He fell through a gateway where there were stars everywhere, and he could not guess what the place was, and he realized that they were now moving outside the transportation field and he wondered if they could get trapped there, with decreasing oxygen supplies in their spacesuits.
Chapter 3
The Lost World in the Stars
A spectacular world stretched out below, where they reentered the universe, in an explosion of streaking lights, and the astronauts stood staggered, at the world, at what they had encountered, and them being so close to death and emerging so near the edge of a gigantic cliff face, going straight down to the ground.
For a few seconds Cronenberg clung to part of a large boulder behind him as they fully realized the rock under them was not as firm as they had thought, and what they had landed on the top of, and that it was a flat top of a massive rock pinnacle, towering over a mind-bending world, surrounded by a sky that would have startled any life form in the universe with its stars and phenomena, covering everywhere he looked, blasting their large shapes of radiance through the light blue sky.
He glared out with the others, looking everywhere, gasping at what they were on, and staring over the edge, at the depth of it, stretching down to what must be miles below, and he realized the extraordinary low gravity of the world, which allowed it to exist.
He was sure the world was a young one and that the pole shaped tower might have fallen down a long time ago if it had been the age of the Earth or Mars.
They soon started searching the top of the pinnacle looking for anything, and why they were there, and they found little, and they all walked separately about it searching everything they could, baffled by the lack of anything.
It was Rosenberg that noticed boulders with cut stone and showed them there could be actually an artificial structure below!
Most of them liked archeology, and the thought of searching ancient structures on alien worlds, and exploring new finds, and what past races would have been like.
The world below now looked like it had been frozen in time, as the sun was going into the horizon, and it was a fantastic surreal prehistoric times type world, and it conjured up great visions of the original primitive Earth, with its untouched environment.
The structure below was fascinating to him and Orwell as for the most of their lives they had wondered what aliens and their civilizations were like and buried away below them there was an ancient alien structure they could investigate, and he had fantasies of them finding something valuable that he could use if he ever returned to the Earth.
The place was fascinating, with rugged golden mountains and hills and shades of the starlight beaming everywhere, creating immense beams of colored lights streaking everywhere, and he tried to see if there were signs of life in the darkening landscape.
The giant pinnacle was tremendous, and he kept thinking that no sane alien could have built anything on it! Anything staying in it must have been mad or determined to avoid something immensely deadly on the world below!
It was also beyond comprehension how it could have stayed up and not crashed down below long ago, and he gasped at how they must have built it.
It looked dangerous and incapable of supporting itself, and looked impossible to climb. There were no paths visible that could have been used to climb it. It was so high up that he was sure that they would not be able to breathe properly when the atmosphere altered, and that they would have to put on their spacesuit helmets, and he made sure all their spacesuits were full of air, and that they filled their oxygen tanks from the atmosphere.
It was strange being surrounded by air, as they had been on Mars with their spacesuit helmets on outdoors for so long it felt like a like mistake being out in the open without their helmets on, and he watched how the men reacted, and some surely missed being on the Earth.
While he rested against the flat edge of a massive boulder next to Orwell and Rosenberg he examined the boulder in the vanishing sunlight and saw it was actually a meteorite and he realized the dangers of a world with so many stars, and being located in such a place, which he was sure was near the central part of a galaxy, and he examined the stone and debris on the ground like an archeologists, sifting through it, looking for anything of interest, and anything artificial, and he examined the sky in places that he had not examined before, and wondered what existed there and what other strange worlds there were to explore, and he started to realize he and the others were starting to like it there, and if they returned to the Earth that he would miss it, and the stars would never be the same again, and they would be empty.
In the distance he spotted an incredible immense meteorite crater with a strange mist cloud hovering over it, only filling its dent in the surface of the world, fitting itself into its shape.
The atmosphere grew slightly thinner as it grew darker and he watched their faces alter and their breathing grow heavier.
When the night emerged, and the blue sky covering the stars vanished, they all stood staggered, examining stars covering the whole sky everywhere with their eyes wide open, from the immensity and colossal dangers facing them, and in the end they sat back in their spacesuits staring up at the incredible sky and stars everywhere, which would have had every astronomer on the Earth going crazy examining and documenting for the rest of their lives, and he wondered what the hell the most highly advanced telescopes back on the Earth would show existed in its depths, and what all the undiscovered things would be, and how it would alter the way they thought of the universe!
The sky was truly unbelievable and he spotted one of the astronauts in the distance now standing filming a section of the sky, and their eyes went on the region trying to see what he was filming, and Cronenberg spotted it, and it was tremendous, and worth being there for, and it had to be the biggest galaxy he had ever seen, and he was astonished that he could see it with his eyes.
Suddenly he heard someone shouting in the distance from a hidden area, and they recognized it was Stanley, the main shuttle pilot, calling them over to him, to what he had discovered, and they all leapt onto their feet and rushed over to him, wondering what it was, and what else could be so fascinating.
They approached him at the same time, with their mouths open, seeing all the stars blazing out everywhere around them, and some racing across the sky, and lights shifting about everywhere, and occasionally making them shudder at the power and immensity of them, and the dangers there were there.
Stanley was bent over something, buried away in darkness, and Cronenberg spotted what looked like a boulder lifted up and saw there was a massive gap going downwards where it was, and they saw what looked like a form of steps going downwards.
He did not know whether he was happy with the find and wondered if they intended to go down into it, and if he should stop them going down into at night, as the dangers of the place looked immense, and as he watched on he actually saw a large planet visibly going into a nearby large sun.
Before he said anything Orwell rushed forward, and announced, “I’m going down! Who’s going?”
Straightaway he knew he would have to go too, and yet he wanted to go down, but he was unsure if they should go at night, but he did not have any evidence that there was anything there, but it was an extraterrestrial world, far out of their region of space, and they had not even visited any other solar systems or anything like there, and they had no idea what could exist there, and if they returned to the Earth they might never get the chance again!
Chapter 4
The Alien Structure
It was spectacular, as the world rotated around its stars grew in immensity, as the central region of the galaxy went directly overhead, everywhere, glowing brighter, glowing all around them, blinding them in regions.
They stood at the edge of the entrance going downwards, still contemplating the dangers, and it was like standing on the top of the world, as though the world below were stretching away out into infinity all around their sides, and he wondered what kind of al
iens had lived in such a place, and he realized that he might soon find out!
Nothing yet had properly showed what their civilization and technology was like, and he wondered if it was the remains of the last civilization there, and he wondered if something there had destroyed their civilization, and he gasped at the height they were above the landscape of the world as he spotted the sheer drop of the pinnacle in the dark, going off into the distance below.
The long day made them slow and sleepy and they slowly prepared themselves to enter the structure below, on their first search of an alien civilization.
A gray shade appeared at his side on the horizon and he studied it and realized that it was a large moon appearing from below the horizon, and he consistently checked the differences in it to Mars and other worlds he had seen in the solar system, and he watched in awe as a massive asteroid blazed across the sky in front of them in slow motion, and they stopped what they were doing and listened to it in the distance and watched the massive blazing ball of flames intensely light everything up about them and finally blast into a distant hill with such force it exploded apart, and a cloud of smoke go up.
Its shockwave blasted out with such force its blast went straight across the world, as they heard its distant blast, and eventually the shudder hit the pinnacle violently, and making them gasp and fall over, shaking the stones around, giving them thoughts of the whole pinnacle collapsing down, and Cronenberg finally realized that it had to be firm as it would have fallen a long time ago, especially with deep impact craters nearby.
Eventually everything calmed down and he stamped on the surface to check its safety again, and wondered what form of structure was below, and what thickness its roof was, and he decided to enter it first, before Orwell, and he eagerly explored a ramp of stone descending below, and marched down into its darkness searching the ground, and dirt there, and testing its safety and if it could withstand his weight, and as he descended further he turned his spacesuit light on, and watched Orwell and the others follow him down, into its hideous depths, wondering why they had not just left it until the morning.
They were all forms of scientists as well as astronauts, and explorers, and had been on Mars to see space and another world, and now they were living out their dreams of exploring an authentic alien world, and a highly advanced civilization, and they examined everything about them and checked the descending tunnel and how the rock had been cut, and how perfect it was, and he brushed his glove over it feeling its smoothness, and knew something had powerfully cut the hole straight into the rock.
Orwell observed the peculiar shape of the structure, and the tunnel not being perfectly square but with other shapes, and considered if had been designed for looks or there was another reason for it and noticed there were signs that something a long time ago had been there and had left vague prints buried under deep dust on the ground, and he marched downwards.
It was strange, as none of them thought anything had been there and yet they were prepared for an encounter with something else below and he wondered if it had been the energy sphere and alien artifact in the hill, what they encountered in the gateway, or was it the strangeness of the place and why they had been put there, as it was like they were put there for a reason and he sensed there was something.
After they had checked an area of rock, which looked different from any natural rock that they had seen, they marched on, and jerked when a heavy thud shook the whole pinnacle around, from another deep meteorite impact, and he continued at a slow pace considering how the thing had managed to stay up in such a place, and he recalled the meteorites on its above structure and wondered what it would be like living on such a place, and how many deaths and injuries people would have.
After a few more minutes he realized their enthusiasm had increased in discovering what was there, and it was now as though it was an ultimate treasure, and some form of treasure they were going to find, which was buried away there.
What was strange was that he had watched things moving over the surface of the stone, and had just dismissed them as insects, but he realized that they were not just insects but were alien insects on an alien world and he suddenly stopped and examined a few with Orwell, and they stood speechless, as the insects there were unknown to them, with characteristics that they had not seen anywhere. A yellow piece of flying gel hung in the air by some means they could recognize, hanging in the air, even after many close examinations they could not pinpoint how it remained in the air, and he believed it had thousands of miniature wings or something similar that allowed it to hover and propel it forward that could not be seen by them.
A distant wind occasionally howled strangely around through the top of the tunnel behind them, as it was caught by gusts.
Eventually the stone tunnel finished and they entered an artificial structure and they examined it trying to find what it was made of and found it was too hard to even scrape a sample off, and were unable to realize what it was.
The inside of the structure was incredible and it at first looked like they were encountering something from Earth’s early past, and the inside of some form of ancient pyramid and an earlier version of what the aliens had, but its look altered the further in they went and he realized that it was far more advanced, even though they had not come across any of their technology and only forms of advanced corridors and forms of rooms, and yet they had not seen anything of the aliens themselves and what they had.
For a swift instant he felt a strange feeling that something had detected them there from some further in region, where he was sure there was some highly advanced structure and technology, and he was amazed that Orwell and the others behind him had also picked it up, and were reacting simultaneously with him, and he even saw them discussing it and something, and he wondered what the hell it was, and if they should have turned back earlier, and he wondered how they could profit from such an encounter, and he spotted Orwell holding a weapon, from his spacesuit.
Chapter 5
The Astronaut
As they entered a large chamber Cronenberg felt shudders and deep vibrations going through the floor and walls and his eyes fell upon a large sphere object spinning with tremendous force, trapped in a form of cage, clearly using tremendous forces to keep it there, and they got to a point near it, staggered at the dangers it had, and watched the power of it, like it could destroy anything put against it, and he watched the other astronauts and started to notice their reactions to the dangers and that they were going to keep away from it, and it looked as if it had recently altered in some way, and he wondered if it had been there the amount of time he thought it had been, and where it was getting its power from, and considered if it was a new source of immense power and what it would be worth!
Gusts of wind occasionally howled about in the chamber in front of them, as air was caught by its forces, and he kept wondering if it created power, which was used by its creators as a power source, and he considered if it could be the reason it was there, and that it was so dangerous it was put there on top of the pinnacle, and had connections going below.
Yet he could sense it was more, and that they could have been put there for a reason!
The antics of the astronauts captivated him more and more – mystifying him with the depth of their unsaid thoughts! Orwell wondered around the chamber examining everything he found, repetitively looking for controls to it or something else, and he realized he might be intending to do something, at some point!
Suddenly, the reactions of the sphere altered, and he sensed something had happened and he felt a shiver run through him as he felt massive shudders of energy blasting through it, and he turned and realized that Orwell had activated something, and he slowly backed away from it, as it looked more and more deadly and pulsated with violent energy surges, and looked and sounded on the brink of something, or exploding!
None of them spoke and he considered what it really was and how it was formed and he believed that they should start leaving the chamber,
but he never knew what direction to go in. Should they go back up to the top of the pinnacle or continue going down, and maybe get trapped below if there was an explosion.
He saw how big it really was, as it expanded out. Its size was huge and like a massive ball of different energies.
Suddenly Rosenberg called out, “What’s that?”
Cronenberg spotted what looked like the shape of something inside it, as though a life form was there, and after a long time of carefully examinations he realized he and the others were unable to properly see it and identify it.
It looked powerful and deadly! It also looked like some form of freak of nature!
He offered the others to give vague explanations, even if fantasies, and they occasionally gave detailed explanations of what could be occurring and Stanley finally explained that particle accelerators experiments on the Earth had now had forces that were able to accelerate particles to velocities beyond anything before, but he was unable to connect the occurrences, and Orwell finally claimed it could be a form of time warp, and could have forces like intense magnetic fields holding it.
Cronenberg realized that they never had anything like it, unless it was kept secret, and he compared it to the energy sphere and the artifact back on Mars.
At one point the thing looked entirely deadly and was pulsating with energy blasts, which looked and sounded on the brink of doing something.
At times they spotted it looked like it turned vaguely translucent and they saw the shape of something inside it, and after along time of carefully examinations and discussions they believed they saw a life form inside it, in some suspended state, in some form of rest, and they stood confused, wondering if they could be on the brink of making a proper first contact situation.
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