Part 13 (1/2)

Alby looked up, surprised to be asked his opinion. He had thought that, as kids, he and Lily were just being brought along for the ride, a.s.signed to Zoe to be kept safe.

”Well?” Lachlan said expectantly. ”Jack West thinks you're a clever one and Jack's a notoriously hard judge. And Zoe here doesn't hang out with losers-I mean, hey, look at us.”

Lily raised an eyebrow at that.

Julius added, ”And weren't you the one who figured out the connection between the t.i.tanic Rising and Stonehenge?”

Alby swallowed. Lily smiled at him rea.s.suringly. She had long ago become used to this kind of adult treatment.

”I, well,” Alby stammered. ”The stone we're after has to fit some way with the Firestone.

I can't see the Firestone fitting onto the Grand Trilithon in any practical way. But the Altar Stone, if reerected, would be at the very heart of the structure. The other thing to remember is the rising of t.i.tan to the northeast-”

”Ah, yes, yes. Good point,” Julius said.

They had gone through this earlier.

As Alby had explained briefly at the meeting in Dubai, the t.i.tanic Rising and Sinking occurred only when the Earth, Jupiter, and Saturn were in alignment, something that occurred approximately once every 400 years, and which-clearly by no coincidence- was happening right now.

The ”rising” of Saturn's largest moon, t.i.tan, actually preceded the pa.s.sage of Saturn itself, rising from behind the great hulking ma.s.s of Jupiter. Soon after this rising, Saturn would sink again behind Jupiter. Due to each planet's angled orbit around the Sun-its ecliptic-this upwarddownward motion occurred eight times in the month that the planets remained aligned.

Seen from Stonehenge, first Jupiter would appear on the northeastern horizon, then t.i.tan, then Saturn.

”So why is this t.i.tanic Rising so important?” Zoe asked. ”What does t.i.tan or Jupiter or Saturn have to do with theSaBenben and the Dark Star?”

”The connection with theSaBenben is straightforward,” Julius said. ”It's the connection between Stonehenge and the Great Pyramid that people have been searching for for centuries. Our theory is simple: the Pyramid is a temple to our Sun. Stonehenge is a temple to the Dark Sun.”

”And the two are most certainly linked geographically,” Lachlan added. ”You know how the bluestones were brought to the Salisbury Plain from the Preseli Hills in Wales?”

”Yes, Lachlan,” Zoe said patiently. ”Ido have two degrees in archaeology. I just didn't do the subjects on Crazy British Neolithic Cosmology that you obviously majored in.”

”Then you know about the rectangle formed by the four original Station Stones that once surrounded Stonehenge?”

”Yes.”

”I don't,” Lily said.

To ill.u.s.trate, Lachlan opened a book, showing Lily a picture of Stonehenge's layout. Arrayed around the circular henge in a perfect rectangle were four stones known as the ”Station Stones.” They formed a 5:12 rectangle.

Lachlan said, ”Now, if you draw a diagonal across that rectangle, simple Pythagorean math tells us that the resulting rightangle triangle is a 5:12:13 triangle.”

He drew a triangle on the picture with a pencil.

”Following me?” he said.

”So far,” Lily said.

”Nice triangle, isn't it?”

”I guess.”

Lachlan then pulled out a map of the United Kingdom. He indicated Stonehenge at the bottom of the map, and then drew the same 5:12:13 triangle on the map using Stonehenge as the tip of the triangle and keeping the triangle's baseline parallel to the equator.

”The 5:12:13 triangle reveals the original location of the bluestones in Wales: The Preseli Hills,” Lachlan said. ”This is pretty exceptional geography for a primitive tribe. It'sso exceptional that some believe the ancients had outside help.”

”I thought you were going to prove a link between Stonehenge and the Great Pyramid,”

Zoe said.

Lachlan smiled. He winked to Lily. ”Remember how I said it was a nice triangle?”

”Yeah...”

”Well, if you extend the hypotenuse of this wonderful triangle like this...”

”...see what it runs through.”

Lachlan turned to a map of the world and did precisely that.

”No way...” Lily said, when she saw the finished product.

The arrow pa.s.sed directly through Egypt, right at the Nile Delta...at Giza.

”Stonehenge and the Great Pyramid at Giza,” Lachlan said proudly. ”United at last.”

”Which brings us to the second connection,” Julius said. ”The connection between all this and t.i.tan, Saturn, and Jupiter. You see, it's not t.i.tan or Saturn or Jupiter that matters. It's what lies hiddenbehind them that matters.”

”Behind them?” Lily asked.

Lachlan grinned. ”Yes. We checked the data you sent us from Dubai, the data from Wizard's notes about this Dark Star and its rate of approach. Seems it's coming at us frombehind Jupiter. Thus the importance of this celestial event, the rising of Saturn behind Jupiter. It is, to put it simply, beyond value, because it will allow us, for the very first time, to see this fearsome Dark Star.”

”How?” Zoe asked, turning in the driver's seat. ”I thought we couldn't see it in our light spectrum.”

”Well, we won't seeit , we'll see the dark s.p.a.ce that it occupies,” Julius said. ”Now, are you familiar with the concept of s.p.a.cetime?”

”Or more specifically thecurvature of s.p.a.cetime,” Lachlan added.

”Yes, good clarification, brother,” Julius said.

”Thank you.”

”More or less,” Zoe said. ”The gravitational pull of a planetbends the s.p.a.ce around it. I once heard it compared to a stretchedout rubber sheet with marbles placed on it...”

”That's right,” Lachlan said, ”and each marble makes a slight depression in the rubber sheet, indicating the curvature of s.p.a.cetime. So if you were in a s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p traveling past these planets, your trajectory would actually bend as you pa.s.s each planet, unless of course you applied more power.”

”Yes...”

Julius said, ”Well, it's the same with light. Light bends, too, as it pa.s.ses through the gravitational fields of planets and stars.”

Lachlan: ”And big planets like Jupiter bend it more than small planets like Mercury.”