The Alien Artifact 8 (20 page)

It also amazed him how close to a human
castle it was in places, and he realized he really wanted to get
inside it, and he thought through everything he had seen there for
something and recalled an old rope nearby, and rushed away and
got.

He tied a loop in it and swung it around his
head and threw it at where there were entrance ropes lying in a
pile over the flat castle roof bricks, and kept throwing it at it
and retrying, trying to throw it around it, until he got lucky and
he managed to pull it down, and realized it was not the advanced
way up he had imagined, and it was just a form of rope ladder.

At the top he immediately thought no sane
life form could have built it, and the castle bricks were not even
cemented together, and the roof, buried under layers of stardust
and debris, was made of unstable planks and wood that he was sure
could not properly hold his weight, and looked as though they had
started rotting through!

Rosenberg and then Orwell joined him when
they saw him and they climbed up, listening to all his scrabbling
around sounds at the top, watching what they did on the badly made
rope ladder.

Anything staying in it must have been mad or
extremely determined to avoid something deadly there!

After examinations of it and the immense
cliff at the other side it amazed them how it could have stayed up
and not crashed down below long ago! All its giant boulder were
chunks of rocks fixed together, and barely straight, and stayed up
with its weight, and Cronenberg realized that there were no major
earthquakes, but he was sure immense stellar objects could destroy
it, especially at the velocities they traveled at.

They carefully examined around its thick gray
stone walls examining it in detail, over the edges of the roof, and
still they found no real way into it, even after carefully
examining the whole floor. They spotted small gaps in the roof, for
breathing inside, which suggested there was not enough air inside,
but going by them not being human they could live on very low
amounts of air.

He waded his feet through thick mud covering
an area, while trying to see if there was anything below, and he
stopped to view the unbelievable sky, which was tremendous there
now, and he was sure the immense black hole had actually increased
in size, because of the world’s incredible velocity, and it had to
be one of the biggest object he had ever seen, and stretched across
space like a colossal black galaxy devouring space! Its stars in
its confines were all over the outer regions going straight towards
it everywhere, and the whole of space seemed to being pulled into
it.

He stood at the edge of the structure, over
the cliff face, like he was standing on the top of the world, as
though on the highest area on the world below, and he wondered if
the aliens that had built it had been or were the main race of the
world. Yet nothing showed their civilization and technology, and it
was like the remains of a last civilization that never advanced,
and he gasped again at the height that it was over the world, under
his feet, and the sheer drop of it astounded him, going off into
the distance.

Rosenberg stamped on the surface of the roof
to check its safety, and show what his thoughts about it, and
Orwell joined in but used it to try and find the entrance under the
areas covered in muck, and he stopped and brushed it away and
revealed a thick stone slab below, and they watched him brush it
away and reveal a slab over the center of the roof.

The hinges on it were made of some unknown
metal and held it in place, and there was no indication on how to
open it, and they stood examining all its edges for a noticeable
way, and Rosenberg began smashing them in at one side where they
were corroded and it fell down at the side he hit it, and the whole
heavy stone crashed into the structure, throwing up a cloud of dust
into the air, and they were glad it was dry inside.

Layers of dust hung in the air as Cronenberg
marched down its stone ramp first and they followed him down into
it, and he considered what could possibly be there and if he was
going to make a mistake, and he thought about the scientific
viewpoint of what they were doing, as he turned on his spacesuit
light.

He jerked backwards, when a loud thud came
through the floor and whole castle, from the lower world, from a
massive meteorite impacting nearby, which sounded close, and
against the cliff, and again he wondered what the inhabitants of
the world had like.

They walked into its darkness almost in a
straight line going downwards and explored the first floor, full of
large empty rooms, and realized the holes in the walls were not
just for air but to let light into the rooms, and he observed the
rooms with interest.

He watched the dust in their lights fly about
as they marched down the stone ramp going deeper into it, and
further down the dampness of the outer stone walls increased and
gave a stale scent through the air, and they went down all the
floors, after examining the empty rooms, and at the bottom they
found a hidden entrance that entered the ground below, and he
continued walking deeper into the stone corridor, searching the
floor for any damage to it and for anything that they could fall
through, and go crashing down below.

At one place he found something made of
metal embedded within layers of mud in the wall of the corridor and
he gripped a metal bar attached to it and gave it a sharp pull, and
yanked it hard, and a sheet of corroded metal came loose out of the
wall, where it had been stuck on with two rotted hinges, and he
lifted it up and over, and placed it against the side of a wall,
and stood mesmerized by a beam of starlight from a giant single
star brightly beaming through a window hole into the dark confined
space, like a laser beam, and
he explored the room and found that they were deep in the
cliff and in caves, which had been hollowed out, and they realized
that the occupants had lived there for a long time, and had gone to
great lengths to build it, and he thought the lower part in the
cliff was there in case the above castle was attacked and entered,
and there were other hidden lower caves
.

When they reached the bottom of a corridor
Orwell, who was at the front suddenly stopped, startled by
something, and Cronenberg felt vibrations blast through the stone
walls and thought it was an earthquake, and when he moved in front
of Orwell he gasped loudly as he heard it far louder, from
something whirling away, and realized that someone had to be there,
and realized that they could be about to meet an alien below, and
he stood considering if they should, and they agreed to continue on
to see what was there, and stay at a distance, and if there was
anything there to silently approach it and observe it.

It grasped their imagination and he
approached it in confusion, as the sounds not only increased in
volume, not only because they were getting near, but because
something was increasing them, and flashes of light started
appearing along the cave roof, from an area below, and shapes and
colors formed, and he finally saw a humanoid form, which glowed and
created the lights and sounds, and he measured the alien at over
eight feet tall and at least four feet wide, and as he shifted
silently forward he saw its skeleton through its body, and realized
it had a translucent body, and he wondered what the hell it
was.

A blast of brightness exploded out from its
center, with beams of colored light, and he saw its skeleton more
clearly, with surprise, and he was surprised at how identical it
was to a human!

For a few seconds he stood stunned, wondering
what the hell it was doing there, and he sensed it was a form of
human, and he sensed the existence from the energy sphere, and the
other deadly existence, and their surroundings vanished into
blackness, and they shot through an infinity of gateways, going
back in lines everywhere, and he continued to wonder what it was,
as well as where they were going, and he realized the thing had
been watching him when he had vanished, and though it was different
he thought it was human, and he saw all of shuttle crew with him,
and they were shooting through galaxies, and gateways.

Chapter 23

The Edge of the
Universe

The peculiar black empty sky of the
destination instantly grabbed his attention, as it was empty of
stars almost everywhere, and he barely saw anything, and it was the
complete opposite of the other world, and he was left confused, as
he had not seen space so empty of anything.

He suddenly realized the world had to be at
the outer limits of the universe, and he sensed it was the most
distant world, and he considered what could exist there in such an
empty region.

A red glow soared out, as the sun raced up
the horizon, and he sat with the other astronauts on flat rocks
watching a beam of light blast out as the sun swiftly came over the
horizon in front of them, beaming across the small rocky world,
creating long dark shadows from mountains and hills going straight
across the desert world towards them, and he had sensations of
balancing over the world, on a spectacular bridge of rock, which
they were on.

The world looked lifeless but he knew
something had to exist there, and that it was early in the morning,
and he wondered if there would be a difference in them.

The atmosphere was warm, evening for so early
in the morning, and the ground had warm rock, and he gasped at how
hot it might be in the day, and there were desert sand regions
nearby that were identical to the hottest deserts on the Earth, and
he smelt odors in the air from what had to be volcanic gases, and
going by the reactions of the others he was sure it could be toxic
gases.

He realized that his spacesuit had the
capacity to analyze it and determine what it was, and he quickly
checked and was surprised that it was marked as unknown, and they
just breathed it anyway, as it was weak and their oxygen supplies
would run out if they never, and he realized the distance they
traveled, and why it had taken so long, and that they had traveled
from the direct center of the universe to the most distant, and he
wondered if it was possible to guess the distance, and size of the
universe.

The sun rose swiftly, and he was surprised at
how fast the sky changed color and a crimson sky engulfed them, and
he realized that they were on another world, and at a point nobody
on the Earth would ever see, and they had gone far further than
anyone would, and he had originally believed that nobody would even
see another solar system or step on another world.

Orwell was fascinated in the worlds, as well
as the other astronauts, as he was the science officer, and as a
scientist, seemed to examine the world, and he was sure he was
thinking of a way to escape from their voyage through the universe,
and its dangers increasing, as they were surely going to get it
soon, if everything went the way it was going, and if there was no
chance of returning to the Earth why not find the best place, and
even though it was so barn, and empty of life, it had air and
surely water, and he also spotted rain type clouds behind him.

Was this world good enough to live on? It was
better than the vast dangers of the last worlds, and again he
wondered why they had been put there, and he realized that there
had to be something buried away there!

He lurched forward, and moved over to where
there was a cliff edge, and instantly saw a panoramic view of an
area of landscape, with a mass of gray stone stretching out, and he
moved further along where loose rocks went down in a slope, and he
considered going down to the lower ground below and he balanced on
the edge of it.

A cold breeze blew across his face, and the
rustle of dry dirt came from beside him, and as the sun rose he
looked back at the last region of space vanishing into a blue sky,
and he wondered what existed beyond the universe, which he was sure
was there, and he could not imagine anything for some reason, and
he wondered if it just vanished into no existence.

The figures of the other astronauts shifted
over to him, after talking about it, and where they should go, and
Orwell moved over to his side.

They studied the contours of the rocky hills
and mountains, and in parts of it where sand stretched out, with
them looking for signs of life and plants.

“
Well, it looks like water over
there!
”
Orwell announced, to his great surprise, calmly scanning the
shapes in the land.

“
Where?
” he gasped, searching for where it
was.

Orwell pointed over to the side, where he had
not really looked, and he saw water shinning, which had looked like
flat shiny rock or something.

“
That’s water! What makes you think
it’s water?”

“
I can tell! And I can see the sky
around it …”

They decided to go down the hill, across it,
and their feet rhythmically crunched into stones, and they breathed
fast.

A light gray rock plane mostly filled up the
landscape directly below, and they went to it, and he saw pockets
of what looked like water and vague splashes of red in places,
which looked like water and vegetation.

When they reached the ground at the bottom,
where the light gray rock plane went out at their fronts, he
examined chunks of stone that covered the ground of the world.

The planet had large areas of its surface
smashed into pieces of shrapnel. The rocks were scattered through
the lengthy rock plane zones, and round holes perforated the stone
in the form of large potholes.

In the silence of the cool morning he felt
the sun and heat start to increase, and he watched the land stretch
out across their front, and the gray shingle rocks become thinner
at their front.