Astronomicon 1: Inception Point (Finished)

18 - Black

"Well, there's another mystery for us," said Chris as they got within a couple of dozen metres of the shiny, metal ball. "I thought all the black we could see from back there was going to be scorch marks across the rocks, but that looks like a layer of black sponge."

"Has something from the ball reacted with the rocks?" asked Kate. "Some kind of chemical reaction?"

"Looks more like insulation foam to me," said Fletcher. "Maybe the heat powdered it and it spewed out when it hit the floor?"

"It definitely left a decent crater," added Chris, moving cautiously closer. "And the impact cracked a section out of it."

The ball, some two metres in diameter, sat in the centre of the half-metre depression and appeared to have hit so hard as to smash several tonnes of the rocky surface out from under it. As far as they could judge, it was perfectly circular but had a lightly marbled texture in the metallic shell. The hole left by the missing chunk was surrounded with fractures and some of the black material inside had leaked out and run like a thick fluid down the exterior surface and formed a pool on the rocky floor.

Chris studied the black material. Its qualities escaped him. It looked exactly like fine-bubbled foam rubber, but judging by the way it seemed to have poured and splattered on and around the rocks in the area, it certainly did not share all the properties of rubber as he knew them. The one thing he could say for sure was that it smelled awful, reminding him of rancid laundry.

He looked in through the large, irregular hole in the upper half of the ball and that did not make sense either. It was hard to say if there was anything else inside beyond the black material as it was almost full of it. There was certainly considerably more of it splashed around the rocks than seemed to be missing from inside the sphere.

"Whatever this is," announced Fletcher after studying the metallic, outer skin of the ball, "It's nothing to do with Elysian. This isn't ours at all."

"Where's it from then?" asked Chris.

"I can't even work out what it is, Commander," Fletcher groaned as he straightened up and stretched his spine. "It's got this metal outer shell and all this padding material inside. It's like there's something in the middle, protected by the rest."

"I don't like the sound of that," said Kate. "What might be in the middle?"

"No idea," replied Chris. "But I don't think anyone should touch it until we have some idea what it is."

"I've worked out what it smells like," announced Melissa. "It smells like one of those really ripe Italian hard cheeses."

"Looks like foam, smells like cheese, apparently flows like liquid and doesn't resemble anything we know. This is going to be a fascinating mystery to solve, but we can't waste more time on this, we need to press on," said Chris.

"Have you seen these?" asked Kate suddenly.

Chris turned to where Kate was squatting near a larger rock. Black foam formed a ring around the rock, looking worryingly as if it was sheltering in the shadow beneath it.

"What have you found?"

"Mushrooms, I think," she replied, sounding unsure.

"Mushrooms! Really?" Being careful to avoid stepping on any of the black splatters, he moved closer and crouched beside her.

"Look, they're only tiny, but there are hundreds of perfectly-formed, thin, pointy mushrooms. They're in a circle right around this rock."

She pointed with her gloved finger at the mushrooms which were dwarfed by her fingertip. All light brown with a darker underside, each mushroom appeared to be identical to the next and the circle they formed looked like it had been measured out rather than forming naturally. They were packed so tightly together that there were no gaps in the ring.