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, and 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.
What sort of world were they on? What did its empty silence mean? He could not hear anything away into the distance, and realized that it could be in a cold region and wintertime there and that the silence was due to it having been a deep cold winter there.
The others reacted by almost whispering to each other, and when Anders climbed down on the ground from a lower branch Cronenberg took them away in the direction where Anders had spotted the jungle ending.
As he walked away his leg became painful, and he felt something rapped around it, and tried to pull the thing off it, which looked like a plant or vine around the lower part of his knee but as he pulled it hard it grabbed him harder and it felt like an animal. It was strong and went down his leg.
He checked a front pocket of his spacesuit for something to remove it. Yet it was too close to his leg for him to use anything that would damage his spacesuit, as it would be dangerous if it was damaged. In the end he grabbed a sharp piece of rock on the ground and struggled to cut it off, and when it fell he lifted his leg up and stamped down hard on it.
“Did you see that?” Rosenberg announced, warning him of something he seemed to notice he had missed, as he moved up to his side, and he marched out in front of the group, and he looked out where he pointed, but saw nothing, and stopped and looked more firmly.
“What?” he finally asked, wondering what he was suggesting.
He suddenly saw a small tree that Rosenberg was looking at and that it was moving about at the roots, as if struggling to do something, and he examined it more, and to his surprise saw it was attempting to move itself towards them and he saw it carefully moving its large clump of roots over the ground.
On the ground near him he saw a glimmer off a rock and he picked it up and examined what it was and saw it had a shiny stone in it, and he examined it to see if it had any value, and he removed the shiny stone, from the chunk of crumbling rock, and watched Rosenberg trying to remove something from his leg.
At the side of his eyes he saw Anders pick up a similar large rock, and as he examined his rock he watched him hurl it at the small tree, which was moving faster towards them, and he watched it seeing what it would do, and watched the rock smash into its tree shape, and to his surprise it jumped at another tree close to it in Anders direction, like a life form, and the other tree fought back as it attacked it furiously and they all stood with their mouths open as the two tree life forms fought each other with all their strength, and other trees and areas of vegetation joined in, and the whole area around them seemed to react to it, and started preparing itself for something, and a massive a riot of tree shapes broke out between all the tree life forms, with the bottoms of many still embedded in the ground.
Everything around them seemed to be smashing, grabbing, and fighting in a frenzy of fighting, and fighting to the death, and he wondered how such life forms could survive so close to each other, and he started examining them trying to grasp something!
The fighting life forms spread out across their sides like a wave in a lake, with a speed they could not understand.
All the life forms at every level going down into the ground were attacking each other, and he kept trying to grasp how they were so responsive to the reactions. When they moved swiftly away to an unaffected region they felt it below them, under their feet, they seemed to sense the tension in what was below, and brace themselves, preparing for the silent wave of savagery to fully reach their place, and he was sure their main level of intelligence and brain area was below the ground.
As they attempted to move forwards all the life forms about them grabbed at their legs.
A sudden silent rustling and whipping noise came towards them as they rushed away.
When they looked back they saw the entire jungle fighting, and entire trees jumping at each other at every place visible, in an immense frenzy of activity. Even the lower areas were now wrestling and struggling with each other.
When the ground below them started vibrating furiously and underground plants and roots started becoming furious they started running fast, just avoiding hitting things, and started running at full speed for their lives, as they frantically tried to kill them!
Chapter 16
The Dark World
The last shreds of sunlight vanished beneath the trees behind them, swiftly going under the horizon, and a deep black winter night engulfed them, and Cronenberg studied his surroundings over and over trying to explain why the jungle had entirely altered, and in a matter of a few miles, from where they had arrived on the world, the entire jungle, landscape, and temperature had altered incredibly, and he had a hard time believing the life form trees were all gone, and replaced with normal forms of trees.
Though they were gone the place was as deadly as ever, there were deadly tremors blasting through the ground there, and the temperature was still furiously falling, and falling to the temperature on Mars, and rocks from hills regularly came crashing down, smashing into trees, and there were landslides, and tremors had even shaken them off their feet.
Yet the trees were vanishing, and the region Anders had seen from the treetop was appearing, and they still plodded on to get there to get rid of the tree life forms, which they still watched out for, and at the side of their eyes.
The whole place looked different, and he considered if there was something there that the life forms were avoiding, and he wondered if it was a far greater danger to them! Yet he was sure it was the tremors, when they were at their worst!
He regularly stopped and looked for miles fascinated, seeing endless miles of damaged smashed up landscape, and he realized it was some form of fault line, and perhaps an early Earth one, when its thickness was
not great, and starting to harden, with thin areas of crust with vast and powerful tremors.
They were now like an army group, after the jungle attack and vicious tremors, who had far more experience in searching, examining, documenting, and detecting what was there, and what others might miss.
It was bringing them back to life after a long length of inactivity, and lack of anything of interest, and he could not recall ever doing anything like it before. At times he still could not believe that he was on another world, lost in space galaxies away from the solar system!
In a matter of an hour the entire place was deep in snow and it shrouded all the hills and tree formations and they could barely believe that they had landed in a jungle, and it had been like a really hot jungle location, and he realized the dangers, and he wondered what a world with its climate changes would be like living on, and what the animals would be like.
The snow landscape was untouched by any intelligent life forms, but they had only seen that location of the world, and at times it was empty of sound, and like Mars, but with a deep silence that he had only heard in thick winter snow landscapes. It reminded him of what he thought another alien world would be like! An empty desolate world, and lost away in the stars!
What was shocking was they could not even get lost as they never knew what the world or surrounding stars were like, or where anything was, and all they could do is lose their way going to where there were no trees at all, and he was unsure if they even knew accurately where that would lead to. All that they had was their faith in a gateway emerging and taking them away.
He never knew what was actually happening and what was there was doing and what its intention was, and what the eventual outcome would be.
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