Alien Freak - Calista Skye Page 0,42
burned here. That alien must have been dead for centuries. Elder moons are popular with adventurers and treasure hunters. There have certainly been hundreds of people here over the years.”
I walk over to him to give the portal a final, thorough inspection.
Before I can get there, the steel plate slides silently to the side.
The portal is open.
“Stand back,” Zaroc urges and puts his arm across my chest. “I don’t like this. It might be a trap.
He picks up a piece of trash and tosses it through the portal. It lands undramatically on the other side.
“I have nothing to lose,” I state and march through the portal before he can stop me.
Nothing happens. On this side, the light is dimmer and reddish. I can’t identify any of the things I see. There is a floor, though.
Zaroc comes cautiously through the portal, and it stays open. His tongue shoots out. “I smell nothing. I doubt anyone has been here since the Elders themselves. This is the inner shell.”
We walk a little distance away from the pillar. And yeah, the sky is much closer now, so close that I would call it a ceiling. I can see the curvature. This shell is a ball only a few miles in diameter.
In a weird way, I get the feeling of being backstage at a theatre, or in the projection booth at a movie theater. Or the newsdesk at a newspaper. It’s a place where not many are allowed, a place where secret things happen.
Zaroc is staring at me.
I look down myself, afraid that I’m starting to grow twigs. “What?”
“That portal opened for you.”
I shrug. “Polite portal.”
“For you, specifically. For the first time since the Elders. Look around, Averie. This is a treasure trove, and everything is still here. We’re the first to see this.”
Now that my eyes are getting used to the relative darkness, I can see what he means. It looks like an overcrowded art museum or an antiques dealer, with sculptures and machines and exotic objects stacked in heaps on the floor, on many raised platforms all over the place and hanging from above.
Zaroc picks up a small thing from a shelf. “If you see something you think you understand, let me know.” He puts it back down.
I walk further in among the curious artifacts. They’re all so different they seem to come from a whole lot of unrelated cultures. If the Smithsonian or the British Museum exploded, this is what the ruins would look like.
A thin, shiny circle on a small cushion-like shelf attracts my attention. “Zaroc! Look.”
He comes over. “An oval.”
“To you, an oval. To me…” I take the ring off the shelf and slide it over my hand. “...a bracelet.”
It’s metal, shiny and thin, made from intertwined strands in a pattern that just gets more intricate the more you study the details.
Zaroc grabs my arm and inspects the piece of jewelry. “I’ve never seen an Elder bracelet before.”
“Now we know one more thing about them,” I state. “They had wrists. And a pretty good sense of style.” I take the bracelet off again and put it on the cushion.
“You don’t want to keep it?” Zaroc asks, incredulous.
“It’s not mine. The door may have opened, but it’s not like an unlocked door means I can go into someone’s house and steal whatever I find.”
Zaroc walks on. “The Elders don’t live here. And they’ve been gone for millions of years. This is an abandoned hoard. Ours for the taking.”
He walks in among the objects and picks up an oblong, gray thing that even I recognize.
“You like your weapons, huh?”
“I actually detest weapons,” he says, turning it over in his hands. “But I’ve lived long enough to realize that the fighter with the best weapon usually wins. And Elder weapons will be the best in any fight in the galaxy.”
He bends down to pick up something else, then comes over to me. “What do you make of that?” He points over to what has to be the center of the shell, about a mile in the distance.
It’s a white orb that appears to hover above the ground, subtly lit up in contrast to the darkness around it.
“Looks pretty weird,” I offer, glancing at my fingers. The leaves are the size of pennies, thin and soft and round, with a classic pattern of a midrib and thin veins that grow symmetrically out of it.
Zaroc glances at me, a mix of alarm and determination in his face. “We’re not leaving here until we fix it.