The Alien Artifact 8 (21 page)

The large holes surrounded their front, going
deep into the ground, which looked strange, and they kept examining
them wondering what the hell they were, and when they ignored them,
and started to look for other things, a distant low pitch tone of
something came from some distant place, like some inhabitant of the
world had been watching them and had reacted.

They rushed through the last of the
shingle and arrived at the flat rock of the rock plane, and they
walked there properly, unimpeded in their spacesuits, where their
heads darted about, looking for traces in the landscape of any
signs of life
–
and anything that would indicate the presence of anything
that they would encounter.

The strangeness of the place bewildered him,
as it never actually had much, and he wondered if there was
something missing from the place, with it being located so far away
from the rest of the universe.

Their figures cast deep shadows against the
rocky background, as the sun accelerated up into the sky, and their
glances looked for nearby water.

His gaze went out across the rock plane,
which went away out to faraway mountains, near the skyline, and he
examined a small nearby red patch, out in the rock plane, for a
long time, and he realized that it was not as far from there as he
had thought.

He sniffed the air as the wind blew from
where he was looking, and out from the rock plane, and he thought
he saw the shape of something moving, and he stared in disbelief,
and tried to explain the confounded shapes of the smashed rocks
about it.

Orwell showed him some large holes in the
ground nearby, hidden behind a small hill, and they rushed over to
them, and as they approached them they all saw the holes had the
same unusual shapes, and up close they saw that they went deep into
the world below, and he was unable to see the bottom of them.

He automatically lowered his head to the
ground, over a hole, and listened for sounds, and any sound, even a
crackle of stone, and stood up and thought about it, and realized
it was not as new looking as it looked!

What could make such a hole? Was there
something on this world they should see, and should they avoid
direct confrontation with it? Could it even be watching him
there?

While he moved away, Orwell stopped at the
edge of a nearby rock pile, and he went over and found him standing
examining a blob of reddish slime, and they watched its veins take
blood through its slimy shape, and they allowed it to slither down
into a crack in the ground, and they watched its organs vibrating
as it vanished out of sight, and went into the ground and rock.

While they walked away, going across the rock
plane, a loud shriek came from there, and in the thin crack in the
rock he saw its shape, and wondered what the hell it was.

They cautiously shifted on, across the hot
plane of rock, to a red patch, and their vague view of it increased
in clarity, and a waterhole became visible at its center and to
their surprise the red color was miniature red forms of thin
plants, like cactus, growing like grass around its perimeter.

They sat and rested at the small waterhole,
and watched a gust of wind whirl a cloud of sand up and into
strange shapes.

To Cronenberg’s surprise he saw the horizon
was altering and darkening and the sun was quickly going below
distant mountains, and he realized it was turning dark already, and
they were away out there, and he had wanted to return before it got
dark, and he wondered if it was dangerous there.

In the end they decided to stay, as there was
water, and they could see everything about them, and it had to be
safer, and it turned dark fast, and darker than he had imagined,
and the night sky was totally empty of stars!

At times he wondered why they had even
gone there, and been left on the desolate world, in the remote
stars, on the boundary of the universe
–
with such a dark, moonless, and
starless sky, where there was little – and out of nowhere an
explosion blasted out across the alien world night, almost making
them jump out of their skin, and look everywhere, and look for
cover, and protection!

All they could see were rocks smashing and
exploding out and showering the ground of the rock plane in the
darkness, at a nearby region they had come from, and he recalled
the deep cavities he had seen in the ground there, and their
strange shapes, and tried to explain what had created them, and he
realized how powerful it was, and that its forces had smashed the
rock to pieces.

It was like it was something smashing its way
out the depths of hell, crawling up into the upper world in the
dark desolate world!

With a final blast it smashed its way through
a pile of solid gray rocks, sending up splinters of rock and dust
across the ground, and its loud thundering thuds blasted out into
the silent world, on the brink of existence, at the furthest
reaches of the universe, and it rushed straight towards them, like
an earthquake, making the ground about them furiously shudder from
its force.

Its black shape rushed wildly over the
rocky plane seeking, and ready to pulverize any life form that it
sensed, and anything that crossed its path, and the ground pounded
and shuddered furiously, and they froze, hoping it had not seen
them, and as it approached them they saw the
beast
’
s red
glowing energy formation, and red devil features, and their minds
screamed in horror, and they were astonished to see the universe
exploding away, and it with it, and them blasting through a
gateway, going further out, and taking them to another
destination.

Chapter 24

The Outer
Universe

At first they could not comprehend anything
and form mental recognitions of their surroundings, and Cronenberg
conclusively wondered if it had accidentally killed him and sent
him to some form of its afterlife, and examined what was there, and
considered if they were still in one of the sections of the
gateways, and considered what would happen if they were trapped
there, or their consciousnesses were, after them being killed
there, and he examined everything about him in as much detail as he
could and saw his entire field of vision full of celestial
whiteness.

His spacesuit faceplate automatically shaded
the light as far as it could, and though it was still blinding he
saw things about him!

After some time his eyes adjusted and he saw
his legs, below his spacesuit, and them looking like they were
hanging over nothing, and he tried to feel what was below him
through his thick spacesuit boots, but could feel little!

There was an intense glow below, creating the
intense light, and he was unable to see virtually anything, and he
checked the surrounding temperature in his helmet, and it was
normal, and he checked if his surrounds had an atmosphere, and it
was normal, and he examined the blinding light beaming up at
him.

He felt some pain in his eyes, and knew that
they had to find somewhere to shelter, and he felt tears pouring
down from his eyes as they reacted to the intense light, and he was
sure that it could blind him, and he searched around to see where
they were and where they could go, and saw little, and decided they
should move away and try and find somewhere elsewhere.

The place was like heaven and he occasionally
heard the others give gasps at it as they marched away as fast as
they could, in a direction where there looked less light.

It was incredible and he could not see or
feel anything below him and everywhere else was white, but not
blinding like from the entire region below, and he searched through
it seeing nothing anywhere, and stopped occasionally frustrated at
their lack of progress of discovering a way to get away from there,
and wondered how long they could survive there, and wondered if he
would die there wondering where the hell he was.

For some reason he thought his size had
decreased, and he continuously measured himself, and he wondered if
the gateway had shrunk him, and he considered if it was the lighter
gravity, and he finally felt the ground with his spacesuit glove
detached, and discovered it was some sort of energy force.

Away in the distance he finally saw something
shift out of the light and he studied it gasping, for a long time,
and they rushed on, silently trying to grasp what was there, and
even tried to listen to the strange ground with his ear.

At a closer position they saw something large
going across the horizon, and at more closer position they realized
it was land, and he felt ecstatic, after what had happened, and he
thought of it like being a castaway out in the sea finding land, or
an island, and he increased his speed and they finally rushed over
the land, and climbed up an area of sand, like a beach, until the
light was out of view, and they rested, and allowed their eyes to
return to normal.

It was incredible he had never seen anything
like it, and he wondered what sort of world it was, which had an
energy that glowed brightly and was solid, and had areas of land,
and he wondered if it was some form of early world of the universe,
and that the land was normal matter and the other an early form of
it.

When their eyes recovered from the
bright light, and they had rested, they climbed a hill behind them,
and they saw an astonishing sight and the world beyond that was
more immense than he could imagine could exist and its horizon was
flat and went out hundreds of miles all around his front, and there
was no real distant curve,
and
the horizon disappeared into hills and
mist hundreds of miles away, out in the distance, and they could
not explain how it could be that way, and he wondered if it was a
flat or square world, and they just explained it as being an early
form of world that had less gravity and an immense size, and he
considered if the energy they saw below it filled the entire world,
and the energy had little gravity.

They spotted large regions of water and what
looked forms of vegetation, and they rushed over to the nearest
area with water, and had a last look at where the massive central
energy was.

Many miles away, he saw types of volcanic
phenomena, which looked strange and he and Orwell studied it with
interest, to check it and they considered if the stuff given out
from below was the same as normal matter, and they examined the
ground more and more and found it had unknown substances, but was
basically normal soil and rock.

The incredible thing was there no sign of a
sun, and they never realized what could be constantly lighting the
sky, if was a sky, as it just glowed like something else, and the
rain clouds and mist formed far below it.

The first plant was found by Orwell, buried
away in rocks, and they examined it and tasted it, and they were
sure it was edible, and left it until they checked what else there
was to eat.

At times, as
they shifted on, constantly examining everything around them, and
on the horizon, seeking answers, he was sure the world was far more
than a natural occurrence and had been created by something
incredible, and he was not even sure it was a race of beings, and
constantly considered different forms of things.

What type of inhabitants could build and live
on a place such as it? Had the creators of it actually lived
there?

Yet why was there no sign of their existence,
and why had it just been built in such a natural state, and not a
highly advanced top layer and with structures, but what if it had
been built for something else, which they had not yet seen, and the
ground was not its proper state, or what if it was to be populated
by some species in the future, and he wondered if the creators were
in fact inside its interior, and that the outer shell was there to
protect it.

He thought of the colossal size of it and
what could be buried away below, and he then realized that it could
be built by anything for anything!

The horizon was astoundingly strange all
about them, and not quite the same as any world they had been
on.

Finally, after climbing a large hill, they
spotted complex artificial lines of silver marking the surface of
the energy shell below, in the almost blinding light of the energy
shell there, in a vast flat region at the other side, where there
was no land, and they sat studying millions of patterned lines that
were mathematically perfect, going out into the distance, at every
angle, like a complex circuit, with thousands of different objects
the silver lines entered, and they studied it trying to discover
what its proper use was, and anything that matched it, and none of
them recognized it, and Cronenberg studied it going up to the
bottom of the hill below, and tried to see where in went in the
ground, and realized that there had to be something under the hill
they were on.

They remained there, hidden away, waiting to
prove something existed there, and that whatever it was it was
still functioning, and they detected it activating in different
places, and they wondered what had created it, and they finally
left, and as they went to go down the other side of the hill
Cronenberg took one last look there, wondering what he had missed,
and saw a blinding flash from a large object within it, and a
streak of light shot over a silver line, and he saw it glow and
thousands of lines of it shoot all about it, carrying out a task,
which he unsuccessfully tried to identify.

After days of journeying across the vast
world they realized there definitely was no night or day, and he
wondered if had a dark side that was covered completely ice and
snow, and they checked the world continuously wondering what they
were missing, and they finally came to the remains of an ancient
civilization in a large valley, where there were the remains of
structures everywhere, and they realized that it was of an entirely
different race, and that they had to have been like humans as their
structures were almost identical, and they realized the value of
it, and that there might be something of great value there, if they
ever returned to the Earth.