Just a little bit of blue R2.09

2.09 - Down the stairwell

Having walked along the mine shaft for twenty minutes, Steve was starting to get annoyed at the endless echoing of the clunk his metallic shoes made. The path went down a few meters in depth along a crack in the zirconia shell of the moon that had been explored as a possible way into it's interior by decades of laborious diamond tipped drilling. It was just wide enough for one person to walk down comfortably but it had a large vertical which had allowed for the instalation of the tubing that provided the brethadable atmosphere and all the wiring for the lighting and the machinery. The illusion of space that the high ceiling provided wasn't enough for someone who wasn't used to walking into caves to not sense an ominous feeling of claustrophobia and slight paranoia about some accident having him stuck inside for eternity.

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"This was the place where we finally cracked through the shell." Said Iturría, leading the way. The tunnel opened into a large chamber. -"We are almost fifty meters under the surface." In the farthest wall, an improvised metallic handrail indicated that there was a staircase going down. Next to it, stood a fat purple cat.- "What's a cat doing here?" Inquired Steve. "-We keep a few around. They are good for catching mice. The mine is full of them." Steve looked at the strange cat again, thinking this had to be the weirdest of nature's adaptations he had ever heard of. Ganimedean cats to catch ganimedean mice.

He smiled, while he thought that mice would one day be the last mammal species in the Universe and calculated a full hundred percent probablity that they would be around for far longer than Man. Wherever man has gone, on Earth, a mouse had found it's way there and remained long after the last man had left. Now, it was happening in space too.-"Quite remarkable creatures"- Steve said. Iturria looked at him, quizzingly, -"cats?" - "No. Mice. They seem to thrive anywhere..." Steve stopped to watch the cat move swiftly down the stairs and realized the clunking noise that bothered him had been replaced by a background humm intermingled with a distant acute drilling sound.

-"How far away is it?"-Iturría displayed a wide smile - "Oh! It's just downstairs. The drilling, now, is in another chamber. We keep finding empty spaces. And doors." - "Doors?" Steve stopped again. -"Si. Puertas! Doors. Big doors. It seems this moon was not just any moon, if you catch my drift..." - "Oh! I see..." Steve marvelled at the thought of his theories finally being proven. Not only had they found an artefact, but they were burrowing into a precursor base. He wondered what more surprises laid ahead. and stepped into the stairs. Iturría was already way ahead of him. The dimly lit stairway descended down a seemingly unending pit. At the bottom, Steve could make out a brighter light. The drilling noise intensified. Again, it took him a good twenty minutes to reach the bottom platform. When his shoes cluncked on the plank that connected to yet another stairway leading to the ground, he noticed the cat at his feet.

When he turned his head forward, he couldn't believe the size of the perfectly hemispheric chamber he had entered, so large you could probably fit a spaceport inside. The natural looking light flowed out of no apparent source from the distant walls. Every bit of it perfectly smooth. Every bit of it cristalline zirconium. The floor was matt yellow and from the center of it protuded a huge bulge that looked like a terpin covered in black and green plastic sheets. He took a while to absorb the view and calculated that there was zero chance that this was a natural cave. He could see the huge Iturría already half way across the room to the bulge but he couldn't bring himself to move, shocked as he was by the implications of what he was regarding. He breathed in deeply, trying to calm himself. -"Amazing," - He said, talking to himself. - "Can this be real?"- He looked back down to watch were to put his feet. Faced with an intense feline look, he paused: -"Meow," said the cat.

03.03.25 - @hefestus

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