In other words, he'd have to walk a bit.
Reassured by the quadtrol's conclusions, he brushed himself off and readjusted his reliable crash helmet on his head. Then he tapped his breast pocket twice. This was where he always kept his small American flag and the faded photograph of the mysterious Dominique. Two taps meant he was wishing himself luck. He was ready to start hiking.
But then he turned around, intent for some reason on closing the DATT tube's door. He was astonished by what he saw.
The tube was no longer a tube at all. It was a coffin.
Not something that looked like a coffin. But a real coffin.
Hunter froze for a moment, his breath caught in his throat. Then, slowly, he ran his hand along its polished wooden frame, its brass handles, its gleaming hinges. The inside was indeed crushed velvet, just like what was used to line the interior of coffins back in his former life. And he could still detect the scent of lilies coming from inside it.
What happened? Had he gone through something weird during his transfer? Had the DATT malfunctioned after all?
Was he even still alive?
Panic rising, he pulled out the quadtrol again and quickly asked it to check his vital signs. The device burped a couple times but then came back with all good readings. This did not convince him, though. Something about unexpectedly stepping out of a coffin on a very desolate rock had shaken him. It would have shaken anybody.
He asked the quadtrol once more for his life signs. Again, everything came back green. Then he asked it, "Am I still alive?" feeling foolish as soon as he did so. Its reply: "If you weren't, you would not have been able to ask the question."
He almost laughed. The quadtrol had become a wiseass. That was very reassuring.
He took a moment, collected himself, then slammed the coffin door shut. But then a thought came to him. He blinked… and when his eyes opened, the coffin had turned back into the DATT.
He froze again, a chill running right through him.
More madness, he thought. From within…
That's when he made a vow. No matter what happened down here, no matter what dangers he faced, or what success he might find, or even how quickly he had to escape, there was no way he was ever climbing into that thing again.
He started walking.
Heading north, the direction the quadtrol told him to go, he wondered again how the puff on the moon could be so stable, and yet the sky appeared void of any atmosphere at all.
And again, why did this place look so forbidding? It was supposed to be a dizzylando, an amusement park — or at least the entrance to one. But then again, maybe it was all a cover. Maybe the creator, in wanting to keep the whole concept here secret, made this place look as uninviting as possible.
Had someone landed here unintentionally in a spaceship, judging from the surroundings, only a fool would open his canopy, without getting proper readings. Just the sight of the place would send even the most hard-bitten space traveler reaching for the power button on their craft and the quickest way out of here. If indeed this had been the creator's intention, then he'd really hit the mark. Walk-ing alone way out here, Hunter felt like he was the last person left in the Galaxy.
He trooped along for about a half mile, crossing natural bridges over two ravines and scaling one small mountain. It was on the other side of this rise that he finally spotted something.
Something very odd.
Off on the horizon was a sign, designed to look like a huge arrow, made up of hundreds of blinking white lights. It was sitting on top of a small red building and was actually pointing to another lighted sign just above the building's entrance. This sign was written in Cyrillic lettering. Hunter pointed the quadtrol in its general direction and then pushed the query panel. According to the quadtrol, the sign read: Welcome to the Dizzylando.
"Must be the place," Hunter muttered.
It took him another twenty minutes to actually reach the building.
It was smaller than he'd imagined, set in the middle of the vast, barren plain. It appeared to be made out of pine, a rare commodity in the Galaxy over the centuries. A porch made of short planks fronted the rectangular structure. It had many windows, was painted bright red, and had a pair of steel rails running past the porch. It looked similar to something from Earth's ancient past, a place known as a railroad station.
The moon dust had permeated every corner and crevice on the outside of this place. Hunter's flight boots made an odd but vaguely familiar sound as he climbed up onto the porch. He stopped and studied the materials around him and realized this was not real wood after all, but a kind of synthesized material that had been made to look like wood. He believed that the sound of his boots hitting it was actually false as well, as this material was equipped with sensors that would imitate the sound of something hitting wood, just to lend authenticity. Very strange…
He stepped through the swinging doors. Just like the outside, the interior had been built as a re-creation of an ancient train station. Ticket windows, yellowed schedules, benches for the weary. But the inside also had many flashing lights of all colors, though mostly white. They were strung around all the windows, above and around the door, and crisscrossing the ceiling.
There was another lighted sign hanging on one wall. It read, Sledyuschaia ostanovka Zemlya Priklucheniy. Xvarit li tebe myzestva chtobi proderzatsya? The quadtrol knew most of the Russian words. Roughly translated, the sign said: Next stop: Adventure Land. Are you enough of a hero to take it?
Sitting on a very simple table in the middle of the room Hunter found the most ancient computer imaginable. It had a monitor, with a tiny screen made of glass — not super-glass. Just regular glass. There was a keyboard attached to it by a wire, another item rarely seen in the Galaxy these days. A power cord ran the length of the room, disappearing behind the far wall.
Hunter ran his quadtrol over this strange piece of machinery and asked it for a name. The quadtrol blinked back: "PC — personal computer."
He contemplated the machine for a moment. It seemed slightly familiar to him now. But in a million years he would never have believed it would actually still work. It took him several minutes just to locate the power switch. It was a recessed button — a button! — placed in the lower right hand corner of the monitor. Hunter gave it a push, expecting nothing more than a click. But slowly, the screen came to life.
He was more surprised when words actually started forming on the monitor's screen. Some were Cyrillic but others were in English, again welcoming him to the dizzy-lando. He selected a box which allowed him to continue in English. Two more words appeared: "Enter password…" Hunter was stumped, but just for a moment. Then he recalled the two vaguely familiar words the Astronaut had told him before he left: Sky Ghost. It took him nearly a minute to hunt and peck out the two words on the keyboard. Finally done, he pushed the Enter button.
The screen blinked, then a small icon of a clock appeared. Its second hand started moving very slowly. Hunter waited patiently, wiping the dust from his uniform's sleeves, studying his boots and thinking maybe it was time to get a new pair, even whistling a tune.
Five minutes crawled by. Finally a new screen appeared. He read the words — and groaned. It said: "Enter password again…"
It took him nearly a half hour to type his way through this and three more security walls, always entering the same password as instructed, and brushing off his uniform twice, while waiting for the old PC to keep regurgitating his entries. Finally, the word "Processing…" appeared on the screen. This was the longest wait of all. But again, after whistling what seemed to be an entire symphony, the screen changed and said, "Entry authorized…"