The Alien Artifact 8 (16 page)

What the hell had built such a place? Should
they leave the place until the morning, and they had rested, before
exploring anything? Was there even a morning there, as there was no
sign that daylight existed? There could be great dangers there, but
they could move to a region where they never existed, and
survive!

They had to survive! There was air there!
There was life forms and vegetation for food, and they had shelter!
Something had to be giving the world heat and light as the trees
existed, and by their looks he was sure that it was winter, and
that they could survive, and that someday they could find an exit
gateway!

Chapter 11

The Ultimate
Existence

Cronenberg flicked his eyes open in an
instant and wondered where the hell he was, and could not recall
how he got there, and he recalled the last memories he could
recall, which were of them going through the outer jungle, and he
was left staggered, and for a few seconds, for some reason, he
never knew what he was!

Was he actually a normal life form of the
universe, as he had always thought, or was he a strange
phenomenon?

He was sure he was being examined by one of
the real inhabitants of the universe, and he gasped and jumped
upwards, and checked the air supply in his spacesuit and realized
it was low, and realized that he had been lying in a sort of black
room with nothing else in it except a strange alien doorway and
window.

He had no recognition of what was there or
where he was in the castle, or even that he was in one of the rooms
in the castle, and he tried to recall more of his last memories,
and he started to walk over to the window in the room to see what
was there, and he was staggered again and stood upright and turned
on his spacesuit light and examined the strange empty room about
him, wondering how the hell he got there, and wondered if it was
caused by his exhaustion the night before, or his lack of proper
food, or the severe cold and snow falling outside, or was something
there in the castle influencing him.

He recalled surreal dreams, which had been
incomprehensible and he wondered if they had actually been dreams!
They never made sense, and one in particular had been made up of
nothing but shimmering lights and freakish sounds and him being
whirled about somewhere, similar to being in a colossal vortex,
where he never thought or even did anything, and had been like he
never existed and just experienced what was there.

Suddenly he recalled his first dream and he
realized something had been trying to make contact with him!
Something strange! Something that was not physically part of the
universe! Something put there, to do something he could not
grasp!

He detected it had a purpose to do something!
Something he could not grasp, and he wondered if he had missed
something or if it had missed out something!

He then recalled the thing in the gateway,
and the thing in the energy sphere and alien artifact, and he
wondered if it was the same thing! Yet he had no proof that it was
or was not, and he wondered what it wanted, and he realized that he
could discover what it was all about, and he went over and over it
and realized it had suggested something else existed. Did it want
to contact it or was it doing something?

Suddenly he recalled something and gasped and
nearly fell over, and remained silent, and realized that it was
warning them of something, and that something similar to itself was
there and was checking them out, and was of great danger!

What could exist in the gateways and be of
great danger? What was its purpose?

He gasped at what they could have encountered
in supernatural gateways in the circle of mirrors, and the dangers
that they were playing with, and he thought of some of the most
highly advanced deadly races that they could have encountered, and
he wondered how the hell they could get back to Mars without
entering them.

When he looked up at the window he was amazed
that the sky was now everywhere, and dark and full of strange
stars, and saw that the jungle was no longer there, and he looked
below and saw thick mist, and looked out into the horizon, and the
mist went out into the horizon, with no sign of the jungle, and he
saw that the castle was floating over clouds away over the world
below, and he saw the whole galaxy arranged around the castle.

He was sure it was in another dimension and
on the world below, and he noticed the stars there were entirely
different from in the jungle, and noticed the castle went far
higher above, and he marched out the room into a long, endless
corridor, and he heard the other astronauts talking away in the
distance, and he marched towards them, and he wondered how the hell
he had got there and had not remembered anything, and he recalled
the horrors that they had witnessed at the bottom of the castle,
and he thought of the dangers.

Suddenly a flash of red flashed, out of
nowhere, and he realized that an enormous blood red devil shape had
shot through one of the walls in a room, like the wall was mist,
and that it was furiously searching for something, with vengeance,
and its
speed seemed to
be increasing, and the wall seemed to alter and glow in flickers
after it had left, and he heard it rage on into the
distance.

It surprised
him as he detected it was different from everything else they had
encountered, and it was strange as it was evil but seemed to be
different and have a purpose, and he even sensed madness, as though
it had altered from something into something else, and that its
madness or something was to blame, and for no reason he realized
it, or what had put it there, or what was behind its existence, and
it was far more powerful than anything else there, and it had
become dangerous because of some occurrence, and he was sure the
thing in the gateway had been protecting them from it, and that
they could be destroyed by it.

In the
distance of the corridor he caught glimpses of its distant
lightning materializations in flashes of red, as it shifted around,
and he wondered why an ultimate existence would give such an
appearance, but he realized it was somehow mad, and had even taken
a red energy formation with devil features, straight out of the
realms of hell, and realized that they were confronting something
that could believe it was a
devil, and he watched
its
giant demon shape
glowing, altering, within hideous energy surges, while it stood
further down the corridor, and stared straight at him, and he
watched it consistently stop itself vanishing.

It was a
freak of nature, and he wanted to handle it as he
thought he had no choice, as he knew he could not
escape!

In ancient
times on the Earth people witnessing it would have either just
freaked out and ran and escaped for their lives and later given
accounts of confronting the most deadly powerful evil from the
deepest depths of hell or would have perhaps have been brutally
killed, and their bodies would have perhaps been found drained of
blood or energy, with their remains found in hideous forms, and
perhaps found so unrecognizable that they would have thought they
were not human.

He rested
against a wall listening to the shuttle crew in the distance
discussing something he could not grasp, and sometimes he saw the
thing lurking in dark shadows of the castle corridors, doing unseen
hideous things, and examining the formations.

At times it
seemed to detect their thoughts with curiosity and tried to
understand what they were and it seemed to detect strange forms of
energy or energy sources from somewhere and alter.

The thing
seemed damaged to him, and perhaps mad, but it was by far the most
advanced existence he had encountered, and for some reason he
wondered what had created it, and was left staggered, and he
studied its vast unstable energy surges, sensing they went across
vast outer dimensions, and it was part of something incredible,
which had so much force and powers that he was sure it could
destroy space and time.

Chapter 12

The Moon
Encounter

A moon appeared about them, going out into a
distant horizon, and Cronenberg stood staggered with the shuttle
crew, wondering what had happened, as he had been just about to
approach the thing in the corridor, to get to the room the others
were in, and he seemed to enter a gateway with them, and he felt
something was playing with them, and he had a strange feeling that
there would be far greater danger than there and the moon, and he
checked the stars above, and how unusual they were, and that they
could alter so much, and he realized that it could even be another
galaxy, and that they could have instantaneously jumped from one
galaxy to another, which fascinated him, with him being an
astronaut!

Orwell, the shuttle science officer and
medic, slowly shifted over to him, looking more disorientated and
baffled than he had ever seen him, or any of the shuttle crew.

Even when they had crashed and were in front
of the alien artifact discovery, or any of the occurrences, as
their trip through space was so mind-bending and deadly!

“
What now?” he moaned, to Cronenberg,
and the others, breaking the deep intense silence between
them.

Cronenberg could do little but shrug, and
studied the alien sun that was just over the horizon, and they all
stood staring about them confused and Cronenberg checked the stars
again trying to identify anything in them, and realized how unusual
they were!

He gasped as he
looked over the moon surface in another direction and considered
what lurked there, and he altered his faceplate’s shading of the
sunlight.

Sunlight in
space was blasting through blinding him with its intensity and he
quickly altered it. The conditions of the moon were incredible and
he never thought that he would confront anything more than Mars!
And he gasped at the temperature his spacesuit recorded there!

Nothing added
up now! Why had it left them at such a place? Yet were they a
danger to it?

He considered
why and if they were a danger to it and why! Yet he recalled there
were two! But he was unsure if it was true, and what the hell they
could do about invisible highly advanced aliens!

There had to be
far more behind it! Surely they would profit little from what they
were doing!

A
sudden
explosion from what seemed a fired missile made
a tremendous explosion, but lacked sound, as there was no
atmosphere, but the damage and blast of stone was immense and
shuddered through the moon’s surface and knocked them about, and
went across the ground, and Orwell leapt back on his feet from
where he had sat, and rushed close to him.

“
Someone seems to have fired some form
of energy beam!”

It was strange as it looked as though it was
a missile and that it was intended to hit or scare them and all he
could do was get them to rush over to a hiding place nearby, behind
a large boulder.

They were
shrouded in moon dust, after they managed to cover themselves from
being seen, and he realized that they might be able hide in the
deep regions of moon dust, as they had oxygen supplies, and he
gasped again at what would happen when they ran out, and he just
rested back and left it, and he considered if some alien species
would find his remains there one day, frozen and in an unaltered
condition, and be their only alien discovery, like them finding
aliens in spacesuits dead on the moon, and he wondered if he would
end up in an alien museum.

The landscape
was gray everywhere and was untouched by water or life, and was
empty and hollow with no sound, and had a deep haunting silence in
its environment that went further than any desolate snow
landscapes. He was on another world with another star! An empty
lost world lost in the depths of space, absent of life, and a dead
world.

Something startled him, over at his side, as
he dreamily listened to the others giving their thoughts on what
had happened, and he and Orwell struggled to grasp what was there,
and focus on anything, and they altered their faceplates back to
normal, for normal levels of light, and he saw what looked like a
sheet of blackness, which had not been there before, and he heard
Orwell gasp at it.

Orwell leapt on his feet, and held his hands
over his eyes, shading them, and shouted, “It’s the gateway … It
has to be the only way to leave …”

They watched him rush away, attempting to
run, but making vast leaps over the low gravity world, and they
decided to follow him at their normal speed, and as they approached
it Cronenberg was tempted to run to it but avoided it, and wondered
what the hell would happen next, and gasped at what the future
would be and if they could survive the encounter.

Chapter 13

The Moon Station

Echoes of the
astronauts’s startled cries and the remains of their last
conversations swirled through his mind, and he attempted to
recognize what was actually occurring about him as he exploded out
the universe, and he tried give himself a proper scientific account
of it this time, especially if he survived!

It looked as if the gateway had followed them
to the moon, but it had been there already and he could not grasp
why it had left them there and returned.

He sensed again that something was chasing
them, and it had not properly detected them and that it was
attempting to check what they were, and he knew that something else
was there was covering what they were and their presence, and he
wondered if it had put them there and if it was why it had put them
there, and he sensed there was a powerful reason and it might tell
them.