13. I was on the surface of Mars, in my suit. Dieter sat next to me in the rover. We drove over a slope into a deeply recessed vale at the bottom of which the giant creature waited. I don’t think we should go too near it, I said. Dieter did not reply but continued driving. My unease grew until it was almost panic and then the vehicle stopped.
I was standing next to the rover and Dieter was standing beside me. We mustn’t go too near, I said again. We must see what it is, he replied, and taking me by the arm he walked towards the creature. My fear mounted until it finally coalesced into terror. I turned to run.
But now Dieter stood in my way, an iron grip on both my arms, and pushed me towards the creature. I could not run, I could not break free. My will strove in terror, but my body was weak, paralyzed. I felt the creature seize the back of my neck. It was going to impale me and there was nothing I could do…
I stirred. I was not awake but in a twilight state, between oblivion and consciousness. All was dark, silent and still. I became aware that I had emerged from a nightmare. Nothing to worry about. The thought was reassuring and after a few moments I subsided back into sleep.
It was early evening. I saw clouds lowering from above, heavy and black, laden with a deadly rain. All around me was a desolate landscape. Nothing grew, nothing moved, save the Wise with whom I stood and who now, as never before, felt the touch of fear.
Let us save ourselves, said Tubal the Mariner. The worm is grown. We must go.
Will we return? asked Noema the Fair.
Tubal turned his face away. I do not know.
The wind rose and lightning flashed from a thickening sky. The eyes of Noema were on the land spread around them, brown and grey in the weakening light. She took her husband’s arm and spoke in his ear: It is the curse.
There was a flicker of anger in his eyes. It is not for us.
Yes, she said. It is our burden as well as theirs.
Tubal the Mariner gazed at the leaden sky. We have never borne it and we never shall.
Noema spoke no more, but the sadness did not leave her face. I looked upwards. A drop fell on my cheek. Then another and another and then, in a rush, the burden of the clouds emptied upon me.
My eyes opened. It was pitch-dark. I was lying on my improvised camp bed, my face soaked by a rivulet that fell from the blackness above. I could hear the trickle and patter of falling drops around me. I knelt up and felt for the torch. Its dim, blue light showed the water falling unevenly on the earth, the branches above acting as umbrellas over patches of ground.
I opened my water bottle and set it under the rivulet. No point worrying about alien bacteria or viruses in the water that might kill me. If there were any I had already got them. I left the water bottle where I had placed it and found a spot for myself protected from the rain. As I lay down to resume my broken sleep I was content that at least one question had been answered. I now knew where the vegetation got its moisture. As the air cooled in the evening the humidity must have condensed into droplets that coalesced together and finally fell to the ground.
It was morning when I awoke. The rich green-gold light saturated the great natural hall, filling the silence of this seemingly uninhabited domain with its canvas of visual splendour. Breakfast was a spartan affair, a packet of dried fruit and a few mouthfuls of water. Until I knew if edible food were to be had in this world I would go on half rations. I examined my water bottle. There was enough for today and perhaps tomorrow after which I would have to find an additional source of water besides what I could catch of the rain. I decided to postpone finding a solution to the water problem until later in the day. The aliens would surely know it was the most fundamental human requirement after oxygen. So far they had met my needs.
It was when breakfast was done and I stood up that I became aware of a slight throbbing at the back of my head. I raised a hand and felt the place. It took few seconds to realise that a small spot of my scalp was covered with a scab. The scab became painful if pressed. It was clearly an injury.
I crouched down and examined my makeshift bed. There was nothing sharp or hard that could have caused a wound and anything that did would have woken me up in any case. Then, gradually, the souvenir of the previous night’s disturbance surfaced in my memory. I began to feel alarm. Something had inflicted a wound on my head whilst I slept. The wound seemed to be about five centimetres wide. Not an insect bite. At least it was proof that I did not share this environment just with plants.
After a few minutes deliberation I concluded that there was nothing I could do. The wound might be superficial or serious, it might heal or become infected. It didn’t matter, I couldn’t treat it.
For now there were two options. Wait here indefinitely until something happened, or continue my exploration. Doing nothing whilst my supplies slowly ran out was not appealing. I opted for exploration. This time I would go in the opposite direction and investigate the other end of the great vessel. I decided to bring my pack along with me. If I found a water source I would set up camp next to it. Food was a problem I would think about later. Where the hell were the aliens?
The only point I would be able to get close to the great bar of light was where it was anchored in the walls at the sunlit end of the ship, opposite the darkened aperture I had scaled the previous day. The trees there grew high up the slope but did not reach the luminous pillar that stretched across the central axis of the ship.
I had made the mistake of leaving my binoculars on Mars, and could not make out any details at that distance, nonetheless I had noticed something peculiar: a collection of regularly-spaced protuberances clustered around the area where the tube of light met the concave wall. They were round in shape, low domes that formed a perfect circle around the ship’s central axis. They were not metallic, but seemed to be made of the same material as the rest of the ground. Some of the upper branches of the trees reached as far as them. It might be possible to climb up and investigate them.
The question now was, which route to take? I could walk to the end of the ship and try to work my way up the sheer slope or I could climb the tree I had scaled yesterday and continue my ascent to the topmost canopy, then walk along it to the end of the vessel, hopefully finding branches that I could use for the last leg of my trip. Scaling the slope was not an appealing option. The ascent would become steeper until I found myself climbing a cliff. Gravity would lessen, but should I lose my grip I would fall, slowly at first, but with gathering speed, until I hit something that arrested my descent. I could break an arm or a leg, or worse. Better to use the trees.
So far I had found only one that could be scaled. I didn’t want to waste any more time so I made my way back to it and began to climb. I reached the first canopy without too much difficulty. The vines wound round the tree trunk to the next level and could be used for handholds and footholds. I worked my way carefully upwards, aware of how high I was.
Midway up I looked down. The green carpet of leaf looked solid enough, but a fall from this height would mean breaking through the fragile network of branch and shoot, and a certain death on the forest floor below. I sensed my fragility. So much of a man’s confidence comes from the knowledge that others will help him if he gets into trouble. It is only when he is marooned, alone, that he becomes aware of his vulnerability. Death was always near. I could not make a single mistake.
The second canopy was better-lit than the first. The topmost canopy above me was an irregular web of branch and vine, punctuated by gaps through which the light shone, more brightly as I was now appreciably nearer its source. I could feel its warmth on my skin, like the morning sun on a cloudless day. The tree trunk had become thinner, but was still solid. The vines had also thinned. I didn’t like the look of them. I gripped one with both hands and tugged. It came away from the tree. I would have to find another way up.
Stepping out on a thicker branch I gingerly felt my way across the canopy floor. ‘Floor’ is a misnomer. It was an irregular, illusory surface from which outgrowths splayed upwards alongside gaps that opened to the canopy below. The branch I edged along gradually rose upwards, finally reaching an apex and intertwining with a branch that arched over from a tree trunk on the other side of the canopy space.
Crossing from one woody walkway to the other was not as difficult as I feared. The two were solidly joined and accepted my weight without sagging at all. I reached the second trunk which looked as if it could be scaled. Several small branches splayed out from its bark, forming steps that proved firm when I tested them.
Slowly and carefully I felt my way up to the topmost level. I emerged above its corona of branches into a light that was hard and bright. The air was noticeably dryer here, and the radiation felt like a noonday desert sun on my skin. The heat was not uncomfortable, but I suspected that I would get sunburnt if I spent too much time under it.
The greatest change though was the view. Above and around me spread the vast, open space of the ship, bisected by the central pillar that shone down on the carpet of forest below. I could see the nearer end of the vessel clearly. The protuberances I had just been able to make out from the far end were now evident. The forest flowed up the concave slope at the end of the ship where topmost branches crept up like tendrils to the irregular structures clustered round the central pillar of light. The trick now was to traverse the forest roof and make the final ascent.
The surface of the third canopy did not even give the illusion of being a solid floor. It was a web of interlocking branches held together by a thin lattice work of vines. To make my way from tree to tree would take good judgement, care and luck. I would have used the lower canopies if it had been at all possible to see where I was going. Only up here was the ship’s layout visible. I had no choice if I wanted to reach those domes without losing time.
I chose the largest branch that arched out in the direction I wanted and felt my way along it. It was initially firm but became increasingly springy the further along I went. By the time I had reached midpoint between the two trees it connected I was on my hands and feet. The main branch had divided into smaller and smaller branches and the one I was edging along now seemed barely able to hold my weight. Once, I lost my balance and found myself hanging from the branch by one hand. If I let go I would plunge to the canopy below and either break a leg or, more probably, smash through and continue my fall to the forest ground. Carefully, trembling and sweating, I hauled myself up until I lay on the top of the branch again. This is insane, I thought. But there was no point going back now. Best just to carry on.
Finally, after an age, I reached the next tree trunk. It was then a case of repeating the entire process of working my way along a fragile branch until I reached the next tree, and the next after that. I had no more slips. Either I was getting good at playing a monkey or gravity was lessening as the trees climbed the slope at the extremity of the ship. In any case, after nearly two hours of nerve-wracking progress I reached my destination.
I was nearly weightless, with the same buoyancy I had felt when I reached the top of the slope at the opposite end of the forest. A network of tendrils fastened the end of the branch I was on to the protuberance I had seen earlier. My hunch was right: It had the same deliberately moulded look of the chair in the gourd that had brought me from Mars. More importantly, it had a doorway.
There wasn’t a better term to describe it. A rectangular gap about two metres high, it rose from the point just below where the protuberance met the main wall, opening into a passageway with large steps—each three feet in height—that led upwards before disappearing from view. The size of the steps seemed to indicate a large creature, or perhaps one that liked hopping. Then it came to me. Of course. With gravity this weak one moved more conveniently at a bounding jog than by walking. The steps were designed for a human or something human-sized.
Below the doorway a row of deep recesses were carved into the wall, each the width of a palm and about two feet long. They were spaced about two feet apart and it was difficult to conceive of them as anything else but handholds, leading downwards to the greenery below where they disappeared from view. I could easily have used them to climb up here from the ground.
If a thing’s worth doing it’s worth doing badly. At least I had got here. The next step was to find out what ‘here’ was. I began to feel an overwhelming apprehension at the thought of entering that passage. It was due perhaps to the realisation that this was the moment of truth. I was going to meet the creatures that had made this world and learn what fate they had in store for me. There is nothing more repugnant than trusting oneself to something completely unknown that had as yet given no hint of benevolence or indeed of any humanly recognisable reaction to my presence. But from the instant I entered the elevator pod I had abandoned all my options. I had no choice but to see this thing through to the end.
The tricky part was reaching the doorway without falling to the ground below. The tendrils of the vine-entwined branch I straddled fastened themselves to the wall of the domelike protuberance, but did not reach the doorway itself. I would have to launch myself towards it and make sure I didn’t miss. There would be no second chance.
After a few minutes deliberation I decided that the best way would be to hang from the branch by my hands and pull myself along it until I had sufficient momentum before letting go. With luck and judgement I would land right inside the entrance.
It was a mistake. Seeing nothing beneath me except a fragile canopy dozens of metres below, my instinct of self-preservation kicked in and in a surge of sudden panic I released my grip a fraction too late. In near weightlessness I sailed towards the doorway and then began to fall below it. With a kick I wrenched my body around till I was pointing head first, my hands stretched frantically before me. Gathering speed I fell below the first few recesses in the wall. My fingertips brushed the wall below the next one, then the next, and then….my fingers closed on the rounded indentation of a recess, swinging my body downwards and forwards, slamming it with sickening force against the wall. I lost my hold for a moment, but at least I was no longer falling. A second later I had a firm grip on the recess whilst my feet scrabbled for a foothold further down. Once secure I did not move for a long time until the trembling in my arms and legs finally subsided and my breathing returned to normal.
I glanced up. The doorway was about thirty feet above me. Slowly, carefully, I climbed the wall, pausing at the top to raise my head above the base of the entrance. The strangely large steps ended at a passageway that seemed to penetrate straight into the wall of the vessel. Gingerly lifting myself over the edge I stood at the bottom step and listened. Five minutes of utter silence confirmed that my near-demise had apparently gone unnoticed. For a moment I deliberated descending to the forest floor and waiting for the makers of this world to come and find me, then, quelling my fear, I tried a tiny hop to test my weight before making a leap to the next step above me.
It was surprisingly easy. Bounding effortlessly from step to step I continued upwards. As I left the light behind me I became aware of a familiar gleam of orange emanating from the passage walls. It was like the illumination that had lit the interior of the elevator pod during my journey from the Martian surface. As I reached the top step at the entrance to the passageway I stopped and, crouching down slowly to keep my balance, examined the floor. It was like the substance that had lined of the inside of the gourd. I took a closer look at the steps. They had no sharp edges and were slightly irregular as if they had grown into their present shape. It was peculiar but I gave it only a moment’s thought. Something more important lay ahead.
The passage was about ten metres long and ended in a doorway. At least I assumed it was a doorway despite having the same rounded irregularity like everything else that passed for architecture here. This time though the door was shut. Its surface, a gleaming russet pattern, was set back slightly from its frame. I placed my hand against it and pushed. It did not move.
I banged my fist against the glowing surface. “What do you want from me? I’m here dammit!” I waited a full minute. There was no response. I sat down slowly and leaned against the passage wall opposite the door. All I could do now was wait.
An hour passed in complete silence and I finally realised that there was nothing to wait for. If the aliens intended to meet me they were not doing it here. There was one course of action left: return to my campsite and wait until they introduced themselves or I starved to death. I rose wearily and retraced my steps down the passageway. The sense of anticlimax almost physically weighed me down.
At the entrance I paused only a moment to take in the curved green vista before me. The strange wonder of this place was fading as my former apprehension at the unknown began to give way to a gnawing anxiety that there was nothing further to know. A new theory had formed in my mind. This vast alien ship was empty, another Rama, with more trees and no biots, that had picked me up from the Martian surface simply because that was what it was programmed to do, not distinguishing between its own creators and an alien race whose physical dimensions were roughly the same. I had been brought here by mistake.
As I climbed down from the doorway towards the forest floor below I turned the theory over in my mind. The vessel had shown no interest in the Terra Nova but had dropped an elevator pod to the ground near where the Hab and Shirase had landed. Perhaps that was its purpose: go to a planet and pick up colonists, scouts, surveyors or whatever, and take them back to its home planet, or perhaps on to some other destination. Having brought me here it might have considered its job done: I was to hibernate or eat leaves for the following few thousand years until it called on the next star. The thought was not comforting.
After a time the handholds imperceptibly began to metamorphose into steps. Gravity had become stronger and I was able to turn about and walk down a stairway to the floor below. Eventually the steps disappeared altogether and I was descending along a path that led over a moss-covered slope. The path followed a fairly straight course through the trees, skirting the odd bush here and there. It seemed to be heading towards my original campsite but gradually petered out in the shrubbery and undergrowth long before it reached it. It was when I could barely make it out in the detritus of the forest floor that the realisation dawned on me. A path? Made by whom?
I retraced my steps until I could see the trail clearly again. Crouching down on my haunches I examined the ground closely. The vegetation was sparser on the pathway and pressed down, as if many feet had walked on it. I was not the only entity in this place capable of locomotion, nor the only one who recently—within the last few weeks at the most—had descended from the stairway above. I stood up and looked around. What the hell was going on?
Examining carefully every foot of the path I became aware of fainter trails leading away from it before disappearing under the greenery. There was not one path but many, radiating out in all directions from a central axis that joined the base of the stairway. My hunch had been right. Those protuberances around the central column of light were important. They were the focal point for the creatures that inhabited the vessel. They were where they lived. So if I had been invited on board, why was I kept outdoors? All I could do was wait for the answer.
Back at the well-glade I made myself as comfortable as possible until evening when I supped on a handful of fruit washed down with two mouthfuls of water. Even though it was certain there were beings on this ship of a higher order than plants, probably intelligent as they had to know how to open that door at the end of the passageway, I decided that prudence was the best course of action. The aliens might have their own notion of timing. Perhaps obliging a visitor to wait a week or two before making introductions was considered polite. I could only hope they stopped short of letting a guest die of hunger and thirst.
The meal concluded, I switched on the video camera and made my report. “Commander Montague. Second day on the alien vessel. Seventeen hundred hours. I have explored the domelike structures clustered round the light tube that runs down the central axis of the vessel. When I reached the domes using the trees I discovered handholds leading up to an entrance in the vessel wall at the base of one of the domes.
“The entrance led to a passage about ten metres long that comes to a dead end. The passageway walls gave the same illumination I experienced in the pod. Its source seems to be some sort of biological organism, but I can’t be sure since I have no means of testing it. At the end of the passage is what appears to be a shut door which I could not open. I left the passage and descended to the vessel floor using the handholds. These turned into steps when the gradient became more gentle.
“There are definitely inhabitants in the vessel. A beaten path leads from the bottom of the stairs into the forest before splitting up and fading out in the forest floor. So I presume the creatures walk and, judging by the width of the path, are not substantially larger or smaller than a man. The spacing of the steps and the intervals between the handholds confirms this. I don’t know if it is a coincidence or intentional. It is possible that intelligent creatures interested in our planet share a lifeform that resembles ours. Life on similar worlds may tend to take similar shapes. But since I have not yet seen anything more sophisticated than a plant I can only speculate, and frankly I’m getting sick of doing that. Montague out.”
It was becoming dark, so arranging my bed under a tree that would provide better protection against the rain, I lay down and was soon asleep.
I stood in the shelter of rock, the fury of a gale above our heads.
The winds are terrible and nothing stands before them. We cannot abide here.
Noema the Fair saw the despair in the eyes of Tubal.
We have been to thrice a hundred worlds, she said, and everywhere it is the same. There is nowhere we can live.
We could see thrice a hundred more and still have not begun to explore the vastness of the heavens, he replied. We have time.
Noema shook her head. We do not.
In the voice of Tubal there was a strange hardness. We can never return. All we loved is ruin and would be ruin still at our coming. We who were the mighty ones, we alone are left. We can never return.
The wind grew louder, its noise rising to a shriek as it found their refuge and pried the boulders apart.
I awoke with a gasp. My face was damp with sweat, my heart thumping. After a moment I heard the shriek again, only it was not wind. Somewhere in the darkness something was calling out in pain or terror, its voice shrill. I felt for my torch and switched it on. Its weak light illuminated a ground leached of colour.
There. The shriek again, a high-pitched sound as if from a small animal. I stood up. I had no weapon and no time to improvise one, but it was imperative that I find out what was making that sound. After a moment the cry was repeated and I headed towards it, torch in hand. Before long I sensed I was close to the source of the sound and paused, playing my torch back and forth in the darkness. There. Something moving in what looked like a clump of vegetation. I approached slowly, one cautious step at a time.
The clump was a low bush with thick, gnarled branches that rose about three feet from the forest floor. It had few leaves but its twisted bark was covered with thorns. Between the branches a small winged creature was trapped, fluttering spasmodically as it tried to escape. As I drew near it stopped moving, giving me the chance to examine it more closely.
It was about eight inches long and seemed to be a cross between a bat and a bird—at least, the narrow, pointed beak was birdlike enough but the ribbed wings resembled those of a bat. Its body seemed to be covered with a fine, downy fur, brown-grey on the top and cream-coloured underneath. Its wings extended into its legs but these were larger than those of a bat and the creature stood upright on them, remaining motionless as I shone my torch on it. It seemed harmless enough. I could see nothing that corresponded to teeth, claws, barbs or stingers.
During my examination the creature’s eyes had been fixed on me but after a few minutes its gaze darted away, resuming its search for an avenue of escape. It was patently clear that whatever the thing was, it had not made the path and was not intelligent.
“All right, I’ll get you out,” I murmured, and began to work on the network of branches that trapped the creature. Taking care not to touch the thorns—I had no idea if they were poisonous or not—I bent back one branch until it snapped, then broke the next, and the next, until I had made a large hole in the cage. Rising to my feet I stood back and waited. Still the creature did not move. “You’ll get used to the idea,” I said, and turned back towards the campsite. A few moments later a fluttering of wings above told me the bat-bird had finally worked out it was free.
Stretched out on my bed I thought about the incident. Why had I seen this creature only now? Perhaps it had the nocturnal habits of an owl and flew only at night, silently. But how had it got into that bush? I had examined the shrub thoroughly and there had been no gap nearly large enough for the bat-bird to get through without impaling itself on those wicked-looking thorns. It had been well and truly trapped, so how had it entered the trap in the first place?
Perhaps the bush was carnivorous, closing its branches on any prey that touched it, like a venus fly trap. That was possible. It had shown no sign of movement whilst I methodically ripped it apart, but plants capable of movement can’t necessarily move much. Once it had closed its trap with a snap, it might take a long time to open it again, and it might have no defence against interference except its thorns. I sighed. Just another unanswered question about this strange realm. Giving up further speculation, I soon fell asleep.
14. Day three dawned without any rain having fallen during the night. Rainfall was not a daily occurrence, which made sense: it would take time for all the water that had precipitated in an evening to evaporate back into the air again. I resolved to record how often it did rain and arrange my sleeping habits accordingly. The night had been uncomfortable. Not only had I missed my springy pillow, but a dip in the ground next to it accommodated my body nicely, and was made up of softer material than the surrounding forest floor. It was a perfect natural bed.
It was when I turned my head to the side after opening my eyes that I got my next surprise. There, next to me, on the ground, was a sizeable pile of berries and nuts. I leaned across to examine them. They had been put there whilst I slept. I could not identify their species though they looked ordinary enough. I hesitated a few moments then, on impulse, reached over to my pack. Pulling out my tablet I aimed its built-in video camera at the pile and took a clip, moving the tablet from side to side to get different views. Then opening the Search function, I narrowed the field to Biology, uploaded the video and tapped Enter. After a few moments the results came up: 0—no known species.
What the hell, I thought, and popped a berry in my mouth. It was sweet, rather like a strawberry but without the bitter undertaste. I tried a nut next. It tasted exactly like a nut, that is to say a peanut but with a more crumbly texture. After a few minutes I was full, having finished off about half the pile. It didn’t occur to me to be frugal. There was plenty more where it had come from and I would let the aliens know, by how much I ate, what my needs were.
The gift of food was immensely heartening. I was to be kept alive and could strike survival off my list of immediate concerns. The big question now was, what to do next? Something had put the food next to me but had taken care not to reveal itself. Clearly the time had not yet come for introductions. I could just hang around the campsite until my host came along or I could resume my explorations. Either seemed a good choice, but hanging around was boring, so I opted for exploration.
There was one part of the vessel I had not yet investigated, the vast, dark cavern beyond the narrow aperture that divided the alien ship into two halves. The air was breathable over there and I could use a torch for light. If I got lost the aperture itself would be a reference point. I was certain sufficient light filtered though it to make it visible in the blackness beyond. No matter where I was in that area of perpetual night I would always be able to find my way out.
Having made my mind up, it was necessary to get a move on right away. ‘Days’ were twenty-four hours long, giving twelve hours of light of which I had about eleven left. I did not relish the prospect of being caught in that black space when the light failed. I would be unable to return until the next day. It was unlikely to be dangerous but it would be uncomfortable: from what I had already seen the ground there would probably be as hard as rock.
I decided to take my pack along with me in the eventuality of being obliged to stay away from my campsite for longer than a day. Adding the berries and nuts to my stock of food, I made a quick report before setting out.
“Commander Montague. Time oh seven hundred hours January twenty-second. I have been supplied food by the vessel’s occupants. A kind of berry and nut, both of indeterminate species. So far no sign of the occupants themselves. I have decided to explore the far end of the alien vessel as I suspect there might be something I am expected to do before the occupants make contact. This could involve the far end of the vessel. Just a theory but worth testing. Montague out.”
As I retraced my steps along the route I had taken the first day I became aware of a sense of adventure returning to me. There was an enormous mystery about this strange vessel and I was going to find out what it was. The mystery went beyond the vessel being an alien craft. It wasn’t its alienness that was so peculiar, but the fact that it wasn’t alien enough. The trees and shrubs looked too much like trees and shrubs, that bat-bird looked too much like a bat and a bird, paths, steps, doorways that were too humanlike, a day as long as a day on Earth….
As I began the climb through the fern forest a new thought came to me. This ship had been made for humans. I stopped walking and looked around. Yes, not quite Earth but sufficiently earthlike to accommodate people, containing everything we needed to live: air, light, water, gravity, food. I resumed my progress, developing the hypothesis. The alien ship had been heading for Earth before it diverted to Mars. Did its builders know Earth would be hit by Ganymed? That would imply an inconceivably detailed knowledge of every natural body in our solar system. Ganymed had been the result of a series of remote coincidences. Something that diverted a planetesimal on a path intersecting the orbit of Ganymed at just the right time and angle, sending the asteroid on a new path that would intersect Earth’s orbit, again at just the right time and angle. Could an alien civilisation tens or hundreds of light-years away have known all this? It didn’t seem possible.
If the alien vessel had been created to go to Earth, why had it diverted to Mars? Its builders would have known Mars was uninhabitable. Unless the vessel had detected the ships orbiting Mars and decided to collect its humans from there. It might have seen that as the safer option. After all, humanity would hardly have looked kindly on a five-kilometre long alien spacecraft orbiting their planet. Maybe it just wanted a few humans—enough to populate the vessel and remain in existence by breeding until it reached its final destination—which made Mars a viable alternative destination. It might not have known that the projected five spacers that were supposed to land on Mars had been reduced to one.
I sighed. The trouble with too few facts is that theories grow on them like weeds. I did not have the answers yet. I would have to wait.
I resumed my progress and did not stop until I had reached the top of the narrow opening that separated the two halves of the vessel. I turned around—slowly in the light gravity—and gazed at the sunlit forest before me. How many people could live here? It all depended on how many food-bearing plants grew between the trees that spread their green expanse around the surface of the vast cylinder. Thousands, perhaps?
I did a mental calculation. This part of the vessel was about a kilometre and a half in length, and the same distance in width. That made the surface area 1.5 x π x 1.5km2 = 7km2, more or less. A human being could live indefinitely on an acre of cultivated land. There are 247 acres to a square kilometre so the total number of people that could be supported was 1729.
But this presumed that all the ground was being assiduously cultivated. Thus far I had not seen any sign of crops, and the forest canopy cut out light from the central tube, diminishing the amount of vegetation, including edible plants, that could grow below. But those nuts and berries came from somewhere. The smallest population that could remain safely free of the problems of genetic inbreeding was about 200 individuals. If just twelve percent of the ground was cultivated the vessel could support a human community indefinitely. It would do fine as an ark.
I turned around and bounced slowly across to the other side of the aperture. The light was dim here and beyond it lay an impenetrable blackness. From where I stood the space stretched for more than three kilometres before it reached the far end of the ship. Why was this section of the ship denied life-giving light? What was down there? Time to find out.
I took off my backpack and pulled out my torch. Hoisting the pack over my shoulders again I began a slow descent into the darkness. After a few minutes it became necessary to use the torch to see the ground before my feet. I crouched down and felt it. It was slightly irregular in shape and as hard as granite.
The torch had a range of about twenty meters. If used continuously its battery would last about a day, nonetheless I decided to keep the torch on only when moving. If I stopped to rest I would switch it off. I had no idea how many times I would coming back here. An area of 15 square kilometres was a lot to explore when one could see only a few metres in any direction.
From time to time I glanced behind me. The opening to the lit part of the vessel was faintly visible and would serve as a compass. My plan was to head straight for the far end of the vessel and see if any steps existed to take me up to the point where the darkened central tube met the ship’s wall. Logic suggested that if there were places of habitation at one end of the vessel, there might just be at the other. It did not seem likely that anything actually lived in this darkness, but I might find something—an artefact, a clue—that would give me an idea of what I was dealing with.
The stony slope led steadily downwards, its irregular surface providing good traction as I descended cautiously in the fractional gravity. It took about an hour to reach the bottom. Once on the level I expected to find the ground flat and featureless, but after a few metres I met my first surprise: what looked like a squat, tubular boulder, roughly round in shape and several metres across. Its top was uneven, jagged almost. I walked around it, playing my torch over its surface which was grained by scored indentations running from top to bottom. The base of the boulder was wide, arms of rock splaying out from the central core and sinking into the ground. For many minutes I could not make it out. Eventually the realisation seeped into me. It was a tree stump.
I moved on. Before long I encountered another, smaller than the first, less distinctly tree-like in shape, but still recognisable. And then a third like it. The fourth looked more like a squat and rounded boulder than a stump, but the basic shape was still there although the tree-like details were gone. It was as if the trees had fallen, leaving only their bases that gradually weathered away or were reabsorbed into the ground they originally sprouted from, the process having gone on for longer the further from the light I went. I retraced my steps to the first stump and drew my tablet from its suit pouch.
“Commander Montague. I have descended to the floor of the darkened half of the alien vessel, or I should say two thirds. I have come across several examples of what are undeniably the remains of dead trees. I am filming one now.”
With the video camera on I walked slowly around the stump, taking views of all sides.
“The tree stumps give every sign of being more ancient the further I progress from the lit part of the vessel. The conclusion is clear—the trees furthest away from the light died first, followed by those nearer to it. This suggests that the light has gradually receded from this part of the ship. It must have originally lit the entire interior space. Which leads to the hypothesis that the power source of the vessel is failing, logical given its immense age. The vessel must have been in space for thousands of years. The question now is how much power does it have left? Montague out.”
Besides the stumps I saw little to suggest life had once existed here. Every now and then my foot stubbed against larger irregularities that might have been the stonelike remains of smaller plants or just a more pronounced unevenness in the ground. My progress was slow. I moved cautiously, peering around me for anything that might be unusual, and glancing back constantly to ensure I was still travelling in roughly a straight line.
There was no sound. The forest had also been quiet except when it rained, but visually it was an explosion of colour and light. Here, the darkness and utter silence weighed on me, awakening a deep, instinctive ancestral fear. I was exposed, vulnerable, alone, in the midst of the unknown. It took every ounce of strength of my rational mind to force down my fear. This is their world. It’s not the wilds. If they wanted to kill you they would have done it long ago.
The further on I went the less noticeable the stumps became until all trace of them was gone. The ground remained rough and slightly irregular, but was otherwise flat. How long would it take for dead trees to completely weather away? There was no rain here—the air was dry—and no wind. What caused them to crumble gradually into oblivion?
I checked my watch. I had been on the move for about three hours. It was difficult to tell how far I had progressed. The distance from the bottom of the slope to the far end of the vessel could not be much more than three kilometres. I had been taking my time, moving slowly and stopping frequently to look around. It was time to pick up the pace. Breaking into a steady stride I resolved not to stop until I had reached the ground sloped up to meet the dead central tube above, and then look for steps or some means of climbing to the top. For about half an hour there was no change in the grey, featureless expanse my torch was able to illuminate, and then without warning, before me, a wall appeared in the gloom.
Looking left and right my torch did not show the ends of it. It was a regular structure of stone slabs with a worn and weathered look about it. The surface of the slabs was pitted and scored. There was no visible entrance, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t one further along out of sight. The wall was about four metres high. I could just about reach the top if I made a determined jump. The half-G gravity would enable me to get my arms over the parapet before I fell back. It would be a last resort; I preferred looking for a doorway first.
For no particular reason I decided to turn right and explore that half of the structure. As I made my way along the wall I pulled out my tablet and took a video clip.
“Commander Montague. Time 11.45. I have encountered a structure of some kind. It has the initial look of a wall from what I can see with my torch. Filming it now. No indication yet how large it is or for what purpose it was built. It is made of a different substance to the tree stumps and ground. Seems to be real stone but of course no way of verifying that just yet. I am looking for an entrance. Hang on. Something ahead. A rectangular gap with a frame of projecting stones. No way of telling how deep it is. Taking a shot of it before I go in. Wait, what’s that?”
I paused in my report and looked closely. A huge stone lintel traversed the top of the gap, which was evidently an entrance. On the lintel faint lines were etched. I played my torch over them. They were odd yet, like everything else I had seen, also somehow familiar. From a distance the tablet screen did not display them clearly, so opening the Draw application I made a crude copy of them with my finger on the tablet screen.
That done, I took closeup pictures of each section of the inscription. Later I would stitch them together and transmit the complete image to Earth if the chance of sending a transmission ever arose. I then spent a quarter of an hour looking through cuneiform alphabets on my tablet.
“Montague here. There are rather crudely carved impressions in the lintel above the doorway—I’m convinced it is a doorway. I count thirteen symbols, maybe fourteen if the last is two separate symbols. The first looks like a waveform, but could be anything….the fifth looks clearly like the sun, or a sun. Not sure about the rest. The eighth is plantlike maybe. Umm…two symbols appear twice, the circles and the triangle, perhaps also the wedges at the end. It seems to be a language of some kind…sequential characters and repetition. A kind of cuneiform, semi-abstract, not pictures, not true letters. Looks like it’s out of a bronze age culture. What’s it doing here?”
I shone my torch through the entrance. A passageway, about two metres wide and high, ran straight into the wall—which I began to suspect was a building—disappearing in the darkness. Putting the tablet away, I hoisted my pack and, with a sense of mounting excitement, went in.
The passage walls had the texture of smooth and slightly worn stone but were otherwise featureless. There was no trace of any carving or ornamentation. The passageway did not bend right or left, but continued straight into the heart of what was now evidently a building. I advanced slowly, peering ahead into the blackness beyond the reach of the torch. Counting my steps, I estimated I had covered about thirty metres when the passageway suddenly opened into a large chamber.
It was a hall, with a square floor plan from what I could make out and walls that became a sloping ceiling arching to an apex high above. I was vaguely reminded of the pantheon. The walls and ceiling were as bare of decoration as the passage, but they held my attention only for an instant. The entire floor area was covered with what looked like stone blocks, each about three metres long, a metre wide and a metre and a half high, all arranged in a regular grid pattern. It took me a few moments to notice there was a slab on the top of each block. They were in all likelihood hollow. I realised they were containers of some kind.
I shone my torch around, piercing the shadows for any sign of movement. Nothing. After three full minutes I approached the nearest block. The slab would have been impossibly heavy to shift in Earth gravity, and at a half-G I could still barely move it. I could not bodily lift it off and place it on the ground so, after a long hesitation, I pushed it from one side with both hands until it fell off and hit the ground with a thud. Without waiting to see if the slab was broken I shone the torch inside the block. It was indeed hollow, and contained a human skeleton.
I jumped back, involuntarily. After a few moments I shone my torch around the room. The primordial panic I had felt in the outside darkness was upon me again. I took time to calm myself, breathing slowly and deeply. Slowly, my shock subsided and I began to take in the details.
The skeleton was partly covered in corroded fragments of grey cloth, evidently clothing. Wisps of hair still clung around the skull. The right hand had several rings around the phalanges. I leaned down and examined them closely. The rings were simple round bands, without jewels or any ornamentation, and were made of what looked like bronze. I pulled a small pocket knife from my pack and, opening it, tested the point against the ring. A small dent confirmed the metal was soft. The ring was pure gold or near it.
Replacing my knife back in my pack I went over to the next block and with an effort shoved its lid off. Its interior also held a skeleton. Repeating the process with the neighbouring blocks revealed that they had similar occupants.
I took out my tablet and pushed Record. “Commander Montague here. I have reached a large interior chamber within the structure. It contains hundreds of stone containers, each with what looks like a human skeleton, with jewellery and remains of clothing. There is nothing else in this chamber except a doorway on the far wall opening to what looks like a passage. My first impression is that it is tomb or mausoleum of some kind. Filming it now.”
I switched on the tablet’s camera and toured around one sarcophagus. As I did so an idea came to me. “I will do a video analysis of the skeletons and see if anything specific comes up.” Opening Search, I chose Osteology and uploaded the video clip I had just taken. After a moment the result came up: Humanoid. Species unknown.
Placing the tablet on the edge of the sarcophagus I opened the holographic keyboard and typed: Probability bones are human?
Insufficient data.
All right then, I’ll give you some more.
I took video clips of five other skeletons, uploaded them and retyped my question. This time the answer was detailed.
Probability low.
Anomalies common to all samples
Skull average 5% larger than normal.
Cranium abnormally elongated.
Eye sockets larger than normal.
Spinal vertebrae abnormally thick.
Three thoracic vertebrae missing.
One lumbar vertebra missing.
Anomalies common to 2 samples
Humerus abnormally thick.
Ulna abnormally thick.
Radius abnormally thick.
Femur abnormally thick.
Extra protuberance on femur similar to lesser trochanter.
Tibia abnormally thick.
Going over to the nearest sarcophagus I examined the skeleton. Yes, there was something odd about the skull, not immediately noticeable. The eye sockets were large and the cranium just a little too long. I counted the vertebrae. 22 instead of the mandatory 26.
I typed in another question: Sex of 2 samples with common anomalies?
Unknown.
Patience, Jason. I rephrased the question: Sex of 2 samples with common anomalies if samples presumed human?
Male.
Sex of other 4 samples if samples presumed human?
Female.
So, a species with larger-than-life brains, eyes like a hawk, and males you wouldn’t want to meet in a dark alley at night. Almost but not quite human.
An impossible coincidence? Maybe not. The human body in many ways is an inferior design. Poor land speed, poor swimming ability, poor at climbing trees, incapable of flight, possessing little protection and no natural weapons against predators. However it is admirably suited to humanity’s one strong point: an intelligence that can make implements and use them. With his upper limbs completely free of the task of locomotion, possessing dexterous fingers and a fully articulated opposing thumb, a man could manufacture everything his body needed: clothing, shelter, protection, weapons, even locomotion. Any tools or arms he made he could use without compromising his ability to walk or run.
An intelligent alien race would have to possess the same facility, and so it was quite possible it would evolve from a lifeform similarly suited to the purpose as ours was.
I ran my eye over the skeleton. It was a theory that fitted the facts as well as any but—and I could not shake off a feeling of unease—it was just a theory.
I switched on the mike. “Montague here. Analysis indicates the bones are humanoid but probably not human. My best guess is that they are an alien race that resembles us as does their flora and fauna. It would explain why they chose to come to Earth. Our planet would be very similar to their own. But this is just speculation. I’ll examine a few other sarcophagi—these containers are clearly sarcophagi—and see if anything else comes up. Montague out.”
I moved between the sarcophagi, every now and then heaving a lid off. Each contained a skeleton, all likewise showing traces of clothing and some of jewellery. It was only when I reached the far end of the chamber that I made a new discovery. The sarcophagus in that corner had no lid and was empty. There were a total of 462 sarcophagi, arranged in 21 rows, each row with 22 stone containers. Presuming all the lidded sarcophagi were occupied that meant 462 sarcophagi and 461 bodies.
I shone the torch around at the walls again. The logic of the room told me there was one survivor. Someone who had made the paths and left me food. Why was he hiding from me? If he was afraid of me why had he brought me on board? I had come this far and still had no answers. There was nothing further to learn here. Time to move on.
The doorway at the far end of the chamber opened into a passageway that was identical to the one I had used to enter the building. It was dead-straight, with walls of smooth stone, and before long I was outside again. I shone my torch up at the lintel. There was no cuneiform or any other markings carved in it. For a few moments I considered going round the building to see if there was anything else of significance to be discovered, but eventually decided against it. I doubted there was anything more the edifice could tell me and time was running out. I glanced at my watch. I had been in the mausoleum for more than an hour. That left enough time to do a cursory exploration of the far end of the alien vessel and return to my campsite before darkness closed in.
I walked directly away from the doorway then stopped after about thirty metres. Looking back and upwards the gap leading to the lit part of the alien vessel was visible as a faint illuminated ring. For the next few hours it would serve as a compass until the light failed.
Setting off at a brisk pace I kept on going, checking behind me from time to time to make sure I was on course. After about twenty minutes the ground began to slope upwards. Once the slope was steep enough I changed direction, making a ninety degree turn to the left. I was looking for a stairway that resembled the one I had come down on at the opposite end of the vessel. The circumference of the vessel at this point was about 4 ½ kilometres. I calculated I would traverse it in a little more than an hour. If I did not find a stairway by then that would mean there wasn’t one to find.
The terrain was slightly irregular but otherwise featureless. Progress was a little awkward walking on a sloping surface but after a while my stride accommodated itself to the angled ground. After an hour and a quarter I stopped. There was no sign of a stairway.
I still had about five hours of light left but nothing else to look for. My only option was to head back to the camp. It was unlikely I would stumble across the mausoleum building again during my return. I had not thought to mark my path from it to the end of the vessel and in any case I didn’t have anything to use as markers.
Taking my bearings from the dim ring of light in the distance I set off down the slope. A quarter of an hour later I was on level ground. Besides the occasional fossilized tree stump I encountered nothing and did not really expect to come across anything more significant than I had already seen.
When visibility is poor one instinctively attunes one’s secondary senses, especially hearing. In this vast empty space there was nothing to hear except the sound of my breathing and the regular thud of my feet on the ground, but subconsciously I kept listening, and it was some time before my conscious mind became aware of what sounded like the faintest echo of my footsteps somewhere in the distance. My eyes and attention were focussed on keeping my progress aimed at the light ahead, but part of my mind quickly flitted through likely explanations. There was perhaps a large prominence reflecting the sound of my walking, a building maybe, possibly even the mausoleum I had visited earlier. My ears told me the almost imperceptible sounds did not have the pitch of an echo. They were more like a repetition of my steps, and their timing was slightly out.
I stopped abruptly. Turning around I shone my torch behind me. Just a grey bumpy plain. I switched the torch off and listened for a full minute. Nothing. I resumed my progress, straining my ears for any sound above the regular clump clump of my feet on the rocky surface, but there was no echo, no sounds at all except those I made myself.
It was becoming difficult to fight down a welling unease. My rational mind told me this was a spaceship, some kind of interstellar ark made by intelligent beings for the purpose of travelling to Earth, either to colonise, visit or save it. But what in heaven’s name did I know about this place? Where were the vessel’s builders? Besides the ship itself, what signs were there of an advanced civilisation? Nothing here made sense.
My imagination began to do its own rationalising. The humanlike creatures that had lived here had unusually strong bodies, evidenced by their thicker bones. They had a keen eyesight and larger brains than that of an average man, but large brains do not necessarily mean greater intelligence. Sperm whales, blue whales and elephants all have brains bigger than those of humans, but that does not make their behaviour any more rational or less dangerous than a man’s. The humanoid bodies in that mausoleum had been built for power, which argued a primitive, brutal existence.
Perhaps they were not the vessel’s builders at all, but its inmates, carried from one world to another, intelligent enough to wear clothing, admire simple jewellery, and scratch crude cuneiforms on a door lintel, but not intelligent enough to keep their aggressive or predatory instincts in check.
I think it was the strain of being utterly alone for too long in an alien environment. Whatever the cause, I abandoned caution and broke into a run. I wanted to reach the light up ahead, to escape from this vast, dark space, from whatever had lived here and might still be alive, against which I had no defence. My run lengthened into huge, loping strides in the half-G gravity. I did not glance at the ground; my eyes were fixed on the ring of sanctuary ahead of me.
I never saw the stump. My feet impacted into it, pitching my body forwards and downwards. My head crashed against the granite surface of the ground and I blacked out.