The Lost Animas (The Ammonite Galaxy Series, Book 5)

Chapter 9

WHEN THEY FINALLY stepped down to the bottom of the abyss, they were almost ready to drop. All of them had cuts and bruises, together with rope burns along their fingers and palms. Diva's hands were badly blistered, and she had been forced to fashion a makeshift bandage around both of them.

Six made her stop as soon as their feet touched bottom. Gently, he covered her hands with a salve, before rebinding them with care. He saw that her bottom lip trembled a little as he was massaging the salve in, but she gave no sign of pain, apart from that. He felt inordinately proud of this girl who never allowed herself to show her fear.

When he had finished, he smiled at her, and then he stood back and allowed himself to examine their surroundings.

There was a many-tiered waterfall, cascading down from as far up as they could see, and continuing for as far down as they could make out. Tier after tier stretched out interminably and the noise of the water in full spate was deafening. The flood of water had carved a canyon out of the rock and now disappeared into a pit in the planet's surface, tumbling down out of sight into the bottomless depths. Each tier was perhaps the height of four men, and Six thought he could count twenty or thirty of the stages leading down from above, passing where they were standing and disappearing down into the abyss below. The water smashed over and over the edges of the waterfalls, in a jumble of white spray which hung above the flow, making a mystical picture.

They found themselves to be standing in a small gully in the rock, and someone – or something – had sculpted a huge statue of stone there. It stared down at them immutably. There was a sensation of huge antiquity about the sculpture; it looked as if it had been there since time immemorial. Apart from the figure, there were trees still alive in this sheltered spot; they had somehow managed to maintain a foothold on life, helped by the warm water and steam in the atmosphere, perhaps. The trees were not large, but they were old. Their trunks were scarred and they bent towards the tumbling water as if bowing to its life-bringing forces.

They all walked over to the colossal carving. It represented a figure, a shape which none of them recognized. It was of an immense face, whose eyes appeared all-knowing and set into many creases of skin. These creases around the eyes were concentric and made the creature appear of extraordinary intelligence. The eyes took up at least half of the oval face; beneath them was a small and delicate flat nose and a mouth with a definite deep ridge running down to the lips under the nose. The face was set back into the gigantic block of stone, as if the creature had lived partially buried inside the rock. There was nothing more than a head, but over the whole sculpture, a wall of water had been carved, making the details of the intricate face hard to make out, softening them. There were words hewn into the rock below the compelling face, but they had become obscured over the centuries since it had been carved.

Diva moved forward, and began to trace the letters with her right finger. Six pulled away some of the lichen which had grown up the rock, and helped to dust away the rest of the letters, clearing the debris accumulated over the centuries with a stick he had broken from a nearby tree. The rock itself had crumbled too, so they had to be careful not to destroy whatever was written there. Slowly, almost reluctantly, several words came to light. Unfortunately they were illegible for the visitors. They were cuneiform, seeming to consist in geometric patterns, rather than words, and looked like nothing any of them had ever seen before. The last word, which was longer than the others, was represented also by a diagram. There was a central sphere, with many other spheres circling it.

"That is the Ammonite Galaxy," said Diva. "They are telling us that their name is related to the galaxy." Then her face cleared. "These must be the original people who lived in this galaxy!"