“What do you suppose are in those boxes?” Mark asked.
“One way to find out,” Max responded as he opened up a box and removed a conical container filled with a whitish liquid. Mark walked over to the box as Max opened the liquid and put a drop on his tongue.
“Oh, it’s just that milk-like drink,” Mark said anticlimactically.
“How did you know that?” Max asked.
Turning the box around, the words ‘MILK’ could clearly be seen in big, bold, black lettering.
“So I see,” Max replied, finishing his milk, tossing the empty container back into the box.
Following the wall, they found numerous large metal boxes fused to the wall. These boxes all had large openings at their base leading to a location well out of site and below them.
“What do you suppose those are for?” asked Max.
“If I knew where they went I would probably have a better idea,” replied Mark, who peered into the dark circular drain in the floor of the basin. Stepping backwards, Mark tripped over something, nearly falling over.
“What’s this?” he rhetorically asked as he looked down at the partially buried object in the ground. Closer investigation revealed it to be a clean skull, still connected to a skeleton that was partially buried under dirt and was somewhat hidden by shoots of grass.
“I think I have an idea where those drains lead now,” said Mark. “I think they lead back down to the hatches in the Pak’s cavern, if this is who I think it is.” He was referring to the man who climbed up the hatch a very long time ago.
“The question is, what killed him?” Max asked.
The skeleton did not appear to have any damage to it, nor was the skull chipped or cracked. Perhaps something lurked within the garden that could kill and not leave a trace. Perhaps it was an agent of the house gods, put there to defend against intruders and invaders. If that were the case, then it was very likely that Max and Mark would soon be found by the guardian of the garden of apparent paradise and quickly be killed. However, this thought did not occur to them, and they did not panic and try to escape the garden without finding a way to open the door from the outside.
“It looks like he died in his sleep, since the bones are laid out in such a manner as one who is sleeping,” Mark guessed. “Let’s go check out the big glass tower with the dark rings at the center of this place,” he continued. “It looks like it might be some sort of launch pad for space faring ships.”