Astronomicon: Behemoth

Chapter 13 - Second Expedition

Megan took the two-seater buggy and met the team on the other buggy after they arrived back at the airlock door. Aron was already swapping his group's oxygen bottles with fresh ones – a simple operation due to the clever design of their E.V.A. suits.

"Anything to report about your perimeter sweep?" she asked as she parked her buggy beside theirs.

"Oh yes," Aron chuckled.

"What?"

"We discovered another door in the wall, directly opposite this one and much larger."

"Much larger?" She involuntarily turned around to look towards the lights of the Arcadian even though she knew this other door would be completely out of visual range.

Aron finished checking Ekono's replacement oxygen bottle and straightened up to talk to Megan properly. "The other door is, as far as we can tell, the full height of the chamber. We were able to measure the width and that came out at just over one-hundred-and-twelve metres."

"A hundred-and-twelve?! Wow. You reckon that's how we got in here?"

"I haven't found a better way," he replied matter-of-factly. "I've placed a remote camera about thirty metres back from it to keep watch on it."

"Can we open it?"

"There's no control panel, that we can see anyway. Unless it's right at the top."

"So, we need to work out if it's just opened from the other side or there's a control room somewhere else."

"Yeah, but I have no idea how'll we'll do that," he chuckled.

"Me neither," she sighed. "Anyway, for now, let's focus on this expedition."

After swapping and checking Megan's oxygen bottle, Aron opened the airlock door revealing the gelfall beyond to Ekono and Tino. Tino, in particular, was mesmerised with its oozing, downward flow.

"What is this place?" he asked, his voice barely higher than a murmur.

"That's the one question I can't answer," replied Megan.

"I know you described it all to us, but you never said it felt so evil!"

"Dark, alien, scary even, but not evil," she shook her head.

"So, are we doing the mystery door or retrieving the alien carcass first?" Aron asked as they walked slowly towards the rippling gel.

"I want to see what's on the other side of that door first," Megan replied, "Then we can pick up the carcass on the way home."

* * *

They arrived at the door in question a few minutes later. Megan set Ekono watching the corridor ahead and Tino watching back the way they had just come. Aron pressed what he hoped were the correct buttons on the adjacent control panel. The buttons lit as expected and then the door slid smoothly open revealing blackness beyond.

Megan moved her tripod lamp's beam off the control panel and shone it through the open doorway instead. She swept the beam rapidly across the area ahead of her briefly catching several vertical columns as black as the floor. They could see nothing else. She moved her beam back to the last column and traced out its outline. It seemed to be cylindrical, protruding from the floor and ascending perfectly straight all the way up to the ceiling some seven metres above. Quickly scanning the room with the beam again she found another cylindrical column, again spanning the full height of the room. Each of the columns appeared to be identical in width, roughly twenty-five centimetres across and apparently formed from the same black material as everything else.