It looked powerful, and deadly! But he could recognize what it was or what it could do, and kept glaring at it trying to get a clue.
At one point Stanley moaned loudly, “What are we doing here? If this thing is as dangerous as it looks …”
His reply surprised him, and he wondered what their reply would be to it, and he allowed them to reply.
“It could be of great value to us!” Orwell replied, firmly. “We were surely put on this pinnacle for a reason … And this is all there is here! It has fascinating properties, and I believe it is not as dangerous as it seems! There would be signs of something having happened before if it had …”
Cronenberg just agreed with him, and examined it in a glance, and replied, “We have been investigating it with everything we have …!”
“The artifact may exist in other dimensions?” Mitchell, the shuttle flight engineer, replied, surprising Orwell, and Cronenberg recalled recent stuff about investigations into other dimensions on the Earth, and he tried to recall what the outcome had been, and realized it had mainly been theories about things.
They all sat down and rested against an area of the chamber wall, at a more distant position, and they started trying to get some rest and sleep, and when Cronenberg finally fell asleep he was soon awakened by Rosenberg giving a loud gasp, making him swiftly awake, and he looked into the sphere and saw a man standing near the center of the sphere and he also gave a loud gasp himself, and he kept trying to see properly what was there, and he finally went silent, and was sure it was a humanoid alien.
The being was in a central denser region, and the whole sphere was turning brighter and louder, and it started shaking everything about them, and it even started knocking them furiously about, and they fell over, and while he was considering evacuating the chamber a sudden shockwave blasted out from it and through the whole structure, throwing them over dangerously, and he heard a distant rumble of rocks falling off the outside pinnacle.
Suddenly everything turned silent and the bright light vanished, and they started to recover, and check the damage, and he noticed Orwell dramatically talking to Mitchell and Cronenberg checked where they were looking and realized that the energy bubble had returned to normal and that a being had appeared from inside it and was standing in front of them, wearing a human spacesuit, and he immediately recognized it, to his horror, and it was the astronaut that he had seen on Mars, which had chased him into the cavity in the hill with a gun, where he had found the alien energy sphere and alien artifact.
Chapter 6
Anders
One of the biggest surprises, after seeing the astronaut emerging, had been when the astronaut removed the spacesuit faceplate, and revealed his true identity, and Cronenberg had been staggered and stumped, as the astronaut was Anders, one of the two astronauts who had crashed and died on Mars, trying to get the diamonds!
He had seen Anders’s skeleton, lying on Mars, staring up at the stars, and when he had seen him standing in front of him he had been totally staggered and had just stood staring, and Orwell had been baffled, and Rosenberg had been dumbfound too, as he had only seen Anders’s skeleton!
For a few minutes they actually stood considering the unthinkable and that they were standing in front of a ghost!
How had he managed to appear in the places he had seen him as an astronaut in a spacesuit, and why was he the same age as he had been, and he would have been dead a long time ago, going by what year he had crashed in.
Anders finally examined them confused, and examined everything about him surprised, and finally asked them what he was doing there, and they just stood staring at him dumbfound, and considering all the possible explanations.
The whole affair seemed to be building up to it – with their space shuttle being brought down by a mysterious force, the discovery of Anders in the crashed space vehicle, right next to where they had crashed, the astronaut that had been haunting him, and the discovery of the alien energy sphere, and the eventual discovery of the alien artifact buried below, under the ground below the hill, the explosion of the whole hill, and their trip through the universe, and being found below it not knowing how they got there, and the mysterious discovery of the laboratory black hole and it exploding out and taking them there.
They were positive the black hole had connected to someone’s gateway, and that they were deliberately taken to the incredible world, and now they had found Anders there, alive and in the same state as he had been on Mars.
The place startled Anders and he had never seen anything like it, and he could recall nothing other than what he was sure was him dieing on Mars, watching the Earth in the sky, and he recalled encountered something alien and it taking him away, and he had no recollection of meeting Cronenberg or shooting at him.
Cronenberg watched him in partial horror and amazement! Astonished that he was alive! Something he had not even thought of! He had thought of him and his map many times over since finding his skeleton, and especially when he had been in the Mars base library, investigating him and where the diamonds were, and he could only watch him, examining him.
He looked slightly different, from his skeleton and photos, but he knew it was him, and he wondered if Anders could help him!
He noticed Rosenberg could hardly believe it was him and kept examining him and trying to fit things together, to explain something he could not grasp, and it surprised Anders that the scientist with him, who had found the diamonds with the satellite, was not there, and Cronenberg realized that he looked more disappointed in that fact than anything else.
Cronenberg could not grasp what had taken him away on Mars, as his descriptions of it were fascinating, and he realized it had to have been the force that had landed them and he had encountered within the energy sphere, and he realized that they had not fully contacted it, and that it could have two identities, as it had to have put Anders on Mars as a form of ghost as the astronaut with the gun, which had shot at him and nearly killed him.
He was unsure how dangerous it was, as it had done many dangerous things to them.
Anders started believing that he had been transported there through a vortex and had religious beliefs of what had occurred, to their surprise! He surely had thought he had gone into his own place in the afterlife but was unsure where the hell he was, in heaven or hell, and they watched him praying to be saved.
Yet after what they had been through there, and all that had happened everywhere, some of the crew even looked like copying him, but he thought better of it.
One of the problems that faced them now was there was hardly any food, and the stuff they had was running out, which was mainly emergency rations in special pockets in their spacesuits, and they were tired and had not slept properly!
So after they had all slept they carried out a great deal of examinations of the structure they were in, but found little, and seemed mainly to be some sort of base, and they investigated the sphere of energy as far as they could, but still found little!
None of them could explain much, as it never even fitted into any of their fantasies! They were more confused than he had ever been, as he no longer just ignored all the mysteries and he just could not explain things, with anything that he could now accept, and why they had gone through the vortex and black hole in the laboratory, which was an incredible piece of luck, and Anders did not explain anything for them either!
His secretive questioning of Anders about the map, when the others were away searching under the structure, gave little other than the fact he had believed the diamonds had been there, and had partially suspected they were elsewhere when the scientist with him kept suggesting it, which he was unsure of, but he was sure that he had been hiding things and that he had not been fully positive that they existed, and had been confused about many things! He must have been the only person in the history to have such an occurrence occur to him and find himself in such a place and have no way to return to the world after such a long time!
Anders never
recognized anything there and kept wondering where the structure was, and why they all acted strangely to the outside world, and why they kept talking of the lower world, and he even surprised them by claiming he had been put there to start over again and repent, in another attempt at entering an afterlife.
Anders spent most of his time studying everything that he met with in fascination, and they confused him by their reactions and that they might be going to encounter aliens visiting there.
Their investigations of finding a way down to the ground and world below were useless, and they were convinced that they had used another means to get there and they tried finding it, but it proved useless, and they only had the energy sphere, where Anders had appeared from, and most of them believed something was there, and had put them there for a reason.
Chapter 7
The Exit
Golden radiances of the morning beamed straight across the top of the pinnacle, and created an immense shadow of the pinnacle’s shape stretch across the landscape below for many miles, pointing to the opposite horizon, where the nighttime darkness vanished.
The top of the pinnacle was the same except a sphere of blackness was floating in midair over the central region, which had just been found there by them, and all the shuttle crew and Anders were there, and Anders was the most curious, and strolled around it examining its shape, confused, and was staggered at the outside world he had not seen, and regularly stood with his mouth wide open watching stars of colossal size doing strange things.
The sphere had clearly recently appeared there and nobody there could account for it being there, and Rosenberg, who had found it, had thought the sphere had some form of intelligence, which they still had not proven to be not, or anything.
Cronenberg watched Anders, still amazed at him, and with horrific thoughts, realizing what was there could pull virtually anything out on them, and he was amazed that there definitely were diamonds on Mars, and Anders had confirmed it, and the diamond or crystal he had was not it, and he was now sure that the scientist, with Anders, had been going to check it, and he wondered again why Anders had been put below in the structure, and thought over what Anders had said about it.
They never knew where they were but at least they had Anders, and lots of information he had about the scientist’s discovery of them, and he wondered if they could return.
Looking at the top of the pinnacle it was clear that something had flattened it with its incredible weight, and he could not grasp if it was deliberately created or something had happened there!
Had something of immense weight, like a large solid meteorite, smashed into it?
Their search of the structure below was useless, and the sphere there did little, and they were unable to activate it again, and he was sure there were actually objects inside the pinnacle keeping the pinnacle up and stopping it falling.
Had something smashed a region off the top of the pinnacle away and had whatever was there held the rest of the tower and structure from being damaged and smashed away.
The hideous condition of the world below was now even more obvious and astounding, and had been subjected to incredible damage. He even liked being on the tower and finding its wonders, and he knew they would even miss being there, if they escaped from there, and he wondered if there was a way to create a gateway there – and some day sell holidays to there, to see the amazing world!
They were all now positive the sphere there was not from there and had appeared there for a reason, and they waited for something to happen, and when it did it surprised them with its swiftness and unexpectedness and he glided away, with the others, out of the universe, and they shot through blackness, as they left the universe, and stars shot by in streaks as they blasted through the gateway, voyaging away.
Chapter 8
The Circle of Mirrors
All the Astronauts gasped, when they came to, lying across the ground, looking around them, and at a circle of mirrors surrounding them.
Cronenberg leapt onto his feet first, staggered at missing what had happened, trying to recall losing consciousness, and he joined some of the others, and cleaned dust away from his spacesuit faceplate, and examined what the circular region they were in, and the mirrors evenly going around its radius, and he saw the circular ground was made of some strange alien material, and covered over in dust, and it seemed to connect the mirrors.
He examined what the strange mirrors were, from the central region, watching them go around him in a perfect circle, and felt like he was being watched, and not just from through the mirrors themselves, which he sensed and knew were far more, and he eventually moved behind the mirrors and saw that the mirrors were not visible there, and there was nothing there, and he stood considering what they were, as the entire circle was like some highly advanced device, and he even considered if magic existed and that they were magical.
Further out from the circle of mirrors he realized it was another pinnacle, and walked around its edge, and it was identical to the last one, but the colossal pinnacle was on top of a colossal mountain, and there was no way to get down, and they were trapped again.
The surrounding world and sky was also staggering and Cronenberg stood with his mouth open staring at a vast world like Saturn, with massive rings, stretching into the atmosphere of the world they were on, and the Saturn world dangerously covered most of the southern horizon and its rings went across the eastern and western horizons.
The world was either doomed to destruction or had some phenomenon holding the worlds apart!
The astronauts lifted their faceplates when they realized there was air there and Cronenberg gasped at the smell of peculiar gases, and some of the astronauts filmed the world with their spacesuit cameras, and examined the strange mirrors up close, and walked through them from behind, proving they were not there from behind, and at a close distance from the front saw they were not mirrors but something else reflecting light.
The sun of the world was the only normal thing there, except the world’s orbit of it was far faster, and it was racing into the horizon, and the sky was swiftly turning darker!
As the night sky emerged, and blue sky vanished, they watched large meteorites blasting out of space everywhere in the distance, in the southern horizon, scattering beams of bright light, and he saw that it was in fact the merging of two solar systems, being pulled together, and the world’s solar system had been damaged by it, and one of its major planets, the Saturn world, was being pulled into it, and on one of the horizons he discovered the cause, and that they were at the center of a galaxy and were being pulled into a black hole, and he started spotting more and more of the destruction it had done, and he saw the whole sky full of debris from destroyed worlds and suns.
Chapter 9
The Haunted World
At night the mirrors of the circle of mirrors altered into different and altering views of clusters of gateways, going back into them in lines into what looked like infinity.
In the end they chose to enter one, which left them staggered, as they walked through and shot through an infinity of gateways, going back in lines everywhere, and they were all entirely different, and they had never seen anything like it.
They entered one with more and shot into a colossal dome, the size of a solar system, full of gateways everywhere, with views of incredible places and things, and they were able to randomly choose the most interesting.
Once they emerged into it they immediately became trapped there, in a dark strange wood, with altered trees, freezing in deep snow, where they spotted strange dark figures hiding behind trees, examining them, while mysterious lights startled them, and they heard them occasionally violently smash things about them, but they had weapons in their spacesuits.
What staggered Cronenberg the most was that they never knew how to return, and as they rushed away, they held their belief that they would be saved once again and that there would be an eventual conclusion, but the snow grew thick and shrouded everything everywhere
, creating a mind-bending landscape, while a massive moon swiftly emerged above, swiftly orbiting the world, and they soon became too exhausted to recognize anything.
It was shocking how lost they were, but the moonshine showed them the strange mind-bending landscape ahead!
The sounds of the life forms and other strange things hidden away there became dangerous and astonishing, and at times they came screaming out of the dark endless alien wood, and also through what sounded like shafts in the ground somewhere, and with a dangerous fury that stunned Cronenberg, and no matter how much they tried their thoughts never seemed to properly achieve stable recognitions.
For some reason he began to believe there were supernatural regions in the universe, and that they had entered one version, and he was surprised that the others in the shuttle crew mentioned it openly, as if they knew he had known it, and he tried to grasp what the place and places were for, and considered all the gateways and their destinations, trying to grasp what the place was doing there. He was sure that they had discovered far more than they realized and that it could prove the existence of colossal magical abilities and energies and he analyzed everything in a far greater degree, searching for an answer.
Out of nowhere a colossal light emerged from the undergrowth, and pulsated like a living thing, magically illuminating the deep lifeless snow and trees everywhere they looked, and seemed to silence the noises and life forms surrounding them.
The light allowed them to see everything across their front more, and they spotted what was a structure buried away in the trees, and Cronenberg realized that it was an alien form of castle, buried and hidden deep away in the landscape and wood, and he examined it astounded at its immense size and how it could be built there, and he wondered if the whole world was covered by the trees and wood and if the builders normally built their structures there, and he had a sensation that the structure had colossal power, which would eventually leave him staggered!
The Lost Treasure Map Deluxe Book Collection (2017 Edition) Page 42
