Simon first checked that the camera was functioning, and when he was satisfied that it was he moved over to the console. Alex positioned himself by the camera so he could observe Simon's actions. Simon's first action was to turn to the camera and start narrating his every move. He first touched one of the grid crystals with no effect. He then touched the unlit wheel crystal which remained dark. His next move was to systematically touch each grid crystal, but not one reacted to his contact.

"I'm starting to think this thing only likes you," joked Simon.

Simon took out one of the grid crystals and briefly studied it. The crystal appeared to be a dark indigo in colour, hexagonal with points at both ends, roughly 20 centimetres in length and 5 centimetres in width. He gently placed it back into its slot. He then proceeded to remove the unlit wheel crystal to look at it. It was the same shape and size as the indigo crystal but had a deep emerald green colour to it.

"Ah!"

"Found something?" asked Alex.

"The slot in the wheel section is snugger than the slot in grid section. I think this section here," said Simon pointing to the row of unlit crystals on the right "is nothing more than storage holders for extra crystals. It is this section here," he said pointing to the lit crystals on the left "that's the control surface."

Simon went back to staring at the crystal with intense interest. He turned his back to Alex and spoke, "I'm betting this isn't even a crystal. It may look like a crystal but I suspect it's a data storage unit and powerful microprocessor. I love to see this thing under an electron microscope."

"I thought Fenske was the main computer guy here," Alex said in an off-hand manner.

"Adrian? He's actually not our main computer guy. That guy actually works on Team 3. He's a bit of night owl. Quite brilliant but somewhat insane. Makes our little Adrian look like a sea of stability. You'll probably get to meet him tonight at dinner. Now Adrian is very good with computers. He works for a company that makes various spectroscopes, including that baby out there," Simon pointed to the machine sitting in the middle of the cave. "Believe it or not, it's worth $10,000. Adrian wrote the operating system program of the machine and computer program that gives us all the graphs and false colour images."

Alex just stared at Simon, secretly wondering why he had to say anything at all.

Simon continued, "As for me, I'm not in the same league as those guys. My company works in the resource management sector, doing engineering for mining, oil drilling, logging that sort of thing. However I did do some consulting work for NASA who were interested in designing machines and habitats for mining on the Moon, asteroids, Mars, that sort of thing. Real pie-in-the-sky stuff even for NASA. Probably will never see the light of day, but because of that I became real interested in computers, their designs and their capabilities. However, that work has led me to working on a project that will hopefully come to fruition in about five to ten years. I'm currently designing an underwater oil drilling platform. I know real James Cameron, eh? I see a lot of potential in it."

Alex thought the last bit was interesting, but he didn't want to let on that he thought so, lest Simon would just keep on talking. Alex decided to change the subject, "Any idea why that crystal wasn't lighting up?"

Simon shook his head, "Nope. I thought perhaps I could see some sort of obvious flaw. Perhaps if….Oh!"

Simon placed the crystal back into its slot when it suddenly lit up. The console hummed to life. Alex could feel a pressure wave hit him a fraction of a second before there was an explosion of light at the back half of the room that quick expanded into a sphere some 15 metres in diameter. Within seconds an image emerged into focus and solidified. Alex walked towards the console, the perspective of the image changed as he moved. He could clearly see that it was an alien landscape. It was nighttime but the barren landscape was lit up from the light of three moons that more or less lined up just above the horizon, each showing a waning gibbous phase. Two of the moons appeared roughly in perspective size to that of the Earth's moon, the third moon was very large in appearance. Alex could easily make out impact craters on its surface, but there were also misty areas, suggesting at least a thin atmosphere.

Alex moved next to Simon, "How did you get it to activate?"

Simon was rapidly looking between the image, the console, and back to the image, "I have no idea. Perhaps it wasn't sitting in the slot secure enough to make a connection…"

"Maybe you rotated it, and put it in differently. Maybe you should…"

Before Alex could continue, they heard Fenske's voice at the doorway, "Guys, what did you just do? We…What the hell is that?"

"Well that got you out of your chair," Alex said under his breath. He then walked towards the doorway, "What happened?"

Fenske motioned to somebody before answering, "There was an EM pulse. If it was any stronger, it would have destroyed all the computers."

Sarah poked her head around the doorway entrance and gave a facial expression of mild surprise, "Well that's something. What is it?"

"We don't know yet," replied Alex. He then heard Simon's voice from behind him "Was any data lost?"

"We don't know yet, the computers are still booting up."

"How big of a pulse was it? My phone is still working, and I can see from here that the camera is still operational. By rights then both of those should have been fried being so close to the source of the pulse." After hearing what Simon said, Alex took a quick glance at his phone. It had no signal, naturally, but it still worked.

Fenske just shook his head "Without functional computers, I can't answer that. The Obelisk acts as natural shield so you should've received a much bigger hit."

"Guys," said an exasperated Sarah, "can we focus on the alien landscape that's now in the middle of the room instead of being techheads for one minute?"

"Isn't that what you hired us for?" Fenske received a death glare from Sarah, so he made a quick exit "I'll go check on the computers…"

Alex smiled at the exchange and turned around to look at the sphere. He could see a fourth smaller moon slowly moving into view. It moved fast enough that he could see its phase slowly shifting. It started to pass in front of the large moon. Clearly it wasn't a static shot. "It must be in real time," he said out loud.

"Is it an actual gateway to that world?" asked Sarah.

Now what made her think of that? wondered Alex. He was about to chide her for such a leap of logic, but the idea intrigued him. Could that actually be a stable wormhole?

"There is only one way to find out."