The Moldering Shroud

[Cmdr Ba'alyo 0]

The orb was a multi-colored palate of pinks and yellows and greens, with even its large bodies of water covered by interwoven layers of fungus and seaweed. Warmed by its cool blue star and the radiant heat of the gas giant it orbited, the fertile moon had once been the cradle of an unrecorded, but intelligent, species. Now it hosted only abundant plant and animal life. The native sentients had once spread across the surface, taming the wilderness, clearing agricultural spans, and erecting cities of concrete, metal, and glass. They had reached sufficient levels of technology to harness the atom, loft objects to circle their world, and begin their first chemical driven foreys into nearby space.

 

And then they were gone. The cause -- like much about their existence -- was still unknown.

 

It was no ancient cataclysm that had ended their dominance of the globe. Only 600 years had passed since the last of their kind stood on the surface. Although their rise and passage was a mere blip in the geologic history, the ravages of time had not yet erased their trace.

 

Native flora, unchecked, had advanced into the remnants of civilization, breaking up streets and sending down roots that drove apart structures. Metal reinforcement bars, expanding with hundreds of years of oxidation, crumbled the concrete they were meant to strengthen. Humid air and unforgiving sunlight pitted surfaces, fractured sealants, and eroded joints. Aggressive molds had rotted wood and consumed softer building materials.

 

The tallest structures had collapsed over the first centuries, their metal frameworks yielding to corrosion and the relentless force of gravity. Only massive stone and concrete buildings retained a semblance of their shape and function. Wind-blown seeds and spores had turned these into multi-level, wondrous hanging gardens. The streets between were debris-filled canyons. Power systems had failed more than a half-millenia ago, with the rare exception of hydroelectric or solar-generated sources.

 

The landing party sent by the starship Columbia -- five humans commanded by a Rigellian Chelon -- had pushed their way through the dense plant life into one of the fallen cities. Their designation for the place was Felfeyra IIIB, although this was far different than the name its inhabitants had given it. Avoiding a large carnivorous plant on the outskirts, the team had emerged into a landscape of gridlike canyons strewn with crumbling cement. Piles of rubble flanked them, with spires of corroded metal and masonry towering in the distance. Seeking the subterranean source of sporadic subspace noise, the team had descended into the fallen interior of a former underground transportation network. They'd unknowingly passed the remnants of an urban solar power network, it’s triple-junctioned gallium arsenide arrays topping stainless steel poles. Dimmed by dirt and film corrosion, they nevertheless continued to produce a faint electric potential, sufficient to power fading LEDs and charge transtator capacitors.

 

Descending into the basement corridors of what had once been a formidable building, they found the gilded, ornate lobby of a laboratory complex. An open shaft, its lift car smashed at the bottom, offered access all the way up to the street level, allowing sudden downdrafts of outside air to mix with humidity from the flooded lower levels. The source of the subspace signals that had summoned them remained a mystery, somewhere within the decaying remnants of a culture, whose nature and disappearance lay under its own moldering shroud.