If there was a signal, there must be a working transmitter somewhere on the planet. And it would have to be close to our location, based on the signal strength that we could detect. I gave an order to search for any clues around the landing area, leaving Neva with the examination of the rest of the artifacts. I looked down at my watch to remind myself of the time we have before the report back to the main ship.
“Captain, I found something,” shouted Dio. He was standing behind what looked like a tall tree in the middle of the bushes. We hurried towards the spot and followed our eyes to the spot he was pointing at. It was a metallic bar coming out of the ground like a door handle. Perhaps, it was the door to the underground where the aliens stayed hidden from the surface?
“Shall we pull it?,” asked Dio.
“Why not? If there is still any intelligent life on this planet, they would already have detected us now,” I replied with the resigned voice.
It took a few of us to pull and stared at another door beneath it. But the door below has a lock, a glass screen, similar to what we would know as hand-print authentication. It would be impossible to find a perfect hand-print of an alien and the conclusion reached was that we need to blast our way in. The only issue was that we didn’t know what kind of defense mechanism that had been installed and we wouldn’t want to be blamed for any destruction that resulted from our actions.
It might have been instinct or plain silliness, but saying nothing, Dio placed his hands on the glass. And a few seconds later, lights flashed from the sides of the door and it slid away into the earth, leaving us staring into a black hole.