The Worlds of the Sheaf

The Attack - Part 2

     The most obvious feature of the planet, which they saw while they were still a million miles away from it, was the thin silver ring that circled it. The report of the felisian expedition said that it was an artificial structure, made of metal fashioned into clusters of pressurised modules ranging in size from a few yards to several miles across. The interiors of the largest modules had been landscaped with grass and trees like the moon trog caverns, a clear sign that the builders of these awesome structures had lived in them.

     Saturn had been sceptical when he'd read the hushed words of awestruck wonder at the engineering prowess of this long vanished race. He'd envisaged a simple cable circling the planet to which the habitation modules were attached like ornaments on a charm bracelet. The felisians had been so crushed and downtrodden by the Masters, he'd thought, that they were overawed by comparatively mundane things that might not impress an upright, sound minded Tharian. The description of the ring was simply too extraordinary to be taken seriously.

     When he saw it for himself, though, he realised that the felisians had not exaggerated. They had, if anything, understated the colossal ring. It was a collection of millions of modules attached not to a central cable but to each other, packed hundreds abreast to form a wide disc of metal and other materials reaching from thirty to sixty thousand miles from the planet's surface. It glittered silver and green in the light of the sun, so beautiful that Tana Antallan could only stare in rapture, unable to believe that anything so wonderful could exist in the mortal realm. Like the planet below, it was tilted to the sun, so that every part of it bathed in its light, while casting no shadow on the world at its centre.

      "By the Gods!" gasped Prup Chull as the arc of green-tinged silver stretched across the scrying mirror. Slender and graceful from this distance and appearing to be a smooth, continuous surface, its individual elements too small to be seen. "And we pride ourselves on our engineering accomplishments! But nothing we've even dreamed of comes close to this!"

     "What is its purpose?" breathed Tana Antallan, his wonder fading to be replaced by a growing bewilderment. "The time and effort that must have gone into the construction of such a structure. Why?"

     "They lived on it, of course," said Strong. "You've read the felisians' report. It's a sort of city, vast beyond comprehension. It must have housed millions!"

     "Hundreds of millions," agreed Prup Chull. "Maybe thousands of millions."

     "But why?" repeated the shae. "What is wrong with the surface of the planet? Why deliberately confine themselves within metal walls? Did they not walk the surface of their world? Feel the warmth of the sun on their faces and the wind in their hair?"

     "They had cities on the planet surface as well," said Clordus. "Huge cities that dwarf even Arnor, the capital of your Agglemonian Empire. So many cities, in fact, that there was very little open land left between them. No part of their world was untouched by their civilisation. Maybe that is why they built the ring. There was nowhere left on their world to build new cities."

     "What happened to them?" asked Strong, still staring at the ring. "Where did they go? Did they all just die?"

     "We don't know. We never found out."

     Saturn stared at the felisian in surprise. "But you must have had ample time to explore and investigate. There must have been records from their final days."

     "Perhaps, but once we determined that there was nothing there to threaten us, we left and have had no cause to return."

     "Weren't you curious?" asked the wizard in surprise.