Sarah glared at him, "Don't you have some samples to collect?" she growled.

"Do think that it might be pointless? You're just going to find the 'Made in Pangaea' label and the manufacturing date making all my efforts in vain."

"Just humor me. There is no guarantee…" A slow smirk started to form on Morton's face, and Sarah let out an exasperated gasp and waved at him, "Just collect your samples."

As Morton moved off, he pointed to his eyes with two fingers, and then moved those 180° towards Alex, before giving a wink and smile.

Sarah just shook her head in annoyance, and then asked everyone to get to work. Sarah moved off towards the cave carvings, while Simon went to the communications station to order down a couple more lights and another camera. Alex put on his headset and approached the entrance of the Obelisk. He paused for a few seconds to ponder the enormity of what he was about to do as well as feeling some trepidation that the Obelisk might not want him to enter. He shook his head at that thought; if the Obelisk had such security features, he probably wouldn't have been able to open it so easily. With that, he inhaled sharply and held his breath, and ducked his head as he crossed the threshold.

He let out his breath. He felt slightly disappointed. He knew he just crossed into a structure that exists mostly outside of this universe, yet there was no more sensation than that of entering a room from another room. The chamber was unremarkable, rectangular, roughly the same size as the cave that it was in. It looked about 20 metres high and wide and about 40 metres deep, all a uniform black in colour. There was no obvious source for the ultraviolet radiation. The only indication that it was being emitted was that parts of his shirt fluoresced, much like being under the influence of a blacklight. The only item in the room was what appeared to be a console which was about 10 metres from the entrance. He slowly approached it, and then remembered something.

"Testing, testing, one, two, three." Alex waited for a response, but heard nothing. "Hello, anybody reading me? Lt. Barrow? Col. Price? Anybody?" There was not even static. At first he thought his battery was dead, but a little red light glowed indicating it was working. It was completely voice activated, so there were no switches he needed to flip…

Suddenly he realized the problem, and felt stupid for not seeing it beforehand. He walked back to the entrance and called to Sarah. "We have a problem."

Sarah was attaching a sheet of paper to the cave wall. She looked back, "What's wrong?"

"The headsets are not going to work. This thing absorbs radio waves; there is no way we can talk to one another once we are inside."

"What about the camera? That won't work either?"

Simon interjected, "I plan on using a cable to connect it to the work stations out here. It shouldn't be a problem." Alex nodded in the affirmative.

"Well I guess we have to make do, continue." replied Sarah.

Alex took off the headset, placed it on a workstation table, and then headed back inside. He walked over to the consol. It was roughly the size of an average computer work station angled at 30°. It was composed of elongated hexagonal crystals arranged in two different patterns. The left pattern was like that of a spoked wheel, with six spokes of six crystals with an outer circle of 12 crystals. The right pattern was simply 12 rows of six crystals; however there were six empty spots of missing crystals in the grid. Alex studied the consol. It stood roughly the right height for a human to operate, but it obviously worked on some base 6 system. He looked back at the diamond shaped doorway, and considered how he had to duck to enter inside. He pondered alien eyes that could see into the ultraviolet. He tried to picture what these beings that constructed this could look like, but his imagination failed him. Alex went back to the doorway and called out to Sarah.

"What is it?"

Alex spoke in low tones, "I think I know somebody that might be of use to us. There is a Prof. Silas Swallow at Arizona State University who specializes in astrobiology and works with NASA in the search for extraterrestrial life. We might get a clearer picture of what these aliens might have looked like."

Sarah nodded, "Okay, I will look into it. However is it something that is important?"

Alex shrugged, "Possibly. If we had some inkling of what they might have looked like, we might get a sense of the purpose and logic of the Obelisk and how it works."

Sarah nodded again, "Okay that makes sense. I will make a call."

"Thank you." and with that Alex headed back inside to look at the console. He noted that each crystal had some variation in colour with both the wheel and grid arranged in a type of colour sequence…. Alex absentmindedly touched one of the crystals causing many of them to light up. He jumped back in surprise. The wheel was almost completely lit up save for one of the crystals in the centre, while the grid remained dark. The colour variation was more pronounced in the lighted section, with it entirely in the green-blue-violet half of the spectrum.

Alex looked sheepishly out towards the entrance way. He saw Simon pop his head in.

"Sarah wants me to tell you to stop touching things."