Portal 2901 Part 4

By Thadd Evans

Fiman and his friends reach the planet Osae, then land on an island, hoping to find out who has been sending radio signals.

• Language: English
• Publisher: eXtasy Books Inc
• Release date: Sep 8, 2014
• ISBN: 9781771118613

Book preview

Fiman and his friends reach the planet Osae, then land on an island, hoping to find out who has been sending radio signals.

Is Osae inhabited?

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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Beyond Portal 2901 3

Copyright © 2014 Thadd Evans

ISBN: 978-1-77111-861-3

Cover art by Carmen Waters

All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher.

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Smashwords Edition

Beyond Portal 2901

Book 4

By

Thadd Evans

Dedication

My mother, Nan Serrins, Tina Haveman, and Jay Austin

Chapter One

On screen 92, 122 miles per hour, X41’s current speed, decreased as it entered Faw’s thin atmosphere.

Text appeared, inches above Voih’s lid—she was waking up. But her chamber wasn’t programmed to do that until X41 reached Osae. If she did wake up, would this threaten her digitization or her regeneration afterward?

Hellllll… a voice in my earplugs whispered. But the voice faded quickly, and the radio interferometric telescope couldn’t tell if the signal had come from the valley.

Was a cloaked ship following us?

On screen, Voih’s face, like everyone else’s aboard, stretched out, pulled by extreme deceleration. Then our bodies began shaking, held in place by straps and the internal gravitational field.

X41 slowed down, and the results of a recent Doppler scan enlarged. According to it, Voih and everyone else were safe, no injuries of any kind.

Now X41 was just over 25,000 feet above the valley, coming down fast, headed for the dome, a structure that was two miles in diameter.

An 11 foot by 11 foot by 11-foot grid, a 3D holographic guide, equipment that X41 didn’t create, materialized.

Who sent it?

At the top of dome, an entrance slid open. Our ship went through it. Beneath us, ghostly buildings—including towers and pyramid-shaped dwellings—turned opaque. X41 had just uncloaked them. Between many buildings, I noticed empty streets, no pedestrians or spacecraft anywhere. X41 veered port, flying toward a town square.

Our ship touched down on a launch pad, blowing dust off it. No one had used this pad in a long time, maybe months or years.

Chapter Two

On-screen, Voih’s chamber opened. I got up and headed for the chamber as one end rose. She stuck out her hand, and I pulled Voih to her feet.

Ahhhhht, she murmured, stretching out the word.

The earplugs translated. Thank you. This rough translation is from The Hada, one ceremony out of sixty-eight thousand.

Hio…ah, a Stru-like voice sounded within my mind, an invitation. But it didn’t tell me where to go.

Hello, I said, hoping that the voice would continue, directing me.

A blank screen, a page without any information on it, scrolled. X41 hadn’t received any messages.

Voih said, These circular B’s remind me of Noqa. Please accompany me.

Earplugs. The term B refers to a group of Stru research buildings.

X41’s hatch opened. We got out, headed for dimly lit buildings.

On my screen, a nine-foot-tall humanoid’s infrared image, the results of a recent scan, enlarged. Unfortunately, the image was only partially filled in. I couldn’t tell if the humanoid, standing in a nearby building, was a Stru or a Ro15 android.

The rest of the screen, databases that would tell me about the humanoid’s DNA and blood type, remained blank. No more information about the being was available.

We reached the building and hesitated as a faint electronic hum, a sound inside my earplugs, a noise that meant nothing to me, got louder. To our left, a door hissed open.

Voih said, According to voices in my earplugs, ones that I’m hearing now, someone inside this B is beckoning me. My guess is that it’s an automatic signal, a message that switches on when anyone walks up to this building.

We went inside. At the opposite end of a long, narrow dark room, I heard a faint dit, dit, dit, a barely audible sound. It stopped. Without warning, dit, dit started again, nine times in one minute.

Voih spoke, the first two words mixed with soft clicks, Qxi…xi…is here. She looked at the opposite end of the room.

My earplugs translated. I can’t tell what is making the sound.

All, Vti, I said, hoping text or images would appear on my screen, telling us what was making the sound and where it was.

It remained blank. No new messages or heat signatures.

We continued on as our clicking boot heels echoed on the hard floor. Close by, a six-foot tall silhouette, a poorly lit figure, lifted its arm. At the same time, my shoulder-mounted flashlight switched on, responding to the arm movement, and illuminated a six-foot-tall humanoid android, a platinum robot with a small forehead, round cheeks, a tiny nose, but no mouth or eyes, its face aimed at us.

Qo. Onl… it said, its voice accompanied by a faint electronic hum.

Earplugs. Unable to translate object programming language derived from Stru method database.

Voih said, Fiman, according to my recent analysis, nine years ago Hia, Nzie, and Sraa, Stru scientists, sent this robot, Exr one, one of two Exr prototypes, to Faw. It wants us to come with it.

I nodded.

Earplugs. No more information on Exr one is available.

The android pivoted, headed for a doorway. All of us went outside.

After crossing a courtyard, I glanced to the left and noticed a large black waist-high concave window. On my screen, alert-text—information from a Wiisd database—brightened. A power Doppler imager, a device behind that window, has just scanned both of you. No more information is available. Was the imager studying our thalamus? Our neurons? Our DNA?

We walked around the corner. Not far away, a Stru boy, an eleven-year-old in a blue spacesuit, whose face was obscured by shadows,