Turcotte suppressed a shudder as he remembered the strange object floating in the tank at the underground base on the island of Novaya Zemlya, where Russia’s Area 51 had been. A central orb several feet in diameter and six arms separate from the main body. Each arm had been approximately six feet long, twelve inches thick at one end, tapering to three “fingers,” each about six inches long. While the center orb had been yellowish, the arms had been grayish blue. There were lidded, protruding eyes spaced around the center orb.
Quinn’s voice cut into Turcotte’s remembering. “The Russians formally called it Otdel Rukopashnyi which means ‘section of hands.’ Okpashnyi was the shortened version. There were two recovered — one of which the Germans had done an autopsy on. They found that the center orb housed a four-hemisphere brain surrounded by a very hard skull. The arms, or legs, or tentacles, or whatever you want to call the six appendages, had a nervous system with a complex stem on the end that attached to the orb. The German scientists guessed that the arms were detachable and could function in some manner on their own, away from the orb or perhaps even mate with another orb, either in a sexual manner or to exchange information.
“The Germans took casualties on that mission,” Quinn continued. “Five men dead. Cause — an alien infection after thawing out one of the Okpashnyi bodies. The Germans shot the men to stop the infection from spreading.”
“Could one of the Swarm have survived the crash?” Turcotte asked. “I don’t know,” Quinn said. “It appears so now, though.”
“OK,” Turcotte said. “Tunguska.”
“Many people have wondered what really happened at Tunguska in 1908. I’ve got photos here from the German expedition. You can see that the trees have all been blasted outward from a central point. The most commonly accepted explanation has been that a meteor struck at the epicenter, but the problem with that was that no one could find any remains of the meteor. Given what we know now, and the results of this German expedition, there’s no doubt that an alien craft crashed at Tunguska.
“You think Area 51 was desolate, Tunguska is in the middle of nothing. It’s located in the Central Siberian Upland. If it had not been for the Trans-Siberian Railway, which was built in 1906, the exact site of the crash would probably never have been found. Siberia is half again as big as the United States. Yet at the time the railroad was built and the crash occurred, the population in that region was less than one million.”
“What exactly happened with the crash?” Turcotte asked, checking his watch once more. He was anxious to get going after Artad and the Swarm, but he knew he had to go prepared.
Quinn consulted his notes. “In 1908, on June 30, just after seven in the morning, passengers on the Siberian railroad saw something bright race across the sky and disappear below the horizon to the north. There was an enormous explosion.
“Thirty-seven miles from the epicenter, at the trading station called Vanavara — the nearest place where people were, at least people who survived the explosion — no one knows how many trappers or hunters might have perished closer to the blast — the shock wave knocked buildings down and those in the open were burned by radiation. That was only determined decades later, when original reports from the time were studied by scientists who had the data from Hiroshima available. At the site itself trees were blown outward for dozens of miles.
“It was quite a worldwide event. In London, five hours after the explosion, measuring instruments picked up the shock wave in the air after it had already traveled around the world several times. At first, the English scientists thought perhaps they had recorded a large earthquake somewhere on the planet. But that night there was a strange glow, bright red, in the eastern sky, something they had never seen before. For two months afterward the night sky over England was much brighter than normal. It was so bright in some places that fire wagons were called out by people thinking there was a blaze just over the horizon.
“If it had not been for the sighting from the Siberian railroad, the whole source of the event might have been lost. Even with that, the cause of the explosion was not formally investigated by the Russians for nineteen years.”
“‘Nineteen years’?” Turcotte repeated.
“Ah,” Yakov growled, eager to explain. “You have to remember that that was a turbulent time in my country’s history. The czar in 1908, well, one could not expect much from him, then we went through revolution and civil war not long afterward. You also have to understand the remoteness of the Siberian tundra. I have been in Siberia many times. Thousands upon thousands of miles of nothing but trees with bog underneath. A most desolate and isolated place.”
“So what exactly occurred?” Turcotte asked, eager to get back on track.
“What do we know for certain happened?” Quinn checked his notes. “Those on the train, Tungus tribesmen, and fur traders in the area who were interviewed later reported seeing a fireball streaking through the atmosphere toward the trading post of Vanavara and leaving a trail of light some eight hundred kilometers long. The object approached from a heading of 115 degrees and descended at an entry angle of thirty to thirty-five degrees above the horizon. The fireball — as most described it — continued along a northwestward trajectory until it seemed about to disappear over the horizon. There followed a rapid series of cataclysmic explosions.”
“Not one explosion?” Turcotte asked.
“No. Numerous witnesses reported hearing several blasts in succession.” “That’s strange,” Turcotte said.
“The site was centered on coordinates one-zero-one east by six-two north near the Stony Tunguska River, ninety-two kilometers north of Vanavara. The power of the blast felled trees outward in a radial pattern over an area covering over two thousand square kilometers. Closer to the epicenter, the forest was incinerated, causing a column of flame visible several hundred kilometers away. The fires burned for weeks, destroying a thousand square kilometers of forest. The fires were so vast and intense that they caused tremendous winds, sucking up ash and tundra so violently that they were caught up in the high-altitude air circulation pattern and carried around the world. The initial explosion and aftershocks were heard as far away as eight hundred kilometers.
“From this data it was calculated that the explosion was at least twenty megatons and may have been as high as forty, depending on the altitude of the initial blast.” Quinn looked at Turcotte and Yakov. “To give you an idea of the size, the explosive force that formed Meteor Crater in Arizona was figured to be only three and a half megatons.”
“Was there a crater then?” Turcotte asked.
“Ah, a good question!” Quinn was in his element, working wild data he had uncovered and giving it to others. “I’ll get to that. A most strange recording was made of the earth’s magnetic field at the Irkustk Observatory nine hundred kilometers from the epicenter. At the time they did not know what they were picking up, but comparing those 1908 data with modern records of atmospheric nuclear test explosions shows a remarkable similarity.”
“You’re saying a nuke went off in the atmosphere?” Turcotte asked, confused. “That’s what caused all this? I thought you said an alien ship crashed there. And Tesla caused it? Did he develop a nuke?”
Quinn quickly backpedaled. “I’m saying the results were similar to a nuclear explosion. Just as when you exploded the ruby sphere inside the mothership it added to the force of the nuclear explosions you also initiated. All I have told you are the known facts.
“Now let us move on to current speculation before getting back to what you recovered from the Moscow Archive. Current — before the discovery of the Airlia that is — explanations for the cause of the 1908 Tunguska blast have been numerous. Some say a nuclear blast, which of course necessitates involving aliens, as humans did not posses nuclear weapons at that date.”