Aliens Omnibus: Volume 5 by Mihael Jan Friedman & Diane Carey

Author:Mihael Jan Friedman & Diane Carey [Friedman, Mihael Jan & Carey, Diane]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Titan Books
Published: 2017-12-26T00:00:00+00:00

3

Moonset. A strange word for morning.

In the mist-veiled sky, a single green moon was too large for poetry. This planet’s idea of daylight was grim. The greenish-yellow sun shone with an angry glaze, offering no comfort the way Earth’s sun did. The environment was almost urban. There were so many tall blood-red pillars ranging to the horizon that we might as well have been in a city center with skyscrapers so close together that sunlight couldn’t shine in unless the sun were directly overhead. Gauzy white topgrowth coiled and draped from pillar to pillar, high up at the tops, creating a rain forest effect and a world of patchy permanent shadows beneath. It looked something like the decorations I’d seen in a church during a wedding, as if human hands had carefully placed them, then forgotten them to become shredded and stale with time.

Corners, passages, holes, gullies, caves with no visible ends . . . it was a gory red world, redder than a barn, redder than the Grand Canyon, but not the color of blood. Not that kind of red. This landscape of towers, all diameters imaginable from pencil-thin to big as buildings, were a strange glossy red. When my space-dizziness faded a little and I could blink a clear field of vision, I realized that the columns were not stone at all in the usual sense. In fact they were translucent enough to see through all but the biggest ones. They were like rubies or art glass. The planet was the ultimate in rose-colored glasses.

White veils and red glass towers. No signs of anything alive.

“Where are they?” Pocket asked.

“They’re not answering any hails.”

“They could be hunkered down. Or maybe their coms quit working.”

“They should’ve still heard the ship land, for Christ’s sake.”

“Yeah . . . ”

While Clark and Gaylord spoke to each other in front of me, I couldn’t find it in myself to speak up in this cathedral of red columns. The environment seemed almost holy in its imposing size and oddness.

We were only about ten feet from the ship, and had paused to take some readings and put out some feelers. Despite knowing that the ship would protect us within a certain perimeter, I couldn’t settle my stomach. Imagine being on a whole different planet than Earth. I was the living inheritor of a stunning scientific advancement. My nerves danced with appreciation.

“Rory, you coming?”

Clark’s imposing form was flanked on one side by MacCormac and on the other by a compact bundle of muscle named Sergeant Berooz. I noted that Clark’s red hair disappeared into the red stone pillar behind him, making him appear to have a face without a head on top.

I felt the path floor with my shoe sole. It was spongy moisture underneath but not on top. I stooped down and brought up a handful of the planet.

“Rory, what’s up?” Clark appeared over me. “We can’t move ahead without you.”

I offered him the sample. “Look at this stuff.”

“Gravel. So what?”

“It’s not gravel. It’s billions of little skeletons.

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