Chapter Six

Five days since the spheres emerged.

With headsets to enable the occupants to communicate above the mind-numbing reverberations of the helicopter, Kallandra urged the pilot to infringe National Park regulations and fly directly into the Yosemite Valley.

“I’m sorry Ma’am,” said the pilot, obviously in awe at flying two astronauts, but insisting on doing his job properly.

Kallandra turned to her French Canadian colleague. She fell in love with his accent and a little with the man, every time he spoke. “Claude, I told you I’d rather fly this bird myself. We’d be there now.”

“It’s better to maintain a modicum of protocol. It’s not a NASA chopper, and we are cashing in favours more than giving them out.” He ran a moist finger over his newly grown black moustache. Kallandra spotted his preening, and smiled.

“You’re a poser, Claude. Already dashingly handsome, yet you continue to add embellishments. Show me that weird tattoo on your shoulder.”

“Two pythons entwined in battle is not weird. And I’m not undressing for you, again. Derek will hear of it. Look, there’s the mighty El Capitan in front. It looks white with the morning sun.”

“You’re looking at Cathedral Rocks. Pilot, another kilometre, please. Oh, what’s your name? I’ve forgotten, and I can’t read your name badge.”

“Lieutenant Lester Cobden, Major.”

“Hey, that’s a great name,” Claude said.

“What?” Kallandra said, “Do you know a Lester? But Cobden is a great name, Lieutenant. Richard Cobden was a Victorian British politician making a real effort for international peace. Are you related?”

“I am, distantly, to one of his daughters, Major, but I know little about him.”

“Well, Lester, his genes are guiding you through life. You won’t be disappointed if you find out more about him.”

Claude quietly laughed. “Listen to you. I didn’t know you majored in British history.”

“I didn’t, but we had high school history projects. I stuck a pin in a list and pricked him.”

“Lucky Cobden. Hey, Lester where’re we going?” Claude said, as the helicopter veered sharply to the right.

“Excuse me, Sirs, I am receiving orders to turn back. This is a no-fly zone.”

Kallandra took a tired intake of breath, and then said, “Lester, tell them these two NASA astronauts have full access rights. We have the permits. Tell them to check it out with Colonel Dwight Disraeli at the Pentagon.” She winked at Claude. They knew that Disraeli would back them, if he could be found. He’d been briefed on the spheres the previous night, and was throwing a crisis meeting together. Five days since the spheres showed themselves, and Kallandra was eager to see any changes. She knew the Chinese had been investigating theirs, but weren’t releasing their findings. The Australians had cordoned theirs, as had the others but the Aboriginals had raised objections to their Uluru being violated, so hardly any investigation had been accomplished. Locals had shot at the South African sphere to no effect.

Claude manifested his concern by pulling at his moustache, again. “We’re going to miss the meeting at Johnson this afternoon. I know your Derek will be there, but to be frank…”

“He’s a brilliant designer, and engineer. OK, so his backbone’s somewhere in a left luggage locker, but so far no one has been close up to two of these spheres to check similarities.

“Lester, you see El Capitan, now, and oh my God.”

El Capitan had a proud right-angled cliff-top appearance, which had disintegrated. Floating above it was a twin sphere to the one at Glastonbury. The sun glinted off the silvery chrome ball that had no turf or earth clinging, but then maybe the other one didn’t by now.

Only the pilot seemed unmoved, but Kallandra knew he’d be worrying about being chased away or worse.

“Lester, operate the cameras and range-finding computer, I have a feeling this beast is larger than the Glastonbury sphere.”

“It could be perspective,” Claude said. “This one is higher. Voila, If you still want to get an up close and personal, there’s a clearing at two o’clock, but too rock-strewn to land.”

The increasingly panicky pilot hovered at jumping off height, and after his passengers leapt, flew to a safe distance out of the no-fly zone to await their pickup signal.

Kallandra had an eerie sense of déjà vu as she stood five hundred metres from the sphere hovering thirty metres above the ground. The landscape, too, looked familiar. The grey limestone rocks had clearly been subjected to upheaval with large fissures running from the crater. Trees further down the slope had either been uprooted by ground movement or smashed down by avalanches. A mass exodus of insects and other fauna had emptied the immediate area of wildlife. She couldn’t see any birds.

Once the helicopter left, the only sounds she could hear were of streams—the remnant of the Horsetail Falls that used to cascade down the face of the monumental rock. She picked her way through the rock-field. She knew Claude would have urged caution, but also that he’d know she’d know, so he didn’t. So much cleverer than Derek, in so many ways.

Without admonition, she approached the edge of the sphere’s exit void. The limestone looked as if the sphere had polished the vertical circular wall on its way up.

Although the sky darkened with increasing cloud cover, she could see down tens of metres, but it seemed endless. The air was cool and thick with silence. She knew it was illogical to have bottomless pits, and supposed a team would soon be sending a remote camera down. Knowing which strata from where the sphere originated would give them its age. She had the urge to abseil, but had no rope.

“If you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you,” said Claude, having picked his way through the rocks to her side.

“You’ve been reading Nietzsche again.”

“Nevertheless, mademoiselle, do you feel the void working on your mind to draw you in?”

“No, Claude. I’ve seen holes before, but what’s creeping me out is being this close to that levitating sphere.”

“I keep ducking, even though it’s higher than a five storey block. And is that static I feel?”

“I felt tingling sensations when close to the Glastonbury sphere, too.”

She held up a hand for silence. Claude obeyed but the streams and occasional rock cascade ignored her. “I can’t hear any buzzing, or engine noise,” she said.

“Could you at Glastonbury? I don’t recall you mentioning it in your reports.”

“No, but…”

“But you thought you might’ve missed it. Did you set up wide-frequency ranging sound recording gear to pick up the sounds humans can’t hear?”

“Sure, but it picked up too much background noise. I left a Lieutenant Gifford there, requisitioning more directional mikes. It’s true to say that dogs ran off, going berserk. As did Derek, but at least he came back for me.”

“Of course he did, Kallandra.” He gave her a hug, and she gently pushed him off.

He continued, “Maybe the sphere is emitting keep away noises, but we can’t hear them. Did the Glastonbury sphere look out of focus, like this one?”

“It might be because it’s vibrating. I can imagine that would help it through the rock, but not through the atmosphere. I wonder what’s making it rise?”

“That fuzziness could be from infrasound. It could be vibrating at less than twenty-five Hertz—you know, like movie frames?”

“I’ll send Gifford a message—it’ll be midnight over there now. Oh, a reply—darn it, auto response. Claude, I think you’re on the button with the blurred affect. It’s known that infrasound can make many people feel uneasy, even nauseous.”

“Ah, you mean the brown note? Seven Hertz? I thought that was an urban myth, but maybe no one has tested it with a weird giant sphere as the source.”

“Hey, good man Gifford is awake and busy,” Kallandra said, dabbing at her iPaq.

“There you go. There are a variety of frequencies coming from the sphere including infrasound at eleven Hertz and a bunch of high ones we can’t hear.”

“Maybe they’re communicating with whales—scrub that thought. But, Kal, it’s ironic that humans might be one of the few species of animals that cannot hear the very low and very high sounds being sung by the spheres.”

She cupped her ears, but it made no difference. “I wouldn’t assume that the sounds are anything but noises from its internal machines or the effect of the vibrations.

It would be like you trying to understand what a bicycle is saying when all it’s doing is recklessly negotiating a steep bend.”

They laughed, took photographs, and then ventured a little closer. Kallandra would have liked to stand underneath the sphere but for the deep hole. “Because the other one was at ground level I was very close. Probes cold-melted when pressed into the surface, yet stones bounced off. I had a definite feeling it was animate, or something sentient was inside. I can’t explain it, but maybe it was the infrasound interfering with my insides. I can’t see any markings, can you?”

“Were there some at Glastonbury?”

“It had too much debris on it. This one’s much cleaner. It’s remarkably smooth.

I can see the landscape, including us in it, but like in a fairground hall of mirrors.”

“Kal, why isn’t the military pointing their best artillery at this apparition? I expected to have to flash our permits at bayonets every few metres.”

“I reckon our chopper flew over roadblocks and dug-in troops in the trees. And you know that there will be missiles aimed at our sphere from over the horizon.”

“It’s our sphere now? Has it captured your heart, Kallandra, mon cherie?” His moustache, along with his mouth, danced with mirth.

“Don’t be soft. Apart from re-sculpturing a few landmarks they haven’t done any harm have they?”

“They’re not just rocky outcrops, they all seem to have been heritage sites, mostly of a spiritual significance to indigenous peoples. I did a bit of web-based archaeology and the Shoshone have been here for thousands of years. They’ll consider destroying their centrepiece a sacrilegious act.”

“Or, they might believe their gods have reached a stage where the sphere has to be released.”

“And do you believe that, Kal?”

“Behave yourself—you and I know this must be an alien artefact. The interesting point is whether they chose to insert, or grow them in sites of spiritualinterest, or…”

“Whether their presence created emanations such as infrasound that made early people believe those sites were sacred.”

“Exactly. But, Claude, there’s more. Why are the spheres only in these areas of relatively minor beliefs, and not in the crucible of Judaism, Muslim and Christianity?”

“Buddhism is major, and a sphere has emerged from one of their sacred mountains in China.”

“True, Huashan Mountain, but was it a spiritual site before Buddha?”

“If spheres were below ground in the Middle East then they would have been damaged by the tectonic upheaval with earthquakes and all the mountain ranges there are volcanic. Kallandra, we are mere observers. Maybe whoever designed them might have thousands of spheres boring their way up through the Earth’s crust as we speak.”

“That’s a bizarre, and scary, image. But let’s stick with the little facts we know.

For example, the spheres seem to create tectonic disturbances on a local scale—mini-earthquakes, and avalanches, yet the holes they make are smoothly cut.”

“Without all the seismic and geochemistry data, we are only hypothesising, but my guess is that pressure release underground can cause all sorts of reactions in the rocks.” He looked at the sky. “Kal, that cumulus cloud is getting bigger and ominously darker.”

“If you mean we’re going to get wet, why can’t you just say so?” She poked him in the ribs, then realized the ground was too fissured, and rocky to play catch me. He grabbed her arms to prevent more teasing. Laughing, she caught a whiff of his Armani men’s fragrance.

Derek would have rather died than wear men’s perfume, with the exception of manly sports deodorant. But Claude’s French half enjoyed splashing out in an extravaganza of continental aromas. She’d discounted the rumoured efficacy of pheromones and perfume, but had to admit to being stirred in the right places when in his proximity. She risked a glance at his brown eyes just as he put a warm arm around her.

“Oops, I thought you were falling,” he said, but he didn’t let go. Her cheek brushed his chest making her knees weaken. Resistance was needed, but she’d put it on hold, wondering fleetingly how Derek would react if she confessed that their lacklustre but steady relationship was history. She shook her head, to clear hormonal cobwebs. What was she thinking? Maybe the awesome situation with the sphere had affected her biological judgement.

“Hey, that cloud is leaking. We’d better call Lester for our lift.”

Claude reached into his camera pouch and retrieved a zoom lens for the camera.

Kallandra realised his intention.

“Excellent. I wonder how the sphere will react to rain. Will the drops be absorbed or be repelled?”

“I think it will act like any other metallic sphere but, since it can absorb objects, anything goes until we know better. It’d be useful to see the angle raindrops bounce off the sphere.”

“Hey, there’s a curtain of rain cascading off the sphere’s equator. And my hair’s getting wet—damn, my curls will straighten.”

“Oh dear, you’d better tell Lester to hurry. You don’t want Derek pulling a face at your blue highlights shining through your gorgeous hazelnut tresses,” he said, and then after looking at her, “or your wet T-shirt.”

Unused to such flamboyant flattery she reddened, willing the helicopter to fly faster than light.

Like the seventh cavalry to her rescue, the reverberating noise of the helicopter drowned the sound of the rain bouncing off the sphere. She looked but couldn’t see it.

“Hey, Claude,” she yelled, “where the hell is it?”

“It’s coming out of the sun in the south.”

“I hope he goes around the sphere and not over it. No. No! He is going to fly over it.

“Major Harvard to Lester Cobden—do NOT fly directly over the sphere! Do you copy?”

“Too late,” Claude said, “he couldn’t have been briefed, and we were too exhilarated to tell him.”

They watched in horror as the pilot struggled to control the helicopter a hundred metres above the sphere.

“Can’t… ca… get lift. Unstable…”

Kallandra had flown helicopters and although she was more used to handling out-of-control jets, tried to help. “Lester, engage your turbo and veer starboard.”

“Control panel… dead.”

The turbulence over the sphere turned the helicopter vertical, nose upwards.

Claude pulled Kallandra’s arm to move further away. Their ears throbbed in pain at the noise of the screaming engine and the blades fighting to do their job.

Slowly, but accelerating, the helicopter fell.

“If that was an alien spaceship,” yelled Kallandra, “then surely it would fly out of the way?”

“Or engage a force field?” Claude said.

Kallandra knew a ship-sized force field didn’t exist in human technology. Ideas of magnetic repulsion flashed through her brain as the tail plunged onto the top surface of the sphere, out of their direct line of sight.

“Has it gone into the sphere?” Kallandra said, though she knew Claude wouldn’t know either.

“No, here comes the debris. Get down behind a boulder, tout suite!”

The helicopter’s rear struts crumpled, followed within a second by the sound of the engine and fuel tank exploding, bringing the awful noise to a crescendo.

Jets of yellow and red flames, black smoke and metal flew out from above the sphere. Like ejecta from a volcano, flaming incendiary bombs fell around them. Daring to look up no longer, Kallandra held her shoulder bag over her head while crouched between two large boulders. Instead of a diminuendo in the noise level it increased as further explosions—maybe the helicopter carried small munitions—and a minor apocalyptic hell plummeted onto the rocks. Sharp fragments: a painful mixture of metal and plastic shrapnel and rock shards ricocheted into her bomb shelter. She heard Claude’s yelps of pain through the percussion, chorusing her own.

Moments later the crashing had ended, replaced by hissing as rain cooled hot fragments. Distant thunder added to the drama. The two astronauts looked up from their sanctuaries and stood, surrounded by helicopter debris, although the larger pieces had landed on the other side of the sphere’s circular chasm.

With no need for speech, Kallandra exchanged anguished looks with Claude as they searched for Lester, or what was left of him. She glanced up at the sphere.

Hovering above the carnage, it was impassive. Nothing seemed to faze it, but then it was probably a machine whose task was to rise, repelling or melting any obstacle. If it could cold-vaporize solid rock, what chance had a helicopter?

Kallandra said: “Have you noticed a difference between that monster and a manmade metallic object when rain hits it?”

“Do you mean it isn’t wet? Yes, but the underside wouldn’t be, and from this close we can’t see the top.”

“But some water would dribble down under, wouldn’t it? Not every drop would fall off leaving it instantly bone dry. Even a Teflon ball would have a trickle around to the base.”

“I know you are employing distraction therapy, Kal, but let’s keep looking for Lester. I can’t see where his part of the cockpit hit the ground.”

Kallandra knew he was right. She was blocking poor Lester’s fate. She tripped on a loose rock and fell among tangled struts from the helicopter’s tail boom.

Claude rushed to her. “Kal, ah, you have quite a gash on your forehead, don’t get up.”

“I’d already had that, and the bleeding has worsened, but I’ve twisted my ankle, damn it.”

He helped her up just as the sun signalled the end of rain, and illuminated the sphere. Reflected light stung her tears.

“Damn you, sphere. You’ve gone from being a fascinating curiosity to a fucking, murdering liability. Let the army do their worst.” She sat on a boulder and let loose her own rain, her shoulders shaking. Claude had a comforting arm around her, and let her work through a few minutes of shock. He rummaged for his water flask and insisted she took a sip.

Through sobs she managed to speak. “Thanks, Claude. At least I’m still alive, unlike poor Lester. I’ve limped before. Give me your arm, you can be a crutch. Let’s find his body.”

“At least the rain’s given up. I don’t understand it; only half the chopper seems to be here. I’ve known of aircraft being partly vaporized when its fuel detonates from a huge impact but even exploded fuel tanks shouldn’t have disappeared the cockpit.”

“Which means…?” She looked up.

“That,” he pointed at the sphere, “has eaten it.”

“I’m not sure I can be surprised by what it does any more. But I still feel we have to look for Lester in case he was flung clear and is lying battered, but breathing.”

They circumnavigated the hole, and widened their search area. Claude sent a message to the San Diego airbase to inform them of the accident and was told it would be a couple of hours before another suicide mission was sent to them.

While supporting her, Claude looked at aluminium fragments, shiny alternating with soot-blackened. “I’ve been on grisly post-operation fuck-ups and there’s always bloodstained aircraft fragments, and lumps of people’s innards.”

“Me too, but there’s nothing of him here. We’ll have to extend the search. Just a minute, something’s different with that sphere.”

They stopped to look more carefully. The blurring of the sphere persisted but near the base was a small dark bulge.

“You don’t think the helicopter engine has fallen through the sphere?” Kallandra said.

“Merde, it is not the engine. Look, it’s a foot!”

Gripped with astonishment, Kallandra agreed that a naked foot was emerging from the sphere. There was no opening. The foot, then a leg. The other leg came out as if sliding from an instantly healing membrane. Before his torso emerged, Lester’s head appeared as if he was bent double.

Kallandra gasped. “He’s alive. Oh my God, Lester’s alive.”

“To think what he’s experienced; what he’s seen, but no doubt too traumatised to speak. The poor man. I cannot see him too clearly. Was he bald before?”

“I was thinking that, but many men are these days and I didn’t see him without his helmet. Ah, Claude, he’s falling out!” With a mixture of concern and disbelief, she watched as Lester drew out his arm and shoulder. It seemed only his back was holding him in the sphere. He opened and shut his mouth, but they couldn’t hear any words.

The instinct to aid overrode that of escaping the horror so they moved to the edge of the hole.

“Lester, can you hear me?” Kallandra shouted.

Only then did the pilot look in their direction.

“Help me! Oh, fuck, fuck…”

“Claude, do something. Quick, he’s about to fall.”

“What can I do?” He looked around, desperately hoping there’d be a rope or planking, but there was nothing but limestone rocks and broken helicopter pieces.

“For fuck’s sake, Major, help me.”

“Don’t worry, Lester,” Kallandra said, having had optimism drive her success in life, so far.

To their consternation and dismay, the pilot exited completely from the sphere.

The naked man appeared to hover just beneath the sphere, giving them all a modicum of cruel hope, before gravity took over. With flailing limbs, and his eyes and mouth wide open in a scream, he fell past them. He gave Claude a last accusing stare before plunging into the abyss.

They couldn’t watch. Kallandra buried her head in Claude’s chest, but they couldn’t shut out his long wavering wail. There was no sudden end: their ears merely couldn’t or wouldn’t hear after thirty seconds.

Kallandra had done many skydives and knew he would have dropped at least three kilometres into the hole. Maybe he’d fall forever. As a test pilot she’d cheated death more times than she’d want to forget, but she’d remembered each stomach griping moment, and in many ways, relished them. The adrenalin buzz was better than sex, better than the best meal, with no exceptions. She reflected that all lives were short, too damn short, and that kept her alive in dangerous situations. It sharpened her reactions, honed by an intellect that zoomed as high as her test flights. She’d argued that by working dangerously, she’d live longer because of her heightened reflexes and mental alertness, and no one dared to contradict her.

But the death of their duty pilot bothered her, especially one she’d engaged with in friendly banter, and then in the face of catastrophe, told him not to worry.

For long minutes they stood at the edge. She wanted to hit Claude for not whipping together an instant rescue construction, but then why hadn’t she conjured one up either? Some missions really were impossible.

“It seems that the sphere wants to absorb some of our artefacts, and our hair,”

Claude said.

“There’s no evidence to support any such thing. The electrostatic or magnetic and other turbulence above the sphere made the chopper lose stability and crash. Just because some of the machinery appears to have been absorbed is coincidence.

Otherwise you’re saying the sphere deliberately brought about the crash, when I suspect the turbulence relates to its motion. For instance it could be a gravity push pull engine of some kind, or an Alcubierre effect where space is being shrunk above the sphere while space is expanded below. I don’t know, that’s why I hoped scientists and engineers would be here investigating it. But I doubt it deliberately added some bits of helicopter to itself. And for all we know, Lester was hairless before.”

“Fair enough, but all this only started a couple of days or so ago, and the universities are on vacation. They and the government investigators will take a few days to get their butts out here.

“And, Kallandra, he might have been bald when he entered the sphere, but he definitely wore clothes and was strapped into a helicopter. Yet he emerged—forget the hair—minus the helicopter he was attached to. It seems that the sphere absorbed or accepted metals and other materials, but rejected live organic matter.”

“I suppose so. Claude, I’m thinking…” she said, dabbing a reddened handkerchief at her head wound, “that the blow to my brainbox is making me feel faint.”

“I only have cuts and grazes, but my head has discovered tinnitus. It’s probably all the trauma with Lester’s death-plunge, noise and minor injuries. Kal, sit down on that flat slab. We have to wait for the replacement chopper. It’s a pity we didn’t bring a flask of coffee.”

“You’d better rest too, Claude, and we should move further from the sphere. The Glastonbury sphere had emanations from its low frequency vibrations that affected us, so it’s a good guess they all do.”

“You’re right. Come on, let’s move away at least a hundred metres. Oh, my head—what?”

“You blacking out, too?”

* * *

“Hey, there’s a curtain of rain cascading off the sphere’s equator. And my hair’s getting wet – damn, my curls will straighten.”

“Oh dear, you’d better tell Lester to hurry. You don’t want Derek pulling a face at your blue highlights shining through your gorgeous hazelnut tresses,” he said, and then after looking at her, “or your wet T-shirt.”

She blushed, hoping the helicopter would appear.

A roar announced the arrival of their lift, but peering around in the sky she couldn’t spot it.

“Hey, Claude,” she yelled, “where the hell is that chopper?”

“It’s coming out of the sun in the south.”

“I hope he goes around the sphere and not over it. No. No! He is going to fly over it.

“Major Harvard to Lester Cobden—do NOT fly directly over the sphere! Do you copy?” As she uttered the warning she experienced a feeling of nausea, and a stage-fright unease as if she’d rehearsed those words for a college play and about to perform on stage. Then a disturbing flash image of Lester, naked and hairless, falling through the air made her squeeze shut her eyes.

“Copy. I’ll fly around the sphere. Major, I’ve spotted a good landing spot five hundred metres to the south if you don’t mind a hike.”

“No problem,” said Kallandra. She looked over at Claude, who was rubbing his forehead. Their gaze met.

He spluttered a nervous laugh. “You too? I feel as if I’m having premonitions.”

The helicopter flew overhead and landed in one piece, although it was difficult to see clearly as the rotors flung the rain in all directions. As they picked their way through the rocks, Kallandra slipped, but Claude had already put an arm out to support her.

They halted and looked at each other with puzzled expressions.

“How did I know you’d forgotten how to keep upright?”

“Beats me, too, Claude. That sphere is screwing up our minds. How far from it do we have to get to be…out of its sphere of influence? Hah!”

Claude joined in the relief of hilarity with the poor pun, and they continued their hike.

As the rotors whirred, the pilot emerged, feet first, from the cockpit. Standing, he removed his helmet, and then scratched his shining bald head.

“Hey, he is an embodiment of the sphere,” Claude said.

“Shush, he’ll hear. And stop laughing.”

“Hi, Lester. How are you? Oh, my, you are shaking.”

“Sorry, Major, I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I was all right until I came around this mountain and landed. I feel…I don’t know how I feel…dithery and like I’m coming down with the flu.”

“Lester,” Claude said, with touching concern, “have you always been bald—you have no eyebrows?” He fingered his own moustache in an act of self-affirmation.

“It’s the sphere,” Kallandra said. “Maybe you flew too close. Come on, let’s get out of here, and leave this beast for bio-hazard suits to deal with.”