The Prize: Book One (30 page)

“Penn!  What the hell has gotten into you?”

“How long have we been here, Ellis?” he yelled.

“I told you!  A day or two at the most!”

“Think about it Ellis!  Look around you.”  As he spoke, Ellis felt a fog lifting from her mind.  ”We've been here for a lot longer than that, haven't we?”  In a sudden moment of clarity, she realized they'd been here for a very long time.  Probably weeks, if not months, but why should that matter?  It wasn't as if they had somewhere to go.

“Why are we here, Ellis?”  Penn asked his head cocked sideways.

Ellis blinked.  It was a silly question, they were here because…  Her mind drew a blank.  She couldn't remember why, or even how they'd got here, but did it really matter?  They were free, happy, with no responsibilities other than to themselves.

“I don't understand the question!”

“Of course you don't, and neither did I, until now.”

“Then why are we here?”

“We are here to get some sort of prize, whatever it is.  This is nothing more than another trap, a mind trap this time.”

“Huh?”

“Up until now, all the traps have been physical trap, or problem-solving tests.  This is a mental trap, one designed to seduce us, to make it seem we have reached the Prize.  Remember what I said?  This building gives you what you want the most.”

Suddenly, Ellis knew the truth.  This was what she had wanted most.  Freedom, peace, tranquility.  No more fighting and killing, no more struggling against prejudice and intolerance, no more doing the Empire's bidding.  Just the time to enjoy each other's company.  It was a startling thought.  They were supposed to be searching for a way to turn off the gravitational effect that dragged starships to their death.  Somehow she'd forgotten all about the mission.

“Oh my God!  We fell into the trap, and didn't even know it.”

“Right, as it was designed to do.”

“But what about the Thrakee, the Silurian?  What if they had found this place?”

“I suspect it would reconfigure itself to conform to their notion of paradise.”

“Oh shit!  Then how do we know this whole place isn't some kind of mind trap?  The tunnels and tricky rooms could just different forms of this mental trap!”

“Now you are beginning to understand.  This whole place could be just that, and we could all be still standing in the entryway.  You can't get out of it, or find the Prize without the journey to get there.”

“So each person sees, feels, experiences something different?”

“I'd bet my life on it.”

“So how do we beat it?”

“We don't, we can’t, even those we know this is all a mind trap we have to keep going until we reach an answer, or die trying.”

“Not much of a choice,” Ellis muttered.

“I don't think there is a way out once you enter the building.”

Ellis looked longingly at the beach, the cabana, and the island.  He could see she wanted to stay here, to end the struggle to be who she was.  Penn reached out, touching her face with the back of his fingers and stroked her cheek.  Ellis leaned into the caress, and the unspoken plea for forgiveness.

“We have to go, my love, or stay here forever.”

“Why can't we…”  Even before the words left her mouth, she knew the answer.

Neither of them could be lotus eaters for long.  It wasn't in their nature.  Their restless spirits would drive them out of paradise eventually.  Reluctantly they dressed and loaded up the camel packs with fresh water and their back packs with food.  Even Penn looked longingly at the ketch anchored just off the beach, and sighed before taking Ellis's hand.  Together, they turned their backs on paradise.

CHAPTER - THIRTY NINE:               Captains & Generals.

Captain Melche eyed General Tandy with distaste, wishing he'd do his pacing somewhere else beside his bridge.  As the Commander of this ship, he couldn't very well tell him to go somewhere else.  As the Captain, his function was to fight any Naval battles, which Tandy pointed out to him at regular intervals.  As a career Naval man, he wasn't about to short circuit his rise by getting into a dick measuring contest with an IMPSEC General, especially with the Director backing this mission.  He just wished he wasn't so much in the dark about what this mission was about, and other than knowing an IMPSEC team was on the surface of an uninhabited planet investigating a strange building, he knew nothing at all.

“Captain, we are coming around into the debris field again.”

“Good.  Relay to all ships they can begin gunnery practice… and tell them to try and hit something this time, Humm?”  His comm tech smiled slightly at the joke.

“Captain!”  His gunnery officer called.  ”I'm detecting life pods and some of them are still active.”

“Ours or?...”

“Several Thrakee, and a few Silurian's… two of them are ours.”

“Good.  Order search and rescue to go after them.”

“And the rest, Captain?”  Captain Melche eye General Tandy, seeing him looking at the battle board.

“Those Thrakee and Silurian pod would make for good target practice, Captain.”  Tandy announced.  Melche stiffened.

“I don't think…”

“That's wasn't a suggestion, Captain.”  Tandy spoke softly, but there was no mistaking the command in his voice.  The midnight black uniform of IMPSEC reinforced his words.

“Yes, General.”  Captain Melche gritted his teeth and nodded to his gunnery office.

“You heard the General's order, lieutenant.  Carry on.”

"I'm getting a little concern, General.  Your team hasn't reported in for a day and a half.  Is there anything we can do to assist them?"  General Tandy looked at the Captain a moment before answering.  Clearly, this was another attempt to solicit information about what was going on, and why this planet was so important.

"No, Captain.  Thank you for the offer, but there is nothing we can do up here to assist them.  It's all up to them.  Hopefully it shouldn't be long before we see some results.

CHAPTER - THIRTY:               The Journey continues

That night, they slept in the corner of a drafty passageway, and even without getting into his favorite lotus position, Penn managed to meditate for a few hours.  As he did, the path became clear.  If he was right, there was just one way to get to the prize and end this nightmare, but it was a risky move.  He knew it would be hard, not just from the traps set by the building, but those from within his own mind, and hers.  Therein lay the rub, and he knew, the key to getting to the prize.  The passageway led in one direction for miles before the smooth walls gradually turned to rough dark rock.  They exited into another giant circular, dome like cavern, about a mile across, and they could just barely make out the exit on the other side.  All they had to do to reach the exit, was get across a gleaming expanse of pitch-black tar-like substance that came within fifty feet of their exit point.  A slight sound made them both turn, now no longer surprised to find the doorway gone.  Walking to the edge of the pitch-black lake, Penn knelt down to examine the substance a little closer, not liking what he saw.  There was something almost evil in its Stygian blackness.  He started to reach out to touch it, but much to his surprise, the substance reached out toward his finger.  He snatched his hand back, as the tentacle sank back into the main mass.

“Damn!  I don't like the look of that.”  Ellis took a step back.

“Me neither.”  Looking around, Penn found a hand-sized chunk of rock, and reached out toward the black pool again.

The tentacle came back up and connected with the rock.  Penn pulled, expecting the black stuff to stretch, but it didn't.  For a few moments, Penn and the black stuff waged a tug-of-war, but no matter how hard he pulled the rock he couldn't pull it free.  In the end, Penn let go and the tentacle pulled the rock beneath the surface.

“Christ!  Thank God, you didn't touch it with your hand.”  Penn suspected that if he had, the black stuff would have pulled him in, and engulfed him.  What happened after that was unknown, death probably.

“I wonder what that stuff is supposed to represent.”

“Could be it represents all the evil in the world.”  Ellis mused.

“But there's no one except us on this rock...  well maybe a few others, but not enough to account for this much evil.”

“The universe then, but if it is, how do we cross it without getting dragged in?”

“You've got me there.”

“Shit!  Now what do we do?” 

Penn dropped his pack and walked carefully along the twenty-foot length of rocky beach.  The pool seemed to ripple with him, as if following his movement.  This set up a slow motion waveform across the whole lake that seemed to take forever to reach the other side and start back.  With nothing better to do for the moment, they sat on the rock near the edge and ate to feed their roaring metabolisms.  While they did, Penn watched the waveform slowly roll back and forth.  Maybe it was his imagination, but the wave seemed to be getting bigger each time it came back, gaining momentum.  His suspicion was confirmed when part of the returning wave lapped the edge of the beach, and reached out for him.

“Holy shit!  Penn yelled, scrambling back out of reach.  Ellis almost choked on a mouthful of food as she followed him.

“Jesus!  That has to be out of someone nightmare!”  Ellis choked out.

“Well, it sure as hell isn't mine!”

“Well, don't look at me.”  They stood side-by-side looking at the inky black lake.

“You know what?”  Penn murmured, cocking his head to one side.  ”That stuff reminds me of that old movie with what's his name…  Steve McQueen.  'The Blob'.”

“You mean the one with that creeping black tar stuff?”

“Yeah, that's the one.”

“That's doesn't help us get across it, and we have no way to freeze it either.”

“True, but I just noticed something.”

“What?”  Ellis asked.

“The whole mass isn't moving uniformly.”  He pointed to a spot about six feet from the edge.

By now, the mass had stopped moving, as if they were too far back for it to sense them.  Penn looked at the discarded food pouch for a moment, and then carefully threw it out onto the lake.  It landed about seven feet from the edge, and much to his surprise the lake didn't grab it and suck it under.  The pouch just sat there, almost mocking them.

“You think that's the safe part?”  Ellis asked, looking first at Penn, then the container.

“Yeah, I do, but then what?”

“We need more rocks.”

“Huh?”

“To test out your theory.”

They each found five large rocks along the bottom of the rock face that made up the wall of the chamber.  Ellis went first, throwing her rocks one after the other progressively further out beyond the food pouch.  None of them sank.

“Your turn,” she said, standing back.  Penn took aim and threw his first rock.  The moment it hit, the lake pulled it under.

“Try to your left this time.”  Penn nodded and threw his second rock.  Again, the rock slowly sank below the surface.  The next one went right, and this time stayed on the surface.

“Think I need to find some more rocks, and work our a way across.”

“That's taking a hell of a chance.” Added, moving along with Penn to pick up rocks and stuffing them in her pockets.  Eying the distance they had to travel, she added a few more for good luck.