The Last Night Chapter 18 A Haunted Planet

The Last Night

 Chapter 18

A Haunted Planet

51

   “She’s gone because she was never there.” Wyatt said, “she’s in my head. No one else saw her?”

    They all nodded no. “Sometimes you can make yourself see what you want to see, especially when you look too hard too long,” said Martha. Just then the hover car stopped. They had finally reached the top of the hill the main access point of Candice Crowns’ business and security district.  

  “So, I’m looking too hard…Hey! My leg.” He jerked back, wriggled his hand into the front pocket of his pants and snatched his ring out a moment later. “It’s vibrating and much too warm. And it’s, it’s, pulsing.” His eyes widened as he spoke, “like a beating heart!”

  Siss’s tentacles whipped back just before the hover craft crested Candice Crown and centered itself over the center of its’ gleaming white ceramic hatch. Of course, it was not mere ceramic but a variable density barrier. The same type of force field barrier encircling the planet. 

    “Your ring,” Siss exclaimed, “should not exist.”

  Wyatt was grinning again, “It’s from there. And, I think it’s alive!”

  “No wonder Captain Pea brain didn’t want it on his little ship.” Martha said just before the ceramic entry hatch shifted density, turn from solid to gas was sucked out of the way by unseen vacuum portals embedded in the walls of the  thirty foot wide granite shaft, causing the craft to drop several inches before regaining its’ buoyancy and start its’ gentle descent into Terratu’s core.

   Wyatt hardly noticed the sudden jolt. “It’s stopped. Just Like Ariel disappearing, saw her for a moment then nothing.” He squeezed the ring in his hand, but it was just a ring again.”

   A moment passed the car swayed to the right. It had reached the fourth level. They were a half mile inside of the terra formed planet and headed straight for the reassignment office, where their duties and quarters would be given them. So they would probably be headed back up top soon. 

   Wyatt did not care. 

52

   “Wyatt,” said Siss, “we need to keep this to ourselves. Your sighting, the ring, none of that needs to be made public. “I felt it this time. It’s huge. And I believe that ring is a fissure, a crack in our reality.” 

  “A way to find Ariel?” He asked.

  “It seems so. It’s not just a ring Wyatt. And, you’re not just a human. I know that now. Maybe the Captain was right to get you and your ring off his ship. We need the kind of open area only a planet can provide, not a fragile tin can floating in space.” Her tentacles were quivering. “Give me the ring.”

  “Why?”

  “I must touch it. I must let it touch me.”

  “You have reached your destination”.. Said a pleasant but lifeless male AI voice. 

   Wyatt shoved the ring back in his pocket.

  Siss nodded her approval just as the car swerved to a gentle stop and the car dome vanished. 

  “Remain seated.” Said the disembodied voice, a moment before the rest of the vehicle melted away, leaving them sitting on the ring couch, hovering a half inch above the ground.  

  The ring couch broke, swung apart on an invisible cushion of altered gravity. A second later it settled down several feet from a deceptively simple sparkling stone arch way carved right from the granite bedrock that surrounded them. But it led to something magnificent. Majestic. “You may depart.” Said the voice.

  “Well, that’s what it did when it picked us up.” Said Forrest, “I was told this new Terratu was different.” He glanced down at Wyatt’s front pocket, and whispered, “just play tourist, for now.”

  Wyatt grunted and realized he would not have to play. The place was huge, a cavernous cathedral. 

  Tremendously high narrow archways of marble, porcelain and gleaming silver lined the interior, creating a hallway one might imagine could exist only in Heaven. It was only a quarter mile long but somehow creating the illusion of being infinite.

    Siss was beaming with pride. “My people did this. It’s so much more, than before.”

  “So, you build your skyscrapers underground.” Martha teased.

53

   “They’re not skyscrapers.” Siss sounded a bit hurt.

  “Same difference, same message.” Martha retorted. 

  “And what would that be?” Said Siss.

  “We’ll show you.”

  Siss’s cheeks turned green, “Perhaps you’re right.”