T. G. slowly opened his eyes to find himself on his back, staring up into utter blackness. He sat up, then stood, hoisting the artifact into place over his shoulder. He was dressed in his pajamas. His mind fought to grasp his surroundings, to understand how he had come to be in their midst, but failed.
He stood on a vast featureless plain, one that was utterly flat, totally smooth, devoid of either color or life. He looked off into every direction, seeing only the extreme monotony of the terrain as it extended into infinite distance. There was no curvature, as one would expect of a planetary surface, no actual horizon—only the haze of distance unimpeded by any obstacle—and without landmarks, he could not begin to determine how far he could see before the failing clarity fogged his perception. He realized that blinking did not interrupt his vision—whether his eyes were closed or open, his hand held up before them or not, he saw just the same. He began to realize that there was no real illumination, no light that he could see, yet somehow still he could see, with his mind as if with his eyes.
A wind whipped up, tossing his hair. He felt a palpable isolation more intense than any he had known in his life. He felt even more lonely than when his mother and father had died.
It was a deep aloneness, one that permeated his being down to its most basic and primal foundation. As he looked from side to side, straining to make out anything that might have stood in the distance, he realized that he was the sole occupant of whatever place this was. Insecurity built within him, drawing its strength from all of the fears and confusion of his childhood.
“Hello, T. G.,” a voice suddenly said, coming from right behind him.
Startled, he spun, expecting to come face to face with whoever had spoken. Instead, he found himself still alone, shaking slightly from the adrenaline rush. Disorientation tried to gain a foothold and he began to lose his balance, but T. G. fought it back, focusing his reason upon the impossible situation at hand. Then his eyes detected a tiny, dark shape emerging from the uncertainty some miles away, a human shape. “Hello,” T. G. tried, speaking quietly, experimenting.
“Remember this place,” the voice continued. T. G. realized that sound carried most oddly here, that distance and volume and clarity had no quarrel with one another. He stared intently at the tiny faraway shape, knowing that it was the source of the words, watching as it steadily and patiently walked closer.
“Where am I?” he asked it.
“Nowhere.”
“Why am I nowhere?”
“This is all there is.”
T. G. blinked. Suddenly, the figure stood right before him, barely more than an arm’s length away. The stark white of his hair and the blue of his robe contrasted harshly with the warm bronze of his skin. His eyes were kind yet intensely powerful, his expression tranquil yet determined.
“How long have I been here?” T. G. asked.
“No time, T. G.”
He glanced around. “I … I don’t want to be here,” he said.
“You’re not. Nothing … is.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You will.” The cold wind increased, but silently. No whistling in the trees, no roar in the distance. The man’s hair and robes danced and billowed as he spoke. “All that must be, will be. The dawn declares the end, from eternity to eternity.”
“Who are you?”
“I’m someone who is here to keep you safe.”
“I feel so … alone.”
“You’re never alone.” There was a pause. The man gestured toward the horizon. “Look. It is time.”
As T. G. watched, the vast flat plain began to drop from sight in the distance, curving away from him, sloping down in all directions as if it were melting over something immense and spherical. It then fell away beneath his feet, and he found himself floating free, hanging like a feather on air. Suddenly, from nowhere, rose a silent and engulfing deluge of duration and motion and substance, a newborn current of actuality, sweeping him along violently as it sought its limits. A brilliant light flared to life directly above, a light of warmth and brilliance like none T. G. had ever known, rolling back upon itself the blackness that had been overhead. Vertigo overtook his senses and he began to black out. He heard the roar of waters, already intense and growing louder. Closer.
The phone rang.
T. G.’s eyes flashed open and were immediately filled with the textured white ceiling of his bedroom. Gray daylight flooded through the curtained window. He was utterly awake, alert and ready, his heart pounding in his chest as if he had just run up a flight of stairs. Cold sweat chilled his forehead. He rolled to one side and reached for the bedside table as the phone once again sounded.
“Hello?”
“T. G.? It’s almost four o’clock. We’re waiting for you. Are you coming?”
He sat up, rubbing his eyes. “Oh … yes, Doctor. I am … I’m sorry …”
“Listen. We’ve come up with something. Something incredible. Please get down here right away, and bring the artifact with you.”
“What? What did you—”
“It would be better if you just got here as quickly as you can. Hurry.”
“Okay. I’ll be right there. Fifteen minutes.” Hanging up, he clicked the hook and dialed a number that long had been precious to him. There was a ring.
“Hello?” a welcome voice asked.
“Jenni?”
“T. G.? Are you okay? I tried to call you last night, late. David called, looking for you. He said something about you vanishing in Colorado and suddenly being back here—”
“Is he okay?”
“I think so. He wasn’t on the phone for long. What’s going on? Why are you back and he’s not?”
“Long story. Look, will you be home tonight? I really need to talk. Something’s happened and … well, it’s just a long story.”
There was a note of hesitation in her voice. “I’ll be here.”
“Listen. Call David’s mom and tell her I said everything’s okay, so she can tell him if he calls …” His words fell away. “Never mind. I’ll call her later.”
“Well, okay.”
“I have to go, but I’ll call you in a little bit.”
“There’s a lot I want to talk about too,” the girl said.
After a quick good-bye, he hung up, seeing her face before him. Perhaps it was not too late, after all.
T. G. realized that the apartment was even colder than when he had gone to bed. Wrapping in his bedspread, he walked to the thermostat. It was set for eighty, yet the room had dropped all the way to the high forties. He held his hand up into the register airflow and found the stream to be quite warm.
“I don’t get it,” he said. He glanced at the windows and saw no movement of the thick, white drapes. They were shut, just as they were supposed to be. So why is it so cold in here? A nervous chill coursed down his spine, forcing a shiver from his shoulder blades. The whole place suddenly gave him the creeps.
He hurriedly dressed, grabbed the artifact and his long coat, and left, pausing in the hallway as he locked the door. He was glad to be out of the apartment. The hall was cold as well, but then it always was. He ran down the three flights of stairs, as he had so many times, into the building’s ornate, aged entry hall. Walking past the mailboxes, he paused to check his own and found it empty.
“T. G.?” a voice asked. “I thought that was you.” He turned to see the smiling, elderly Mrs. Lucreia, dressed in a floral robe, leaning out of her apartment door and into the hall. She was the oldest of the building’s residents, having lived there since a year after her marriage in 1921. Her husband had passed away during the war years, and she had never remarried. For her the world had changed little since then—the crooning of Bing Crosby usually filled her apartment, she still listened to an old 1930s-model Philco radio, and she even left her door unlocked most of the time. She was one of the friendliest people T. G. had ever met, and he had developed quite an affection for her. “I thought you were going to be gone until next weekend.”
“Well, I thought so too. But it didn’t turn out that way.”
“How is that pretty girlfriend of yours?” As she spoke, T. G. noticed the slight fog of her breath as it danced fleetingly before her.
“We had a fight … and, well, I think that might have been it as far as anything serious goes. I don’t know. I did call her, just now, actually …”
“Oh no, dear,” she frowned. “Please … you two make such a sweet couple. Work things out, okay?”
He smiled, looking into the bright eyes of the kind woman. “Yes ma’am … I’ll see what I can do.”
“Oh … I almost forgot the reason I came out here in the first place. Is your apartment cold?”
“Yes, very.”
“I tried calling the super, but he can’t get out here until tonight. It’s never been this cold in here … not even when the old coal boiler had to be taken out, back in ’56. I thought once we went to gas this kind of thing wasn’t supposed to happen. At least that’s what they said …”
He cut her off gently, knowing from past experience that she would keep him there in conversation all day if he let her. “Boy,” he said, looking at his watch, “you know, I’m late for an appointment at the school, Mrs. Lucreia. Let me know what the super says once he gets here … tell him my apartment’s cold too.”
“I’ll talk to you later. Stay inside and try to keep warm.” He hurried away, down the stairs and out the front entrance, into the snow.
“Sorry I’m so late,” T. G. apologized, walking into the professor’s office. He loved the feel of the place—hundreds of books lined the walls, along with statuettes and curios from Dr. Abelwhite’s many travels. It was a busy room, assembled by a busy woman who was seated at her desk, speaking with another professor who sat across from her.
“Ah, T. G. Excellent. I think you know Professor Eugene Kerrod,” she said, indicating the white-headed, white-bearded, heavyset man. They shook hands.
“Yes,” T. G. remembered. “We met once.”
“So this is the artifact?” the man asked, indicating the object hanging from T. G.’s shoulder. “Forgive me for being so abrupt, but this is rather extraordinary.”
“Yes, this is it,” T. G. answered, swinging the object outward so that the man could get a better look. “I brought it here last night and—”
The man interrupted, speaking excitedly to Professor Abelwhite. “May we get this right to Dr. Leighton? Now that I see it in person, I’m more certain than ever.”
“Of course,” she said, picking up the phone.
“What … what is it?” T. G. asked, puzzled. Professor Kerrod motioned for him to remain quiet and wait.
She dialed an extension then spoke. “We have it with us now. We’re on our way up.” She hung up then began toward the door. “Come along, gentlemen.”
“Dr. Abelwhite,” T. G. began as they made their way down the largely empty corridor, “what’s the big deal? What did you figure out?”
“We’re not sure yet,” she said. “Professor Kerrod suggested I send some of the detail photos I took last night up to Dr. Leighton’s office, and he got back to me about fifteen minutes later. He seems to have at least a partial answer to our little puzzle, but he hasn’t fully shared it with us as yet. He said he didn’t want to sound foolish, so first he wants to examine your find personally.”
“But he’s a paleontologist.”
“Wait just a few more minutes. Perhaps you’ll have an answer.”
T. G. nodded, hating to wait. Patience had never been a virtue of his.
They entered the faculty conference room. Dr. Corbridge Leighton was seated at the head of the table, looking over some notes. He was an intriguing figure, his well-lined leathery face and pale hair betraying decades spent under the Montana sun. He stood as the others entered, holding a pipe in his teeth, his right arm outstretched.
“Come in, come in,” he said. “So … you must be Mr. Shass.”
“Yes sir,” T. G. replied, extending a hand and shaking Leighton’s.
Dr. Abelwhite, wanting to cut to the chase for T. G.’s sake, indicated the artifact. “This is the object, Corey. I certainly hope we aren’t wasting your time.”
After Kerrod swept a few papers aside, T. G. set the heavy object on the large, polished walnut table that took up most of the room. Leighton leaned closer, adjusting his glasses, intently studying the twenty-four-inch leather-bound mystery. The others took seats at the table and sat quietly, watching him.
He puffed on his pipe a few times, never taking his eyes from the artifact. T. G. barely breathed as he watched the man, wondering what was firing in his mind as sharply analytical wheels went into motion. The man ran his fingers along the object, turning it over now and again, studying its every detail.
“Incredible,” Leighton finally said, taking his seat. He opened a textbook he had brought with him, then sorted through a few notes in an adjacent file folder. After looking at an entry in the textbook, his twinkling, sapphire eyes pivoted upward toward the others. He took a deep breath then sat silently, undecided whether to speak.
“What is it, Corbridge?” Kerrod implored him. “Was I right?”
“Yes, my friend.” He looked at T. G. “Son, you have made the scientific and archeological find of the century.” The young man’s eyes widened.
“Say it, Corey,” Abelwhite prodded.
He removed his glasses, then puffed on his pipe yet again. T. G. looked at the others, then at Leighton once more.
“The hide that covers this artifact,” the man began, “is ceratopsian. There is no mistake.”
“Inconceivable,” Abelwhite said, her voice low and incredulous.
“Yes,” Leighton continued. “I thought so too, after seeing your pictures. But a find in southern Wyoming just last year gave us an almost perfect impression of the ventral skin of a juvenile Torosaurus gladius, the first we’ve found. Much like triceratops, but a bit larger. Until then, in fact, the genus itself was known only from a pair of skulls that had been found, and one of those was incomplete.” He stood. “Not only was the new skeleton complete … but beneath it, preserved in the rock, was an impression of much of the skin of the neck and forward abdomen. It matches this precisely,” he concluded, indicating the artifact.
T. G. was stunned. “Dinosaur skin? How can that—”
“When I saw it,” Kerrod began, “I knew it was unlike the dermis of any known living species. Those bony nodules and that pebbled scale pattern don’t exist in nature. Not anymore.”
Dr. Abelwhite looked to Leighton, hoping for an answer. “So what does it mean, Corey? Is this artifact millions of years old? Were there men alive back then to make it, if it is? Why isn’t it dust by now? Or were there a few dinosaurs around until recently, waiting to be made into luggage?”
He smiled. “I doubt that. In a part of Siberia, so many woolly mammoths are frozen in the tundra that their remains make up more than half the soil. Hunters have long fed their sled dogs on the mammoths’ frozen meat, although it isn’t fit for human consumption. I suppose it’s possible that this hide was recovered in the same way, but the evidence we have makes that seem unlikely. So far as we know, the genus represented here existed nowhere other than Wyoming, and frozen tundra has been a bit scarce there for a very, very long time.”
Kerrod spoke up. “Not to mention that those mammoths lived only a few tens of thousands of years ago. Millions are another matter …”
“And this hide,” Leighton added, once more leaning over the object, “gives the appearance of having been taken from a living animal. For it to have been tooled this way, with the flexibility it had to possess then, and still possesses now … this could only have been done if the creature had been freshly slaughtered and the hide tanned immediately.”
“But the apparent age of the artifact …,” Abelwhite began. “It seems no more than a few decades old, if that. T. G. believes that it was somehow preserved … sealed in a protective container of some kind.”
“Aliens?” Kerrod threw out, only half kidding.
Leighton smiled. “Oh, now don’t let our friend Carl hear you say that.”
“My pictures,” T. G. questioned, looking to her. “Did you develop them?”
Abelwhite shook her head. “They were all overexposed, T. G. No images at all. Something ruined the film. Whatever photographic evidence you may have had of the artifact’s place of origin is gone.”
His eyes fell. “What about the characters inscribed in the leather? What does it say? Anything?”
She shook her head. “As far as I’ve been able to determine, it isn’t even close to any language ever known to have been written on Earth. I’m not a linguist, but I’ve seen a lot of writing in my day. I’ve found no root language to compare it to. Nothing.”
Kerrod made a warbled whistle under his breath, imitating the sound of a flying saucer in an old science-fiction movie. Leighton and Abelwhite both smiled. Both wondered if he was not so far from the truth.
“Quite a mystery we have on our hands, my friends,” Leighton went on, puffing on his pipe. “A jeweled relic, apparently no more than half a century old, covered in a seamless dinosaur hide with no apparent access to the interior and tooled with words in a language never recorded by man.”
“The jewels,” T. G. asked. “The amber things all over it. What are they?”
“There we have an answer,” Abelwhite said. “But even so, that holds another puzzle, I’m afraid. We ran a spectral analysis this morning. As I suspected, they’re not amber.”
“What are they?” T. G. asked, on the edge of his seat.
“Gold.”
“Gold? But they’re clear … you can see right through them. I mean, gold isn’t—”
“These must be atomically pure … so absolutely pure they’re transparent. There’s no known way to produce gold like this from any ore ever found on the planet. There are always some impurities, if only on the molecular level. In thicknesses like these, no. We cannot produce gold like this.”
“How can gold be transparent? Just because it’s pure—”
“You’ve seen it, T. G.,” Kerrod chimed in. “Remember the visors on the helmets of the astronauts who walked on the moon? They were coated with a protective layer of gold, one only microns thick so as to allow light to pass through. It served as a radiation filter and heat reflector. It was an awfully thin layer, I’ll grant you, but transparent it was.” He looked at the relic. “But she’s right. Transparent ‘nuggets’ as thick as those just can’t be. Not by any process known to man, now or ever.”
T. G. stared at the artifact, excited and fearful. “So now what?”
“I announce my retirement and go fishing,” Leighton smiled.
“We open it up,” Abelwhite said. “We see what’s inside.”
It had not gone well.
Kerrod and Leighton, with pressing appointments to keep, momentarily left the artifact in the very capable hands of their esteemed fellow educator and promised to return as soon as they were able. Alone in the controlled stillness of the sciences lab, T. G. and Abelwhite huddled over the object with a battery of swing-arm lamps, macro-focus cameras, and magnifying lenses arranged in place around them.
“This doesn’t make any sense,” the woman said to T. G., who sat next to her at the worktable. Leaning back, she slammed the handle of her scalpel to the hard tabletop and sighed loudly.
“It won’t cut,” she said in frustration. “The blade won’t even make an impression in the hide, despite the fact that it’s pliable to the touch. It’s as if the more pressure one applies, the firmer the material resists. Going the other way, I even tried a very light touch … but whatever I do, it just dulls the blade.”
“What could cause that?” T. G. asked.
“Nothing,” she said in disbelief, turning to him. “Nothing can. It’s impossible … which seems more and more a common trait with this thing. A few minutes ago, while you were in the other room, I put a drop of sulfuric acid onto it, near the end, here,” she indicated. “It rolled off like water on a duck’s back, then proceeded to eat a decent pit into my table.”
“Well, what’s Plan B? How else do we open it?”
She directed T. G. to carry the relic over to an oil-cooled band saw normally used to section geodes and other mineral specimens. He hesitated, eyeing the toothy blade.
“Must we?” he asked. “I hate the thought of just ripping into it like that.”
“Maybe there isn’t anything inside it. Maybe it’s just a solid, purely decorative thing used in some sort of ritual.”
“Possibly,” she agreed. “But the gold, the hide it’s covered with, and the fact that it won’t yield so much as a scratch to a scalpel all seem to indicate that a technology beyond our own fashioned it. I can’t believe something so sophisticated could be but a talisman. But it’s your decision, T. G. If you want to leave well enough alone, we will.”
He ran a hand along the cool surface of the artifact, hoping to stumble upon some way into it that their microscopic examination had missed. It continued its silence, its secrets held within.
“Okay,” he agreed. “Go ahead.” He helped to position the object on the saw table as she adjusted the guide plate and blade height. Handing T. G. a pair of safety goggles, she placed her own over her eyes and flipped the switch on the saw. It roared to life, its thin blade becoming a blur as it reached full speed.
“I’m going to try to slice into it near the end of the object, here,” she pointed, shouting over the roar of the saw. “I’ll take the very end off. That should do the least damage to whatever’s inside.” She pressed the artifact forward, rolling it slightly until it came into contact with the flashing teeth of the saw blade.
The blade screamed as pressure was applied. T. G. put his hands over his ears as the piercing sound bored through his eardrums and into his skull. She pressed harder and the metal of the saw blade whined louder in protest, making a sound T. G. did not know metal could make. After a few seconds, she pulled back to examine the point at which the hide had contacted the cutting edge. There was not a mark on it, nothing to show that they had even tried to penetrate it.
“Well, I’ll be a—” she said, tossing her goggles aside in defeat.
T. G. moved over to take a closer look at the still-pristine object. “I don’t get it. You’ve been all over the world. There has to be something you can think of that explains this. I mean—”
“We’re in uncharted territory now, T. G. I can’t begin to explain this. All my years of experience and research put together mean nothing right now, not when something like this happens.”
He noticed the saw blade. “Look,” he whispered, reaching out to run a fingertip along its edge. At once he jerked his hand away and put the burned finger into his mouth. “Aaahhhh … it’s hot!”
Abelwhite looked closer. The blade was discolored, with odd blues splotched along its length. The little detail T. G. had been trying to point out was that its teeth were gone.
“That was a tempered carbon blade,” she said slowly, shaking her head in bewilderment. “I’ve cut everything from granite to titanium to spacecraft-grade steel on that saw. If I weren’t so fascinated, I think I’d be scared to death.”
“Maybe we should just leave well enough alone,” T. G. suggested, shaking his head in stunned amazement. “I guess we can just let some museum display it as it is. I mean, I’d love to see what’s inside it as much as you would, but—”
“T. G., I don’t think you understand,” Abelwhite began, gripping him by the upper arm, her tone intense. “This thing shouldn’t have stood against that blade for a millisecond. What we just saw was a violation of physical law. Something got in the way, keeping the blade from touching the leather … something harder than any material we know of. Something invisible—”
“But I can feel the grain of the leather with my fingers,” he said, rubbing it.
“Whatever is there is there only when it needs to be, to protect the object. That carbon blade never touched the dinosaur skin. It couldn’t have. It would have gone through it like butter.” She walked over to a table and took a seat, then momentarily removed her glasses and rubbed her tired eyes with one hand.
“And so much for pulling a genetic sample of the hide,” she continued, making a few notes on a yellow pad. “Poor Eugene was positively drooling at the prospect.” She almost smiled. “I’m getting too old for this. Everything I’ve ever unearthed … everything anybody’s ever unearthed … has always been made of known materials, has always obeyed the laws of action/reaction, and has always aged as one would expect according to the second law of thermodynamics. This thing looks as new as the day it was made. And at this point, since all the rules have been thrown out the window, I’d be willing to concede that that day could have been millions of years ago.”
“Millions?” T. G. whispered under his breath.
“Maybe billions. One thing’s for sure. This object, whatever it is, is utterly priceless. Not only to the archeological community, but to all of science. It holds a mystery for practically every field of study. It’s covered with tanned dinosaur hide. It’s studded with a form of gold that is impossible for our technology to produce, even in the laboratory. It’s inscribed with a language that as far as I can tell is totally unknown to man. It has some kind of protective layer about it that kicks in only when it needs to. And given all that, it could contain anything from a compact thermonuclear device to a weapon that’s millions of years ahead of anything we know. For all we know it may even contain the original blueprints for Earth, or God’s home address and telephone number.”
“Maybe it’s a specimen container,” T. G. offered. “Think of what it might hold. Wouldn’t that be something … maybe a living dinosaur egg in suspended animation or something.”
“Or what if it contains a disease organism or virus … maybe even one that wiped out the dinosaurs. That’d answer that little puzzle, wouldn’t it?” She threw down her pencil and hung her head, rubbing her eyes. “I’ve been so foolish. Just goes to prove that you’re never too old to do stupid things. If this thing really is that old, we dare not open it, not even if we find a way to. Not unless it’s done under strictly controlled conditions.” She rubbed her eyes again, then the back of her neck. “I’ve been thinking like an archaeologist, not like a pure scientist. A virus that was commonplace so long ago would have disappeared by now or at the very least would have mutated. We’d have no defense whatsoever against its original form. This object needs to go into a quarantine facility before we even think of trying to open it again.”
“Do you think Professor Kerrod’s right?”
“About what, T. G.?”
“Aliens. Maybe this thing comes from somewhere else. Sure would explain a lot, wouldn’t it? I mean, I’ve read about ‘lost time’ and all. It’s a UFO phenomenon, and I’ve got three days to account for.”
She smiled. “I’m not ready to give up on an earthbound explanation, not just yet. But ask me again tomorrow.”
T. G. paused to wash his hands in the table’s sink. “So what do we do with it?” he wondered, running cold water over his burned finger.
“I’ve been thinking about that,” Abelwhite said, nodding. “For now, I’d suggest we lock it in the specimen vault downstairs. The room’s got high security and very limited access. Then I’ll make a few calls and get it into a proper quarantine lab. I think we need to bring others in on this … the combined experience of some of the leading minds in science may help to unlock some of the mysteries shrouding your discovery.”
“Yeah,” he agreed. “I don’t guess it can stay our little secret forever. How long do you think it’ll take for news of this to get out?”
They both smiled, looking at the silent enigma on the table. T. G. had the disquieting feeling that it was looking back.