To my English 111 students who want to become better writers:
“Practice, practice, practice!”
Prologue
The mission to Titan, and years later the orbital mission to the lost ship from Titan, affected everyone in some way. My book, Titan’s Gold, turned out to be a bestseller, as everyone wanted to know what actually happened. I continued to teach, and not once did any of my students ever figure out that Quan Tran had once been a student of mine, or that I was the one who recorded the story of Titan’s gold.
Along with everyone else, I expected that eventually the six extraordinary, gold-plated panels from LS-Twould emerge from whatever secret or protective location they were in, and all kinds of questions about the Pyramids would be answered. As everyone knows, the panels did reappear, but only in strange circumstances. Since I was the one to record and retell the original story, I continued to document conversations, save memos, and generally keep track of this saga. Quan, and later Beavs, continued to feed me inside information from InSpace, and about their activities. Coup and Gray also told me everything, even as Gray planned a daring mission to Cairo. As this unlikely story itself went on, and grew (there were no rules), I hoped that there could one day be a conclusion, or happy ending. Now, here is the latest. I am not sure this is the end, but it must be close.
Part 1
1. Departing Cairo
“We’re going home as soon as we can,” Coup said. He and Gray, Trixie, and Beavs had returned to the Nile Ritz Carlton, after the visit to the Cairo Tower. The partially paved open area between the Egyptian Museum and Tahrir, in front of the hotel had emptied; Coup could see workers sweeping the paved areas, and collecting trash and papers left by the previous day’s throng. Just the day before, Coup had presented six mysterious, gold-plated panels to the Egyptian Museum on behalf of all people in the world.
As he looked out the window of his fifth-floor hotel room, Coup saw two black limos turn into the hotel’s driveway. They could have been the same two black limousines that transported Coup, his space crew, and Egyptian officials and the panels from Cairo’s international airport to the museum. But he could not be certain, for he did not know if limos were common in this huge city. He asked John Gray, “Could those be the same two limos that we rode in yesterday?”
Gray, still wearing the dark pants and long sleeve shirt he had put on earlier in the day, said, “Are they for us? We’re supposed to go to the airport soon, aren’t we?”
“I think they are,” Coup said, answering his own question, and ignoring Gray. “We were safe in them, even though they look old, and are probably not armored.”
Gray said, “We had plenty of protection. All those soldiers, army trucks. The limos didn’t need to be armored.”
Just then, someone knocked on the hotel room door. When Coup opened it, he found a hotel staffer ready to bring Coup and Gray down the elevator to the waiting limos. The staffer also handed Coup a sealed white envelope, which Coup expected to contain email addresses of the museum’s lost-and-stolen artifact recovery team. Coup had requested that information from the museum Director. He stuffed the envelope into his shoulder bag, planning to open the envelope during the trip home.
In the lobby, Coup found Trixie and Beavs waiting for him and Gray. “You’re ready to go home,” Coup said. He noted that Trixie still wore the headscarf that she had donned earlier.
“We’re ready. I want to get away from here. You know that I didn’t want to land here in the first place,” Trixie said, her voice tired.
“We can’t get liquid oxygen on short notice for the Cumula,” Coup said, referring to fuel InSpace’s suborbital space plane required. “There are sources for kerosene, and I could get that, but without a source for LOX, I planned to leave the Cumulahere, for now.”
“So what’s the Plan B?” Trixie asked.
“I have chartered a jet. It’s due to arrive from Rome, and it will bring us to Scapa, with a stop in Iceland,” Coup said.
“A stop in Iceland.” Gray said, his voice vacant of opinion.
“We will need fuel, and Iceland lies under the great circle route. We’ll be kind of hidden there. We can use some rest, too.” Coup looked at the tired faces of Trixie, Beavs and Gray, surmising that the three could be overloaded by the events of the last week. “Let’s spend a few nights in Iceland and talk about what happened.”
“I think we need to get home,” Trixie said, also looking at Beavs and Gray. “We’ve been away longer than you have.” She sought and received agreement from the others.
“Okay, but we still have to stop in Iceland,” Coup said. He added a second later, “Actually, I just want to get back, too.”
The trip from the Nile Ritz Carlton to the airport turned out to be a calm introduction to the post LS-Tworld, with nothing to suggest that anything had changed. Cairo’s thick traffic moved according to its usual frenetic purposes; pedestrians, singly and in small groups, flowed across streets. Women and men moved about freely ¾even women in a restrictive black chador. After the previous day’s commotion, Coup did with justification expect a similar, tense, even dangerous trip through Cairo’s congested streets. They rejected the conspicuous limousines and instead used two anonymous white taxis, so numerous in Cairo.
But reality became apparent to Coup when he saw a headline on that day’s Herald Tribuneat an airport newsstand: Doubts Persist with Unusual Gift
Coup showed the newspaper to Gray, and then Beavs and Trixie. “There’s no doubt, is there? I mean, Beavs, your training. . .they were actual construction plans, yes?”
“That’s what I saw,” Beavs said. “And that’s what I thought, too..” He rotated the watch on his right wrist, seeking greater comfort. “I’ll say also that the drawings appeared show Khufu’s pyramid, the biggest one, with a burial chamber in it .”
Coup read the headline out loud, “Doubts persist. . .” Then he noticed other newspapers, in stacks, with similar headlines. Then he went to his phone; he had not been on any news sites during the confusion in Cairo ¾the landing, the limo ride, the tear gas, the Museum ¾and saw reports of confusion, discomfort, and outright denial, from around the world. He was reminded of the original finding of LS-Ton Titan, and of the turmoil, which was caused by the knowledge that people were not alone, or necessarily unique. Then he thought of how LS-Tby itself was evidence that there was other intelligent life out there, somewhere. The panels, which Gray and Beavs found on LS-Twere evidence that that intelligent life had visited Earth, at some time in the past, presumably when the Pyramids were built.
“We did not think this through,” Coup said, mostly to Trixie. “All I wanted to do was make a valid gift to the people of Egypt, actually to all people, but I didn’t anticipate how people would react.” He held up his phone to show live video streams of unrest in several cities on separate continents. “And people everywhere are reacting.”
Gray said, “I might have been able to predict this. The unrest is totally predictable.”
Trixie said, “If someone invades your house at night, you’re going to be pretty nervous. Someone some time ago invaded our planet. I mean, everyone thinks that could happen again. Everyone is afraid. Everyone is now afraid that our serene blue planet is not safe.” Trixie took the newspaper from Coup, looked at photos of the Pyramids on page one, then turned to page two, where there was a map of Egypt, and more photos.
“I’ve been watching all along.” Gray checked his phone again. “Nobody has really seen these things, the panels, and nobody knows anything about them.” He drew a rectangular shape in the air to suggest one of the panels. “People now have reason to believe that aliens are out there, and that scares them.”
Trixie added, “We could have left them with LS-T¾”
“Hindsight is twenty-twenty. We should have taken more time to think about the consequences,” Coup interrupted.
“We had to get away from that hostile visitor that was not SpaceY,” Trixie said. “We had very little time to make a decision. My first priority was safety. I wanted to get away.”
Coup left the newspaper on a row of seats in a waiting area, and checked the time on his phone. “Trixie’s right, but ¾”
“We did the right thing, in the short term,” Beavs said, staring at Coup. “What we did not do was think about the long-term consequences to earthly living. We just had no time.”
Coup said, “When the panels are put on display, and all can see them and make judgments, then the questions can be answered, and people will settle down.”
They walked to a large window with a view of the airport, and they could see the Columbia900, right where they left it, the day before. The main hatch was still open. Coup pointed to it, “Our glider over there. . .we were able to bring to Earth a new understanding. All new, now! We did the right thing, I hope.”
Beavs said, “Sir, we should talk about this more once we are in the privacy of the plane. This area is kind of public.”
“I don’t mind the publicity,” Coup said. “There’s an obvious new truth that humanity is not alone”
“You don’t understand,” Gray added. “This space, at the Cairo Airport is uncontrolled. You need to carefully manage your message.” Gray swept his arms around the large, open terminal. “There could be people who want a piece of you. At least we don’t have ¾or, at least we know the panels are in a safe place, where they will be studied and protected.”
“The Egyptian Museum,” Trixie said. “I wish I had not fallen asleep in there. There was a lot to see. I could have looked at the Tutankhamun stuff.”
“It was a long day,” Beavs said, as the foursome made its way to the general aviation building. “We started at an altitude of 250 miles, and ended in a huge, dark museum, with no preparation, training, or any idea of what was happening, where we were going, or anything.”
“And a crazy guy flew a powered parachute into the museum courtyard,” Trixie said.
“He got beat up by the security people too,” Gray said. “I wonder what will happen to him?”
Coup said, “You guys did a great job. Nothing could have prepared anyone for what you did.” They pushed through a double door, into Cairo’s mid-day heat. Just across the ramp sat a Gulfstream twinjet. “There’s our plane. We will be home in eight or ten hours, and into a new world.”
“That we created,” Gray said. “We’re in a new world now, and now we will have to wait for the Egyptian Museum’s people to go examine the panels and give us a proper interpretation.”
They climbed the external stairway to board the Gulfstream. While the 30-something Swiss captain completed the preflight checklist, the first officer closed the hatch, and the four passengers buckled in.
Once airborne, Coup remembered the envelope and dug it out of his shoulder bag. Coup liked his old teal-and-gray, bicycle messengers’ bag because it could hold a lot, and was durable. He bought it at a sporting goods store many years ago and used it when traveling. He had become sentimentally attached to it, and he did regard it a partner.
The white envelope lay upon a number of cheap mechanical pencils, a flash drive, and a tired old banana that he had brought from home his home in California, in case he became hungry. Time to throw that out, Coup mused as he reached for the envelope.
“Anyone want a banana,” he said, offering the others the wretched, bruised, black fruit. Coup grinned fiendishly, as he held something he knew no one would want.
“Get that thing out of here,” Beavs said.
“I hate the smell of old bananas,” Trixie echoed.
Gray, though, accepted Coup’s offer and took the banana from Coup, peeled, and consumed it. “I don’t know what your problem is with old fruit,” he said.
Coup’s attention returned to the envelope. It bore an emblem representing the Supreme Council of Antiquities, which Coup surmised, was the organization that controlled the Egyptian Museum. The envelope was sealed from end to end, with no way to slip a finger under the flap, to open it. Coup noticed that the envelope was so carefully sealed there was no place to insert the point of a pencil. Coup, always careful, unwilling to tear open the envelope, scanned the Gulfstream’s cabin for a knife, or a letter opener.
“Give me that envelope,” Gray said, tiring of watching Coup’s over-wrought carefulness.
“No. I’ll do it. I think I’ve got something in the bottom of my shoulder bag.” After a moment of rummaging, he produced a small, red Swiss Army knife. Coup acquired the knife several years back as a door prize to a charity fundraiser somewhere, but had forgotten about it. He had never used it.
This first use would give him the information, the names and email addresses of the people who would care for, and analyze and interpret the precious panels. He slid the sharp blade along the top of the envelope, exposing a folded piece of paper within. Having carefully opened the envelope, Coup pressed the blade closed, removed the paper from the envelope, unfolded it, and prepared to read.
But, the sheet of paper was completely blank. Coup looked at both sides, flipping the paper over. “This must be a mistake. They were going to give me the names and addresses, but there’s nothing here.”
Gray said, looking at Trixie, then Beavs, “That means we have to make sure that the people at the museum do what they said they are going to do.”
“It’s not even been a day since we dropped off the panels,” Beavs said.
Coup added, “Who did we decide to trust?”
“We acted very quickly,” Trixie said. “All we can do now is watch.”
“Practice, practice, practice!”
Prologue
The mission to Titan, and years later the orbital mission to the lost ship from Titan, affected everyone in some way. My book, Titan’s Gold, turned out to be a bestseller, as everyone wanted to know what actually happened. I continued to teach, and not once did any of my students ever figure out that Quan Tran had once been a student of mine, or that I was the one who recorded the story of Titan’s gold.
Along with everyone else, I expected that eventually the six extraordinary, gold-plated panels from LS-Twould emerge from whatever secret or protective location they were in, and all kinds of questions about the Pyramids would be answered. As everyone knows, the panels did reappear, but only in strange circumstances. Since I was the one to record and retell the original story, I continued to document conversations, save memos, and generally keep track of this saga. Quan, and later Beavs, continued to feed me inside information from InSpace, and about their activities. Coup and Gray also told me everything, even as Gray planned a daring mission to Cairo. As this unlikely story itself went on, and grew (there were no rules), I hoped that there could one day be a conclusion, or happy ending. Now, here is the latest. I am not sure this is the end, but it must be close.
Part 1
1. Departing Cairo
“We’re going home as soon as we can,” Coup said. He and Gray, Trixie, and Beavs had returned to the Nile Ritz Carlton, after the visit to the Cairo Tower. The partially paved open area between the Egyptian Museum and Tahrir, in front of the hotel had emptied; Coup could see workers sweeping the paved areas, and collecting trash and papers left by the previous day’s throng. Just the day before, Coup had presented six mysterious, gold-plated panels to the Egyptian Museum on behalf of all people in the world.
As he looked out the window of his fifth-floor hotel room, Coup saw two black limos turn into the hotel’s driveway. They could have been the same two black limousines that transported Coup, his space crew, and Egyptian officials and the panels from Cairo’s international airport to the museum. But he could not be certain, for he did not know if limos were common in this huge city. He asked John Gray, “Could those be the same two limos that we rode in yesterday?”
Gray, still wearing the dark pants and long sleeve shirt he had put on earlier in the day, said, “Are they for us? We’re supposed to go to the airport soon, aren’t we?”
“I think they are,” Coup said, answering his own question, and ignoring Gray. “We were safe in them, even though they look old, and are probably not armored.”
Gray said, “We had plenty of protection. All those soldiers, army trucks. The limos didn’t need to be armored.”
Just then, someone knocked on the hotel room door. When Coup opened it, he found a hotel staffer ready to bring Coup and Gray down the elevator to the waiting limos. The staffer also handed Coup a sealed white envelope, which Coup expected to contain email addresses of the museum’s lost-and-stolen artifact recovery team. Coup had requested that information from the museum Director. He stuffed the envelope into his shoulder bag, planning to open the envelope during the trip home.
In the lobby, Coup found Trixie and Beavs waiting for him and Gray. “You’re ready to go home,” Coup said. He noted that Trixie still wore the headscarf that she had donned earlier.
“We’re ready. I want to get away from here. You know that I didn’t want to land here in the first place,” Trixie said, her voice tired.
“We can’t get liquid oxygen on short notice for the Cumula,” Coup said, referring to fuel InSpace’s suborbital space plane required. “There are sources for kerosene, and I could get that, but without a source for LOX, I planned to leave the Cumulahere, for now.”
“So what’s the Plan B?” Trixie asked.
“I have chartered a jet. It’s due to arrive from Rome, and it will bring us to Scapa, with a stop in Iceland,” Coup said.
“A stop in Iceland.” Gray said, his voice vacant of opinion.
“We will need fuel, and Iceland lies under the great circle route. We’ll be kind of hidden there. We can use some rest, too.” Coup looked at the tired faces of Trixie, Beavs and Gray, surmising that the three could be overloaded by the events of the last week. “Let’s spend a few nights in Iceland and talk about what happened.”
“I think we need to get home,” Trixie said, also looking at Beavs and Gray. “We’ve been away longer than you have.” She sought and received agreement from the others.
“Okay, but we still have to stop in Iceland,” Coup said. He added a second later, “Actually, I just want to get back, too.”
The trip from the Nile Ritz Carlton to the airport turned out to be a calm introduction to the post LS-Tworld, with nothing to suggest that anything had changed. Cairo’s thick traffic moved according to its usual frenetic purposes; pedestrians, singly and in small groups, flowed across streets. Women and men moved about freely ¾even women in a restrictive black chador. After the previous day’s commotion, Coup did with justification expect a similar, tense, even dangerous trip through Cairo’s congested streets. They rejected the conspicuous limousines and instead used two anonymous white taxis, so numerous in Cairo.
But reality became apparent to Coup when he saw a headline on that day’s Herald Tribuneat an airport newsstand: Doubts Persist with Unusual Gift
Coup showed the newspaper to Gray, and then Beavs and Trixie. “There’s no doubt, is there? I mean, Beavs, your training. . .they were actual construction plans, yes?”
“That’s what I saw,” Beavs said. “And that’s what I thought, too..” He rotated the watch on his right wrist, seeking greater comfort. “I’ll say also that the drawings appeared show Khufu’s pyramid, the biggest one, with a burial chamber in it .”
Coup read the headline out loud, “Doubts persist. . .” Then he noticed other newspapers, in stacks, with similar headlines. Then he went to his phone; he had not been on any news sites during the confusion in Cairo ¾the landing, the limo ride, the tear gas, the Museum ¾and saw reports of confusion, discomfort, and outright denial, from around the world. He was reminded of the original finding of LS-Ton Titan, and of the turmoil, which was caused by the knowledge that people were not alone, or necessarily unique. Then he thought of how LS-Tby itself was evidence that there was other intelligent life out there, somewhere. The panels, which Gray and Beavs found on LS-Twere evidence that that intelligent life had visited Earth, at some time in the past, presumably when the Pyramids were built.
“We did not think this through,” Coup said, mostly to Trixie. “All I wanted to do was make a valid gift to the people of Egypt, actually to all people, but I didn’t anticipate how people would react.” He held up his phone to show live video streams of unrest in several cities on separate continents. “And people everywhere are reacting.”
Gray said, “I might have been able to predict this. The unrest is totally predictable.”
Trixie said, “If someone invades your house at night, you’re going to be pretty nervous. Someone some time ago invaded our planet. I mean, everyone thinks that could happen again. Everyone is afraid. Everyone is now afraid that our serene blue planet is not safe.” Trixie took the newspaper from Coup, looked at photos of the Pyramids on page one, then turned to page two, where there was a map of Egypt, and more photos.
“I’ve been watching all along.” Gray checked his phone again. “Nobody has really seen these things, the panels, and nobody knows anything about them.” He drew a rectangular shape in the air to suggest one of the panels. “People now have reason to believe that aliens are out there, and that scares them.”
Trixie added, “We could have left them with LS-T¾”
“Hindsight is twenty-twenty. We should have taken more time to think about the consequences,” Coup interrupted.
“We had to get away from that hostile visitor that was not SpaceY,” Trixie said. “We had very little time to make a decision. My first priority was safety. I wanted to get away.”
Coup left the newspaper on a row of seats in a waiting area, and checked the time on his phone. “Trixie’s right, but ¾”
“We did the right thing, in the short term,” Beavs said, staring at Coup. “What we did not do was think about the long-term consequences to earthly living. We just had no time.”
Coup said, “When the panels are put on display, and all can see them and make judgments, then the questions can be answered, and people will settle down.”
They walked to a large window with a view of the airport, and they could see the Columbia900, right where they left it, the day before. The main hatch was still open. Coup pointed to it, “Our glider over there. . .we were able to bring to Earth a new understanding. All new, now! We did the right thing, I hope.”
Beavs said, “Sir, we should talk about this more once we are in the privacy of the plane. This area is kind of public.”
“I don’t mind the publicity,” Coup said. “There’s an obvious new truth that humanity is not alone”
“You don’t understand,” Gray added. “This space, at the Cairo Airport is uncontrolled. You need to carefully manage your message.” Gray swept his arms around the large, open terminal. “There could be people who want a piece of you. At least we don’t have ¾or, at least we know the panels are in a safe place, where they will be studied and protected.”
“The Egyptian Museum,” Trixie said. “I wish I had not fallen asleep in there. There was a lot to see. I could have looked at the Tutankhamun stuff.”
“It was a long day,” Beavs said, as the foursome made its way to the general aviation building. “We started at an altitude of 250 miles, and ended in a huge, dark museum, with no preparation, training, or any idea of what was happening, where we were going, or anything.”
“And a crazy guy flew a powered parachute into the museum courtyard,” Trixie said.
“He got beat up by the security people too,” Gray said. “I wonder what will happen to him?”
Coup said, “You guys did a great job. Nothing could have prepared anyone for what you did.” They pushed through a double door, into Cairo’s mid-day heat. Just across the ramp sat a Gulfstream twinjet. “There’s our plane. We will be home in eight or ten hours, and into a new world.”
“That we created,” Gray said. “We’re in a new world now, and now we will have to wait for the Egyptian Museum’s people to go examine the panels and give us a proper interpretation.”
They climbed the external stairway to board the Gulfstream. While the 30-something Swiss captain completed the preflight checklist, the first officer closed the hatch, and the four passengers buckled in.
Once airborne, Coup remembered the envelope and dug it out of his shoulder bag. Coup liked his old teal-and-gray, bicycle messengers’ bag because it could hold a lot, and was durable. He bought it at a sporting goods store many years ago and used it when traveling. He had become sentimentally attached to it, and he did regard it a partner.
The white envelope lay upon a number of cheap mechanical pencils, a flash drive, and a tired old banana that he had brought from home his home in California, in case he became hungry. Time to throw that out, Coup mused as he reached for the envelope.
“Anyone want a banana,” he said, offering the others the wretched, bruised, black fruit. Coup grinned fiendishly, as he held something he knew no one would want.
“Get that thing out of here,” Beavs said.
“I hate the smell of old bananas,” Trixie echoed.
Gray, though, accepted Coup’s offer and took the banana from Coup, peeled, and consumed it. “I don’t know what your problem is with old fruit,” he said.
Coup’s attention returned to the envelope. It bore an emblem representing the Supreme Council of Antiquities, which Coup surmised, was the organization that controlled the Egyptian Museum. The envelope was sealed from end to end, with no way to slip a finger under the flap, to open it. Coup noticed that the envelope was so carefully sealed there was no place to insert the point of a pencil. Coup, always careful, unwilling to tear open the envelope, scanned the Gulfstream’s cabin for a knife, or a letter opener.
“Give me that envelope,” Gray said, tiring of watching Coup’s over-wrought carefulness.
“No. I’ll do it. I think I’ve got something in the bottom of my shoulder bag.” After a moment of rummaging, he produced a small, red Swiss Army knife. Coup acquired the knife several years back as a door prize to a charity fundraiser somewhere, but had forgotten about it. He had never used it.
This first use would give him the information, the names and email addresses of the people who would care for, and analyze and interpret the precious panels. He slid the sharp blade along the top of the envelope, exposing a folded piece of paper within. Having carefully opened the envelope, Coup pressed the blade closed, removed the paper from the envelope, unfolded it, and prepared to read.
But, the sheet of paper was completely blank. Coup looked at both sides, flipping the paper over. “This must be a mistake. They were going to give me the names and addresses, but there’s nothing here.”
Gray said, looking at Trixie, then Beavs, “That means we have to make sure that the people at the museum do what they said they are going to do.”
“It’s not even been a day since we dropped off the panels,” Beavs said.
Coup added, “Who did we decide to trust?”
“We acted very quickly,” Trixie said. “All we can do now is watch.”