Falcon’s Ghost

He thanked Thoth and Hephaestus, the gods of technology, for his suit and prayed it would not fail him. The surface temperature registered at ninety-six degrees Kelvin, or minus one hundred and eighty Centigrade, far too cold for a flesh-and-blood body to survive.

The insulated suit protected him from the hellish environment, but a chill still filled his soul. He glanced down, scuffed a booted foot in the grainy sand and contemplated the mark it left, proof of his presence in this forbidding place. With a shake of the head to force himself back to reality, he began the trek around the ship toward the cargo hatch. He had seen all this before, but long ago and from a distance.

Giant, black dunes marched skyward beyond the dark plain at the edge of which he stood, but those high ridges were not normal mineral sands. Composed of fine, hydrocarbon grains that drifted down from the frigid clouds, they extended many kilometers to where higher mountain ranges of rock-hard, super-chilled ice stretched into the ever-present haze of a frozen sky.

On Joe’s other side, the calm waters of a broad, liquid-methane lake spread mirror-like, reflecting the orange murk that filled the nitrogen-methane air. Dominating all, a colossal, multi-colored orb forced its presence through the overcast, the glow sufficient to bathe the alien landscape with an eerie half-light. The giant gas world of Saturn, unchallenged queen of the Solar System, brooded over its hellish, elder child Titan, its glowering visage counterpointed by multiple lightning flashes that crackled uninterrupted across the moon’s sky.

In the distance, the near wall of a vast structure stretched for many kilometers from the edge of the lake to the distant dunes, and soared several hundred meters into the frigid air.

Six decades ago the colossal alien starship known to all as the Minaret arrived to warn the people of Earth and Mars they were under threat of attack from a second vessel, dubbed the Blackship, which entered the system soon after.

The first arrivals, named by Joe’s crew the 'Visitors', offered protection for the worlds of humanity in return for the exclusive use of the moon Titan for one hundred years. Joe helped to finalize that agreement and the decree went out that no human ship was to land here for one century.

Joe had arrived a little early.

He worked his way around the ship, the New Worlds Institute research vessel Marco Polo, until he reached the cargo hatch. The short journey was disconcerting, the only sounds those of his breath, the pounding of his pulse in his ears and the multitude of small, whirring noises from the servos operating the limbs of the mini-tank that was his environment suit.

A breath of warm air flowed over his face but did little to ease the chill in his soul. No decent human should ever be in a place like this.

It all began with an innocent observation.

The Minaret was missing.

The exact purpose of the giant structure ahead remained unknown, but the accepted belief was it was a giant cyclotron used to manufacture antimatter, the supposed power source of the vessel. The Visitors never quite clarified the matter, and most knowledge came from speculation rather than fact.

The Visitors stated they had used all their fuel to reach Earth ahead of the Blackship, and after the battle needed to make more before they continued their quest to find a new home elsewhere among the stars.

Or so the people of both worlds believed.

Joe knew otherwise. The giant structure ahead was an illusion, a ghost, but of all humans only he was aware of that.

Io, the ambassador of the aliens, once made a secret admission her ship lacked the capacity for another star voyage. They were here to stay. The Titan complex was intended as a blind to make humanity think the Minaret was being refueled. After one hundred years the ship would leave as promised, but go no further than the Oort cloud where it would wait hidden until a future time when it might be rediscovered by humans. By then they would have developed sufficiently to cope with the sophisticated engineering the starship offered.

The Visitors possessed the technology to create or clone any organic body they desired, and Joe advanced the idea they take on human form and merge with humans. Subject to the same emotions and hormones, the crew of the alien vessel would in time become integrated into the race and after a few generations of interbreeding would be indistinguishable, a part of the varied patina of humanity.

Joe long ago began to doubt the plan. For reasons both deep and personal he now mistrusted the aliens, and this landing was the result. He deliberately chose to defy the embargo. The time had come for everyone to know the truth about this place, but he needed to reveal it in such a way that his duplicity in the alien charade would remain a secret.

From the moment the war against the Blackship ended, rumors began to spread. Some maintained the Visitors wanted the Solar System for themselves and took the chance to destroy not only their interstellar rivals but also human opposition. The fleets of both Earth and Mars were decimated in the conflict, and many considered humanity unprepared to defend itself in the future. Joe had worked hard to correct that deficiency in the last six decades.

Others suspected the Visitors walked amongst them in artificial bodies indistinguishable from natural ones. Joe knew that to be true without a doubt, as he had been party to the deception.

Despite the rumors, nothing was heard from the Minaret after it went into orbit around Saturn. Only days before the Marco Polo arrived, the alien starship vanished.

“You alright, Joe?” a static voice crackled over the radio. “Your heart rate's up a heap and a half.”

“Yeah, still standing.” Joe took a deep breath and tried to calm himself. “Suit's working fine. This place gives me the willies, is all.”

The embargo on Titan landings did not preclude exploration of Saturn's other moons, and Joe’s logged objective was to carry out research and survey exercises on several of them on behalf of the New Worlds Institute. After his having spent years as a surveyor in the past, this trip was an opportunity to return to that simpler life for at least a short time.

His ship was one of the first manned vessels ever to come this far, the voyage costing more than most organizations beyond the Institute would consider worthwhile. As they approached Saturn the first thing the crew sought was the starship, but a survey of the system failed to produce any trace. Joe decided the Visitors had not kept their side of the pact, throwing the whole question of the agreement between them and humanity into doubt. He needed to confirm their absence, and so the largest of the planet's moons became the Marco Polo’s first destination.

The crew was determined to see inside the giant structure. If the Visitors were gone, anything remaining might be of value to humanity, but that was not the motivation for Joe. The aliens' original plan had diverged, and that troubled him.

At the rear of the vessel, an exploration buggy rolled from its storage bay and waited, its tail ramp lowered. One steady step at a time Joe shuffled aboard and locked into the pilot frame, designed to hold the thermal suit in a standing position. A minute later he was on his way, the vehicle leaving deep tracks in the black sand as it rolled toward the nearby monolith.

“This place is bloody enormous,” Joe mumbled as the buggy rumbled on, drawing close to the high, black structure before stopping a short distance from the near wall. He demounted and walked nearer, then leaned back as far as practical in the confines of the suit to peer upwards. “Must be a couple of hundred meters up there.”

“Any sign of a way in? A door or something? Anything?” asked the voice again. Chan Berry, the man on the radio, was the captain of the Marco Polo and a close friend of Joe.

“Nope, not here. I'll run around the base a bit.”

He remounted and drove along the perimeter ten meters out from the structure. The ship had flown over the building on the way down, and there was no trace of an entrance on the flat, featureless roof. Any way in would be here at ground level.

The monolith was far too large to circumnavigate in the time available, so an hour later, having given up and turned around, Joe returned to his original position. He stopped beside the wall, dismounted and stepped closer.

He reached out a hand, but did not expect to encounter an actual surface. As anticipated, the carbon-fiber glove of the suit passed through without resistance. He jerked the hand back, the faint, tingling sensation one with which he was familiar. Memories flooded back of his first landing on the starship when he flew through a force field into the airfield deck; it felt just like this.

“Something's not right here,” he said, continuing the pretense. “This wall is—I don't know—not real. I can put my hand through it like the hatches on the Minaret, but it's not the same. It seems different.”

“Sure you're not imagining it, old buddy?” the intercom replied.

“I'm not. Legit, my hand went straight into the damned thing. I’ll try walking through. This might be the way inside.”

“Are you serious? What if you go in and can't get out again?”

Joe paused for a moment to consider his response. “What else can I do?” He had taken similar risks before and emerged safely, and he could not stop the charade now.

“Drop it and come back. I think we should get off this moon and get on with the job we came here for. This place gives me the willies as well.”

“Agreed, but I'm not giving up so easily.” Joe stepped forward again, re-inserted the gloved hand and leaned in until the faceplate of his helmet passed through. He felt no sensation beyond the tingling, and no resistance.

The wall had no thickness. Hundreds of meters above, the ceiling of the vast structure was transparent, the dim light from the exterior filtering through to provide minimal visibility. Inside, the black plain continued unbroken.

Joe took several paces forward and stopped. He was in, but it was like he had not gone anywhere at all. Beneath his feet lay nothing but sand, in every direction only blank walls. The structure appeared to be a vast, hollow space.

“Can you hear me, Chan?”

“Yep, you're still coming in clear. I can't see you. Where are you now?”

“I'm inside.”

“Cool. What's in there?”

“Bugger all. Nothing.” Fine, now it's common knowledge.

“What, they stripped it when they left? Damn!”

“No, I mean there literally is nothing here and it doesn't appear there ever was. This place doesn't even have a floor. Wait, I can see something in the distance. The light's not so good but I can just make it out. It's a little block-like thingy on a raised platform. Might be worth checking.”

Joe turned and walked back through the wall to his buggy, boarded and drove into the enigmatic structure, heading for the object sitting on the sand several kilometers ahead.

“Not sure you should be doing that,” Berry said. “Something stinks to high heaven about this.”

“That'll be your jocks, Chan. You haven't showered for a week.”

“No, I'm serious. This whole thing is weird. I mean, why would we be ordered away from this moon if it's deserted?”

“We thought there was something here, but I guess we were wrong. I'm still going to check this out though. Almost there.”

Minutes later the buggy reached its destination, drawing to a halt beside a platform about five meters square and one high, smooth, featureless and by all appearances made from some kind of plastic material. Joe placed a glove on the black surface and felt the slightest of vibrations.

In the ultra-low gravity of Titan, he flexed the knees of his suit and launched himself up to the platform, landing with a soft clunk and the slightest of wobbles. He steadied himself and straightened up.

At the center of the block, a thin pylon constructed from the same material rose to a cube structure, the surface of which was broken by dozens of rectangular irregularities that reflected Joe's helmet lamp like glass. He stepped forward and examined the device, moving around until he had viewed it from all sides. Standing tall, he could see across the top.

“Nothing. No access hatches or anything. Can't see any way to get inside. Smooth as a baby's butt. Nothing else here either.”

“So, a waste of time coming here, hey.”

Joe laughed to himself. “Yeah, I guess. There's something about it though; I don't know what. A feeling I've seen something like this somewhere else.” He had experienced the same déjà-vu sensation before. The Visitors had a penchant for building things not unlike their equivalent on Earth.

“Come back. You can stew over it later. The power in your suit is down to thirty-nine percent and if it fails I can't reach you in time. You'll freeze in a minute or less.”

“True. Alright, I'm on my way.” Joe knew he shouldn’t have come alone, but this little subterfuge was something he needed to do by himself.

The buggy was almost back to the ship when realization flashed into Joe's mind.

“Got it,” he said. “It's a projector like you see in planetariums. That explains a lot. This building's a phantom, a projection of some sort—a holographic image. That's why I can go straight through it. It isn't real.”

“Don't make no sense. Those aliens have been out here for sixty years. Why would they stay so long and put nothing but a hologram here?”

“Who knows? What puzzles me most is I watched them build the damned thing from orbit, and now I wonder if it's a massive charade. A trick, an illusion for our benefit to make us think they were making fuel out here. They weren't doing anything. They were never here at all.” Joe hoped he sounded genuine, and that Chan would not realize he was aware of the illusion all along.

“Where are they, do you think?”

Joe hesitated, unwilling to say anything that might give him away. “I'm sure I don't know, but until we can find out I think we need to keep this quiet.”

“Sure, but where are they?”