by S. W. Ahmed
“Bigger things like those, maybe?” Dumyan said, pointing at a series of blips that had just appeared on one of the cockpit’s navigation screens. The blips soon became visible to the naked eye through the cockpit’s wide window.
“What are they?” Marc asked, sensing trouble.
The entire sky was suddenly lighting up with uncountable numbers of those bright spots, instantly transforming itself from a black mass into a starry sky. It looked a lot like the sky Marc had grown up seeing on clear nights back on Earth. Except for one major difference – the stars seemed to be growing in size, and rapidly.
“More Starguzzlers, many more,” the pilot said, eyeing the navigation screen closely. “They are all converging on this location.”
Zorina flapped her ears. “I don’t like this, not one bit. We’ve got to get out of here!”
“Yes, but not until we’ve obtained the necessary information we came here for,” Dumyan said firmly. “We’ll have to take our chances with the Starguzzlers. Too much is at stake for us to turn back now.”
The scout ship descended effortlessly through several layers of clouds, its outer shell made of a sophisticated material impervious to the tremendous heat generated during entry into planetary atmospheres. After the ship had passed through the lowest cloud layer, the dense forests below that covered much of the planet’s surface became visible to the naked eye. According to the surveillance equipment on board, there wasn’t a single town, city or settlement of any kind on the entire planet, nor were there signs of the aliens anywhere. In fact, there were no signs of life whatsoever on the planet.
The scout ship landed in a tiny, empty clearing a couple of miles away from the much larger clearing where Wazilban’s Shoyra-class vessels were located. All on board had agreed that this was the right thing to do in order to remain as inconspicuous as possible. The rest of the journey would then have to be made quietly on foot through the forest.
“It is deceptively cold outside,” Sibular warned everyone, as he opened the exit door in the ship’s cabin.
Marc wrapped the Aftaran robe he was wearing around his body a couple more times to stay warm, and whisked the robe’s veil over his face. By now, he had quite mastered the use of the magical robe, and greatly enjoyed its comfort and convenience.
They stepped out into the clearing, a Mendoken trooper and Aftaran soldier leading the way, followed by Sibular, Dumyan, Sharjam, Marc and Zorina, who in turn were followed by four more troopers and soldiers in the rear. The pilot remained inside with the rest of the contingent to guard the ship.
It was cold alright, freezing cold. Even with the robe tightly wrapped around him, Marc could feel the icy air trying to edge its way through to his skin. The lighting in the clearing was dim, but there was enough of it to let him see his surroundings. The ground was covered with what had probably once been something similar to grass, but was now all shriveled up and frozen. The trees surrounding the clearing were tall, but lifeless. They looked like evergreens, yet their leaves were all gone. The air was absolutely still, and there was total silence, unusual silence for a place out in the open.
Regardless of its current morbid conditions, Marc realized this was obviously a world that had once been full of life. At some point, however, temperatures must have dropped to unbearable levels and killed everything on this planet. He wondered whether the Starguzzlers were somehow responsible for this change in climate. Perhaps their gradual consumption of the sun’s gases had reduced the amount of light and warmth the star could radiate, resulting in a slow and painful extermination of all wildlife on its surrounding planets.
The group made its way cautiously through the forest. Sibular and the Mendoken troopers floated easily over the wide roots of the trees, while the others had to watch their steps to make sure they didn’t fall. It soon became obvious to Marc that the roots weren’t the only obstacles to watch out for. There were skeletons of strange looking animals scattered all over. Some seemed as large as the dinosaurs of prehistoric Earth, with bulky bodies, long, swooping necks, and pointed snouts. Others were much smaller, with birdlike bodies and wide wings, while some were more insect-like, with long tentacles and multi-eyed faces. The only thing they all had in common was that they were dead, the flesh of their bodies long gone like the leaves on the trees. The entire forest was one big, natural graveyard.
After close to an hour of trudging through the forest, the group arrived at the larger clearing where the five Shoyra-class vessels were parked. Hiding from behind the trees, they peered out into the clearing. A couple of the Mendoken troopers used their portable surveillance devices to scan the clearing and its surroundings. There was no sign of the aliens.
After a few minutes of surveying, one of the Mendoken troopers slowly ventured from his hiding place into the clearing, his two front limbs aiming his ganvex weapon straight ahead. He was followed by one of the Aftaran soldiers, and then by the rest of the party.
Marc’s hands clutched tightly onto his own ganvex, as he nervously walked out into the clearing towards the nearest vessel. His eyes darted suspiciously to the left and right, looking for the slightest movement in between the trees or between the parked ships. But there was none, and a quick check of all five ships revealed no aliens on board.
“Where can they all be?” Marc wondered aloud, walking out of the last ship with Sibular.
“We must look for a gate of some kind in the ground,” Sibular replied quietly. “I am certain they are all below us in the planet’s crust.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“That is the only logical conclusion. We know there are no aliens anywhere in this forest, yet their ships are here.”
Everyone combed the entire clearing for a hidden gate or door that might lead to an underground passage, but over a half hour of searching revealed nothing. The Mendoken surveillance devices couldn’t locate any secret gate or opening in the ground either. In fact, for some odd reason they weren’t able to scan more than a few feet below the surface.
Marc began to feel frustrated. They had come all this way unhindered, through a consar across many millions of light years and then on the tail of a gigantic Starguzzler, only to reach a dead end now in the midst of a dead forest on a dead planet.
“I give up!” Zorina said, wiping her forehead as she walked over to the edge of the clearing. “Time for a quick nap.” She sat down on the ground and leaned back against a tree. But just as she closed her eyes, the tree suddenly began swaying. She yelled out in fright and jumped up, flapping her ears violently as she ran back out into the clearing.
Marc turned to look at the swaying tree. Its tall trunk creaked and groaned, and a few of its branches broke loose and came crashing to the ground. Then the rest of the branches magically folded up into the trunk, turning the entire tree into a long, smooth pole. The ground surrounding the base of the tree caved in, and with a thud and a whoosh the whole structure descended into the ground and disappeared out of sight.
“What in the name of the Creator is going on?” Sharjam exclaimed, looking stunned.
Sibular floated over to the gaping hole left behind by the tree, and cautiously peered down. “It appears we have uncovered what we were looking for,” he announced, looking up again at the others.
“An underground passage?” Dumyan asked.
“It appears so.”
“Wait a minute, not so fast, my man!” Zorina said, still visibly shaken by the whole experience. “What are the odds that I coincidentally leaned against the one tree that serves as a secret gate to an underground world? It could be a trap!”
Without answering, Sibular floated over to the next tree at the edge of the clearing, and pushed with his two front limbs against the base of the trunk. The tree began swaying right away, folded up its branches and disappeared into the ground below with a whoosh, leaving behind a hole identical to the first one. Sibular then repeated the process with three more trees at the edge of the clearing.
“As you c
an see, Zorina, it was no coincidence,” he said calmly, watching the last tree vanished out of sight.
Zorina grunted and muttered something under her breath that Marc couldn’t understand. It certainly didn’t sound like anything nice.
Crouching over the edge of one of the holes, Marc gazed into the depths below. The hole was perfectly circular, had a diameter of about 15 feet, and was no more than 30 feet deep. There appeared to be a rudimentary elevator on one side, consisting of a small ledge supported by vertical tracks. At the bottom, he could barely make out a dimly lit passage. The tree that had slid through this hole was nowhere to be seen, probably resting somewhere below the floor of the passage.
As Marc watched the first Mendoken trooper float into the hole and onto the ledge, he tried to prepare himself for whatever dangers lay below. He could only hope that they would all make it out of this planet again alive.
Chapter 36
Marc and the others had entered a labyrinth, heading in single file down one passage after another. At the first passage crossing, they made a left. Then a few crossings later, they made a right. Then another left. On and on this went, with no end in sight.
Marc felt totally lost. The only thing he knew for sure was that every passage they were turning into was tilting downwards, leading them deeper into the planet’s crust. He also knew he had no choice but to rely on the surveillance devices the Mendoken troopers were holding. The devices had calculated the shortest path through the labyrinth to what they simply called the “destination point”. They weren’t able to provide any additional information on what the destination point actually was, except that all passages in the labyrinth eventually led to it.
From above the surface, the surveillance devices hadn’t been able to penetrate more than a few feet into the soil. But now that they were below the surface, they had successfully plotted maps of the entire passage network. The Mendoken troopers attributed this anomaly to some invisible surveillance jamming mechanism surrounding the planet’s surface, preventing anybody outside from being able to scan the inside of the planet.
“Do you still think these aliens have no enemies in this galaxy?” Sibular asked Zorina, as they turned into yet another passage.
“Fine, fine, you win again!” Zorina said with a sigh. “You happy?” She paused before speaking again in a more composed tone, as if to regain her reputation as the resident defense expert. “Obviously their defense system is different from the ones we’re used to back home. It seems to be geared more towards staying hidden, rather than explicitly thwarting invaders.”
“And towards protecting what’s below the planet’s surface, instead of the space around it,” Marc added.
The passages all looked exactly the same. They were oval in shape, with a width of about 20 feet and a maximum height of 15 feet at the center. The lighting was dim, thanks to tiny lamps fixed to the ceiling every 30 feet or so, revealing bare, uninteresting walls made of solid rock. Marc felt the only positive thing about the passages was that it was much warmer inside them than it was back on the surface.
A half hour passed, then another half hour. They had descended deep into the belly of the labyrinth, without coming across a single alien. The surveillance devices claimed the destination point was close now, very close. And then, there it was. There was no door, no gate, no wall at the end, just an abrupt end to the passage. What lay beyond was solid darkness, both to the naked eye and to the surveillance devices.
Huddled around the end of the passage, they all stared at the darkness beyond. Pointing flashlights ahead did no good – the light just faded away into the distance, revealing absolutely nothing.
“What do we do now?” Marc whispered.
“Why are you whispering?” Zorina asked.
“I… I don’t know,” he said uneasily. “I feel as if someone is out there in the dark, watching us.”
“You can feel it?” Sharjam asked. “What exactly do you feel?”
Marc was unsure how to answer. He had been feeling a growing level of anxiety during the hike through the labyrinth. “Well, I feel that we’ve reached the end of our quest. Whatever answers we’ve been seeking lie in wait for us out there, ready to pounce on us. And I feel fear of that which awaits us, for all of us may not make it back out alive.”
“We came here with that risk in mind, my friend,” Sharjam said in a reassuring tone. “If the Creator has decided that the time has come for you, me or anyone else in this group to die, then there’s nothing we can do to change the Creator’s will. But I can assure you that there’s no nobler cause to die for than the defense of our homelands and our loved ones.”
“Can you see anything, Marc?” Dumyan asked.
Marc focused his eyes as best as he could and stared ahead into the darkness. Several seconds later, he gave up in frustration and shook his head. “Nope, I can just feel the same…”
But he wasn’t able to finish the sentence, for at that moment a deafening sound of laughter erupted in his ears, a deep, resonating laughter easily recognizable as that of Lord Wazilban. He tried to cover his ears to block out the sound, but to no avail. The others all asked him what was wrong, but he couldn’t find his voice. The laughter kept getting louder and louder, eventually becoming so unbearable that he closed his eyes and fell to his knees in despair.
He tried hard to pull himself together. He reminded himself that this was similar to his visions, where darkness and evil laughter had threatened to encompass him and destroy him. He reminded himself that if he stood firm, then they would eventually subside and be shooed away by light and hope.
And so they did. The laughter did eventually die down, and once he opened his eyes, the darkness ahead was gone. In its place was an entrance to what seemed like an underground world.
“Can you see?” he whispered to his friends.
“Yes, we can see everything,” Dumyan said. “It’s unbelievable! Somehow you appear to have breached this defensive barrier for all of us.”
“Wow! I don’t know how. It was like… one of my visions. Darkness, hopelessness, loud laughter…”
“Indeed,” Sharjam said, nodding. “Your visions obviously had many a purpose, not just to help you see through the conspiracy and to guide you throughout your journey, but also to train you to handle obstacles like this barrier.”
“That’s all very good, but we’d better get moving before someone out there notices us!” Zorina said, pointing to the steep path downwards that lay beyond the entrance.
Nobody could disagree with that. The group cautiously made its way in single file down the path, which leveled off after a few hundred feet and led straight into a huge underground settlement carved out of the planet’s crust. There were houses, hundreds of them, situated in a grid-like pattern around a central square. The houses were made of rock and seemed fairly rudimentary in design and construction, leading Marc to wonder how aliens of such technological sophistication could live in such primitive conditions.
And there the aliens were, gathered in the square. There had to be thousands of them, all facing the center, their eyes fixated on a bright, moving 3D image suspended in the air above their heads. The image was so bright that it provided enough light for the entire settlement, the rest of which with all its narrow alleys seemed to be deserted.
“What are they all staring at like that?” Marc wondered aloud.
“Images of Starguzzlers, it seems,” Dumyan said. “Looks like they’re somehow communicating with those monsters.”
“This indicates the Starguzzlers are beings of intelligence,” Sibular said. “And they evidently have some form of influence over the aliens.”
“To say the least!” Marc added. “They all seem completely captivated by the images.”
“Shhh!” Zorina hissed. “We must tread carefully and quietly. We don’t know what’s going on down there yet, and the aliens could turn their heads and spot us at any moment.”
Several minutes later, Marc and the others reached
the floor of the underground settlement. They slowly began edging their way towards the central square, hopping from behind one house to the next in order to stay out of sight. Once they had reached the last row of houses around the square, they stopped and waited.
Peering out from behind one of the houses, Marc was now able to get a clear view of what was happening in the square. The aliens were keenly gazing up at the image from all sides of the square, as if mesmerized by what they could see. And what the image displayed were hordes of Starguzzlers, flying through space with their large spherical bodies and dancing red sparkles within. Every few minutes, loud sirens wailed through the underground settlement.
As Marc watched the scene, he realized that Dumyan was right. The aliens were indeed communicating with the Starguzzlers, and the haunting sirens were the sounds the Starguzzlers were making when they “spoke”. Several of the aliens were right in the center of the square, speaking among themselves and to the Starguzzlers in between the sirens. Their language sounded harsh, and it wasn’t understandable to him at all. His Mendoken translator obviously didn’t recognize their native tongue.
“Not surprising,” he thought. No Mendoken would ever have heard this language before, as the aliens would never have exposed their identity or their language to anybody in the Glaessan. But here, on their own turf, the aliens had no reason to hide anything. They were all in their native reptilian garb, brandishing their menacing eyes, long snouts and sharp teeth, their shiny skin and muscular bodies, their heavy tails and wide, sweeping wings with which they constantly stayed afloat.
One of the aliens standing in front of the others Marc would recognize anywhere – Lord Wazilban. He seemed to be doing most of the talking with the Starguzzlers, and was issuing orders to the other aliens around him.
Marc also spotted Thorab, Rulshanim, Ozwin and Ruminat in the crowd, as well as a number of other faces he had seen on Bara Dilshai. The aliens were clearly all here. The big question was why they were all so mesmerized by the presence of the Starguzzlers, so much so that none of them had noticed him or any of his companions encroaching upon their settlement.
