Independence Day: Silent Zone by Stephen Molstad Read Free Book Online Page B

to the light and realized he had been
half-right. Like
the ancient symbol, the thing between his fingers was composed of a
central
shaft with a shorter bar crossing it like a stick-man's arms and a
rounded open
head. But this one was 3-D. Instead of two little arms, there were
four.
Likewise, the hole at the top opened east-west and north-south. Ankh
cubed ,
he thought. For whatever reason, it struck Okun as supremely cool, and
he put
it in his pocket. It's not stealing , he told himself. It's not like
I'm going anywhere with it.
    "Here
we have the steering controls," Cihatutto
continued, pointing to what looked like a tightly folded bundle of
greasy bones
lying on the floor. "This mechanism goes here, in front of the pilot,
and
we think it opens outward." It had been removed from its original
position
and was connected to the console by a series of thin strands that
looked like
roots or perhaps really hairy veins. "Dr. Lenel went to medical school,
so
he's the one who sews up our patient after we amputate her a little
bit."
Indeed, the vein-roots at the bottom of the bony mechanism had been
severed and
stitched back together using medical sutures. "She looks like a
machine," he said, rapping very hard on the dashboard, "but she's
actually alive, living tissue. Look closely, and you can see the little
tiny
scars."
    "What
does that thing do?" Okun was already on to the next instrument on the
dashboard, something that looked like a shell.
    Cihatutto
said no one knew, but he lifted the thing out of its resting place and
held it
up to the windows. The yellowish shell plate was thin enough to allow
light to
pans through, and was laced with a network of very fine veins. There
were no
dials or switches. As the scientist put it, "She's a mystery."
    Cibatutto
went on to explain that because the ship was not
functioning, it was impossible to say with certainty what the various
instruments were and exactly how they worked. Nevertheless, over the
course of
the years, Area 51's scientists had made a number of highly educated
guesses
which, in time, would be discovered to have been surprisingly accurate.
For
Okun, Cibatutto's thumbnail overview of each instrument in the cabin
was like
the opening pages of a long and fascinating science-fiction novel with
him as
the hero. He was confident he could figure all these gizmos out. By the
end of his
quick tour of the interior, he had completely lost his feeling of
disappointment about this place. His mind was exploding with questions,
possible solutions, and experiments he could run to test his hypotheses.
    Radecker
couldn't get over the horrible smell of the cockpit. "Why won't this
thing
fly?"
    The
question seemed to confuse Cibatutto, and once again Dworkin assumed
command of
the tour. He was standing halfway up the access ladder, so that only
his head
and shoulders protruded into the cabin. "Ah, the thorniest problem of
them
all—the power supply! If you'll follow me, I can show you the aqua-box."
    "Here
is the main culprit," he said a few moments later,
pointing up to it. "Our most insoluble problem, the ship's
generator." Dworkin was standing five feet behind the main hatchway,
looking up into a square recess in one of the armored plates. The
cover, he
explained, had been torn loose in the crash, leaving the possibility
that the
device inside had been damaged or that something had fallen out. Lenel,
grumbling about something under his breath, came forward with a
flashlight to
show Okun and Radecker what was inside. Six dark green walls formed an
open hexagon
three feet across which tapered slightly toward the top. These walls
were the
color of dirty jade and appeared to be just as solid. Connecting the
six sides
were thousands upon thousands of ultrafine strands, thinner than human
hairs.
They looked like cobwebs pulled taut to form a complex geometric
pattern that
hugged the walls and left an open space in the center of the hexagon.
As the
flashlight played over these extrusive threads, it