Castle whistled through his teeth. “Look at these drawings!” He was standing in front of one of the walls and gently running a finger across the grooves of the alien symbols carved in the stone.
Joanne leaned forward and pulled a face. “That’s disgusting,” she said and turned away quickly.
Jeff swallowed. The drawings were of humanoid creatures that might well be humans. And they were unremittingly violent. Some of the figures were holding huge knives, others were lying on the ground with severed limbs. Some of them were burning at the stake. One of the figures was tied to a cross with its head hanging down and its stomachs ripped open, red coils dangling in front of its face.
Jeff took a step back, turned around and walked to another part of the wall. The whole room was covered with scenes of violence and torture. But why?
“We shouldn’t enter the cavity,” Joanne whispered.
Jeff swallowed. Again he felt that peculiar feeling in his stomach as he looked at the gate opposite them. Next to it was a small square with which they could probably open it. But should they open it? What kind of hell awaited them on the other side? Jeff was afraid to find out.
Green seemed less concerned and reached for the square next to the gate.
“Green, wait!” Jeff cried.
But it was too late. With a horrible scraping noise, the gate slowly swung open. Gloomy, blood-red light filled the room.
Jeff approached the entrance, but stopped short a few feet in front of it. Beyond it was a kind of terrace. It was bounded to the left and right by a parapet of beige sandstone.
“There’s no other way to go!” Green said, in response to Jeff’s accusing look. He led the way out, and Jeff and the others followed him.
A rock wall rose up behind them, disappearing into thick gray and red clouds that swirled across the sky. The outline of the pale sun was only just visible through the haze. Jeff walked up to the edge of the platform. A broad, stone staircase led down to bare rock below, which looked as rugged and inhospitable as in the other cavity. And the landscape was just as bleak and monotonous. The ground was at least 300 feet below them. Fires flickered here and there on the naked rock, as if some kind of natural gas was rising from the earth and being kindled. The stench of decay was so pungent that Jeff gagged several times.
Castle pointed into the distance. “Do you see that? What is it?”
A few miles away there appeared to be a group of small buildings. Little black dots were moving around them. Jeff grabbed the binoculars from the equipment sled.
Something was running along the side of a stone hut. Was it an animal? Jeff adjusted the binoculars, and finally the image came into focus. His heart skipped a beat. That was a… no, it couldn’t be. He lowered the binoculars, wiped his eyes and raised them back up.
Yes it could! He had seen correctly!
“You won’t believe it,” he whispered.
“What is it?” Joanne asked agitatedly. “Tell us!”
“Humans!” Jeff spoke in a husky voice.
“What?” Castle blurted out.
He was sure he wasn’t mistaken. It was a group of people. No, two groups. But Jeff couldn’t see what they were doing exactly. They were wearing only pathetic scraps of cloth. Their skin glistened with dirt.
“It can’t be,” Joanne whispered.
“Incredible,” Green added.
Shorty was more pragmatic. “And what should we do? Shall we go and talk to them?”
Jeff lowered the binoculars. He chewed his lower lip as he tried to organize his thoughts. Were those really humans? Or were they aliens that just looked like humans? Holograms? He couldn’t get his head around what he was seeing. They had to go and find out. “Yes, we’ll go and talk to them.”
Mac was dubious. “Might be a trap set by the aliens.”
“What aliens?” Joanne snapped. “The light aliens?”
“No,” Mac shot back. “I meant those… over there…” He trailed off.
“We’ll go and find out if we can communicate with them,” Jeff said. He found it hard to believe it was a trap. What would be the point? He also couldn’t imagine they were extraterrestrials that just happened to look like humans. Well, they would find out soon enough. He began to descend the stairs, the others close on his heels.
It would take at least a quarter of an hour to reach the bottom. Through the mist, Jeff thought he could see other buildings and groups of people. But was it possible? How could humans possibly have found their way here? Had other spaceships landed on this ship and tried to save themselves by going into the interior?
Jeff and the others gathered at the foot of the steps and set off.
Tentatively, they approached the nearest group, which consisted of a good dozen people. Jeff could hear them yelling and shouting. They were running round and round the building, which looked more like a derelict stable than a dwelling. They were running in pairs, each pair was pulling a bundle on two ropes.
What is that? What are they dragging over the rocks?
Jeff’s stomach clenched as the bundle in front of him raise an arm.
That’s a human!
Yes, they were human bodies, and they were alive.
Jeff found himself rooted to the spot a few feet away from this grisly scene. His shipmates huddled around to look. Joanne’s eyes were wide. The group appeared to take no notice of them. One of the bodies was dragged right past them by two angry, screaming men. It was a woman. She was naked and moaning softly as she was dragged on her back across the jagged, rocky ground. She was covered in open wounds, and a big one on her left thigh was leaving a trail of blood on the ground. Shorty retched.
Jeff shook his head. What was going on here? He gripped the butt of his pistol, but left it in the holster. Then he stepped in the path of two more men who were pulling another naked woman behind them. She was whimpering. In horror, Jeff realized the skin on her left leg was completely rubbed off, exposing the muscles underneath.
“Wait! Stop!” he said loudly.
The men stopped and stared at him angrily. Joanne grabbed Jeff’s arm. He checked to see that his shipmates were all close by.
Jeff took a deep breath.
“Can you understand me?” he asked as casually as he could manage.
“Move! You’re in our way,” said the man on the left. He looked around fifty years old, was of medium height and had a gray beard. He squinted a little, which made it difficult for Jeff to decide which eye to focus on.
He felt a chill running down his spine. The man had spoken Cosmocration, the standard language in the Inner Sector. He wasn’t an alien, but a human. Was it possible?
“What are you doing here?” Jeff asked.
“What does it look like? Punishing the whores,” the other man answered. He had a huge birthmark under his right ear, and also spoke flawless Cosmocration. He addressed Jeff in a tone that suggested he’d asked the stupidest question of the century.
Maybe it was smarter not to pursue this line of questioning. “May I ask where you’ve come from and how you ended up here?”
The two men exchanged glances. The one with the birthmark shook his head as if he couldn’t grasp Jeff’s stupidity. The other one fixed his gaze on Jeff as if were about to tie him to a rope.
“Are there more people here?” Jeff asked.
The man on the left burst out laughing. The other man shook his head again, and they continued to drag the moaning woman behind them.
“Hell is full of people,” the one on the left shouted.
Jeff watched them for another moment before returning to his shipmates. “What do you make of that?”