The thing seemed damaged to him, and perhaps mad, but it was by far the most advanced existence he had encountered, and for some reason he wondered what had created it, and was left staggered, and he studied its vast unstable energy surges, sensing they went across vast outer dimensions, and it was part of something incredible, which had so much force and powers that he was sure it could destroy space and time.
Chapter 12
The Moon Encounter
A moon appeared about them, going out into a distant horizon, and Cronenberg stood staggered with the shuttle crew, wondering what had happened, as he had been just about to approach the thing in the corridor, to get to the room the others were in, and he seemed to enter a gateway with them, and he felt something was playing with them, and he had a strange feeling that there would be far greater danger than there and the moon, and he checked the stars above, and how unusual they were, and that they could alter so much, and he realized that it could even be another galaxy, and that they could have instantaneously jumped from one galaxy to another, which fascinated him, with him being an astronaut!
Orwell, the shuttle science officer and medic, slowly shifted over to him, looking more disorientated and baffled than he had ever seen him, or any of the shuttle crew.
Even when they had crashed and were in front of the alien artifact discovery, or any of the occurrences, as their trip through space was so mind-bending and deadly!
“What now?” he moaned, to Cronenberg, and the others, breaking the deep intense silence between them.
Cronenberg could do little but shrug, and studied the alien sun that was just over the horizon, and they all stood staring about them confused and Cronenberg checked the stars again trying to identify anything in them, and realized how unusual they were!
He gasped as he looked over the moon surface in another direction and considered what lurked there, and he altered his faceplate’s shading of the sunlight.
Sunlight in space was blasting through blinding him with its intensity and he quickly altered it. The conditions of the moon were incredible and he never thought that he would confront anything more than Mars! And he gasped at the temperature his spacesuit recorded there!
Nothing added up now! Why had it left them at such a place? Yet were they a danger to it?
He considered why and if they were a danger to it and why! Yet he recalled there were two! But he was unsure if it was true, and what the hell they could do about invisible highly advanced aliens!
There had to be far more behind it! Surely they would profit little from what they were doing!
A sudden explosion from what seemed a fired missile made a tremendous explosion, but lacked sound, as there was no atmosphere, but the damage and blast of stone was immense and shuddered through the moon’s surface and knocked them about, and went across the ground, and Orwell leapt back on his feet from where he had sat, and rushed close to him.
“Someone seems to have fired some form of energy beam!”
It was strange as it looked as though it was a missile and that it was intended to hit or scare them and all he could do was get them to rush over to a hiding place nearby, behind a large boulder.
They were shrouded in moon dust, after they managed to cover themselves from being seen, and he realized that they might be able hide in the deep regions of moon dust, as they had oxygen supplies, and he gasped again at what would happen when they ran out, and he just rested back and left it, and he considered if some alien species would find his remains there one day, frozen and in an unaltered condition, and be their only alien discovery, like them finding aliens in spacesuits dead on the moon, and he wondered if he would end up in an alien museum.
The landscape was gray everywhere and was untouched by water or life, and was empty and hollow with no sound, and had a deep haunting silence in its environment that went further than any desolate snow landscapes. He was on another world with another star! An empty lost world lost in the depths of space, absent of life, and a dead world.
Something startled him, over at his side, as he dreamily listened to the others giving their thoughts on what had happened, and he and Orwell struggled to grasp what was there, and focus on anything, and they altered their faceplates back to normal, for normal levels of light, and he saw what looked like a sheet of blackness, which had not been there before, and he heard Orwell gasp at it.
Orwell leapt on his feet, and held his hands over his eyes, shading them, and shouted, “It’s the gateway … It has to be the only way to leave …”
They watched him rush away, attempting to run, but making vast leaps over the low gravity world, and they decided to follow him at their normal speed, and as they approached it Cronenberg was tempted to run to it but avoided it, and wondered what the hell would happen next, and gasped at what the future would be and if they could survive the encounter.
Chapter 13
The Moon Station
Echoes of the astronauts’s startled cries and the remains of their last conversations swirled through his mind, and he attempted to recognize what was actually occurring about him as he exploded out the universe, and he tried give himself a proper scientific account of it this time, especially if he survived!
It looked as if the gateway had followed them to the moon, but it had been there already and he could not grasp why it had left them there and returned.
He sensed again that something was chasing them, and it had not properly detected them and that it was attempting to check what they were, and he knew that something else was there was covering what they were and their presence, and he wondered if it had put them there and if it was why it had put them there, and he sensed there was a powerful reason and it might tell them.
The universe seemed to explode with energy about him and he sensed that they were the chosen ones and that something incredible would occur that was one of the greatest occurrences to occur since the beginning of the universe, and that it had been created for it, and that it would one day replace the other that was chasing them through the universe.
For some reason his mind seemed to remember it as though it had been put there to stay there, and he knew that he would always remember it, no matter what occurred.
Powerful stars exploded through colossal black tunnel shooting through the universe, stunning him with its brilliance and majestic creation, and a colossal vortex of trillions of straight lines magically blasted by, and he studied it for a long time and realized that he had no proper bodily presence, and he slowly lost consciousness, as though entering an altered sleep state.
He sensed something, and he realized he was at another destination! Something of ancient origins was there.
For a moment all six of them stood in complete darkness, trying to see what they had entered, and a vague light emerged, and Cronenberg examined Orwell and was surprised that he now looked confident, and he wondered if he had something planned and what it could be, and wondered if he had detected something that he had not and what he would do, and he had a weird sensation of something happening, and he examined himself to see if there was anything different about him now!
It was incredible! It had only been hours ago that he had been sleeping, and it was as if it was days ago, and he realized how little he remembered of things! All their minds and bodies were affected by the gateway and what they had experienced, and he even recalled losing consciousness and he could not fully recall anything after it! It felt like an incredible amount of time had passed, and he wondered if time had been altered, and if they had traveled through time, and he realized that it could have been a time effect of the gateway!
He realized that he had actually survived though, and what must be the most dangerous anything that he had undertaken, and he realized that he could have actually avoided the whole lot by doing other things, and he wondered if he would have ended up there anyway, and had even been waiting for them.
The astronauts searched everywhere about them for anything that showed why they were there, a
nd what was there, and he searched for Orwell as he thought if anyone could find answers he was the one to do it.
The blackness about him reminded him of an empty region of space, and he examined it in awe, wondering if it was somehow representing something, to show them something, but he could not grasp anything and knew it was something else.
In a region of blackness he spotted something shift, where Orwell was, and Orwell’s eyes adjusted and Cronenberg saw a faint blue radiance, which he considered as a blue star, and that it might be a section of sky or somewhere and he made a closer examination of his surroundings by feeling around him, like Rosenberg was doing, at another region, and he immediately felt it was something artificial, and part of some form of structure, and he felt the strange floor, with his thick spacesuit boots, and he watched Orwell lift up his faceplate and slowly breathe in air there and nodded to them that it was breathable, and he slowly copied him and smelt a strange odor, and a little dizziness, and just ordered the astronauts to copy him to save their oxygen supplies.
With it off he heard a faint vibration from something and felt it running through a wall when he touched it and he tried to realize what it was, and what material it was made of, and wondered if he could get a sample of it and if it was worth anything, but he never bothered as he did not know what it was and if it did anything, and could not remove anything as it was too solid!
He returned to staring at where the faint blue radiance was as Orwell and Rosenberg shoved something into the wall and as more light came in he realized that he was actually in some form of room, and had been looking through a crack in a form of entrance to the structure.
For a second his emotions ran amok thinking of what incredible things could be there and what their voyage through the universe could give them, even if it had them on the brink of existence, but the spectacular views of the universe were worth it!
In the darkness he felt an eerie sensation that the place was stranger than he thought, and he sensed a hidden presence somewhere, as though something was nearby, and he wondered if it was what was in the gateway, and why they had not been put somewhere else, and he marched forward through the entrance as Orwell and Rosenberg watched there, and he realized by their reactions how strange it was, as they would normally have just marched in!
Strange lights blasted out at him everywhere from things he could not see, blinding him in the surrounding blackness, and he examined flashes and beams of radiance!
He staggered in and it became more and more perceptible and he saw a room full of beaming colored lights and controls and he examined how strange it was, and clearly designed for some alien creature, and that it had a strange form of claw, and he even spotted scratch marks where it had scratched the bottom of a complex control panel, and he tried to examine it in the dim light to see what it was, but nothing indicated anything and gave anything away as to what it was for.
Suddenly he spotted Orwell and Rosenberg over at something at his side and he spotted speckles in the darkness, and he moved over to them, and realized that he was glaring out at the stars of deep space, and he saw the ground below, outside the structure, and he realized where he was! He was actually on a moon station in the depths of the stars!
He searched through the blur of controls in the dim room behind him, only lighted by controls, looking for anything familiar now he knew what the structure was, wondering if they should avoid touching anything.
He realized it was actually out in the deepest depths of a group of stars! Further than any human had been before, and many galaxies away from the Earth!
“Where do you think this place is?” Rosenberg moaned, searching about the landscape outside, trying to find something that could give him a vague clue to something.
“If it is a race of aliens like humans,” Orwell replied, firmly, “I’d say that it had to be part of their civilization, on a moon, and for carrying out research!”
“There could be a planet nearby!” Cronenberg continued.
“It seems to be abandoned, left out in the depths of space, endlessly trapped in time and space.”
“We can check it and see if we find anything of value here!” Rosenberg announced.
“Value to us trapped in space?” Orwell asked. “Or value to us if we get back home!”
Rosenberg shrugged, and followed Cronenberg going back to the controls, where the other three members of the crew were standing examining them, discussing them, and they tried activating one, and they all watched strange reactions about them.
Their thirst for knowledge was increasing and they insisted in checking everything that they could for the slightest clue to what it was for and why they had been put there, and Cronenberg suddenly spotted the room that they had appeared in and realized that it was strange and he attempted to examine it in the dim light from the controls, and discovered that the entrance to the gateway had appeared there and he wondered if they should enter it, as they would eventually, and Cronenberg sensed that it had reappeared for them to reenter the gateway.
Chapter 14
The Monster
While the gateway shifted them through galaxies at one point it altered considerably and Cronenberg instantly started examining what was happening, and they were being shifted somewhere else, and he detected the other presence and its danger, and he realized the gateway systems stretched everywhere through the whole universe, and called the Dyson Stargate.
Even though he did not know what was happening he knew it was their only chance of survival, and, as they shot through the outskirts of a small concentrated galaxy, seeing it as a faint ghost shape of large celestial objects shooting by, he and the other members of the crew were surprised to see a cloud of energy form far behind them, and it was their first visional detection of what was there, and he looked for a central point of it. He was sure that something was there, and he looked for anything else, or if it was being projected from somewhere. Yet there was nothing anywhere that could produce anything like it!
What could exist in a gateway? What were they up against?
It never accelerated further! It hung there thickening, directly behind them, swirling around in intelligent ways, with intelligent formations, and as he watched it to see if it was being controlled or controlling itself. Yet he was sure it was a form of probe attempting to check them out!
He mentally detected it doing something, and wondered what would happen next, and he watched Orwell examine it, as they all spun through space, as mind-bending lines of stars shot by, as they accelerated faster at a hyper speed, and he was sure Orwell was going to say something. He was sure he was not fully able to fully explain its presence, and how it got there, but had an idea.
The probe shifted creepily, forming a more turbulent thickening formation, forming shapes in itself, and they checked it with horror as well as excitement.
Strange sights and silent sounds began manifesting everywhere about them – like partially visible life forms were appearing – and it was forming something around them.
Strange glows and swirls formed and reformed, while the energy around them increased and increased, as though something was manifesting, and creating itself about them, almost in a bubble formation, surrounding them.
Chapter 15
The Living Jungle
They woke on the ground in a strange jungle landscape, and they examined what was there with interest, wondering what was there and why it was there, and in the trees formations above Cronenberg saw a strange weird cloudless ivory sky, and he spotted an easy way to climb up, using strange formations like branches, and he realized how peaceful it was there and he rested on a boulder, and smelt a scent in the atmosphere, which he could not recall, and he suddenly detected it was an animal smell.
He knew it was not a normal jungle, for some reason, and it was not like any other jungle that they had been in, and he suddenly saw Anders climb up the tree he had been examining, which he found a way to climb up, and he realized he was taking the route up it that
he saw.
The others all stood looking up at him as he reached the top, while they shaded their eyes with their hands, and Cronenberg took a good look around and saw their problem and that they could not see through the tree formations and ground vegetation further than a short distance, and it confused him and them, as they for one never knew where on the landscape of the world they were and where they should go to, and he could not grasp how they would leave there and if they should just remain there.
Anders looked out, at the top, and shouted down that the jungle region vanished at a region, away in the distance, and he pointed in the direction, and Cronenberg noted the direction, and tried using a compass he had to see if there was a magnetic pole on the world that they could use to navigate, and he found there was a weak movement at the direction Anders had pointed at, and he examined it surprised and wondered what it was, as it seemed different from the Earth’s magnetic field.
It surprised him how swift Anders was at climbing, and that he had some experience, and he realized how things had changed.
Cronenberg realized how much the place reminded him of the Earth and he allowed his spacesuit to fill its air tanks with air, as some of the other astronauts were doing, and he was amazed at the environment and how he reacted to it instinctively, realizing how much he missed being out in the open on the Earth.
He suddenly felt something hidden below was on his ankle and that he had noticed it before, and he wondered if it was one of the species of the world and he realized that he had not even heard a noise on the world or seen any form of animals and it seemed strange, and it was also strange as nobody had encountered any normal life forms on other worlds and they were now, only days from being on Mars, treating such things as normal, and he gasped at what could be there and felt something grab his ankle and he jerked, and he looked but in the dense undergrowth around his legs he saw nothing, and never felt it anymore, and ignored it.
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