The Space Mavericks

by Michael Kring

  The pain was spiraling up my leg and each step was agony. I knew I wouldn’t be able to take it much longer, but I had to get farther from the clearing before I climbed the tree. They would be checking all the trees near them. I gripped the parts bag tightly in my fist as I forced my way through the jungle. There were a few loud growls and coughs that made my hair stand on end, but I didn’t see anything.

  I shoved aside some particularly thick foliage and found myself in a strange clearing. There were trees all around it, forming sort of a canopy over the area, but there wasn’t any brush at all in the center. Just grass. And standing in the center was a huge mass of stones. The stones were really old. I couldn’t imagine how old they were since they seemed as if they were growing right out of the ground. Some of them seemed funny, and as I got closer, I could tell they weren’t merely stones, but part of a large area of ruins. The ruins were so old, only the vaguest outline of the structure of the place was visible. I walked closer and was surprised to note the stones were starting to glow a little. I stopped. Something seemed dangerous.

  I then noted there wasn’t a sound nearby. There weren’t any growls, or any tiny, little frightened squeaks as some small creature tried to find shelter. I felt totally alone in that ruin filled clearing. Something was odd, very odd, about the place, but I couldn’t place my finger on the feeling I was getting. I’d never had such a feeling of being watched and at peace before. I felt at home. I felt as I do when I’m in Warp.

  I sat down on one of the stones that was shaped, vaguely, like a huge square, and examined my calf. The bullet had torn a little hole in my leg, and the blood was seeping out at a regular, but, luckily, non-pulsating rate. It hadn’t hit anything really vital. I reached into my back pocket and pulled out a rag and wrapped it around the wound. While I was tending my leg, I saw it.

  It had been covered with dust, and looked merely like some sort of an odd root. I normally would have passed something like that by, but, for some reason, I couldn’t this time. I bent down.

  It was a ring. It had a dull stone mounted in a wide, thick band and what seemed like gold. I couldn’t really tell, since u-v light changes the color of things. The stone was smooth and imbedded in -the metal of the ring. When I first picked it up, I had the impression it was a huge ring, but as I brought it closer to my eyes, I saw it was just a normal sized ring with a strange stone. It was ancient, that much I could tell at a glance. I turned it over in my fingers. I examined it closely, but here were no signs, no scratches, nor any markings on it, whatsoever.

  I put it on. The stone flared to life, glimmered a smoky red, then sent out a spark of sheer, white light. I was blinded by the brilliance of it for a second, and when I could see again, the ring’s stone was merely glowing softly. I knew I should have been terrified of such an occurrence since it meant the ring wasn’t merely for decoration, but had served some purpose at one time. But I wasn’t afraid. I felt very secure and safe, and the pain in my leg was gone. I was getting very sleepy, so I deactivated, put my boots on, and lay down on the ground near the stone. I closed my eyes and, deep in the back part of my mind, I felt a terrified yell. I couldn’t think anymore. I slept.

  7

  Sunlight awakened me. I blinked once and the shaft of light that had, somehow, crawled through the mass of leaves and the trees looming over the clearing struck me on the eyes and moved on. I sat up and rubbed my eyes. I felt great! There wasn’t a pain or ache in my body, and I wondered about that as I stretched. I relaxed and then realized I shouldn’t have been feeling good. I’d been shot and had run myself ragged. I reached down and pulled up my pants leg. I pulled off the rag over the wound, and gasped. There wasn’t even a scar telling where I’d been hit. The wound had completely healed.

  I glanced at the ring on my finger and it was still glowing slightly red. I figured that somehow, someway, it had healed my wound. No one normally heals that fast. I was a little frightened of the implications, but also delighted that it could do something like that. I got to my feet and looked down.

  A quicksilver jingle of freezing fear spiked into my stomach as I stared down at the grass. Where I’d been sleeping was clearly etched into the green grass. Where my body had touched the grass, it was dead and brown, almost as if it had been burnt. The hairs on the back of my neck crawled as I realized what had happened. What had the ring done?!

  A surge of fear engulfed me and I shook. I reached over to take the ring off and fling it into the midst of the ruins. As my fingers touched the gold band, I stopped. Something was tingling in the middle of my brain, and I suddenly started to breathe calmly again. If the ring had been harmful to me, I was sure feeling like nothing bad had occurred. In fact, it had healed my wounds, and I felt better than I had in some time. My mind was calm, and I was very well rested. I knew I’d only spent a few hours in deep sleep, but it had been more than enough. The ring was obviously very good for me and I didn’t dare throw it away. Why do something that stupid? I pulled the plastic bandage from my cheek and felt. The scars were gone. I let the bandage fall to the grass.

  I tugged on the ring gently, just to see if I could take it off, and as I halfway expected, I couldn’t. The ring wasn’t tight on my finger but it was not going to come off. At least, not unless my finger came with it. I doubted if anything I knew would ever take if off me, except, perhaps, death.

  I was calm enough not to try to figure out the situation. The ring had somehow cured me of my wounds, and taken the energy, the life-force, the whatever, to do it from the grass I’d been sleeping upon. The implications were far-ranging, and a little beyond me, but I knew I’d have to keep the story to myself because who would believe something that wild?

  In the daylight, the ruins looked even older than I had first surmised. I looked up from the grass and stared around me. The stones were all massive, but there were no rough edges, no sharp corners, anywhere. I didn’t hear any sounds, either. The birds were still staying away from the ruins. I could tell the basic structure of the place, the building, whatever, had not been disturbed by any animals. There wasn’t even a trace that an insect had flittered within the clearing. Only the wind, rain, and the other elements of the planet had effected the stones. And to make the stones as smooth as they were, when I could just barely discern some sort of writing on some of the stones, would have taken more years than I could imagine.

  Just how old was Green anyway?

  Why had a race, that had developed such marvelous things as the ring, died out? Were these rings native to Green? I had no answers, and a million questions. I shrugged my shoulders, and began to walk into the area on the ruins where the tall stones were like pylons. I could tell something was hidden by several large stones in front of me.

  The grass was soft underfoot, and the air smelled clean and damp, just like after a summer rainstorm. I hummed to myself as I walked among the giant stones. Whatever the place had been, it had been huge. The stones were, on the average, ten feet long and at least five feet thick. They were sandy colored, but I knew they weren’t sandstone. I wasn’t sure what they were. I stopped by one of the larger ones, about twelve feet long and six feet thick, and basically a rectangular shape. I could see there were some sort of writing at one time on its surface, but the elements had rubbed most of it off. I could make out a few of the symbols, and they were like nothing I had ever seen on any planet I’d ever visited. My eyes watered a little as I stared at the symbols, and the itching in the middle of my brain was worse. I pulled my head back from the stone and scratched the top of my head. It didn’t help, but it was something do do.

  I sauntered over to a row of stones that were still standing like columns. As I rounded the last of the columns, I saw the entrance. I stopped short and for an instant, panic gripped my stomach and squeezed. I had this urge to run away, an urge that I didn’t want to go into that tunnel. It only lasted a second or two, but it was so strong I broke out in a cold sweat. After it was over, I wiped my forehead and advanced. The entrance w
as marked by a massive stone, about ten feet wide, eight feet tall, and at least ten feet thick. The entrance was carved right into the middle of the side facing the columns. There were steps leading down into the dark bowels of the stone, and I wondered what could be down there.

  I sniffed, but all I smelt was the grass and dust. Age-old dust. The clearing hadn’t been disturbed for centuries, and perhaps for centuries upon centuries. I swallowed loudly, and decided I might as well investigate. I knew I should have been in a hurry to get back to the Kraftwerk, but something made me walk down into the darkness.

  The steps were worn, and a little long for my legs. They were made of the same stone as the columns and stones outside. However, there were indentations in the center of the steps to testify that, at one time, thousands of feet had walked the steps. As I walked down into the chamber, the walls gradually grew lighter. I knew it wasn’t my eyes, because when I looked behind me, I could tell I had come at least twenty feet down from the entrance. Some sort of machinery, or something, was being activated by my presence. It was disconcerting.

  I finally reached the bottom of the steps, and the walls gave everything a gray haze. There wasn’t enough light to enable my eyes to see color, yet, but the brightness of the walls was still climbing. I waited, not moving much, unsure of what would happen next. I knew the place I was in was a chamber of some sort because of the way my footsteps had sounded coming down the steps. Even though slip boots are soft soled, they had caused an echo that had that dead feel of an enclosed space, a room that had been empty for quite some time, and the only thing left was dust and the walls. And whatever was causing the light. I couldn’t see any source of the light, but it looked as if it came from a sun.

  The light finally stabilized and it was a bit bright for my tastes. I didn’t know whether or not the people who built the place were used to brighter light, or if it was the fault of the mechanism that had not been used for so long.

  The chamber was completely empty. The place was about ten feet high, fifty feet long, and about thirty feet wide. It had drawings all over the walls, in wild colors, glistening as if the paint was still fresh. There were countless rows of what looked like writing, and in the center of the white, marble-like floor, was a huge red circle with a blue dot in its center. The circle must have been about ten feet across, and the dot a yard in diameter. I didn’t move for a time, waiting to see what else would happen, but nothing did. I finally walked over to the circle and stood in the center of the blue dot. Something clicked behind me and I turned around.

  Music blared at me from all sides and it was loud and frantic. It throbbed with a beat that I couldn’t grasp. There were words being sung in an odd, chilly feline type of voice. The voice was graceful, lilting, pure, golden, but it was also so alien, so foreign to my senses, I felt chills dance upon my spine. I shuddered with complete non comprehension. The music throbbed at me for about five minutes and gradually faded away. It was replaced by a voice, perhaps male, that recited something repeatedly in the same odd language. It was like gibberish to me, but very rich in overtones and nuances even I could feel, now and then. I also felt the harmonics of the language were very important. I’m not good at languages, having learned only three in my life, but I would have given anything to have learned the language. It was pleasing to the ear, in an odd way, and I felt that it would be an incredibly precise and rich language to speak in. I listened a bit longer, and finally nodded my head. I was certain the male voice was lecturing about the drawings upon the walls.

  Perhaps the chamber was a history room. Perhaps. Who knew? I certainly couldn’t even guess. I would have to tell Kohn about the chamber, and he could make discreet inquiries with the various people he knows who are interested in such things. There could be a way to make a profit out of the situation and still preserve the chamber and the ruins. There are enough strange billionaires in the Spheres who make archeology their hobby, especially xeno-archeology, that we could possibly make more than a little money on the deal.

  I stepped from the blue dot and the voice lecturing merely continued. I had more than likely set off a sequence of events that wouldn’t stop until they were finished. I walked over to the wall to the left of the stairs. The drawings were like photographs in their clarity, but I could tell they were just highly stylized representations. The race that had done them had been masters of the highest order.

  I decided that if the race had been logical, they would have started with their earliest history near the bottom of the steps, then down one wall, across the far wall, and then toward the steps up the other wall. If they had done it that way, it would have enhanced the flow of people, whatever their shape, through the chamber. At least, so it seemed to me.

  The earliest drawings were mainly animals of various sorts. There were little squiggles and things near all the animals, and I assumed it spelled out their names. I stared at them, but I didn’t see anything that remotely looked like a biped, or even a quadruped, that could have been intelligent. The landscapes of the first paintings were odd. The hills were gently rolling, devoid of jungle, and there were a couple of paintings of massive lakes, and perhaps one that was an ocean. I could never quite understand the scale system they were using. There were none of the green-gorilla things, nor any exotic birds. I was puzzled. Where were they? And when the trees were shown, they didn’t seem to have that underlying hue of green. Perhaps the paintings were the remote past. I had a feeling they weren’t however.

  As I walked along, the chamber was filled with more music, but this time, it was more subdued, less primitive, and much more complex. It was so enchanting, so enthralling, I found myself just listening to it and ignoring the paintings as I walked along. There were subtle nuances and harmonics that I didn’t know I could hear coming from the walls of the chamber. The music was exhilarating. I glanced down at the ring, but it still glowed with its ruddy color. It hadn’t changed.

  As I advanced along the walls, I was firmly convinced the squiggles and marks near the paintings were languages, and they changed characteristics from painting to painting. Perhaps it reflected the different areas of the planet and the different languages of the people living there. But, again, somehow, I felt that theory was wrong. I had the hunch the people of the planet had spoken basically the same language, and the language, not the people, had changed over the years. I had no idea why I felt that way, but the more the thought filled my mind, the more firmly convinced I was correct.

  As I crossed the far wall, I came across a painting of a city. It was beautiful! The city was huge. I could tell by the tiny dots on the roadways and on the walkways. The dots were bipedal, and I surmised they were the people who had made this chamber and the ring I was wearing. The city itself was pastel in color, gradually flowing from red to blue to green in a sensuous movement of hues. There were soft arcs and soft lines, and none of the usual phallic boxes shooting from the sky that most primitive cultures seem to think are necessary to prove themselves. Frontier Worlds have the nasty and stupid habit, too. The alien city was drawn so perfectly, I could almost feel a movement in it, hear the sounds of the city and the voices, smell the flowers in the numerous gardens and parks. As I continued to walk along, there were other cities, different in color, in architecture; some had been designed with straight lines, and some were mainly designed with arcs and waves. They were all beautiful and huge and magnificent. I ached to visit one of the cities.

  As I made my way around the chamber, the paintings began to take on a frantic feeling, as if the artists were racing against time. I didn’t know why I felt that since the paintings were of either animals of cities, or gorgeous landscapes of mountains or lakes. It seemed odd to me that the paintings could convey so much feeling.

  The final four paintings were a shock. The first of the last four showed a bipedal, clothed creature in detail. I knew at once this was the race that had painted the walls, built the cities, and made the ring I was wearing. I stared at it closely. The being was slightly
green-skinned and had binocular eyes. The iris of the eye were white and the rest of the eye was blue. There were no pupils that I could see. The face was rather flat, and it had no nose, merely to tiny slits slightly above its mouth. The lips were full. Its arms and legs each had three joints. The hands had three fingers and a rather thin looking thumb. It was wearing boots. It had a mass of dark green hair, and it seemed to be smiling. It was rather broad across the chest, and it wore a light blue tunic that reached to mid-thigh. It did not wear any pants. I didn’t know if the creature was male or female. I guess it didn’t really matter. The next painting was a map of Green’s solar system, which I instantly recognized. The writing beside the painting was small, cramped, and short. There were only three lines. The next painting showed Free Space, and the Charon Nebulae, which is near the Vespers system. I marveled at how detailed it was, and how beautiful the faint golds and reds and the Nebulae glistened. There was only one line of the writing beside that painting. The last painting was of another solar system, and in the background, to the right of the sun, was the Charon Nebulae. The system had to be the Vespers system. There was no doubt of its location in the Nebulae, but the sun was the wrong color, and the planets weren’t quite right. The two outer planets of the system should have had highly eccentric orbits. The painting showed all eight planets and the comet system, but two outer ones were depicted as having vaguely elliptical orbits that drifted near the orbit of the sixth planet. I stared at the fourth planet, trying to see if Vespers itself was changed. The continents were all wrong, and the oceanic system seemed much broader and made more inroads into the continents and I remembered it did.