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CHAPTER 4

Rain was ecstatic. She and the Samaritan’s communications team had been monitoring the as-yet undecipherable radio signal as they progressed away from Proxima b and toward the outer regions of the star system and, until now, the signal strength had been fairly constant. At approximately four AU, there was a small but noticeable drop-off in signal strength and what looked like the beginnings of a small sidelobe. By five AU they were solidly out of the main beam and even passing out of the weak first sidelobe they had detected. From the data so far, there might not be any more to detect. Sidelobes were an annoying reality of directional radio systems and even the advanced civilization broadcasting the mysterious signal had not been able to completely escape the fundamentals of radio transmissions and suppress all of them. Still, with a signal as strong as the one they had been monitoring, having only one detectable sidelobe was an achievement.

As soon as the signal strength went to zero, Rain had her triangulation data. With luck, she might not even need the data from the Emissary to complete the analysis and determine its source. And luck was with her. A few seconds after running the algorithm with the new trigonometric data, she had her answer: Luyten’s Star.

Via her contact lens, Rain pulled up the stellar database and began reading about Luyten’s Star. Like Proxima Centauri, Luyten’s Star was a red dwarf—which made sense. When Earth humans began searching for potentially habitable exoplanets, they looked around stars like the Sun—a yellow dwarf main-sequence star. Might the Atlanteans not look for a habitable planet around another red dwarf like their own? Of course, she had no idea if the beings sending the radio signal were the same ones as the Atlanteans who had visited Proxima b millennia ago, but it was the team’s working hypothesis. Observations from Earth indicated that Luyten’s Star had five planets, one of which, Luyten b, was in its habitable zone. Luyten b was less than three times more massive than Earth, which made Rain cringe at the thought of trying to walk on its surface with all that extra gravity pulling on her already-out-of-shape self. Like Proxima b, Luyten b orbited much closer to its star than Earth at only nearly one tenth of an AU, which meant that it completed an orbit, its year, once every eighteen days. Given the luminosity of the star and the planet’s distance from it, the surface temperatures ought to be nearly identical to those on Earth. And it was only twelve light-years from Earth; approximately sixteen light-years from Proxima b. Farther than she’d like, but within reach. And, if all pans out, reach it we will.

She was so excited that she nearly ran from the room to inform Captain Crosby. Calm down, she thought. The positional data would be coming in soon from the Emissary, which was now reaching about the same distance from Proxima Centauri as the Samaritan but on the other side of the star. Once she had their data, she could run it through the algorithm to confirm the analysis and make sure there were no unexpected errors. She could not imagine what those errors might be, but as an experienced radio astronomer, she knew that “crap” sometimes interfered with otherwise good data. She would wait until she had another set of data before she made any sort of announcement.

Rain did not have to wait long. Shortly after noon the next day, the Emissary passed out of the main signal and through the first sidelobe, giving her all the corroborating data she needed. The signal originated at Luyten’s Star, most likely from Luyten b. Now she could tell the captain and send the good news back to Proxima b.

* * *

“Captain, we’re in orbit around c Prime,” announced the ship’s navigator, Lt. Ricardo “Rick” Alexander. Alexander was the unsung hero of the Samaritan’s flight from Earth to Proxima Centauri, working with the demoralized Roy Burbank to make sure the ship arrived safely in orbit around Proxima b. One of his “other duties as assigned” at the time was to make sure Burbank remained engaged in his work so that he would not have too much time to brood over being separated from his family across multiple light-years. In the process, Alexander and Burbank had become close. Alexander’s efforts were subtle but appreciated by Captain Crosby.

“Give the science team the go-ahead to begin their mapping,” Crosby said. He knew the mapping shouldn’t take long, given that c Prime, Proxima Centauri c’s smallest moon, was only approximately 150 square miles in area—roughly half the size of New York City. The ship was equipped with multiple optical, infrared, and ultraviolet telescopes with high-resolution imagers that could discern features to well less than a few centimeters. In addition to the telescopes, the ship was using its radar to map the moon’s contours and synthetic aperture radar to penetrate several feet below the surface, allowing features such as caves to be found and charted. On their way back from collecting Dr. Gilster’s radio data, they’d stopped and gathered similar data from c’s other two moons and two of the system’s dwarf planets located at two- and three-point-five AU, respectively. They, and the other two moons orbiting Proxima Centauri c, had been devoid of anything artificial they could detect, though the data they accumulated got both the Samaritan and Finti scientists excited. Scientists apparently liked seeing things for the first time, even if they looked like rocks to untrained eyes—like Crosby’s.

“We’ve got something.” The voice was that of Enrico Vulpetti coming from the far side of the bridge where the visible-light mapping data was being rendered on a display. Crosby could hear the excitement in his voice. Before he could ask anything, Vulpetti and Mr. Bob began talking to each other rapid-fire, and Crosby did not want to interrupt them—yet.

After a few minutes with no indication that they were going to bring their captain into the discussion anytime soon, Crosby decided to interject himself into their dialog. “Would one of you gentlemen care to enlighten the captain as to what you’ve found?”

“A cluster of pyramids, slightly north of the moon’s equator! Three of them, each with a base about three thousand square feet. They are clearly artificial,” remarked Vulpetti.

“Why does it always have to be pyramids?” asked Crosby. For centuries, some people attributed the construction of the great pyramids of Giza to aliens. Now they had found real pyramids that could only have been fabricated by aliens, or aliens who otherwise looked human, if they were built by the Atlanteans.

Crosby pushed off the deck toward the scientists and the display upon which they were now showing what they’d found. Now that the ship was no longer accelerating to reach the moon, his body told him they were again in zero gee. Except they weren’t. C Prime was so small that in order to quickly map its surface, they were circling it but in a powered trajectory, not a simple gravitationally bound orbit. This meant that there were subtle, small accelerations occurring all the time that were barely perceptible to humans, and those minor accelerations caused him to misjudge his own personal trajectory so that he nearly missed the handhold he was targeting and came very close to bowling over Vulpetti. Vulpetti was so engrossed in his data that he didn’t seem to notice.

“What? Oh, of course. Ha! I understand. And I have no idea why it has to be pyramids,” said Vulpetti without looking up. “Here are the high-res images from our first pass. The shadows are rather long due to the sun angle, but on our next pass we’ll cross at a slightly different angle which should allow the computer to subtract them out and give us a clean image.”

Sure enough, on the screen Crosby saw three pyramids on the small moon’s surface, plain as day. Their bases were not individuated and separate. Instead, they overlapped, with the resulting pyramidal shape being somewhat truncated on the bottom as one structure’s side wall emerged from the lower portion of another’s wall. It sure looked like one structure with three triangular apex roofs. Most interestingly, they looked pristine. Almost new. But out here on an airless world, and one with little gravity, there was no atmospheric weathering, and, from a long-term degradation point of view, there was no way any disturbed surface regolith would remain close to the moon’s surface to slowly sandblast the structure. Regular micrometeoroid impacts, common to all planets and moons, would simply launch any ejected dust on an escape trajectory away from the moon instead of creating much of a spray that would travel any significant distance, as might happen on the Earth’s moon. It could be a hundred years old, a thousand, or tens of thousands. Based on what they found back on Proxima b, it was most likely the latter. These pyramids were ancient.

“And there’s more,” announced Vulpetti, as he brought up a new set of images that overlayed the previous one with what appeared to be a soil-depth profile from the SAR. Under each pyramid, connecting them, were a series of tunnels. “They are connected underground and one of the tunnels seems to extend farther into the ground than our radar can penetrate. At this resolution, they appear to be intact.”

They stared in silence at the images as more data poured in, giving a clearer and clearer picture of the ruins.

An area in the rightmost pyramid slowly turned a semitransparent red.

“Well, well, well,” said Vulpetti. “More and more curious by the moment. The infrared sensor is picking up some heat from down there. It isn’t much, but it’s enough above background to be significant.”

“A power plant?” asked Crosby.

“If this is as old as we think it is, then I doubt it could be either a fission or fusion power source. I can’t imagine something like that still being operational after thousands of years. We don’t see any solar panels and c Prime isn’t showing any sign of geothermal activity. I would put it in the category of ‘something we will have to find out.’ When can we go?” Vulpetti asked.

* * *

The airlock next to where the planetary shuttles were docked to the Samaritan was larger than most. It was, after all, located next to the shuttle dock for a reason—to allow the crew to don their spacesuits before boarding the much more cramped shuttle. Nonetheless, it was designed to be an airlock and could be fully functional with or without atmosphere. Its white walls appeared more stark than most due to the intense “natural light” spotlights that illuminated every cubic square inch of the walls, floors, and ceilings.

“I hate these damn suits.” Joni Walker fidgeted at the arms as if she could adjust the space suit to a more comfortable fit, but the one-size-fits-all system was what it was. She continued to moan about it as she and her two fellow SEALs wriggled their way into the pressure suits that would keep them alive on the airless c Prime. “Once we got to Proxima and found that the air was breathable, I never thought we’d have to deal with these damned things again.” Retired Space Force Chief Warrant Officer 5 Joni Walker had volunteered for the opportunity to take the one-way trip to Proxima Centauri as soon as it had opened up. When they met while in training for the mission, Rogers was immediately impressed with her diverse capabilities, which included spacecraft construction and repair, power and nuclear technologies, space and exo-terrestrial construction, and piloting. Today she was their pilot, taking them to the archaeological site on the moon’s surface.

“Stow the shit, Walker. That’s why we kept training,” Rogers said, also struggling to fit into his suit system.

“Kiss your mother with that mouth do you, Commander?” The chief warrant officer 5 shot the navy officer a bit of a scowl. CW5s typically only took shit, and orders, from officers with a lot more metal on their uniforms. “Besides, looks like you could use some custom-fitting to your own LCVCG,” she added to emphasize her expertise and why she was there. As was typical of the military, equipment names, including uniforms, were often unpronounceable except for the contractors who made them—including their Liquid-Cooled Ventilation and Compression Garment (everyone just called them long johns)—but she wanted all to know that she paid attention to detail, and this was one way to do that.

“Right,” Rogers grunted. He continued to struggle into the suit.

The LCVCG microfiber garment was much easier to wear and offered more mobility than early twenty-first-century spacesuits, but it was still no fun. They had to be careful to not dislodge the Excreted Fluids and Solids Compression Under Garment, or EFaSCUG, carefully positioned underneath. SEAL 3, Jozef Horváth, saw Rogers also struggling and tried, unsuccessfully, to contain his guffaw. CW5 Walker grinned and nodded.

“Like I said, these damned things are a pain in the ass.” Walker laughed.

With the garment now fully on, all Rogers had to do to get it to feel “right” was wiggle, squirm, and bounce around a few times while puffing out his chest and flexing his shoulders until the garment fell into place. Finally, it conformed to his shape. Next to put on was the backpack with the oxygen tanks and the sealing of a few small connectors between it and his suit. Last was his helmet. Now, he was ready. A few minutes later, so was the rest of his team. The third SEAL, Horváth, was a quiet and very capable guy whom Rogers had also grown to know and appreciate during their time together. Like everyone else on the ship, Horváth was a volunteer. He was a first-generation American whose parents had immigrated to the US from Slovakia after the great economic reset of 2066. Before they departed Earth, Jozef’s parents invited the entire Samaritan SEAL team to their home in Long Island for a huge blowout of a meal with plenty of vodka. In Mike’s book, Jozef was good people.

He and the SEALs would be accompanying Drs. Vulpetti and Shavers, Mr. Bob, and Walker to the surface. It was Carrie Shavers’s first time in the suits since their emergency drills onboard the Samaritan during the journey from Earth, but, interestingly enough, she was the first to get completely suited up. As the Samaritan’s only astrogeologist and planetary astronomer, she’d naturally said yes to the opportunity to join the two-month solar system exploration. She also didn’t hesitate to agree to joining the team going to the surface. From what Rogers could tell, she was in scientist nirvana at the thought of exploring yet another new world. All he wanted was for the EVA to be over, with everyone back in the ship safe and sound.

Rogers, now fully suited up and ready to go except for dropping the visor in his helmet, began to inspect his gear—again. Headlamp—check. Utility belt with almost every tool known to man—check. Sidearm loaded with plenty of extra ammo—check. Finally, he checked his primary weapon, a modified SIG Sauer carbine. In theory, any weapon that used a bullet should work fine in the vacuum of space. In theory. Reality was a lot different from theory and when lives were at stake, Rogers and any trained professional would want a weapon that worked in practice as well as theory. Bullets carry their own oxidizing agent, so there was no need for atmospheric oxygen to ignite the propellant. But without the atmosphere, the wide temperature variations in space were a problem. Direct sunlight might make the gun hot enough for the ammunition to explode spontaneously, which would not be a good thing. A gun kept in the shade might eventually become so cold that the primer in the firing cap might not work at all. The wild temperature swings and the vacuum of space also caused most lubricants to bead up and seize parts together. To solve these problems, the SEALs’ weapons had built-in thermometers, heaters, and microcooling units to keep them in their optimal temperature range. They used a special lubricant that had been designed just for that purpose by the Space Force Research and Development office back on Earth decades prior. Their spare rounds were kept in clips and magazines that were similarly temperature controlled. He’d opted against having anyone on the team bring anything heavier—like grenade launchers. This was an archaeological expedition to a site theoretically abandoned thousands of years ago. It was unlikely they would be battling space monsters—he hoped.

Rogers looked around and saw that the rest of his team were performing similar last-minute inspections of their gear, as were the two scientists, who had quite different gear, and Mr. Bob. To no one’s surprise, Mr. Bob took the longest to get suited up and needed a great deal of help from the support staff. The sum total of Mr. Bob’s time to train in the suit had been during their journey from Proxima b, not enough for him to become proficient. Additionally, he’d yet to attempt it in microgravity. Hopefully, it was enough to keep him from doing anything stupid. A few minutes later, everyone was ready.

“Alright, people. Let’s get aboard the shuttle and get this show on the road,” Rogers ordered as he motioned for the group to join him in boarding one of the Samaritan’s four drop shuttles. Designed for taking up to twenty people from the Samaritan to a planetary surface, one with or without an atmosphere, each shuttle was its own mini spaceship equipped with nearly everything one would need for a monthlong trip in space except for a Samara Drive. The photon drive that had brought the Samaritan and the Emissary to Proxima b required way too much power to operate than the designers had wanted to install in a ship meant for near-space orbital and orbital-to-surface hops, so its propulsion was much simpler—and limited in range. It was good enough for what it was designed for and that was all they needed. A military transport it was not.

Thirty minutes later, Walker undocked the shuttle, eased it away from the Samaritan, and began her descent toward the moon below them. “Relax and enjoy the short ride. We’ll rendezvous and dock with the moon’s surface in less than forty minutes,” she said.

Rogers kept his eyes glued to the windows and displays that showed the view 360 degrees around the shuttle. He was now “on duty” and that meant he wanted full situational awareness.

As promised, and unlike the ride from the Samaritan to the surface of Proxima b, there was no turbulence. After all, the moon was too small to have an atmosphere and they were simply moving through the vacuum of space—where there was nothing to cause bumpiness.

Thirty-nine minutes later, there was a small puff of dust as the shuttle set down on the gray surface of c Prime. No one spoke as Walker powered down the shuttle systems, leaving only the reassuring thrum of the ventilation fans as ambient noise.

“Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to c Prime,” she announced as she rose from the pilot’s chair. “In a few minutes we’ll enter the air lock, cycle out the air, and open the hatch to begin our walk over to the Atlantean artifact. I don’t know if you noticed, but from my perspective as a pilot, our landing here was more like a docking maneuver. This rock doesn’t have much mass and, as such, the gravity is very weak. It’s enough for the shuttle to remain in place and for you to walk—but barely. If you walk too fast, say over three miles per hour, you might find yourself launched into a ballistic trajectory up and away from the rest of us and I really don’t want to have to do my own acrobatic routine to come and fetch you. Does anybody want to tie off to someone else while we walk over?”

There were no takers.

“Alright then, visors down and follow me,” she said as she moved to the back of the shuttle and the airlock. The rest of the team followed, with Rogers bringing up the rear.

It took less than fifteen minutes to get through the airlock and out onto the surface. It was all Rogers could do to keep himself walking forward without taking little jumps like he saw the early Apollo astronauts do when they first arrived on the lunar surface. Here, it would be even easier, and Rogers could easily see himself taking a flying leap and reaching escape velocity. Not today.

The surface of the moon looked a lot like Earth’s moon. It was gray, covered with craters, and regolith into which their boots made shallow boot prints. It was also like the lunar regolith in that after only a few steps, the gray dust began to adhere to their suits, making them look like they needed a good cleaning. Looking up from the surface, however, and the similarity with the Moon became more striking. The horizon of this much smaller body was far closer and stood out in starker contract given the lack of atmosphere and the blackness of space just beyond.

Walking across the dead surface, routinely scoured by the intense ultraviolet light emitted by Proxima Centauri, made Rogers more sentimental toward both the verdant Earth and his new home, Proxima b. With the exception of the clearly artificial structures ahead of them, this world was truly dead, devoid of life, and would almost certainly remain that way forever.

Ten minutes later, they were standing in front of what looked like a door to the leftmost pyramid. While the clearly artificial structures were large, towering above the humans by at least as much as a three-story building, they were far smaller than the pyramids of Egypt. The door was only a little larger than those to which they were accustomed. The door was metallic, but the pyramid appeared to be made of the same material as the moon’s surface. Rogers knew that many of the structures back on Earth’s moon were made from lunar regolith that had been superheated, sintered, by microwaves, fusing the densely packed dust into an impermeable solid that could be shaped as needed during the heating process. Whoever built these had apparently done something very similar.

Mr. Bob, Vulpetti, and Shavers were taking pictures and examining it from every angle. While they did so, Rogers had Walker and Horváth check out the other structures, which were clustered close by.

“Commander Rogers, I think we’ve figured out how to open the door,” Shavers informed them.

“Great. Let’s try it after my team gets back from recon,” Rogers replied.

A few minutes later, Walker and Horváth returned.

“The middle one doesn’t have any openings. This one and the one on the right have the same type of door,” Horváth briefed them, motioning toward the door in front of them as he spoke. “Nothing else to report. Just cold-looking alien walls.”

“Dr. Vulpetti, you may proceed,” Rogers said, bringing his carbine from being slung over his shoulder to the ready. The other two SEALs did the same.

“If I’m right, and if there is any power left in the system, then all I should have to do is place my hand on the pad right here,” Vulpetti observed as he placed his glove on a hand-sized pad slightly below what appeared to be a control panel with various buttons and even a small dark screen.

Nothing happened.

“Well, damn,” Shavers sighed.

The trio of scientists stood staring at the door and the likely control panel to its right as if it were a rattlesnake ready to strike.

“Did you push on it?” asked Shavers.

“Push on it? Well, no. I placed my hand on it. It looks like a hand reader that I’ve seen in company offices back on Earth,” Vulpetti explained.

“If there’s no power, a hand reader won’t work. Give it a push,” she suggested.

Vulpetti again placed his hand on the reader, leaned slightly forward, and pushed.

The pad moved inward two inches and the right-side edge of the door slid sideways, making an opening of nearly six inches, stirring up a bit of dust from around the edges as it did so.

Reacting like he’d just stuck his hand in a pit of snakes, Vulpetti removed his hand from the panel and stepped quickly back too energetically. Shavers quickly reacted and tugged him downward by the left wrist.

Rogers’s training kicked in. He quickly stepped forward and brought his weapon to the ready.

“I’ll be damned,” Walker remarked, panning her light through the opening.

Rogers turned on his headlamp and peered around the door into the newly made opening. “There’s a small room and another door on the far side. It looks like an airlock,” he said.

Rogers put his hand on the plate, now indented in the wall, and pushed. Hard. Nothing happened.

“Well, let’s try it the old-fashioned way. Horváth, Walker, give me a hand,” Rogers ordered, making a space for the other SEALs to reach over and around him. Together, they were able to slide the door open enough for a person to squeeze through, though it would be tight.

“I’ll go first,” Rogers said, waving off Shavers, who had begun moving for the door.

“Because I’m a woman?” she asked.

“No, because I’m a SEAL…with a gun,” he commented as he turned himself not-quite sideways and went through the opening into the dark room beyond. His headlamp illuminated the small room, which was only slightly larger than the airlock on their shuttle. It was completely empty, made of what looked like metal or plastic, and was featureless except for two identical control panels—one next to the door he used to enter and another beside a door on the opposite wall. If he didn’t know better, he would assume he was in an airlock at some human outpost in the solar system instead of in one created by aliens on a moon in another star system. The control panels in the room did not have the pressure plate below them; instead, there was an old-fashioned lever like those in every Earth-made spaceship.

“I guess the Atlanteans were as cautious as we are. It looks like these doors are designed to be openable even if the power goes out. Walker, you are with me. We’ll cycle through the airlock and into the structure first. Horváth, you stay with the scientists and come on through when I radio you that it’s okay,” Rogers said.

Fortunately, the inside mechanism made closing the outer door much easier than opening it, and opening the interior door was just as easy. When they opened the inner door, they continued to be greeted by darkness. To Rogers’s surprise, there was no detectable atmosphere in the building. In the God-only-knows-how-long that the structure had been abandoned, someone had either vented any interior atmosphere to space or it had slowly leaked away. Rogers bet on the latter. All it would take over a decent span of time was for only a few meteorite strikes to put enough holes in the walls to allow any air within to escape.

Seeing no immediate threats, Rogers summoned the rest of the team through the airlock and into the building.

The room in which they found themselves was unremarkable. Along the walls were what appeared to be display screens and one additional door on the far side of the room. In the center of the room were several desk-height pieces of built-in furniture that Rogers assumed were control panels—apparently powered down and dead, of course.

They spread out around the room and began taking videos of everything they saw, transmitting the data immediately out to the shuttle, which then relayed it in near-real time to the Samaritan. They also began touching the desk surfaces, the walls, anything and everything, hoping their presence might activate some system. They had, after all, detected residual heat coming from the structures, which could indicate low-level power still flowing somewhere to something.

Nothing happened.

“Alright, let’s keep moving,” Rogers said as he moved toward the door that presumably led to the middle pyramid. It, too, was lever activated and relatively easy to open.

Rogers peered into the darkness of the next room, only it wasn’t completely dark. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust, but within the room along the two side walls he saw multiple dimly glowing boxes, each slightly over six feet in length and three feet in depth. As he peered around the room, he saw that not all the boxes were glowing, some were dark. Sixteen in all, with five glowing faint green and one a dim orange.

“They look like coffins,” Mr. Bob observed. It was one of the few times he’d spoken since they entered the pyramid complex.

“Or the cryobeds we use on the Samaritan,” Shavers added.

Rogers walked slowly into the room, followed by the rest of the team. Seeing no immediate threats, he approached one of the coffins with the green glow while the rest of his team spread out to examine others. As he neared it, he knew their suspicions were correct. Each box had a semitransparent cover. Through the green glow and heavily frosted cover, though he could not make out many details, it was clear to Rogers that within the box was a human body.

“You’re right. There’s someone in this one,” Rogers observed.

“This one too,” said Shavers. She was standing next to another of the green glowing boxes.

“These too,” added Horváth.

“And in the orange one,” Walker said.

“I can’t tell if the body is intact or not. The glass is too fogged up to see much. It sure looks like someone in cryosleep,” Shavers said.

“It will be a miracle if any of them are still alive,” Vulpetti said. “If our assumptions are correct, then they may have been here for over thirty thousand years. Unbelievable.”

“Don’t touch anything,” Rogers admonished.

As he spoke, Mr. Bob’s gloved hand touched the frosted window covering one of the green glowing cryobeds. Upon hearing Rogers, he pulled his hand back.

At first, nothing happened. Then Rogers noticed that the room was not as dark as it was previously. The walls themselves were beginning to emit a dull, reddish-colored light that was soon bright enough to eliminate the need for those assembled to use their headlamps.

“Alright everyone, circle up, civilians in the middle. SEALs, you know the drill,” Rogers ordered.

The scientists and Mr. Bob moved toward the center of the room with the SEALs taking up position around them, guns at the ready. The lights brightened and then stabilized at a level that reminded Rogers of a summer evening right before sunset. Bright enough to see, but with a hint of dimness.

“Really, is this necessary?” asked Vulpetti.

As he spoke the lighted boxes, cryobeds, whatever they were began to glow more brightly and upon each of them, in areas previously dark and unremarkable, various lights began to glow, some flashing, some varying in brightness.

“I take that back,” Vulpetti muttered nervously in a hushed tone.

“Oh my God, they’re being awakened,” Shavers announced. “We’ve got to do something!”

Rogers knew she was correct. Though it was extremely unlikely that any of the bodies in the cryobeds were still living, the last thing they wanted to do was accidentally awaken a bunch of sleeping Atlanteans only to have them immediately die from being exposed to hard vacuum and extreme cold. If the power system had been operating for thousands of years to keep them alive, then he owed them more of chance to live than that.

“Everyone, I don’t believe we are in immediate danger, but they are. Fan out. See if you can understand enough of what’s going on to stop it from happening. If they are waking up, then we need to get them some ambient atmosphere and heat or they’re not going to last more than a few seconds,” Rogers said.

To the scientists’ credit, they moved forward quickly. Rogers let them focus on the individual cryobeds while he decided to close the door to the room so that any atmosphere this building might decide to provide would not immediately leak away.

He immediately checked his suit’s external environmental monitoring system and detected no sign of change. If some sort of environmental control system knew the room was uninhabitable, then it was unable or unwilling to do anything about it. Of course, if it was as old as they thought, then that would not be a surprise. Getting anything to last that long and still be functional would be quite a coup against the second law of thermodynamics. Nonetheless, when he reached the door, he closed it.

He quickly and methodically scanned the walls, searching for any sort of control system that was still functional that he could try. Of course, without knowing anything concerning the Atlanteans—their language, their culture, anything—even if he found a control panel, he would not know what to do with it. There had to be something he could do.

“Commander, the shuttle has the Biohazard Containment Tent. It’s big enough to cover two, maybe three of the cryobeds!” Shavers exclaimed. “We brought them to use when we first landed on Proxima b in case we detected pathogens in their atmosphere.”

Rogers immediately reversed himself and began opening the door he had just closed. “Horváth, you and Dr. Shavers get over to the shuttle as fast as you can and come back with that tent,” he said.

“But it isn’t vacuum rated,” added Shavers as she approached the door. “Not sure it will work.”

“That’s why Horváth is going with you to bring back some spare oxygen tanks along with all the portable MLI he can carry. It’ll be leaky, but it might be good enough until the Samaritan can get us something better. Now, go!” Rogers shouted as the door was finally open.

“Are you getting all this, Samaritan?” Rogers asked, changing his aural implant from broadcast-only mode to now allow two-way communication. Broadcast mode was usually preferred for any remote operations team to avoid the inevitable chatter from third-party observers who might distract those in harm’s way from being fully situationally aware in their potentially hostile local environment. Those on the ship could have overridden this mode to allow direct contact via the implant, but they had not done so in this case, allowing Rogers maximum freedom to control the situation.

“Copy that, Commander. We’re prepping the other shuttle for immediate launch with a medical team and a vacuum-rated rescue inflatable. The soonest it can be loaded and on the ground is approximately forty minutes,” replied Captain Crosby.

As Rogers was speaking, he noticed that the top of one of the green glowing cryobeds had opened, releasing a miniature snow shower of ice crystals upward into a graceful ballistic trajectory elongated by the low gravity of the moon. Walker, the closest of the group to that particular cryobed, rushed over to investigate and then stopped.

“This is bad. The poor bastard never had a chance,” said Walker as she stood transfixed, staring into the now-open cryobed.

Rogers activated his corneal implant and accessed Walker’s video feed, immediately regretting doing so. Inside the cryobed was a naked human male with coal-black hair and a muscular frame. His body was grotesquely distorted, ballooned outward to twice the size of a normal, healthy male, and his skin was shriveled and cracked. His face bore the expression of a person in a great deal of pain.

“Alright people, that’s one. It appears he was alive when the cryobed opened. If there’s no obvious way to stop the awakening process, then let’s try brute force to keep at least a couple of the beds sealed until we get the tent. Let’s pick two beds close together, a green one and the orange one. Two of us on each one. Put every muscle you’ve got into keeping those lids secure and closed until the tent gets here and in place,” Rogers said.

As he spoke, another of the green-lit cryobeds opened, emitting the now not-so-pretty spray of ice crystals. Rogers and Mr. Bob moved toward the orange-lit bed while Vulpetti and Walker moved to the adjacent green one.

Rogers tried to make out more detail beneath the frosted window and could not. He just knew that whoever was under that lid deserved a chance to live.

* * *

Shavers and Horváth exited the airlock and were back on the moon’s surface heading toward their shuttle. Taking full advantage of the low gravity, both were taking long, loping strides that carried them three to four feet above the surface before being pulled back down to the moon while trying not to launch themselves into orbit. It reminded Shavers of the flying dreams she had when she was a child. In those dreams, she discovered that she could jump into the air and, with a great deal of concentration, remain there, suspended a few feet above the ground, for longer than should have been possible for a normal person. It made her feel special, like she and she alone had the gift of flight. In these dreams, she would run and then leap for the sheer joy of being suspended in midair for a few extra seconds while her peers all immediately returned to the ground. But those were childhood dreams that she had long forgotten. It took the reality of leaping on an alien moon to remind her of them. It was exhilarating.

“Hey, watch out!” Horváth shouted, bringing her back to reality. She was so caught up in the moment that her last leap had been a bit too forceful and had carried her just a little too far, too fast and now she wasn’t coming down as fast as she should. In fact, she was barely coming down at all. From what she could tell, she was going to overshoot the shuttle completely. She panicked as she attempted to force herself down to the surface, without success, and went into a tumble. Without any reaction force, there was nothing she could do to alter her now-ballistic trajectory across the moon’s surface. She began to hyperventilate as she tumbled onward.

“Shavers! Listen to me. You’ve got to straighten out your body to reduce your spin rate and orient yourself. You’re coming back down, but you’ll reach the ground a good thirty yards on the other side of the shuttle. You’ve got to prepare yourself for hitting the surface. If you come in headfirst you will need to go into a roll to avoid hurting yourself. And I can’t nursemaid you and carry the tent and oxygen bottles back to the pyramid by myself,” Horváth told her as he loped along, trying to catch up with her without launching himself into a similar trajectory.

At first, Shavers did not process what Horváth was saying. All she could think about was how fast the world was spinning and how she was now going into orbit around the moon—perhaps never to come back down. Slowly, as the panic attack subsided, she mentally replayed what she’d heard and attempted to straighten her body. It helped slow down her spin, but it did not eliminate it. She could now also see that she was not going into orbit, but rather coming down a long way from the shuttle. As her body continued to rotate, taking her head downward, she fought hard to keep the panic from returning and concentrated on slowing down her breathing.

“I hear you,” Shavers remarked. “I’m okay. I can do this.” She only half believed what she was saying. But she was going to try. Feet first—run with it to slow down. Headfirst—go into a roll. She repeated this to herself over and over as she dropped closer and closer to the surface. Feet first—run with…Hmph. The thought abruptly ended as she landed on her feet with her upper torso leaning slightly forward. She came to a stop and stood there, taking deep breaths.

“Shavers! Are you okay?”

“I’m okay,” she said, looking back toward the shuttle she had just flown over. “I’ll be right there. We have some Atlanteans to save.” With that she began to lope back toward the shuttle—taking much smaller steps.

* * *

So far it was working—mostly. The three Earth humans and the Fintidierian were successfully keeping the lids on their two cryobeds closed as whatever mechanisms within them were trying to open them. Unfortunately, one by one, the other unattended cryobeds repeated the same cycle of opening and death as the first two and there was nothing they could do but watch. For these time travelers across tens of thousands of years, death came quickly. Unfortunately, though they were mostly successful at keeping the lids closed on the cryobeds, Rogers could see an occasional puff of atmosphere and ice crystals leak out along the seams. Unless something changed soon, instead of a quick decompression death, the occupants would die from hypoxia.

Rogers peered through the still-frosted covering between him and the now-awakened Atlantean within the cryobed with wonder and empathy. At first, the newly awakened occupant just lay there, assessing his surroundings. Then he tried to push open the lid. When it didn’t move, he frantically moved his hands left and right, presumably looking for some sort of manual release mechanism. When that didn’t work, he began to panic and alternatingly started pushing hard against the covering and beating his fist against it. Rogers could only think of those horror stories he heard as a youth about people thought dead being buried alive with their fate only discovered when people exhumed the coffins and saw scratch marks in their inner lids. He also wondered if the trapped Atlantean realized he was being kept in the cryobed by two people sitting atop it. The poor guy must be terrified. I wonder if he can feel the cold.

Rogers glanced at his partner, Mr. Bob, and gave him a smile that he hoped was visible through his helmet’s visor. “Mr. Bob, hang in there. You are doing great. Without your help, this guy would be dead.”

“I’m not sure he shouldn’t be dead, Commander Rogers,” Mr. Bob replied. “He might have whatever disease wiped out his kind and so many of mine. Plus, if the records are to be believed, he was one of the actual monsters who enslaved my people.”

Rogers knew that Mr. Bob was responding to a lifetime of conditioned belief that anything associated with the continent of Misropos, the newly discovered Atlanteans first and foremost, was dangerous and must be avoided at all costs. This cultural belief had almost resulted in the firebombing of the Samaritan crew when they investigated the ruins there shortly after their arrival on Proxima b last year. Truth be told, though he knew the risk was low, he would be happier to have the medical experts from the Samaritan dealing with the problem of the Atlanteans instead of him and his team.

“I realize this is difficult for you, but this man might have the key to stopping the fertility crisis. Keeping him alive might actually save your people,” he replied.

“Commander, we’re coming through the airlock. We’ll be there with the tent and air tanks within a couple of minutes,” said Horváth.

“We’ve got a couple of awakened Atlanteans who I suspect will be mighty grateful,” Rogers said.

Two minutes later, Shavers and Horváth ran into the room carrying the biohazard tent, multiple-layer insulation blankets, and two oxygen tanks. It did not take long to set up the tent and begin filling it with oxygen. Rogers’s environmental sensor showed the atmospheric pressure in the tent that now covered both cryobeds slowly rise to barely under eighteen kilopascals and level off. The tanks were still pumping air in but the leakage rate from the tent kept it from rising any higher.

“We can’t open the cryobeds. The pressure in the tent is still only half that on top of Mount Everest, less than one sixth of sea level. That’s not enough to keep them alive if we get them out, but hopefully enough to keep them going long enough in their cryobeds until the real pressurized tent arrives, hopefully with a couple of spare space suits,” Rogers said.

“Uh, Commander, I think we have a problem. The Atlantean in our cryobed has stopped moving and gone limp,” announced Walker.

“Shit,” Rogers uttered.

“What do we do?” asked Walker.

“Stay put. Opening the lid will only make things worse. Maybe the med team will be able to do something once they get here,” Rogers said. Then, speaking into his implant, he added, “What’s the status of the next shuttle?”

“It’s on the way and should be landing near yours within two minutes. Drs. Kopylova and Thomaskutty are with the team and ready to do what they can,” replied Captain Crosby.

“Thanks, Cap’n. That’s great news.” Rogers was feeling optimistic for the first time since the cryobeds began activating.

“Commander, you and your team are to remain in the rescue inflatable with the doctors to provide their security. Let me be clear: If you perceive any threat to you or any member of the team, you are to use whatever force necessary to remove that threat. Am I clear?”

“Yes, sir. I understand,” Rogers said, looking to his team to affirm that they heard also. All heads nodded.

The next fifteen minutes felt like an eternity. When the secondary crew entered the room carrying the rescue inflatable, more oxygen tanks, and a large radiant heater and power supply, Rogers allowed himself a sigh of relief.

“Aren’t you guys a sight for sore eyes,” Rogers declared.

“Good to see you too, Commander,” Mak responded. “Let’s see if we can keep our new friends here alive, shall we?”

“I’m afraid one of the two might be in serious trouble. The other one, the one I’m sitting on, looks pretty agitated—but healthy,” Rogers noted.

“Let’s hope they are as human as our Fintidierian friends. I know how to treat humans suffering from hypoxia and recovering from cryostasis, but if they’re truly aliens, then I’m not sure how much help we will be,” Mak said.



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