DRAGON OF THE SECOND MOON
by
CHRISTIAN TAMBLYN
Smashwords Edition
Copywrite 2009 Christian Tamblyn
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
What others are saying about ‘Dragon of the Second Moon’
"It’s not often I come across a sci-fantasy book that I would read to the very end – but 'Dragon of the Second Moon' is a surprising exception. The author not only has a vivid imagination, but he has a deft hand at writing a well-polished and entertaining fantasy novel. It’s a very original work that commands the reader’s attention from the first page … A very engrossing fantasy world that is a credit to its author."
Wendy O’Hanlon, APN Newspapers
I don't usually do this however I thought you would like to know that I really enjoyed your book. I bought it from you at the armageddon expo in Melbourne and started reading it on the train home and didn't put it down once I started it. I found it a lovely read, especially for a first novel. It had a lot of substance and I really liked the way you had thought about and built a whole world with its own customs and beliefs. Nothing was too small or left out. Which meant that I really looked forward to my 90 minute commute every morning and evening.I'm really looking forward to your future books regardless of weather they are related to Zanderhal or not. All the best for the future,
Sue from Melbourne
Have just returned from holidays and thanks to wet weather most of the time, had plenty of time to read your book. Have enjoyed it, finished it off in no time. Keep up the great work. Look forward to you next. Cheers,
Bill from Brisbane
CHAPTER 1
Something intruded upon the tranquillity of his silent existence. It called to him, trying to draw him from his floating sea of peace. He resisted the pull at first, comfortable in his place of calm.
‘Come!’ it beckoned. Tempting him with tantalising glimpses of intense feeling and vibrant senses that could not be denied. It moved enticingly away from him and he followed hungrily, rising up from the depths in which he languished. He chased the thing trying to grasp it as it rushed ever upwards, faster and faster. Finally, he caught it in triumph only to discover that this strange messenger, sent to bring him back from the pit, was named Pain.
The air flooded down into his lungs from the tubing of the regulated bottle bringing with it a rush of biting agony to his chest. He coughed spasmodically into the snugly fitting facemask and drew in another gasping breath. The pain had lessened this time; other senses exerted themselves on his increasing consciousness.
A loud whistling noise filled his ringing ears and a heavy vibration shook his entire body. The vibration turned suddenly into a series of heavy jolts that threw him aggressively about in the tight, confined space in which he lay. Testing the straps that restrained him to the limits of their endurance. The violent movements were accompanied by a loud series of screeching noises that assailed him from all sides. Then all noise and motion ceased just as suddenly as it had begun.
He lay dazed and completely disorientated in the still darkness. The pains subsided and his breathing became normal again. Feeling flowed down his arms and legs in ever lessening waves of pins and needles, leaving his fingers and toes tingling electrically. Eyes, closed for who knows how long, now opened again to be confronted by a small, neat cluster of red glowing lights that greeted his blurred vision. He strained to focus on them as they formed shapes he recognised but could not recall. His mind struggled to regain its normal patterns of thought, so long suspended. He stared in blank incomprehension for some time before it finally came to him.
‘Mission cycle terminated.’ stated the L.C.D on the tiny console that hung only inches from his face.
Time passed. Flashes of thoughts and memories imposed themselves on his sluggish mind, giving back his identity and past in erratic spurts. One burning thought came to the forefront and obscured all others, daring him to believe it.
It had worked.
Alex lived again.
The peace within the cramped capsule was broken by the sudden hiss of loudly extending pneumatic rams. The coffin-like door cracked open on the capsule’s side and light flooded into the almost total darkness of the interior, momentarily blinding Alex with its dazzling brilliance. He didn’t see the yellow package fall from beneath his feet to the ground below until it had expanded to form a tent covered raft of about eight feet in diameter. He hung trapped at an odd angle within the toppled craft and marvelled at the expanding piece of brightly coloured equipment below him. The straps that were restraining him now automatically released, spilling him sideways to the tilted earth beside the raft.
The spacecraft lay on its side in a shallow trench of its own creation. Around the battered capsule was a small, open clearing of long grass and lush ferns at the furthest edge of which was the slow running waters of a small, bubbling creek. This clearing was enclosed on all sides by an imposing, but picturesque forest of thick, ancient trees marred only at one point by the fresh scar of his pod’s recent crash. Along the path of his craft’s trajectory through the forest for a distance of two hundred yards was a shattered line of broken scrub and tree branches. Several small fires burned amongst the damaged foliage and tatters of silken parachute hung festooned like bizarre Christmas decorations throughout the area. The most prominent sound to be heard was the capsule’s shell still hissing loudly in hot protest where it now contacted the moist soil and grass of the upturned ground beneath it.
Alex lay motionless and dumbfounded on the grass for some time, attempting to absorb the meaning of his new surroundings. A flash of vivid memory invaded his mind.
The remembered image of a familiar older woman came to him. She stood before him with her features partially obscured by a colourfully, knitted shawl, while he lay motionless upon a cold, surgical bench in a cramped medical theatre. He thought she had smiled wanly to him with a tear in her eye as the others in the crowded room had rushed diligently about their assigned tasks. The cold fluorescent lights of the low hung ceiling glared down at him while those about him went methodically on with their duties.
He barely noticed as the large surgical needles were inserted deeply into the main arteries of his inner thighs, nor when the multitude of sensors were attached to all parts of his body. But the feel of the thin, steel core temperature sensor being inserted deep into his abdomen had made him flinch, even with the mountain of painkillers they had forced upon him. The sensation was terrible to experience, it was like being skewered for a spit roast.
His vision and hold on reality had then slowly slipped away from him as the blood was drained from his right leg and the burning injection of ice-cold saline solution was pumped in through the left, bringing with it violent fits of shivering as his body temperature plummeted. The plastic blanket filled with blue coolant gel covering him completely had been his last image of the world as the mounting wave of cold had engulfed him in utter blackness.
He snapped out of the vision, back to the present and his new surroundings. It had all worked somehow, beyond his wildest hopes. Now here he lay on the surface of another planet. Heaven only knew how far away from Earth in time and space he had travelled. It was seldom, during his schooling on the space station that Alex had ever seen or experienced a natural environment of plants and soil. Access to the Ag section of his previous satellite home that produced much of their food and oxygen was usually restricted to the trained horticulture specialists.
Now he was laying on a patch of deep, lush grass in a large expanse of old forest growth under the open sky. The warmth of the sun felt exquisite on his pallid flesh. Then he noticed with amazement the oddity of not one but two orbs of fiery light shining down upon him from above. Two suns, a finger’s width apart in the sky, followed each other across the pale blue heavens.
Feebly, he stood up to look about, stubbornly fighting the stiffness of his complaining limbs. Looking down at himself he realised that he was completely naked with the thick electrodes still attached to his chest and a thin metal probe skewered uncomfortably through his middle. Wires from these attachments trailed back in long strands to the craft’s tiny interior in a bizarre parody of an umbilical cord with their bright copper cores showing through the melted insulation where they had touched the hot outer shell of the cooling vessel. Painfully, Alex withdrew the long probe from his abdomen, stopping the small flow of dark blood with pressure from his thumb when he had finally pulled its full length free. He ripped the remaining patches from his chest and head with his free hand, letting them fall unnoticed to the ground as he staggered back to the spacecraft’s side.
He peered into the dim interior of his recent tomb and soon found the object of his search. He freed the small kit bag of supplies from its secured location in the same gap where the tent-raft had been stowed at his feet. Taking care not to burn himself on the cooling shell of the outer hull, he clumsily unlatched the holding straps and released the package from its hiding place. He grimaced in concentration through this exercise, trying determinedly to make his reluctant limbs and digits obey his commands for movement. With his prize held victoriously under one arm he finally retreated towards the brightly coloured yellow, plastic shelter.
This small amount of activity had been a colossal effort for him and he planned to relax and take time to assess the bag’s unknown contents. It was as he entered the flap of the tent-raft that he felt violently ill and fell dizzily to his knees outside the entrance. Nausea overcame him and he vomited out a choking jet of thick, yellow bile streaked heavily with blood. His head slowly cleared and the agonising stomach cramps subsided. Gradually, he felt better but he remained conscious of how extremely weak his body felt.
‘What’s happening?’ he thought. ‘That’s right’, he remembered, ‘it’s a normal reaction after the resuscitation. I must eat something and get some rest.’
Grabbing the bag, he crawled the short distance to the tent entrance and rolled over the raft’s inflated edge to flop wearily in through the access flap. He fumbled with the pack’s zipper and eventually opened the stubborn pouch. A creeping fatigue was getting the better of him as he worked through this task.
The first contents to reveal themselves were several muesli bars in clear, plastic wrappers. Taking one of these he opened the packet with shaking fingers and forced himself to immediately eat the contents. He positioned himself to lie as comfortably as possible, propping his head with the bag as a makeshift pillow. With the contented feeling of finishing the last bite of his small meal came a curtain of dreamless sleep brought on by complete exhaustion.
The cold, grey glimmer of a new dawn woke him. Sitting up shivering in his still naked state he squinted through the gloomy shelter’s interior, and was gripped with the burning desire to get warmer. He could not abide the cold and the thought of tolerating it for even another instant drove him to fervent action. He quickly found the kit bag that had doubled through the night as his headrest and was pleased to notice through doing this that movement of his body came easier to him than on the day before.
He emptied the contents in a jumble onto the floor before him. Even in the dim, yellow half-light permeating the vinyl walls he could recognise one crumpled blue lump as his old familiar pair of heavyweight, cotton overalls. He quickly put them on and huddled down into a tight crouch, trying to get warm. To distract himself from the cold he methodically sorted through the other contents of his pathetically limited survival kit.
He placed them all before him in a neat row. There was one thin, woollen blanket, which he wrapped immediately around himself, his own old socks and boots were in there too. He immediately put these on to further fend off the cool of the frigid morning. What remained after these bulky items were removed was a dismal collection of inadequate goods. There were two more muesli bars, half a box of matches, a water bottle, a pocket-knife, a small book entitled Tobin’s Wilderness Survival Guide and a heavy lump wrapped in grease paper.
Alex smiled sardonically to himself. The occupants of the space station may have abhorred the idea of killing but the exile system, of which he was a victim, was only a thinly veiled way of doing just that to their unwanted extras. His survival kit mirrored the limited expectations of his mission’s possible success. The clothing, blanket and water bottle were all his previous possessions. Taken from his quarters on the satellite. The Swiss style army knife already had a broken blade and was obviously donated by its undesiring owner. The lack of any maintenance to this item meant it was now so badly corroded that none of its utensils could be opened anyway. Alex tossed it out through the tent flap in disgust.
He then picked up the last carefully wrapped item and peeled open its sticky protective wrapping. This move immediately revealed the mysterious identity of this last piece of equipment. The paper contained a handgun of some sort, heavily greased and sealed away neatly within the waxed paper that enclosed it. He forced the stiff wrapping paper open and it virtually crumpled away at the touch of his fingers. Unlike the knife, the gun at first glance appeared to be in perfect working order. It would have been gladly stowed in his kit by the space station’s administrators as a convenient method of disposing with the unwanted item from the station.
It had always been drummed into the occupants of his previous home that guns, war and violence were intolerable evils. The desolate earth that they orbited continually in a makeshift satellite station had been a constant reinforcement of this message. Never the less, some weapons had been present on board the satellite for the policing of law and order in emergencies. The attitudes of the new generations on the station had made them virtually obsolete. Most of the small community had recently petitioned for their complete disposal, hence the presence of this pistol in his survival kit bag.
Alex was about to throw it out, after the useless knife when a sudden sobering image came to mind of some wild, indescribable beast attacking him from the intimidating shadowy tangle of the surrounding woods. It made him hesitate. He kept his hold upon the weapon and unconsciously edged a foot or two back from the rafts semi-open tent flap.
‘Better hang on to this for now,’ he stated aloud to himself for reassurance. ‘You never know what’s out there.’
Peeling off the grease paper and dropping it to the shelter floor, he turned the pistol over in his hands, wiping the excess grease off with the corner of his blanket as he did so. A small latch released the magazine from the base of the handgrip. Alex let this fall into the palm of his left hand. He methodically removed and counted the seven bullets within the clip before replacing it with an audibly satisfying click as it locked back into position. Being a maintenance fitter by trade he could not help but appreciate the finely machined precision of its lines. The side of the pistol was engraved with a short collection of words. He looked at the engravings blankly and still found it difficult to recall the meaning of these letters. Finally, it came him, Smith & Wesson, Springfield USA, .45 ca,. Satisfied with his decision to keep the gun he fitted it snugly into his hip pocket and closed the heavy zipper.
After consuming one more of the last two food bars and draining his canteen completely of its stale, tasteless water he decided the time had come. Alex threw aside the brightly coloured flap of his tiny artificial shelter and ventured out into the growing light of a brand-new day.
The world was a living wonder. One footstep outside the raft, Alex stopped and crouched down to marvel at the army of glossy, enamel blue ants that gallantly fought a band of larger orange opponents for the salvage rights to his vanishing patch of vomit. Its remnants from his previous bout of nausea were quickly disappearing through their combined efforts. He also became conscious of the constant noise level all around him as he exited from the flap. Birds sang, insects chirped and clicked, the wind blew through the trees, branches groaned and leaves rustled. Even the play of water over the stones in the nearby creek added to the chaotic melody that assailed his ears.
Being used to only the soft hum or click of the occasional gadget on the space station made this cacophony of sounds very unsettling. Unwanted thoughts raced through his mind, making him grow fearful. Images flashed in his imagination of thousands of tiny insects crawling about him unseen in the long grass as they called out in angry unison, making ready to swarm upon him. Wild creatures, like those he had studied from his native earth, stalked him from the forest edges hungry for his blood.
This thought imposed on Alex an edge of what he knew was illogical panic. The other significant influence that added weight to this unsettling dread within him was the presence of the clear, blue sky that smiled in unblemished clarity down upon him from above. Every day of his life Alex had been enclosed in cylindrical, fluorescently lit passageways and cramped living quarters. The open sky above him made him feel worse than naked. He felt vulnerable in a way that was totally new and unexpected to him. While trying to subdue the many fears that assailed him he slowly forced himself into motion towards the creek, eyeing the grass suspiciously as he moved. Besides his many inexplicable fears, the only other dominating thoughts occupying Alex at present were his growing, conscious awareness of thirst and hunger.
Carefully, he picked a path across the small distance from the clearing to the nearby creek edge. The thick carpet of grass was almost knee-deep in places and the lush green colour of it was flecked with tiny purple and yellow flowers. The creek at this point was about six feet across and appeared only a few feet deep at his best guess. At shallower areas away from this small pool, the water could be seen rippling in graceful swirls as it jostled around protruding stones in sections of small rapids. Alex knelt in the thick grass growing right to the water’s edge and dipped his hand in the gently flowing stream. The cold surprised him and he quickly withdrew it as if he had been stung. Realising the silliness of his action he scolded himself.
‘Idiot,’ he whispered to himself. ‘What’s it going to do? Bite you?’
His immense thirst overcame his hesitation. Cupping his hands, he dipped them again in the brisk water and gingerly drew a mouthful to his lips. The cool, sweet taste surprised him. This was not the usual flavour of clinically filtered, treated and recycled water of his upbringing. Even such simple things as drinking water here were to bring a whole new meaning to life.
Again a memory came flashing vividly to mind unbidden. The strength of the images was frightening but he managed to maintain his calm by strength of will. Such visions, he had been told, were to be expected as an inevitable aftermath of the cryogenic freezing process. While some memories would be lost permanently as a result of the storage process, others returned in these random flashbacks. Sometimes persisting for years after the reanimation process.
He was back in the confines of the medical theatre floating in a disembodied state above his own body. He watched as they shunted his body from the stainless steel bench over to a mobile trolley packed overflowing with cubes of ice. He watched in detached despair until he realised that the old woman still stood, looking at him. Not at his semi-frozen corpse below but at the ceiling where he hovered. A name for this mysterious observer came to mind with the memory. It was Greta, an old Polish woman that he had visited frequently as a youth. His last, most recent visit had been an unpleasant one that had soured their strange and complicated long-term friendship.
She drew a tattered square of scrap paper from beneath her shawl and held it up for his benefit. It was a card from her old, well-used tarot deck. The faded grinning skull of the reaper easily identified it as the death card, even from a distance. She spoke clearly and directly at him as he gazed down upon her from above.
‘Alex, my boy, you should have seen deeper than the obvious. There are two sides to old Mr Death here. Death and final loss is the more obvious face of this powerful figure but he has another side that you have chosen to ignore. He also represents hidden opportunities, new beginnings and opening doors. You should not have been so enraged by my drawing of this card for you. You never let me explain. Hang on to your hope, Alex, or death will surely claim you now for good, and that would be a shame as I sense that your life has not yet even truly begun.’
She had been right, he suddenly thought while the words of his old friend came back to him again across the boundaries of space and time. I have not yet begun to live.
The memory faded back into the reality of the clearing around him. Inspired by his encouraging recollections, Alex drank his fill without hesitation from the crystal clear waters of the creek pool and quenched his nagging thirst. He then sat idly stirring the water, lost in a daydream. His hand ran in a random circular motion within the pool while he thought fondly of this old woman and tried to urge forth more of the muddled memories from his past, which must have been from many life times and light years away.
It was then that the creek did bite. Sharp teeth suddenly sank into the fingertips of his left hand and with a terrified yell, Alex yanked his hand from the water with all the force and speed his adrenaline could muster. From out of the water, trailing behind his hand came a long, black shape rising into the air. It separated from his hand in midair with a fair share of the skin from his two middle fingers, and fell writhing to the ground three or four paces from the water’s edge. It had been about three feet long and as thick as Alex’s wrist. That was all he noticed as he ran, panic stricken, back to the safety of his yellow tent. He dived headlong through the flap to the safety of the enclosed interior. Nursing his throbbing hand under his other armpit and looking back to the entrance with expectant dread. He crouched fearfully waiting for the thing to leap through after him at any moment.
It did not come. His pulse slowed and the panic subsided. A close inspection of his hand revealed several nasty teeth marks, which had inflicted cuts to three of his fingers. Despite the damage he could still flex them properly and use the hand.
No nurse to run to here, he thought to himself as he assessed the damage. You’ll live this time.
What in the world had bitten him? He had no idea. One thing he was sure of though, if he was to survive more than a few days in this new and surprising place he had to learn very quickly about his environment and its unknown hazards.
‘I must treat all things with caution,’ he stated loudly. Reaffirming his thoughts with conviction. ‘Study everything carefully and take nothing for granted.’
Summoning his courage and the loaded pistol from his hip pocket, he once again left the shelter. He slowly approached the spot where the encounter had happened and caught sight of a movement in the grass not far from the water’s edge as he neared the creek. Alex edged closer with the gun pointing at the ground before him and soon came upon his recent assailant. It was flopping weakly on the grass. Gasping at the air with its open mouth of jagged, tiny fangs. In earth terms the creature at his feet looked like an eel. It regarded him from the ground with slowly glazing eyes. Soon its movements stopped and the panting ceased. Alex mustered his courage and poked it with the toe of his boot. There was no response, it seemed to be dead.
An idea struck Alex and he quickly made his way to the damaged space pod. He searched the interior again. Finding that the interior panelling was made of thin sheet metal as he had hoped. He located a sturdy branch from a tree that lay broken in the path of the capsule and broke away the smaller offshoots from it. Forming a stout stick of about five feet long and two inches in diameter.
Using the stick as a pry bar, Alex levered a trim panel from the pod’s interior by tearing it from the mounting screws that held it in place. He then cautiously collected deadwood and twigs from the forest edge while constantly watching for movements amongst the trees. He assembled the collection of tinder on the bare patch of soil in the slight trench behind the crashed space pod. The ground had been laid bare in that area by the ploughing action of the recent crash. He brought out the precious matches from the tent and used two of them before he could coax a steady flame from the gathered wood. He tended the fire diligently until he was satisfied that it was truly stable. He took the steel plate from the craft and made his way down towards the creek again. Stopping where the dead eel lay. He sat the metal plate down next to the creature.
‘So what do you taste like?’ Alex asked the eel.
The eel stared back through its dull, unseeing eyes.
‘You needn’t look so shocked,’ Alex continued while brandishing his wounded fingers at the eel. ‘You tried to eat me so the least I can do is return the favour.’
Using his boot he nudged the eel onto the plate and carried it back to the fire. Placing the plate on the fire he then made a dismal attempt at cooking the eel. The plate was much too thin for the intense heat of the fire. The skin of the eel burnt badly and stuck constantly to the hot surface. Turning it with his stick did little to prevent the damage and he pushed the plate from the fire after half an hour to survey the grotesquely blackened lump that lay on it. Using a corner of the steel plate, which had torn off from the large panel, Alex scraped at the burnt exterior of the eel. A section of the skin and flesh fell away revealing steaming, white meat inside highlighted by strips of thin bone.
He picked out some of the better looking morsels with the pointy end of his steel poker and tasted the sample. It was far from delicious with a burnt, muddy taste that had spread through all the meat and it also seemed extremely tough and stringy. It was, however, edible and in his hungry state he gladly picked over the corpse to salvage what he could.
After he was contentedly full, he fetched the survival guide from the shelter’s interior and sat down in the growing shade beside the space pod. The shell of the craft had cooled over night and made a comfortable backrest. He was physically exhausted by the efforts of the morning’s events and decided to tackle the challenge of reading the book’s contents. The words came slowly at first, but after some efforts his reading skills finally came back in a rush of understanding. He then sat for almost the entire day reading through its most relevant chapters. Moving only to avoid the direct sunlight of the strange dual orbs as they shifted across the clear blue sky.
Well into the afternoon, he grew thirsty again so he summoned the courage for another visit to the creek. This time he took his water bottle with him and some tiny scraps of the eel’s charred flesh. Throwing pieces of the meat as bait into the pool where the eel had bitten his hand brought swirls of life to the water’s surface as it was devoured while it sank from sight. Obviously, at least one more occupant still called this pool its home. He threw more of the meat in at the small, stony rapids where it washed away downstream, unmolested by the creek’s inhabitants. He cautiously drank from the stream here and then filled his bottle, without incident. Drink from the rapids and fish from the pools, he made a mental note.
Occasionally, throughout the day he fed the embers of his small fire giving it a few small branches to keep it burning until the night. He wanted a fire to see by in the evening and did not wish to waste more of his precious matches.
By the time darkness came he had read most of his only book. Learning through it how to build temporary and permanent shelters. A log cabin or mud brick house made interesting reading but seemed to be impossibly daunting tasks without any of the proper tools. Other topics he covered where strategies on ways to hunt for food. The section on edible plants was totally useless as it applied to another world entirely.
The only useful hint to be found in its pages on that subject was to see which fruits and berries the other creatures around him ate. These he could consider safe, maybe? The best ways to get meat were by spearing, setting snares and fishing. He was inspired by this to burn the end of his stick in the fire. The book had said this would harden the wood and make it easier to form a point. He ended up with a nice sharp tip on one end after only a little work with his steel scrap. Although Alex was sure at this stage, if a creature large enough to spear came anywhere near him, he would be too busy running in the other direction to bother with using his newly fashioned weapon.
The chapter on snares seemed a more promising proposition. All he needed was some wires stripped from the spacecraft. They could also be used for fishing line as a much better alternative to his fingers.
By the time he had taken several useful lengths of wire from inside the pod it was nearly dark and soon the only useful light was the flickering orange glow that came from his tiny campfire. He rolled up the wires and placed them in the shelter to be used the next day. He then sat beside his fire and watched as the night began to unfold. As the sky blackened, it slowly filled with a multitude of stars that Alex found a comforting as well as a familiar sight. He remembered now spending countless times aboard his satellite home gazing through one of its rare porthole windows, looking out into boundless oceans of space.
The constellations were new to him here but the assurance he gained from their glittering presence was the same as he had always known. He wondered which of the tiny specs above him might be the sun around which his distant home revolved. His musing over this puzzle of where Earth might lay hiding in the heavens was interrupted by the appearance of a small, odd-shaped moon that rose slowly above the forest. Its deeply cratered surface and stark terrain reflecting a cold, pale light onto the world below. As Alex fell soundly asleep beside the comforting glow of his small fire and relaxed after the day’s exertions, it continued in its slow progress across the heavens above.
The cold bite of the early morning hours woke him once again and he sat up shivering. The glow of only one tiny red coal showed where the fire had burned so warmly the evening before. Above him in the heavens now hung the softly shining orb of another moon, this one quite different to the first he had seen earlier in the evening, which had now vanished from sight beyond the horizon leaving this newcomer in its place. This second moon was huge in comparison to the first and absolutely marvellous to behold. It seemed to be a living world in itself and many times larger than the first orbiting chunk of rough, barren rock. This one was covered in patterns of scattered white cloud over large areas of brown, red and green earth. Even several small, blue oceans could be seen through the enshrouding cloudbanks and in one area a patch of frosted white hinted at the presence of a small polar icecap.
‘Two suns and two moons!’ he exclaimed in fascination. ‘What a strange new world I have found myself.’ Again strong memories of satellite life returned to him with this new vision.
He recalled himself paused in the middle of fixing an airconditioning valve, spanner still in hand, looking out another porthole window down to the surface of the Earth far below. From the safety of The Arc, his space station home, he thought how majestic and peaceful the planet looked as it drifted past, yet he knew that its surface harboured many dangerous and deadly secrets.
He thought how deceptively peaceful worlds can look from a distance and wondered what secrets the fertile moon in his view held to itself.
A noise suddenly drew his attention away towards the creek, breaking his train of thought. Perhaps, he should keep his focus closer to home and discover what secrets the world he stood upon kept hidden in surprise for him yet before looking further. He feared that biting eels would not be the worst of it. Looking in the direction of the creek he saw a large shadow moving across the dimly lit clearing in a random, sweeping pattern.
Anxiously drawing the pistol from his pocket he crept, in a crouched position, towards the dark shape that meandered across the grassy clearing. He shivered from the cold bite of the chill night air and a little too from his growing fear. He came within twenty feet of the strange, moving shape and sat motionless, watching. The light of the fertile moon outlined its large shape in clear detail now. It was big. It stood about five feet tall at the shoulder and was at least six feet long with four slender legs. Its head was down, busily cropping at the long grass. He could hear the soft crunching noises of its grazing from where he squatted. A short tail flicked frequently at its hunches. Suddenly, it stopped its continuous eating spree and its head shot bolt upright, sniffing at the heavy air. The wind had shifted, bringing news of Alex’s presence to its sensitive nose.
Standing before Alex was a magnificent deer of stunning size and proportions. A set of antlers rose regally above its head in a crown of many points. It stared suspiciously at the location of his close crouching position. As he had approached it he had thought of possibly shooting the creature for meat, but all thoughts of this were now dismissed as he huddled, staring in admiration at this stunning, noble beauty. The animal froze, regarding him in return with its deep penetrating gaze. In an instant it turned and fled. Leaping the creek in an effortless bound and vanishing off amongst the trees. The occasional fading crack of foliage under hooves was the only lingering trace of its passing, then finally silence.
Alex crouched there for some time with the image of the deer clearly imprinted within his minds eye.
‘Magnificent!’, he stated softly to himself.
The constant shivering of his limbs finally broke his daze and he moved back to the fire that was now completely dead. Moving into the shelter he found his single blanket easily in the almost bare, dark interior. He wrapped it quickly about himself and curled up on the floor, promptly falling asleep again.
He woke late the next day from a heavy, dreamless slumber to be confronted with a new surprise. Rain hammered a soft rhythmic tune upon the shelter’s vinyl roof. Alex was delighted at this new and unusual experience. He stripped the restrictive overalls from his body and ran naked out onto the grass clearing, drenching himself thoroughly under the refreshing downpour. The novelty soon wore off and he returned to the tent’s sheltered protection, putting on his overalls again when the worst of the water had dripped from his body. He then sat on a dry area of floor to resume his reading.
The day passed uneventfully. He ate his last muesli bar and the rain finally stopped near dusk. The overcast sky masked the wonders of the heavens that evening and it was impossible to start a fire. That night was spent fitfully with scant patches of sleep; feeling cold and miserable in the oppressive, damp weather. Everything was now wet. His clothes, blanket, boots and even the survival book had somehow become wet during the course of the day. The rain had unremittently worked its way in everywhere.
‘And to think I danced in the bloody stuff,’ he cursed to himself softly as he tried to will himself back to sleep during the night.
Morning eventually came and Alex was up early. His first priority was to have the warmth of a fire again. He loathed being cold. The feeling of which brought with it a sense of dread and fear that he could not explain. He thought his unknown sentence of time frozen within the space pod could be the source of his new phobia. Whatever the cause, he desperately wanted to be warm again. His desire forced him to venture deeper into the forest canopy than ever before in search of dry wood. Four more precious matches later and with the sacrifice of a few pages from his book, he managed to coax a steady flame from his damp kindling. He sat with great satisfaction with both hands extended to the welcoming heat as the morning stretched on.
In the afternoon he spent his time assembling the signal beacon from his disabled craft. Within the capsule he had found all the components required for the device. Before his exile he had been quickly shown the workings of the communication equipment. It was a solar powered transmitting beacon designed to send a concentrated signal away from the planet’s surface. They had explained to him the theory behind its presence on board. It was possible in the future that they might detect the signal back on earth and know he had safely reached his destination. He laughed at the thought of it.
He could only guess at the minuscule odds of the beacon’s success but he built the thing anyway. It somehow comforted him to think he was possibly still linked to the people he had left behind no matter how remote that connection was. So, by nightfall the small, dark box and reflective dish were assembled and sat anchored to the top of a large boulder in the centre of the grassy clearing. Its concave face pointed skywards to the clouds, emitting its silent call to the heavens above.
One morning, several days later, while relieving himself at the forest edge, he noticed a burrowed hole dug into the soft earth beneath a large tree root. He decided this partially concealed tunnel would be the target of his next snaring attempts. The past few days of scrounging for food had not brought much success. Since waking up that day, cold and damp yet again, his gnawing hunger had been nagging at him incessantly. He went back to crouch beside his dismal, smoky fire with a fresh resolve of grim determination. A new source of food was his first priority and he would try anything today to fill his stomach. If he did not find something to eat he would soon become weak and totally useless.
The survival book had suggested eating worms and other grubs, which could be easily found in this area, but he felt ill at the very thought of it and would only turn to that as a last resort. His main plans were to place snares at any burrows he could find. He would also try making a hook and attempt fishing in some of the creek pools. Hopefully there were more than just eels within those crystal waters. Scavenging deeper into the forest after edible vegetable matter was another tack that he would have to summon his courage to attempt. The possibility that there were berries and fruit growing beyond the clearing’s edge had to be explored despite his fear of what might lay concealed within the shadowy folds of undergrowth.
He thought how strange it was that so many things on this world were similar to Earth so far away. The vegetation and animals he had seen already, while different in slight ways from their earth counterparts, were strikingly similar to those of his old world.
He left the scant comfort of his campfire and began his preparations in earnest by twisting wires, stripping branches and bending hooks. By noon he had laid snares at several burrows on the gently sloping banks beyond the creek and also at the edge of the closest tree line. Then he sat beside the tranquil waters of the pool’s edge to try his hand with the newly constructed fishing line. With worms taken from beneath field rocks, he clumsily baited his rough, steel hook and dangling it from a fine copper wire and tried fishing within the nearest pond.
His unsuccessful and frustrating attempts at angling were soon disturbed by an odd noise that came to him from across the clearing. He thought it strange and amazing how his ears could already unconsciously filter out the normal sounds and alert him to the unusual. Had one of his new snares already trapped him a fresh meal? Possibly the deer had returned to the tempting grasses of his lush clearing. He anxiously raised himself from beside the creek and carefully stalked off in the direction of the odd sound. He squinted into the depths of the shadows beneath the ominous trees hoping to gain a glimpse of his unknown quarry. He paused as a sudden thought entered his mind. It may not be the deer at all or a harmless bunny caught within a wire snare. What if it was something far more dangerous? Possibly he was the one being stalked by some menacing, predatory carnivore. Perhaps this was the equivalent of an earthly tiger or bear. He would not miss the chance to see any new wildlife but experience had taught him caution.
Opening the zipper of his hip pocket he drew forth the menacing pistol once again. It annoyed him that he seemed to rely on it constantly for security but he grudgingly accepted that he had little choice in a dangerous world. He crouched and weeded out a small stone from amongst the grass with his free hand and then crept further across the clearing towards the suspected source of the unusual sound. He stopped at the edge of a thick fern patch where the creek angled back into the forest’s heart. These ferns stood waist high and were a perfect spot for concealment. Within them, he guessed, was the source of the noises he had heard. Alex stopped dead, frozen with terror, when the ferns not twenty feet in front of him rustled with unnatural life. They grew steady again and there was silence. Fear of the unknown gripped Alex like a vice and he did not have the courage to go any further into the high ferns to be confronted by whatever lay waiting for him there.
He stood his ground in the shorter grass of the clearing and decided to scare the hidden creature into action. Taking a deep breath he deftly tossed his small stone at the same spot in the canopy of ferns before him. He let out a sharp, loud yell as the rock fell from sight and then brandished the pistol with a fierce, white-knuckled grip aiming it directly at the area of activity.
The ploy worked. A creature shot up from beneath the underbrush and stood to its full height before him. Alex was shocked into complete immobility. There in the ferns not twenty feet away from him stood a full-grown human male.
CHAPTER 2
The man who appeared to be about forty years of age by Alex’s estimation, had a small goatee-style beard and thinning, sandy hair tied up in a short ponytail. This was streaked at the temples with visible highlights of white. His features were almost Asian in appearance but difficult to place as opposed to Alex’s own heavily freckled, pale skin and short-cropped orange hair that easily betrayed the origins of his Scottish heritage. His clothes consisted of a plain linen, open neck shirt; soft, leather pants held at the waist by a rough belt of rope and a knee-length cloak with a hood that was pulled back to expose his head. The cloak’s corners were attached to his wrists with decorative leather lacing so that the movements of his arms gave off the impression of bat-like wings.
As Alex stared on in disbelief the man lifted his left arm into a defensive, shielding posture. Levelling it in front of his chest and concealing most of his body behind the shroud of his cloak. His right hand came up before his face, revealing a small, purple crystal the size of a walnut, which he held in plain view between the thumb and forefinger of that hand.
‘I must be dreaming,’ Alex exclaimed out loud, still holding the gun pointed vaguely at the figure before him.
The man responded to Alex’s vocal expression of surprise with a deep frown of obvious fear and anger. Recovering some composure Alex tried to talk directly to the odd person that stood before him.
‘Who are you?’ he questioned slowly. ‘Are you exiled here from Earth too?’
Speaking to the man only seemed to make him more frightened and edgy. Almost driving him to the point of panic.
‘I’ll put the gun down,’ Alex stated as he lowered his aim and held his hands extended in a gesture of peace, ‘I didn’t mean to frighten you. Do you understand English?’
Alex’s thoughts raced as to how a human could possibly be here on this planet. He had to be another exile or explorer who had somehow reached here before him. How else could it be explained? Unless he was now hallucinating from the effects of his long frozen slumber. He had heard the mind could play many tricks soon after reanimation. He had struggled with his memory, which seemed to come back in vivid flashes but this vision seemed too real and substantial.
Alex’s thoughts were suddenly interrupted by the man’s voice. The stranger had begun chanting in deep musical tones, words Alex could not understand. An eerie light sprang up from the heart of the crystal held within his fingers. Then his voice stopped as quickly as it had begun and the stranger smiled smugly to himself as though something satisfied him deeply.
Alex tried again speaking to the man while he absently wondered how the stone within the man’s grasp could glow like that of its own accord. His words had barely begun to leave his mouth when a strange feeling descended on him like a thick curtain. His mind clouded as though he was drunk or extremely fatigued. He struggled to bring his thoughts clearly into focus. As he began to resist this feeling, a strange thing happened to the ground directly between the two men. The grass bulged as though some large pressure forced up from beneath the surface then finally split and peeled away. A formless lump of soil quickly and silently grew out from the ferny ground. Impossibly rising up to a height of seven feet until it obscured the older man from view. A sudden thought appeared by itself in the back of Alex’s head.
It must take form, insisted the thought.
No sooner than he had thought this, it did indeed take form. Before him from the formless mass of living turf grew a hideous, humanoid shape like some demon from the horror films of his youth. He watched mortified as the seething lump took on its newly defined shape. Its long fangs dripped yellow ooze from their sharpened tips. Its skin writhed on its flesh with a life of its own. The penetrating eyes glowed deep red with an iridescent inner fire. It flexed the razor-like talons of its grasping hands.
Again Alex was paralysed with shock at this new overwhelming sight. In the back recesses of his mind a small spark of clear consciousness fought back against the blanketing slurry of confusion, which enveloped his mind. This can’t be happening, the clear bit asserted as it grew bigger. You’re having a dream or a hallucination. Demons aren’t real!
To his staring eyes this new train of thought appeared to be true. The demon seemed less substantial now, almost transparent. Alex was also now aware of the frantic yelling coming from behind this absorbing apparition of evil. The mysterious man he had confronted was raising his voice desperately and two more figures suddenly popped up from the ferns at both edges of his field of vision. These two appearing newcomers seemed to be other normal humans, but Alex’s attention was completely engrossed by the monster directly in front of him. The other men started to approach from each side. Alex noticed no more about them as the demon reasserted itself on his struggling mind.
‘Oh, I’m real all right’, it seemed to say in his head as the cloud descended once again on his thoughts, ‘and I will rend you limb from limb and feast on your entrails.’
The very solid looking demon smiled its evilest grin and took a slow deliberate step towards him. The tiny speck of clear thought within him was almost obliterated completely. The demon reached out with questing fingers. Seeking to grasp Alex in a deadly embrace.
The small clear speck of logic within him fought in desperation against the will that attempted to dominate it. It found in Alex an untouched reserve of strength that he now used in his defence. The strength was founded on his fierce disbelief and denial of all things unnatural in his completely solid and ordered universe.
In an explosive fury of defiance he rebelled against the madness that confronted him and screamed at the top of his voice, ‘You are not real!’
He forced both hands up with the gun clenched tightly between them, flicked off the safety catch and with nervously, fumbling fingers fired two deliberate shots at the demon’s chest as he yelled in protest. The first clawed finger of its skeletal hand had just touched upon his cheek when the shroud around his mind was rebuffed by his loud declaration. It then vanished with a blinding flash that left stars popping before his eyes. He steadied himself uneasily while his vision and other senses cleared completely.
Then he noticed clearly the unmistakable changes around him. Where the demon had stood moments before was now nothing more than the fresh green fronds of untouched ferns. The strange man behind the monster no longer stood in his previous position. He now lay sprawled backwards in a patch of flattened ferns, unmoving. The two other figures Alex had noticed at the edges of his vision were still there. They were younger than the first man he had encountered and he estimated them to be in their early twenties. Both were dressed similarly to the first man and to his dismay they had been approaching him with vicious-looking, long knives clenched menacingly in their hands. The pair now turned tail at the sight of their fallen comrade and fled quickly into the haven of the forest trees.
When they were gone, Alex still stood frozen in a befuddled daze. His cheek stung and felt oddly wet where the demon vision had touched him. He fell to his knees, dizzy and weak with a strange, growing fatigue. Dropping the gun from his limp hands he reached up to touch his face as the monster had done. He pulled away his fingers and found them covered with his own fresh blood. The touch of the demon’s hand had cut deeply into his left cheek. The sky spun wildly above him and then went black as he slumped sideways, unconscious onto the grass.
Some time later he awoke. How much time had passed? He was not sure. Picking up the pistol he stood shakily to his feet and looked about uncertainly, not sure of what to do next. Then he saw the man’s body lying nearby still face up in the flattened ferns.
He picked his way through the waist high greenery to where the strange man still lay, motionless and cold upon the red sodden earth, eyes open to the heavens. An expression of complete surprise was on the dead man’s face. Two neat holes in the centre of his chest betrayed the points where the bullets had struck. Alex knelt beside him and cried with grief. Killing another person was totally unbelievable and terrible to him. It had been instilled in him throughout his upbringing that all life was precious and that a violent shooting of another person was personally inexcusable. Squatting on his haunches, close to the dead man, he hugged his own legs and rocked back and forth, silently grieving over the death.
‘I’m so sorry,’ he said to the dead man.
Reaching over he closed the man’s eyes. The skin was cold and inflexible. Alex was repulsed by the contact but persisted until the lids were shut. He could not bear to weather the look of their accusing gaze.
Looking at the man brought the events flashing back to the forefront of his thoughts. He had no clear idea of exactly what had taken place. It seemed as though it had all happened in a dream. He had seen three men, of that he was sure. One lying dead before him now as evidence to this fact. An unspeakable monster had sprung from the ground at this man’s command. Was it real? He could not tell. The cut on his face from the creature’s touch said it was, but the bullets had passed through it and killed the man instead. These facts contradicted each other and only served to confuse him further. Would the demon have killed him? He thought it would have. Still he felt a great weight of guilt for shooting the man, even in self-defence.
‘Why did you have to do that?’ he asked the dead figure in anguish. ‘What’s so wrong with a simple friendly greeting. I know I had the gun but I would never have shot you, honestly! Now you’re dead and I’m a murderer. Just great!’
Alex’s remorse changed to a feeling of annoyance. Why did the meeting have to be a confrontation ending in death? He remained squatting in a foetal ball, rocking back and forth for a long time, hugging his legs close to his chest with his chin resting on his knees as he stewed over the predicament he was in.
Eventually, his curiosity resurfaced and he began to look more closely at the dead man. He definitely looked human. The only peculiar thing he noticed was that the man had thin, pointed ears. Alex’s inquisitive nature forced him to leave his squatting position. He hunched forward for a closer look at the man’s head and this inspection revealed that his ears were not naturally pointed at all. A section from the back of his ears seemed to be missing. The normally rounded part from the lobe to the ear’s top looked as though it had been cut away. The straight, scared edge at the rear had left them with an unnatural point at the top.
The other thing, which now caught his attention and curiosity, was a small leather pouch attached to the man’s belt. He felt compelled to see what the small bag contained. Alex loosened the drawstring, which held the opening firmly closed, and reached in. He pulled forth the odd collection of trinkets from its interior and he placed these on a section of the dead man’s cloak as he drew them forth.
The first and largest item was a flat disc shaped object, six inches in diameter. It was soft and flexible wrapped in fleshy, green leaves. Peeling back a corner of a leaf revealed a spongy brownish material. A pleasant smell wafted up to greet his nose and his mouth began to water profusely with the presence of the delicious aroma. It was obviously some kind of food, possibly a cake of some sort.
Alex peeled away the remaining leaves and gingerly nibbled at the edge. It was crusty outside but the inside was soft, moist and delicious. It reminded him vaguely of bread but the texture was much rougher and heavier. It was slightly sweet with a scattering of soft lumps throughout it. The flavour of these was similar to an almond he had once tasted and upon sampling it he realised how ravenously hungry he felt. This was the best food he had eaten since arriving on this world and he ate the rest greedily whilst he sorted through the remaining collection of possessions.