A Secret Gift To Mankind

Episode 2

The Return to the City

By John Baxter

CHAPTER ONE

It’s funny how the passage of time makes you forget the more disturbing memories, the ones that would keep you awake at night, thereby making the happier ones seem even happier. This was what had happened to me up until the time we had a reunion of the team whom had all shared a real secret, a secret from a very strange sort of adventure, taken by us all some two years ago. Some of that team from then were still working for my department, others had decided to leave and had moved on, and hopefully in their careers, also up. Even so, the subject of our little adventure was never mentioned. When we did have our little reunions, over the last couple of years, the underground complex was mentioned, but usually only to make a point, or common ground. Unfortunately, the topic of conversation on this most recent occasion was not a very happy one. We had learned that one of the younger members of our original team who had gone to the city, a young chap by the name of Jim Williams, had developed severe headaches around the beginning of this year. He had spent a lot of time going to and fro, in and out of hospital, mainly for tests and scans, and then the medical people had found what could only be described as the worst thing to find. A large cancerous growth was forming inside the brain itself, a nasty lump of cells that were determined to kill him. A couple of highly qualified medical specialists had tried to plan a procedure they could use to remove it, but failed because of the many complications. The tumour was deemed inoperable. Jim was dying. He was by now already suffering the debilitating effects of this disease, and was almost completely paralysed down one side, suffering temporary loss of feeling in the other on a regular basis. They said that it’s only a matter of time. That’s why we are meeting right here, right now. Up until a couple of days ago, we had felt totally powerless to help this young friend, then we hit on an idea that we might just have the answer, if we plan and execute it right. It would be risky, but, as Jim was now deteriorating at an alarming rate, we felt it might be worth giving it a go. We decided that night that if we were to re-enter that underground city complex, visit the vast library it contained, copy anything we could find in there which may be of help, then pass this information on to a real specialist in this field, Sir Geoffrey Davis in particular, who had expressed an interest in learning new techniques. Unfortunately though, not from us. He had said that while we were taking notes or copies from this “other hospital”, we could omit something vital for the success of the operation, and by omitted these facts through ignorance, we could inadvertently kill Jim. He had to be there to see and learn the procedure for himself. He also insisted that Jim should go with us as he assumed that the place we were going to would have operating rooms he could use on the spot. This could have been a major setback, as we hadn’t told him where we were actually going. We had to let him believe we were going to travel to some top-secret military base for the time being till we were able to work the whole thing out. We did inform him

that some of the stuff he would see might come as a surprise, and not to get too wound up about it. This only made him even keener to go. We also told him that this came under the OSA, which he interpreted as the Official Secrets Act… I went in to see Jim in the normal hospital. By now he was totally bedridden, and could do little in the way of either moving or speaking. I told him, in whispers, of our plan. We were going to take him, and the specialist, into the underground city, and to that library, gleaning out the information to allow Sir Geoffrey to complete a successful operation. I also told him about the secrecy that surrounded the plan, with even Sir Geoffrey not knowing where he was going. For the first time in weeks, I saw Jim’s mouth move to a tiny smile, and his eyes filled with tears. I left the hospital feeling very happy. I have to admit, as I settled down that night in bed, that I could feel the complex again, smell the air inside. It was all coming back. Lots of disturbing dreams followed.

CHAPTER TWO

I called at the bank the next morning, to collect the electronic key from the safety deposit box, and I must admit the apprehension on seeing that piece of metal again really moved me. The city, the powerhouse, the control room, the stillness, it all came flooding back. I felt not fear, but more of a mixture of excitement and uncertainty in our next moves. The plan had been worked out, and because we knew the terrain, we could move along at a pace. I still felt a little unsure of it all, as this time, unlike the first time, one of our team was depending on us to survive. This time we knew more or less what we wanted, and where to get it. All we had to do was work out how to get it. Bob Taylor was waiting in his garden as we drove up, all of the required gear stacked neatly beside his front gate, and some bits and pieces we might not need, including a full blindfold for Sir Geoffrey. By one in the afternoon, we were at the hospital with the special ambulance car to collect Jim, and a normal car for Sir Geoffrey, who was then blindfolded, before we drove around for about an hour to confuse the passenger. The ambulance car went straight to the Valley Drift, while we drove around till about four, then down into the small valley itself. I must admit, my heart was pounding at the thought of going down into the city again, and my stomach turned over as I saw the small Valley Drift entrance. As the terrain was rough, I informed Sir Geoffrey not to worry about any sudden movements of the vehicle, and we got as close as we possibly could to the entrance. The stretcher would be carried using shoulder straps, by two of the team at a time, working in rotation so as not to tire anyone in particular. They started off down from the cave inside the drift itself, while Bob Taylor and I moved Sir Geoffrey through the small gap, and into the drift. He had no idea that we were now in the dark, only in the shade because it was cooler. We set off.

CHAPTER THREE

Everything was exactly as I had remembered it from our previous visit, those roadways, and the old workings, all still perfectly intact, though for safety’s sake, Bob sometimes went on ahead ahead, checking as he had the first time we were here. In two years, anything could have happened. It hadn’t. We made quite good time to Taylor’s Tunnel, considering one of us was wearing a blindfold, and others a stretcher. When we arrived, two of the team climbed up to the top, and then hauled poor Jim on his stretcher up in as near as possible horizontal position, with another of the team at the bottom, using a rope to keep the stretcher away from the ladder and the wall. Poor Jim seemed almost oblivious to what was going on around him. Only when we had Jim on his stretcher at the top, and into Taylors Tunnel did we start to bring Sir Geoffrey to the bottom of the ladder, and then the climb up. He had never spoken all of the way from entering the Drift all of the way to here, but he must have been wondering by now where on earth we were taking him. The blindfold over his face was still in place, and in the light of our dim torches, he looked like a mixture of Zorro, and the Phantom of the Opera. He climbed the ladder without question, being guided the last few rungs by the team already up there, and then, after everyone was up, I went last. Ahead of us, reflecting our torch and cap lamp lights we could see the shining surface of the blank wall, which we knew of course was a flush door, and we walked the last few paces with more than a little apprehension. I placed the key on its position on the wall, turning it as we had done before, and the door moved silently forward again, the steps unfolding from within. Light flooded our area. We needed to work fast, changing out of our underground clothing, the boiler suits, the helmets and lamps, plus the gloves, and hid them from the sight of Sir Geoffrey, so it would appear that we were as we had been when we started out earlier in the day. We entered the brightly lit corridor, and I operated the key to close it. Silently, it slid back to its position. We could remove the blindfold from Sir Geoffrey from here, allowing him to be able to move for himself from now on, once his eyes had got used to the light in the passageways as we walked them. As the last door silently slid open, I heard him gasp as he caught site of the city beneath us, a city that looked exactly the same as it did those two years ago when we were last here. “Where are we?” Sir Geoffrey asked in a choked whisper. No one answered; we just motioned him to walk down the many steps down the sheer face of the huge cavern, all the way down, and onto the pathways leading to this silent city.

As we walked, I explained to him that he would see some very advanced equipment, and various other unusual things he would be likely to see as we travelled, though I didn’t really know myself if this would be true. I explained that his teacher would be a sort of videotape, though not saying that we first had to find the right one. As we passed the first dwelling in the district near the library, we delivered Jim into the bed there so he could rest properly, and two of the team stayed with him. As a precaution, I noted down the symbols on the telephone machine, should we need to contact them quickly. The library, when we entered it, looked much the same as it had the last time we were here too, the same wall maps, the learning aid machinery ready to be initiated, and the banks and banks of video boxes ready for anyone to learn from. Unfortunately for us, they were marked up in this symbolic language we did not understand. How the hell we were going to find exactly the right ones for Sir Geoffrey, we had no idea. He expressed a desire to return to his patient and left, with an escort, while the rest of us discussed the major problems we now faced. Could we find the correct learning aids, and could Sir Geoffrey be able to understand what he was being shown. The lights above the city were now starting to dim, so as to signify the approach of night, so we left the library to have a little thought about our next move. Bob Taylor suggested that, while the medical people were settling down, and since we were already here in the city, we should check on our repair job from our last visit, just to see how it was holding up and make sure it was still no threat to the land above. Since the control room and the powerhouse were only a short distance away, we could detour out that way without arousing suspicions, and be back at the dwelling before we were missed. I removed my thick sweater and left it on the table, as the walk to the powerhouse would have to be brisk, and would get quite warm. I’d collect it on the way back. The control room when we got there was as it had always been, the computers clicking away, spools spinning, lights flashing, stopping, reversing, stopping, and repeating all over again. A thought passed through my head that if the people who owned this complex were so clever, why were they using an old-fashioned computer storage method? All a little too highbrow for me. Never mind, onward to the powerhouse. Those silver coveralls were hanging on their pegs, as before, and we slipped into the suits, finally opening the door to the reactor room and entering. It was almost the same as we had left it. I say almost because on the pipes we had repaired with the bandage, there was no sign of the bandage anywhere on any of the leaks. I approached for a closer look, thinking that the bandage could have chemically merged and blended in with the pipe over time, but we could see that that was not the case, and I wasn’t sure whether I could believe what I was seeing. Where the holes had been, and where we had taped it, that whole section of pipe work had been removed and replaced. This had happened to all of the other original previous repair sites too. This could mean only one thing. The owners of this complex must have been back, and must have seen our repair work. They would now be aware that someone outside of their caste knew of the existence of this complex and they might have taken steps to maintain its secrecy. When had they been here?

This discovery was the major subject discussed on our way back to the dwellings. Someone, or something, had been back, witnessed the repair we had done, so they may have activated some kind of monitoring equipment to track anyone re-entering the complex at some time in the future. Big Brother is watching, and all that. As we passed the library on our way back to the dwellings, I called in to retrieve my bulky sweater, and saw that something was slightly different. On the table, next to my sweater were four video type boxes, all with similar markings on them. I glanced over to Bob, who just shrugged his shoulders, then put one of the disc like objects into the reader. What I saw projected onto the whole wall was quite obvious, even to a layman like me. I was watching, and listening to, in English, a tutorial on brain surgery, in all its gory graphic detail. The implications were now huge. Not only had these owners been back, they must still be here! They had overheard our conversation about wanting to find the correct tutorials, and had placed them where we couldn’t miss them. I suppose this also meant they were not hostile either as they would have got rid of us before now if they had wanted to. We knew we were being watched. For the second time in two years, I felt that terrifying fear that I had accidentally overstepped the line between what I was supposed to know, and what I was not allowed to know, and sooner of later, there would be consequences of some description. Both Bob and I headed for the dwelling at a brisk pace, thinking we would be safer in numbers.

CHAPTER FOUR

We arrived at the dwelling where Jim was being looked after, and, as we walked in I saw the torso of Sir Geoffrey bent over the prone body of Jim. He looked at us sternly, and shook his head, signalling for us to go outside, which we did, and he followed. Once out of earshot of Jim, he gave his diagnosis, “ Unless the surgery is performed in the next day or two to relieve the pressure on the brain itself, Jim will go beyond the stage where he can be helped, the tumour will cause permanent damage, and he will become totally incoherent and then to a vegetative state within days of that. Within weeks, he will be dead” He returned to the dwelling to continue to monitor Jim’s progress, or lack of it, and we entered the next door dwelling where we were able to tell the rest of the team what we had seen at the powerhouse, and what we had found in the library. They became very excited at the prospect of being able to help Jim, though when I told them what Sir Geoffrey had said, the mood calmed a little, and became a little more serious. When we explained our theory that the city owners were still here, we knew we had to make decisions, and not a lot of time to make them in. It basically boiled down to two scenarios. We cut and run, leaving the city to it’s owners, or stay and do what we had planned to do all along and hang the consequences.

The cut and run idea would sentence poor Jim to certain death, and cause major problems with the, up to now, very understanding Sir Geoffrey. He would really start to ask the awkward questions then. We thought through the second option. Remain and try to cure Jim. It is evident that the city owners have compassion, as they left the boxes of discs out for us, and some of the team thought that we might get further help along the way, though I was a little sceptical about this. We were the trespassers here, and the help that was given so far may be to get rid of us as soon as possible. These theories were doubtful, as, if they had left the discs in the racks, we would never have found them, and, after Jim had deteriorated, or died, we would have left anyway. Maybe this was a kind of reward for fixing the pipes in the powerhouse, although; up until we had left the library and gone to the powerhouse, they would not have know who had affected the repairs. Or did they? This last possibility started to change my train of thought. Suppose we had been watched, recorded in some way, when we first entered the city, that security system we readily dismissed when no one came to challenge us. Perhaps they knew all along it was us, and that we had been there. They knew we had repaired the pipe work, possibly before they had a chance to know it was broken, and, after we had left, came back to repair it properly. Perhaps they knew that we had stopped the city being discovered by the betrayal of the heat to the surface followed by a huge explosion in a few years time. They could only have got the confirmation it was us from our conversations in the library. One of them must have been there when we were! I tried to remember every little detail of when we had talked in the library, what I could see, what was where, but drew a blank. I couldn’t remember anything specific. Our attention was then turned to the plan for the following day and we decided that, while Sir Geoffrey was being educated in the library, some of us would try to locate the sick bay, or medical facility where Sir Geoffrey could do his stuff. A place this size must have something of that nature somewhere, but where? I slept very little that night, sorting out the methods we would use to find the rooms we needed, and how best to search the complex methodically. I had vivid nightmares about Sir Geoffrey operating in a filthy room, with a blunt saw, and rusty old pliers, the blood dripping onto a straw covered floor, infested with bugs and rats. You can imagine the state I was in by the time Bob Taylor woke me. I was physically shaking, and the sweat was pouring out of me. It took a while for me to calm down, though whenever I thought of those dreams, even now, I still break out in a sweat again, and the hair on the back of my neck stands up. Sir Geoffrey had slept well, still in ignorance that the city did not belong to us, and our fears that the real owners were here somewhere. We didn’t tell him either, just in case it upset him to a point where he couldn’t operate when the time came. When we were all ready, we guided Sir Geoffrey to the library. On entering, I have to admit, I gave the place a really good scan this time with my eyes, though all that betrayed our assumed solitude was the presence of the discs, next to the machine. Sir Geoffrey seated himself at the machine, and then placed the first disc into the machine, which automatically started to play. It was in English!

We left him to learn from these discs, something he was quite happy to sit there and do, and the rest of us set out to find this medical facility, though this could be like looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack. We had to find it, or Jim was beyond help. As we approached the doors into the control room section, we decided to split up to try to cover more ground, taking one door, then the next, see where it goes, come back to the beginning, and take the second door, and so on. A lengthy method, but effective. We walked to the first doors, one of the sliding types, and they remained closed, as did the next, and the next. From all of the doors leading from that corridor, only one set operated. We entered another corridor, and once again, only one set of doors would open from there. This happened all the way through about six or seven sections, till the last unlocked door led us into the pre-operation preparation room, and then into an operating theatre. We had found this very quickly. Too quickly. We were being led, and watched. The room itself was very well lit, with lots of electronic equipment about the place, and though I am no expert on what an operating theatre should have in it, this appeared to be about as near as I could judge one to look like. No time to look a gift horse in the mouth, we traced our steps back to the city, then to the dwelling to collect Jim, and take him to the theatre. As we did so, all of the previously locked doors were now open; the sliding doors would open as we approached them, even if we didn’t go through them. We knew we had not found the theatre by accident; the owners were guiding us through the labyrinth, locking the wrong doors so we could only use the correct ones. This had saved us hours of searching. Were they really trying to help us? As we walked out from under the bay window style glass wall which protruded from the front of the control room above us, I turned and looked up at the large smoked glass windows on the front, trying to get a glimpse of who or what was helping us, through the darkened glass. I could see nothing, and no one, and no movement. They may be there, but I couldn’t see them.

CHAPTER FIVE

Jim neither moved nor made any sound as we carried him to the operating rooms. He lay there, like a corpse, white and lifeless, none of us really understanding the depth of the pain he was in, his body a mere shadow of what it used to be, so light was his weight that he was not putting any strain on any of the people carrying him. At times, his drip feed bottles felt heavier than he did, and some form of glucose was the only food he could now take, directly by drip into his blood. We arrived at the operating theatre, and placed Jim onto one of the trolleys standing at the end nearest the wall in the Pre Medication Room. We dare not enter the theatre itself in case we carried some infection into the place, and this could have dire consequences. While the team prepared Jim, I set out to collect Sir Geoffrey from the library, thinking he should have seen enough to be able to do the operation. When I arrived, he was sitting back in the chair, a thoughtful look on his face. He glanced at us as we entered, then shook his head. We feared the worst.

He explained that he had learned a great deal from these discs about brain surgery, this extra knowledge he would carry with him for his entire career, this was not the problem. The problem lay with the equipment that was being used in its performance. He had never seen any of it before, and even though these discs showed the basic use of each and every one of these implements, he knew he couldn’t use any of this stuff safely without some experience of operating the devices. It would take him years to learn how to use even the most basic of the equipment correctly. He could not operate. Our mission was a failure. We had assumed that the alien equipment would have been similar to our own, but evidently not, and that we all could have, under the guidance of Sir Geoffrey, assisted with the operation itself, as sort of theatre assistants, operating the gas taps, or handing him tools, that sort of thing. All that was now gone. Without Sir Geoffrey, we had no hope. Jim had no hope either. We left the library together and headed up to the operating theatre, hoping that Sir Geoffrey may see something there he knew and recognised, felt comfortable to work with, and could use, something to save the mission, so to speak. We entered the anteroom where Jim had been prepared, and Sir Geoffrey gazed through the windows into the theatre, and shook his head. For him to try to use this equipment without the proper training would more than likely kill Jim than cure him. I asked the others to step outside, so Jim could not hear what I was about to tell them, the problems about the complexity of the equipment, and Sir Geoffrey’s lack of experience in it’s use. As we stood outside, I explained what Sir Geoffrey had said in the library, and his expression here again in the operating suite. All of the faces on all of the team took on a solemn expression while we pondered and tried to see if we had any other ideas to try. At long last, as the sort of expedition leader it fell to me to go back in and explain to Jim the problems we had that we could not solve, hoping that he could understand me enough to realise the consequences, and hope he would not be too unhappy, as our long shot had not worked. I took a deep breath before I grasped the door handle, turned it, and walked on, straight into the door. It was locked. Jim was still alone on the other side, and we couldn’t get to him, the electronic locks were holding the door fast. We started to panic. We had to open the door. We tried everything we could find to hand, but to no avail. We started to blame each other for not staying with Jim.

CHAPTER SIX

The events that happened from here are still vague in all of our minds. One minute we were trying to open this door, the next we were all getting up off the floor, feeling a little giddy and shaky. I glanced at my watch. We had somehow lost about three hours somewhere. My first thoughts went to Jim, alone in the other room, so I went to try to open that door again. It opened automatically as I approached it. Inside, Jim was where we had left

him, only this time he was wearing an operating gown, and his head was bound in bandages. Sir Geoffrey moved forward and started to check on these dressings, and Jim’s general health. He went to check the incisions, and the stitches. There weren’t any! The only visible mark was a small round hole in the top rear of his head, but the skin appeared to have been welded shut. As I leaned over his prone body, Jim opened his eyes, smiled, and spoke, for the first time in weeks, that it was nice to be back. We all felt as if we had won everything you can win in life, lottery, pools, and the works. The feeling of elation was intense. We had succeeded in our little quest. Jim was going to be fine. A little thought brought me back to reality. If someone had been watching, they were not here now, and everything was as it had been before, so, where and what were they? Jim filled us in with the details from when we had gone outside, and had not returned. He had lay there for only a few seconds before he sensed a presence. Someone in the room with him, even though he knew we had all left him alone. He had tried to open his eyes, but couldn’t, and he was aware of a soft low voice telling him not to try. Was this dying? Was this our Maker, here to collect his soul? He could remember being moved into the theatre, and his clothing being removed, but being totally helpless, unable to stop whatever was happening to him. He was also aware of a very bright light, as he could see it through his closed eyelids, and a sort of crackling sound. He was then moved again, to the table itself, and heard sounds of things being moved about. Cloth brushed his face. Something was strapped to his arm, and he could hear bleeps and hisses, ticking, and water running. A shadow fell over his face, so, fighting against the odds, he tried to open his eyes. Through the little slits in his eyelids, he could see a figure, dressed in white, bending over his legs. He remembered his appendix operation many years ago. Was he dreaming about this? The figure moved up to his head, and shaved a small piece of hair from a small central part of his skull. As the figure moved back, Jim tried to see if he could pick out a face, and saw a sort of nice face, but not a person face, and only for a second. He remembers those very blue eyes. At this point something went into his arm by compressed air or something like that. The next recollection was me, standing over him. Sir Geoffrey was beside himself with worry, pushing past to examine his patient. He checked his pulse, the colour and skin tone, wounds and dressings, both of which were very small. He checked again and again this tiny little incision, declaring that this surgeon was the best he’d ever seen, and working together they could revolutionise brain surgery. If only he knew!! Now was the time to come clean and tell Sir Geoffrey exactly where he was, and all of the details we could give him. It was only fair that we came out with the truth. I explained that the city was not of human origin, and certainly not of earthly origin, and how we had found it, and then exacted a repair to the pipe work, the city being totally empty at that time. This time was different though. The owners had overheard our need for the discs in the library, and had put the correct ones where we would find them, guiding us by locking doors remotely to the operating theatres, and, when everything else failed, the operation itself.

Sir Geoffrey added something to this by saying that while he was watching the discs in the library; he was about halfway through the first one when a voice behind him asked where the rest of the team had gone. He said he had resented the interruption, and not bothering to turn around, informed the speaker that we were looking for the operating theatres, and they could find us there. Sir Geoffrey had had direct contact with an alien, without realising it!! First Contact! We were still chatting about the events of the last few hours, sort of comparing notes, when suddenly, the phone on the wall started to ring. The conversation went very quiet.

CHAPTER SEVEN

If anyone had told me at some time in the past that I would have been terrified of the sound of a phone ringing, I would have laughed about it. Not this time. Here I was, looking at this inoffensive object on the wall as if it was threatening my very existence. All conversation in the room had ceased when the warbling tone of the phone had started, and now all the teams’ eyes were looking at it. It rang for a while before any of us moved or spoke. Bob Taylor motioned me to answer it. Thanks Bob. I walked to the phone, and picked up the receiver, bearing in mind that these phones were a sort of video phone and I was more than a little apprehensive about what I was about to see. What I did see was totally out of place, but at least it was quite pleasant. The whole wall now contained a picture of a bunch of daffodils, in flower. The caller had selected sound only. I placed the earpiece to my ear and said hello. A soft voice spoke, saying that our leader was to go to the anteroom, the one behind the control room. There was a click, and the picture on the wall vanished. I turned to the team and repeated the message. After a very short discussion, I was now ‘elected’ that leader, since it was my idea to return to this city. I felt as though my friends had just given me a death sentence. I walked slowly and steadily from the changing rooms of the operating suite, arranging to meet the others at the main dwellings on my return, should there be a return. I wended my way through the corridors, until I arrived at the city dome, and then turned towards the steps leading up to the control room complex. As I reached them, I looked round and saw my team emerge from the corridors from where I’d been, carrying Jim on the stretcher and making their way to that last dwelling on the street, where we were to meet up. I looked ahead, wondering what I was about to encounter. I don’t know why, but when I arrived at the first anteroom, possibly out of habit, I knocked on the door. There was no sound from within, so I opened the door and walked in, my eyes scanning for whatever I needed to see. No one and nothing. The whole room was silent. My heart was pounding like a drum by now, and I just wanted to get to know what this was all about and get out of here. I passed through the room, and then headed towards the door leading to the powerhouse. It opened noiselessly, and I knew they wanted me to go through this door. I also knew which would be the next door to take, but I was very slow to go to it.

It opened noiselessly. The room itself was in semi darkness, all of the light coming from a ceiling fitting in the centre of the room. It was like looking at a snooker table, the table lit but the surroundings not, though this was a lot less bright. I walked to the chair in front of the table, and sat down. I heard a movement from the other side of the table, and I strained my eyes to see who or what it was, but to no avail. Whoever had set this meeting up was making sure that there was no way I could see them, so I reasoned that if I cannot see them, they cannot see me. The silence was broken by a voice, the same voice I had heard on the telephone, thanking my team for the repairs we had carried out, and also keeping the complex a secret from other people, therefore preserving the secret and eradicating the possible consequences of discovery. I, in turn thanked them for the help with Jim. There followed a moment of silence, and I knew the reason for my summons to this meeting was about to be disclosed. I hope I was ready. The voice started to tell of the whole history of the complex, and why it had been built here in the first place. The building started, in Earth years, around 2500 years BC, by the people of their home planet, to act as both a holiday resort and refuge for peace and quiet between their then two colonies, Earth being roughly equal distance from them both. As the people from the home planet had to visit the second colony, on either business or family visiting, this complex was ideal as a short stop over on the way. This place was a hive of activity when the trading between the colonies was in full swing. It became almost like a third colony, as huge numbers of staff were required to help run the place, and monitor the many recycling tasks the complex used so as not to betray their existence to the locals. Everything from food to waste disposal was handled with ease here, catering for up to 200 guests at a time, and it would still have been in use, had it not been for a major disaster. Their race suffered a catastrophe, which decimated their people Around 90 of your Earth years ago, a disease broke out on the second colony, something that had been carried in from somewhere outside the planet itself. Though not fatal, and having no ill effects on the person infected, it severely affected their offspring. All of the children born to them were born without any means of reproducing themselves. They had the organs, just not the real working parts, as in sperm/egg. This meant almost instant extinction to this super race within one generation. Naturally, the home planet, not wishing to become infected too, had to close down this complex, and the shuttle service between the two was also stopped in an effort to block the spread of the infection, which was highly contagious. These visitors now are the first of their kind from the home planet to set foot in the complex since it was closed, their mission was to see if there was any kind of news from the second colony, and to check this infection had not wiped out the human race living above the complex, and totally ignorant of it being there, something that they would have been really sorry for. As luck would have it, from their point of view that is, the human race could neither catch nor carry this disease, as we were physically too far down the evolutionary scale for this virus to affect.

They were also aware that we had entered and repaired the complex, but had to get some data by testing a human to make sure we could not be carriers. This they did with Jim in the theatre. We cannot infect them as we cannot either catch, or carry this virus. When they had first arrived, they were surprised to see that a repair job had been done in the powerhouse, and at first they were hoping that someone from the second colony had been and effected the repair, but when they checked the landing station logs for incoming flights, there were none shown. There had been no traffic since the evacuation on the complex all those years ago. They checked all of the emergency door logs, and found door Five had been opened about 2 Earth years before. This could only mean that some of the natives must have entered the complex, the natives being our team of course, and they started to check the videos of our entering, and leaving. While they were checking on the complex, and giving it a full service to keep it operational, the door five alarms went off again, and they detected us entering again, this time with a sick Jim. After a quick check, we were identified as the entrants from 2 years ago. They sent a communication to the home planet that we were back and to request instructions on what to do, and were told to seek communication with us, as we could be trusted. This they were now doing. They had a message from their leaders on the home planet, a request really, and also an offer to make to us, as these visitors had to return to the home planet very soon. The message was this: The disease, though they still didn’t know how, had been smuggled in somehow and had now reached the home planet and was already ravaging the people there as it had the second colony. In the next two generations, they would all be gone. They then made this remarkable request of us here in this darkened room, beneath a plot of land, under a new housing estate. Could we please maintain the complex in it’s ticking over mode, which was more or less self-maintaining, on the off chance that someone surviving from the second colony may come here to find what has happened to the home planet. The offer from this race, from a world unknown to us, was the complex itself. We can have it, the whole thing, in its entirety, to be ours until we have no further use for it. There were no weapons for any government to gain technology left in the city that could be used to endanger human life, or to subjugate its people. The only stipulation that this race put on this gift was that, should any of their race, from whatever colony, arrive here, we must tell them everything. The contract was made, and binding.

John Baxter 2010/2015