Episode 4
Part One
Bortniansky stood and watched as his technicians separated the surface of the East Wall from the structure of the Alien Temple. Large cutters adapted from equipment on the Unity made short work of the Temple's strange material, losing only fractions of millimeters from the cut.
But fractions mattered. They mattered!
"Step back, Academician," a cocky young lieutenant ordered him as the wall surface began to pull outward. Large cranes steadied the section.
"If it falls, let it crush me," Bortniansky muttered. "I can not stand this."
Slowly, carefully, the cranes lifted the huge section from the wall and set it on its edge, then lowered it onto a palette made of plastic honeycombs. As they let the piece down it boomed and the sound echoed richly through the hall.
The young lieutenant stared at the face of the wall now revealed, its "skin" peeled away.
"Don't move," whispered Bortniansky.
"Sir," stammered the young lieutenant. "We checked this. I fear our equipment was not good enough..."
Bortniansky ignored him and walked forward toward the newly revealed surface. The face of this wall was a study in contours, full of tiny pits, elaborate hollows, and ever stranger ripples and curves. the configurations stretched up and away, to the ceiling and out to both sides, a story inside the walls.
"This is a mistake," Bortniansky croaked. He looked to the main wall where two technicians had stopped working, measuring tools in their hands. "Stop working there. We will not cut into any more walls. The rest will be imaged and transferred by datalink."
"And what of this one?" the young tech asked, tapping the panel on the floor with his foot. "Zakharov wants it."
"This one we will send."
The lieutenant nodded. "I'll have it loaded onto the transport."
"No," said Bortniansky. "We will not be sending this by land. The land transport is a decoy."
"How then?"
Bortniansky stared at the panel on the floor. "This one goes by sea."
The wind in the chamber touched the newly revealed surfaces and began to sing.
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