The Before People

By Jhon Lain

When our odyssey of survival begins a pathfinder to the stars, believed dead by his fellow peers is abandoned.

The Earth devastated by a comet is no longer habitable. The few survivors leave to search the stars for a new home world. Our lone bastion standing against the invading ruin of chaos builds a great pyramid to act as a beacon to the stars.

The structure is a life preserver allowing our pathfinder to travel thorough the ages awaiting the return of his people to rescue him. His awakening, after the passage of one hundred thousand years, lead the budding new human civilization of Egypt to believe he is a god.

Now recognizing that he is alone for all time, there will be no rescue, Stargue, sets out to find any remaining caches of knowledge left behind by his civilization to share with the new world.

Stargue encounters aliens bent on using humans as cattle to feed their hordes. Unclean creatures brought to the Earth by Stargue’s SOS beacon sent out by the pyramid, pleading for his rescue. Using Pharaoh Menes’ army of warriors and the assistance of a warrior princess he has rescued from slavery they defeat the beastlike creatures from the stars.

Along the path to knowledge, Stargue and his grateful warrior princess encounter cannibals intent on making them trophies and both nearly die in the head long rush to escape. Their continued survival falls to bonding with a pack of short tailed wolves who had taken an interest in the two.

Their search for knowledge never comes to fruition because they discover all that was left behind has been destroyed through the ages of time. They are left with a burning desire to help the infant civilizations now awakening on Earth.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jhon Lain
• Release date: Oct 4, 2011
• ISBN: 9781465779038

Jhon Lain

My wife and I have been married 41 years.We have 2 children and 2 granchildren.We were childhood sweethearts.We now live in Leesburg Florida. Special thanks to the late, great Andre Norton sci-fi grand master, who was our mentor and consultant on Claws Of Darkness, a novel that spanned 40 years in the making.

Book preview

Preface

Civilization is a very difficult thing to describe, it is many different things at many different levels that when taken together form a basis for our current understanding of civilization. . When did civilization come into being? Five thousand years ago as modern historians would have us believe?

Did civilization begin in Egypt, India, the stepped mountains of Tibet or maybe Rome or even legendary Atlantis? No one truly knows where and when civilization began or even why. History tries to tell us and have us believe that civilization just suddenly appeared out of the mists of time. There is no intelligent discussions on the possibility that they may have come into being tens or hundreds of thousands of years earlier.

Man has been around a long time. Is he truly any smarter today than he was thousands of years ago? That concept would seem very doubtful. Evolution does not appear to move that rapidly.

What prevents our being able to comprehend that civilizations could and probably did exist tens of thousands of years ago, possibly hundreds of thousands of years ago? That the rise and fall of civilization on Earth may have occurred dozens of times down through the ages.

Prior civilizations may not have even been populated by homosapiens. Civilizations that raised their voices to the heavens and then were struck down by massive calamities, earth shattering disasters.

What would be left of our tenure on Earth if a major disaster struck and thousands of years rolled by and we were covered by a hundred feet of soil and debris? Would any who came after us know we existed or find any of our remains and if they did would they just dismiss the information and artifacts in front of their eyes as just not fitting into their pattern of our how the world evolved?

Our world, the Earth, has been in existence for billions of years and has been populated by millions of bizarre creatures, is it beyond belief they may have been as intelligent or more so than we are?

There are some in India who believe their civilization has been around for hundreds of thousands of years that they had space travel, that they traveled to the other planets in our solar system. That they fought Herculean battles with strange otherworldly beings using nuclear weapons and disintegrating beams of destruction that rained down from the heavens. Destroying their metropolitan cities and way of life. Are these myths just stories or do they ring with truth?

It is believed that Nesu Menes was the first proclaimed Pharaoh that ruled all of Egypt after founding the first dynasty and after unifying upper and lower Egypt. It is not known if he was a single individual or several lumped together for some unknown event or group of actions. Nesu was the original name for a Pharaoh of Egypt. It is certain that Menes armies defeated all who defied him.

* * * * *

Chapter 1

When our odyssey of survival begins a pathfinder to the stars, believed dead by his fellow peers is abandoned.

The Earth devastated by a comet is no longer habitable. The few survivors leave to search the stars for a new home world. Our lone bastion standing against the invading ruin of chaos builds a great pyramid to act as a beacon to the stars.

The structure is a life preserver allowing our pathfinder to travel thorough the ages awaiting the return of his people to rescue him. His awakening, after the passage of one hundred thousand years, lead the budding new human civilization of Egypt to believe he is a god.

Now recognizing that he is alone for all time, there will be no rescue, Stargue, sets out to find any remaining caches of knowledge left behind by his civilization to share with the new world.

Stargue encounters aliens bent on using humans as cattle to feed their hordes. Unclean creatures brought to the Earth by Stargue’s SOS beacon sent out by the pyramid, pleading for his rescue. Using Pharaoh Menes’ army of warriors and the assistance of a warrior princess he has rescued from slavery they defeat the beastlike creatures from the stars.

Along the path to knowledge, Stargue and his grateful warrior princess encounter cannibals intent on making them trophies and both nearly die in the head long rush to escape. Their continued survival falls to bonding with a pack of short tailed wolves who had taken an interest in the two.

Their search for knowledge never comes to fruition because they discover all that was left behind has been destroyed through the ages of time. They are left with a burning desire to help the infant civilizations now awakening on Earth.

Stargue awoke with a pounding headache, the cryogenic gases slowly siphoning off. He raised his right arm trying to bring into focus the autometer on his wrist to determine the time frame that had passed since placing himself into this cursed machine. The years that it had taken him to construct it after the cataclysm had destroyed his life, civilization, his entire world. Then what few thousands who had survived the devastation had finally drifted together bringing what technology was available had constructed a number of space worthy ferries and believing that all were aboard who wanted to go had lifted off to board the few deep space starships in orbit that still belonged to the human race in an effort to find a more hospitable home world.

Stargue had been off on one his foraging quests for technology when he saw them lift off climbing into the night sky. He knew then he was really alone on a savagely ravaged planet. A world destroyed by a heretofore passing comet. A comet that that had circumnavigated this insignificant star system hundreds if not thousands of times in the past.

This time however it did not just pass by, something had thrown it off its normal orbit and it slammed into the Earth before they had a chance to deflect the thing.

Millions of people, creatures large and small, creatures that would have stretched believe in today’s world were killed. Destroyed in an eye blink. The only ones saved were those who were deep underground, in the air or off world. All that they had held precious was gone. Families and friends, all the infrastructure of a thousand years, incinerated in an eye blink all across the globe.

The Paleolithic civilization that Stargue grew up in was peopled by individuals who sought knowledge and had struggled to reach the stars for a thousand years. Their wish had barely been granted when all they had accomplished was taken away in the blink of an eye. Stargue had been a pathfinder officer, because he had no ties he had served a major part of his required enlistment time off world at several exploratory stations usually manned by less than a hundred hardy individuals. Larger cadres of personnel were to difficult to adequately support in a timely manner. None of the Worlds in the star systems they had explored were capable of being self supporting.

He had spent a year on the Red planet, Earth’s neighbor, in fact that was where he teamed up with Siva, part pet part teammate. Stargue’s training gave him the ability to be self supporting. He had gained the knowledge over the years to be totally self sufficient. It had been part of his duties to go in on new worlds to determine if they could support a human population without terra forming, which required hundreds if not thousands of years.

His family including a sister he adored had all been killed in an aircar collision just a few miles from home, while he was just getting settled into the prestigious academy his family had worked so hard to get him. Stargue was only fourteen at the time. Needless to say he was devastated by his loss so he put his heart and soul into his courses taking triple the number required to be qualified as a pathfinder, graduating number one in the pathfinder field.

Only a few thousand upper echelon officials most without their families survived they were the lucky ones if it can called that who were in places that they could hide in shelters. After the devastating quakes, super gale force winds and firestorms scourged the world they, the survivors tried to accumulate as much of man’s knowledge and technology and boarded on of several deep space star ships that had been orbit around the Earth. They had made a Herculean effort to find all who survived and or wanted to leave and after several years of day and night effort left to try and find a new world where man could again call home. The Earth by then was shrouded in dark dirty clouds. The Earth had become a place of terror. Roaming bands of cannibals and packs of wild canines managed to kill off the few remaining people who had survived and either not been found or refused to leave.

Stargue had been sent out to check out a rumor of an enclave of scientists on a remote artic island. They were dead when he finally found them. Twenty one men and women huddled together in a frozen mass. All had succumbed to the cold when their power generator broke down.

Stargue had tried to contact Central Command but the interference was just to great. He had almost made it back when his airship went down in a cyclonic storm just miles from the departure gates. As the storm cleared three days later he was able to have an unobstructed few of the survivors leaving Earth for the last time. It was his efforts for the most part that had enabled them to find each other and to come together and bring this escape into reality. Then to be left behind was mind numbing. It took him almost a year to bring his deranged back from oblivion and give his life a remaining purpose.

He would build a structure that could be seen from space and be able to protect his life and body while he slumbered in a cryogenic tank. He would tap into vortex focal point for an uninterrupted power source. He had the know how and the equipment capable of putting that all together had been left behind at the center.

There was massive storage facility stocked with foods they had been unable to take so he would not starve while he worked. If they came back they would immediately see his handiwork and come to investigate. It was a long ordeal for a single individual but he used many robotic units and a number of extremely high tech technologies and even several inventions and discoveries he made as he labored alone.

His nightmares continued the whole time he struggled to complete his one man monument, it took almost ten years but the day finally came when he said enough is enough. He entered his massive life pod to begin his journey up through time the new fashioned way by waiting for it to pass minute by minute. He closed the massive stove doors put the power on automatic shutdown climbed into his lonely tank closed the lid and all was quiet except the winds still howled in fury outside his huge pyramid of stone.

Stargue blinked a dozen times trying to clear the haze from his eyes. He was unable to comprehend the figures he was seeing. Over a hundred years had passed him by while he dozed unknowingly the sleep of the dead. He slammed his balled up fist into the panic button on the side wall of the tank just above his head. Servo motors whined in resistance to the command, nothing happened. He panicked, struck still with anxiety, then he savagely smashed his fist into the switch repeatedly, his hand was a bloody pulp by the time the tank lid finally began rising. Brought to life by the repeated hammering of his hand. It was dark, really dark.

He sat up to quickly, his head felt like it was going to fall off his shoulders because of the intense vertigo. Slowly it passed, he pulled his naked body out over the metal tank lid up over the stone wall of the sarcophagus. Sitting on the edge to swung his legs around up over the sides to dangle freely to the side.

He slipped off and dropped down to the floor. Standing caused him to sway with continued vertigo, his equilibrium totally out of wack. Reaching back in he activated a small switch at the bottom of the container. A hidden door opened, a dim light flicked on allowing him to see the contents. His clothes were still in one piece he shivered as he pulled them out and dressed himself. Silky cool underclothing, tough almost impervious pants and jerkin navy blue in color, foot gear that when he pulled them on reached to mid thigh. His weapons belt he swung around his waist as well as his tech belt he clipped on it swung down on his left hip while his weapons belt hung to the right. There now he thought I feel balanced.

Reaching into his Pandora’s box he pulled out some lighting instruments. Checking their power supplies he clicked them on, his reference to Pandora‘s box was because the technology used in making the container allowed it operate outside the normal laws of physics, the inside of the box was a hundred times bigger than the outside dimensions would indicate, Pandora was the woman‘s name who had developed the amazing characteristics of the box. Looking around, making a mental inventory of his precious hoard of supplies. Those supplies were all that stood between him and barbarism.

What would he find when he opened up the exit to the outside. A brave new world. Had the few remaining survivors come back to find him is this what had awakened him at this particular time.

It had taken him a ten-year to build the pyramidal preserver and stock it with the necessary equipment and foods that would guarantee his survival through the years or sustain him when he awoke if his people did not come back for him.

However he had set the equipment to awaken him in 10 years not 100. He had built the largest thing he had the equipment to build that he thought would last long enough if they came back that they could see from orbit and know someone had been left behind.

He had set his beacons to broadcast everyday. Basically saying I am here come help me, I am alone. The Gold cap he had placed on the upper tip of the pyramid was the power source that drove everything inside keeping it powered up, safe and secure from the ravages of the outside world.

He briefly wondered if his stone carving of his pet Sphinx still stood facing