The Silent Museum

SPECULATIVE FICTION

Kay ran her fingertips down the surface of the structure. Even through the thick gloves she could sense the rough texture, a sensation entirely at odds with what she saw. Close enough to touch it, the edifice still appeared perfectly smooth, although she could now make out faint, rust-red stains that ran, vein-like, through the dark grey stone. If, indeed, it was stone.

Concerned that the abrasive surface had been too hard on her gloves, Kay ran an integrity check on her EVA suit. It found just the usual small leak from the helmet joint. Nothing to worry about.

She walked away from the structure, then turned to get a broader view. She knew the dimensions from the measurements taken during their descent from orbit. This slab-like structure was a perfect equilateral triangle, 100 metres on each side and rising three metres above ground. None of the ship’s sensors had been able to penetrate the surface.

The triangle sat inside a flat, circular surface, almost pure black, whose circumference intersected the vertices of the structure. Ten metres outside this circle was a broken ring of flat-topped earthworks, also rising three metres high. There were eight gaps in the ring that had most likely been aligned with the cardinal and ordinal points of the magnetic compass, although they were now out of alignment…