Part I

For the people who know what this is.

—-

Roger Beecher stood on the deck of the research vessel Carolina Sapphire, his binoculars raised to his eyes. He was studying the shore of the sea carefully through them. Broad plains eventually gave way to high mountains, some of which were volcanically active. The plains were covered in dense swampland, dark green and foreboding–though the largest animals that had so far evolved on Goliath were scarce larger than a dog. Beecher lowered the binoculars and looked up. Red Sol was still just rising over the horizon, but it was already hot and humid.

“This is probably what Earth was like during the Carboniferous era,” Beecher said.

Al Schram, who was leaning against the railing, rolled his eyes. “You sound like a travel brochure,” he said. “Come see Goliath’s wonderful orogenies–new mountain ranges in fifteen million years or your money back!”

“Says the geologist,” Beecher said. He turned back to the shoreline. “It wasn’t that long ago that you screamed like a school girl when you found out you’d been tabbed for the Goliath expedition?”

“That was before I knew it was going to be this hot,” Schram said. He picked his bottle of water off the boat’s deck and took a drink from it. He wore a simple dark green wife beater shirt and tan cargo shorts; he wore a broad-brimmed floppy hat and sunglasses to keep the sun out of his eyes and face. But despite all that, he was already soaked with sweat.

“What part of ‘near perfect representation of Carboniferous era Earth’ did you fail to understand?” Beecher asked.

Schram shrugged. “My excitement got the best of me,” he said.

Beecher had to concede that point to Schram. In this day and age, planetary geologists were a dime a dozen, which made it difficult for good geologists like Schram to get ahead in the world. And while it would be disingenuous to say that studying Martian rocks was boring, it had a tendency to be rather menial work because Mars was very much like Earth (important work nonetheless). Most of the exciting work was done on planets such as Goliath.

Goliath had been named so because it was almost six times the size of the Earth, making it the largest terrestrial planet in the Pentarch. It was so large that it had moons just smaller than Earth was. The most interesting thing about Goliath was its apparent relative youth to its neighbors and the fact that it was much too light for a terrestrial planet its size. A major expedition–organized by Roosevelt National University and funded by National Geographic, the Smithsonian, the federal government and private donors such as Scott Bush and Astrodyne–had been commissioned to study Goliath and its moons.

Schram had left his tenure-track professorship at the University of New Mexico to join the expedition. Beecher himself was a marine biologist who had just finished up a stint with the National Science Foundation and was prepared to return to his work at San Diego State University when RNU called him up wit a job offer he couldn’t refuse.

Beecher looked at his watch. “Come on,” he said. “Halsey is probably going to kill us if we’re late.”

“At least it’d save me from this heat,” Schram said, pushing himself off the railing.

“Oh shut up. You’re from New Mexico. You should be used to this heat.”

“That’s dry heat. This, on the other hand, is not.”

The two of them reached the stairs and went below deck. They found Julia Halsey in the conference room, her palms on top of the table as she leaned over it looking at a map of Goliath. “You two are late,” she said without looking up.

Beecher looked at his watch. “By like a minute or two.”

“Still late,” Halsey said. She finally looked up and brushed dark blonde hair out of her eyes. Other than the rolled up sleeves of her plaid shirt, she gave no indication that the heat and humidity were bothering her. “Have you two gone over the the final checklist?”

Schram nodded his head. “We have.”

“Everything green?”

“Everything’s ship-shape,” Beecher answered.

Halsey’s eyes narrowed for a moment. “Very well,” she said. “You two should get ready for your trip. Now!”

The two of them both nodded their heads and left the cabin. The Jonas was located on the afterdeck of the Sapphire, attached to a crane that would lower it into the water. It was a small, two-person deep submergence vehicle carried on the bow of the Carolina Sapphire. Beecher had been on almost thirty trips down in vehicles such as the Jonas, while Schram had only gone on a few trips down. “It seems silly for a geologist to go down in one of these,” Schram said as they got themselves comfortable in the vehicle’s cabin.

Beecher rolled his eyes. “If I remember correctly, you volunteered for this.”

“I never thought they’d take me seriously,” Schram said.

“One of these days, you’re mouth is going to get you in trouble,” Beecher said.

“That one day might be now.”

“Oh shut up and watch the dials,” Beecher said. He then turned on his radio. “Jonas to Sapphire Control.”

“Sapphire Control here, Jonas. Are you ready?”

“As ready as we’ll ever be,” Beecher said.

“Excellent,” Control said. “Prepare for descent in sixty seconds.”

“Copy that, Control,” Beecher said. “It’s too late to back out now.”

Schram shrugged. “I’ve been to the Challenger Deep before. I think I can candle this.”

“Then stop complaining,” Beecher said and Schram simply laughed.

“Okay then, this is Control. Prepare for descent in ten seconds…five…beginning descent now.” Beecher was jolted in his seat by the sudden movement. They were lowered fifty meters into the water by the Sapphire’s own crane before they were let go and able to go on their own. “Handing over depth control to Jonas now.”

“Acknowledged,” Beecher said. “Continuing descent.”

Beecher was nominally the commander of the Jonas, though most of the diving was handled by the vehicle’s onboard computer. Until one thousand meters, Schram announced every time they’d reached a hundred meters. After that, he only announced it every five hundred meters. After four thousand meters, Beecher stopped the descent and nudged the Jonas forward.

This was simple expedition into the ocean. They would dive a few thousand meters, poke around and see what they could find. While the computer and Schram kept the submarine level, Beecher pressed himself against the glass window of the Jonas, with the camera control in his hands. The fish–if they could be called fish, since they hadn’t gotten quite that far yet–were spectacular. “They seem like a cross between reptiles and fish,” Beecher said, snapping a picture of an eel-like creature with a pair of arms.

“So, amphibians?” Schram asked.

“Shut up,” Beecher said. For now, he would have to satisfy himself with pictures. In the coming months, they would capture life specimens and record footage of them in their natural habitat. The biodiversity of the Goliath oceans already seemed to rival that of Earth.

“Jonas, we’re picking up a lot of heat near you guys,” Control said. “It’s approximately three hundred meters below you. Dr. Halsey wants you to check it out.”

“Copy that, Control,” Beecher said. He nodded his head to Schram who pulled up the heat sensors on the screen. There was indeed a massive heat signature beneath them–it was large, and was about a hundred degrees warmer than the surrounding water. “Volcanic vent?”

“I doubt it,” Schram said. “It’s not hot enough to be one.”

“New world, new rules,” Beecher said–Schram shrugged and didn’t say anything. “And Halsey wants us to check it out.”

Jonas began to dive deeper towards the heat source. “Christ,” Schram said. “That thing’s like a hundred meters wide.”

“It looks like a tunnel of sorts, or a cave,” Beecher said looking at the sonar. “It goes down a further four hundred meters.”

“Dr. Haley encourages you guys to check it out,” Control said.

“I was thinking the same thing,” Beecher said and Schram nodded his head. Beecher sat back down in his chair and nudged Jonas deeper into the cave.

“It just keeps going,” Schram said. “If it goes much further, we’re going to have to pull up.”

Beecher looked to his left at the screen that displayed images from the cameras mounted on the bottom. “Is that light?”

“Light? Where?”

“Coming from beneath us,” Beecher said. He was about to tell Sapphire Control when he felt himself falling. He looked at the cameras and saw that Jonas was suddenly falling towards a yellow sun.

TWO
Roger Beecher woke up to the sound of cicadas buzzing in the trees. He could feel the hot sun beaming down on him. He opened his eyes for a moment and closed them shut again; the sun was right above him. A yellow sun. Something’s not right here, Beecher thought. He rolled over onto his stomach and pushed his body up and opened his eyes. His mouth felt like a desert. He hurt all over, and his skin felt sunburnt.

After almost a minute, he stood up on wobbly legs. He was in the middle of a jungle. About ten feet in front of him were the ruins of Jonas–it lay on its side, with a massive hole ripped in its side. But somehow, other than soreness in his muscles and a splitting head ache, he was unhurt. He looked up at the sky. A yellow sun, not unlike the Sun, was high in the sky, near its zenith. Impossible, Beecher thought.

“Al!” Beecher called out. “Al! Where are you?”

The only thing to answer the cicadas. Beecher walked over towards Jonas, but no sign of Schram. He looked in the clearing around Jonas and called out Schram’s name, but still nothing. After ten minutes of searching, Beecher collapsed to the ground next to Jonas. “First, I have no idea where I am or how I got here,” Beecher said. “Second, I have no idea where Al is. But first, I need to find some food and water.”

Beecher looked through Jonas for its survival gear. There wasn’t much of it to be honest, since no one had ever thought that a deep submergence vehicle would ever wind up stranded in the middle of a jungle. He found a flare gun and some flares. A first aid kit. A water bottle filled with water. A few days worth of food. A knife. A compass that was spinning hopelessly and uselessly in circles. Beecher put all of it in a bag he found and put on his sunglasses.

Since the compass was no help, Beecher looked up at the sun for a sense of direction. But the sun was no help at all since it sat stubbornly still at its zenith. Beecher sighed and looked back down. He spun in a circle and stopped in a random direction and started walking. The jungle wasn’t as dense or as difficult to get through as he expected it to; it reminded him very much of hiking through the Pacific Northwest back on Earth. He found himself a good walking stick early on, which helped him to balance himself and keep himself steady.

After maybe an hour or so of walking, he found a small stream. He stopped and sat on a stump next to it. He pulled out the rations and studied them–they were military surplus MREs, beef enchiladas. He opened the package and looked through its contents before he found the flameless heater. He put the enchiladas in the heater, put in some water to start the chemical reaction and waited a few minutes until the enchiladas were ready.

When he was done eating, he put all the trash back into its packaging and hesitated. He didn’t want to carry around the extra weight but he didn’t want to litter unnecessarily. After a few moments of thought, he shrugged and threw the trash deeper into the forest before he stood up and started walking again.

He looked up at the sun. “Hasn’t moved a bit,” he said to himself. He shook his head and continued walking, this time following the flow of the stream.

Beecher had been walking for another hour when he saw her. She was crouched next the stream. She wore a simple dark, leather jacket and trousers. She had a quiver of bows slung across her back and a bow sat next to her. “Hello!” Beecher called out. “I’m lost. Could you point me to the nearest town?”

She turned and looked at him. She stood up and dried her hands on her pants. She walked up to Beecher, and studied him with her pale eyes. It was then that he noticed the antlers that were protruding out of her forehead–they were small, but still noticeable. She was thin, but athletic with broad shoulders and thick arms. She had a pointed chin with a high forehead and small nose. Her hair was an odd shade of green-grey and her eyes were a pale yellow, while her skin was a pale shade of green.

“You speak English,” she said in a sing-song accent.

“And so do you,” Beecher said.

She studied him up and down. “No one but us speaks English. And you are not one of us.”

“Was it the lack of antlers that gave me away?”

“Unless you are…” she began to say but stopped. “Where are you from?”

“Oregon,” Beecher answered.

“Where is this Oregon?”

“In America.”

She furrowed her brows. “The United States of America?”

“The one and only,” Beecher said.

“Interesting. You must meet Lord Kosnar at once. He will be interested to see you,” the woman said.

“Who’s Lord Kosnar?” Beecher asked. “And who are you?”

“Lord Kosnar is the last American from Flight 19,” the woman said. “And I am Marici. Please, come with me. You must meet Lord Kosnar.”

She turned around and started into the forest, with Beecher right behind her. She didn’t speak much as she guided him through the forest. Beecher noted that the trees were getting significantly taller and that the sun was still stubbornly staying in place. He asked Marici about the sun, but all she said was that Lord Kosnar would explain everything. He guessed that they had been walking for an hour before Marici stopped.

“Why did we stop?” Beecher asked.

“Because we go up now,” Marici said, pointing up. Beecher looked up and saw a small village sitting in the trees. They were hundreds of feet above the ground, nestled in the branches of the trees towering above him.

“How?”

“Rope,” Marici said. As if on cue, two ropes were lowered down from the village in the trees.

“You want me to climb up that?”

Marici laughed. She grabbed onto one of the ropes. “Just hold on,” she said. Beecher took the other rope. Marici tugged on the rope and she was lifted up; Beecher did the same and he was pulled up. He held on tightly with boy hands and didn’t look down. He was lifted onto a platform where a trio of guards stood, waiting. They all wore breastplates that reminded Beecher of Roman centurions, two of them carried spears. All three of them had antlers like Marici, but there’s were much larger.

Marici was talking to them in a language that Beecher didn’t understand. She was gesturing at him, and the three guards looked at him. “You are American?” the one without a spear asked–Beecher assumed he was their commander.

Beecher nodded his head. “I am,” he said. “An American from Earth. Marici here said that Lord Kosnar would want to speak to me.”

“He will,” the man said. “Come with us.”

The guard commander turned around and Beecher got in line behind him, while Marici and the other two guards followed. The tree village–no, it was more of a city to be honest–was spread out as far as Beecher could see, with each tree connected by a series of rope and blank bridges. Birds made nests on the roofs of the houses and squirrels–at least Beecher thought they were squirrels–walked along the railings of the walkways. He looked over the edge and quickly looked back at the guard’s back–it was a long way down.

It was much quieter up here. The sounds of the cicadas were replaced with the singing of birds and the sound of leaves and branches rustling in the breeze. Men and women–all of them had green-tinted skin and antlers to some degree–passed by. They often wore simple robes in earth tones; some of them carried whicker baskets filled with groceries and others held the hands of children. But all of them stopped and stared as Beecher walked by.

“Why are they staring?” Beecher asked.

“Because no one has seen another American in years,” Marici said. “You are the first.”

“That makes me feel special,” Beecher said.

They walked up a flight of winding stairs, and the guard stopped in front of a gilded, painted door. There were two more guards standing outside of it. The two new guards saluted the commander and they exchanged a few words. The commander turned around. “Lord Kosnar is inside,” he said.

Beecher stepped towards the door. “Should I knock?”

“Just walk in,” the commander ordered.

Beecher nodded his head and opened the door. Inside was a dark, circular room lit by clusters of candles sitting around the room. There were windows, but the curtains were drawn. “I thought I said I didn’t want to be disturbed!” a harsh voice said.

“I’m sorry,” Beecher said. “Are you Lord Kosnar?”

A dark figure got out of a chair in the corner. “What is it to you?”

“Marici said I should speak to you.”

The figure stepped forward, and his face was now illuminated by the shadows. He was an old man with a round face and tired, brown eyes. He had long, dark hair that fell past his shoulders. But more importantly, it was a human face. “My God,” the man whispered. “Are you…are you here to rescue me?”

“No,” Beecher said. “Lord Kosnar I presume?”

The man walked towards Beecher and embraced him. “Oh God. It’s been so long. Another human,” he said. Beecher didn’t know what to do, so he only patted the man on the back. After a few seconds, the man stepped back and wiped his eyes with his sleeves. “I’m sorry. But it’s been twelve years since Parpart died.” He shuffled over towards the windows and opened the curtains one by one. The room was large and dominated by a large bed in one corner and a shelf of books. It was relatively sparse, except for a black and white photo of a man and a woman smiling.

“I’m sorry. Please, have a seat. Do you want anything to drink. Water? Dandelion wine?” the man asked.

“Water will be fine,” Beecher said, sitting down in a chair.

The man went to pour some water. “So who are you?”

“Dr. Roger Beecher of San Diego State University,” Beecher answered.

“A scientist then,” the man said. He walked back over to Beecher and handed him a glass of water. The man sat down in the chair next to Beecher. “I figured they would’ve sent a military expedition, no offense.”

“What do you men?”

“Where are my manners?” the man said. “Corporal Allan Kosnar, U.S. Marine Corps Reserve, formerly of FT-81 from Flight 19, Naval Air Station Fort Lauderdale.”

Beecher narrowed his eyes. “Marine Corps?”

“By my reckoning, I’ve been here for almost sixty years. We were a flight of Avenger torpedo bombers who got ourselves lost in the Bermuda triangle,” Kosnar answered. “I’m the last one of us left alive. I’d all but given up hope. I thought I was stuck here until I died.”

“Where is here?” Beecher asked.

Kosnar took a drink from his own water. “You don’t know?” he asked and Beecher shook his head. “Well fuck. I guess you’re not here to rescue me.”

“Unfortunately, no,” Beecher said. “I seem to be quite lost myself.”

Kosnar sighed and was silent for almost a minute. “When we first got here, we thought we were on some Caribbean island. But the sun never moved, never set. It only got dark at night. It took us a while, Stivers determined that we were inside a planet.”

“Impossible.”

“So we thought maybe Earth, but no. We fly around in our Avengers and estimated that this planet was at least seventy thousand kilometers in diameter–almost six times as big as Earth.”

Beecher frowned. “May I borrow some paper and a pen?”

“There’s some on the desk,” Kosnar said. Beecher walked over to the desk and sat down and he started to work the numbers out. “We found these people–Thelander called them elves.”

“Like from Lord of the Rings,” Beecher said.

“Never heard of it. But Thelander said they were like the elves from The Hobbit or some shit like that,” Kosnar said.

Beecher turned around. “When did you say you got lost?”
“1945.”

“And you said it’s been sixty years?”

Kosnar nodded his head. “So it should be 2004, 2005 back home.”

Beecher opened his mouth and closed it again. “How sure are you on that?”

“Pretty goddamn sure,” Kosnar said. “Why?”

“Because it’s not 2004. It’s 2070.”

Kosnar was taken back. “Excuse me?” he asked after silence.

“You’ve been missing for a hundred and thirty years, not sixty,” Beecher said.

“How? Impossible.”

“Says the man that got teleported billions of miles to Goliath,” Beecher said. “The math isn’t quite right because I don’t know the dimensions or mass of that sun, but a hollow planet would certainly explain why Goliath is so much lighter and less dense than it has any right to be.”

“Goliath is one of those planets orbiting Red Sol, isn’t it?” Kosnar asked and Beecher nodded his head. “Thelander mentioned something like that, but we didn’t think it was possible.”

“And a species of antlered elves is?” Beecher asked.

“But yet a hollow planet seems to be impossible to you,” Kosnar said.

“Because according to every model of planetary geology and solar system formation, it should be impossible,” Beecher said. He threw the pen in the air and caught it in his hands. “And how the hell is gravity working?”

Kosnar shrugged. “I have no idea. All I know is that it works.”

Beecher leaned back in the chair and thought for a moment. The last thing he remembered was Jonas falling down. And based on the way it had landed, it had started to fall up at some point and then back down to the ground. Perhaps that was why no water was flooding this inner world, because of the weird system of gravity. But what of Schram? “Have you seen another human recently named Al Schram?”

Kosnar shook his head. “Can’t say I have. But I’ll tell my scouts to keep an eye out for him and to bring him here.”

“Thanks,” Beecher said.

Kosnar stood up suddenly. “We need to find you some living quarters because you’re going to here for a very long time.”