The Seed Garden
By
David B. Reynolds-Moreton
SMASHWORDS EDITION
* * * * *
PUBLISHED BY:
D.B.Reynolds-Moreton on Smashwords
The Seed Garden
Copyright © 1999 by D.B.Reynolds-Moreton
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.
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The Seed Garden
THE STATEMENT
In the beginning was the PRIME STATEMENT and the DIRECTIVES, and the LAWS thereof, and the WORDS of the LAWS.
And the FIRST LAW when implemented shall condense energy into matter, so bringing about solidity. And the distance between points of solidity shall be called space, and shall thus create time, because of the distance between them.
And so shall come about matter, energy, space and time, and from these the SECOND LAW shall create the universe, and all that it shall contain...........
....and the last WORD of the last LAW shall be the driving force of all things created containing a Life Force, and that WORD shall be called SURVIVE....
Synopsis
Jed was the sole crew member on one of the giant ore ships which plied their trade across the galaxy. The ship’s detectors failed to notice a shower of meteorites which crippled the ship’s controls and communication equipment, leaving Jed the only chance of survival by using the emergency escape pod. Fortunately there was a planet just within range of the pod’s drive unit, but it was apparently devoid of all life forms, and very alien..........
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The Story.
The Arrival.
Jed stood at the top of a stony rise, looking down on the shattered remains of the big ship’s escape pod spread out before him like so much redundant metal in a scrap yard.
He still found it hard to believe that he had survived the horrendous landing on the planet with only a few minor bruises as the escape pod careered from one jagged rock to another, tearing itself to shreds in the process.
Why the ship’s detectors had not registered the oncoming shower of meteorites and deflected them with the repulsion shields, he would never know. The ship itself had been thrown off course and thundered on under full power, the heavy shielding of the engines protecting them from the meteoritic bombardment which had already ripped through the forward section, totally disabling the main control room.
Being the only person on board the giant ore ship, he only had himself to think about with regard to surviving the destruction which was going on all around him. The scream of tortured metal rent his ears at a painful level, and along with the pungent toxic fumes of burning plastic from the control room, which was now enthusiastically ablaze, he was also by assailed by pieces of flying wreckage and sprays of hydraulic fluid from ruptured control lines as the meteorite storm continued to dismember the ship around him.
As the air was sucked out of a multitude of small holes in the ship’s hull, it set up a series of screaming whistles, which apart from setting his teeth on edge, further emphasized the need to seek the sanctuary of the ship’s escape pod while there was still enough air to sustain him.
The escape pod was the only hope of survival he had. There was no time to think, only pure reaction from long training sessions would enable him to survive now.
With his head swimming from lack of oxygen, and the toxic fumes from just about everything which was combustible in the ship, he staggered into the pod’s antechamber, clamping the door closed behind him.
By the time he had fumbled and struggled into the space suit and clamped the helmet on, the pod’s door had automatically opened, being triggered by the anteroom's entry door being sealed shut.
Jed crawled through the small entry hatchway into the cramped confines of the pod, pulling the door closed behind him and activating the door’s locking device. After plugging his air hose into the receptacle on the side of the control panel, he simultaneously took a deep breath of pure clean air, and hit the pod’s release button.
Several seconds later, after the automatics had checked to see if everything had been done correctly, there was a lurch as the holding clamps released the pod and the power unit jetted it free from the main ship.
As the navigation and communication equipment had been the first to suffer the meteorite’s onslaught, there had been no time to send details of his mishap, and although the pod had a distress beacon, it was not intended for long distance broadcasting, and he knew for sure the signals would not reach his main base.
If the signals were picked up by some nearby ship, his oxygen might just about last until rescue, but as there had been no sign of other ships in this star cluster prior to the disaster, he realized the chance of someone coming to his aid was on the negative side of zero.
His only chance of prolonged survival was to find a suitable planet on which to land, and it would have to have water and an oxygen based atmosphere.
When his heartbeat had returned to as near normal as it was likely to get, Jed set about looking for a suitable solar system among the myriad pin points of light which might offer some hope of survival in the long term.
The pod’s instrumentation was very basic, as it was only intended to sustain life until rescue could be affected. But it did have a small viewing port, and it was through this that Jed scoured the heavens for a nearby sizeable sun with attendant planets.
At the bottom of the view port, a large blue white star shone brightly, and as the next nearest star only twinkled in the far hazy distance, he had little option other than to take a closer look at what was on offer.
The pod had acquired the same forward velocity as the main ship when they had parted company, so there was a considerable forward momentum, thus saving the rather small fuel reserves for manoeuvring, and the final approach to a planetary landing.
As the large blue white sun grew ever bigger in the view port, Jed caught a glimpse of sunlight reflecting off a lone planet as it circled the giant star. It was still a considerable distance away and would take a good twenty time units to get within close sighting distance.
As he had no other options open to him, Jed began the manoeuvre to bring the pod into an intersecting path with the tiny speck of light, resigning himself to the fact it was a chance in a million that the planet would be similar enough to his home world to support him.
There were several ‘pings’ as the outer fringes of the meteorite storm brushed against the side of the pod, but fortunately the particles were only very small, and no damage was done, although his heart missed the odd beat.
Checking the pod’s air pressure matched that in his helmet, Jed disconnected the air hose and removed the cumbersome headgear. Quite some time had to elapse before he would have to take control of the pod and guide it down to the planet’s surface, so he looked around for something to while away the time.
The controls were simple in the extreme, being a main drive unit with side thrusters for directional control, and a simple radar system indicating any other objects within the immediate area. He found the distress beacon switch and activated it. The tiny orange light blinked on and off, indicating that the signal was being sent out and giving him some comfort of a sort. It was most unlikely that anyone would pick up the message, but he had nothing to lose.
Satisfying himself that he understood which controls did what when the time came to use them, Jed then located the rations and the water supply, and was relieved to find there was enough to last for at least one hundred time units.
There was plenty enough for the journey to the planet, and once there, a generous supply to keep him sustained until he could locate his own supplies.
The oxygen supply was recyclable, removing the carbon from the carbon dioxide in his breath, and as far as he could remember, would long outlast the food and drink.
With nothing else to do, Jed decided to partake of a little light refreshment. He was more than a little disappointed when he found that the food supply only consisted of compressed blocks of concentrate, which then had to be dissolved in water, making a thick soup.
He found the plastic beaker and carefully pushed in a concentrate block. With the tube from the water container plugged into the lid, he then filled the beaker with water.
Disconnecting the water supply tube, Jed waited for the block to dissolve, but it just lay there, inert at the bottom of the beaker. Wondering what to do next, he nearly let the beaker go as the block suddenly came to life, propelling itself around in the water until it was lost from sight as the pale amber coloured mixture thickened and went opaque.
‘Well I’ll be damned,’ he muttered to himself, as he put the feeder tube in his mouth and took the first tentative suck. It was smooth and slightly warm, and tasted of something familiar, but he was unable to define exactly what it was.
With the soup finished, Jed looked out of the view port for the tiny pin prick of reflected light which represented the planet he hoped to reach. It seemed no nearer, not that he really expected it to be.
He felt surprisingly calm, considering the trauma he had been through, and while going through the recent events in his mind, he felt his eyelids getting heavy. It was an effort to keep them open, so why bother, he had plenty of time before reaching the planet. After a couple of wriggles to get himself more comfortable, he drifted into a deep sleep.
Safely strapped in his seat by the restraining straps, Jed snored his way through the oblivion which sleep brings, entertained by a few dreams which he was later unable to recall with any detail, although he felt sure they had some importance with regard to recent events.
Twice he was nearly woken from his slumbers, as the pod was given a gentle nudge by something correcting the course towards the planet below, which by now had increased considerably in size and brilliance.
A rogue piece of space detritus hit the pod, and the resulting clang of struck metal finally brought Jed out of his sleep and back into the real world, and its problems.
He stretched, as much as the restraining harness would allow, yawned, and looked out of the view port in astonishment. The planet below had grown to almost fill the view port and he would soon have to begin the final manoeuvre into its atmosphere for a landing.
Jed readied himself for the impending task, going over the sequence of events again and again to make sure he had optimised each detail. As fuel was limited, he thought it best to save as much as possible for the final landing, for if he got that wrong, it would be the end of everything.
He decided to let the pod brush the upper atmosphere several times, bouncing out into space for it to cool down again before the next entry, that way he hoped to lose the heat gained from the friction of entry and lower the velocity to a point where the pod would not burn up as it made the final plunge to the surface.
When the planet had filled the viewing port from edge to edge, the first sound of contact with its atmosphere became apparent. A soft rushing noise grew in volume until it became a constant throaty roar, and he could feel the radiant heat from the outer shell along with the occasional creak as expanding metal tried to compensate for that part of the pod which was a little cooler.
A quick burst of the side thrusters, and he was back into space again, allowing the outer skin of the pod to cool a little before allowing it to dip into the atmosphere again.
As the velocity of the pod dropped, the excursions into the upper air of the planet became more frequent and longer, while the buffeting rattled his teeth, and the temperature inside the pod increased to an almost unbearable level.
‘I’ll probably cook before I land this bloody thing.’ he muttered to himself between clenched teeth.
When Jed considered the pod had reduced its velocity enough to make the final dive towards the planet’s surface safely, he gritted his teeth and took his hand away from the thruster controls, allowing the pod to drop ever deeper into the thin upper atmosphere.
The escape pod had not been designed for free flight in an atmosphere, and having no wings or stabilizing surfaces, consequently dropped like a stone. Only its forward velocity gave the appearance of normal flight, but Jed knew that would not last for long.
The kind of situation he found himself in had not been covered in any of his earlier training programmes, and he knew he would have to improvise some means of reducing his forward velocity before he reached the surface. The other problem was that as the viewing port was situated on the upper half of the pod, he would not be able to see the ground as it rushed up to greet him.
The feeling of desperation was overwhelming as he realized that what had at first seemed a relatively simple operation had turned into a death trap. He had to land the pod as he could not exist in space for any great length of time, and the pod had by now reached a point where it was free falling towards the planet’s surface with no means of controlling its descent.
Suddenly he had a flash of inspiration. Flip the pod over so that he would be upside down relative to the fast approaching ground, and then turn the pod end to end, so that the main propulsion unit would be pointing in the direction he was going, but at a slight angle. This way he would have a view of the terrain below as it sped by, and at the right moment he could use the main thrusters to reduce his velocity just before impact.
If the pod could be held at a slightly inclined angle, it would tend to act as an airfoil section, not much perhaps, but just enough to make the difference between dropping like a piece of lead and a glide.
Somehow his fingers seemed to know what to do as they played over the various thruster controls turning the pod upside down, and then flipping it end to end so that the main thrusters pointed in the general direction of travel.
A slight feeling of nausea swept over him as he viewed the approaching terrain from an inverted position and with his back to the direction of travel, but this was quickly forgotten as the ground rushed up to greet the pod.
At what he thought to be the right moment, the fingers of his right hand danced over the controls, applying power to the thrusters and the main drive, desperately trying to lift the pod from the fast approaching surface below.
With a sickening crunch the pod made contact with the planet, and the screech of torn metal made him screw his eyes up in a vain attempt to shut out the hideous cacophony of sounds which ripped at his eardrums.
What few rocks there were on the plain, the pod seemed to find, careering from one to another, and shedding pieces of itself along the way.
When all was finally still, Jed found himself still strapped in his seat, with a long line of debris strung out before him.
He was bruised and battered, and his ears still rang from the multitudinous series of noises created by the disintegrating pod, but as far as he could tell, he was still in one piece.
Jed’s shaking fingers undid the restraining straps, and he slowly and carefully extricated himself from the tangled remains of the shattered pod, hardly able to believe he was still alive.
Standing back a few metres from the wreckage, he could see that his decision to land the pod backwards probably saved his life. The impact on landing would have torn him from the restraining harness, leaving parts of him distributed among the rest of the pod, which now lay scattered in a straggly line within the confines of a slight depression in the hard barren terrain.
As it was, he had been forced back into the seat with enough energy to cause him to nearly black out as the pod hit the ground, and his seat, still firmly attached to the bulkhead, was the largest piece of wreckage in sight.
Before attempting to land the pod, Jed had switched his oxygen supply back to the suit unit, in case he was thrown clear of the pod on impact, and he now glanced down at the suit’s gauge to see how long he had left. He didn’t.
The gauge now indicated empty, despite his repeated frustrated tapping of the dial. A few quick panic driven steps took him back to the seat and its attendant bulkhead, but there was no sign of the oxygen receptacle.
And then he remembered, it was attached to the control panel, and that could be anywhere. All that remained of the air processing unit was half of the outer casing, and a torn pipe which had once led to the missing receptacle.
His suit supply was on zero, and most of the pod’s oxygen unit lay scattered in pieces. Within minutes he would be dead, unless the planet’s atmosphere would support him.
Jed realised he had little choice in the matter, slipped the catch on his helmet and took a deep breath of what the planet had to offer in the way of breathable air.
His head spun, and he had to hold onto the bulkhead to prevent himself from falling over, and then he realized he had been hyper ventilating.
Gaining control over his breathing rate, the dizzy feeling eased away, and he thought there must be enough oxygen in the atmosphere for him to survive, although it did seem a little low, as he found out when climbing the mound to view the wreckage of the pod.
Jed decided to climb the low mound at the side of the depression in order to get a better view of the rest of the wreckage, as he would need to search every piece for anything which would aid his survival.
From the top of the mound he could see the full length of the depression the pod had chosen to litter with its constituent parts, and again he realized he was a little more than lucky to be alive, and with only a few bruises.
‘Better salvage the water and food, such as it is.’ He found himself talking out loud, and chuckled. ‘Ah well, that’s the first sign I suppose.’ he added, as he made his way back down the slope towards the wreckage.
He found the water tank behind the bulkhead to which his seat was attached, the flexible supply tube still intact. Of the beaker there was no sign, so he put the end of the tube in his mouth and pressed the release tab. A flow of lukewarm water flooded into his parched mouth, and he drank greedily.
The search for the food concentrates took him back almost to the point of impact. The container was badly dented, but when he had pried the lid off, the blocks were all present, barring the one he had consumed during his flight towards the planet.
Jed felt exhausted after his long walk up the depression to where the pod had made its first fatal contact with the planet, and he sat down to rest and look over his options, of which he quickly decided, there were only two. Stay with the water supply until it was all consumed and then die of thirst, or collect anything which might aid his survival along with the water and food blocks, and head out to see what this God forsaken planet had to offer.
As he trudged back towards the water tank, he found the beaker lying on its own in a clear patch of sand, and undamaged. That reminded him that he would have to find something in which to carry the water, as there was no way he could transport the heavy tank which was still firmly attached to the even heavier bulkhead.
Two severely battered metal containers, which had probably held compressed gas or air, complete with their exit pipes, were the only things he located which were suitable, but he would have to find some way to get the pipes off, and the water in.
Back at the water tank, Jed managed to jam the hexagon shaped pipe connector into a convenient slot in the bulkhead, and, rotating the metal container, unscrewed the pipe.
A quick sniff at the open end of the container revealed no noxious smells, but Jed resolved to flush the canister out with a little water just the same, in case there was a residue of something harmful. The other container surrendered its attached pipe and fittings quite easily, and he now had the means to store what he thought to be about ten litres of the precious life giving fluid.
A means of carrying the two containers and the box of concentrates had now to be found, and he looked around for a suitable sharp piece of metal to use as a knife.
The material covering the pod’s seat was tough, but he managed to remove a section large enough to fold in two, and with a length of wire, stitched the sides together to make a crude bag.
The harness, which had held him so firmly during his descent to this new world, was cut from its fixings and wired onto the bag, the whole assembly now resembling a somewhat makeshift backpack.
A long metal tubular strut, with one end hammered to a rough point, would act as a walking stave, a means of safely prodding anything suspicious, and a weapon, should the need arise.
After one more careful tour of the wreck site to make sure he had not missed anything which might be useful, Jed returned to the water tank, and filled the two containers.
Using a piece of firm plastic foam from the now naked seat, he fashioned a couple of bungs for his water containers and loaded them into the backpack, along with the food concentrates and the ‘knife’.
Jed drank deeply from the water tank until he could hold no more, and then shouldering his pack and picking up his stave, he took one last look at the wreckage of the pod and headed up the slope to get a better view of the surrounding terrain. He must now locate a local water supply, and something to eat for when the concentrates ran out, but the seemingly endless barren wastes of sand and stone which met his gaze held little promise of either.
The sky held a few thin high altitude wispy clouds, more like giant ghostly feathers than the heavy grey rain clouds necessary for a good downpour of rain, so perhaps there was underground water somewhere he hoped. If not, he was going to be in a good deal of trouble.
The sky was a deep blue, tinged with green near the horizon, while a large blue white sun blazed down unmercifully on a terrain of sand and gravel. The odd rock reluctantly poked through the otherwise barren landscape, but of vegetation there was no trace, and that worried Jed.
Among the sand and gravel were what he first thought to be small pieces of coloured glass, but as the colours covered the whole spectrum of the rainbow, he knew they must be some naturally occurring mineral, possibly what would normally have been considered precious or semiprecious stones.
‘God, there’s a bloody fortune here!’ he said out loud, wishing he could hear another voice agree with him.
The terrain was made up of a series of low rolling mounds which stretched off into the far distance, gradually blending into a line of low hills. Behind the hills, it seemed that dark mountains fringed the horizon, but they shimmered in and out of vision in the heat haze, so he could not be sure if they really existed at all.
Jed had to slow down what he considered to be his normal walking pace, as he was getting out of breath when going up the sloping mounds, and they seemed to be getting steeper the further he went. A faint metallic taste to the dry and sterile air made him wonder if he would ever find any native water, but then on reflection, he had visited many worlds which contained desert areas surrounded by lush countryside, so he trudged on in hope.
The other factor which made him feel uneasy was the total absence of any sound. An eerie stillness seemed to soak up his very footfalls, and even when he vocalized the odd comment, the words seemed distant, as though his ears were full of cotton wool.
The sun appeared to have moved across the sky a little since he had left the wrecked pod, so therefore there should be day and night. He also reasoned there should be a wind, or at lease a slight breeze as the land mass heated up each day, but there was none. It was as if time was frozen, and he was the only thing which moved in this strange landscape.
He had been wise to keep his space suit on, as the metallic finish reflected most of the blistering sunlight which would otherwise have raised his body temperature to unbearable limits, and caused a great deal of water loss.
Jed was almost in a dreamlike state when he reached the top of the last mound in a seemingly never ending series of undulations. Before him, the ground dropped to a flat plain of fine sand before the next line of ridges began. Scattered about on the smooth surface were many brilliant pinpoints of light, which twinkled as he moved his head, giving them a false sense of movement.
As he was heading for the distant hills anyway, he would have to cross the intervening sand plain, and so it was with renewed enthusiasm for something different that Jed hurried down the last slope and onto the soft sand below.
The first of the twinkling light points he came across turned out to be a slender thirty centimetre high triangular black glass like pyramid, with three perfectly symmetrical fluted sides. The edges looked wickedly razor sharp and he was tempted to test them, but thought better of it.
The three flutes came to a point as fine as any needle he had seen, and he wondered what purpose they served, if any.
Jed looked around for a stone, but the area was just fine sand. Reaching into his bag, he withdrew the piece of metal he had used as a crude knife, and gave the Shard, as he mentally christened it, a sharp tap.
A clear bell like tone sounded, although he thought he felt it rather than heard it with his ears. Not knowing quite why he did it, Jed then ran the piece of metal across the fine tip of the Shard, and nearly dropped it as a loud clear tone echoed around inside his head. The piece of metal now had a deep groove in its surface, where it had been dragged across the Shard’s tip, which showed no sign of being blunted.
‘What the hell do we have here?’ he asked himself, but the words were swallowed up in the hungry silence, so he barely heard them.
Being very careful not to touch the razor sharp edges of the Shard, he scrapped away the sand at its base to see how far it penetrated the sand. At about half a metre he gave up, as the sand kept running back into the hole.
The groove in his ‘knife’ was just that. No burred edges, just a clean cut, with the metal removed as if it had been machined away. Jed felt very uneasy about the whole situation, but was unable to pin down exactly what it was that caused the feeling.
Surveying the field of Shards, as he thought of it, the idea came to him that the Shards somehow grew, and were advancing into the rolling mounds of sand and gravel he had just travelled over, levelling the landscape in the process and converting it to the fine sand he was now standing on.
If he wanted to reach the distant hills, he would have to walk through the field of Shards, and the worrying thing about that was, were there any small Shards in their early growing stage at or just below the surface, and therefore out of sight? Placing a foot on one would probably cause a massive cut, and he would then be vulnerable to whatever passed for bacteria in this world, and he felt sure there would be plenty to choose from.
Prodding the sand with his stave, Jed very cautiously moved into the field of Shards, and noticed that some were taller than others, and this reinforced his fear of treading on a hidden point.
It took him a long time to traverse the Shard field and reach the next set of rolling dunes, and by the time he did, his throat was parched dry and he felt hungry for the first time on his new world. A quick glance at the sun, and he knew that night would soon be upon this place, that’s if the sun went below the horizon.
His legs ached from the long walk, and the tension of the Shard field left him feeling drained. It was time for a rest, and a little sustenance.
Jed took advantage of the next deep hollow between the mounds, and taking off his backpack, removed the beaker and one block of concentrate. A small sip of water made him feel better, and he then added some to the beaker until it was nearly full.
The block lay inert for the prescribed amount of time, and then propelled itself around until it disappeared in the thickening liquid. Jed sipped it very slowly, savouring every drop as if it were his last. All too soon the soup had been consumed, and he took one more small sip of water to freshen his mouth as the sun, now tinged a greeny blue, dipped below the horizon, and the black of night rushed in across the bizarre landscape.
Removing the larger pieces of gravel and small stones from his chosen sleeping place, and scooping out a small hollow for his hips, Jed settled down for his first night, curling himself up to conserve as much body heat as possible as he suspected the night would be cold as in most other desert regions he had experienced.
Despite his aching limbs and general mental and physical exhaustion, sleep would not come. He lay there, looking at the myriad diamond like twinkling stars which littered the black velvet of the heavens, and tried to piece together the events which had led to his present predicament.
He thought of his home, the people he knew and would never see again, and the ore ship, with its multiple automatic safety devices. They had never let him down before. Life aboard the ship had been almost as automatic as the ship itself, and he had often wondered if his presence was really necessary in the first place.
Once the ship had been loaded, and the co-ordinates set for its destination, there was little for him to do in reality.
Sure, he checked the progress of the ship at regular intervals, filled in the log book, noting anything which needed attending to when she next docked to unload, but that was basically it, the ship could have done the journey on its own.
He thought about his friends, whom he would never see again, and the things they had planned to do when next on leave. Also the quite considerable sum of credits he had accumulated from his lonely job on the ore freighter over the years, and the retirement home set deep in the wooded hills of his home world where he could do just as he liked, for as long as he liked, whenever he chose. It was all very far away now, and almost like a dream.
There was absolutely no hope of being found. The freighter would by now have left the star system it had cut across, and because the instrumentation had been the first part of the ship to receive the blast from the meteorite storm, it could be heading in any direction, and probably never seen again, as space was so vast, and man’s efforts so very small in comparison.
A soft gentle breath of air washed around him, as if something had passed near by and disturbed the ever present stillness. A slightly sweet spicy fragrance reminded him of something, but what was it? The stars faded one by one, and then he drifted into a deep and untroubled sleep.
The sun had returned to bathe the world in its brilliant blue white light, but as yet the air still had a deep chill to it, and Jed’s bones ached with the cold and from being set in the same position for so long. For one brief moment, he wondered where he was, and then it all came flooding back in one horrific rush.
He was used to being alone on the ship, but this was isolation with a difference. He felt a surge of fear and dread, and then it was gone as he prised himself up on one elbow, and gazed into the rising sun.
Once more the air about him seemed to move slightly, and a hint of that delicious spicy smell wafted past, and then it was gone.
Food. That’s what he wanted. The beaker was filled again, and this time the soup tasted even better. A small mouthful of water from his precious supply rinsed the last remains of the soup from his teeth, and he was ready for the next stage of his walk.
Jed hesitated for a brief moment before he climbed out of the depression in which he had spent the night. A small line of yellowish stones lay before him. They ranged from pale amber to deep yellow, in a neat little row.
‘How the hell did that happen?’ he asked himself out loud, and as usual, the words were sucked into the vacuous surrounding silence, causing him to shake his head quickly from side to side, as if by so doing it would bring the words back again.
‘There’s no way that could have happened naturally,’ Jed muttered, ‘and that means something or someone is doing it.’ He did not like what that implied. In the absence of any logical explanation, he rationalized that given enough stones in enough space, sooner or later a line would appear by random chance alone. But he was not totally convinced.
The line of mystery stones pointed in the general direction he was going, but he chose to ignore the slight deviation they indicated, and stick to his own choice of direction, but he would keep a vigilant eye open for any other indicators along the way, although finding one would certainly blow a large hole in his random chance theory.
The hills did not seem any nearer than they had been when he set off the previous day from the crash site, but he put that down to the lack of variation in the never ending rolling mounds of sand and gravel he had traversed, as distance without a varied landscape can be deceiving.
The sun had nearly reached its zenith when the dunes gave way to a flatter terrain of gravel with a gentle upwards slope, and he stopped for a drink of water. The temptation to drink deeply was hard to overcome, but he knew if he was to survive for any length of time, he would have to ration himself severely until a local source was located, and so far there had been no sign of that.
Jed rammed the bung back into the water container with a little more force than was strictly necessary, and resumed his walk up the slope, hoping to find a change of scenery at the top. He did, and nearly fell into it.
A ravine, some two hundred metres across, barred his way, stretching in both directions for as far as he could see. The only way he could keep on track for the hills was to cross the gulf somehow, but at first sight, that seemed impossible.
Jed went to the edge of the rift and looked down in dismay, it seemed bottomless, the sides appeared to close in and then disappear in the inky blackness below.
He could feel frustration building up and suppressed it, knowing full well that if he let it get the upper hand it would cloud his judgement. Somehow he had to get across the rift, for there had been no sign of water so far in the desert area, and the hills being a different type of terrain, may well have channelled any rainfall into the valleys.
The rift looked as if the planet’s surface had shrunk, and then being too tight for its core, had split, so clean and deep was the break.
Although he was used to being outside a ship in deep space, standing near the edge of the rift gave him a surprisingly uncomfortable feeling, and he withdrew from the seemingly bottomless abyss.
Jed knew he had to confront the rift again, just in case there was a means of crossing it, so he dropped onto all fours and crawled to the edge, going down flat on his stomach for the last metre or so.
He still got a strange feeling as he peered over the edge, but it gradually faded away the longer he stayed there. The sides of the rift were quite jagged, and could possibly be climbed if he was careful, but it would be to no avail if it was truly bottomless or so deep that he would not have the energy or strength to go down and then up the other side.
Jed was about to retreat once more from the perilous edge, when he noticed an anomaly in the vee cut of the rift far away on his left. There was something in the rift, about fifty or so metres down from the top, although at this distance he could see little detail, but it did look as if it might extend from one side to the other.
The Bridge.
Getting to his feet, he set off a few metres back from the edge to get a closer look at what had fallen into the rift, and then he stopped dead in his tracks. ‘The yellow stones,’ and a shiver ran down his back. He remembered the angle at which they deviated from the direction he had taken, and after a rough calculation realized that if he had followed the line, he would have arrived at the blockage in the rift.
What that implied was too much for Jed, and he dismissed the concept, or tried to.
He was hot and thirsty by the time he reached the blockage, and crawling up to the edge of the rift he peered over to see what it was. Below the rim, a dark brown, almost black, cylindrical bar shaped object spanned the yawning gap between the two sides. Then he noticed the hole. It was about ten metres from the point where the ‘bridge’ joined the opposite side, and at the same level.
The edge of the hole gave Jed the first clue as to what he thought it might be. A dark ring, half a metre thick and different from the surrounding rock, outlined the hole, suggestive of a giant pipe.
He shuffled back from the precipitous edge, and sat there trying to make sense of the seemingly impossible. After much thought, he came to the conclusion that somehow two huge pipes had been constructed, some fifty metres below the surface of the planet.
When the surface had split and parted, one of the pipes had broken at the interface of the split, indicated by the hole in the rift wall, while the other one, which formed the bridge, must have sheered some distance back inside the rift, and still being attached to the other side had been pulled out, so linking the two sides.
Wriggling up to the edge again, Jed looked down on the bridging length of pipe, which, if he wanted to cross the rift, he would have to use to get to the other side. He estimated it to be approximately three to four metres in diameter, but it was hard to tell from where he was, as the depth of the rift distorted his judgement.
The idea of walking along the pipe sent a cold shiver down his spine, but far worse was the thought of climbing down the almost sheer face of the rift to reach the pipe in the first place.
A few metres along the edge, the climb down looked a little easier where the rift wall bulged out, but then he would have to traverse horizontally to get back to the pipe. Carefully he visually checked each foot and handhold he would have to use, and finally concluded that it was possible to reach the pipe, but getting across the tubular structure without falling off was another matter.
The journey across the divide would take a lot of stamina and strength, and not a little courage, but the alternative, just sitting on the edge and dehydrating to death didn’t bear thinking about either.
His parched mouth and a whiff of bad breath brought him back to his senses, and he made up another beaker of soup which he slowly sipped as if to put off the inevitable task ahead as long as possible, and then cleared his mouth with a drink of water from the dwindling supply.
Having checked that his backpack was securely on, he once more wriggled up to the edge of the nerve racking drop into nothingness, located the first foothold he would have to make, and then swung his legs out over the precipice. After a bit of scrabbling about with his feet, he found the ledge and allowed it to take his full weight. It held.
Releasing his grip from the edge of the rim to find the next handhold below brought out a new flush of sweat, but he did it eventually, and he was on his way down to the pipe bridge across the rift.
What concerned Jed more than the steep angle of decent and the difficulty of locating footholds below him, was his new fear of falling. It made little sense really, as he was used to being in free fall during extra vehicular activities and never had any qualms about that.
When he was level with the bridging pipe, he began working his way horizontally across the rift face, and came to the hole on this side of the divide. It had been obscured before by an overhang of rock, but now he could reach it on his way to the pipe.
As he would have to pass it anyway, a wide ledge just below the hole tempted him to inspect the opening. Gaining the ledge, he peered in. The surface was black, glass smooth and featureless, and as far as he could tell, perfectly symmetrical. It looked as if the native rock had been fused and compressed outwards to form the actual tube wall, but how this could be achieved was beyond his comprehension.
It was easy to climb into the hole, and he did so, standing upright with plenty of headroom to spare.
‘Hello there.’ he called out, and multiple echoes came crashing back. So he did it again, just to hear something other than his crunching footfalls on this silent world.
Jed walked up the tube until the light level diminished to the point where he could no longer see the tube wall clearly, and just in case there was a hidden hazard ahead, he turned and went back to the ledge, and the view across to the other side. Somehow it seemed a lot further away than it did before from the top of the rift.
It was only ten metres or so to the bridging pipe, and as he shuffled along the rift face from ledge to ledge, a large piece of loose rock became dislodged and toppled out into the void below. Jed waited with bated breath for the sound of its impact at the bottom, but it never came.
With his fear of falling restimulated yet again, he reached the bridging pipe and was relieved to find it seemed a lot bigger than when viewed from the top of the rift, and the surface had a slightly rough texture to it and not a glass smooth finish like the inside of the other one he had entered.
It was easy to climb onto the pipe, but when he looked across to the other side, it seemed to have shrunk to a quarter of its size. Hoping this was an illusion, Jed bravely began to walk across the rift, careful not to look down over the sides while making sure there were no protrusions on which he could trip.
Roughly halfway across he made the mistake of looking back. A new flush of sweat joined the already soaking wet lining of his suit, and his knees turned to jelly. Before he could help himself, his body had dropped to the surface of the pipe and his hands were frantically searching for something to hold onto.
How long he lay there, spread-eagled and shaking, and cursing himself for his stupidity, he was not sure, but it seemed an eternity. A soft whisper of air drifted across his face, and again he could just make out the faint smell of sweet spice, and then the shaking stopped.
It was a few minutes later before he got up enough courage to stand on his feet and resume the walk across to the other side, but slowly and surely the rift face grew closer and he eagerly grasped the first of the rocky handholds for the long climb up the other side of the divide.
This side of the rift face had fewer handholds and ledges, and was of a more vertical nature, which meant Jed had to traverse sideways in order to find suitable places to climb.
By the time he had reached the top of the rift, he was totally exhausted, soaked in sweat and shaking again, but this time it was from over worked muscles and tension.
He stripped of his suit and under garments, and laid them out to dry in the baking sun. That was when he noticed the most unpleasant smell of his unwashed body. No way was he going to waste precious water in bathing, not that there was really enough to give it more than a perfunctory wipe over.
He would just have to put up with the odour until a copious supply of water could be located.
Jed’s body was crying out for water and food as he had expended a lot of energy during the journey across the rift and lost so much liquid in perspiring. A quick swig from the nearly empty smaller water container helped drive home the point that if he could not find the life giving fluid soon he would be in serious trouble.
The concentrate did its little dance in the beaker, and this time Jed drank it down quickly, realizing too late he would gain more by sipping it. One more drink from the container, and it was empty. A little chill of fear ran through him.
The sun was losing some of its heat as he prepared to walk on towards the hills, but first he had to cross the flattened area bordering the rift and then climb the next set of rolling dunes of coarse sand and gravel.
He felt better after taking some nourishment and water, but it hardly replaced what had been expended during the gruelling crossing of the rift. His feet felt like lead as he took the first of many painful steps on towards his goal.
As he neared the transition of the flat area to that of the dunes, he got back into his walking stride, and felt better. The climb up the first dune brought a warning protest from over worked muscles, and he slowed the pace a little to ease the pain and give his body a chance to recover.
By the time he had climbed ten, or was it twenty mounds, he was no longer sure which, the terrain changed yet again.
It looked like pillow lava, but on a much greater scale, and it stretched off into the far distance. Disappointment and despair hardly summed up how he felt. He realized that it would be difficult and tiring to cross, but he had to make the crossing to reach the hilly region ahead.
His first footstep on the pale grey foam like rock nearly sent him sprawling. It just crumbled under his foot, and he was up to his knee in the fine dusty powder. Jed cursed under his breath and withdrew his foot, shaking off as much of the fine grey dust as possible.
In desperation he looked left and right to see if there was a way around the new barrier to his progress, but the pillow lava stretched in both directions for as far as he could see.
Another attempt to cross the lava field a little further along produced the same result, with the added complication that the further he went into the field, the deeper the crumbling lava seemed to be, and could well swallow him up if he went in too far.
By now the sun had settled on the far horizon in a brilliant splash of colour, and nightfall would soon engulf his strange new world in a smothering cloak of darkness, so he decided to stay where he was for the coming night and try and work out a solution to the problem of the lava field.
The beaker was filled again from his last container of water and the concentrate block added as usual.
This time he drank his soup more slowly, but doing so did not increase the enjoyment factor very much as he was preoccupied by the problem of the lava field. A final drink of water completed his evening meal, and he put the containers back into the backpack.
As the light began to fade, he suddenly realized that he had not voided his body of its toxic wastes since he had arrived, and thought he had better do so. Jed’s attempt to defecate proved useless, nothing happened, and he only managed a small trickle of urine, and that was a dark amber colour and stank.
His first thought was the possibility of renal failure if he was without enough fluid to flush out the toxins his body produced during the long marches. It was going to be a fine balance between dying from lack of water and kidney failure, so he reached into the backpack for his water container and took another good mouthful.
Sleep was a long time coming that night, despite his physical tiredness, and somehow the stars had lost some of their beauty before he drifted into the first of the worst dreams he had yet experienced.
Jed awoke next morning with a woolly head, aching limbs and a pain in his stomach. His mouth was dry and tasted foul, while one eye was shut tight with an encrustation of dried mucus. He was not a happy man.
He could sense his body craved for something more substantial than the soup like brew he had been feeding it, and he certainly knew he needed to drink more water.
Breakfast was a miserable affair, despite the extra mouthful of water he allowed himself, and he packed up his backpack with a sigh of resignation and slung it over his shoulders for the long walk around the lava flow.
He had only taken a couple of strides, when he saw the line of yellow stones. It was much like the other line he had seen earlier, only this time there were far fewer stones, and they were nearly all of the same deep shade of amber.
The line was parallel to the lava field, with one end very slightly inclined towards it. He interpreted that to mean he should travel along the edge of the field in the direction he had already decided to go anyway.
‘What the hell am I doing taking advice from a line of bloody stones in the middle of a desert where there’s no one else around?’ he asked out loud, surprised at his own outburst.
He felt like kicking the stones all over the lava field, but stopped himself as it seemed a churlish reaction to something he did not understand at the moment.
Turning to face the direction the stones indicated, Jed began what he thought was going to be a long hike to the end of the lava field, but after only a few hundred metres he came across a small circle of the yellow stones.
‘Now what’s that supposed to mean?’ he verbalized, mainly just to hear spoken words again, and then realized he was taking the stone signs seriously, without a second thought about the rationality of the seemingly impossible.
The only difference in the surrounding area he could see was a raised section of lava, which stretched off across the field like a low wall, dividing the field in two. Did the stones mean him to try and cross the lava at this point? He could see no other reason for the near perfect circle of stones to be there, except as an indicator of some kind.
Tentatively Jed placed one foot on the ridge, applied a little weight, and nearly jumped back as the surface crumbled.
His foot had penetrated the lava for only a few centimetres, and the lava had then supported its weight.
‘Well, here goes.’ he muttered to himself resignedly, and took the first few exploratory steps onto the lava ridge. The lava held firm, only crumbling to a fine grey dust on the surface, and billowing around his feet at every step.
The sun was by now beating down unmercifully, and with the absorbed heat radiating back up from the lava, Jed was beginning to cook in his own juices, despite the reflective properties of his suit.
Walking on the lava ridge was more tiring than he had expected, as he still did not fully trust the lava to hold his weight, and each step was to some degree hesitant in case he stepped on a softer patch and sank in the grey stifling dust as the lava crumbled beneath him.
He had travelled what he thought was about halfway across the lava field, when he stopped for a drink. The rolling billows of lava now stretched in all directions, and only the outline of the distant shimmering hills offered any hope of a change in scenery, and a possible water supply.
Sitting down on the hot lava, he drank greedily from the dwindling water supply, knowing full well that he should restrict his intake, but the first mouthful was so soothing to his parched and dust clogged throat, he had swallowed three great gulps before reason prevailed, and he reluctantly put the stopper back into the neck of the half empty container.
Getting back onto his feet, he noticed his knees hurt sharply as his full body weight came onto the joints, and he staggered as the searing pain raced along the nerve ways causing a little yelp of pain.
‘That’s all I need.’ He said out loud, a new fear manifesting itself, to be added to that of the lack of water, food, shelter, and the company of other human beings. He managed to keep the feeling of total despair at bay, but only just.
At long last, as the sun began its journey towards the horizon, Jed could see the end of the lava plain, and what looked like a return to the flat sand and gravel of yesterday, or was it the day before? He was losing his sense of time and the sequence of events.
He hurried along the last few metres of the lava ridge as best as he could, and then he was down onto the more familiar sandy ground which would make walking so much easier. Before he realized what he was doing, he found himself looking for a yellow stone indicator, and laughed out loud for the first time since landing.
‘God, I’ll be believing in fairies next.’ he chortled to himself, and headed off in what he thought to be the correct direction, although the rise in the ground ahead obscured his view of the hills.
Before long, the flat level area gave way to rolling mounds of gravel, and the scrunching of his footsteps made a pleasant change for his sound starved ears.
Clearing a particularly high ridge, he saw below him another field of Shards, through which he would have to pick his way carefully. He had gone but a hundred metres or so, when he came across a Shard of a different type.