With a whoosh I was separated from my quarters. I had been there a total of 15 hours and still not a soul in sight. Or anything that might have once been alive. I hadn't come for a Friday night Luau or a video date, so this was ok with me. But it was oddly disquieting. The sun was climbing and not so directly in my eyes. I wore shade and a breather membrane for dust. Nothing stirring dustwise, either. The welcome package contained a global positioning monitor and a simple map of the compound, both of which were uploaded to my headgear on arrival. Fingering the button on the suit triggered the display and I found myself on the southern (?) end of the small grouping of structures that was to serve as a tourist destination. What had looked like rocks earlier showed to be the camoflaged buildings on the map. Thataway, I said to no one.
This particular Desert World had a similar gravity to Earth, just a bit heavier. My footsteps felt clunky and crunched loudly in the absence of anything to absorb the sound. If I had flown over this area during the day I might have missed it--the blending of rock and buildings was almost seamless. There was a gentle slope leading away from my lodge. As I approached the nearest building I turned to barely make out the doorway I had just walked through hidden in the creamy stone. Better get my bearings, I grumbled to myself. Getting lost would be too easy here.
Circling the rocks that housed the next building, I felt a bit disoriented as I looked for an opening. About this time I would have had my comm out and asked directions . A minor challenge, sure, but nothing I couldn't handle. There was nothing obvious, no change of color or texture. Whatever language the landscape spoke, I was dumbfounded. After a few minutes I pulled up the guest map and looked for a key. There were numbers next to the building, maybe indicating a code for the doorlock. I punched them into my comm and aimed it at the rocks. Immediately a wavy noise eminated from one side of the pile. Looking a bit more closely at the source I found a light flashing around the doorway, illuminating the opening slightly in the sunlight.
The door opened automatically as I came near with the same sucking noise I had heard the night before. Anybody home?
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