The cup of water fell from Valerian's hands.
The spire of rock soared above Valerian like the horn of some massive, buried narwhal, its surface pitted and worn smooth by uncounted centuries. He ran his hand across the surface, feeling tingling warmth through the fluted surface of the rock that was quite at odds with the chill of the air around him.
Sheer cliffs of curving rock arched up overhead, a natural canyon that Valerian suspected had once been roofed by ribbed beams of stone, but which now lay scattered and broken at his feet.
Frozen, gritty winds howled as they funneled through the canyon, lamenting the fall of so mighty a structure, and Valerian wondered what great catastrophe had occurred here to cast it down. The sky rippled through the thin atmosphere, stars pulsing in the far distance, their light already millennia old.
He pulled his thick jacket tighter about himself and adjusted his goggles as he descended the loose-rubble-and-scree slope that led to the colossal cave mouth ahead. He had ventured within this cave before and fell a deep sense of connection to the past within its shimmering, hybrid walls.
To know that long-forgotten hands had crafted this palace with ancient artifice was an electrifying sensation—proof that life had existed in the galaxy long before the arrival of human beings. The secrets that might yet be buried here were beyond measure and Valerian longed for the opportunity to plumb the depths of those mysteries, both for the sake of knowledge and for the rewards it would bring.
Valerian paused as he took a moment to savor the solitude, smiling to himself as he realized that this was probably the most alone he had been in his entire life. He was the only human being on this rock, and the freedom of that sensation was intoxicating.
The news that his father was coming to Orbital 235 had made Valerian surly and irritable. He found himself unable to concentrate on his researches, and his mother had even berated him—something she almost never did.
The only peace he found was on the surface of Van Osten's Moon, alone with his thoughts and the ruins of a forgotten race of alien builders. What had brought them here and what had become of them? These were mysteries Valerian felt sure he could unlock were he but given the time.
Time. It all came back to time.
Time he, and more especially, his mother, didn't have.
He'd managed to persuade Charles Whittler that he could travel to the surface of Van Osten's Moon without escort and had landed one of the orbital's two flyers al the mouth of the largest canyon complex on the surface.
He wore a pair of loose-fitting cargo pants and a heavy, insulated jacket. Over his back was slung a rucksack filled with a comm unit, surveying equipment, and food and water he wore a slugthrower in a shoulder holster and his favorite sword was belted at his hip. He wanted solitude, but he wasn't about to venture into alien ruins without taking some precautions.
The journey down the rocky canyon had been easy going so far, but his breath was still tight in his chest, and he slipped the mouthpiece of a small aqualung canister over his nose and mouth.
A squall of dust blew off the ground and Valerian looked up to see the Orbital "s second lander flash overhead, circling and coming in to alight at the mouth of the canyon. He cursed at the interruption and had half a mind to just carry onward, to hell with the new arrival, but he forced the thought down.
The lander touched down without fuss and within moments, the side hatch opened and a tall figure emerged into the twilight world of Van Osten's Moon.
Valerian recognized him immediately, and his heart hammered on the cage of his ribs.
There was no mistaking the powerful cut of the man, even from this distance.
His father.
Arcturus Mengsk descended the ladder and began the trek to meet his son. Valerian saw that the man was dressed similarly to himself, with heavy-duty work wear and rugged boots. Like Valerian, his father carried a pack over his shoulders and moved with the natural assurance of a man used to being in control.
As his father approached, Valerian took the time to study him. Arcturus's hair was still dark, but the first signs of gray were appearing at his temples and in his beard. Only in his mid-thirties, his father's ongoing war against the Confederacy was evidently aging him prematurely—though he was still an imposing, proud figure.
Despite the thin atmosphere, his father seemed untroubled by his exertions, and maintained a steady pace toward him over the rough terrain.
He waved al his son and, despite himself, Valerian waved back.
His mother had once told him that people often found themselves going out of their way to please his father for no reason they could adequately explain. Valerian wondered if he too had been affected by that reality-warping effect.
Arcturus dropped over a fallen slab of rock and took a deep breath of the thin air.
"Bracing, isn't it?" said his father.
Valerian removed the aqualung canister and said. "That's it? That's your greeting after eight years?"
"Ah, you're angry," said Arcturus, pausing and taking a seat on a smooth boulder. "A natural reaction, I suppose. Do you need to berate me for a while before we talk as men? It won't do any good, but if you feel you must, then go ahead."
Valerian felt the angry outburst he had planned to deliver wither in his breast and the angry retort on the tip of his tongue become stillborn.
"Right" he said. "I might as well get mad at these rocks for all the good it would do.”
"Words spoken in anger are just hot air, Valerian. They rarely hurt, so what's the point of them? There are no words as ultimately destructive as those which are ultimately considered."
"You'd know about that," said Valerian. "The UNN is making you look like some kind of crazed madman."
Arcturus waved his hand. "No one believes what's on the UNN anyway, and the more they vilify me, the more people are waking up to see that I have the Confederacy worried."
"And do you? Have them worried?"
His father stood and came over to him, looking him up and down as though inspecting a prime specimen of livestock. "Oh, I'd say I do. The Confederacy is about to falclass="underline" I can see the cracks widening with every day that passes. My father and your grandfather knew what they were doing, but they weren't thinking big enough."
"And you are?"
"Very much so," said Arcturus, nodding in the direction of the cave mouth Valerian had been heading for. "Now what say you show me what's been occupying your time on this barren rock?"
Valerian nodded and set off without another word, picking his way down the slope toward the yawning cave. Its scale was immense and it took them a further hour to reach the bottom of the canyon, the towering cliffs wreathing them in shadow and cold.
The surfaces of the rocks were smooth and glassily transparent, as though vitrified by intense heat and striated with what looked like gleaming metal. Perfectly round gemstones were buried within the bean of the rock.
"Fascinating," said his father. "The surface has an igneous look to it, but appears to be metamorphic. Do you know the substance of the protolith?"
"No," said Valerian, suddenly wishing he knew more about the formation of rock and had more specialist equipment here. "I don't even know what that means."
"Ah, no, I suppose you wouldn't," said Arcturus. "Metamorphic rocks come about when a preexisting rock type, the protolith, is transformed into something altogether new."
"What sort of thing could cause that change?"
Arcturus pressed his hand against the rocks, resting his forehead on the smooth face of the stone. "Usually it's caused by high temperatures and the pressure of rock layers above, but tectonic processes like continental collisions would do it as well. Any sufficiently large geological force that causes enormous horizontal pressure, friction, and distortion could cause this, but I don't think we're looking at any natural phenomenon here."