Basement B3

Part 7

     Later, just before Tracy was about to leave for home her father came around to her office. He locked the door and sat down. "I went back down to B3 with a powerful portable vacuum cleaner," he said, "I got it all, then the vacuum cleaner went into the laser incinerator. It's gone for good, Tracy. Are you feeling okay now? You still look a bit pale."

"I'm fine," she answered, "I had a cup of tea which did wonders for me. But please tell me the whole story. Did you know what Bolton and Walker were doing in B3? Did you know what they had?"

"I did and I didn't. It seemed they decided not to keep me up to date with their findings. After they died I removed their reports from the computer file as some of their speculations were rather disturbing.

"As you know they found the cluster on the moon embedded in ice in a crater where it was in a permanent shadow. Initial scans by the computer at Mainbase showed it was harmless and inert, so I approved its transport back here for study. After further scans it was revealed that there was some kind of unknown matrix in the centre of the crystal. Walker and Bolton asked for a secure lab to study it while they were on Earth rotation, so I set them up in Lab Two down in B3. That way it was in a Level One security area, we didn't want other staff speculating about them studying some alien life form. I was busy with other projects at the time so I left them on their own. Their initial reports suggested they thought something telepathic was in the crystal and it was talking to them. This concerned me so I visited their lab, but I could pick up nothing emanating from this thing.

"After that their reports were rather basic, analysis of the quartz, dating it at three hundred million years, nothing to ring any alarm bells. Then the car accident. The day after the accident I went down to the lab with a clean up crew. We moved most of the equipment out, and we searched every square inch of that place including the annexe and the adjoining lab for the crystal, but we couldn't find it. It wasn't in the car wreck either. That concerned me, so I closed off B3 with instructions that no one was to go down there without my authorisation. It seems, Tracy, you managed to override that command and get the access codes from the computer.

"Anyway, apparently this 'entity' somehow reconstructed its crystal home and then lay dormant in the Lab 2 annexe for about fifteen years when it started projecting 'ghost' images up to Level B2. Then you visited it. I'm assuming the cabinet was placed in front of the annexe door by one of the clean up crew. I'm not quite sure why, but it's possible this thing put the suggestion into his mind to do so. Maybe it didn't want anyone walking in on it.

"When you finally did walk in on it, it got into your mind projecting scenes from the night Walker and Bolton died. It also knocked Brad out. This was a very powerful alien entity. I'm not sure why it said it wanted you, but luckily you and I together were able to weaken it so you could destroy it with the laser. I have explained all this to Brad in a slightly watered down version without telling him about our 'special abilities'."

They both sat in silence for a few moments, then Tracy asked, "Is it really destroyed, Dad? Are you completely sure?"

***

The only sound was the humming of the air conditioning as Dr Hellen Stewart walked along the deserted passage. She carried a box with geological samples from the Lunar Research Unit which required filing in the storage facility on Level B2. She opened the door to the LRU storage room and found the correct cabinet. After filing the samples she walked back towards the door. As she reached for the handle there was a faint sound behind her. She turned around, but saw nothing. She walked back a few steps until she could look down the nearest aisle between the storage cabinets.

A few metres along the aisle she saw it on the floor, a rather beautiful cluster of large clear crystals. Who could have left that here on the floor like that, she wondered as she bent down to pick it up.

Author's Note
I hope you enjoyed reading this story as much as I enjoyed writing it.
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Is the alien entity really destroyed?
Find out by reading the next story in the "Silver Star" series "Laser Light".
wattpad.com/story/165649037-laser-light