anything like a permanent suppression of the data. Simply do me the favor of not making an announcement for, shall we say, forty-eight hours? Let me consult with my superiors in Geneva, and we can talk again after I’ve heard back from them. Two days more to gather further data and evaluate the site. Isn’t that fair? Especially given the importance of this find.”
Graves looked across the table at Alexander. “What do you think, David? We could let her have that much, couldn’t we? We’ll need the time just to write up the reports and to check all of the digital scans.”
“I suppose so.” He didn’t sound happy. Garroway thought that Joubert’s comment about his professional mistakes had touched a very raw nerve.
“Everybody?” Graves asked, addressing the table. “It’s late, and we’re all tired. Is there a problem with waiting two days before announcing this discovery?”
There were murmurs from the others, mostly in the negative. Colonel Lloyd raised his hand.
“Colonel?” Graves said.
“I just wanted to say that…this isn’t a scientific comment, but I do find the fact that the members of an American expedition are deferring to UN personnel with no jurisdiction…disturbing. It sets an unfortunate precedent.”
“In the first place, Colonel,” Joubert replied, “I’m not asking for you to defer to me. I just want a little time to consult with my superiors. Most likely, they will agree with Dr. Alexander, but if there is a problem, they should be allowed to share with us their views, no? As for precedent, I will only remind you that there is every possibility that future expeditions to Mars will be internationalized and, therefore, will come under direct UN jurisdiction and supervision. Your cooperation with my superiors could indeed set a precedent. A good one.”
The meeting broke up shortly afterward. After Joubert and the other UN people had left, Garroway turned to Alexander. “I thought you had something going with Joubert?”
“Not anymore,” the archeologist replied. “That woman is bad, bad news.”
“Looked like you were about to slug her there, for a second.”
“No. I wish…but, no.”
“What was that crack about mistakes? You don’t have to tell me if you don’t—”
Alexander looked up at the doorway through which Joubert had just left. “Oh, there’s nothing secret about it, but nothing really important, either. Let’s just say I’ve crossed swords with some highly placed people before over discoveries that they’d rather didn’t see the light of day. I guess she’s done her research and found out whose toes I’ve been stepping on. I think she’s looking for leverage, some way she can manipulate me.”
Garroway chuckled. “I’ve heard it said that archeologists dig up other people’s garbage. I didn’t know that included skeletons in closets.”
“Quite true. Very old garbage, usually, and you never know where the skeletons are going to turn up. Archeologists are diggers, Major. But sometimes, the things they dig up are inconvenient. Or culturally embarrassing.”
“I’m still not sure I understand why she’s so bent out of shape about this.”
“Mmm. Hard to say, really. She’s right that there are people back home who won’t like what we’ve found here. And others who’ll seize on it as proof that God was an astronaut.”
“Yeah, I was wondering about that. What was that thing about ancient astronauts?”
“Oh, various writers, late twentieth, early twenty-first century, developed the notion that a lot of the strange artifacts and buildings and monuments on Earth couldn’t have been built by primitive peoples…or at least, not by primitives working by themselves. They must have had extraterrestrials helping with antigravity or whatever.”
Garroway laughed. “Seriously?”
“Oh, yes. Quite a few writers jumped on that particular wagon. Erich von Daniken was one of the noisiest. His willingness to attribute every cultural oddity or mystery to aliens pretty well soured the scientific community on the whole idea. Unfortunately, well, the discovery that the Face was an artificial structure of some kind gave an extra boost to his theories, gave them greater credibility. Probably spawned half a dozen star-child religions.”
“You believe this stuff?”
“Mostly, no. Most reputable scientists don’t. The idea was popularized in a number of books, but the information was never scientifically presented, much of it was hearsay, and a lot of the facts were just plain wrong. Hell, back in the seventies, von Daniken’s stuff gave the whole subject such a bad taste that most real archeologists stayed clear of the whole subject for fifty years.”
“No science, all air, huh?”
“Well, the trouble with most of those books was that they usually ignored the simple answer, even ignored the people right there on the spot who could still demonstrate how their ancestors built the whatever-it-was. The Easter Islanders are a great example.”
“I’ve heard about them. Big, stone heads on the beach. I didn’t think aliens were supposed to have anything to do with them. They’re big, yeah, but not so big you need antigravity to explain them. I thought the biggest mystery there was why the things were raised in the first place.”
“With the ancient-astronauts crowd, nothing is ever that simple.” Alexander chuckled. “Sometimes the ancient-astronaut guys really got carried away. One saw aircraft landing strips where the natives had cleared away dark surface pebbles to expose light-colored stones underneath. The Nazca lines, in Peru. They are incredible—huge drawings of animals and figures and geometric lines that can only be appreciated from the air.” He chuckled. “But don’t ever try to land your airliner there.”
“Don’t worry. I won’t.”
“What I always hated about those theories was the way they could so casually dismiss the natural inventiveness, the creativity, the cleverness of us humans. We’ve done some quite spectacular things on this planet, you know, without a scrap of help from aliens with antigravity beams. Most of the evidence offered to support those theories is ambiguous at best.”
“Yeah, but you said ‘mostly, no,’ when I asked if you believed. What part do you believe?”
“Well, you know, sometimes I wonder if we didn’t go too far in chucking everything those writers suggested. There are a few landmarks on Earth that probably weren’t built by the people we’ve always assumed built them, and there’s no decent explanation. The Temple of the Sun at Titicaca is one. The foundation at Baalbek in Lebanon is another. The complex at Giza, the Great Pyramids and the Sphinx, is a third. If aliens didn’t build the things, it’s at least possible they were inspired by, shall we say, visitors from someplace else. If I had to point to specific structures on Earth that I thought gave evidence that we’d been visited in the remote past, I’d point to those three.” Alexander grinned suddenly. “Of course, don’t tell my colleagues that. I’d be black-balled from the Loyal Fraternity of Diggers and Pot-Shard Hunters if they knew. Stripped of my official shovel and whisk broom and drummed out of the corps.”
“My lips are sealed. But tell me, off the record. Is there really any chance that aliens built those places?”
Alexander
