Oxygénia

"Now I remember... I do remember exactly... We'll soon reach the
city."
Again, exictement flooded his body, like back when he told about
the content of the secret booklet.
"According to the map, we are here, at the end of the path, and I
can remember this canyon... We're there any moment... But we still
have to master the most difficult part..."
There are things like this in fairy tales: steep glass mountains
with polished walls, where only gryphons or dragons can fly over.
"I remember again... The City of the Rememberers is completely
enclosed by a Dark Rift, and the edge of this ravines is covered with
thick undergrowth, and beyond those, the houses start. But I don't
know how to overcome this ravine. Maybe we have a rest first..."
"I'm sure we'll make it", Peter said. "I have moon ladders in my
equipment."
They stopped on the bottom of a steep rock wall. It was petrified,
cold lava, the result of a giant subterranean explosion.
Peter opened his instruments bag and took out two moon
ladders. They looked like simple, spooled up threads. One needed to
do nothing but to roll off this spool in front of him. The twine stuck
at the rock wall and engorged on contact with a solid body. One
could step on the rungs with the shoe tips, shore on it with the
knees and climb up along it. On a single spool was a cord of several
hundred meters length. Every spacefarer had dozens of them in his
luggage since it was possible to fall into a deep ravine on some
foreign celestial body or encounter a steep rocky obstacle, and then,
those sticking ladders helped with ease. They had been employed
on the moon during the 21 st century for the first time and therefore
gotten their name ever since.
The climbing, however, was not that easy. But the ladders proved
to be stable, rung by rung, meter by meter they got closer to the
upper edge. One last unreeling, and Peters ladder kept stuck in the
twigs of a tree beyond the rock wall. One last effort... and Peter got
a hold on the branch of that tree. It felt smooth like plastic. It was
no living tree.
ON, too, reached the brushwood. They switched off the
wristbeam and waited for several minutes to catch their breath and
refill the oxygen bins, and they mused about what would expect
them here. ON could remember that in general, the inhabitants of
the city didn't stroll out here. The entrance of the houses faced –
like down there in the concrete blocks cities – towards the center.
People never got out of the town. What would have been the
66