The Alien Artifact 8 (19 page)

While they
moved away faster he silently observed deep pounds and creature
sounds with immense weight coming at them, out of view, causing
them to scurry away faster and faster.

They furiously
moved their legs in and out of bogs and snow until the finally
reached rocky regions, and they all became confused and unable
fully discover what they were up against!

Had they
failed, and were they to get it for visiting the hill?

They ran almost
blindly over rocks and rough ground, rushing through thick tree
objects and heavy snow, while heavy beast sounds furiously exploded
out, and they occasionally heard smashing objects and heavy
boulders tumbling away in their way, like something out of a dark
nightmare.

Suddenly
Anders shouted, “Look out there
!
”

“
There
’
s something!
”
Rosenberg confirmed. “Quick! Move over there! There’s
something ...”

Over to their side there was a cliff front
facing them, almost the only place there without any snow.

For some reason Cronenberg just knew it had
to be a place of sanctuary for them, but he started wondering why
as he could not see anything!

What was there? Was it just a hill and cliff?
Could these things not climb or something?

A deep thud like an explosion appeared just
behind them and he studied the area they were going to for anything
and suddenly spotted a black region, like a black curtain in the
dimness there, and he studied it, seeing them going straight to it,
and he felt the ground around him shudder like an earthquake, and
he watched Anders and Rosenberg jump into the black curtain and he
followed them and realized it was the entrance point of a gateway,
and he shot through stars, and he saw the entrance close behind
them, as the last person jumped through.

Chapter 19

The Center of
Space

Blasts of radiance exploded everywhere
stunning Cronenberg, leaving him staggered, and a colossal
whirlpool of shifting outlines of globes magically shifted by, and
he studied them with the others for a long time and could not grasp
what they were, or where he was, as the gateway had entirely
altered.

It was like something was trying to find them
and something was hiding them in the new gateway, and he could not
realize why, and he felt like he was being played around with, by
two mad eccentric life forms, playing a deadly game with their
prey.

He saw that now they had no body, or proper
presence, and were some form of force formation, and were swirling
out into a vortex of reshaping energy patterns that replaced
reality, with surreal transformations, and were gradually altering
to something they could not recognize.

He was mesmerized, and wondered if he was
even classified as being alive!

He gave vague gasps as reality magically spun
around in patterns, while he wondered how worse the things could
get!

Could they actually get trapped there, for
all eternity, and was he even underestimating that?

Something grasped his attention ahead,
and he studied it, and a white blur emerged in a central region of
darkness ahead, as they slightly swirled around, and he grew more
interested in it, and wishing it would be an exit, and he started
to recognize detail to it as it grew, and they shifted into it, and
once within its depths he saw magnificent giant distant stars of
the universe blazing out, blending into his surroundings in
brilliant magnificent
colors.

Spectacular beams of light exploded out, and
stars shot to and by him at incredible velocities, and he realized
the tremendous speed they were accelerating at, and realized it was
a different form of gateway with a far higher velocity.

Space was expanding all across his front, and
they shot into it.

The stars filled his entire vision everywhere
as magnificent bright white and golden lights, and like a cartoon
universe.

Stars turned dazzling, and he could not
recognize what forms of stars they were, and he wondered if they
had actually entered another universe! Space was so condensed he
could not believe the density of the stars everywhere, and he was
staggered that they could exist in such a state, without being
pulled together, into a colossal explosion.

At his side he spotted Orwell staggered at
something and he followed his vision and back at where they had
come from and saw the most colossal anything he had ever seen! A
colossal black hole was stretching out everywhere, going straight
across space, and he actually saw it entering other dimensions and
regions beyond the universe, and he realized the true immense speed
that they had been traveling at, and that they had just shot
through a black hole gateway, the size of a small galaxy.

Chapter 20

The Mind-Bending Black
Hole

For a moment Cronenberg was blinded, as a
powerful dazzling radiance blinded him, and he thought he had been
thrown into somewhere deadly!

The entire sky
was filled with trillions upon trillions of magnificent incredible
stars everywhere, turning the whole sky a magnificent white and
gold, and Cronenberg stood upright with the others, and watched the
colossal black hole shift across the sky above, and he realized it
had to be the center of an enormous galaxy, and suddenly he
realized it was more than that, and it was the central galaxy, and
center of the universe, and they were on a world that was going
into it, and slowly entering its confines.

The sight
was fantastic, and probably the most magnificent sight he had seen,
and he
sensed mysterious and dangerous things existed
out in space there, in the deepest depths of the
universe.

Cronenberg
stood examining the flat top of the massive mountain they were on,
which had to be the highest on the world, and he watched it
overlooking the world for immense miles in every direction, going
out into distant horizons, and he watched a distant fog blanketing
an entire region going into a horizon, which was glowing from some
form of sun the world was orbiting.

It was incredible that they could feel the
colossal gravity of the black hole from there, and he was
astonished!

Its entire massive galaxy seemed to be
orbiting it, and he gasped, wondering how they had managed to enter
and escape from it, and he gasped at how much power what had put
them there had.

For a moment they were all blinded, from a
powerful dazzling radiance in space, and they shaded their eyes,
and he saw it was a bright sun exploding apart in the depths of
space, and he wondered how deadly it was on the world, and how
protected they were, and he realized that they were on a large
world, with high gravity, and he watched another dazzling radiance
of another massive sun explode.

Strange
multicolored streaks of starlight exploded through thin regions of
fog around them, reminded him of lasers, and in the sky on the
horizon massive blinding stars were appearing, as the world’s
rotation showed new regions of space.

It was a truly
unique world that saw no darkness, and probably would never know
it, and he realized it was also a doomed world, and would be
destroyed in the black hole.

Stardust fell
down from space and covered everything, including their boots, and
lower spacesuits, and he imagined the mind-bending landscapes out
in space there, on magnificent worlds, and he watched an altering
mist surrounding them, and he wondered what the hell the place was
originally like.

Chapter 21

The Ancient
World

They found parts of an ancient structure
buried beneath sand and debris from the sky, from the vast
mysterious galaxy surrounding the doomed world.

There had been an advanced civilization there
once, and what was left of a structure was buried away in a region
nearby, on the edge of a vast cliff face, going straight down for
miles.

The area was
now had vast nearby suns overhead, and in the brightness Cronenberg
spotted the shuttle crew excavating an interesting part of a
structure, and he wondered what they were up to, and started
examining what they had revealed and stood back and started to see
how advanced the race had been, and realized there could be
something of value buried away in its interior.

The air at the incredibly high region was
fresh and breathable, and he believed the mountain was not as high
up as it had seemed, and that the area across their front there was
an immense cavity and that the world’s normal surface was far
higher.

He felt the temperature at the area increase,
and his spacesuit altered to compensate, and he realized how well
his spacesuit controlled its temperature.

There were no clouds, or the mist, and they
were glad, as none of them wanted to enter any cloud formations if
they had to.

They were lucky to be alive after everything
they had been through, and they all now realized the dangers of
being in such places and on such a world!

He studied the bright, now warm stars, and
observed faraway sand being blown about by gusts of wind. The area
was like an oasis on the world, but he was unsure what the rest of
the world was like in its different regions.

Even though the world was doomed to enter the
black hole and be destroyed he was sure most of the world had
something wrong with it and he tried to prove it by studying the
landscape in greater detail than he had, looking at places he had
missed out, and he was sure it had immense earthquakes that had
destroyed vast regions.

He was surprised when a creature of the world
appeared and darted by, close by, examining them, looked like a
miniature monster, and he examined it, looking for why it did.

A structure the others started entering
looked primitive, but he was sure it was advanced, and it was the
fact it was buried away like it was.

He strolled through heaps of sand entering
the structure, and he wondered if the Earth would ever fall and
turn into the place, and have beings like them from other worlds
exploring their remains.

Gusts of air, like breezes coming in from the
colossal stars, threw sand and red dried out bushes about wildly,
into different directions, as if unable to decide where to go, and
he wondered why there was no sign of rain, and if that was what was
wrong with the world, and that all the water was nearly gone.

The temperature was now higher, and he rested
and watched a small lizard-like creature rushing away, showing them
it was there, and he heard others.

In the interior of a structure they entered
an underground chamber and he heard underground creatures burrowing
behind the walls, as they burrowed through hard ground and
sand.

Under heaps of stones and debris they had
uncovered a form of skeleton, looking like a fossil, with close
resemblances to an upright ape creature, and he was staggered that
anything there could be close to looking like a human, and he
uncovered its skull, covered in sand, and finally proved it had a
far more unusual shape, which disappointed some of the others, and
he wondered why they wanted it to be like a human, and he realized
that they might want to settle somewhere on the world or another,
if they could not return, as they would eventually be killed by
something, as the dangers were immense, and seemed to be
increase.

He believed the skeleton was of an inhabitant
that had lived in and had built the structure they were in, and it
surprised him that they thought it could have been more advanced
than them, and he realized that there could be far more advanced
versions of humans, perhaps in city type regions there, and still
alive, and they could have a highly advanced civilization and he
started to realize the dangers that there were there.

Chapter 22

The Extraterrestrial
Castle

At the edge of the cliff further along there
was a structure like an ancient monastery, where they found water
from a stream, and they managed to find food, which they had found
the alien civilization had eaten, and they collected supplies,
water supplies and they rested and tried to find the entrance to
the structure, as if they were to stay there it was best that they
were inside it and protected from the outer dangers.

Though they could not find any entrance and
they started examining regions of the ground below it, as there
could have been an area below it that was covered over, by the
ground building up along its sides over decades, and they kept
searching until they found the entrance was above, and it was
lowered by forms of ropes, so it was better protected.

They rested below, when the sun of the world
was down, even though there was far more light there from the stars
blazing out.

They rested staring up at the immense wonders
that existed in the sky, and he realized the speed the world was
actually traveling at, and the pull of the black hole was
incredible, and he was sure the world had far less time left than
he had imagined and he watched the debris of old worlds come
shooting through the sky faster than he had ever seen meteorites.
Some appeared and hit there so fast that he never saw them and all
he saw was their impact, and now and then he saw them approach in
deep space.

He was sure the structure was a castle they
were under, and an alien castle.

Some form of alien race had to have built it
there to defend it, and perhaps had been at war!

What surprised him was the way it had been
built and that it was far more different from the last structure,
and he was sure the builders of it had been far different, as he
could not imagine the other being that they had found the skeleton
of actually building it, and it seemed a far more advanced species
that built it.