In the Land of Giants - Book 2 of the Acropolis series

Chapter 10

  "Look!"

All eyes in the army went out into the valley. Everett took a few surprised steps forward, watching the big reptile as it rose up from the final corpse that it was half-finished eating. Its long snout rose up to the sky and let out a loud, pained sort of howling, staggering on its big, powerful legs. Another squealing noise escaped it, and then it took a stumbling step forward before crashing to the ground with a resounding boom.

There was a long silence as people looked around nervously to one another. Slowly, someone moved out of the forest – it was Spalding, his rifle at the ready as he came out into the clear. He observed the fallen beast for a few seconds and then reached down to grasp his radio. "So, I guess that solves that, huh?" Came the distorted, amused voice in Everett's pocket.

"So much death on this world." Said Nikki's quiet, calm voice beside him.

"All right, everyone move forward." Said Sam over the radio, and very suddenly, the army was lurching into motion again.

As Everett broke out of the treeline and into the open valley, his eyes again went to the sky. He could see that big shape in the sky more clearly now; it was vaguely star-shaped, turned to a silhouette by the angry red sun in the sky, and at this distance, it was only slightly larger than a star in the night sky would have been.

"That's the Acropolis?" He asked, looking over his shoulder at Nikki, who trailed a little slower than everyone else with Patches in her wake. "That shape up there?"

Nikki nodded slowly. "That's it. Out in space."

Everett looked back at the shape, squinting. "How far out, do you think?" As he spoke, there was a rumbling, and the truck roared past them, Sam in the driver's seat. They had put Bear and the stretcher in the flatbed, and nobody had looked back at the ruined buggy and the dead man in the grass beside it.

"Patches said it took them years to fly to it." Nikki said, her eyes straying to the sky. "The Chitters who left to see it were young. They were near death when they finally arrived."

Everett blinked, considering this fact. While they hadn't been around long enough to be certain, all research indicated most Chitters probably lived for twenty to thirty years.

"So the distance is massive." He said. "Further away than a planet on the edge of the solar system is from Earth." He frowned. "And yet we can see it. As clear as day, right there."

Nikki nodded. "It must be enormous. Bigger than a star."

Everett stared at it without belief. His father had loved astronomy, and had explained to Everett the scale of the universe once, that there were stars out there that could fit hundreds of Earth's own sun inside of them. That, on the cosmological scale, Earth itself was incredibly small.

Getting an idea, Everett brought his pack off his shoulder and began to rummage through it. Eventually, he managed to find what he wanted; a small, slender telescope, used by spotters to assist the planes on Orson's Island. He extended it out and brought it to his eye, pausing his footsteps briefly until he found the shape in the sky.

It was too dark for him to see clearly, and the telescope was meant to see things across a field, not out in space. Nevertheless, a distinct star-shape was obvious, with five or perhaps six appendages extending out from its center. Somewhere above it all, he thought he could see another shape, a small circle, but he couldn't be certain.

The Acropolis.

Everett couldn't believe it. His room, back home on Orson's Island, was filled with still frames of the old footage from nearly four years ago, showing the walls and floors of the strange alien site. He had been obsessed with it, desperate to know more about this mysterious location. He had been imagining, for so very long, what it might look like from the outside. Now, there it was, within his sight, and yet it had never seemed so far away.