The Circle and Star

by John Foster

  “Looks like some of the port thrusters were damaged in the attack, so we may take more damage when we settle down,” said Theo.

  “You can do it Theo. After all you’re the best pilot in the mining fleet,” said Volkum.

  Theo looked over his shoulder at Volkum and scowled at him. “What do you mean in the mining fleet? I’m the best in the whole Terran fleet,” said Theo and with that the ship set down and everything seemed fine and Theo rose up from his seat and said “See?” and then the ship suddenly shifted and Theo fell back over his chair and toppled to the floor. The bridge was silent as Theo stood and dusted himself off and glared at anyone who looked his way.

  West punched the intercom button and the little microphone jumped out and hovered near his mouth. “I think we’re done landing,” said West looking over to Theo.

  “We’ll do a repair evaluation first, then effect repairs. Security teams set up anti-air batteries and a perimeter screen,” said West.

  Volkum walked up to West. “You think they’ll come back?” he asked.

  “Probably, and while our air defense isn’t exactly up to date, we can give them a nasty surprise if they return. Volkum, you handle site security and make sure everyone is armed. Madison said the planet has a variety of life forms with some semi intelligent and others not so much,” said West.

  A few minutes later, the ship’s ramp lowered and West and Volkum walked out into the reddish brown light of a Jo-Tene morning. The air was pleasant enough with a slightly peppery tang to the scent. There was a sense of immense age to the square where they stood. Large obelisks, some more than 300 feet high surrounded the square and there was some type of badly weathered script apparent on their faces. In some areas, the obelisks were broken as if a giant had playfully knocked them askew. West and Volkum walked to the closest one and looked up at it. The giant needle was made of what looked like an amber stone fashioned from thousands of smaller cut blocks of a dull red color that were slightly transparent.

  “They’re beautiful,” said Volkum, his face suffused with awe as he looked up at the spires.

  “Yes, they are and look at the richness of the color as the morning light strikes it,” said West.

  As they watched, the sun started to permeate the square and each of the tall spires filled with light as the sun touched it, running down the sides to the base as if there was an electrical current that had suddenly been touched off.

  “Wow!” said Volkum.

  Madison who had left the ship now joined them looking up as the sun bathed the spires.

  “Amazing and so beautiful,” said Madison her face turned to the massive structures before her.

  The other crew members were also mesmerized at the tall amber spikes that were now faintly glowing as the sunlight started to envelope them.

  “I wonder if they’re some type of energy collector, like a solar cell? When I was collecting data, I didn’t look at what the energy pulses were, just the output,” said Madison.

  Madison on an impulse walked up to the spire and put out her hand to touch it.

  “Careful there. We don’t know what it’s doing,” said West walking up to her side.

  She took a stylus from her hair and touched it to the surface of the stone. Nothing happened. She then touched the rock, and it felt cool to the touch. As she touched it she felt a faint sense of chaos like echoes from the past, jumbled like something not used in a long time. She could feel a very odd sensation like something was forming in her mind, taking shape, something still ephemeral but nonetheless there. She pulled her hand back with a start. She then noticed West had also touched it but then jerked his hand back too. They both felt disquieted by the effect.

  Volkum walked up them and was about to touch the stone when West said, “don’t touch it, there’s something odd about it, like it can sense us and get in our heads.”

  “What!” said Volkum.

  “Yes, it is something very much like that,” said Madison. “When I touched it, I got a sense of a chaotic jumble but as I continued to feel it, I could sense a greater coherence like something that was highly unfocused that was slowly becoming aware of us and was trying to reach out to us,” said Madison.

  “Send the word out to the crew to stay away from the spires and not to touch them for any reason,” said West to Volkum.

  “Aye, Captain,” said Volkum and then turned and walked back to ship.

  West and Madison continued to look at the amber tower which was still faintly pulsing. They looked at the other towers nearby.

  “Those nearby towers aren’t pulsing as much as this one is,” said Madison.

  “Yeah, I noticed that too,” said West.

  “It’s like we woke it up,” said Madison.

  “Okay, we’ve got enough problems without worrying about ghosts wandering about,” said West, sounding somewhat exasperated.

  “I hear ya.”

  “Well, let’s see what happened to the ship and see if we can get it in the air again,” said West.

  They turned to face the ship There was a solid white panel of what appeared to be stone under it. The sand wiped away by the landing blast. They walked back to the rear of the ship where the ramp was down and the crew was unloading gear.

  From a high window in a majestic red building off to the side of the square, eyes that were narrowed and slit thin, followed their path back to the ship. A second pair of eyes joined it and continued to watch a while and then slinked off down a corridor that led to a shaft going down the building and deep into the earth. The other stayed and watched.

  Theo was out looking over the rear of the ship evaluating the damage. West and Madison walked up to him. “Well?” said West.

  “It’s not too bad, in fact the damage is almost superficial,” said Theo.

  “You sound surprised?” asked Madison.

  Theo turned to look at her. “Yeah, I am surprised. It’s almost like they weren’t trying to kill us but just scare us,” said Theo as he scratched his bearded chin. “You know it’s like it was an airburst as opposed to a kill shot.”

  “Are you complaining that they didn’t kill us?” asked West who was shaking his head in bewilderment.

  “Well, not exactly,” said Theo, “but have you thought about what happened up there?”

  “Yes, they tried to shoot us down. I got that part just fine, as far as the deeper geopolitical implications I haven’t gotten that far,” said West looking amused.

  “Those fighters were Sovar and so why did they try to shoot us down? They must have realized that we were a Terran ship. We don’t look anything like a Soshi ship. Also, why didn’t they pursue us to finish us off?”

  “One of them was on fire or suffered damage and they broke off,” offered Madison.

  “I don’t believe it. The only thing we shot at them were the decoy missiles and they couldn’t hurt those fighters, much less damage them enough to make them flee. I think they were trying to teach us a lesson or keep us from doing something,” said Theo.

  “Well, that seems reasonable and I don’t think the Sovar are our friends in spite of their official protestations to the contrary,” said West.

  “You know that brings up another point. Those fighters were too small to be on their own and that means they came from a mother ship. Where was the mother ship? Why didn’t that come on down and finish us off, if that were their intent?” said West as he looked skyward.

  The others all looked up to the sky.

  Madison turned to West, “I’d like permission to start to recon the ruins here to find out what’s using the power that the other nodes are feeding.”

  West frowned but realized it had to be done. “Okay, take Volkum and an armed team with you.”

  Madison started to protest but, seeing the look in West’s eyes, she realized that a protest would be futile. She also realized that she really wanted that protection.

  “In the interim, I’ll start the ground penetrating radar and see how deep this little pl
ace goes,” said West looking around at the immense square.

  Madison went back into the ship and West walked to the now open cargo bay and found Volkum moving some of the anti-air weapons out of storage and preparing to dis-embark with them.

  “I figure about 10 of them should give us good protection in this location,” said Volkum to West.

  West nodded and said, “I’m going to do a radar survey and then I’ll get out of your way.”

  The ground radar survey equipment was the archaeologist’s dream come true. The devices were small, portable, and could hover for hours and could see several hundred feet down into the densest of soils and find anything larger than a fist. It could also be tuned to find items that had specific metallurgical properties. They had used the same device at the Gobi site and while it wasn’t perfect, it could certainly find anything significant buried within a hundred feet of the surface.

  West radioed the ship and asked for the radar technician to join him in cargo bay. Wilson bounced down the ramp, he was a regular on the ship’s crew and had assisted West in doing the surveys before. West liked Wilson because he was good at this job and had a seriously positive attitude about his work. Wilson was also good at tinkering with engines which is why Theo picked him up a couple years ago.

  “Where do we start,” asked Wilson walking up to West and looking around.

  “We’ll use the ship as our datum point and do a radial pattern out from here,” said West turning with his arm sweeping across the square where they had landed. The two men pushed the big blue box out of the cargo bay and popped the lid. It sprang open and a large blue ball with spider like legs sat before them. Wilson took out a control box from the inside, fiddled with it for a moment and then pressed the inevitable red button. The blue ball whirred, the legs retracted a bit and then it hovered an inch and slowly rose from the box. West synced his HDA with it and ran his own diagnostic test. He nodded his head in satisfaction, and waved to Wilson to start. The little ball hovered a second longer then sprang up a foot and started to move out on a straight line away from the ship, a few lights on the side pulsing as it moved along the invisible transect that Wilson had laid out for it. West watched the output on his HDA and then, nodding again, looked up and saw Madison walking down the ramp laughing and talking to Volkum and the two members of the security team. West thought ruefully that security team was somewhat of a misnomer in that the most security they had ever conducted was to swat flies in the Gobi, but nonetheless they had qualified with the weapons and were proficient enough to hit what they shot at.

  West could hear Madison say, “Let’s start with that tall red building over there, the one with the damaged side,” pointing to a large structure just off the square. The building had taken a direct hit by something and part of the second floor had caved in and was wrecked. He wondered why that building had been hit and by what but there was no damage elsewhere. He sighed, more mysteries. West looked to where she was pointing and for a moment thought he saw something move in one of the windows. He shook his head as if to clear it and thought he was seeing more ghosts. West then frowned at the thought of his crew going into danger.

  Madison, Volkum, and two other team members, Johnson and Curt, headed off to the large red building just off the main square. The giant spires dominated the immediate skyline and it was difficult for the team to take their eyes off the warming colors that were generated as the rising sun touched the obelisks. Both Madison and Volkum were equipped with hand scanners that picked up transient energy and followed the pathways that the energy flowed along. It was similar to following an electrical line albeit an invisible one.

  The pavement of the square and adjoining broad avenues consisted of five meter white blocks of stone perfectly aligned and set. There were no cracks or vegetation creeping out between these stones. “I wonder how long this city has been abandoned?” asked Volkum looking around.

  “West will be figuring that out soon enough,” said Madison as she checked off their equipment list on her HDA.

  “I would have thought that he would have had the radiocarbon detector out first,” said Johnson looking back to the ship.

  “True enough but I think he was interested in where our mystery device might be and he’s going to be concentrating on that aspect for a bit,” said Madison thinking of how obsessive West was going to be if he didn’t make headway in that direction.

  Curt, the largest of the team, was over 6 feet tall, broad shouldered, with wild dark hair and beard, and the largest hands Madison had ever seen. He towered over the rest of them but was the gentlest of the group except when it came to a fight and it was rumored that with a little alcohol, no barroom was left in the same condition as it was when he came in.

  “So, what are we doing here?” asked Curt looking about.

  Madison looked up at Curt, “We’re going to follow traces of electrical energy that are being generated at different points of the world, many of which come to this city. Our job is to find out where it goes. That building, the big red one over there, seems to be a receptacle for some of it. We’re gonna find out what’s using that power.”

  Curt looked over to the building and noticed the large windows that dotted the structure. “There’s no glass in those windows,” said Curt.

  The team stopped and looked up the side of the building and indeed there were no obvious glass visible or even any fragments or shards visible.

  “Maybe they use an electrical screen like we do on the Paradig?” said Volkum.

  As the group approached the building they could see that the first floor had no windows at all and there was a closed massive double wide metal door. Sand was evident everywhere but there were piles of sand randomly spaced along the perimeter of the building like someone had been sweeping them off the building.

  “Look at those cones of sand around the building with branches sticking out of them. They look like sand rockets,” said Johnson. Johnson was a wiry young man and fastest of foot of the entire crew. He had been a long-distance runner on Terra and at short distances could outrun the quad bikes they sometimes used. His slight build belied his strength and knowledge of the martial arts in which he was a master. He had been resistant to taking a beam weapon, instead relying on his speed and training to defend himself and the others. Volkum, who was an assistant head of security, made sure Johnson had a weapon particularly since they didn’t know if they would be attacked by aircraft again.

  Madison had stopped, looking at the sand piles. Eying them with interest and then her eyes narrowed and her mouth tightened.

  Curt had stopped by one of the piles of sand and was peering at it when he exclaimed, “These branches are actually bones.” Curt stood beside one pile pulling at what looked like a long bone of some long dead animal. The bone wouldn’t give way and Curt kicked at the pile he was looking at and the cohesion of it suddenly collapsed becoming a giant flat pancake, a foot thick and 6 feet in diameter. “Wow, what the heck,” said Curt as he stepped back, eying the oddly flattened pile in front of him. “The bones seemed to be glued to the sand and that sand seems to be pulsing,” said Curt backing away warily.

  The rest of the team moved up to where Curt had stopped and were peering at the sand.

  “The sand has rounded edges and how could that be if it were sand?” said Madison.

  As she uttered these words, a part of the sand nearest Curt’s foot slowly probed out in a fat tentacle and moved tentatively towards his shoe. It neared Curt’s foot as if it were sniffing for him. Curt jumped back as they all did as if some invisible puppeteer had suddenly jerked their collective strings simultaneously. They peered down at the thing in horror as the tentacle continued to inch its way to Curt who then turned and ran about 10 feet away and then turned to face it. The pseudopod had stopped and was waving back and forth as if sensing that Curt was no longer present. It then turned towards Madison, who was the closest of the rest, and started to wiggle its way toward her. Madison, her hand to her mouth, turned
and ran to Volkum, and stood off to one side of him. “My gawd, what is that?” asked Volkum.

  “I don’t know but I’m guessing the bones littered all over it means something,” said Madison who then looked at the other piles around the building. As the pile of sand continued to quest for the disturbance, the rest of the party joined around Madison and Volkum. “There must be hundreds of them,” whispered Madison.

  As if on cue, another sand pile suddenly collapsed and formed a thick pancake, and then another, and then another until the entire front of the building was covered with bone covered flattened piles of sand. Several of them started to send out single tentacles but they extended farther and farther until they were about 10 feet in length and about a person’s arm’s diameter and were snaking about seeking the intruders.

  Volkum took out his laser pistol and held it ready. “Okay, everyone, take out your weapons and be prepared to use them. We need to return to the ship and let West know about this. There are hundreds of them here and if they can move farther than they seem to be doing now, we might be in trouble,” said Volkum.

  “I think we should do some observations first,” said Madison, eyes straining, then said, “the more knowledge we have the better we’ll be able to deal with them.”

  The entire sand pile that Curt had kicked now started to move towards them as if on tiny little feet which they could see were small tentacles that were forming on the underbody of the creature. “Uh, oh, I think we need to do our observations from the ship,” said Curt moving backwards. Several other piles had their tentacles now waving in the air also as if sniffing.

  One of the nearby tentacles waved wildly a moment, in back and forth motions, then settled down as it seemed to fix on their location and then stretched outward to them about 10 feet and the rounded blob started to quiver. A second and then third tentacle appeared about a foot to either side of the central tentacle but these were a smaller diameter and seemed to be stretching out farther and then forming horns on the end. Then it pulsed and slowly started to move toward them.