Chapter No.17

That evening, they boarded the spaceplane and prepared for the beginning of a risky mission to the Moon. Carl fired up the jet engines to roll the craft down the runway before bringing it up to takeoff speed. Once airborne, he pulled back on the stick and increased power to get to the stratosphere. When he had it nearly at the top of the atmosphere, he fired the rocket engines to head to the Moon.

When the rocket engines shut down, everyone relaxed.

"I've been thinking about how this alien contraption is making people vanish," Margaret said. "The aliens must have discovered exotic nuclei that when blasted out at near the speed of light would cause some sort of strange quantum flip."

"Yes, and it creates anti neutrinos of the tau favor," Carl replied. "If we were quantum physicists, we might be able to come up with an idea of how that actually works."

"So, how could we reverse the effect?"

"If what you said is the process that makes people vanish, maybe it takes different nuclei, ones that are created at lower energies."

"The only thing we know for sure is that people can reappear. It's up to us to figure out how to make all of them do that. Hopefully, we'll be able to understand how to make the adjustments on the alien device."

"I think this whole idea is a stretch," Janet said. "We'll be lucky not to make the people we just put on Earth vanish."

"That's why we need three heads for this project. You at least know something about the alien language after you translated the signal from it."

"That was a pure guess," Janet said. "But it did come up with a reasonable translation."

"Well, we may as well relax," Carl said. "We have a couple of days to think about it."

The three scientists, forced to be astronauts, mostly relaxed during those days of waiting. They realized that the successful completion of this mission to save mankind was in their laps. Better to get plenty of rest and stay positive, otherwise they could get depressed.

As the spaceplane approached the Moon on the third day, Carl began the process of determining the best approach to the alien device that was in the center of a fairly large crater. He wanted to get as close as possible to what he thought was an entrance to the device so that they didn't have to waste too much oxygen to get to it. That required a lot of positioning-rocket blasts. The gravity of the Moon is one third that of the Earth, but it still presented a problem landing a spacecraft because there's little atmosphere to offer a gliding effect.

He managed to get the spaceplane down on the surface in one piece and about fifty yards from the peak in the center of the crater.

"We're here," he said in teasing manner."

"Very funny!" Janet replied. "We don't even know if we're in the right place."

"There's only one way to find out."

"Unfortunately," she said with a mocking frown,

They spent an hour getting into their spacesuits. There could be no mistakes in how well they were properly fitted. They would be walking out in a vacuum on a sattelite that offered no tolerance for mistakes.

They literally hopped over to the crater's peak and began searching for an entrance. After moving around the rocky artifact, something that resulted from an ancient violent collision, they came upon a way in.

"Hey!" Janet exclaimed. "This looks like it might be a door."

They came over to where she was and studied what looked like a metal door.

Janet used a handheld scanner to probe it. After a few minutes, she revealed her scan results. "It's not any alloy I'm familiar with. "It's made of some weird titanium alloy."

"I wonder how it opens," Margaret said.

Carl placed his gloved hand on it and it suddenly swung open. "That's how."

"Very funny!"

They entered a tunnel that penetrated deep into the peak using their helmet mounted lanterns to see where they were going. The lamp beams swung wildly around as they moved along the tunnel. Eventually, they entered a large cavern.

The cavern contained all sorts of strange devices, none of which they were familiar with.

"Well, this certainly looks complicated," Margaret commented. "How are we going to figure out this bunch of crazy alien equipment?"

"Knowing what it can do might help us," Carl said. He pointed to a large concave metal plate that sat on top of a large round ball. "That has to be the reflector that expels cosmic rays."

Janet walked over to a large circular wheel with spokes that resembled a large chronograph. "This thing has strange symbols on it. Maybe this is how they control this."

Margaret walked over to her and looked over the device. "We'll have to figure out what those symbols mean."

"I think this thing is powered by a fusion device," Carl said after scanning it with a handheld device. 'I'm getting readings for neutrinos consistent with that."

"How could they create a fusion device without a source of heat?" Margaret asked.

"I don't know. Maybe they've found a way to make a device that doesn't require that."

After that exchange, they remained quiet. After the silent interlude, Janet had something to report. "The symbols on this device match some of the translations we came up with from the radio signal."

Carl walked over to where they were. "So, what does this thing do?"

"The outer rim has what we think are time numbers, sort of like a clock. The inner wheel is probably a timer." She pointed to a switch. "We think this switch starts the process."

Carl looked it over for several minutes before saying anything. "How do we know which way to set it to make people reappear?"

"I don't think it works like that. It's more like a time machine."

He had to think about that for a few moments. "So, you think we can go back to when this thing did its thing and stop it from happening?"

"No. I think we can cause the effect to reverse by erasing what had happened."

"Now, you're confusing me. How could we erase what happened without changing time?"

"I think it's because time is relative. What this outer wheel displays is relativistic time. If we set it back to this red mark, then it will reverse what happened without actually changing our time."

"Wow! That's a wild concept. These aliens must be a lot smarter than we realized."

"I think they screwed up," she said. "They sent humans too far back in time."

"So, how can we do this reversal without destroying ourselves? If you're right, this thing is going to shoot out tons of cosmic rays that will result in tau neutrinos when they impact Earth's atmosphere. It won't be the neutrinos that cause trouble but the large exotic nuclei that this thing will create."

"I don't really know. We can set the time for the longest period possible and then get the hell out of here as fast as we can."

Carl moved the wheel backwards to the red mark. "Okay, Let's boogie!"

Janet looked at Margaret. "I hope the hell we got this right."

"I guess we'll soon find out," she said before she moved the lever to start the process.

The three scientists made a hasty departure from the alien device in the peak. They got back to the spaceplane and Carl wasted no time in powering it up to lift off the Moon and move away. He concentrated on getting the spaceplane around to the dark side of the Moon, hoping that it would shield them.

Despite all of that, they saw a brilliant flash of light and knew that the device had done its thing. The question is, did it fix the problem? The answer to that question ended up being more bizarre than they every imagined.