Lieutenant Jo Schmidt was in intellectual heaven. If it weren't for the fact that she was stranded on a dead planet orbiting an impossible 50 billion year old sun more than 500 million parsecs from home she could almost have been happy -- and then of course there were the recurring nightmares. Nightmares wherein her friends were gruesomely dismembered and killed by horrible scorpion monsters while she herself stood by, muscles locked in place by sheer terror, watching, unable to tear her eyes away from the bloody carnage, helpless to do anything but scream in impotent rage and pain.
While she was in the Library it was different though. The ghosts didn't haunt her here nearly as much; there was a wealth of information in the ancient records to keep her mind distracted and busy.
It had been a week since the old woman Ereshkigal had first brought her to this place. 'Perhaps you will discover a way out of this place,' she had said, and that was precisely what had been occupying Jo's every waking moment. Finding a way out of this forgotten realm, away from the monsters. And not just for herself, but for everyone else consigned to this purgatory. Banshee Squadron may be no more, but she had found a new mission for herself.
One of the things that had amazed her when she started working was the incredible ease with which she was able to operate the computer equipment. Though completely alien, she seemed intuitively able to discern how everything worked, and she wondered why that would be so. Even the information found in the library records seemed easy to understand. She couldn't understand the language of course, but the many pictograms and diagrams spoke volumes all by themselves, and she was able to piece together a lot just by looking at the pictures. It was almost as though it was meant to be easily read by beings other than the builders.
The twisted, alien text etched on the control surfaces was a different story however, but even so it seemed vaguely familiar somehow. It looked almost like... Jo's forehead creased in concentration as she struggled to remember her archeology schooling. ...Sanskrit! The writing on the computer looked like Sanskrit!
She looked closer and ran her fingers across the markings. Upon careful inspection, it was clear that the Sanskrit was etched on top of older text of the same style as the pictograms in the records. Jo now recalled the 'welcome' message carved into the wall back out by the city's entrance. It too had looked familiar at the time and she realized now that it had been Sanskrit as well.
What was ancient Sanskrit writing doing on a planet halfway across the known universe? There must be a connection between this place and Earth, or at least a connection between Earth and whoever had made the carvings. Everything here was ancient beyond the extreme, but the Sanskrit was carved on top of the older text meaning it was newer. It might be only a few thousand years old. Could it have been carved during the same time period Sanskrit flourished on Earth?
The more she thought about it, the more connections she made. The name of this city, 'Kurnugi', was the name of the Sumerian underworld, a place of darkness and ash from which no one could ever exit. The old woman Ereshkigal was the namesake of the queen of the underworld, somewhat fitting given her role here. Even the Aqrabu fit into the puzzle. In Babylonian mythology, the Aqrabuamelu were scorpion men who guarded the gates of the underworld.
There must be a connection! It was unthinkable that so many similarities could be simple blind coincidence. That meant there was a way to travel between this place and Earth! Jo's heart raced as this astounding revelation hit her with its full import. A way home! She had to find it, and was certain the secret lay within the library. She just needed time to find it.
Jo heard a slight noise behind her, the soft scrape of leather on stone, and then a light touch on her shoulder. She jumped with a violent start and spun in her seat, her overworked imagination conjuring al manner of ravening monsters poised to devour her, but when she saw who it was she exhaled slowly, forcing her heart back down her throat, and smiled. It was only the precocious lad Enki with her lunch.
She took the wooden bowl filled with the ubiquitous gray sludge these people called food and set it on the desktop beside the computer terminal at which she sat. "Thanks, Enki," she said to the youth and watched his eager face light up at her kind words. She realized that even young Enki's name hearkened back to Babylonian origins.
The youth had been her unshakable shadow for the last six days, bringing her food and water plus the occasional archaeological trinket, but mostly he just sat beside her and watched her as she worked. Jo wondered how much someone so young could understand about the material she was researching, but Enki never seemed to get bored or restless the way a typical human child would if confined for a week in a library.
"What are you doing?" he asked as he hopped up on a chair behind Jo.
"I just realized that some of the writing here is just like writing used on my home planet," Jo replied.
"Oh."
"It's carved in the wall near the city gate and on the computer controls here on top of some older writing."
"Can you read it?"
"A little."
"Oh."
"I just have to figure out how the people got from here to my planet."
"Maybe they used the Stairway to Heaven," suggested Enki indifferently. He picked up a bent spoon and started poking at the bowl of sludge he had brought Jo.
"The what?" asked Jo. "What did you say?" She had seen pictograms of something that might be considered a 'Stairway to Heaven' in the library, but had passed them by as mere local superstitions or a religion of some sort.
"The Stairway to Heaven," repeated Enki. He had finally decided that if Jo wasn't going to eat her lunch then he might as well, and dug his spoonful into the porridge. "I saw it in the library once," he said around a mouthful.
"Can you show me?" asked Jo, excitement growing again.
"Sure!" Enki hopped off his chair and headed off into the depths of the library with Jo right on his heels.
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