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TABLE OF CONTENTS

FOREWORD
TABLE OF CONTENTS

THE HALL OF THE FOUNTAINS
1. THE HALL
2. ACCUSATION
3. SECRETS
4. PROCESS - DAY ONE
5. PROCESS - DAY TWO
6. PROCESS - DAY THREE
7. THE FOUNTAINS

PEASANT AMBASSADOR
1. CAGE
2. DINNER
3. AGGREA
4. ATTACK
5. DAR'RAEN
6. OBAR
7. SHALLE

HURRAN INVASION
1. INVASION OF THE KUGH SYSTEM
2. ALLIED WORLDS COUNCIL
3. RAIKA MADJEN
4. DELEGATES
5. CHANCE
6. INVASION OF THE ANCEN SYSTEM
7. PRESIDENT DELEGATE
8. GOKUN CITY - DAY ONE
9. GOKUN CITY - DAY TWO
10. SOOHOLL CITY
11. TRAP
12. ATON
13. HURRANS' FLEET
14. GUNIS RELAS
15. VICTORY
16. RETURN
17. EPILOGUE



THE HALL OF THE FOUNTAINS

1. THE HALL

     There was nothing more relaxing on Iradina 41 than being seated at a table inside the Hall of the Fountains, and listening to the erratic background conversation noise. That complex sound came in waves: sometimes louder, sometimes buffered, sometimes joyfully high-pitched, though always unexpected as the soothing sounds of the breaking ocean waves. At nighttime, it seemed there was a magic presence in the air due to the elevated temperature, and to the subtle aromas emanating from the seven Fountains in the center of the Hall.

     According to the rules set by the Archeologists, there was no technology allowed in the Hall--not even air conditioning--except for fifteen light projectors on the ceiling and the two automatic entrance gates. The air, however, was totally refreshed by forced ventilation before each nighttime meeting, and projector's light was a mixture of three-color components only, each having precisely adjusted wavelength and intensity.
     The people gathered there during the first night quarters were almost all Technicians dressed in the standard silver-and-gold uniforms; for that special, nocturnal event, however, everybody was wearing something extra. They used to beautify themselves with unusual one, two, or more "eyepieces", with grotesque hand, neck, or head laces, or with antique shoulder armors. Many wore strange--and totally unnecessary--hats, helmets or various brain-shields, ear devices, huge insignia, fancy, absurd, or invented ornaments, and each had perfectly valid, sensible motivations for those extravagant, wild-imagination decorations. However, everybody knew those "extras" to the standard uniforms were concealing the most sensitive detection instruments that could be bought, traded, or hand-built in Equal Coalition Worlds.
     Most people were seated in groups at the tables arranged on the terraces around the Fountains; few wandered alone, in the farthest and highest sides of the Hall; others were waiting patiently in line their turn to fill at the Fountains. Sooner or later, everybody made at least one trip per night to the Fountains testing his or her luck.
     There was plenty of good disposition around, because the Technicians spent their time telling jokes, stories, or making fun of each other. Overall, however, they were all monitoring attentively the activity around the Fountains. (...)

(...) Three conventional minutes after Miss Laleah H'Ven Kinlen had left the Hall, people began to recover. Slowly, the background noise returned to normal amplitudes, patterns, and frequencies. Bruce threw shy glances at his friends: they all had ghostly looks in their eyes and their faces were a lot less colored than usual. He knew as a true fact he had haunted looks himself. What he had witnessed was brain shattering: Miss Kinlen had filled her cup from the Violet Fountain! She didn't bother to try filling her cup from The Great Fountain, with transparent waters, but it was clear she didn't intend to. She had just filled her cup with the violet drink, and then she left the Hall.
     Somehow, Bruce was grateful Miss Kinlen had left, otherwise he would have felt highly embarrassed, and much unworthy in her presence …

     There were about three hundred people inside the Hall that night, both males and females, all of the Kull-Mosky, intelligent, carbon-based organic type, and all in different shapes, sizes, and colors. What brought them together were the Fountains. There were six Fountains having colored waters arranged in a circular distribution, and a seventh one with transparent waters positioned in the geometric center of the circle. A well-marked path encircled the Fountains starting with the Red Fountain, then leading to the Orange, the Yellow, the Green, the Blue, and then to the Violet one. Once in front of the Violet Fountain, the path didn't unite to the beginning, to close the circle: it changed direction towards the center, to the Transparent Fountain--The Great One!
     Things were very simple. Anybody, or almost anybody, of the Kull-Mosky beings type could go to the Red Fountain and fill a cup of red drink. The drink was very good: it had a nice aroma and a refreshing taste. After drinking that red water everybody, or almost everybody, felt very good disposition and a slight euphoric sensation. Taste and feelings were different, for different types of beings, but the generally accepted conclusion was, both the taste and the resulting feelings were greatly pleasing.
     The problems came when people tried reaching the next Fountain, the Orange one: not everybody could! Their bodies refused to make any move in the wrong direction. Things were even more difficult for the Yellow Fountain. As for the rest of the Fountains, Bruce had heard few--too doubtful--stories about a couple of Heroes who reached the Green Fountain.
There was nothing like a force field, energy walls, or anything technical around the Fountains--at least nothing that could be detected and measured--and that was the reason almost all people in the Hall were Technicians during the first night quarters. They were studying the Fountains night after night, for almost two conventional years, and each of them hoped and fantasized about becoming "The Hero", the brightest intelligence who solved the Mystery of the Fountains!

     The Legends of the Fountains were based on few vestiges of a very old Civilization: the Elgams, in the Elgam System--deserted and without natural living conditions for a Kull-Mosky being. Some scientists said the Elgams had not been carbon-based organic beings, and their molecular structure could have been sulfur-based, silicon-based, or phosphorous-based. Others went even further, considering the Elgam people as being energy-based intelligence!
Archeological remains were everything that was left from the Elgam Civilization. There were few grandiose constructions scattered on two planets, Elgam Four and Elgam Three, and on three satellites of the System, most of them terribly worn out and almost unrecognizable from orbit. The underground constructions, however, had resisted fairly well to the merciless time, to meteorites, quakes, and to natural erosion.
     What was very strange was, there had been no writing-inscriptions discovered, no paintings, and no sculptures: no symbols at all! The remaining constructions or parts of constructions, above and below ground, were all geometrically shaped in cylinders, cubes, pyramids, cones, semicircular or rectangular enclosures, pyramidal or domed halls, and alike. All constructions were built with flat surfaces which must have been perfectly polished long time before. The material used for construction was always natural rock or, possibly, it was the only one left after the destructive passage of time.
     Based on statistical meteorites impact on planetary surface, it was assumed the Elgam Civilization had left the System between one and twelve million conventional years before. However, many contested that theory, based on other theories which said, the Little Squid arm of the Sea of Ash Nebula couldn't have penetrated the System earlier than 120 thousand conventional years.

     The Elgam System had been discovered 14 conventional years before and, despite the huge archeological interest it stirred, few areas had to be lent for colonization and exploitation of natural resources. It happened the System was quite abundant in few precious isotopes. Even more, rumors went that two new atomic elements had been found, and their chemical and physical properties defied the well-known laws of Physics!
     The Work Base Iradina 41 was a huge spaceport built inside the Shecca Mountain on Elgam Four. The planet had no rotation around its axis, with one side always hot and facing the Elgam star, while the opposite side was dark and very cold. Initially, the atmosphere was mostly xenon isotopes and carbon dioxide, but 35 autonomous oxides-reduction stations had been built during the first years of the exploration. As a result, the atmosphere became about four percent oxygen, which was almost acceptable at 1.25 conventional barometric pressure. Elgam Four had water, though not very much, as steam, liquid, and ice, and few primitive forms of flora--mostly of the mushroom type. Excepting bacteria colonies, there had been no animal life discovered; however, the exploration was slow and continuing.
     Following the addition of oxygen, some beings of the Kull-Mosky type could have lived on the open surface of the planet for few conventional days if they were on the right temperature equicenter ring. The livable area was, on average, a 500 conventional kilometers wide ring surrounding the equicenter point where the light of the Elgam star was perpendicular. The ring was positioned at the optimum livable circular zone between always-day and always-night, and it was a lot of good living space on a planet having 9231 conventional kilometers radius.
     On top of the Shecca Mountain the gravity was about 0.8 conventional, since the monstrous mountain actually penetrated the atmosphere with its 42526 conventional meters peak. Many believed Shecca was an artificial construction, because it had a huge, flat, spaceship-landing platform built on top, but no sustainable evidence was found to support that theory. The mountain could have been an enormous city for the Elgams, since it was bored with thousands of geometric corridors, halls, rooms, and plazas, most of them still intact. When the powerful Iradina Inter-Systems Trust came in the Elgam System, they asked for Shecca to build their Work Base, and the deal with the Archeologists was to destroy as little as possible of the old constructions while using at maximum the existing layout.
     In order to accommodate the Work Base, the entire Shecca Mountain had been sealed with energy shields and airtight gates. Lots of accommodations had been built inside for fast and comfortable transportation, air ventilation, communications K-links, and everything else needed. Many businesses came to Iradina 41 attracted by the new, abundant flow of Equal Coalition Credits, therefore shops, restaurants, and entertaining places were popping up allover the place from one day to the other. At high administrative and governmental levels there were hot discussions about transforming the Work Base Iradina 41 into a Free Trade City for the benefit of all ECW citizens.
     Overall, Iradina 41 was not a bad place for living, and someone could venture on interesting archeological discoveries if they had time and the drive for that--some did.

     The Fountains had been discovered deep down inside the base of the Shecca Mountain, in a vast circular hall having a domed ceiling. They were the most mysterious artifacts of the Elgam Civilization, as they were still in working condition! The Fountains became famous on Iradina 41 and, later, allover the Equal Coalition Worlds.
     There was no sign of technology involved, as far as the best instruments could detect. The waters of the Fountains proved to be natural spring water containing only a small percentage of a strange hydrogen isotope--yet perfectly safe to drink--and few infinitesimal mineral impurities. None of those impurities explained the color of the waters, the exotic aromas of fresh fruits or strange spices, or the euphoric effects.
     The great mystery was the impossibility to reach the Fountains past a certain point for most people. Machines, however, did manage to reach all Fountains and to collect samples of their waters. In time, rumors and theories formed the Legends of the Fountains.

     They said the Fountains were a highly sophisticated system used to measure the degree of intelligence of the beings who tried drinking the waters: the more intelligent, or at least the more capable of intelligence a person was, the further he or she was allowed to taste the waters. There were some speculations saying, the person who was allowed to drink the clear water from the center Fountain--The Great One--would be gifted with all knowledge of the Elgam Civilization! Others said the Fountains differentiated intelligent beings based on their genetic code: the closer was the genetic code to the Elgam people, the further in the row of the Fountains that being could reach. It was possible, they said, few Elgams were still sleeping, hidden somewhere in suspended animation, waiting for someone worthy to wake them up.
     Anyway, legends or not, the Fountains WERE a true Mystery, and many Technicians, Maintenance, Archeologists, and Administrative people on Iradina 41 were very passionate in solving it.

     The fact the behavior of the Fountains was unpredictable, relative to different intelligent beings, was the reason they were free for public visits from the very first days of their discovery. The Archeologists, who were studying the Fountains on a permanent schedule, allowed public access inside the Hall during the nighttime quarters. Nice tables and comfortable seats had been brought inside the vast room, and were positioned in a circular distribution around the Fountains.
     The floor of the Hall was a series of five concentric rings arranged in terraces, from lower in center to higher on extremities. A wide, slow ramp coming down to the Fountains and then going up again divided the Hall in the middle, and two huge corridors connected the Hall of the Fountains at each end of the ramp with the bulk of the facilities.
The Hall was a pleasing attraction point for everybody. In time, the Work Base Iradina 41 became a nice place to live, made even excitingly interesting due to the Mystery of the Fountains.

     The main activity on Iradina 41 was harvesting rare and prized isotopes which were of higher density in the Little Squid arm of the Sea of Ash Nebula trapped inside the Elgam System. The strong ionic currents of the Nebula collided with the gravitational pits and peaks of the System, therefore amplifying the matter trapping process and creating huge, natural, matter filters and concentrators or, possibly, even changing a little atoms' structure.
     As everywhere in Equal Coalition Worlds, the qualified work force was at its highest premium; still, the payment on Iradina 41 was outstanding. Virgil Bruce Scott had a six conventional years contract with the powerful Iradina
     Inter-Systems Trust as Level 12 Technician. He spent in a loading-raid anywhere between 100 and 180 conventional days in space--depending on how dangerous the Dalk radiation was--on a tanker spaceship, filtering Nebula's matter for scarce isotopes. It was a tough job to handle nightmarish ionic storms, monstrous electrostatic discharges, high-speed rocks, devious pockets of plasma or plasma streams and, naturally, dangerous, hull-penetrating cosmic radiations. At the end of each loading-raid Bruce enjoyed about ninety conventional days of medical therapy and recovery on Iradina 41, while his tanker was repaired and decontaminated.
     The recovery program was very good, the food was excellent, even the work was interesting, and Bruce had plenty of time to continue his studies as much as he wanted. The Communications Department was doing an admirable job in keeping the Work Base and the Elgam System connected with most Worlds of the Coalition. Of course, there was a time delay in communications, anywhere from three to twenty-seven conventional hours, depending on how deep the connection reached inside the ECW, but things were improving, constantly. (...)

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