The Cave - Part 6 (Final)

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The Cave - Part 6 (Final)

About ten meters in front of them, a new gallery opened, unlike the tunnel that preceded it, it seemed to be intensely illuminated by a golden light, radiating harvester from its center.

They felt an intense cold breeze blowing on their faces, coming from the gallery. They approached cautiously, as they approached the end of the tunnel they could distinguish how in the middle of the place a gigantic tree of stem and branches of a white color grew like snow and foliage of a gleaming gold, the light that filled the place seemed to come of the.

It was not the faint and ghostly bioluminescence they had seen so far, it was intense light, like the day. When they looked up, they could see hundreds of the small flying creatures that left the cave during the night, hovering in a wide circle, around the roof of the gallery. They were like bats, but they reflected the light of the tree as if its skin were made of glass.

Slowly they approached the tree and noticed that in their branches there were creatures resembling little apes who watched them with curiosity. When they realized the presence of this they stopped their passage and both took the weapons they kept in their bag and held it as prevention.

It was then that suddenly, as if someone had passed a switch, that everything went dark, the gallery turned black as space and intense shrieks were heard in all directions, the flying creatures began to flutter near them, hitting them as if they were throwing rocks from all directions.

Enmanuel turned to his right and his reflector illuminated less than three meters from him, a great creature similar to a lizard standing on its hind legs, his yellow eyes watched him, while from his mouth, a long, purple viperine tongue appeared as if he was trying to savor the air around him, his jaws opened and from them a roar like a lion arose, which made him shiver, surprised, he pointed the gun at him and discharged a sound pulse directly to the head of the Beast, which fell to the ground writhing.

Terrified, he started running back to the tunnel through which they had arrived, around him flying several of the flying creatures, which seemed to follow him as he ran through the tunnel. On his way he found a small animal similar to a turtle that stood in his way, kicked him and the creature lay on the road.

He kept running and could feel his breath running out, his heart was beating fast, he traveled the rest of the tunnel heavily to the next gallery, that was when, in the middle of it, his legs faltered and he fell down exhausted, tried to crawl, but the forces had abandoned him, he could hardly breathe, he felt as if something very heavy was on his back, pressing him against the ground and taking his breath away. Then he stopped trying to escape and accept his destiny, stopped, closed his eyes and lost consciousness.

After the gallery darkened, Lionel, surprised, turned in all directions, illuminating the gallery to locate Enmanuel, then in front of him a dark form about two meters high pounced and hit him repeatedly in the head, Lionel fell to the On the ground writhing in pain, his skull seemed to rumble inside the helmet, as if expanding and contracting repeatedly.

With difficulty, he crawled across the flooded ground, until he reached the other side of the gallery, where a new tunnel opened, which he managed to illuminate. He felt that he was drowning and that his body was about to collapse, he lay on the threshold wall of the new tunnel and remained motionless, he had lost control over his limbs, even though he tried to move his body did not respond, he remained there, motionless, with its reflector pointing to the other wall of the tunnel, until its energy ran out and fell asleep.

On the small bridge of the ship, Hernán, Patricia and Midori, carefully watched the recording of the trackers of Lionel and Enmanuel, the video recorded the last minutes of the explorers, their hesitant and slow travel through the tunnel to the third gallery, where, in the midst of the darkness, illuminated only by the infrared light of the trackers, Enmanuel suddenly shot a sonic pulse at Lionel and then ran back through the tunnel, kicking the little ROBERT on his way, following them from close, and then collapse after reaching the second gallery.

For his part Lionel could not recover from the blow, tipped directly on his head by the pulse and crawled to the entrance of the next tunnel where he lay until he died.

-Then that was what happened, -said Hernán, looking at Midori-. And how did it happen?. Apparently they followed the entire safety procedure.

-I think it was when they ate, before they left for their first tour of the cave, that they were doomed from the beginning, -Midori pointed to a container of dehydrated food that was on the table -. The seal must be removed before connecting it to the suit adapter, that is designed to be used in space, not in contaminated environments. The spores must have adhered to the adapter of the container or suit, and that's where they got into the suit and their organism.

-They have a toxin that affects the central nervous system, - Patricia intervened -. They are expelled by the blue mold that grows on the walls and floor of the cave. It seems that it generates intense hallucinations and paranoia, and attacks the cardiac and respiratory functions, it can also cause paralysis. Paradoxically the samples they took helped us find it, all the air in the cave is contaminated, maybe that's why there's no animal living in it, only mold and fungus.

-Well, it seems that this and the analysis of the DNA sequences of the samples they had taken, ends up proving Dr. Gouveia's theory, the life forms of this planet are of terrestrial origin, -concluded Hernán -. Now we must go to the second location, there must be the answer to all this.

About a hundred kilometres from the cave, in the middle of the forest, totally buried between vegetable matter, were the remains of an old colonising nave, which had been damaged more than fifteen thousand years ago, and which had gone unnoticed due to the thick vegetable layer and had become completely inoperative.

-Is this it? - asked Patricia, while watching Hernán observe the diagrams of the sinister ship that were projected on the bridge.

-Yes, the records recovered from the colonization program indicate that it is Eurydice, it seems to have crashed, but its AI continued to work and it managed to initiate terraformation, it happened so long ago that the systems are now practically undetectable, - explained Hernán -. We won't know what really happened until the accident site is analyzed, but as far as I can see, the whole belly section of the ship collapsed and there were the human embryos and much of the animal life forms, I guess they were lost and the AI worked with what it had at hand, the plant life forms and a few animal species.

-And obviously with the passing of time and the new and peculiar conditions of the planet, evolution did its job, -Patricia intervened -. The species ended up changing to adapt to the new environment, creating great differences with respect to their original ancestors, differences that cannot deceive the DNA mapping.

Text of @amart29 Barcelona, Venezuela, December 2019

The Cave - Part 6 (Final)

The Cave - Part 6 (Final)

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