It is a clockwork of symmetrical spokes of blue-green ice. Radiating from every direction toward the center of the plateau.
Every spoke emanates from the yawning height of a cave’s mouth. Gradually descending to a terminus that disappears into the smooth surface at the middle of the plateau. So identical is the orientation of the randomly spaced spokes, one to another, they appear to be joined at a common hub.
Like the clear surface they flow into, the blue-green ice is so thick and so pure that every surface reveals several feet of depth before fading into a milky opaqueness the observer cannot see beyond.
The eerily transparent depth creates the impression that there are no plane surfaces here. That the viewer has entered a dimension beyond reality.
That is their first unsettling sensation in this place. It will not be their last!
The distant mouths of smaller caves call to them from every direction between the spokes. As their deep black shadows pock every stretch of stony surface at the base of the cliffs.
While they cannot yet make out any real detail, they are intrigued by the caves that are everywhere. And by the towering columns of blue-green ice that reach across from the highest of them.
Eager to explore both, Noah marvels at the wondrous geometry of ice and stone displayed before them.
But the final leg of their ascent has been an exhausting climb and, so, he readily agrees with Davina’s suggestion to halt now and thoroughly explore the plateau rested and refreshed after a much-needed sleep.
Even their most fanciful dreams could not prepare them for what they will discover when they wake!
Fully rested, they boldly set out across the smooth surface of the plateau the following day.
Wending their way between the towering ribs of blue-green ice-spokes on either side, they keep their eyes glued to the clear ice beneath their feet.
As it reveals many titanic forms imprisoned within its translucent depth.
There are gigantic mollusks. Colossal squid-like cephalopods. Amphipods whose length seems beyond measure. And finned leviathans that dwarf the great whales of Noah’s world.
All denizens of an ancient sea that once washed over this mountain plateau. Stranding these primeval aquatic life-forms in its frozen depth. All staring up at the couple through unblinking eyes.
Looking over toward Davina, Noah is about to remark on an enormous oceanic ray suspended beneath them when an image over her shoulder stops him in mid-sentence.
Words escape him in his astonishment, and all he can do is point.
There, encased in the blue-green ice of the nearest spoke, is a giant cave bear. It is standing erect. Its arms extended. Its face contorted into a hideous snarl.
The creature is identical to the coal-black, short-nosed bear Noah encountered in the dark recess along the high desert ravine. But that shy cave-dweller would not reach the height of his ancient cousin’s knee-socket.
Startled, Davina cries out in terror and starts to back away. But Noah quickly reassures her this bear is no threat to them. And he motions her to join him in a more systematic examination of the blue-green ice.
As they walk its length, they encounter ancient goliath prototypes. Identical in all but size to land-dwelling animals Noah encountered on his previous journey. In the temperate zones of this strange world.
Here are the ghosts of mega-fauna of this planet’s antediluvian past. Forever locked in the icy embrace of this frozen blue-green sepulcher.
Sea-rats the size of elephants in his world. Aurochs-like bison that dwarf their modern descendants. Dire wolves larger than the ancient sea-rats, their snarling jaws frozen in a rictus grin like the hyenas of his world. Even crocodilians, here many times the size of the monster Noah encountered in the glade.
The couple spend several days exploring these galleries of long-gone goliaths. Each day examining a different spoke. Surveying the still, silent specters of many species. All gargantuan archetypes of those that roam the planet now.
But one species is missing from this wheel of extinction:
Man!
Interpreting the ice-bound evidence, and relying on the context of Davina’s tale, Noah is able to piece together a plausible account of what occurred here those many ages ago.
Here is the likely conclusion Noah shares with her to the legend of The Great Melt:
Before it froze, the plateau was a mountain tarn whose pure water was clear and deep.
The Great Melt raised the level of the tarn, vomiting creatures from the sea into its crystal waters. The aquatic life-forms—some familiar to Noah, others not—came from every ocean depth. From the briny surface waters to the frigid aphotic deep and the mesopelagic zone between.
Plunging temperatures of a cryo-event froze the swollen tarn solid. Imprisoning all the creatures now staring up from the ice through lidless, unseeing eyes.
They were the first to enter eternity in this icy tomb. They would not be the last.
Just as the wild creatures of his world, with their greater instinctive acuity, know to fly before a gathering storm, the large land-dwellers here sensed the devastation approaching their endangered temperate latitudes. And fled to the southern polar region before the scientists ever arrived. But what they could not comprehend was the unrelenting persistence of the catastrophe chasing them ever higher into the mountains:
The submergence of the land into a rising sea swollen by the melting ice around them.
Retreating ever higher, they finally reached the mountain plateau where they made their final stand. The large caves promised shelter and warmth, and they quickly occupied them.
But the promise was false!
For at the bottom of every large cave was a boundless open well of surging sea water. And when the swelling sea crested, the caves flooded and the occupants were flushed out onto the solid, frozen plateau.
That was when the column of cryogenic air suddenly descended. Freezing the animals in place and crystallizing skin, flesh and bone.
But the cryogenic air could not quell the rising tide of the sea, which continued to spew forth. Forming immense, towering, spoke-like columns of ice that marched across the plateau. In ever diminishing scale as the flow congealed from liquid to solid in the super-cooled air.
Confining themselves to the smaller caves, whose seamless cores remained closed to the sea, the scientists who followed were able to escape the ocean’s final wrath.
Their species alone survived and, thus, is not exhibited in the gallery of the ghostly giants that did not.
That was the great irony.
The thing the planet did not intend:
The survival of the very species responsible for its ruin!
What Noah cannot divine is how the other land-dwelling species endured to the present day in their diminished form. How is the short-faced bear who stole his fish and evicted him from its shadowy recess related to the frozen colossus here?
That is a connection he will make much later in his travels across this paradoxical moon.
Leaving the plateau, with its haunting images of the ghosts of giants from the planet’s distant past, the earth scientist in Noah cannot help but speculate:
If this much of Davina’s story of The Great Melt is attested to by the ice-bound mummified witnesses surrounding them, what else about the legends of her people may be true?
Chapter 36. The Land of Shadow
Fourteen bestial brutes begin the hunt. One is swallowed by the whistling crater. And now there are thirteen.
Huddled near the outer edge of the polar cloud bank, the hunters are a gaggle of jabbering, gesturing, stooped figures. Uttering their dismay and pointing dubiously at the shadowy landscape ahead.
Gruk is many yards in front of them. He pauses as Grak fearfully approaches.
“Our feet are sore, our eyes hurt, and we are afraid.” Grak whines. “The hunters do not want to enter the land of shadow. It is taboo, and we will die there.”
“Not if I kill you first!�
�� Gruk snaps back.
“Tell the fools we are in no danger so long as we follow the prints. If whatever made them is safe, then we are safe. Unless you are mad enough to defy me; then you surely will die!”
The party proceeds single file through a bleak, barren waste of frozen tundra as the shadow thickens into a blackness whose depth they cannot plumb. No longer able to make out the smudgy footprints, Gruk calls a halt and commands the party to fall out and sleep where they are.
It will be an unsettling night for the superstitious brutes.
As their gabbling dies down, they begin to hear muted wailing sounds that descend on their keyed-up imaginations. Like whispers of waiting agony and death. The noise stabs the stillness of the blackness around them, calling up their worst fears, before leveling off to a pulsating hum that will not diminish or cease.
Little do they suspect the soft hum will only grow in intensity and volume. Their constant companion on the harsh tundra.
The blackness has thinned to shades of grey when Gruk stirs the nervous hunters awake. The prints are visible once more. It is time to resume the hunt.
The farther they travel in the direction of the departing footprints, the louder the hum grows. Only the massive cudgel of their leader keeps them from bolting.
Still, the prints lead on.
It is their third night on the tundra when misfortune strikes!
What began as a hum two days ago has grown into a deafening howl. Gruk knows he must do something soon before his panicky hunters mutiny.
That is when he discovers a pair of footprints pointing away from those they are following. He wonders where they lead.
Selecting one of the hunters, he orders Grak and the others to remain in place while he and the hunter scout this new direction.
The dark is beginning to deepen again, and Gruk worries the prints will soon disappear. But they lead up to a low ridge where the howling reaches a deafening crescendo.
Raising his cudgel to urge the hunter to precede him up the short slope, Gruk is astonished to see his companion suddenly pulled over the ridge and disappear.
The craven brute lowers his profile against the pulling force of sucking air and retreats quickly from the slope, where he finds…
Nothing!
The footprints have vanished in the blackness, and Gruk is stranded and alone in a place where his hunter has been swallowed by an unseen, unknowable demon.
Abandoning that hapless fellow to his fate, the leader slinks as far away from the howling monster as he feels is safe. For within Gruk’s breast beats the heart of a coward. Ever ready to cut and run from the merest threat to his own hide.
Indeed, cold fear creeps over him when, as the darkness softens to grey, he finds himself alone on the barren tundra. With no sign of footprints or other landmark to guide him back to Grak and the other hunters.
The constant, unnerving howl will be his sole companion as he makes his way across the bleak barrens.
Separated from the relative safety of the hunting party, his instinct for self-survival is sorely tested as he resolves to fall back on flight and evasion before the least of creatures in this unfamiliar world.
∆ ∆ ∆
It has been two sleeps since their leader left them. The other hunters are agitated and anxious to escape the unsettling noise. Their uneasiness and discontent throw Grak onto the horns of a dilemma.
Should he continue to insist on remaining here and face certain mutiny from the hunters?
Or should he give in to their demand to leave this place and risk Gruk’s cruel wrath should he return alive?
Hedging, Grak tells the party they can leave this place but only in the direction the smudgy footprints lead. That way, he temporizes, he can tell Gruk they are only obeying his orders to follow the prints.
Deciding anywhere is better than here, with its accursed constant howling, the other hunters readily agree.
And so, off the hunters go. On a roughly parallel course with, but a full day ahead of, their separated leader.
It is not long before the footprints lead Grak and his fellows to the very shore of the blue-green sea.
After another day’s trek, they begin to see puddles and pools of open water, as the ground turns to muck from the rising temperature.
Staying on the shoreline path, with its more solid footing, they find an abundance of small fish which, along with the fresh water puddling on the landward side, provide the sustenance and nourishment they require. Even the most sullen hunter seems more hopeful on a full stomach and the promise of regular fare.
They do not know they are approaching the outer edge of the polar cloud-mass.
They do not know they are venturing beyond the protective womb of half-light, which shielded them from the harshness of the open sky.
It is on the third day after their leader abandoned them when fear returns. With knife-edge intensity!
It comes with the arrival of dawn. An unfamiliar occurrence beyond their experience. An assault on their senses and superstitious fears.
Grak is first to notice it. And it pains his eyes to do so.
There is a definite brightening ahead and, as Grak focuses his half-closed eyes, it appears that a distant shadow is creeping steadily toward them. Pursued by the bright light.
While these brutes lack the wide, dilated pupils of their quarry, even the hunters’ beady, recessed pupils blink at the unaccustomed glare.
But the bright light is not their only cause for alarm.
As the passing shadow recedes behind them, two blazing spheres are revealed in the now open sky above. So intense is their fire the hunters cannot look directly at them.
Cowed by the unfamiliar sight, at first Grak does not notice its effect on the hunters. But as his eyes come back into focus, he sees they are huddled, shaking and pointing fearfully toward the blood-red orbs in the sky as if trying to ward off some unspeakable evil.
Looking down for reassurance, he is relieved to see that the footprints continue. And he knows from Gruk they need not fear this place since those who came before passed through it and survived
Puffing out his chest, in imitation of their missing leader, Grak loudly declares:
“Fear not for I, Grak, will lead you safely away from here. I do not fear anything. In the sky above or the earth below. And you may follow me!”
With that bluster, he leads the other hunters farther along the shoreline path. Dogging the prints before them. Thinking what a grand thing it is to be the leader.
Lust for dominion over his fellows is heady tonic for even the dullest wit.
“If Gruk does not return, with his mighty cudgel, who is to say I should not be leader?” he asks himself.
The hunters travel a great distance as the twin suns rise high in the sky and then fall to earth once more.
The approach of night alarms the hunters once again, as black bleeds over the landscape ahead. And once again, secure in Gruk’s assurance, Grak sees that the footprints continue and so tells the rest he will lead them safely through this new danger.
Grak passes the night in a rapture of dreams.
Praised by the other hunters.
Cosseted by many fresh slaves.
Venerated by all in the village on his triumphal return.
Chapter 37. Gruk the Brave
Thirteen bestial brutes invade the heliotrope forest. One is carried away by the winged guardians. And now there are twelve.
Aday away, Gruk arrives at the same shoreline and is relieved to find the footprints of his fellows overlapping those they faithfully follow. He knows from the freshness of the new prints his hunters are but a day ahead.
Stopping only briefly to capture and eat the raw fish and to drink the puddled water, he presses on with all deliberate speed. And with a renewed sense of urgency to close the distance before quarry is captured and claimed.
The shoreline path is straight and solid, and the knowledge his companions are hewing to it frees his mind from the
constant vigil of tracking the footprints. Which he knows must slow the progress of those he pursues.
It is while he is searching for a plausible explanation to give the other hunters that a plan begins to take shape in his mind. An ingenious ruse to snatch glory from the death of the hunter who accompanied him.
Only the lost hunter knew what happened at the howling ridge, Gruk realizes, and he is no longer here to tell the others. No, Gruk is the one who will do the telling, and the others must accept what he says.
Grasping the opportunity, the devious brute fabricates an explanation he knows will elevate his own reputation and standing with the others.
First, though, he will confront forces more sinister and awe-inspiring than the howling air that swept his companion away and sent him fleeing into the black night!
When the darkness begins to thin, Gruk awakens to a brighter horizon than he has ever known. And the shadow he has always traveled under seems to be swallowed by the brightness ahead.
Soon, the shadow is gone altogether. The bright glare stabs his dilated pupils with needles of pain. It is not until his eyes adjust to the light that he perceives the greater threat.
Suspended in the sky above him are two glowing, blood-red orbs staring down at him. The inflamed eyes of a great, demonic beast hovering over his head.
Cowering, the terror-stricken brute holds both arms over his face. Hoping they will render him invisible to his tormentors in the sky.
Panicky, Gruk looks for any relief in the landscape where he can find refuge to scurry and hide. But the tundra is as smooth and featureless as the shoreline path, and he is forced to continue his journey under the two watchful eyes overhead.
Since he is neither attacked nor harassed, despite his exposed position, he soon takes the presence of the twin suns in stride as he picks up the pace to catch the other hunters.
As he treks on, his plan matures from a remnant of opportunity to the whole cloth of deception.
When he finally spots the other hunters, silhouetted against the brightening light in the distance ahead, he is thankful for the safety of their number and eager to impress them with his contrived tale of fearlessness and fidelity.
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