Read Forbidden the Stars for Free Online Page A

rough translation of Dis Pater from Latin was “Lord of the Dark Realms.” The Romans had called their god of the underworld Dis Pater , and later changed it to Pluto. Justine had done her homework on all things Plutonian.
    Henrietta mimed blowing George a kiss.
    Glad that her helmet obscured the sour look on her face at the two of them, Justine nodded. “Very well. Let’s get as much data as we can in one hour. Then we’ll have to return for oxygen, and I’ll transmit my report.”
    Like wind-up toys, the team jerked into action and began to set up their instruments.
    They spent the rest of the hour taking measurements, readings, still photos, videos, and forming hypotheses. Within minutes, Dale Powers yelled out.
    “What is it?” Justine asked, out of breath from running to his side despite the chance of slipping.
    The astrogator raised his arm, and pointed his finger. Centered on one sloping face of the monument, Justine could see thousands upon thousands of etched glyphs. When she moved to another of the bubbles, she saw it also had strange writing on the surface.
    “My God!” Justine turned, looking for the engineer. “Henrietta! Get over here. I need you to get a picture of this. And tell me what you think.”
    With her camera, Henrietta took a few stills, and then ran the data through her palm puter.
    “Forty-nine columns on this bubble,” she announced. “One-hundred and seventy-five rows. I can’t make anything out. I have to take a closer look.” She waited for Justine’s nod before turning on her anti-magnetos.
    The engineer repelled off the planet’s surface and hovered before the engraving, taking photos and video.
    “Each column and row represents a unique set of glyphs, maybe like a sentence or something. I can’t make out anything here.”
    “How many sets?” Justine asked the group as they all peered up at their floating compatriot.
    George, the astrophysics genius, replied, “Eight-thousand, five-hundred and seventy-five lines of glyphs.” The figures came to him with little effort. “On each face.”
    Taking a quick spin around the circumference of the nucleus, George counted, “At least thirty-five neutrons. That’s over thirty thousand lines.”
    “Yeah,” confirmed Henrietta. “And I think each line is in a different language; each style is markedly different, and I don’t recognize any of them.” She measured a few with her palm puter. “Each row is twenty centimeters in height, and each column is seventy-one centimeters in width, separated by forty-two millimeters of blank space. The whole encryption encompasses a square area on the face 35 meters by 35 meters. Here, I’m transmitting the image to your puters.”
    They all pulled out their palm puters, and reviewed the images. Each line had a varying number of symbols, ideograms, dots, squiggles, or glyphs, from ten to a few hundred characters. Some specimens were simply a thousand or so straight lines inscribed side by side.
    At the bottom of the last column, by itself, was a single line of glyphs. Justine thought it might be a signature of sorts.
    Justine knew in her heart it was a Rosetta stone of an interstellar collection of languages.
    Imagine! Over thirty thousand other species out there in the vastness of space!
    Justine shook her head.
    “Alright. We have to get back and send a report. Besides, our oxygen is low. In ten hours, we should have a reply to our report. And then we’ll go from there.”
    Justine had to cajole every member of the team to return to the ship.
    She, most of all, was the hardest to convince to leave.
     

__________
     
    [Event Report : Form ER-102]
     
    Date:
    21-08-2091 / 13:23 GMT
     
    Filed by:
    Captain Justine C. Turner, Orcus 1
    Navigator Helen Buchanan (CSE)
     
    Scientific Team:
    Joahanne Belcher (ESA), Ekwan Nipiwin (JAP), Dale Powers (NASA), Henrietta Maria (NASA), George Eastmain (NASA), Sakami Chin (PRC)
     
    Nature of Event:
    Discovery of unknown artifact. Scientific team