Easy Keel had been held captive in Upper Chaldea for 30 years, 4 months, and 5 days.  His captivity was like house arrest; his captors granted him relative independence, though escape was out of the question.

Today, he was on his morning walk.  The desert was lovely early in the morn.  Thrice, loud claps of thunder from on high sounded and drew his attention skyward.  He looked up, and saw a cloud unlike any he'd ever seen.  His mind was boggled by what he saw.  It looked to be composed entirely of fire.  A Northerly traveling cyclone had passed him before the thunderclaps resonated.  In its wake was a trail of sandstone gouged from the plain.

Whenever material departed one plane and entered another there took place a minute inclemency in both.  In the plane it left, a small negative emptiness similar to antimatter was created, while in the intruded, a positive surplus occurred, often accompanied by electric, as well as sonic discharges and whirlwinds.  The changes were meteorologically assimilated in both the vacated and the entered places.

Easy Keel looked back upwards. The fire burned inward and seemed to consume itself.  From the middle of it, a bolt of lightening shot.

Something was ejected.  It was shaped like a squared funnel on top.  The widest part faced down.  It had four flattened sides, and it tapered to a point at the top.  A foursome of appendages equally spaced around the bottom protruded down past the thing's wide base.  Transparent gossamer wings like those of gadflies twirled around each of the spars.

He lowered his head and fastened his gaze on the ground.  The fiery cloud and what came out of it were the machinations of god.  Mortal men were unfit to look upon anything godly.  He glanced back up, and the divine fire was gone.

“Did I imagine it?” he wondered.  God wouldn't reveal himself to a lowly, imprisoned prophet.

Easy Keel had seen the first of three unmanned topographical satellites burn up.  The second and third wouldn't come along for quite some time.  None would witness them because they would incinerate over an ocean.

                                          

Scores of annals later, a manned orbiter entered the troposphere unseen.  The collier's outer hull had been breached before and was enlarged when they entered.  It was just a tiny hole initially.  The heat had elongated it into a gaping fissure.  A flap of it sagged out, creating an aerodynamic idiosyncrasy.

“Do you have control?” asked The Lord.

“Yea sir, although it's sluggish,” the pilot answered.  “We have warning lumens across the board, and a pronounced starboard drag, sir,” he added.

The co pilot said, “I'm afraid we have no choice but to set down, and make reparations, sir.”

The Lord said, “It looks pretty mountainous here.  Is that clearing big enough?”  He pointed as he spoke.  The place was called Sigh Nigh locally.

“Might be, sir. Let me see, here,” and he hovered momentarily, then slowly degraded.  When the skid plates touched, he shut down the atmospheric ramjets.  Their axial turbines pulled in ether and compressed it.  When it bled into the combustion chamber, it was enriched by a hydrogenous mist.  The constrictor vanes were on a hollow shank.  They counter rotated on the power shaft.

In the combustion compartment other vanes output the thrust.  The engines couldn't be used in space.  They had to be in a non inert, inflammable medium to breathe.  They put out a greened exhaust.  A Spaniard named Columbus would see a triad of them many millennia hence.

A flight of steps uncoiled from the ship's base.  The Lord and steersmen strode down the stairs.  They wore cubical headgear with the top red, and the rear and sides white as were their uniforms.  The faceplates were simulacrum, as were their boots.  The high shoes, and gilded veneers shone like fine brass.  Monitors within the cuirass told each they were in an O (omicron) class atmosphere.  They could breathe.  They left their hats on because the chilly microenvironment was preferable to the sun's heat.

None were accustomed to the levity, and they all waddled as a result of the L force.

“Lookee’ there,” said The Lord, pointing at an epidermal rend.  “Can that be welded shut?”

“One of the mechanics can close it up, but not this broad, sir,” the navigator notified him.

“Why not?” The Lord asked.

“Because the godstar is waning, sir  We would’nt have sufficient photon duration.  We’ll do it on the morrow while it's not so caloric out here.  We can examine the entire pod at that time.  That was a pretty intense meteor shower we went through.  I want this thing looked over and have a sonic inspection run on it, sir.”

“OK,” said the Lord, “Get on the intercom, and tell everyone what’s happening.  Advise them to get some shuteye.  Let’s all get in, and pull in the steps before something wanders in there”.

Inside the vehicle, a mechanic named Yah, watched while his cohort, who was called Whey, rifled through a locker.

Yah asked, “Whatcha’ looking’ for?”

“I found it.”  He pulled out what appeared to be a juvenile's toy handgun.  “A friend of mine in the infirmary has some soporific carapaces he'll vend to me.”

“What you are going to do?”

“How long have we been on this craft?”

“A long time...”

“Yea.  Ye ruminated any prurient thoughts?”

“I don't know what that means.”

“You thought about mating?”

Why would I want to think about that?”

“Because it’s here.  The helmsmen said there are humanoids here.  Wherever they’s males, they’s females.”

“Oh, I see.  Tonight while everyone else is at rest, you want to stun a couple cows...”

“...then mate.  What do you think?”

“I don’t know.  We’ll be breaking protocol… besides, primate females aren’t much to look at.  Kind of grubby too...”

“It'll be crepuscule, not broad.”

“What if their troop jumps us?”

“They won't.  We’re at least a cubit taller than these humanoids.  They’re scared of anything unfamiliar, and that includes us.  This region is gonna’ have a solarial penumbra soon… that oughta’ shake ‘em up.  Well… are you in or out?"

"Okay... I'm in".

The task of hull repair fell on Yah and Whey.  They were ordered in addition to examine the entire shell with sonar frequencies to detect any damage invisible to the naked eye.

They removed a receptacle mounted on the hull that filtered through Noble Gases as they traveled.  It kept and pressurized Argon.  It also retained Helium and Hydrogen in separate compartments but discarded Radon, Neon, Xenon, and Krypton.

A conduit from the hull to the absolute electrode would exude the inert slowly when the dynatron was impelled.  The gas would supplant ether and permit the metallurgical work to occur in a vacuum.  If the repair were being done in space, it wouldn't be required.

A heavily isolated, flexible cord delivered dynamism to the hull.  It was essentially one big piece (actually, several small pieces smelted together) and was grounded on itself, so they didn't need to run a negatron.  A thin rod of Duranium sharpened on the forward end protruded from the ceramic beak.  Duranium’s melting point was much greater than the hull alloy.  When the progression of muons was conversed, the electrode would create and indefinitely sustain an arc.

Yah and Whey brought together their tools prior to any discourse.

Whey asked, "Well, what did you think about the spawning?"

"Wad'n nut'n to write home about, but it wad'n unpleasant," Yah riposted.  "If anyone ever says anything to me about it, I'll know it came from you, and it’ll be bad for you".

"Don't worry.  What happens in the field stays in the field I always say.”

His suit's condenser unit came on.  He asked, "Why is it so sweltering and dry out here, I wonder?"

"Drought.  This region must be in the grip of environmental pestilence.  The rill we past over on the way in was way low, or we could suck up a load of water, make a cloud, and seed it.  The last load from the big tarn was full of arthropods.  I observed striations on the knoll where this stream has peaked in the past.  The hinterland marina we over flew was so servile, at low tidal ebb, it could be promenaded athwart in one place.”

Whey uttered, "If it were to precipitate, the finely weathered reddish aggregate on the rill hillocks would be sorely eroded.  It wouldst transform the liquid carmine.”

Yah applied a shielded head sheath equipped with an adumbrated loupe, so he could watch the reparation unmolested.  A fan in its interior would keep any airborne contaminants from him.

Whey went to the other side to eschew the dazzlement and escape the aerosols the chore would evolve.  Presentation to the shining and smokes had been deemed culpable for neural ocular vestibule dysfunction, partial asphyxiation per anoxia, chaopathies, neuronal atrophy, hallucinations, cor pulmonae, and phthisis on the home planet.

In the prescience, females called Oracles would inhale greatly similar fumes from subtelluria in Greece and foretell coming events.

When the weld was underway, the empower source made a bass bellow.

If adequate mineral resources were discovered within the planetary crust, a station would be constructed here below to harvest them.

Whey got a megatone wavelength device and began to play it across the hull.  It would inform him if there were any microfissures they needed to patch.

Neither Yah, nor Whey saw a hirsute anthropoid stroll out a hillock cavern.  He was attired in simple clothing.  He removed his footwear, and fell on his knees as soon as he saw the brightened arc light.

By the completion of the weldment, the guy was gone.

Whey had finished his examination of the rest of the hull.  He found no other defect.

The fornicators had a problem to deal with.  Some foliage close to the work area had caught afire and was burning vigorously.  They stomped it out, put away their tools, and went aboard.

In a matter of minutes, the turbines whined to life, and the ship took off.

                                          

Mosley couldn't recall exactly where the white fire had been.  It had been close to a cavern.  He remembered he'd heard a noise.

At first he thought someone was shouting, "I am hurt!" but when he'd strode out of the cave into a clearing, he saw no one.

Instead, he was dazzled by brilliance.

He shuffled about the summit and looked in every cave he could find.  One he came out of had a strange pattern pressed into the ground.  There was a burnt patch inside the cursus(1).  The meadow looked strangely familiar.

He became delirious from thirst, wandered aimlessly across the hilltop and croaked repeatedly, "I have returned like I was instructed.  What have I left undone?"

He was in that condition when Josh The Elder found him.

Josh was a stone mason.  He'd most recently worked for a regal contractor.

The rain waters of The Great Flood had so worn the visage of a feline monolith, it was decided to cut its facial features into a man's.  When it was built, it was the only monument on the tableland there.

Beneath the colonnade’s forelegs, catacombs had been excavated.  The chambers were enlarged when the head was trimmed.  Josh worked in that capacity.

Two great quadhedrons would be erected there eventually.  A canal would be excavated, and a harbor built nearby, so boats from The Great Sea could deliver their cargos.

A nasty rumor had begun circulating to the effect that all those involved in the job would be strangled by The King's Nubidians at job's end.  When coworkers began to mysteriously disappear toward the completion of the project, so did he.  Josh left so hurriedly, he left a few tools behind.

Josh learned of Mosley's whereabouts from his sanguine brother Aaron.

The beautiful redhead Mosley nested with had told Josh to search on the mountain.

A mob was at the mountain's bottom.  Some of its constituents had told him that Mosley was atop the alp.

Josh located him, got some food in him, and laid him down.

Josh’d made a fire already to heat the food then collected deadwood to stoke it for warmth and to see by in the coming night.  Mosley might be rational and talkative in the morn.

He was.

"So…”, Josh asked, “What it is?"

"You got any balm?  My head hurts bad.  I was shewn a vision up here not long ago.  A burning hedge told me to bring my spiritual brethren here.”

"Are those them in the rabble below?"

"Yea"

"I don't wanna' shatter your illusions, my friend, but bushes, even those aflame, are incapable of speech.”

"This'n spake"

"Okay, if you say so.  Did it tell you what ye were to bring the crowd here for?"

"Not exactly.  I think it might have been to get a codex.  Hey,” Mosley asked, “What's the date?"

When Josh told him, he said, "That means I've been up here nearly a week.  I'm on a time limit.  How long will it take ye to make a couple nice smooth tablets, and cut some words into them?"

"If I had a big masonic adz, it'd take about two weeks.  All I have is my personal toolery.”  He hadn't taken his heavy adz.  He could've gotten it, but it would've been hard to transport.  He might have delayed his departure and figured a way, but the prospect of getting throttled wasn't much incentive to linger.  "With my rinky dink tools, the lappets alone'd prob'ly take three weeks.  A little longer for the text.  What be the words?"

"I'll think them up if you'll start cuttin'.  There is some flint 'bout halfway down the hill and limestone in yon cave".

"Too soft.  I'll need some bedrock, like granite", said Josh.

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