Proxima Adventure

Chapter 32. Questions.

Chapter 43. Questions

Since they hadn't recently heard anything from the cyborg vessel, Charles made the decision to go down on the planet to check out the domes. Vicky, Hilary and Dave joined him for a trip to the surface in a shuttle.

Before they boarded the shuttle, they discovered an addition.

"How'd the cat get up here?" Hilary asked, pointing to it.

"They control the robotics," Charles told her. "It looks like he wants to join us."

"Why would a cat want to go down to the surface of an alien planet?"

"Maybe it knows something we don't" Charles replied as he picked the cat up before he climbed into the shuttle.

Once he got the shuttle out of the hanger, Charles guided it down to a landing near one of the domes, which boldly sat on a dessert like setting that was decorated with strange looking red and purple flowers spread out in crisscrossing patterns.

The similar domes were distributed in a circular pattern that made them appear to be connected even though they weren't. The dome's construction appeared to be totally metallic, with no sign of how they were created.

The walk up to what looked like an entrance was without incident, a sign that no one was home.

"This looks like a door, but I don't see any way to open it," Dave said as he touched the center of an X formed by two flat metal strips. Surprisingly, that made the round door slide to one side.

Charles led the penetration into the dome, and what he and his compatriots saw blew their minds.

"What in the hell?" Dave exclaimed as he approached a horizontal transparent tube next to a long line of similar tubes. "There's a human in there!"

The bodies, held in place by metallic wires, were floating in a blue tinted liquid.

"Are they living?" Hilary asked, her head swiveling to view the long line of similar cylindrical chambers that contained both genders.

"Good question," Charles said. "There's no sign that they're alive."

"Yes," Vicky replied. "I'm not detecting any heart beats."

"Why would someone store dead bodies like this?" Hilary asked, her face twisted with disgust.

"Another good question," Charles replied. "Let's check to see if they're all dead."

They began a long walk around the inside of the dome and found row after row of cylindrical chambers containing an unknown liquid.

Most of these, whatever they are, are empty," Hilary said. "The few that aren't, contain a dead body." She paused. "I don't think these are humans."

"What do you mean?" Dave asked, "They look like humans."

"Yes, but their X-ray diffraction scans don't register as human."

The cat wandered over to a wall that appeared to contain a door. It lifted its paw to gesture to the closed entrance and meowed.

"Maybe this room over here could explain what they are," Vicky said. pointing to that door.

Charles went over to it and opened it, allowing the cat to run into the room. The others joined to enter a chamber that was obviously a laboratory, containing all sorts of equipment and strange devices.

Hilary smiled. "Ok, this makes sense." She picked up a flask with a side tube. "This reminds me of a Schlenk flask, but it's designed to add one liquid to another under a sterile atmosphere."

"What does that mean?" Dave asked, looking at the flask as if it were an alien device.

Hilary pointed to a Petrie dish. "I think that they were trying to create a human from cells that they created from some sort of biosynthesis and then mixing them to form a zygote."

"Do you mean that they were trying to create humans in this lab?" Charles asked.

"I'm not certain, but it could be what they were trying to do."

The cat meowed.

"Why in the hell would they be doing that?" Dave said after turning away from looking at the cat.

"There might be several possible reasons," Charles said. "Maybe we can get that from our cyborg buddy."

"This place is creepy," Hilary complained after looking around.

Charles stared at her for a moment before he made his decision. "Record everything that could be used to determine what was going on here. We shouldn't waste any more time than necessary down here."

The cat meowed again when they exited the dome. It ran off to a dome nearby.

"Maybe we should check out some of the other domes," Charles said.

They entered the dome that the cat had gone to and found the same situation, except for one major difference.

"These are not humans," Hilary said, pointing to a body that had scales and a lizard-like face.

"I think there's more going on here than we thought," Charles said. "I bet that these domes contain attempts to create species from various habitable planets in the galaxy."

"Why would they want to do that?" Dave asked.

"The only way we'll know that is if our buddy will inform us. I think we should check out a few more of these domes and then get back to the ship.

The cat made sure that they did check out the other domes.

Later, when Charles entered the command deck, he sat down next to Alice. "Anything from our buddy?"

"Not yet," she replied.

"I've detected a communication request," Judy revealed.

Charles pointed to the main screen. "Put it on."

The now familiar cyborg face appeared. "What did you discover?"

"They were attempting to create humans and other species in labs. There was no indication of who they were or why they were trying to do that."

"They are our enemies. They plot to infect your world and others with their agents. Beware of them."

The communication ended abruptly.

Charles sighed. "If they were trying to create humans and other intelligent species, they were unsuccessful."

"Maybe they weren't," Dave said. "We don't really know what's going on here."

"I don't think it matters," Alice said. "We're what's left of humanity."

No one could refute that conclusion. What happened next would change everything,