Interstellar Caveman

by Karl Beecher

  There’d better be some worthwhile treasure waiting at the end of this.

  She pulled herself to her feet and soldiered on. A moment later, the fog before her began to darken. A weather front maybe? If so, it was time to run back to the ship. Tyresa checked the scope, but it reported no evidence of unusual weather.

  What the hell was this?

  It then occurred to her how static the ‘shadow’ appeared. That gave her an idea. She fired a radar ping from the scope. The result came back. Interesting. The shadow was actually a structure of some sort, very solid and about fifteen metres high. This was a relief, albeit only a slight one.

  The structure revealed itself as she approached: a huge rocky outcrop with sheer walls that towered overhead. The rock itself appeared fairly smooth but closer inspection revealed it to be layered. Being an exogeologist, Tyresa could say two things about these rocks, one remarkable and the other stupid. The rock appeared to be sedimentary, remarkable for a lifeless planet seemingly devoid of liquid and organic matter. That she could accept. She’d seen it before. However, these rocks also seemed to be generating microwave radiation. That she couldn’t accept. That was stupid. Yet that’s what the scope told her.

  Hang on, Tyresa implored herself. Logic! If it’s not the rocks themselves, then perhaps something inside the rocks.

  She scanned the imposing cliff face and thought about the force needed to break through rock like this. She had no equipment with her capable of such careful yet heavy-duty cutting. Would she really have to blast through it? She always hated having to do that. Blasting was like breaking open a nutshell with a huge mallet. It did the job, but it risked smashing your nuts to pieces.

  She looked off to one side. The rocks stretched off into the mist. She looked to the other side and saw the same. Except…

  Except…

  Ade’s voice crackled loudly onto the speakers. “Ade here, ma’am. Beginning repairs on the thrusters now.”

  Tyresa was startled. “Shit me, Ade, you nearly gave me a heart attack.”

  “Ma’am?”

  “Oh, nothing, just keep the chatter down for now.”

  “Very good, ma’am.”

  She refocused. In the fog, Tyresa saw a pile of rubble standing against the cliff. In the wall beside the rubble: some kind of fissure a couple of metres high. It seemed to be begging investigation. Tyresa obliged.

  Tyresa couldn’t fail to notice how neat some of these rocks appeared, all straight edges and right angles, almost like great construction blocks. From this angle, the fissure almost resembled a doorway. The unnaturally straight edges were unmistakable, even beneath the battered surface.

  Tyresa clambered over the rubble until she could stare directly into it. It was classic nightmare stuff. A dark hole of uncertain depth leading into the rock. Why did it always have to be dark? If it wasn’t dark holes, it was dark tunnels or dark caverns or dark sides of moons. Why was the universe so obsessed with darkness all the damned time?

  She dismissed the images in her mind of huge scaly arms reaching out of the darkness, and tried to ignore her heart, which beat like a rapid-fire proton cannon. With a trembling hand, she fumbled at a small set of controls on her wrist. Shoulder-mounted torches on her suit illuminated something extraordinary.

  A door.

  A huge, solid-looking, metal door, set a couple of metres into the rock face. What the hell was a door doing cut into the side of a cliff on a dead planet?

  Tyresa could see no markings aside from scars and pockmarks, but it had a wheel attached to it. She pushed and barged against the door, but it was solid as the rock surrounding it. Perhaps the wheel was some kind of locking mechanism?

  She gripped it with both hands, heaved and strained with all her might. It moved a microscopic amount before Tyresa gave up, panting. She gathered her breath, braced herself against the side of the tunnel, practically hanging off the wheel as she pulled. Her muscles screamed in agony and her throat strained as she yelled out, but it was working. The wheel moved a millimetre. Then another. And more, until it began to move with a satisfying glide. She fell on her ass as the wheel yielded, but the sense of triumph overrode her pain. After climbing to her feet and turning the wheel once more, it spun with relative ease until it stopped with a clunk.

  She pushed at the door. This time, it moved. Her excitement rose. For Tyresa, these moments were like unwrapping a gift.

  Seemingly ancient hinges groaned, complaining at having been woken from their long slumber. Metal scraped stubbornly against metal, but the door was opening. Air rushed out from the space beyond, spewing grey dust along with it. The opening finally grew large enough for her. She squeezed herself through.

  Once inside, the great door slammed itself shut and the air began to settle. She found herself inside a small chamber just a few metres wide with featureless, grey walls. Layers of dust and grit covered the floor. But no identifying markings gave any clue as to what this place was or who had built it.

  On the opposite wall stood another doorway, roughly equal size to the one she’d just come through, although it was without a door. Tyresa stepped forward and looked closer. The room within was even smaller, its four walls only a couple of metres apart, but the floor was missing. Had it collapsed? She peered over the edge to discover that the room was actually a shaft that led down into an inky blackness.

  She stepped back from the edge and saw that the dust, which had been dancing around the air like shoals of fish, was beginning to settle. She recalled how the air had blasted outwards when the door first opened, likely due to a pressure difference. The room must have been sealed tightly. What, then, was the air like in here?

  She whipped out her scope and scanned the surrounding air. The results came back.

  What the hell? That couldn’t be right.

  She took a second scan, but the results were the same. The air in the room was roughly three-quarters nitrogen and one-fifth oxygen, with the remainder a mixture of other non-toxic gases. Almost textbook levels for a breathable atmosphere.

  Could it really be true? Was the air breathable? There was only one way to be really sure.

  She triggered the release switch on her helmet. It hissed as the seal released. Tyresa drew back the glass visor and exposed her face.

  And breathed in.

  She wished she hadn’t. The air was breathable, but only in a chemical sense. A wretched, musty stench assaulted Tyresa’s nose. It was a smell like an old cellar, abandoned for decades and hopelessly overwhelmed by damp and mold. It wasn’t air anyone would choose to breathe—although she had been in fouler smelling night clubs before. But it couldn’t be denied: here was a tiny bubble of breathable air on an otherwise dead planet.

  What the hell was this place?

  She opened her comms. “Ade. Come in, Ade.”

  “Ade here, ma’am.”

  “Zero in on my location and follow me immediately.”

  “Is everything all right, ma’am?”

  “I’m fine, but I’ve found something you wouldn’t believe.”

  “I haven’t yet completed repairs to the thrusters.”

  “Never mind that. We’ll do it later. Just get your ass here now.”

  “Understood, ma’am. My arse and I will be with you momentarily.”

  “Good. Oh, and Ade? Bring the winch with you.”

  11

  “That’s fine,” said Tyresa. “Speed is good. Keep it moving.”

  Ade’s voice crackled over the speakers. “Ma’am, are you certain you can’t be persuaded to let me go in your place?”

  “Cut the chatter. Just focus on the winching.”

  “I am capable of handling both tasks simultaneously.”

  “Well, I’m not, so shut it!”

  Tyresa was understandably jumpy. But then, dangling on the end of a rope while descending slowly down a shaft into a black void of uncertain depth was enough to make anyone testy. She’d left Ade at the top of the shaft to operate the winch. He’d prot
ested, as expected, but Tyresa had none of it. Excitement got the better of her.

  But now, several dozen metres down, the excitement was wearing off, replaced by a combination of claustrophobia, acrophobia and whatever phobia being scared of the dark was. Tyresa suffered none of them much, but she knew from experience how phobias could become wildly more potent by ganging up with each other. She tried to focus instead on gathering clues about this weird place. The shaft had so far yielded none. It was just metre after metre of metal girders and bare stone walls.

  Ade’s voice came through again. “Readings indicate you should be approaching solid ground now, ma’am.”

  Tyresa shone a light. He was right. The floor below came into view, but she saw no doors. Was she being lowered into a pit? Then, she noticed something like a hatch or trapdoor in the ground. Beside it, among the dust, lay the remains of some metal cabling.

  She gently touched down beside it. “OK, Ade, I’m there.”

  “May I enquire what you see, ma’am?”

  “Strange. No doors or passageways. No ladder. Just a hole in the ground.” She detached the winch cable, then knelt and shone a light through the hatch. It led down into another smaller enclosure, one with metallic walls and a sliding door. It looked familiar. “I think it’s an elevator! I must be in some kind of elevator shaft.” She eyed the coil of ancient, frayed cabling. “One that used cabling.”

  “Intriguing.”

  Intriguing was the word. Why would anyone have chosen to use cables in this day and age? It suggested this place was really old.

  “I’m going into the cabin,” she said, already lowering herself through the hole. She dropped onto the floor with a clang and found herself in a filthy little metallic hovel. The only feature was a hole in the wall beside the closed doors. It was a snake-pit of primitive-looking wiring. Probably the remains of a control panel. “I see a tiny gap between the doors. I think I can force them apart.”

  “Caution, ma’am,” urged Ade. “You don’t know what’s on the other side of those doors.”

  Tyresa took another look at the scope. “Well, no life signs that’s for sure. Just minimal levels of electrical activity.”

  “And that electrical activity could be coming from automated defence mechanisms.”

  Tyresa’s stomach tightened. He had a point. “You always have to spoil things, don’t you, Ade.”

  “I’m only thinking of your—”

  “—safety, yes, I know.” Her instincts told her this wasn’t the kind of place to have robot guards or auto-guns. It didn’t have a military feel about it, and she got the sense it wasn’t a place worth defending with weaponry. She might be wrong, but she’d got this far in life by trusting her instincts. “Thanks, but I’ll take the risk.”

  She shoved her hands, jamming her gloved fingers into the gap, then wrenched the doors apart with all her might. They resisted, but Tyresa’s strength was too much for them. They separated with a great mechanical groan.

  She stepped into a darkened room. The ominous, silent gloom gathered around her. She reached to adjust the levels on her shoulder-mounted torches but, before she could, a noise broke out and she dropped instinctively to her knees.

  She hoped to shit Ade wasn’t right about defence mechanisms.

  It was a tapping noise, like someone flicking against glass. A quiet hum soon accompanied it. In the ceiling above her, a set of strip lights flickered on to reveal a corridor in front of her.

  “I’ll be damned,” she muttered to herself.

  “Ma’am?”

  “Some lights just came on. Only I didn’t switch them on.”

  “An automated system, perhaps?”

  “Yeah.” She looked around for anything resembling a weapon. “Let’s hope lights is all it does.”

  “And what do you see?”

  Tyresa stood and stepped forward. Her surroundings weren’t much nicer than before. The grey, plastered walls were chipped and scuffed. The dusty floor was the colour of a pale blue sky, and a few fallen tiles littered the way. She couldn’t tell exactly why, but the place felt to her like it was supposed to be clean and sterile. It seemed to be protesting its current, dishevelled state.

  “It’s a corridor of some sort,” she said. “Leads about fifty metres then there’s a junction. There are a series of doors along either side.”

  “Do you see anything that indicates the purpose of this place?”

  On the walls were fixed a few plain-looking signs with text written in an unfamiliar language. Beside one of them, she spotted a faded poster with an image on it. A sad-looking man stood in the middle of the scene. Behind the man were a woman and two children, equally sad-looking, clinging onto his arm. In front of him, a man wearing a white lab coat smiled with all the insincerity he could muster and beckoned toward a huge, macabre-looking, metallic box.

  “Looks like some kind of torture chamber,” said Tyresa. “Albeit one with a public relations department.”

  “Torture chamber?”

  “Just a joke. I don’t know yet what this place is, I need more data.”

  She came to one of the doors, tried the handle, but it was locked. On the door was mounted a small, yellowed sign with the word ‘maintenance.’

  “Ma-int-enn-an-keh,” she whispered to herself. It was no language she was familiar with.

  She continued along the corridor. More locked doors. More signs with unfamiliar words. As she turned the corner, she came across a wide doorway, its sliding doors already open. Finally, something that might shed light on this place.

  As she moved towards the doorway, the corridor lights flickered. Her ears came under assault from an alarm that blared out like an ill-sounding siren.

  “Ade!” she yelled over the noise. “Ade come in!”

  “Ade here.”

  “I’ve got weird shit happening down here,” she said, yanking the scope from her belt. “Lights going out. Alarms. I’m reading electrical fluctuations all around me.”

  “I can confirm those fluctuations, ma’am,” he replied. “They seem to be system-wide.”

  “Can you tell what’s happening?”

  “Not precisely, ma’am.”

  “Best guess?”

  “Whatever is powering everything has become overloaded.”

  “Why?”

  “Unknown, ma’am, but all evidence indicates these systems are very old and have been lying dormant for untold years. Our presence has caused them to activate automatically. To turn a phrase, ma’am, perhaps they are no longer ‘up to the task’ and are now giving up.”

  Tyresa tried to think over her next move. That damned alarm was distracting.

  Ade spoke again. “I don’t wish to alarm you, ma’am.”

  Naturally, this alarmed Tyresa greatly. “What?”

  “I’m detecting a life-sign in your vicinity.”

  “What?” Tyresa looked around rapidly. “I see nothing. Are you sure?”

  “Quite sure, ma’am.”

  “There can’t be. We didn’t detect any on the whole planet.”

  “Indeed, ma’am, but it is quite indisputably there. It…” He sounded almost embarrassed. “Well, it simply appeared from nowhere.”

  Tyresa looked at her scope again and switched to bio-scan. He was right. Something was alive and only about twenty metres away from her current position. To be precise, it was in the room ahead.

  “I see it,” she said, fondling the pistol hanging from her belt. She had never reckoned on needing it for this mission. “I’m going to take a look.”

  Carefully, she peered around the doorway. The room within looked as cold and clinical as the rest of this place, but there was something new to see here. Along one wall sat five metal objects, each about three metres long and waist height. Tyresa recognised them from the poster. However, she couldn’t fail to notice the massive girder resting on top of the four objects nearest the door. The surface of each one had crumpled to some degree. Shards of metal and bits of circuitry litte
red the floor. She looked up. Several girders lined the ceiling, but there was a conspicuous gap above the objects where one girder ought to have been.

  Tyresa edged forward, hand on her weapon, peering round the corner as she went. Nobody in sight. On the wall beside the doorway hung a control panel. One of its buttons, a large red one, flashed red in rhythm with the alarm. She pushed it and mercifully the alarm ceased.

  She examined the objects again, they were the only possible places a life-form could be. She prayed whatever it was didn’t mind being disturbed.

  The lid of the nearest object had been bent out of shape by the girder’s impact. It had opened up a small gap, exposing the dark interior. Tyresa took a deep breath, then flashed a torch inside. She saw a bone. A human tibia if she was not mistaken. She shuddered. It was far from the first tomb she’d ever seen, but this was different. If, as she suspected, this person had entered the object alive, then it was like no tomb she’d seen before. It sickened her to think of what might have happened to this person in their final moments. The next three objects offered similar, morbid glimpses of the skeletal occupants.

  The final object was different. It was undamaged for one thing, but it was also clearly operational. Some kind of screen was set into its side and flashed an urgent shade of red. She couldn’t understand the text, but something resembling a progress bar was moving along the screen. It didn’t look far from completion.

  “Hello!” she called out. “Is someone in there?”

  At that moment, the metal sarcophagus made a brief but violent shuddering sound and gave out a large hiss like an airtight seal breaking. Then, the lid began to move.

  12

  Revival from stasis is really, really unpleasant.

  Here’s what happens. As you wake, your entire body feels numb. Sounds are a jarring discord of echoes. Vision amounts to little more than vague, colourful blobs.

  Even your thoughts are barely coherent. You get the horrible feeling that your mind is not your own. Of course, if your mind were clearer, you’d realise how nonsensical that feeling actually is. How else could you experience these thoughts if it weren’t your mind thinking them?