Night of The Nanobot

Chapter One

Sashelas looked up from the monitor. "They've found something." She pushed loose blonde hair out of her eyes and tucked it behind the tips of her long ears. "The divers are bringing it up now."

"What is it?" Ellison followed the Dig Leader out of the cabin.

"Not sure. It's too murky down there to see it properly. Big though." Sashelas smiled.

She looks like a kid in a sweet shop...where does that phrase come from I wonder? And what are sweets? Ellison watched the fountain of bubbles as the artefact came to the surface. The divers held onto the floats surrounding the thing as they changed to air breathing. Ellison still found the disappearance of the gills sickening, and he looked away until Sashelas said:

"Come on Ellison, help me get this aboard. We need to scan it before we open it, just in case."

He joined in with heaving the thing over the side of the craft, placing it onto a trolley and wheeling it into the Scan Lab. Then he sealed the lab door and joined Sashelas at the lab monitors.

"Looks like it's definitely pre-Destruction. Dating puts it at roughly 1065 B.D" Ellison muttered.

"That's the beginning of the third millennium." Sashelas gasped.

The two of them grinned at each other.

"What's inside?" Ellison flipped the monitor over to look inside. "It's crowded. There's all sorts in there, metal, paper, plastic, pottery, glass ...is that food? We've hit the jackpot!

"It has to be one of those Time Capsule things that Keller was talking about, it just has to be!" Sashelas laughed and kissed Ellison on the cheek. "We have got to get this back to the university and investigate it properly."

"I'll call the camp and tell them we're leaving...when?" Ellison paused.

"Now. We'll drop the divers back at the camp and head up river. We can be there by tomorrow morning." The Ligalfar clapped her hands. "This is going to be massive. An award for sure and you'll be able to get your doctorate on this dig alone!"

Ellison grinned as he turned for the communicator. Sashelas went out to tell the Divers what they'd pulled up and the credits they'd get for the work. He heard them gasp and cheer as he dialled the Camp Co-Ordinator.

He was in the middle of arguing with Dr. Keller when Sashelas came back in.

"What's wrong?" She came up behind him.

"I can hear you, Dr. Jertinal." Keller hissed. "You can't take that artefact straight back to the university. I thought we'd agreed that whatever you found would be opened and catalogued on site." Ellison imagined Dr. Keller's panicked expression at the thought of a find getting away from him without his name attached to it.

"We think there might be foodstuffs inside. We don't have the appropriate equipment at Camp for that kind of delicate operation. Your name will be mentioned in the report of course. I'll see you in a couple of weeks." Sashelas flipped the communicator off leaving Keller spluttering into a soundless screen and went back to the Divers.

A moment later there were a series of splashes and Ellison ran out onto deck. All the divers and crew were swimming for shore, laughing.

"What did you say?" he asked.

"I offered to double their credit if they'd get themselves back to camp. They took me up on the offer." She grinned, her pointed teeth shining in the sunshine. "Let's get back to University!"

Ellison laughed.

* * *

The moon seemed to sit on a thick puffy cloud above the Refectory clock. Rhianwen sighed with delight at the sight of the moonlit park, the water splashing into the fountain providing a soft musical counterpart to the crunch of her feet through the leaves starting to drop off the trees surrounding them.