While they were busy slowly walking towards the ringed vertical tube, Hector had wandered into the garden building as well, and was following the party at a short distance, inspecting the plants with its antenna and shuffling about along the path. Philbert glanced behind him and saw the large black bug. He let out a shout, and grabbed a club from a warrior. Before anyone could hold him back, Philbert shouted: “Be gone fowl creature from this place of purity! Do not dare taint this realm with your putrid existence,” and be brought the pipe crashing down upon Hector’s thorax. The pipe shattered into many pieces, and Hector quickly scrambled away into the shrubbery. Doug and Carl restrained him before he could pursue the bug further.
“What the hell are you doing!?!” Wallace shouted at Philbert. “Hector is not your enemy!”
“That bug is a fowl creature who breeds pestilence, and brings disease to this holy land!”
“Hector is no such thing you doddering old fool,” Wallace retorted. He felt like beating the holy shit out of Philbert for those attacks on Hector, but restrained himself. “Luckily the shells of the roaches are very hard and strong. You couldn’t have hurt him if your life depended on it.”
“But that thing is unholy, it has been passed down for generations that they bring nothing but bad luck,” Philbert claimed.
“Yeah, that’s a valid argument to prove something as true,” Wallace said rather sarcastically.
At that point, Mark intervened in the argument. “Wallace, I just remembered we need to get the rope we left outside on the building. Come with me and operate the airlock,” he said. Without word, Wallace agreed, and they walked towards the service airlock. Mark shouted back, “We’ll meet you at the ship over there,” pointing towards the ringed tunnel.
Philbert was still being held by Doug and Carl, who released him after Wallace and Mark were well out of site.
“Doug, I want you and the others to stay away from those bugs. Don’t trust Wallace, he is an unsaved heathen,” Philbert whispered into his son’s ear.
Doug, not wanting to cause scene, merely nodded, although he though his father was more of a fool every day.
They began their walk towards the launch silo once more, only to be interrupted again. The humming of the floating wasp like machines cause everyone off guard, except for Max, who had already encountered them before.
“There are your gods, Philbert,” Max spoke stoically. “Machines created by the men of this world before your chaos fell. They are not divine, nor are they alive, yet they are what send you the food that you eat in your cavern below with the Pak tribe.”