by T. R. Harris
Lacking any kind of rescue rope, Lefty removed the belt from his pants and tossed the buckle end toward Dom. It was far too short. Quickly, we all removed our belts as well and joined them together. This almost worked, but by now, Klein had drifted farther from the shore. He was also picking up speed as the floor of the cavern began to slope more toward the exhaust tunnel.
Lefty turned to Bennett. “Take my arm; Jason, his. I’m going in.”
“Don’t do it, Sarge,” Klein yelled out. “This stuff’s like quicksand.”
Bennett already had Lefty by the arm when my Army buddy stepped into the brown ooze. He slipped immediately, finding no foothold, and sank up to this chest the thick mud. His free arm splashed in the shallow top layer of water, casting the belt out as far as he could. Dominic was drifting farther away.
Bennett, Angela and I grabbed Lefty by the arm and struggled to pull him from the mud. The suction fought us all the way, until we had Lefty free.
Dom decided not to give up without a fight and began to work his arms against the slow-moving tide hoping to make his way back to the shore. All this did was liquefy the mud even more around him. He sank deeper in, and a few seconds later, his head fell below the surface.
We waited a full minute for him to resurface, but he never did.
Lefty’s selection of curse words echoed off the lava walls of the cavern, tripling in number before fading into oblivion. We sat on the hard rock floor for several minutes before I eventually climbed to my feet.
“Let’s go. You can see on the path continues on other side, so just like the bridge before, there has to be a way to cross.”
No one protested my need to keep moving. They climbed to their feet, and with almost slow-motion movements began to help me scan along the side of the river of mud for a way to cross.
“This had better be worth it,” were the last words Lefty spoke about Dominic Klein.
********
As before, a way was found to cross the river. It wasn’t a bridge, but a rock archway where the river flowed beneath. The surface of the rock was hard, and the constant breeze in this part of the tunnel kept it clear of any traces of footprints left by other explorers. Once on the other side, we skirted the shore until meeting up with the main path.
No one spoke as we continued our journey, ducking under low arches or squeezing through narrow openings. The going was slower here and considerably more restrictive.
I couldn’t help but question how the Guardians had transported the Lights to this unlikely hiding place. Sure, I had no idea how they were carried, but this seeming like a pretty dangerous path to take with objects—that if broken—could destroy worlds. I began to seriously doubt we were in the right tunnel, believing this to be some long-abandon mine, and not the final resting place for the Galactic Lights.
I changed my mind when we came upon a wide open area at the edge of another deep crevasse. However, this abyss was spanned by a shiny metal bridge leading to a ten-foot high door, also made of metal. We definitely had come upon something special.
Chapter 18
Our arrows of light lit up the bridge spanning the dark abyss. It was only about twenty feet across by three wide, and ended at a wall of red rock. In the center of the wall was the door. It was perfectly smooth and devoid of any markings or attachments. The adjoining walls were also missing of any control panels, coding boxes or any other thing that looked like it could fit the key.
I assumed it was a door. From here it looked more like a panel set into stone.
Enic said I would know how to enter the chamber once I made it this far. Well, here I was. Now what?
“Check out the ceiling,” Bennett said.
Our lights titled upward, revealing two modestly angled slabs of polished stone forming a shallow tent-shaped design. They joined directly over the bridge, and both huge sections of stone appeared to be connected by a huge hinge system along the crest.
“A trap?” Angela inquired.
It was obvious the slabs weren’t naturally-occurring formations, and they hadn’t been placed there to provide an appealing cathedral-like architectural feature for visitors to the vault. We turned our lights on the lower ends of the slabs and could see they were easily two feet thick. If released to swing down on their hinges, anyone caught in the middle would be smashed thinner than a pancake.
“You first,” I said to Lefty.
“No way, amigo. I elect Angela. That’s just being polite. You know…women and children first.”
“And what if she’s the key-master?” I’d told Lefty about Angela poking herself with the needle. He hadn’t been too happy with the news, but seem to gain some respect her spunk after that.
Lefty shrugged. “Then we go by rank. Mister Bennett, care to volunteer?”
“We ain’t in the military no longer, Sarge,” Bennett protested. “And I ain’t volunteering for nuthin…not again.”
I picked up a rock and tossed it across the bridge in a low underarm arc. It landed at the other end of the bridge before tumbling to a stop a few feet from the metal door.
“That doesn’t tell us much,” Bennett pointed out. “It could be triggered by someone on the bridge.”
The next rock I threw was onto the metal runway. The ceiling slabs remained locked in place.
Angela picked up more rocks and began to cast them onto the bridge. A few seconds later, we were all scrounging the area for loose stones. Pretty soon, the ramp was covered in a hodgepodge of rocks, ranging from pebbles to basketball-size boulders.
“Looks safe,” I concluded. And with that statement, I volunteered to go first. I removed the key from my pocket and handed it to Angela. “Just in case…and if you need any of my body parts to help trigger the door, I’m sure there’ll be plenty of me to scrape off the slabs. Now how about a kiss for good luck?”
“I don’t think so, but I will as a reward if you make it across. That seems like more of an incentive.”
“Risking death for a single kiss…sounds like a fair trade.”
And with that I raced onto the bridge. I was hoping that even if the slabs were triggered, my blinding speed would get me across before they slammed together. That was my thinking anyway, up until I caught a foot on one of the damn rocks littering the bridge and felt my ankle buckle. I fell forward, reaching out with desperate arms to break the fall. My head smacked a large basketball-size boulder, a rock now lit by sparkling stars within my addled eyesight. I rolled on my back, stunned and groggy.
“Get up, clumsy!” I heard Angela yell. “Hurry!”
Shaking off the throbbing in my head, I set off like a drunken track star. The thirty remaining feet of the bridge were covered after a few seconds of lopsided staggers and even more stumbles. Eventually, I skidded to a stop in the thin dust outside the tall metal door. I wobbled around until I could see my companions. “No problem, come on—”
I stepped backwards, this time tripping over the first stone I’d thrown across the bridge. Falling again—this time backwards—I smacked the back of my head against the unforgiving metal of the shiny door. The impact wasn’t as traumatic as I expected, however…because the door had twisted inward, pivoting on a tall central axis.
Before I could regain my feet, I was surrounded by the rest of the team. They helped me up—I needed the help—and I staggered into the vault room, Enic’s Chamber of Light.
“These aliens need a course in fine art of booby-trap making,” Lefty said. “That was rather anticlimax.”
“Speak for yourself,” a babbled.
He took my head in his huge hands and scanned my eyes. “You okay, buddy. That looks like a pretty nasty bump on your forehead.”
I blinked several times and nodded. “I’ll survive.”
The door to the chamber began to close. Lefty rushed over and tested it. It spun easily with barely any effort. No latches or locking mechanism.
Angela was beside me now, holding up the shiny metal cylinder. “So this isn’t the key to the d
oor—”
“No, but it probably fits into that,” Bennett’s voice interrupted.
All eyes turned toward him.
As the beams from our flashlights swept the chamber, we were mesmerized by the brilliant flickers and reflections dancing off the glistening walls. Enic was right. It was made of gold, and it was everywhere; lining the walls, on the floor and even the ceiling. Lefty and I stepped closer to a wall and ran our fingers reverently over the sensual surface. It was smooth as a baby’s butt and made up of thousands of brick-sized blocks of the yellow metal. The chamber expanded out from the swinging door, forming a circular room easily a hundred feet in diameter.
My near-hypnotic trance lasted only a moment until my eyes locked on the subject of Bennett’s announcement. It was a four-poster formation placed at the center of the circular room, with pillars resting on bases of gold and joining with the thirty-foot-high ceiling, also made of more blocks of gold. Each column was about ten feet apart, forming a square. And resting on a raised platform at the center of the enclosure was an ornately-adorned rectangular box with four handles and glass sides resembling an aquarium. From inside the container a myriad of shifting and dancing colors escaped, colors of infinitely more variety and brilliance than our simple flashlights.
This was a temple to the Galactic Lights.
Bennett stepped toward the formation.
“Hold up,” Lefty ordered. “Check out the litter at your feet. There seems to be a line of demarcation between the pillars. You live on one side, die on the other.”
Lefty was right. The skeletal remains of several creatures, most small rodents of some kind were scattered on the dusty floor. I moved closer and examined the remains of something about the side of a dog. There were nothing but bones remaining, but it was the skull that told the whole story. The elongated snout was no longer elongated. Instead, there half the head was missing, having been sliced off along a perfectly straight line. The other half of the skull was gone. Obviously the unfortunate animal had stuck its nose where it didn’t belong.
All the remains on the outside of the pillar enclosure had this same distinctive feature, including a couple of remains from creatures that were of more Humanoid form. As Lefty had stated, the area outside the enclosure was littered with carcasses, while the area inside was pristine, including the dust-free floor, revealing glimmering tiles of gold.
Angela scooped up a handful of dirt from the floor and tossed it toward the center of the formation. The tiny particles ignited as they passed through the invisible plane between the pillars and evaporated in a shower of tiny glowing embers.
“Damn, that could’ve been me,” Bennett breathed.
The four of us circled the structure, surveying the columns for any evidence of the force field, as well as for a way to disarm it. There were no other objects in the room, no control consoles and nothing on the walls—nothing except a shitload of gold. I continued until I’d completed a full circuit the structure.
We saw where the lasers could be originating from. Within the gold blocks making up the pillars and their bases, we noticed a conspicuous gap measuring about half an inch wide. The line was obvious because all the other bricks fit together with machine-like precision. The laser generators had to hidden within the center of the pillars.
“Everyone…turn off your flashlights,” Angela demanded.
“What for?” Lefty asked.
“I may be imagining things, but I thought I saw something change in the Lights.”
Fingers clicked off the four individual flashlights. The room fell into quasi-darkness, illuminated now by only the glow of the Galactic Lights and their ever-changing patterns.
“Circle the enclosure again,” she ordered.
We obliged, although I didn’t have a clue what she was looking for.
“See! They’re shifting. The light’s moving with us.”
It was nearly imperceptible, but she was right. As we slowly moved from pillar to pillar, the intensity of the light did shift. However, what got my heart racing was the fact that the Lights seemed to be following me.
I wasn’t the only one who noticed. Angela handed me the key. “Go ahead, do it again.”
I followed orders, and a half a dozen steps later, we had our confirmation. The Lights were following me.
“That settles it,” Angela said. “The key is still coded to your DNA, not mine. It was probably a one-time programming feature, for security reasons.”
“The Lights followed him, even when he didn’t have the key,” Lefty noted. “It’s already be in contact with the Lights and passed along Jason’s aura, or however it works.”
“There’s an opening along the top of the water tank,” Bennett pointed out. “That’s what I saw at first. Looks like the key would fit in there.”
“Yeah, but that doesn’t do us any good if we can’t get through the laser shield,” I mocked.
“Maybe the shield’s also coded to your DNA,” Bennett offered. “It doesn’t make sense that someone with the key could get this far and not be able to get to the Lights.”
“That makes sense,” Lefty agreed. “Go on, Jason, test Mister Bennett’s theory.”
“And how do you suppose I do that?”
“I don’t know. Maybe reach across with a body part you can afford to lose.”
I looked at Angela. “Don’t say it.”
“Say what?” Her feigned look of innocence confirmed we shared the same ribald thought.
“You may not want it, but there are plenty of others who do.”
“Stop talking about your dick, LT, and get on with it,” Lefty ordered.
“Wait a minute, I haven’t agreed to anything yet. There has to be another way.”
Everyone was looking at me. You would think they were kidding, but from the serious look in their eyes, they weren’t. I had to risk a body part.
I stepped up to Lefty’s line of demarcation and extended the tip of my new, patent leather dress shoes. I’d bought them only four days before and wasn’t anxious to throw away ninety-five dollars just like that.
When I moved my foot forward, smoke began to rise from the tip and a tiny flame burst forth. I pulled my foot back and stomped it on the floor of gold, extinguishing the flame.
“That doesn’t tell us anything,” Bennett said. “The shoe could be worn by anyone.”
I glared at the man. “You really think the key-master needs to strip down naked to pass through the field? I don’t think so. Accept it; the field is still active.”
That was when I felt a burning in my foot. I looked down to see that the flame had reignited and was in the process of spreading to more of my shoe. None of us had any water with us, so I once again began to stomp the floor with my flaming foot. More smoke rose up and the flame died down. But was also when I brought my foot down on one of the numerous bones covering the floor, a hard, round bone shaped like a pencil. It wasn’t much, yet since I was already dizzy from my head injuries, I lost my balance completely and my foot shot out in front of me.
The pain was almost unbearable, sweeping over my left foot and extending up my leg. I screamed and fell back, landing on my butt. I was afraid to look at my foot, fearing there would nothing there to see.
Angela rushed to my side and cradled my body in her arms, allowing me to survey the injury. It wasn’t as bad as I thought. My foot was still there, but now the end of the shoe was gone, sheared off like the skulls covering the floor around me. I screamed out again when Lefty pulled off my shoe and the black sock.
The end of my left toe was gone, leaving only a black-tipped stump. There was no blood; the intense heat of the laser having cauterized the wound. My toe had been burned off at a slight angle down to the inner edge of the toenail. Tiny whiffs of smoke still rose from the charred end.
I gnashed my teeth and squeezed eyes tight against the pain. I was already in a mild state of shock from hitting my head. Now I felt my skin go clammy and my vison begin to blur.
�
��Stay with us,” I heard Lefty say. “Dammit, Jason, it’s just a toe. Get a grip, pussy.”
His assault on my manly grit helped to bring me back. My eyes bore into him. “It’s not your goddamn toe, asshole! This hurts like hell.”
Lefty smiled and squeezed my shoulder. “That’s better. Imagine what it’s like to have your whole leg chewed off? And did I tell you, that damn bug took his sweat old time doing it, too.” He looked down at my missing toe. “Yours is just a scratch.”
“Hey, look at this!” Bennett called out. “There’s markings on the pillars.”
Lefty rushed over to see what he was talking about. Angela looked at me with pleading eyes.
“Go ahead,” I said. “I’m okay.”
She kissed my cheek and then ran off to join the others, leaving me alone in my pain and sorrow. I was embarrassed by my initial reaction. This was minor compared to some of the injuries I’d seen during my Army days—although this was happening to me. I’d been damned luck during my Army days. The worst I’d personally suffered was a piece of shrapnel in my back once. I still had it in a jar—or I did. It had been kept at my house.
“He’s right,” Angela was saying. “They’re slashes, like those on the key. Some forward, some back.” She leaned in close to a nearby column and ran a finger over the tiny engraving. “Barely noticeable.”
“They’re different on each column,” Bennett added.
Angela turned an animated face toward me. “Let me have the key, Jason.”
I was sitting up, with my arms extended behind me for support. “Go ahead.” If she wanted it, she’d have to come get it.
She retrieved the key from my pocket then rushed back to the pillars. “Okay, I see the markings,” she began. “They’re obviously significant, a combination of some kind, possibly. But in what order?”
