The Alien Artifact 8 (13 page)

He seemed to vanish out of existence and was
startled and saw that he was accelerating through a form of tunnel
through something at hyper speed, and realized that streaks of
light shooting passed him were powerful outer suns further out,
blasting their radiance through its shield!

He fell through a gateway where there were
stars everywhere, and he could not guess what the place was, and he
realized that they were now moving outside the transportation field
and he wondered if they could get trapped there, with decreasing
oxygen supplies in their spacesuits.

Chapter 3

The Lost World in the
Stars

A spectacular world stretched out below,
where they reentered the universe, in an explosion of streaking
lights, and the astronauts stood staggered, at the world, at what
they had encountered, and them being so close to death and emerging
so near the edge of a gigantic cliff face, going straight down to
the ground.

For a few seconds Cronenberg clung to part of
a large boulder behind him as they fully realized the rock under
them was not as firm as they had thought, and what they had landed
on the top of, and that it was a flat top of a massive rock
pinnacle, towering over a mind-bending world, surrounded by a sky
that would have startled any life form in the universe with its
stars and phenomena, covering everywhere he looked, blasting their
large shapes of radiance through the light blue sky.

He glared out with the others, looking
everywhere, gasping at what they were on, and staring over the
edge, at the depth of it, stretching down to what must be miles
below, and he realized the extraordinary low gravity of the world,
which allowed it to exist.

He was sure the world was a young one and
that the pole shaped tower might have fallen down a long time ago
if it had been the age of the Earth or Mars.

They soon started searching the top of the
pinnacle looking for anything, and why they were there, and they
found little, and they all walked separately about it searching
everything they could, baffled by the lack of anything.

It was Rosenberg that noticed boulders with
cut stone and showed them there could be actually an artificial
structure below!

Most of them liked archeology, and the
thought of searching ancient structures on alien worlds, and
exploring new finds, and what past races would have been like.

The world below now looked like it had been
frozen in time, as the sun was going into the horizon, and it was a
fantastic surreal prehistoric times type world, and it conjured up
great visions of the original primitive Earth, with its untouched
environment.

The structure below was fascinating to him
and Orwell as for the most of their lives they had wondered what
aliens and their civilizations were like and buried away below them
there was an ancient alien structure they could investigate, and he
had fantasies of them finding something valuable that he could use
if he ever returned to the Earth.

The place was fascinating, with rugged golden
mountains and hills and shades of the starlight beaming everywhere,
creating immense beams of colored lights streaking everywhere, and
he tried to see if there were signs of life in the darkening
landscape.

The giant pinnacle was tremendous, and he
kept thinking that no sane alien could have built anything on it!
Anything staying in it must have been mad or determined to avoid
something immensely deadly on the world below!

It was also beyond comprehension how it could
have stayed up and not crashed down below long ago, and he gasped
at how they must have built it.

It looked dangerous and incapable of
supporting itself, and looked impossible to climb. There were no
paths visible that could have been used to climb it. It was so high
up that he was sure that they would not be able to breathe properly
when the atmosphere altered, and that they would have to put on
their spacesuit helmets, and he made sure all their spacesuits were
full of air, and that they filled their oxygen tanks from the
atmosphere.

It was strange
being surrounded by air, as they had been on Mars with their
spacesuit helmets on outdoors for so long it felt like a like
mistake being out in the open without their helmets on, and he
watched how the men reacted, and some surely missed being on the
Earth.

While he rested
against the flat edge of a massive boulder next to Orwell and
Rosenberg he examined the boulder in the vanishing sunlight and saw
it was actually a meteorite and he realized the dangers of a world
with so many stars, and being located in such a place, which he was
sure was near the central part of a galaxy, and he examined the
stone and debris on the ground like an archeologists, sifting
through it, looking for anything of interest, and anything
artificial, and he examined the sky in places that he had not
examined before, and wondered what existed there and what other
strange worlds there were to explore, and he started to realize he
and the others were starting to like it there, and if they returned
to the Earth that he would miss it, and the stars would never be
the same again, and they would be empty.

In the
distance he spotted an incredible immense meteorite
crater with a strange mist cloud hovering over it, only
filling its dent in the surface of the world, fitting itself into
its shape.

The atmosphere grew slightly thinner as it
grew darker and he watched their faces alter and their breathing
grow heavier.

When the night emerged, and the blue sky
covering the stars vanished, they all stood staggered, examining
stars covering the whole sky everywhere with their eyes wide open,
from the immensity and colossal dangers facing them, and in the end
they sat back in their spacesuits staring up at the incredible sky
and stars everywhere, which would have had every astronomer on the
Earth going crazy examining and documenting for the rest of their
lives, and he wondered what the hell the most highly advanced
telescopes back on the Earth would show existed in its depths, and
what all the undiscovered things would be, and how it would alter
the way they thought of the universe!

The sky was truly unbelievable and he spotted
one of the astronauts in the distance now standing filming a
section of the sky, and their eyes went on the region trying to see
what he was filming, and Cronenberg spotted it, and it was
tremendous, and worth being there for, and it had to be the biggest
galaxy he had ever seen, and he was astonished that he could see it
with his eyes.

Suddenly he heard someone shouting in the
distance from a hidden area, and they recognized it was Stanley,
the main shuttle pilot, calling them over to him, to what he had
discovered, and they all leapt onto their feet and rushed over to
him, wondering what it was, and what else could be so
fascinating.

They approached him at the same time, with
their mouths open, seeing all the stars blazing out everywhere
around them, and some racing across the sky, and lights shifting
about everywhere, and occasionally making them shudder at the power
and immensity of them, and the dangers there were there.

Stanley was bent over something, buried away
in darkness, and Cronenberg spotted what looked like a boulder
lifted up and saw there was a massive gap going downwards where it
was, and they saw what looked like a form of steps going
downwards.

He did not know whether he was happy with the
find and wondered if they intended to go down into it, and if he
should stop them going down into at night, as the dangers of the
place looked immense, and as he watched on he actually saw a large
planet visibly going into a nearby large sun.

Before he said anything Orwell rushed
forward, and announced, “I’m going down! Who’s going?”

Straightaway he knew he would have to go too,
and yet he wanted to go down, but he was unsure if they should go
at night, but he did not have any evidence that there was anything
there, but it was an extraterrestrial world, far out of their
region of space, and they had not even visited any other solar
systems or anything like there, and they had no idea what could
exist there, and if they returned to the Earth they might never get
the chance again!

Chapter 4

The Alien
Structure

It was spectacular, as the world rotated
around its stars grew in immensity, as the central region of the
galaxy went directly overhead, everywhere, glowing brighter,
glowing all around them, blinding them in regions.

They stood at the edge of the entrance going
downwards, still contemplating the dangers, and it was like
standing on the top of the world, as though the world below were
stretching away out into infinity all around their sides, and he
wondered what kind of aliens had lived in such a place, and he
realized that he might soon find out!

Nothing yet had properly showed what their
civilization and technology was like, and he wondered if it was the
remains of the last civilization there, and he wondered if
something there had destroyed their civilization, and he gasped at
the height they were above the landscape of the world as he spotted
the sheer drop of the pinnacle in the dark, going off into the
distance below.

The long day made them slow and sleepy and
they slowly prepared themselves to enter the structure below, on
their first search of an alien civilization.

A gray shade appeared at his side on the
horizon and he studied it and realized that it was a large moon
appearing from below the horizon, and he consistently checked the
differences in it to Mars and other worlds he had seen in the solar
system, and he watched in awe as a massive asteroid blazed across
the sky in front of them in slow motion, and they stopped what they
were doing and listened to it in the distance and watched the
massive blazing ball of flames intensely light everything up about
them and finally blast into a distant hill with such force it
exploded apart, and a cloud of smoke go up.

Its shockwave blasted out with such force its
blast went straight across the world, as they heard its distant
blast, and eventually the shudder hit the pinnacle violently, and
making them gasp and fall over, shaking the stones around, giving
them thoughts of the whole pinnacle collapsing down, and Cronenberg
finally realized that it had to be firm as it would have fallen a
long time ago, especially with deep impact craters nearby.

Eventually everything calmed down and he
stamped on the surface to check its safety again, and wondered what
form of structure was below, and what thickness its roof was, and
he decided to enter it first, before Orwell, and he eagerly
explored a ramp of stone descending below, and marched down into
its darkness searching the ground, and dirt there, and testing its
safety and if it could withstand his weight, and as he descended
further he turned his spacesuit light on, and watched Orwell and
the others follow him down, into its hideous depths, wondering why
they had not just left it until the morning.

They were all forms of scientists as well as
astronauts, and explorers, and had been on Mars to see space and
another world, and now they were living out their dreams of
exploring an authentic alien world, and a highly advanced
civilization, and they examined everything about them and checked
the descending tunnel and how the rock had been cut, and how
perfect it was, and he brushed his glove over it feeling its
smoothness, and knew something had powerfully cut the hole straight
into the rock.

Orwell observed the peculiar shape of the
structure, and the tunnel not being perfectly square but with other
shapes, and considered if had been designed for looks or there was
another reason for it and noticed there were signs that something a
long time ago had been there and had left vague prints buried under
deep dust on the ground, and he marched downwards.

It was strange, as none of them thought
anything had been there and yet they were prepared for an encounter
with something else below and he wondered if it had been the energy
sphere and alien artifact in the hill, what they encountered in the
gateway, or was it the strangeness of the place and why they had
been put there, as it was like they were put there for a reason and
he sensed there was something.

After they had checked an area of rock, which
looked different from any natural rock that they had seen, they
marched on, and jerked when a heavy thud shook the whole pinnacle
around, from another deep meteorite impact, and he continued at a
slow pace considering how the thing had managed to stay up in such
a place, and he recalled the meteorites on its above structure and
wondered what it would be like living on such a place, and how many
deaths and injuries people would have.

After a few more minutes he realized their
enthusiasm had increased in discovering what was there, and it was
now as though it was an ultimate treasure, and some form of
treasure they were going to find, which was buried away there.

What was strange was that he had watched
things moving over the surface of the stone, and had just dismissed
them as insects, but he realized that they were not just insects
but were alien insects on an alien world and he suddenly stopped
and examined a few with Orwell, and they stood speechless, as the
insects there were unknown to them, with characteristics that they
had not seen anywhere. A yellow piece of flying gel hung in the air
by some means they could recognize, hanging in the air, even after
many close examinations they could not pinpoint how it remained in
the air, and he believed it had thousands of miniature wings or
something similar that allowed it to hover and propel it forward
that could not be seen by them.