There was no doubt in John's mind of the largess of the object blocking his tunnel. And judging from the slight curvature, he had struck merely a fraction of it. John grumbled to himself. Regulations required for the emergency tunnels to be as straight as possible. He couldn't just dig around it, and it might take him at least another week to create a new path.

He turned around and prepared to climb in the driller again when something about the object caught his eye. Something alluring that pulled him out back towards it. He peered closer at it, trying to determine what it was that struck him as so odd, careful as to not foolishly bump his visor against the thing. He could sense the light growing intense around the pearl-white sphere as he drew closer. With a clumsy motion due to his thick padded gloves he turned off his helmet's flashlight, then remotely turned off the driller's headlights. Instead of the expected pitch blackness, he found himself bathed in a soft and radiant white glow.

John placed his hands on the glowing sphere and brushed off stray dust and debris that had fallen around parts of it. Even through his thick, heavy gloves he felt as if he could feel the smoothness of the texture. It looked and felt beautiful, like a priceless gem that no one could ever possibly own. Something else in the glow caught his eye. John kneeled, thoughtlessly brushing with his hands as he did so. He felt as he brushed a series of engravings on the object which, if he were able to walk around the sphere's circumference, would presumably wrap around its entirity like a belt.

The engravings were small, about the size of a fingernail for each character, and seemed to be a collection of garbled symbols with no apparent meaning. However he then recognized Greek symbols, then heiroglyphics, even arabic. And English.

John read what little he could comperehend.
YAWEHZEUSRAJUPITER -- it continued with no breaks in between characters until he reached the end of the English string -- GOD.