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He thought about the men aboard the Churchill: Macklin, Hardestey, all the men
who read his books, such as Bob, the chief of ship. A lot of fans were dead.
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Sean Dodge owed them something, and so did he.
"Maybe what killed those Nazis will get Steiglitz." It was Partridge speaking,
interrupting Culhane's reverie.
"I can't understand why he wasn't more worried about that," Mulrooney mused.
"What did those Nazis everyone's been mentioning look like? What killed them,
I mean?" Janet Krull asked.
Culhane shrugged. Maybe she would understand it. "Just dead instantly as if
whatever happened, happened so fast there was no time to react. And one funny
thing we noticed unless it has to do with the pyramid here is that there was
no beard growth after death like there normally would be."
Dr. Rutgers asked, "Were there any marks on their bodies maybe some burn
marks as if they'd touched something that had been running a power charge or
something?"
"Not a mark on 'em," Partridge said definitively.
"He's right," Mulrooney said. "And it doesn't make any sense."
"Heart failure maybe a stroke," Janet Krull said, sounding to Culhane as if
she was merely thinking out loud.
"It's like the curse of King Tut's tomb," Mulrooney whispered. "When Lord
Carnarvon died in Egypt, his dog, which was thousands of miles away in
England, howled and fell over dead at the same instant. Like something
reaching out to strike down the intruders who defiled the "
"Intruders," Culhane cut in. "Intruders...."
"I've read enough Takers books to know whenever Sean Dodge talks like that,
he's onto something for sure," Partridge said.
Culhane licked his lips. He looked at Partridge, then at Krull and Rutgers,
then at Mary Frances Mulrooney. "You just told me what happened. It's the only
explanation. It has to be "
"What?" he heard Partridge ask.
But Culhane still looked at Mulrooney. "Remember you kept telling me that I
was trying to memorize the submarine? Well, I was. I asked Macklin and
Hardestey every question I could think of. It was Macklin who told me. If
something happened, and the Churchill were boarded or taken over like what
happened to the U505, the German submarine our guys captured during World War
II they had an intruder-defense mechanism. Macklin could throw one switch
from several different spots throughout the ship, and the only way to
counteract the system was for Macklin, Wilbur and the chief of ship to put
together nine numbers in the right sequence. Each had memorized six. And the
numbers worked like a combination to shut off the system. That's what this
is."
"You lost me," Rutgers said.
Culhane looked at him. "Okay. Suppose everything we've been conjecturing about
these alien guys is pretty much true: only a small group stayed behind here,
and eventually they were all dead. The last couple of guys would have
activated an intruder-defense system. Just think about it. The reason they'd
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want themselves mummified was so they could be revivified maybe and perhaps
even what Steiglitz said about somehow recording their minds is true. Who
knows? If they could fly here from another star system more than forty
thousand years ago, maybe they could do that, too. But they valued the idea of
being revivified. So they wouldn't want anybody messing with their bodies and
destroying the pyramid and if somebody did, whammo!"
"You mean " said Mulrooney.
He twisted around to see her better. "Macklin told me that what happened with
the Churchill's system was a two-pronged defense. Once he activated the
system, all compartments would be flooded with a gas. He couldn't tell me what
kind, but it would even penetrate clothing, so a gas mask wouldn't do an
intruder any good. But Macklin, Wilbur and the chief of ship all had a pill
they could pop, which would counteract the effects of the gas, and they'd wake
up a couple of hours before everyone else. But in the meantime, after the gas
was expended, say somebody got aboard with the right protective clothing, or
he beat the combination for deactivating the system out of all three men, but
one of the numbers was given wrong, if he tried to deactivate the system or
touched the maneuvering gear the reactors would blow up and destroy the ship."
"There's something like that here?" Partridge whispered.
Culhane looked at him. "The Nazis were killed by the aliens' intruder defense
system. The system was probably set for some kind of delay to allow whoever
found an intruder like more aliens, like the guy who died on Cumberland
Island enough time to find the spot in the pyramid where the system could be
deactivated. If after some time elapsed who knows how long, maybe a few
hours and the system still hadn't been deactivated, then whammo! The intruder
couldn't be one of the aliens and would be killed."
"Then you think the Nazis were gassed?" Janet Krull asked.
"Maybe or it was something like a gas."
"If the system was activated once we got inside the hangar bay... " Partridge
started.
Culhane couldn't see his wrist to read the Rolex. "I make it we've been in
here for about three hours or so."
"The earth always rotated at the same speed nearly a perfect twenty-four
hours in one day so if they divided the day into twenty-four hours like we
do... " mused Mulrooney.
"But they could have divided the same period of time a dozen different ways,"
Culhane told Mulrooney.
"There's an element of truth in what Miss Mulrooney suggests," said Rutgers.
"Of course, a segment of time could be constructed containing 180 of our
minutes, and then, of course, there would be eight 'hours' in a day. But the
apparent origin of the twelve hours of day and twelve hours of night dates to
ancient Egypt before the building of the Great Pyramid. So the
twenty-four-hour day goes back at least forty-six hundred years perhaps
longer. And the hour being divided into sixty minutes is from the Babylonians
using a number base of sixty. So perhaps there was interaction between the two
groups "
Culhane interrupted him. "But when this starbase was built, there were no
Egyptians or Babylonians or any kind of civilization. These guys were
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functioning on a time system of their own. What if...."
"What if what?" Mulrooney asked impatiently.
"These guys seemed obsessed with the number seven. The measurements of the
spaceship were based on their height seven feet more or less, right? Seven
tunnels out of the hangar bay, seven chambers beyond the main pyramid here.
What if they broke up the time it takes for the earth to complete one rotation
into seven subdivisions? Then in our minutes, each one would be " He looked at
Mulrooney, who raised her eyebrows and shrugged her shoulders. Another English
major was just what he needed at the moment.
"Each seventh of the twenty-four-hour solar day would be roughly 205.7
minutes. I can figure it more exactly for you," said Rutgers.
"How many times does sixty..." Mulrooney started.
"Three hours and twenty-five minutes but again, that's an approximation,"
Rutgers answered.
"Let me see your watch," Mulrooney said suddenly, bending over, losing her
balance and bumping against Culhane. "Let me see your watch."
Culhane twisted on the floor, losing his own balance and slumping forward.
"I I can see it. Holy "
"What is it?" Culhane asked her.
"We've been in here almost three and a half hours."
Punctuating her words was a thunderous noise. Culhane had never heard the
sound of a UFO's engines firing up before, but somehow he knew it when he
heard it. And touching the aircraft would be like touching the sub's
maneuvering gear; it would activate the second and final part of the
intruder-defense system. Very final, Culhane thought.
Chapter Forty-One
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