The Stang — Harris Tobias

It was almost dark when the big steel door finally came down. It fell crashing inside with a woomph into the chamber stirring up a cloud of dust, dust that had lain undisturbed for hundreds of years. The air in the chamber had a stale, musty odor. While the dust settled, we dug our flash lights from our packs and, standing in the doorway like giddy children, shined them around the room. The vast space swallowed our feeble lights but it was plain to see that the room was perfectly intact and filled with wonders. The room was rather large, a couple of thousand square feet was my guess. We could see rows of bunk beds four high along one of the walls. The bunks contained the mummified corpses of aliens. The ones our lights could reach were lying on their backs. There were several sizes represented, different ages and genders we assumed. We wondered what they died of. Was it starvation or asphyxiation or something worse. Maybe they got trapped in there when the building burned around them. I hoped their death was peaceful but I have to tell you, it was a very spooky sight.One wall held what looked like a large flat screen TV. Another had shelves of what might very well have been books. There were enough alien technology scattered around to make Barnes jump around like a five year old kid on Christmas morning. He would have burst in to the room right then and there if Phol hadn’t reminded him that strict archeological protocol would be observed.“Don’t touch anything,”Phol said, “Wait until I’ve had a chance to photograph the room first. There are procedures to follow. This is a tomb and a great archeological find. We mustn’t behave like barbarians, like tomb robbers. Every item must be recorded and mapped. It’s too late to start now, we’ll get an early start tomorrow.”It took all four of us to lift the steel door off the floor and prop it back up. We thought that that would be enough to secure the site. Even though there was no other living thing on the whole planet, Phol insisted saying it was correct procedure. That done we packed up our gear and headed back to camp.Needless to say there was tremendous excitement that night. Sitting around the fire, Barnes and Phol could hardly contain themselves. Phol called in the news to the settlement. Jason told us how proud he was and that this was an historic day.