The Geologist, page 1

The geologist trudged up the dusty incline warily. He had been wandering around the hills near Lake Victoria for several months now with little success in finding the mineralogical resources his employers were paying him large amounts to locate, and the stress was starting to get to him. The stress, compounded by the heat, dry climate, and rugged terrain had been hard on him these past few weeks especially.

He had been in the field for almost 2 weeks, and he was considering going back to Bukoba for supplies, but the bumpy ride in the dilapidated Russian truck didn�t sound any more exciting than staying in the field and making due with what he had. Of course Bukoba, situated on the shore of Lake Victoria, wasn�t exactly a tourists paradise itself.

He paused at the crest of a small rise for a moment, popped open one of canteens and took a long drink. The water was warm and tasted like plastic, but it would keep him alive, and therefore it tasted delicious. As he tossed the water back something caught his eye off to one side.

A roughly circular feature was barely visible across a slight ravine. Many people would have simply glanced right past it without noticing. However, he had been a geologist for almost 30 years and had built his career on noticing things that others overlooked. He reslung his canteen and set off across the ravine.

The strange circular feature was about 500 meters in diameter, and about 50 meters deep at its deepest point to the best that the old man could figure. It was badly eroded, and most of the northwestern side of it was filled with windblown sediment, with the edges worn down by scouring of the windblown sand. Still, his old eagle eyes picked out very unusual features that his brain told him didn�t belong in many models that could explain what this feature was.

The feature was actually elliptical in shape, lengthened in the northwestern direction, with a slight rise in the landscape in that direction. Several large boulders were strewn about the landscape around the depression. It was obviously not a drainage feature of any kind as no tributaries led to or away from it, although it was large enough and shaped correctly to be a medium sized pond if filled.

The old geologist clambered down inside the depression and began nosing around the ragged rim of the basin. He noted distinct metamorphic features on the rocks around the rim, as well as very wide spread fracturing... But as he continued his inspection, he found these features to be very localized as sections that had since broken away due to weathering exposed undeformed rock units that he recognized from his local expeditions. As he walked along the bottom basin he noticed glassy vitrified rock fragments which peaked his curiosity as he knew the area to not have any volcanic activity. As he dug a bit into the sediment at the bottom of the basin he found the bottom rock layer of the basin, which turned out to be severely fractured and vitrified.

The old man retreated out of the depression to think. He sat down against one of the nearby boulders and took a long drink of water and began to gnaw on a piece of jerky he had brought with him. As he sat, he looked over the weather-beaten side of the boulder he leaned against... He saw the same heat stress metamorphism he had noticed in the basin. Abandoning his jerky, he raised his rock hammer and beat a slab off the side of the boulder, exposing the same rock formation under the heat deformation that he knew to be in the area....

His mind began to race, trying to fit the facts into a framework that his mind told him could be the explanation... Obvious impact crater, slightly oblique impact angle to the northwest....

Forgetting to cap his canteen, he jumped to his feet and ran back into the depression, unfolding his entrenching tool as he went...

Several hours later, the old man sat in the middle of the basin. The sun hung low in the sky, and he knew he had precious little daylight for the hour long hike back to camp... but he sat and stared at what he had brought to daylight for the first time in millions of years...

In his initial excitement, the old geologist had forgotten several rules of documentation and categorization. He had simply leaped into the basin with his entrenching tool and waded into the wall of windblown sediment. He just knew that whatever had made this impact crater could be identified if he was able to find a piece of it, and it appeared that at least part of the original impactor was still buried under the rock units to the northwest of the basin.

The first thing that gave the old man pause was when a few fragments of something metallic came to light with his entrenching tool. He puzzled over these for a long while, until he finally set them aside and continued, more determined than ever to find exactly what caused this hole in the ground. Now possessed, and working with a fervor he hadn�t felt in decades, he dug on.

Now, hours later, he sat looking at what he had found.

Surrounding him at the center of the basin was an array of obviously artificially manufactured metallic items. He had no idea what many of them were, although they seemed to be part of a larger structure. There were many metal fragments that seemed to be structural load bearing components of some kind. At least one item, about the size of a paperback book with a row of small indention�s on the bottom looked to be some kind of handheld electronic device.

But all these items lay scattered on the ground around him, temporarily forgotten. Directly in front of the old geologist lay 5 objects that were of obvious biological origin... skulls. Four of them, situated in flanking positions, 2 on each side, were characterized by very heavy jaws, full lines of omnivorous teeth, and heavy brow ridges. His paleontology background told him these were closely related to Australopithecine, which had been originally found by Richard Leaky over half a century prior several hundred miles to the south. However, although these skulls were related, they were of a line that had never previously been seen in the fossil record before.

The skull in the middle of this array that currently held the old geologists attention was obviously not of earthly origins. The brain case was far distended, and could not possibly have passed through any biological birth canal of any humanoid female, even in an infantile state. The eyes were almond shaped, and distended to each side, over 3 inches wide each. The nose slits were so small he couldn�t see anything of the sinus cavities inside the skull. The ears were slight penetrations into the side of the skull, and the teeth... the teeth really bothered him... There really weren�t any teeth... Just an upper and lower row of abrasive bone material that reminded him of very fine files... Almost like the jaw of a lizard.

But the thing that struck him the most of all of these skulls was that the Australopithecine skulls had a feature that the alien skull didn�t have... A feature that he recognized immediately, as he had at one time been part of a wildlife trapping and tagging program... Attached to the heavy brow ridge of each skull, neatly punched into the bone were simple metal tags... the writing had long ago become illegible, and it would have been written in a language never before seen on this planet anyway... but that was undeniably what they were...

The alien skull seemed to smile bemusedly at the bewildered geologist....