Chapter Four

From the air, she couldn’t accept what she’d seen. On foot, the obscuring trees conspired in her denial. Eager to observe once again the most stomach-curdling, astonishing sight, she ran through tall grass and yanked back the five-bar gate. Five more steps and her legs rebelled. Her body trapped in a catatonic trance, her brain tried in vain to make sense of the bizarre sight. Muscles screamed: run away, but her curiosity pleaded: stay.

After adrenaline-stretched moments that seemed like hours, with the others similarly confounded behind her, Kallandra found words. “It’s impossible.”

“Ridiculous,” Derek said. “It must be an illusion. That hill must weigh millions of tons.”

“Eighty million,” said the Colonel.

Derek squinted at the hill, which continued to drip rocks and lumps of earth.

“Yes, that’s a good estimate. How did you calculate it? Volume times the density of limestone I suppose.”

“My engineer did.”

“Listen to them,” Kallandra said to Inspector Scrivens. “My bewilderment is in complete awe, while they nerd like trainspotters.”

The policewoman nodded, a smile, perceptible for a second. “They are sublimating their helplessness by playing with numbers. It would be just as inconceivable with one million tons.”

After a thick silence from the four, although the sound of the random cascade of rocks formed background percussion, Kallandra contributed observations of her own.

“It’s still rising. The air seems to be quivering above it. See how the clouds behind are distorted, and the whole thing vibrates, making it appear unclear like yesterday. Has someone measured how fast it’s rising?”

“A foot an hour, approximately,” said the Colonel, “according to my surveyor.

Hello, who’s this?”

“He’s the policeman who let us through the cordon yesterday,” Derek said, as the overweight police officer puffed up the rock-strewn meadow to them.

“Morning, Ma’am,” he said to his superior, and with lesser salutes to the rest. “I thought you boffins ought to know.”

“We’re boffins now?” Kallandra said. “Is that bad?”

“It’s ancient British for scientists,” Derek said. “What should we know, officer?”

“Some of us local police have a theory about this floating mountain.”

Kallandra looked at him in an effort to find evidence of awe in him. None.

Anyone would think floating mountains happened all the time. Maybe he had a Japanese print of Fujiyama at home. For a moment she wondered if it wasn’t just the frequent mist that made the mountains there appear to float. Could this have happened before?

“We think it’s them hippies. We’ve had trouble with them in the past…”

“Constable,” said his inspector, “pilfering from local shops, setting fire to haystacks and poaching fish is one thing. Stealing an eighty-million-ton mountain is quite another.”

“No, no. Excuse me, Ma’am. There’s caves in these rocks all around here.”

“You mean like at Cheddar,” said the Colonel.

“Exactly, there’s potholes around Glastonbury and some locals reckon there’s a sacred cave inside the Tor.”

His superior interrupted him. “I don’t see how that could possibly have anything to do with this phenomena.”

“It’s Wild Murray. He’s a nutter who lives in Shepton. He’s always had a crowd of followers at the Festival and each year has done some crazy gimmick. He’s made giant straw men to set afire; giant kites—and he’s a potholer.”

“So, where’s the relevance here?” The inspector was clearly agitating herself into a rage.

“It’s obvious to us, with respect, Ma’am, that Wild Murray has found a way into the cave. He’s taken a big balloon in there and filled it with hydrogen to create a big scene again.”

“I don’t think a Zeppelin inside the hill would make it lift the hill,” she said. For the first time, Kallandra saw a glimmer of a smile grow into a dismissive smirk.

“What do you think, Colonel?” Kallandra said. “Is it just possible that weak fault lines in the limestone could allow a very large hydrogen-filled balloon to do this?”

“I would say it is very unlikely, but not completely impossible. Of course it would mean our estimate of the weight of the hill is way over that of a cave.” His moustache increased twitching as he warmed to the idea. “Just suppose there was a tall cave and the roof was made of very thin strata, riddled with cracks. After all, limestone gorges, like Cheddar Gorge, are made from collapsed cave roofs. The additional buoyancy of a hydrogen-filled balloon might just lift it. And the weight of the surface soil and few rocks could keep it from rising too fast. Well done, Constable.” His mouth paralleled his moustache in a grin, enabling the constable to smile too.

“Absolute poppycock,” said the Inspector.

“Nevertheless, it is a hypothesis to be tested,” Kallandra said. “Make a note, Derek.”

“Already done,” he said, “but it’s nonsense.”

“I know. It’s quite feasible for the Tor to have a cave within—legendary, I believe.

But unless Wild Murray has an international following, it doesn’t explain the geophysical disturbances in other continents. Have you sent pictures of this floating mountain to Claude?”

“It’s sleep-time in Canada, Kal. Hey, where are you going? It’s dangerous too close.”

Risking the occasional rock fall, Kallandra grabbed a hard hat from a soldier, and ventured to within twenty-five metres of the apparition. She gasped as she raised her camera to capture the view beneath the slowly rising hill. As soon as she aimed her camera, she was grabbed by two soldiers, who carried her, screaming obscenities, back to the others.

The Colonel wagged a finger at her. “You’d be no use to us, Major Harvard, if you were crushed under an avalanche.”

As her mouth re-opened to hurl abuse at him, a thunderous crash shook the ground as the remains of St Michael’s Tower fell off the Tor.

“We have remote cameras that we don’t mind being dented,” he said, and waved to a lieutenant manning a mini-car sized tank with a turret bristling with cameras, aerials, sensors and a gun barrel.

“Are you going to shoot it down?”

“Not straight away, Miss.”

“You mean you are really considering it?”

“Miss, we have to consider the possibility that whatever is holding that rock up might let it go over the town. If the constable’s theory is correct—”

“It can’t be. Can we have some images from robo-tank, please?”

* * *

A large police incident van had displaced the few cattle remaining in the angry farmer’s east field. Army field units mushroomed around it, reproducing by the hour. It was as if the Ministry of Defence training grounds on Salisbury Plain had lunged out to swallow Glastonbury. Kallandra spotted a Bristol University minibus. She wondered when local scientists would get here. The Tor continued rising at the rate of a foot per hour.

Inside a large operations tent, Kallandra stood at the shoulder of the robot-camera operator. She pointed at the image of the base of the rock.

“See, there is something there. Although the trailing turf and falling bits mess it up, there is a smooth dark curved surface.”

“It might only appear dark because of the absence of light on it,” suggested Derek. “Can we illuminate it?”

The Colonel took a deep breath. “We could, in several ways. That robot vehicle has laser, infrared and visible light projectors. It also has radar emitters and receivers.

But using any of these could be considered offensive to an enemy.”

“The floating hill is an enemy?”

“Can you assure me it isn’t, Major Harvard? No, you can’t because we remain in observational mode. I have to decide whether to illuminate the base or not after I have more firepower at my disposal.”

“I’ve already used a flash camera on it yesterday. It didn’t blow me away.”

“That’s positive information, even if you have a reckless disregard for your safety, and for everyone else’s. How did you know the presence of sudden bright light where it had detected none before, wouldn’t trigger an explosion? You didn’t. What sort of military training have you had, Major? No offence meant.”

Kallandra’s face could have heated a house. She knew he was right. She had been trained to fly untested aircraft, and make gutsy on-the-spot decisions, not to pussyfoot around potential enemies. She must have bunked that course.

The Colonel studied the faces around him. “We’re going to light up the arse of the floating mountain.”

Everyone grinned.

If anyone expected to see alien rockets in the base they were disappointed. The light reflected off a smooth metallic curve, like the lower third of a sphere, seventy-nine metres in diameter.

Inspector Scrivens bent forward to examine the image. “Good Lord, it looks like the constable’s theory might have some validity. That could be the underneath of a balloon.”

“No it couldn’t,” Derek said. “There must be thousands of tons of rock remaining on the top of whatever that is. And initially, at least a million tons. Then there are the others.”

“Ah, the others,” said the Colonel, with a smirk barely concealed beneath his moustache. “Yes, we’ve made contact with the military in the States, Australia, Brazil and South Africa. Maybe it’s early days, but they’ve all reported geophysical or tectonic disturbances at a local level. None of them report a complete hilltop flying off. It could be coincidence, there are hundreds of earth tremors everyday around the planet.”

“What about China—Huashan Mountain?” Kallandra said.

“No contact. Just how do you know about that one? Again, there are many seismic disturbances from tectonic plate movement there, so we have access to seismograph readings, but there’s been no official reporting of anything unusual. On the other hand, although entente has been more cordial lately, they remain tight-lipped about most things.”

“So do all countries if there’s something to be embarrassed about,” she said.

“Like flying mountains.”

“Quite so. Lieutenant, for our own rocky UFO, do an infrared scan, followed by micro-radar, then other short wave radio scans. Report directly to me.”

Kallandra pulled Derek outside, made him carry two camp chairs, grabbed them a coffee each and settled to a ringside view of the hill.

She was about to speak, but surrendered when a Chinook thundered overhead.

It seemed the air was alive with helicopters, slow flying airplanes and an army drone spy plane. She focussed purloined army field glasses just above the apex of the tor, to confirm the shimmering of the air. “Either the top is very hot, or something else is distorting the air above the tor,” she yelled. The Chinook landed in the nearby developing airfield.

Derek nodded agreement. “Now we know the base is like the lower half of a sphere. The disintegrating hill could be sitting on a giant ball.”

Once she removed the field glasses to see the whole hill, she had to agree. “It really is shaping up to be like a spherical balloon, shaking off a mantle of soil. So, what is it?”

“OK, I think we can rule out a natural phenomenon. I know it’s not possible for metallic ore to have a bulbous appearance…”

“Such as pure haematite?”

“Exactly, but not that size.”

“On the other hand, maybe we are witnessing the first natural metallic shell with lighter-than-air interior.”

“Kal, just say balloon. But are there natural metallic balloons?”

“Some ejecta from volcanic eruptions have hot gases inside. And we do not possess a complete inventory of every natural phenomenon possible.”

“True. So we add to the list of hypotheses, possible natural but unknown phenomenon. An ore, inside a limestone cave that experienced massive expansion, possibly from hydrogen. Nope.

“Hello, a Bentley has arrived with a military police escort. Should we go and introduce ourselves?”

“No, Derek, if they’re sufficiently important they’ll come to us. If that sphere is not natural, then it must be artificial. Let’s rule out little green men for now.”

“Which means, man-made,” he said. “Wild Murray might be responsible after all.

It’s about time Claude woke up, let’s send him a copy of that image and ask what’s happening to El Capitan.”

“It’s only four in the morning there, oh, go on then,” she said, partly because he’d have to go to the lieutenant to copy the file or have it transferred to their iPaq. Also, the stranger seemed to be shouting in there, and she’d like to know why. She didn’t believe in auras yet an ominous feeling accompanied that car, oozed across the field and hovered in front of her. She watched Derek enter the tent, followed shortly by shouting.

He returned.

“We have to leave,” he said, with a mix of anger and apology, although both of them knew it wasn’t his fault.

“My guts had an ominous feeling about him. Who is he, MI6?”

“Maybe. He said he was Commander Berringer, Ministry of Defence liaison bigwig. He said we had no business here and to clear off or be escorted to the cordon.”

“But they brought us here. It’s that typical cock-up where the left hand doesn’t know what all the other hands are doing. We’ll see about that,” she said, putting on her stern face.

“I agreed to go.”

“More fool you. Go then. I’ve work to do here, and I thought you had.”

Derek tagged along, lagging behind a couple of metres. Before she reached the tent, she turned. “Did you get the images copied to your iPaq? If not, do it while I distract Berringer.”

She marched into the tent, but was taken aback at the diminutive size of the new arrival. She took a deep breath, having learnt the hard way that small people often punched an intellectual wallop, and decided to defend herself by an attack strategy.

“Berringer, are you in the pay of the Chinese?”

If he was surprised, or annoyed, he didn’t show it.

“Miss Harvard?”

“Major Harvard.”

“No matter, I am a Commander and so senior to you. Now get out.”

She could play status semantics but she also knew she should control her maverick tendencies, which jarred with the usual clean-cut NASA astronauts. No matter how good her flying and lateral thinking abilities were, one more embarrassment could see her off the Mars flight.

“You must have been invited here by error, Harvard. In any case you are a foreigner.”

“But Derek is British, we are together as a NASA investigative team. Are you prepared to push this into an incident, Commander, or agree to international cooperation that gets results and makes us both look good?” She embellished her conciliation with her most winning smile.

“Very well, Harvard, you may stay, but all information gathered here is to stay with me and the British Government unless I say so. Understood? Or do I have to make you sign the Official Secrets Act?”

She glanced over to Derek and noticed from his grin to the lieutenant that he’d already copied the images. She nodded compliance to Berringer. “You might be surprised at how useful I can be.”

“In that case, Major, now we are friends, you can inform me what you know about the Chinese situation in Huashan? And Uluru, Sugarloaf, El Capitan and Table Top.

Do you know more?”

She winced as she realised he knew as much as she did. “I have contacts.”

“Good, so do I. We might need them. The Chinese have already broken off a trade mission. They seem to think a bomb is responsible for the massive landslides and cracking of the mountain. Huashan is one of their most sacred mountains.”

“I guess they haven’t seen inside it yet? Or noticed that it is rising?”

“It was you who was going to be helpful to me, Major? All we know about the Chinese situation is that there is too much smoke from a forest fire, possibly caused when a crushed hotel oil tank spewed burning oil into its grounds. Our surveillance photographs can’t see enough and China News is silent. We have little information on your country’s El Capitan. Apparently the whole of the Yosemite Valley is cordoned off, including a no-fly zone. I hope you can enlighten us?”

“We’re trying to wake up our contact. Don’t forget, that region is eight hours behind us. Even if the military are there, it’s dark so, unless they feel under threat, there’ll be no detailed observations. Have you been there, Commander? If only the top hundred metres are affected, they won’t see events as clearly as we can here.”

“Major, you mean because El Capitan is three times the height and in a gorge?

South Africa is in a political turmoil again, so we’ll probably not get much sense there.

Uluru’s been in daylight for hours, so why’s Australia keeping quiet?”

“Something different seems to happening there,” Kallandra said, finding herself on the defensive. If only Rob Summers had been more informative. “It seems Uluru is splitting. If there is a sphere in there, it might take longer to become visible. But all of us are in the dark, so to speak.”

“In which case, why do you think you can be helpful, Major? You seem to know less than my department.”

“A very big reason, Commander. I called NASA. If necessary I can have close-up live satellite imagery and data from their onboard sensors much quicker than you could.” She could tell by his nodding, that she was on a winner. “Plus, my training allows for more lateral thinking than yours.”

“Maybe. Speaking of imagery, I believe you noticed the shimmering in the air above the Tor. Maybe you could ask NASA to scan it for any odd emissions, and alert your contacts in the USA to fly low over theirs? I’ll ask the Australian Air Force to do the same. Major, are we singing from the same hymn sheet here?”

“You mean it’s the Air Force’s meteorological wing—so to speak—with their flying sensors? Sure I do.” They both grinned.

Derek, secreting his iPaq in his jacket pocket, came over. “The lieutenant has another theory about the floating mountains.” He saw the Commander looking serious.

“But I wouldn’t give any of the theories any credence, especially his.”

“Spit it out, Derek,” Kallandra said.

“He says it could be an elaborate illusion, such as when the entertainer David Copperfield made the Statue of Liberty disappear.”

“Thank him, will you,” said the Commander, clearly unimpressed.

“Add it to our list of hypotheses, Derek. None of them might be the answer, but the answer might be in a combination.”

The lieutenant called over from his console. “Excuse me? I saw one of the shows. A Jumbo jet vanished in front of a large audience. I know it was only an illusion but it looked very real. I’m not saying he or another entertainer is behind this, only that a similar effect could be operating.”

“That’s a fair point,” Kallandra said. She flashed her eyes at him. “I’ve noticed the air shimmering above the rising tor. I’m waiting for high-definition satellite imagery of all the sites. The infrared and gravity anomalies in particular might reveal phenomena we can’t see. It probably isn’t a master entertainer at work here, but it might be instructive to question them.”

Inspector Scrivens jotted it into her notebook. “So we shan’t arrest Copperfield on suspicion of vandalising part of our National Heritage by floating it up and away, but to help us with our enquiries?”

“Exactly,” Kallandra said. “Squeeze out of him how he would have done it, if he’d thought of it first. It could point us in some useful directions.”

Kallandra heard a sharp crack from outside.

The lieutenant cried out: “A slab of rock is sliding off the top of the tor.”

The ground shook sending everyone hurtling to the floor as a roar, like a rocket taking off, hurt their ears. As the thundering ended, the tent walls facing the tor burst in as rocks smashed into it. More thumps and equipment-smash noises followed, but ended in seconds. In-tent chaos pursued the exterior noises with tumbled shelving.

Kallandra gasped as an angle-iron shelf unit broke its fall on her ankle.

She knew it could be broken, but couldn’t reach it because the limp body of the Commander lay on top of her. She could see his face, pale, but a pulse throbbed in his neck, allowing her to assume the rest of him survived too. “Commander, can you hear me? Someone get him off me?”

Her request was met with groans from the others, as the sunlit tent exterior cast an eerie green glow on the shambles of fallen equipment and people. The main poles remained, but gashes in the canvas showed where ricocheted fragments of sharp limestone made forced entries.

A helmeted sergeant rushed into the tent. “Who’s hurt?”

“Hooray. Over here,” Kallandra said. “The Commander’s unconscious and I can’t move.”

“I’ll call for medics first, Miss, then I’ll be back.”

A long groan came from the direction of the lieutenant. She called to him, and after some minor crashing, he responded. “I’m all right, Major, but the computer isn’t.

Anyone would think the Tor didn’t want us to know too much.”

“Now that would be too spooky. Lieutenant, if you are able, can you get over to me? I can’t see my ankle, which is trapped. It only aches but I’d hate to think I’m leaking red stuff while we’re idly chatting.”

In moments he stood over her. “No bleeding, Major. Is the weight of the Commander too much? I’d rather wait for the medics to put a neck collar on him just in case.”

“OK. I’ve eaten burgers heavier than him. Can you lift the shelf-unit up enough to shift my ankle?”

“I’ll help,” Derek said. He rubbed his face as if waking from a nightmare.

* * *

Grateful that the bombardment hadn’t seriously injured anyone, Kallandra sat on a camp-bed outside, and nursed her bruised ankle with an icepack, while staring at the floating hill. Derek lay on a nearby camp-bed, head propped up by his right arm, and stared at the gravity-defying mass.

“It’s no longer a Tor,” said the lieutenant, more upset at his computer’s demise than his scratches and mild concussion.

The Colonel shouted at them. “We’re retreating to the next field. You three, come out of the line of fire.”

“You’re right, we can’t call it a hill, mountain or Tor,” Kallandra said. “That last rockfall has exposed the top so much, it looks like a bald head.”

The lieutenant laughed. “And the remaining rocks and turf looks like a monk’s fringe.”

“A silver-headed monk. But I doubt that turf will hang on for much longer. That is a sphere—no doubt any more.”

The Colonel’s shadow crept over them. “Fascinating though it might be, people, but let’s move out.”

“We’re as safe as we’re going to be, Colonel,” Kallandra said. “That last fall was the top, and when it went it took most of the rest.”

“Orders, Ma’am,” said the lieutenant. “We’ll be right along, Sir.” He winked at Kallandra, so that she nodded agreement to the Colonel, allowing him to get back to the base relocation.

They couldn’t take their eyes off the sphere.

“It’s not as shiny as new steel would be,” Kallandra said.

“Nor dull, more a silky lustre, like an aluminium sphere might be. But it’s still indistinct, as if there is a motor inside.”

“Lieutenant – just a moment, what is your damn name?”

“Lieutenant Keeler, Ma’am.”

“First name, idiot. Mine’s Kallandra.”

“Gifford, Ma’am. Maybe there is a motor inside, and a difficult-to-see ratchet railway pulling it upwards.”

“Do you feel a tingling up your neck when you look at it?”

“I know what you mean, Ma’am. It’s like looking at the Grand Canyon for the first time, or the moon through a telescope. Only this is a thousand times weirder.”

“Totally awesome. I am looking at that sphere slowly rising, yet my brain’s logic centre screams that it can’t be happening. That tingle I am experiencing in my spine is like being plugged into an electric fence.”

Minutes of wonder drifted by as the sphere imperceptibly rose. She glanced at the young Gifford, taking in his pale skin, high cheekbones, longer than military-approved blond hair and narrow nose. A classical, handsome profile, but she wondered if he knew it. No ring—probably because of his marriage to computerised robotics and sensors. She’d take him on as a challenge, if she hadn’t Derek. In any case she’d be accused of toy-boyism, but so what? She smiled at wicked thoughts but had to abort when he turned to her, and then nodded at the supine form of Derek, half-asleep, but with his left little finger mining his ear.

“It gets worse,” she said.

“You mean he eats it?”

“Revolting isn’t he?”

“My cat eats my earwax.”

“Oh my God, Gifford. Don’t you feed it fish? But earwax has a sour bitter taste.

I would’ve thought cats had more sense.”

“A friend did a research paper for his biochemistry degree. He found that cats went for the triglyceride fats and cholesterol among the other muck. It’s food… but not as we know it.”

“Hah! So Derek must be half-cat. I knew it.”

Another round of thuds alerted them to more of the sphere losing its mantle. The base of the sphere shimmered at fifteen five metres above the rest of the Tor.

“Besides thinking this floating sphere might be an illusion, what do you think is happening?” Kallandra said.

“I didn’t say it was an illusion, but that the tricks used in them might give us clues.

It’s obvious to me what it is, especially if it’s happening to other mountains.”

“Well? Wild Murray, natural gas inflating a metal ore deposit, or an unusual volcanic ejecta.”

“Aliens.”

“Maybe, but aren’t they supposed to invade, not go away?”

“They write their own rules, Ma’am.”

“It wouldn’t make sense for them to bury themselves under millions of tons of rock. Look he’s eating it now. Hisss.”

“It makes perfect sense, if they have the technology to make their way out again.

Mankind hadn’t discovered them until now, had we?”

She had to concede that point, but raised another, playing Devil’s Advocate.

“That’s another puzzle. How come millions of tons of metal can hide from us? Why haven’t they been detected with seismographs or by potholers?”

“I don’t know, Ma’am. We don’t know how deep they were. For all we know they started up years ago from several kilometres deep.”

“How did they get down there then? It would take quite an operation to bury them. Ah. You’re going to say they might have been on the surface millions of years ago and have been covered up by sedimentary rock. Interesting. I like the way you think, Gifford.”

He stopped himself laughing at her tease. “It’s only a hypothesis, Ma’am. It could be rubbish. On the other hand, none of the ones we know about are in volcanic rock, which implies they didn’t want to risk being destroyed.”

“Not necessarily the case. There might have been some in volcanic areas but have been destroyed. Others might be under the ocean. I wonder if the spheres can swim?”

“Here come the Royal Engineers,” said Gifford, as an armoured humvee equipped with telescopic poles motored slowly by. “They’ll probe the sphere and see if they can get a sample, before it rises out of reach.”