The made their way through the vegetation towards the center of the garden, where they could both clearly see dark rings with space in between beginning at or near the floor and ending at the ceiling. Bright lights burning with the intensity of the bright star that was now passing behind planet Moon burned from fixtures in the ceiling.
As they drew nearer to the base of the large ringed tube, the ground transitioned from dirt to a tarnished, cold metal floor. An opaque wall obfuscated what existed inside the tube at ground level, however a door and a dark panel proved promising as means of entry and discovery of what was beyond the dark curtain.
“I think I can figure out this door,” Mark claimed as he lightly touched the dark panel. The screen illuminated with boxes and words in many colors, mostly shades of green or red. Tapping over a button that read ‘OPEN,’ the door slid into the wall and revealed the secret behind the curtain.
A very deep and wide tunnel led straight down, deeper into the surface. At the bottom a cylindrical object was sitting, with what looked like a hatch and windows facing skyward. A crude ladder consisting entirely of indentations in the tunnel wall allowed a safe descent to the object below.
“We may have a way off this rock,” Mark said. “According to the panel, down there is a mostly functional ship.”
“Why would anyone put a ship at the bottom of a deep tunnel? Don’t you think that it would have made more sense to put the ship on ground level?”
“I think that the door up here is just an access point to make repairs on the tunnel easier. It would appear that the ship is initially treated as a ballistic object by the tunnel, which accelerates it to an escape velocity so it can escape the gravity well of planet Moon as well as to conserve fuel. I think that this tube also works the other way around,” Mark said.
“You mean it lands ships in roughly the same way?”
“Yes. I think that the rings are some sort of electromagnetic field generators that accelerate the ship, much like a particle accelerator accelerates a particle.”
“We can check back with this ship later, close the doors, and let’s try to find the main entry door so we can inform the others,” Max directed.
Mark closed the door, and put the panel back into standby mode. Then the humming from many different sources caught Max’s attention. Turning around, he saw several giant hovering black wasp-like things moving around in the garden. With long tentacles, they reached down and plucked from the vines and trees ripe produce and floated away, returning again. So far they paid no attention to Max or Mark. They darted around harvesting, movements similar to a humming bird. Then the things were gone. Returned to their hidden caves from whence they came.