Chapter Nine
“So where are you and Mark from, Max?” asked Wallace in a polite conversational manner.
“We were born somewhere in space,” he replied. “Yourself?”
“Born on the Moon during the height of civilization.”
An awkward silence resulted as they ran out of things to say to each other quickly.
“These roads were once overcrowded with cars,” Wallace stated. “Used to be impossible to get anywhere if you weren’t on foot.”
“That’s not the way it is in deep space. Floating toward a distant star at incredible speeds, but no one crowding you for millions of miles.”
“Sounds lonely,” Wallace said as he glances back at them through the rearview mirror.
“We lead a different life than most people. Practically a different society all together, Considering we usually only meet people once in their lifetime, only to return a long time later to their world and they’ve died of old age.”
“Right, well, I was just saying.”
After another period of silence, Wallace slowed the bus down besides a large door.
“I think this is it,” he remarked.
The group disembarked their vehicle and walked up to the door. Wallace tried turning the hatch lock, but it was refused to move.
“Well, it appears that we’ll have to find another way past this door.”
Carl and Cameron decided to try to force the door open, but to no avail.
“It certainly doesn’t want to open from this side,” Carl said.
“It looks like there’s an airlock over there. Maybe there’s a way in from the outside. Do we have any rope?” Wallace walked back to the bus and procured a length of thick strong rope with a magnetic grapple at one end. Good for climbing and grappling metal things with.
“Care to go on a moonwalk?” Max asked Mark.
Nodding, he put on his helmet and they walked to the airlock with the rope. Moments later, they were back on the outside on the dull gray surface of the world next to the monolithic structure.
Looking upwards, Max shrugged and threw the magnetic grapple as high as he could. It arced marvelously and landed somewhere on the roof of the gigantic structure. Pulling forcefully on the other end of the rope, it pulled tight, and remained so. The grapple seemed to have found a strong anchor point.
Max just hoped it would be strong enough not to break on his way up to the summit. He motioned for Mark to remain behind for now, and climb up when signaled. Mark appeared to be just a moving speck upon the ground so very far below.
Putting one foot in front of the other, and hand over hand, Max began the ascension up the thick, smooth wall. He finally reached the top, which was a rather flat plateau. He grabbed hold of the rope and motioned for Mark to follow. After they were both safely at the top, they realized what a massively large and tall colossal building it was that they now stood upon. Nearly the entire roof appeared to be of slightly domed transparent material. Holding up this transparent material was a large network of dark bars composing the lattice that supported the roof.