The Alien Artifact 8 Read Online Free Page A

all examined it and avoided replying,
and Cronenberg wondered if they agreed or disagreed!
     

Chapter 4
     
    The Haunted Hill
     
    Cronenberg leapt onto his feet when a strange
explosion shattered his sleep and he stared out into dark Martian
night!
    They had wrongly calculated the distance and
time it took to get to the hill, and they had only been able to
leave late in the evening, and it had become dark on the way and
they had rested and had fallen asleep below the hill. The long day
and march over small hills in the thick heavy spacesuits, marching
through deep regions of sand carrying large amounts of equipment,
including oxygen tanks and supplies, had tired them, and they were
unable to do anything but sleep anyway.
    Cronenberg was staggered when he considered
what the noise was, as it had sounded like an artificial explosion,
and he stood trying to explain how it could be there, and he
wondered how the atmosphere could even carry the sound through it,
and he realized Mars was different, and it might even be some form
of volcanic disturbance from below, blasting up through a vent.
    The other two astronauts, Rosenberg and
Campbell, who had accompanied him either ignored it, or were
asleep, or had not heard it, and he examined them through their
dark helmet faceplates but could not see what they were doing.
    When a second explosion blasted out he stood
shocked, as he had just started to ignore the first and had
considered it to be his imagination, and the powered rifle blast
exploded into the empty silence staggering him, and the explosion
sounded so powerful he believed it had some form of powerful
explosive in the bullets!
    The other two astronauts at first never
reacted or even moved and he finally spotted Rosenberg opening his
eyes, and watched him looking startled and realized he had also
heard it and had been trying to ignore it.
    “ What the hell was that?” he finally
asked, as he stood.
    “ It sounded like a gun!”
    “ We don’t have any guns on Mars
though?”
    “ There’s nobody out here
either!”
    Rosenberg yawned, and replied, “It has to be
something else!”
    Rosenberg went back to where he was sleeping
and tried to go back to sleep.
    Whoever was there had to be crazy or up to
something and he realized he might even get the answer to what had
brought them down there and decided to investigate it.
    He silently crept away, and tried to creep up
on whoever it was to observe them and realized that if there was
someone there that they surely had to have left traces of
themselves, as there was sand everywhere and there had to be
footprints or something.
    It felt silly looking for someone there, in
such a desolate place, where nobody should be! He could not realize
who was there and just accepted that they might be trying to do
something! Perhaps it was the shuttle they wanted, as it was
priceless and its technology highly confidential on the Earth.
    It had to be located in the coldest and most
remote place on Mars, and its southern pole! Even in the summer the
place was deadly cold without the spacesuits!
    As far as he was concerned there was nothing
to be there for! The hidden coldness around him at times made him
cringe, and he, almost blindly, rushed on to where the sound came
from, and for some reason when he reached a specific region he
realized it had to be where the noise came from.
    Suddenly a loud explosion blasted out and a
bullet thudded somewhere nearby and he automatically switched off
his light and ran through the darkness for his life!
    He dared not use his light now and he could
barely see, and regularly tripped up and continued!
    He realized that he could have an infrared
filter on is faceplate, to see in the dark, and he searched for the
switch to activate it, and realized it was a different version that
had it, and he just dived into a pile of sand behind some rocks,
and hid himself. Surely he would not be found there, and he had not
left any footprints nearby and had changed