Solbidyum Wars Saga 5: Desolation (15 page)

I waited a few minutes before walking over and taking a closer look at the beast.  I expected it to be a smelly creature, but it wasn’t  I’ve smelled domestic dogs back on Earth that smelled far worse, and the woewe seemed to be well groomed as animals go.  I didn’t like the looks of its teeth though, and could only imagine how they ripped through flesh.  The paws were very fascinating with six toes that were more like fingers on the front paws, and it looked like the outer two served as thumbs, which meant the creature would be able to grip things with them.  The animal was large and must have weighed close to 400 kilograms.

I slowly walked around it and carefully over to the hole it had come out of.  Had it not been for the light amplification unit built into my helmet, I would have been unable to see down into the hole, but as it was I could see quite clearly what lay below.  Over the years, dirt must have blown in and piled up below the hole through the floor until it formed a natural ramp down into the portion of the building below the ground.  I moved down the ramp slowly, looking about in anticipation that there might be more woewe inside, but I saw none.  The air inside was a bit warmer than outside.  The room itself was about 10 meters square with the hole I had entered through being in the center of the room.  The ceiling height was about 4 meters above the floor.  The room itself seemed to be bare of all furnishing and other than for the pile of dirt in the center, there was nothing else present.  I noted one place on the floor in a corner where the floor seemed to have a swept and polished look, and I reasoned that this must be where the woewe had been sleeping and that it obviously was a very clean animal, because I didn’t see any signs of excreta about, so the animal must have gone outside to perform that task.

There were no windows along the walls but on one wall, I noted a large round stone that got my attention.  I had remembered seeing documentaries on TV back on my home world of cultures that used round stones as doors, rolling them to open and close.  I wondered if these might function similarly.  I went over to the stone disk and pushed on one side; the stone budged a little and then seemed to freeze.  When I removed my pressure on the rock, it seemed to move back into place again.  I took a closer look at the rock and realized that there was some dirt and small rocks wedged under the side that prevented it from rolling.  Carefully I knelt down and removed the dirt and tried to move the stone again; this time when I pushed there was no resistance, and it rolled relatively easily, revealing another room behind it.

Even though my helmet visor had light enhancing capabilities, it could not generate images in total darkness.  There had to be some source of light, no matter how dim or remote, such as starlight or the light of a Sisoma tree.  There was enough ambient light filtering in through the square hole in the outer room for me to see clearly in that room, but as I entered the second room things became dimmer.  Fortunately, the helmet had a built in light source, similar to LED  lights on Earth, that required minimal energy input and were powered from energy created by the body of the person wearing the helmet. This was done by electrodes embedded in the helmet that touched the skin on the wearer and through some sort of galvanic action, generated enough power to light the helmet light.  I reached up and switched the light on, brightening the room.

For a moment, I wasn’t sure what I was seeing, for certain here and there small pieces of the wall had detached themselves and fallen onto the floor, but where they hadn’t, richly colored pictures and symbols were painted.  My first impression was of seeing the tombs in Egypt, but a closer look and that resemblance was gone.  Symbols and figures covered the walls, and images of what I thought might have been the original natives of this world and the builders of this structure.  There was a sort of resemblance of these images and the muralam, not in the sense that they were the same, but in the way in which a monkey and a human resemble each other.  There certainly was a similarity.  There also were scenes of individuals riding on the backs of animals resembled woewe, and scenes that appeared to be of a ceremony with images of hot-air balloons in the sky and natives riding in them.  I remembered reading from the computer that it was believed that the inhabitants on the planet had achieved flight but not enough so as to be able to leave the planet.

I looked around the room.  At one time, there had been other furnishings in this room, but only scrap pieces now lay on the floor, and whatever items that had once been there, had deteriorated slowly away over time.  The stone-like structural material was all that remained.  At the other end of the room, another circular doorway presented itself but there was no stone door blocking it.  I moved through the door and found a long corridor leading away in both directions.

I picked one and started to follow and then realized that it was possible this structure was a labyrinth, I could get lost or trapped if I was not careful.  I decided I would only go a short way and come back.  I looked about carefully memorizing as many features as I could, so I would be able to find my way out again.  I walked only a short way down the hall before I came into another room.  Like the previous room, there was no stone at the door.  I stepped inside to find rather crude looking stone basins along the wall with some pipes coming out of the wall.  I expected that water or some liquid must have flowed through these pipes and poured into the basins.   There were no plugs or stoppers, though over the years, any that may have existed now had rotted or corroded away, it was also possible that there never were any plugs at all.   The function of these basins could have been many.  Possibly things were washed here, or perhaps it was where the inhabitants bathed.  They may also have been toilets, and a place where the residents relieved themselves; there was no way of knowing for sure.

Whatever liquid had once flowed through these pipes had long since ceased , and when I touched one of the pipes, it crumbled like dust, a victim to millennia of corrosion.  I did note the blue-green color of the dust, and the pipes deteriorated in my hands.  “Perhaps a copper alloy,” I thought, it might also have been bronze.  I was about to return to the surface when, in the distance, I heard a sound that I thought might be running water.  I went out into the hall and listened.  I heard it again in the opposite direction from the way I had come once I had entered the corridor.  I turned and went back; passing the door I had used to enter the corridor.  I paused and listened, the sound stronger now.  I continued to move down the corridor, counting the number of steps since I had passed the door that led out.  At one hundred and thirty two steps, I came to another door at the side of the corridor, and I could hear the sound of running water clearly coming from that direction.  I entered to find a very small room with a shaft going down.  I peered into the shaft, and there about 3 meters below me, I could see water leaking through a crack in the wall and running away down another corridor that ran beneath the room.

I saw where at one time ladder rungs had been placed in the wall, but they had long since corroded away and only stains remained around the holes where they had once existed.  I looked about and when I didn’t see anything else of interest, I returned to the room where I had entered the building.  I sealed the room shut again with the round stone and climbed up the dirt ramp and then cautiously looked out in the direction of the woewe, just in case another had come and joined it and was outside waiting.  However, nothing was there other than the corpse of the one I had killed earlier.  I wished there was some way to remove the body as I thought this might be a good place to sleep once the sun came up, but I didn’t know how fast a woewe would rot, and I didn’t want to be around to find out.

There was still about two hours until sunrise, and I wanted to explore as much of the area on the plateau as I could.  The way the Sisoma trees were lit up and spaced, it made the plateau look like a city park at Christmas time.  I saw a number of the boilatee crawling about and a number of the bat winged ball creatures feeding on the Sisoma, but I didn’t see any muralam, though that was no surprise with the woewe living nearby.  Now that the woewe was dead, the muralam would no doubt quickly populate the area.

I observed a lot of the mushroom like life forms sticking up from the ground.  The computer indicated that these were edible, but I was unwilling to give them a try just yet.  The computer had also indicated they were neither plants, animal nor fungus, but a totally different form of life.  I wondered how far they retreated underground after the sun came up and imagined they must have had some tube-like enclosure under the sand, much like marine tube worms back on Earth.  Just what were these things anyway?  What did they get their nourishment from and why did they bother to come to the surface every night?  The computer didn’t really say much about them, and since the scientists that had started to study the planet were more interested in possible minerals they might exploit, they hadn’t bother to study these life forms.

As I walked across the plateau, I observed a number of places where pieces of the flat pavement like structure existed, and I noted a number of other piles of rubble that might have once been buildings.  I examined several of these, but none revealed anything more than just busted up slabs of rocklike material.  It appeared that at one time this plateau was the site of a community, but now only the outlines of former shapes existed and there was no telling what went on here or how the inhabitants lived.  The best clues that existed were back in the underground structure where the woewe lived.  It was quite possible subterranean rooms existed under the rubble piles I was seeing, but I didn’t see any entrances that would allow me to access them if there were.  It made sense, that a good portion of their houses would be underground, since that would offer the best protection against the solar flares.  It was sad to think that a civilization could come so far and then be wiped out by forces beyond their control.

The thought quickly reminded me of Earth and what it was; now it was a dead world, save for a few microbes in the sea.  However, the destruction of the Earth was not an accident of nature.  The Tottalax had been the cause of Earth's destruction, and I had a good idea now how to make the Tottalax pay for their deeds, if only we could get off this planet.

By now light was beginning to glow along the horizon and the Sisoma trees were starting to dim and retract their fronds into their shells.  I watched amazed as the mushroom like life forms slowly seemed to deflate and shrink beneath the sand until not the slightest trace remained of them.  I observed the bat creatures head toward the higher regions of the mountain, and I wondered just where they went and spent their days.  Did they go and hang upside down in caves like Earth bats or did they crawl into holes dug into the cliff sides?  Were they edible, and did they taste like Earth chicken?  I laughed at this thought as I returned to the site where I had killed the woewe, with the intent to seek shelter during the day.

I was startled to see the carcass of the animal was covered with small crab like creatures that were devouring its corpse, and while they hadn’t made much progress so far, I could imagine that in another day or two there would be no trace of it left.  This must be what had happened to the woewe I had shot from the ship.  It had crawled off and died and been devoured by the small life forms of the planet; that would explain why I found no corpse.

I went down into the underground rooms and debated whether I would sleep in the first or second room.  I finally opted for the second after I discovered hand grips on the back side of the door that would allow me to open and close it from either side; but before I sealed myself in, I walked over to the cliff edge and looked down at the
ALI
where Kala, and the babies were.  I loved them dearly and I so wanted to be there with them.  I wondered if we would ever be rescued or if we had to live out our days here on Desolation, and if we did have to be here forever, what would our lives be like?  I called Kala before going inside to sleep and told her of the things I had discovered and told her I loved her.

Tomorrow I would be heading back when the sun set.  It was only after we had disconnected, and I had eaten and settled in to sleep for the day that I realized that over the next few months, I would need to make this trip many times to transfer supplies from the ship to this place, to set up a home here.  It was not going to be an easy task, but there wasn’t really any other choice that I could think of. Once the fusion reactor on the
ALI
failed, we would need another place to live, or we would die.

After I fell asleep I found myself dreaming I was back on the
NEW ORLEANS. 
A’Lappe and Cantolla were ballroom dancing as Kerabac sang Nat King Cole songs.  This was particularly comical as A’Lappe is quite short and dwarfish, while Cantolla was tall, slim and attractive.  Both were dressed in ballroom attire, with Cantolla wearing a long yellow dress and formal yellow gloves, and A’Lappe was dressed like a penguin in a black tux complete with tails.  Behind them Jenira, dressed like a Japanese ninja, was juggling five razor-sharp swords while Padaran and Admiral Regeny, both stripped above the waist, fought in a martial arts match.  Kala sat at a white linen clothed table trying to feed Reidecor and Lunnie, who both sat in high chairs next to her.   I awoke sometime late in the afternoon feeling very tired and sluggish and not at all in the mood to make the trek back down to the desert.  I ate a few more bites of my ration bar and drank about a half liter of water.  I would need to refill my bottle before beginning my trip back, but I knew that at least until I reached the desert floor and exited the canyon, I would have plenty of water to meet my needs.   I decided to get an early start before the sun had actually set, but first I called Kala.