Paradox Moon: The First Book of Regenesis Read online

  Paradox Moon

  The First Book of Regenesis

  D. Scott Dickinson

  Paradox Moon and The Book of Regenesis Copyright © 2019 by D. Scott Dickinson.

  All rights reserved

  Cover: original artwork by Doan Trang

  Visit D. Scott Dickinson’s author page at amazon.com.

  Contents

  Chapter 1. The Bleeding Valley

  Chapter 2. Strangers in a Strange World

  Chapter 3. The Breathing Towers

  Chapter 4. Marooned!

  Chapter 5. Alien Species

  Chapter 6. Into the Abyss

  Chapter 7. Echoes of a Lost Civilization

  Chapter 8. In a Deep Place

  Chapter 9. Mermaids of the River Caves

  Chapter 10. The Great Magma Mines

  Chapter 11. The Diluvian Plain

  Chapter 12. The Mud-Lurkers

  Chapter 13. Into the Canopy

  Chapter 14. The Whistling Craters

  Chapter 15. The Terror Birds

  Chapter 16. A Different Universe

  Chapter 17. Burning Sands

  Chapter 18. Strobing Webs

  Chapter 19. Tube of Terror

  Chapter 20. False Eden

  Chapter 21. Night Crawlers

  Chapter 22. Edge of the World

  Chapter 23. The Judas Molecule

  Chapter 24. The Stone Forest

  Chapter 25. Terror from the Tree-Tops

  Chapter 26. Home at Last

  Chapter 27. Forsaken Shore

  Chapter 28. Crystal Spires

  Chapter 29. Ersatz Science

  Chapter 30. Hands Across Distant Worlds

  Afterword

  Prologue

  Adiminutive, cloud-shrouded moon orbits a giant planet suspended between two suns. The giant planet is swaddled in folds of vivid violet, crimson red and lemon yellow in stark contrast to the blood-red suns. The clouded moon has a nacreous, almost metallic luster and a faint blue-green halo.

  The watcher is intrigued by this unusual circumbinary system with its massive exoplanet and twin dwarf stars. Peering at the computer-generated image, the astronomer manipulates the virtual lens of her space-based telescope, anxious to know more.

  The appearance of the small moon with its blue-green halo is unexpected and, in her mind, provokes a single unspoken question:

  A possible positive?

  The answer, unsolicited, pops up on her user’s monitor. Extreme ambient temperature readings confirm a parametric negative on the conditions conducive to life (CCL) curve. An abort command turns the telescope’s gaze elsewhere.

  The CCL is not programmed to look behind the surface temperatures it detects.

  It cannot know the impenetrable shroud envelopes only that fraction of the moon in its direct line-of-sight.

  It cannot know the extremes it is recording on the external periphery of the fog-like clouds are being neutralized by a powerful magnetosphere shielding the moon’s atmosphere from the lethal UV rays of two suns.

  It cannot know the unique molecular structure of the fog particles absorb excess heat from the moon’s atmosphere and respirate it through the clouds’ outer surface.

  It can only act on what it does know. And it knows the cloud cover’s extreme temperatures preclude the possibility of life below.

  Unaware of the planetoid’s peculiar chemistry and eager to accelerate the pace of the wide-field Scan for Evidence of Life-Forms (SELF) search, the remote watcher gives only scant, passing thought to the quantum mechanics imprisoning the small moon before following her lens to more promising prospects in its celestial field.

  At once, its attention settles on the giant planet, as favorable readings stream in to the user’s monitor displaying moderate temperatures and even indicating the presence of oxygen on the outer surface of the opaque violet-red-yellow cloud cover.

  It cannot know the giant planet’s clouds mask a hellish surface of toxic gases and molten metals.

  It cannot know its inner atmosphere is roiled by convectional forces surpassing the windspeed of super-hurricanes on earth.

  It cannot know objects which pierce the false serenity of the outer cloudbank are impelled by that convection to the white-hot surface below.

  It can only transmit what it does know. And it tells the trailing Cosmos spacecraft here are the CCL readings it seeks.

  The scouting telescope stations itself above the planet’s atmosphere to await the arrival of the spacecraft following its cosmic trail. And the Cosmos crew is energized by the prospect of exploring this first positive hit in its galactic mapping-mission and quest for habitable planets.

  Meanwhile, the ignored, tiny moon, hiding behind its fog-like mask, returns to the obscurity preserving its precious secret.

  Had Cosmos’ astronomer overridden the negative CCL reading and deployed the telescope’s remote-sensing array to penetrate the thick layers of fog and monitor vital signs in the moon’s atmosphere, the SELF search would be over.

  For beneath the clouds, safe from the superficial pass of the telescope, lay a mysterious world abounding with life in all its struggling, competing and adapting complexity.

  This is the story of one of its life-forms, one not unlike our own, and of a small band’s odyssey between two different worlds in a quest to regain their own.

  The story of life begins, paradoxically, where life is most scarce—in the harsh, ice-locked remoteness of the moon’s polar extremity.

  Chapter 1. The Bleeding Valley

  Blinking at the stark whiteness of his frozen world, the creature stands at the narrow entrance of the ice-bound cavern.

  He cranes his upper torso backward and reaches forward with twin furry outstretched arms. Superbly adapted to the cold of his world, thick fur also blankets both legs and the rest of his body—save for the palms of his hands and his face, whose fleshy features are exposed.

  From a distance, the creature appears human-like in his anthropomorphic features and his erect posture. But closer inspection reveals striking differences.

  His ears are tall, when erect, and sharply pointed at the top. Wide white eyebrows accentuate the ruddy complexion of his face. And enormous pupils anchor large, crescent-shaped ice-blue eyes.

  But his most distinctive anatomic feature is the thick white fur enveloping nearly the whole of his body, and it is the peculiar composition of this fur that enables his band to cope successfully in their polar isolation on this far moon. It is the same consistency that enables our own Chesapeake Bay Retrievers to survive the wintry shallows of Maryland’s eastern shore—a thick, impenetrable outer coat, overlaying an oily inner coat of waterproof insulate.

  The most arresting aspect of the creature is his extraordinarily calm, peaceful, non-threatening demeanor.

  His is a guise that would disarm even the most suspicious visitor to his world. Little would the stranger guess the mortal menace and lethal threat his host’s mask of innocence conceals.

  Looking backward into the icy cavern, he calls softly as several other fur-covered bodies stir within. All are the stature of their leader, and they respond with soft answering sounds of their own.

  Soon, the entire band of a dozen members are standing with their leader, staring out from the cavern’s cramped opening.

  This is an important day in the life of the band, and the leader has much to do.

  The Old One passed in the night, and he must be returned to the life-source. He was a valued hunter, and the leader is beset with a sense of both personal and communal loss as he recalls the events of the night before.

  The Old One had let his fellows know he was, at last,
ready.

  Fragile as he was, two fellow-hunters had to carry him to the Chosen Place—the rocky promontory overlooking the crashing spume and spindrift of the life-source below.

  There, with his wide, seeing eyes, he had serenely drunk in the eternal motion of the blue-green water until the gelid air quenched his breath and he passed from this dim light into the unknowable shadow beyond.

  Theirs is a sunless world, forever shaded by an unbroken barrier of thickly layered clouds which bathe the polar region in a pale, unremitting glow. It is a barren, eerie landscape of blue-green and crystal-clear ice, and it surrounds the band’s remote hidden valley.

  The cavern itself opens onto the side of a steep cliff, surmounted by vast steps of ice and stone descending to a rocky floor at the edge of a wide glacial floe. The steep walls of the valley extend to the very edge of the frigid green ocean at the end of the floe, isolating it from approach or view.

  It is to this shore the two hunters, accompanied by the entire band, bear the lifeless body of the Old One. There, they slip their departed fellow into the icy deep.

  As great fins slice through the surface seeking the proffered flesh, the entire band raise their arms toward the vastness of the ocean in supplication to its providence as the life-source. As one of their hunters who helped harvest these waters, the Old One was esteemed for his special connection with the life-source, and the band knows the sea is grateful to be recalling one of its own.

  There is more to be done, and the band returns to its cavern home to retrieve the grey stone the Old One has prepared to mark his presence at the Chosen Place. The rock has a smooth vertical face upon which the Old One has painstakingly and deeply etched in blue the image of a large-finned aquatic beast surrounded by eye-symbols and flanked by the two jots signifying his rank as hunter second only to the band’s leader.

  As the band gathers to pay their respects, the leader carries the stone to the promontory and sets it down among the many other markers at the Chosen Place, whose concave rows of mute monuments sit silently surveying the surging sea. All the rocks are the same grey stone, and all the polished faces show the eye-symbols. But many more have red images than blue, and few carry the likeness of the finned beast.

  The leader carefully rotates the marker of the Old One so, like its neighbors, the smooth face looks out upon the sea. Through its eyes shall the Old One forever view the life-source.

  The Old One’s passing leaves the band depleted and short one hunter. Now the leader must designate she who will restore the band to its full strength, but that can wait until he attends to a more pressing need.

  Upon returning to the cavern, the leader motions to two of his fellows who join him for the descent to the valley floor below. They are the band’s other huntsmen, and they quickly traverse the short distance back to the green ocean at the base of the floe.

  Reaching the frigid water, the three hunters turn north and follow its icy shore for a much greater distance, arriving finally at the sheltered cove they know from long use will yield a plentiful harvest for the band.

  Curiously, none of the hunters is carrying weapons or gear of any kind. That is because each of them is a weapon unto himself, a potent dual threat to their quarry.

  The hunters gather at the inner shore of the small cove, intently focused on the open, liquid stretches of sea water that are the only relief from the solid counterpane of needle-like particles of frazil ice that give the ocean’s surface its oily translucence. The presence of open water near the cove means conditions are perfect for the hunters’ purpose.

  It is time to begin the hunt.

  They crouch at the margin where frazil ice meets open water and begin a rhythmic slapping of the ice’s calcified edge. Then, like the three daughters of Achelous, the hunters serenade the still, silent sea with a siren song of soothingly soft, synchronous sounds.

  After what seems but a moment, there is an urgent roiling of the open water at their feet, and a vertical steel-grey fin breaks its surface slicing directly toward the hunters.

  Suddenly, in a violent upward thrust, the creature breaches. Immense spike-lined jaws snap madly at the hunters searching the air for their soft throats.

  Just as suddenly, the three huntsmen spring toward the creature, spreading their own jaws to display a menace of razor- sharp fangs and splaying their fingers to deploy a threat of razor-sharp talons.

  So lethal is their assault the giant finned beast is dead before it meets the ground.

  Like three venomous vipers whose prey has been immobilized, the hunters retract their fangs into the soft pockets lining the roof of their palate and stare at the dead creature, thankful for the quick kill. They know this quarry will feed the band for a long while before they must hunt again.

  Thanks to a metabolic process unique to their species, they will live off their feeding from this hunt for many months before seeking the next creature to pack in the blue ice preserving their future larder.

  At a nod from the leader, they sink long talons into their victim’s flanks. So powerful are they that lifting and carrying the finned beast seem effortless as they begin to retrace their steps back toward the glacial valley.

  It would not be the same valley they so recently left.

  The returning hunters would instead be greeted by a scene of angry, vivid colors beyond their experience in this monochrome polar world.

  As the hunters near the shoreline of the floe, they enter a wall of dense fog that obscures every familiar detail of the valley. They proceed slowly, cautiously feeling their way along the path they have traveled so often.

  Suddenly, the fog parts and the three behold a scene that chills them to the core.

  Their valley is bleeding.

  And it is bleeding fire!

  The floe is flanked by flaming flumes of vividly fluorescing red and orange liquid. Trapped between the spreading fire, their familiar river of ice is vanishing into earthbound banks of fog.

  Looking up toward their cavern, the hunters see that the broad steps are all ablaze, dripping with flaming rivulets of the reddish-orange liquid. There, in the cavern’s narrow entrance, are the huddled figures of the band—in imminent peril, but with no way to reach their leader.

  Without hesitation, the hunters abandon their catch and, with talons extended, scale an area of the cliff’s sheer surface between the rivulets of fire.

  Reaching the entrance, the leader motions the band to climb the icy surface above to the roof of the valley.

  Pausing at the top, the band looks down on a scene of horror.

  The broad floor and steep walls of their hidden valley are aglow in a reddish-orange haze, with great fissures of steam soaring skyward from rents in the valley floor. As if on cue, a cone of flames erupts from their cavern-home below, released with such force its fiery tendrils lick the slick stony surface of the valley’s opposite face.

  As the inferno spreads, the leader becomes fearful and anxious. He wonders:

  Does the valley’s bleeding fire portend even greater danger to come?

  Suddenly, he is shaken by a rumbling temblor beneath his feet, and he urges his band across the valley’s roof and down its back slope to the shoreline path leading to the hunters’ small cove.

  As they reach the shore, a percussive explosion stops them in their tracks.

  Looking back, they witness the implosion of the valley’s walls and the collapse of the bedrock that had separated their valley from the sea as it sinks and irresistibly becomes one with the icy ocean.

  The leader knows they will not be returning to this place and, so, resolves to take them as far away as quickly as possible.

  Thus does the small band flee the shelter and isolation of their hidden valley.

  Thus begins their odyssey across an unknown world.

  Chapter 2. Strangers in a Strange World

  Sheltered by sheer walls of bare rock, the hunters’ cove offers the band refuge in an otherwise barren landscape. Their leader motions the
m toward the protected lee side to pockets the sea has carved into the cliff’s base.

  There the frightened, exhausted members of the band rest.

  The leader and his fatigued huntsmen join them. Soon they are asleep as well.

  Jolted from his slumber by a distant soft and growing roar, the leader springs to his feet and is greeted by an eerie scene beyond his experience.

  The sea has disappeared!

  Where water once licked the shoreline of the cove, there is only a broad expanse of rocky bottom stretching as far as the leader can see. Somehow, he reasons, the water crept stealthily away while the band slept.

  But that is not what alarms him.

  Like the dread that visited him when his valley’s roof trembled, the leader is most troubled by the soft roar and its invisible source. He immediately wakes the rest of the band and, at his command, they climb the rocky wall at once.

  As the last member of the band crests the ridge, they turn as one and behold a vast wall of ocean racing toward the cove. The band watches in fascination as the rushing sea crashes against the wall beneath them, and they are awed by the hollow, sucking sigh as it crashes back on itself.

  The sea is restored and, as if by magic, the cove reclaims its shore.

  Relieved and rested, the leader takes them back down to the shoreline and continues to follow it away from their valley.

  The low hills melt into the distance behind them as, gradually, the uninviting land becomes flat and featureless.

  Frozen.

  Barren.

  Lifeless.

  Gradually, they become aware of a whisper-soft hum in the distance.

  The leader pauses, listening closely. Bidding his fellows to remain by the seashore, he strikes out inland toward an increasingly deafening howl.

  The closer he approaches the howling, the closer the air becomes until, nearing a wide upward slope, he can scarcely breathe at all. Still, he is committed to find the source of the thick, shrieking air. Filling his lungs with as much air as he can inhale, he soldiers on holding his breath.