Chapter Three
“Human…oid?”
Joseph was awakened by the fabulous aroma of breakfast wafting through the house. As he entered the kitchen, Sharianna turned from the fridge and put a gallon of milk on the table. “We thought you were going to sleep all day.”
“Where is Dad?” Joseph asked, as he looked out the window toward the barn.
“He left early this morning to get the backhoe, saying that you needed some sleep. Sit down and have some French toast,” answered Mom.
Sophia put the source of the exquisite aroma on the table and sat down next to Joseph. “Tell us about your adventure,” she encouraged, with authentic interest.
“You have to come out and see this giant statue-thing we found,” Joseph declared, as he began to rise from his chair.
“I want to see it!” exclaimed Sharianna, as she headed for the door.
Mom put her hand on Joseph’s shoulder. “It will still be there after breakfast. Come and sit down Sharianna. Now, tell us everything,” she entreated with earnestness. She didn’t tell Joseph and Sharianna that Thomas couldn’t wait to tell her everything and had even drug her out to the barn long before dawn to unveil the figure with all the excitement of a five year old on Christmas morning.
They ate, and the girls listened intently.
Finally, when breakfast was done and the whole adventure was fully expounded, Mom said: “Well, let’s go out and see this strange thing.”
“Prepare yourselves…” Joseph admonished with great drama, as he opened the man-door next to the two large main doors of the barn. Sharianna and Mom stepped into the dim interior. “The aberration!” announced Joseph, as he dramatical-ly turned on the lights.
“Wow…” Sophia had meant to let out an exaggerated gasp to go along with Joseph’s theatrical introduction, but she realized that her amazement was as strong now, as when Thomas had shown her the giant hours earlier.
Joseph walked all around the figure showing them every detail. “See, it doesn’t even dent or scratch.” He took a hammer from the workbench and banged it on the side of the figure.
Joseph grabbed a stepladder off the wall and leaned it against the giant. “You have to look at it close up.” He swung a step stool over and climbed up. Putting his face against the side of the figure, he held his hands up to the sides of his face and peered into the depths. “Like this.”
Sophia climbed the stepladder and peered into the metal. “It does look never-ending,” she concurred with amazement.
“Let me see,” demanded Sharianna, as she pulled on Joseph’s pant leg. He climbed down and let her have the stool.
“I wonder what could be inside,” Mom mused mysteriously, as she climbed down the ladder and looked up at the figure. “Maybe some treasure, or a message from another world.” She smiled as Joseph’s face lit up. She knew he loved mysteries, treasure, and adventure.
“You think it might be from outer space?” questioned Sharianna, with excitement overflowing in her voice.
“It might be,” whispered Mom furtively.
“Let’s see if we can cut it open,” proposed Joseph, as he prepared the welding torch and put on the goggles and gloves. He was proud that he was the only seventh grader he knew who could use a cutting torch and a welder. After about five minutes of holding the flame to the side of the figure, Joseph turned off the torch and looked at the metal. “It’s not even red.”
Sophia waved her hand over the metal, and then tentatively touched it. “It’s still cool,” she observed with wonderment.
They heard the sound of wheels rolling over the gravel driveway.
“That sounds like Dad in the dump truck,” announced Joseph.
They turned and looked when the door opened and Thomas stepped through. Looking at Sophia in her nightgown he whistled loudly. “You pretty....”
Suddenly, his mouth dropped open as his eyes became riveted on the head of the giant figure lying on the trailer. Joseph, Sharianna and Mom turned to see a four-foot round door silently slide open on the side of the giant’s head where there had previously been no seams or other indication that a door existed. They could see light emanating from the interior.
Thomas stepped forward and put a hand on Sharianna’s shoulder and the other on Joseph’s.
After a few moments of anxiously staring at the doorway, Joseph deduced: “I think Dad’s whistle activated it.”
“I think you’re right,” responded Mom.
Dad leaned the ladder up into the doorway. “Stay here,” he commanded, as he began to climb the ladder.
“Wait, what if there is something in there?” Mom questioned tensely.
“I doubt it, it must have been buried for hundreds of years,” Dad replied with a casual tone, while his heart pounded in his throat as he continued up the ladder.
“It looks like some kind of control room, and it is empty,” called out Dad, from the top of the ladder. “I’m going in.” He disappeared from their view as he stepped over the top rung of the ladder into the control room.
“I’m coming up!” called out Sharianna and Joseph, almost simultaneously.
“No,” countered Mom, as she caught them each by the arm, “It could be dangerous.”
Dad stuck his head out the door. “It will be alright. You can all come up. I think it is safe as long as we don’t touch anything.”
Joseph wanted to fly up the ladder to see what was inside but he stepped aside: “I’ll hold the ladder for you, Mom.”
Joseph’s mom was so proud of him, she almost forgot her apprehension. She stepped up eagerly. She couldn’t believe how curious she was to see the inside.
“Thank you, Joseph. Will you hold the ladder for Sharianna too?”
“Okay,” agreed Joseph, reluctantly.
Sharianna smiled sweetly at Joseph. “Thank you,” she condescended surreptitiously, as she paused with her foot on the bottom step and nodded her head as if she were a privileged royal princess, delighting in her preeminence over her subjects, and knowing that even the slightest delay was practically unbearable for Joseph.
Joseph was so excited to see the inside of the robot that he could hardly wait for Sharianna. She seemed to climb so slowly that he felt as if she might never reach the top. He could bear it no longer when she paused near the top and glanced down at him with her smile. Joseph shook the ladder slightly and she scrambled quickly over the top. Joseph flew up the ladder so fast that he almost passed her in the doorway.
The interior was small, only about twelve feet across with two control chairs side by side, with joysticks on each armrest, positioned on the same level as the doorway. Directly behind the captain’s chairs, and two steps higher were two other chairs right against the back of the sphere, with the outline of an oval door between them. Directly in front of the control chairs and four steps lower was another small level with a sofa-like bench.
There was a wide screen directly in front of the captain’s chairs, angled slightly like a desktop, with a beautiful display of earth’s solar system, the sun, and each of the planets with their moons. Earth was lit up. It even showed the asteroid belt and the position of many comets. Below these screens were several lights labeled with strange symbols and pictures.
The entire wall in front of the chairs, from the midpoint of the ceiling all the way to the floor of the lower level and from the door on the left around to the right of the control chairs, was a huge curved view screen. The view was so perfect that at first they thought the hull of the ship must be transparent from the inside. In the exact center of the screen was a small red dot.
“Look.” Dad pointed to the view screen. They saw Percy stop in the doorway of the barn and look in. With a slight whine, he laid down.
“That’s remarkable, I could hear Percy whine as if I were standing right with him,” Mom observed. Percy was black with a white patch on his chest and white paws. Their best guess was that he was half Labrador Retrieve
r and half Border Collie. They had found him a few years earlier, as a lost pup in the hills.
Joseph sat down in the left control chair, then quickly stood up again and looked on the chair. Reaching out, he grabbed three beautiful, smooth, rounded stones and held them out for his dad to see.
“Interesting,” Dad commented.
“Look.” Sharianna held out a similar stone. “I found this one right by the door.”
“What could they mean?” puzzled Mom.
A disconcerting thought occurred to Joseph. “How could these round stones be sitting on the seat?”
“Someone left them there.” Sharianna’s tone intimated: ‘why do you ask such stupid questions?’
Joseph looked at his dad while rolling the stones around in his hand.
Suddenly, Dad’s jaw dropped and his eyes widened as he looked around the room a little nervously.
Witnessing this strange interchange, Mom’s penetrating look captured Dad’s eye. “What?” demanded Mom with unquestiona-ble authority.
“The stones would have fallen off the seat during the crash landing,” he explained.
“Maybe they were placed there after it landed,” theorized Sharianna.
“But we rolled the robot completely over when we loaded it onto the trailer,” countered Joseph. “And the robot was lying on its face when we found it—the chairs would have been hanging upside down.”
“They must have landed on the chair when you rolled it over,” proposed Sharianna.
Joseph looked up at the smooth, domed, ceiling. “When we found the robot, it was on its face; if they were lying on the ceiling, then they would have slid along the curved surface as we rolled it over. All four of them would have ended up on the floor by the door.”
This time it was Sharianna who looked around wondering who could have put the rocks on the chair since the day before.
“Well, I don’t see any aliens in here now,” Mom stated, “Surely, if the ship was buried for hundreds of years there couldn’t be anyone still on board. Could there?”
“I wouldn’t think so,” replied Dad.
Dad sat down in the right control chair at the same time that Sharianna made an attempt to slip past Joseph and take the left. Joseph was slightly faster, and besides, he had been anticipating her move.
Joseph set the stones on the console, as he settled into the chair.
“Every button and switch has some kind of symbols labeling it,” observed Sharianna.
“Yeah, but what do they mean?” asked Mom, as she leaned over Joseph to get a better look. As she looked at the console something occurred to her: “If this…ship? Was buried for hundreds of years, then why is everything in here so clean? Shouldn’t it be all dusty?”
“The door was perfectly sealed,” reasoned Joseph.
“Then wouldn’t the air be stale?” she persisted.
“That’s a very good point,” responded Dad. “I think this…” he gestured at the ship with his hand while he looked at Joseph, searching for the right descriptive word.
“Robo-ship,” interjected Joseph.
“Yes, I think this Robo-ship has been fully functional the whole time it was buried. It must have been maintaining a breathable atmosphere.”
“I can tell what these mean,” declared Joseph, pointing to the labels in front of the left joystick on his chair.
“And these are exactly the same,” observed Dad, pointing to those on his chair.
Surrounding each joystick were arrows pointing in different directions. In the top of the joysticks, next to a roller button, were drawings of the robot’s hands. On the console in between the seats was a switch with two drawings, one of the robot in a vertical position and the other horizontal. Joseph flipped the switch.
“Hey, don’t touch anything,” reiterated Dad.
“Okay,” replied Joseph.
“Here’s another one I can understand.” Dad pointed to a large toggle switch between the chairs labeled with line drawings of a chair on each side of the switch. “I’m sure this one switches control from one chair to the other.” As he pointed to the switch, he reached out and flipped it in the direction of his chair.
“Hey!” Mom tried to muster her scolding voice: “You said not to touch anything.” But her heart was pounding with the excitement of the adventure and new discovery and she realized that she liked it. She really wanted to experiment and see what some of the controls and buttons would do. A myriad of thoughts raced through her head all at once: What if this ship really does work? Where did it come from? Who built it? Why did it crash in the desert? Where is its crew? Were they really aliens? With this last thought, she looked at her husband and her son comfortably sitting in the control chairs. “They must have been humans, because the chairs and the controls fit you guys so well.”
“Maybe they’re just human…oid,” posed Sharianna, as she looked at Mom to see her reaction. Turning to look at the outline of the doorway between the rear seats, she said with a little trepidation: “Do you think there could be remains of any of them in other parts of the ship?”
“That would be cool!” Joseph exclaimed.
They made their way to the door, “Look at the seal on this door,” marveled Joseph, as he ran his hand around the edges. “If it weren’t for the outline on the door and this push button you would never know there was a door here. It looks like it is one continuous piece.”
Sharianna reached around Joseph and pushed the button.
“Careful…” Mom cautioned.