s going on? You didn’t find a dead animal, did you? Cause if so, you’ve got the worst damn luck…”
“Stop,” Lysa interrupted. “I didn’t find anything dead. But I do think I misinterpreted the scan.”
Kyle’s heart sunk. “What’s that mean?”
“Come here and look at this.” Lysa backed away. “I’m… I think I found a hollow section.”
“Under all these rocks?” Kyle stepped over to her. “That’s impossible. This rockslide should’ve settled a long time ago. I can’t imagine how it wouldn’t have crushed…” He paused as he peered into the hole she exposed. “This… what the hell?”
“I ran a close-up scan.” Lysa offered her computer to him. “There’s something preventing the rocks from falling.”
“What do you mean?” Kyle frowned at the readings. The energy readings made it look like a shield of some kind, a perpetual defensive barrier. “How the hell is this even possible? Any sort of reactor would’ve been dead a long time ago.” He hummed. “You don’t think this is some kind of military installation, do you? That we’ve stumbled on.”
They’d found such a bunker in the past. It had been a nightmare to convince them they weren’t scavengers. Fortunately, their military records had helped establish they were patriots and they were let go, having lost five days of work and another three during interrogations. He really hoped they weren’t in for another round of that.
“I doubt it.” Lysa took her computer back. “I’ve been running checks on the fossils we’ve found throughout this dig. They’re thousands of years old. In one case, twenty-thousand. We know from our own work that this rockslide happened a long time ago. Long before humanity took to the stars.”
“Meaning we couldn’t have possibly built anything here.”
Lysa shrugged. “Unless this is the most elaborate ruse in history but why bother? We’re the only two people who have bothered to come this way. Only probes have been out this far.” She drew a deep breath. “Honestly… I know I might be jumping the gun, but I think we genuinely found evidence of alien life.”
Kyle felt a chill run up and down his nerves. He felt faint because he agreed. A hundred percent. “Oh my God!” He shouted, hugging Lysa tightly. He spun her around while laughing. “Holy shit! We did it! We did it! This is incredible. Absolutely…” He stopped himself. “Okay, okay… this shield thing must be protecting something, right? Something important?”
“Valuable even.” Lysa nodded. “We need to get inside.”
“How do we do that?”
“I have no idea yet. But we need to clear more of the stone away anyway. I think I can map out exactly where the shield is… which means we can get above it and take out those stones that are resting on the top. We can’t turn it off until we know we aren’t essentially burying our find.”
“Yeah, that shield might be protecting something fragile enough that the stones would totally wreck it.” Kyle nodded. “Okay, um… do you think we need the scaffold for that?”
“Sadly, yes.” Lysa shrugged. “And we will want to go up pretty high. I’m calculating what will fall. Anything that shows up on that scan has to go. Hopefully, that won’t be too much.” She huffed. “I’m tempted to use the ship’s lasers to sheer off some of this stuff. Our weapons won’t penetrate this shield. That much I guarantee.”
“Ooh.” Kyle frowned. He hesitated to risk their find by blasting the area but it would save a lot of time. “Can we calibrate them to ensure they do the least amount of damage possible? Why didn’t we get that mounted sonic blaster again?”
“Because it cost a quarter of the value of our ship,” Lysa replied, “and I couldn’t guarantee our reactor had enough power to maintain it. Yes, I can calibrate the ship’s weapons to ensure we don’t obliterate the area. That’s not a problem. If you’re willing to trust me with that, we might not need to build the scaffold.”
“How fast would it be?”
“I’ll give you both scenarios. If we dig the way we are now, we’ll uncover the shield in four days. If we use the ship, we could see it in about three hours.”
“Wow.” Kyle stepped away, head bowed in thought. “Risks?”
“Just that if I screw up my calculations, I could trash the wall. Then we’d have to dig anyway and we’d
