Kirizzo moved through a vast room filled with angular columns of gray metal that stopped just short of the low ceiling. Black plates embedded in the devices glowed with symbols in a funny violet color at the edge of his visual capabilities. He supposed that he saw only a fraction of the wavelengths that the creators had used to view the information.
His backside twitched slightly as he scanned the room with his mass sense, trying to find the next door. Kirizzo suppressed his curiosity about the devices in favor of his effort to escape to the surface. An oppressive feeling came over him, causing him to slow. Something was wrong. Kirizzo took another few steps forward. Ahead, below the floor, he detected something too massive for his senses. His head reeled. Kirizzo staggered back, retreating from the overwhelming input.
A few moments later he began to recover. The golden alien knew what he had encountered: a microscopic singularity. The intense gravity close to the event horizon would daze a Gorgala almost to the point of helplessness. The tiny black hole was probably used as a source of power for the energy-greedy complex. Matter could be tossed into it, and the superheated gases outside the event horizon would emit a small fraction of the energy released as high-frequency radiation that could be harvested by a sufficiently complex technology. Just holding the singularity in place took an advanced science. Without any support, the black hole would tumble into the center of the planet and consume everything until no planet remained—just a black sphere orbiting the star, a dark monster with a fat stomach lingering where its victim once lived.
Kirizzo took a different route, trying to avoid the dangerous area he had accidentally discovered. He skirted the outside of the large chamber and came across a circular opening in the side wall.
The tunnel reminded him of the entrance that he had scrambled down, pursued by the Bel Klaven war machines. He entered it, moving through the tube. The inside was utterly dark, so he relied upon his other senses to find his way. It took a familiar twisting, inclined course up toward the surface.
He encountered a blockage at the end of the passage. Dirt and leaves completely obstructed the exit. Kirizzo dug through the matter efficiently, scooping dirt out of place and under him with his forelegs while several sets of rear legs flicked it far behind him. He burrowed a few meters down the tunnel before he sensed the surface, a vast low-density area only a few more meters above.
The surface light flooded into the tunnel around Kirizzo when he emerged. The light-sensitive bundles under his gravity-sensing bulb retracted slightly to protect the sensors from overexposure. Once his vision had adjusted, the shining searcher darted back into movement. He flitted through the dense foliage, taking his bearings. Kirizzo recalled the direction of his initial approach to the complex and took off, adjusting the tall plants out of his way with several limbs while the others carried him along.
Kirizzo thought about his flight through the forest as he traveled through one valley and into another. The forest seemed calm and peaceful compared to the tumult of the day he arrived, lulling Kirizzo into a sense of safety in the heavy cover. He came to the hillside where he had landed and started a spiral search for his craft.
Although a lot of time had passed while Kirizzo was imprisoned—several revolutions of this planet around its star—he felt sure that even if his starship had been destroyed there would be signs. He wandered along the hillside, his legs stopping occasionally but his mass sensor bulb always moving to feel for anomalies underground.
It took Kirizzo a long time to find the first piece of metal. He detected a small triangular fragment, buried under a layer of dirt and leaves. Kirizzo recovered it and held the clue up in a single hand to examine it visually. The plate that the piece had broken from had been shattered; tiny fracture lines crisscrossed the item.
This was what Kirizzo had feared. The Bel Klaven had destroyed his ship in their zeal to exterminate him so long ago. He froze in thought.
How, then, might Kirizzo make his escape from this planet? What had happened in the war between his species and the Bel Klaven? Had they succeeded in eradicating his race from the galaxy, or had others like him survived?
It seemed that the aliens trapped in the nearby complex might serve as Kirizzo’s only way to leave the planet. He might be able to convince them to allow him onto one of their ships. From that point, it might be possible to return to a Gorgala stronghold, if any still existed.
With his new plans formed, Kirizzo returned to motion. His legs blurred and he ran back down the hillside toward the complex.