Gunfield couldn't help himself. "Mars?"

74.

Nabinger nodded as he made a connection in his mind.

"What are you thinking, Professor?" Sterling asked, catching the movement.

d.a.m.n, Nabinger thought. He could never get used to being watched by a machine.

"Mars makes sense, at least from an archaeological viewpoint."

"Explain," Sterling ordered.

"We found the Airlia atomic weapon in the Great Pyramid at Giza, just outside Cairo," Nabinger said. "Some Egyptologists define the word Cairo as meaning 'Mars.' Quite a coincidence, I would say. Do you have an exact fix from where on Mars this message was broadcast?"

"The Cydonia region on the north hemisphere," Sterling said.

"You know what has been photographed at Cydonia, don't you?" Nabinger said.

"Why don't you tell us?" Sterling said.

"Well, first there's what appears to be the thrust-up outline of a large face on the surface of the planet there," Nabinger said. "It was discovered in July 1976 by NASA personnel studying the images sent back by the Viking probe." Nabinger paused but no one interrupted, so he continued. "In 1979 some computer engineers at the G.o.ddard s.p.a.ce Flight Center reexamined the digital frame that held the face, then expanded the search, checking out the imagery of the immediate area.

"They found what appeared to be a pyramid close by. A pyramid, that as nearly as they could tell, was over five hundred meters high and about 75.

three kilometers long on each base, easily dwarfing the Great Pyramid at Giza."

"How do you know all this?" Sterling asked, a frown on his face-whether from the fact that Nabinger had stolen his thunder or wondering if Nabinger had learned more from the guardian than he had told UNAOC, Nabinger neither knew nor cared.

"I have a friend in the most unique field of archaeoastronomy: the study of archeological objects in s.p.a.ce. Since most people believed there were no archeological objects in s.p.a.ce, he was rather, shall we say, ignored by the other scientists. I would imagine now, though, that his expertise is in rather strong demand. We met at a conference, and since there were some similarities between what he thought he saw on the surface of Mars and what I was investigating on the surface of the Earth at Giza, we spent some time exchanging notes."

"Go on about Cydonia," Sterling ordered.

"The face, if I remember rightly, was estimated to be about two and a half kilometers long by two wide, and I think five hundred meters high also."

"More like four hundred meters high, from shadow a.n.a.lysis," Sterling said.

"Four hundred meters, then," Nabinger said. "Obviously you have access to data about this. Do they have any better idea about the City?"

"City?" Gunfield asked.

Nabinger turned in his seat. "Yes. Besides the Face and the Pyramid, there was a group of what appeared to be smaller pyramids to the southwest of the face.

And an object that was called the Fort: four straight lines like walls, surrounding a 76.

black courtyard. The men looking at this dubbed those pyramids and the Fort as the City."

Nabinger turned back to Sterling. "So now we know that what NASA dismissed as just shadows and natural objects, are really artifacts from the Airlia. Another Airlia colony, perhaps."

"It appears that is so," Sterling admitted. "If there was an Airlia outpost on Mars, it would also explain some facts that were dismissed as coincidence. The fact that the Russians have launched ten unmanned missions to explore Mars with very little success. Several exploded on takeoff. They lost control of two and couldn't get them out of their intermediary orbits around Earth. Two missed Mars when their guidance systems went haywire. Three made it to Mars but their probes went dead. There was one lander that the Russians managed to get there and send down. They lost data link with it as it was descending for a landing while relaying back some very confusing data."

"How about American missions to Mars?" Nabinger asked.

"Suffice it to say that they had many failures also, some public and some not so public. The Americans did manage to get their two Viking missions to the Red Planet in 1976 and get both landers down. The interesting thing about that, though, is that those landers went down a long way from Cydonia and the orbiters never went directly over that site. The one Viking satellite that is still up there does not go over the Cydonia region in its present orbit."

"What about Pathfinder?" Nabinger asked. "That was all over the news last year."

77.

"Yes, indeed," Sterling said. "But it landed very far away from the Cydonia region. And the range of the Rover is so limited that it would take several lifetimes for it to make it there and it would run out of power long before it got a tenth of the way."

"There were many requests by my friend and others to get the orbiters to take a picture of Cydonia," Nabinger noted. "Those requests were never acted on."

Nabinger had to wonder if Majestic-12 had known anything about Cydonia and the connection with the Airlia and that was the reason NASA had so blithely ignored the Face and Pyramid and the entire region even though they had pictures of it.

And if that had had anything to do with the selection of the Mars landing site for Pathfinder.

"That action is being taken by NASA as we speak," Sterling said. "They are going to use the last reserves of fuel Viking II has to reposition it so that it can take a closer look at Cydonia.

"The issue is, what is there? Is there any hint from what you received from the guardian when you were in contact that the Airlia had left an outpost on Mars?"

Nabinger shook his head. He had told no one of the last vision he had had, and he didn't see that it applied here. "No. But you have to remember that there was much that was left out of what the guardian gave me. So many unanswered questions. What about the message? Didn't it give you more information?"

"You'll see for yourself when it gets released," Sterling said. "I want you to stay alert. We need to know if there is communication between the 78.

guardian and whatever is at Cydonia. We suspect it is most likely another computer left by the Airlia, but if we can get a dialogue going with the Mars guardian, perhaps we can access the Airlia data base by tapping in. Just think of that!

"Besides, the one on Mars has made communication with us now. There's no reason to think it won't continue to do so. Also," Sterling continued, "you are not to release any news of this message to the media quite yet."

"I thought-" Nabinger began.

"I have to go now. That is all." The screen went blank.

In the eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains, eight hundred feet underground, a system that had originally been developed to detect ICBM launches during the Cold War suddenly sprang to life.

"Sir, we've got activity in the Pacific. Sector four-six-three."

The Warning Center watch officer, Major Craig, looked over his shoulder. "Can you identify the signal?"

The screen watcher stared at the information in front of him: infrared maps of the Earth's surface and surrounding airs.p.a.ce downloaded every three seconds from satellites in geosynchronous...o...b..t twenty thousand miles up.

"Multiple contacts. Very small." He took a deep breath. "Signature matches foo fighters."

The term foo fighter came from World War II, when American airmen reported small, glowing spheres that they occasionally spotted on mis- 79.sions. What had not been generally reported was that the first several times foo fighters had been spotted and aircrews attempted to engage the flying spheres, the planes had been knocked out of the sky. That had led to an Air Corps-wide policy ordering crews to ignore the foo fighters, which in turn had led to no more fatal incidents. What had been particularly intriguing was that during the Enola Gay's run in to Hiroshima it had been shadowed the entire way by two foo fighters, almost leading to a cancellation of the mission. The consensus now was that the foo fighters were the guardian's way of gathering information and, when needed, directing force.

"What about the Navy ships there over the site?" Craig asked. "They pick anything up?"

"The fighters are coming up fifty miles west of where the ships are, over the horizon from their radar."

"Send the Navy the data," Craig ordered. He knew it was too late for the Navy to do anything, but at least they couldn't complain that they hadn't been informed as quickly as possible.

"Put it on the screen," Craig ordered. The large screen in front of the room displayed a Mercator conformal map of the entire world's surface. With a few commands the data that was being downloaded from DSP could be selectively displayed on the screen. Several glowing dots appeared.

"I count three foo fighters," the operator said.

Craig could clearly see them. One glowing dot heading due east toward the coast of South America. One heading west across the Pacific, and 80.

a third heading northeast toward Central America.

"d.a.m.n, those suckers are booking," one of the men in the center muttered.

Craig looked down at his own computer and cleared it, then put the tracking data the other man had on his screen. He chewed absently on the nail of his right forefinger as he considered the data, then did what he knew he had to do.

He entered a code and transmitted the data to the UNAOC operations center in New York and on Easter Island along with the Pentagon, NSA, and CIA in his own government. Then, glancing around and making sure no one was watching, he entered another code consisting of the five letters STAAR, and transmitted the data to that destination. He breathed a sigh of relief as soon as the message was sent and his screen was clear again.

He looked up and watched. One of the foo fighters. .h.i.t the sh.o.r.e of South America over Chile, then cut hard left and followed the coast north. It followed the entire coastline up to Central America and then looped back.

Meanwhile, the second one had crossed Central America and was over the mid- Atlantic while the third was pa.s.sing New Guinea. The first dot returned to the spot it had originated from and disappeared.

The second foo fighter pa.s.sed straight through the Strait of Gibraltar and flashed across the Mediterranean. The third had pa.s.sed Taiwan and was doing a loop over mainland China.The second reached the far end of the Mediterranean and curved right over Egypt before heading back. The third had done a large figure eight 81.

over the entire length of China and was now also heading back. At speeds in excess of thirty thousand miles an hour, the blips on the screen ate up large chunks of distance quickly and shortly all were back down underwater at the point where they had come up.

"What the h.e.l.l was that all about?" someone asked.

Craig was tapping his forefinger against his lips in thought.

"Reconnaissance," he said.

"Looking for what?"

"d.a.m.ned if I know," Sinclair answered.

Chapter 6.

The pebble hit the bricks, then slid down to the turf at the base of the Wall.

Che Lu bent to pick up another one, then paused, her back aching with pain. She straightened, as much as a wizened seventy-eight-year-old woman could, to her full height of four inches over five feet.

"Never works for me," she muttered as she turned from the crumbling remains of the Great Wall.

"What doesn't work, Mother-Professor?" her a.s.sistant, Ki, asked. He was young, just out of the university, and it was her opinion that he had taken the job more out of desire not to be arrested in Beijing than interest in her work. He used the term her students had used for her for many years. It was a sign of respect for both her age and her status as chief archaeologist at Beijing University.

"The tradition." She peered at him, her eyes a bright blue and, despite her years, not needing gla.s.ses of any sort. "You need to know traditions.

83.

They are very important in archaeology. They can guide you to what you look for."

She waved her hand at the serpentine mound of rubble that extended left and right as far as the eye could see. This portion of the Great Wall was not what was shown on doc.u.mentaries to the outside world. The fools in Beijing would want the world to believe that the entire fifteen-hundred-mile length was in pristine condition, but this pile of rubble and decaying brick was more the norm, left to the ravages of nature and the needs of generations of peasants who had used the bricks to build their hovels.

"The tradition is that a traveler going through the Great Wall should throw a pebble against the brick. If it bounces back, then the journey will be a good one. If it simply falls to the ground, then it will be not so good."

"So we will have a not-so-good expedition?" Ki said with a worried smile.

"It has been not so good from the very beginning," she said. "I don't see why things should get any better." She turned from the wall and headed toward the battered American Jeep that she had been using for so many years. A Russian truck, also Korean War vintage, was puffing large clouds of diesel into the air directly behind the Jeep. It held the other five students in her group and their equipment.

Her great expedition, Che Lu thought to herself as she allowed Ki to help her into the pa.s.senger seat. He scurried around and got behind the wheel, throwing the ancient transmission into gear. They continued on their way, now paralleling the Wall, heading toward their work site many 84.

miles distant in the vastness of the western provinces of China.

Despite the pebble and paucity of people and equipment allotted her, Che Lu was as excited as she had been in many years. She had finally received permission to dig into Qian-Ling, the mountain tomb of the third emperor of the T'ang dynasty. Inside the ma.s.sive hill that made up the tomb were buried the Emperor Gao-zong and his empress, the only empress ever to rule in China.

She knew it was the confusion of the current turmoil in China, of course, that had gotten her the permission. Some fool in the Antiquities Division of the government had made a mistake and stamped APPROVED on her request after twenty- two years of her resubmitting it every six months. She'd changed the wording on each submission, obscuring in scholastic language the fact that she wanted permission to actually enter the tomb.

She'd known they had to get to Qian-Ling quickly and get to work before someone else at the division discovered the error. There were two things working against her, and both were significant. One was tradition. The Chinese people revered their ancestors and thus their dead. Grave robbing was unknown in the country, and archaeological digging was considered practically the same: defiling the burial place of someone's ancestors. The second reason was that the present Communist government was walking a very tight rope in how the past was treated. There was fear, foolish fear in Che Lu's opinion, that there might be desire among the peasants for a return to the old imperial days.

Che Lu understood respect for ancestors. But 85.

she thought it was carried a bit too far in China, denying the world, and most particularly the Chinese people, a look into the splendor that had once been the Middle Kingdom. If China was ever going to take its rightful place in the present world order, Che Lu felt it had to acknowledge its power in ancient times and understand how that power had been eroded and destroyed by the ignorant and small-minded people who had ruled.

Che Lu had given much to China, and she wanted to see her country regain some of the stature it had held in ancient times. She had partic.i.p.ated in much of the history of modern China, often at the cutting edge. Just twenty-six women had started the Long March with Mao sixty-four years ago. Only six had made it to the end alive, Che Lu being one of them as a young fourteen-year-old girl. Over one hundred thousand men had also been there at the start, less than ten thousand remaining alive when they arrived at Yan'an in Shaanxi Province in December 1935 after walking over six thousand miles.

Such a feat should have a.s.sured Che Lu a revered place in Communist China, but such were the shifting vagaries of power and influence that she had long ago fallen out of favor with newer regimes. At least she had been able to get schooling and earn her degree in archaeology before she was put on the blacklist.

The Jeep hit a pothole in the dirt road and she felt pain shoot up her spine, a fiery red explosion in the back of her head. Ki turned to make an apology and she waved him to remain silent. Young fools. They knew nothing of suffering.

The two-vehicle convoy was heading west from 86.

Xi'an, the city that had been the first imperial capital in China and the eastern terminus of the Silk Road that had stretched from western China across Central Asia to the Middle East and on to Rome. Che Lu and her a.s.sociates had arrived there three days earlier and checked in with the local authorities.

Things were not much calmer here, a thousand miles away from the turmoil that was brewing in Beijing. The students were growing restless and now the workers were also. The UN disclosure of aliens visiting Earth had seeped its way even into tightly controlled China. Change was in the air all over the globe, and Che Lu feared and hoped that it was coming in China.

She reached into the old straw bag between her legs and pulled out a leather sack. She emptied the contents into the cloth of her skirt that was stretched wide between her legs and looked at the four pieces of bone that lay there. She picked one up and turned it, staring at the marks etched into the white material. The bone was from the hip of some animal, perhaps a deer, triangular in shape, with two long flat sides.

"What are those?" Ki asked.

What did they teach young people at the university? Che Lu wondered. Of course, Ki was a geology major, not archaeology. Most of the students she usually worked with had preferred to remain in Beijing, prepared to partic.i.p.ate in whatever happened in the upcoming weeks. That there would be another event like the Tiananmen Square ma.s.sacre Che Lu had no doubt. She had lived through too many purges and bloodlettings in seventy-eight years to be optimistic that this turmoil would end peacefully. The key issue was 87.

would everyone behave like sheep and go back to the status quo after the blood had flowed, like they had in 1989? Che Lu, from listening to her students who politely but firmly declined to come with her, felt this time it would be different.

"They are oracle bones," she answered.