The Lost Time Probe

by V Bertolaccini

  They furiously moved their legs in and out of bogs and snow until the finally reached rocky regions, and they all became confused and unable fully discover what they were up against!

  Had they failed, and were they to get it for visiting the hill?

  They ran almost blindly over rocks and rough ground, rushing through thick tree objects and heavy snow, while heavy beast sounds furiously exploded out, and they occasionally heard smashing objects and heavy boulders tumbling away in their way, like something out of a dark nightmare.

  Suddenly Anders shouted, “Look out there!”

  “There’s something!” Rosenberg confirmed. “Quick! Move over there! There’s something ...”

  Over to their side there was a cliff front facing them, almost the only place there without any snow.

  For some reason Cronenberg just knew it had to be a place of sanctuary for them, but he started wondering why as he could not see anything!

  What was there? Was it just a hill and cliff? Could these things not climb or something?

  A deep thud like an explosion appeared just behind them and he studied the area they were going to for anything and suddenly spotted a black region, like a black curtain in the dimness there, and he studied it, seeing them going straight to it, and he felt the ground around him shudder like an earthquake, and he watched Anders and Rosenberg jump into the black curtain and he followed them and realized it was the entrance point of a gateway, and he shot through stars, and he saw the entrance close behind them, as the last person jumped through.

  Chapter 19

  The Center of Space

  Blasts of radiance exploded everywhere stunning Cronenberg, leaving him staggered, and a colossal whirlpool of shifting outlines of globes magically shifted by, and he studied them with the others for a long time and could not grasp what they were, or where he was, as the gateway had entirely altered.

  It was like something was trying to find them and something was hiding them in the new gateway, and he could not realize why, and he felt like he was being played around with, by two mad eccentric life forms, playing a deadly game with their prey.

  He saw that now they had no body, or proper presence, and were some form of force formation, and were swirling out into a vortex of reshaping energy patterns that replaced reality, with surreal transformations, and were gradually altering to something they could not recognize.

  He was mesmerized, and wondered if he was even classified as being alive!

  He gave vague gasps as reality magically spun around in patterns, while he wondered how worse the things could get!

  Could they actually get trapped there, for all eternity, and was he even underestimating that?

  Something grasped his attention ahead, and he studied it, and a white blur emerged in a central region of darkness ahead, as they slightly swirled around, and he grew more interested in it, and wishing it would be an exit, and he started to recognize detail to it as it grew, and they shifted into it, and once within its depths he saw magnificent giant distant stars of the universe blazing out, blending into his surroundings in brilliant magnificent colors.

  Spectacular beams of light exploded out, and stars shot to and by him at incredible velocities, and he realized the tremendous speed they were accelerating at, and realized it was a different form of gateway with a far higher velocity.

  Space was expanding all across his front, and they shot into it.

  The stars filled his entire vision everywhere as magnificent bright white and golden lights, and like a cartoon universe.

  Stars turned dazzling, and he could not recognize what forms of stars they were, and he wondered if they had actually entered another universe! Space was so condensed he could not believe the density of the stars everywhere, and he was staggered that they could exist in such a state, without being pulled together, into a colossal explosion.

  At his side he spotted Orwell staggered at something and he followed his vision and back at where they had come from and saw the most colossal anything he had ever seen! A colossal black hole was stretching out everywhere, going straight across space, and he actually saw it entering other dimensions and regions beyond the universe, and he realized the true immense speed that they had been traveling at, and that they had just shot through a black hole gateway, the size of a small galaxy.

  Chapter 20

  The Mind-Bending Black Hole

  For a moment Cronenberg was blinded, as a powerful dazzling radiance blinded him, and he thought he had been thrown into somewhere deadly!

  The entire sky was filled with trillions upon trillions of magnificent incredible stars everywhere, turning the whole sky a magnificent white and gold, and Cronenberg stood upright with the others, and watched the colossal black hole shift across the sky above, and he realized it had to be the center of an enormous galaxy, and suddenly he realized it was more than that, and it was the central galaxy, and center of the universe, and they were on a world that was going into it, and slowly entering its confines.

  The sight was fantastic, and probably the most magnificent sight he had seen, and he sensed mysterious and dangerous things existed out in space there, in the deepest depths of the universe.

  Cronenberg stood examining the flat top of the massive mountain they were on, which had to be the highest on the world, and he watched it overlooking the world for immense miles in every direction, going out into distant horizons, and he watched a distant fog blanketing an entire region going into a horizon, which was glowing from some form of sun the world was orbiting.

  It was incredible that they could feel the colossal gravity of the black hole from there, and he was astonished!

  Its entire massive galaxy seemed to be orbiting it, and he gasped, wondering how they had managed to enter and escape from it, and he gasped at how much power what had put them there had.

  For a moment they were all blinded, from a powerful dazzling radiance in space, and they shaded their eyes, and he saw it was a bright sun exploding apart in the depths of space, and he wondered how deadly it was on the world, and how protected they were, and he realized that they were on a large world, with high gravity, and he watched another dazzling radiance of another massive sun explode.

  Strange multicolored streaks of starlight exploded through thin regions of fog around them, reminded him of lasers, and in the sky on the horizon massive blinding stars were appearing, as the world’s rotation showed new regions of space.

  It was a truly unique world that saw no darkness, and probably would never know it, and he realized it was also a doomed world, and would be destroyed in the black hole.

  Stardust fell down from space and covered everything, including their boots, and lower spacesuits, and he imagined the mind-bending landscapes out in space there, on magnificent worlds, and he watched an altering mist surrounding them, and he wondered what the hell the place was originally like.

  Chapter 21

  The Ancient World

  They found parts of an ancient structure buried beneath sand and debris from the sky, from the vast mysterious galaxy surrounding the doomed world.

  There had been an advanced civilization there once, and what was left of a structure was buried away in a region nearby, on the edge of a vast cliff face, going straight down for miles.

  The area was now had vast nearby suns overhead, and in the brightness Cronenberg spotted the shuttle crew excavating an interesting part of a structure, and he wondered what they were up to, and started examining what they had revealed and stood back and started to see how advanced the race had been, and realized there could be something of value buried away in its interior.

  The air at the incredibly high region was fresh and breathable, and he believed the mountain was not as high up as it had seemed, and that the area across their front there was an immense cavity and that the world’s normal surface was far higher.

  He felt the temperature at the area increase, and his spacesuit altered to compensate, and he realized how well his spaces
uit controlled its temperature.

  There were no clouds, or the mist, and they were glad, as none of them wanted to enter any cloud formations if they had to.

  They were lucky to be alive after everything they had been through, and they all now realized the dangers of being in such places and on such a world!

  He studied the bright, now warm stars, and observed faraway sand being blown about by gusts of wind. The area was like an oasis on the world, but he was unsure what the rest of the world was like in its different regions.

  Even though the world was doomed to enter the black hole and be destroyed he was sure most of the world had something wrong with it and he tried to prove it by studying the landscape in greater detail than he had, looking at places he had missed out, and he was sure it had immense earthquakes that had destroyed vast regions.

  He was surprised when a creature of the world appeared and darted by, close by, examining them, looked like a miniature monster, and he examined it, looking for why it did.

  A structure the others started entering looked primitive, but he was sure it was advanced, and it was the fact it was buried away like it was.

  He strolled through heaps of sand entering the structure, and he wondered if the Earth would ever fall and turn into the place, and have beings like them from other worlds exploring their remains.

  Gusts of air, like breezes coming in from the colossal stars, threw sand and red dried out bushes about wildly, into different directions, as if unable to decide where to go, and he wondered why there was no sign of rain, and if that was what was wrong with the world, and that all the water was nearly gone.

  The temperature was now higher, and he rested and watched a small lizard-like creature rushing away, showing them it was there, and he heard others.

  In the interior of a structure they entered an underground chamber and he heard underground creatures burrowing behind the walls, as they burrowed through hard ground and sand.

  Under heaps of stones and debris they had uncovered a form of skeleton, looking like a fossil, with close resemblances to an upright ape creature, and he was staggered that anything there could be close to looking like a human, and he uncovered its skull, covered in sand, and finally proved it had a far more unusual shape, which disappointed some of the others, and he wondered why they wanted it to be like a human, and he realized that they might want to settle somewhere on the world or another, if they could not return, as they would eventually be killed by something, as the dangers were immense, and seemed to be increase.

  He believed the skeleton was of an inhabitant that had lived in and had built the structure they were in, and it surprised him that they thought it could have been more advanced than them, and he realized that there could be far more advanced versions of humans, perhaps in city type regions there, and still alive, and they could have a highly advanced civilization and he started to realize the dangers that there were there.

  Chapter 22

  The Extraterrestrial Castle

  At the edge of the cliff further along there was a structure like an ancient monastery, where they found water from a stream, and they managed to find food, which they had found the alien civilization had eaten, and they collected supplies, water supplies and they rested and tried to find the entrance to the structure, as if they were to stay there it was best that they were inside it and protected from the outer dangers.

  Though they could not find any entrance and they started examining regions of the ground below it, as there could have been an area below it that was covered over, by the ground building up along its sides over decades, and they kept searching until they found the entrance was above, and it was lowered by forms of ropes, so it was better protected.

  They rested below, when the sun of the world was down, even though there was far more light there from the stars blazing out.

  They rested staring up at the immense wonders that existed in the sky, and he realized the speed the world was actually traveling at, and the pull of the black hole was incredible, and he was sure the world had far less time left than he had imagined and he watched the debris of old worlds come shooting through the sky faster than he had ever seen meteorites. Some appeared and hit there so fast that he never saw them and all he saw was their impact, and now and then he saw them approach in deep space.

  He was sure the structure was a castle they were under, and an alien castle.

  Some form of alien race had to have built it there to defend it, and perhaps had been at war!

  What surprised him was the way it had been built and that it was far more different from the last structure, and he was sure the builders of it had been far different, as he could not imagine the other being that they had found the skeleton of actually building it, and it seemed a far more advanced species that built it.

  It also amazed him how close to a human castle it was in places, and he realized he really wanted to get inside it, and he thought through everything he had seen there for something and recalled an old rope nearby, and rushed away and got.

  He tied a loop in it and swung it around his head and threw it at where there were entrance ropes lying in a pile over the flat castle roof bricks, and kept throwing it at it and retrying, trying to throw it around it, until he got lucky and he managed to pull it down, and realized it was not the advanced way up he had imagined, and it was just a form of rope ladder.

  At the top he immediately thought no sane life form could have built it, and the castle bricks were not even cemented together, and the roof, buried under layers of stardust and debris, was made of unstable planks and wood that he was sure could not properly hold his weight, and looked as though they had started rotting through!

  Rosenberg and then Orwell joined him when they saw him and they climbed up, listening to all his scrabbling around sounds at the top, watching what they did on the badly made rope ladder.

  Anything staying in it must have been mad or extremely determined to avoid something deadly there!

  After examinations of it and the immense cliff at the other side it amazed them how it could have stayed up and not crashed down below long ago! All its giant boulder were chunks of rocks fixed together, and barely straight, and stayed up with its weight, and Cronenberg realized that there were no major earthquakes, but he was sure immense stellar objects could destroy it, especially at the velocities they traveled at.

  They carefully examined around its thick gray stone walls examining it in detail, over the edges of the roof, and still they found no real way into it, even after carefully examining the whole floor. They spotted small gaps in the roof, for breathing inside, which suggested there was not enough air inside, but going by them not being human they could live on very low amounts of air.

  He waded his feet through thick mud covering an area, while trying to see if there was anything below, and he stopped to view the unbelievable sky, which was tremendous there now, and he was sure the immense black hole had actually increased in size, because of the world’s incredible velocity, and it had to be one of the biggest object he had ever seen, and stretched across space like a colossal black galaxy devouring space! Its stars in its confines were all over the outer regions going straight towards it everywhere, and the whole of space seemed to being pulled into it.

  He stood at the edge of the structure, over the cliff face, like he was standing on the top of the world, as though on the highest area on the world below, and he wondered if the aliens that had built it had been or were the main race of the world. Yet nothing showed their civilization and technology, and it was like the remains of a last civilization that never advanced, and he gasped again at the height that it was over the world, under his feet, and the sheer drop of it astounded him, going off into the distance.

  Rosenberg stamped on the surface of the roof to check its safety, and show what his thoughts about it, and Orwell joined in but used it to try and find the entrance under the areas covered in muck, and he stopped and brushed it away and revealed a thick stone sla
b below, and they watched him brush it away and reveal a slab over the center of the roof.

  The hinges on it were made of some unknown metal and held it in place, and there was no indication on how to open it, and they stood examining all its edges for a noticeable way, and Rosenberg began smashing them in at one side where they were corroded and it fell down at the side he hit it, and the whole heavy stone crashed into the structure, throwing up a cloud of dust into the air, and they were glad it was dry inside.

  Layers of dust hung in the air as Cronenberg marched down its stone ramp first and they followed him down into it, and he considered what could possibly be there and if he was going to make a mistake, and he thought about the scientific viewpoint of what they were doing, as he turned on his spacesuit light.

  He jerked backwards, when a loud thud came through the floor and whole castle, from the lower world, from a massive meteorite impacting nearby, which sounded close, and against the cliff, and again he wondered what the inhabitants of the world had like.

  They walked into its darkness almost in a straight line going downwards and explored the first floor, full of large empty rooms, and realized the holes in the walls were not just for air but to let light into the rooms, and he observed the rooms with interest.

  He watched the dust in their lights fly about as they marched down the stone ramp going deeper into it, and further down the dampness of the outer stone walls increased and gave a stale scent through the air, and they went down all the floors, after examining the empty rooms, and at the bottom they found a hidden entrance that entered the ground below, and he continued walking deeper into the stone corridor, searching the floor for any damage to it and for anything that they could fall through, and go crashing down below.