The Legend of Earth

Chapter 46



Adam pulled the furry hood of the parka tighter around his head and trudged a little further in the near-knee-high snow drifts. The velocity of the wind was high, yet one of the things he found about worlds with lighter gravity, lower air density meant weaker winds. The velocities may be the same, but rather than fighting to remain upright against the force, it was more like a soft breeze on his pink cheeks.

It had been two hours since the conversation with Lord Wydor, and afterwards Adam had felt a strong urge to get outside and experience some wide open spaces; the close walls of the flying saucers had suddenly felt more confining. Even though the weather outside the command complex was terrible, Adam welcomed the change. It helped him put things in perspective, something this mind had been attempting to do for several months already.

Adam could see where Malor Tower had once stood, marked by the few remaining metal frame elements still anchored securely in the massive concrete foundation, although now twisted and warped into something resembling a scene from an old black-and-white gothic horror movie. He moved between two twisted spires and made his way to where he estimated the center of the structure would have been, at the very spot where the Contact Monument had once stood. In a surprising flash of Jerry Seinfeld-type thinking, Adam thought the Juireans really had to work on naming their monuments and structures better, maybe use a little more imagination and flair. Contact Monument had never really done it for him. But that was a thought for another day.

The Kracori asteroid had done a real number on the planet, even though it hadn’t arrived with the tremendous velocity and punch of a traditional impact event. Adam looked out across the vast alluvial plain below the mountain and out to the Southern Sea beyond. He was sure the Kracori had been originally aiming for the very spot he now stood, however they missed. The massive rock of nickel and iron had instead struck almost a hundred kilometers out to sea; the hundred meter high tsunami sweeping in from the ocean, across the vast plain – where the still-smoldering remains of Juir City had once stood – and then reaching the very base of the Kacoran Plain itself. And then the waters receded, leaving the land below virginal, as it was before the first ancient Juirean had ever set foot upon its grasses.

He would be leaving for Earth in a few days and was not looking forward to twelve long months cooped up in a metal cocoon. But it would be good to get home. He had been gone for three years – four if you didn’t count the brief six-day stay just before the Juireans attacked. He was sure he would find things so incredibly different from when he left….

He stretched out a wide, cynical smile as the cold air struck the skin of his face. I make it sound as if I had a choice about leaving, he thought. That was hardly the case.

Indeed, very little that had happened to him over the past four years had been his choice, and he placed the blame for such circumstance squarely in one place: on aliens! Since his first encounter with these odd creatures, they had brought him nothing but pain, misery and heartache. They had disrupted his life and taken away his future.

Yes, a year was a long time to spend confined to a big metal disk, but Adam Cain swore – then and there – that after he got back to Earth it would be a cold day in Hell before he would ever return to space again!