Free The Prometheus Project by Douglas E. Richards Page A

with greenish bark and round, orange leaves. A forest that was far, far larger than the entire building they were in! Maybe even larger than the entire city .
    “These crazy aliens,” quipped Regan. “They really do wonderful things with living space. I’d love to have them design a closet for me—with a thousand times more room inside than the entire house that it’s in.”
    “Ah, I think they could even do better than that,” whispered Ryan in a trance. He pointed upward.
    Upward to the sky and the clouds. They were outside!
    Incredible! And even more incredible was the fact that they could see two huge orbs hanging in the sky, visible even during the day.
    Moons. And there were two of them .
    They looked once again at the bizarre orange trees and gulped. They were definitely outside all right.
    And they were just as definitely no longer on Earth.
     

 
    Chapter 18
     
    Predator
     
    A terrifying thought occurred to them both at the same time—was the doorway still there? They turned slowly, fearfully, to look behind them.
    It was!
    What a relief.
    Just to be sure they weren’t stranded they stepped back through the doorway. Sure enough, they were back in the zoo.
    They stepped through to the forest again and considered the vast landscape carefully. “I have to admit, the cages are slightly bigger than I thought they would be,” said Ryan impishly.
    Regan laughed.
    “This could be the break we’ve been looking for,” said Ryan. “There must be some sort of food and water here. I think we should stay fairly close to this entrance and explore. Each doorway in the zoo must go to a different world, so if we can’t find water right away we can try one of the other worlds.”
    They decided to climb a nearby tree to scout the area, but after walking only thirty yards a wall of force, just like the one around the city, appeared magically in front of them, completely blocking out the woods. They jumped back, startled.
    And the wall disappeared again.
    After just a little experimentation it became clear that an invisible dome completely encircled them, with the door back to the city at its center. Whenever they got to within five feet of the barrier it instantly became visible, probably so no one would slam into it without realizing it.
    “I suppose this is here so the zoo animals won’t eat the zoo visitors,” said Ryan.
    Regan nodded. “Yeah—probably. Zookeepers must hate it when the animals spoil their appetite that way.”
    “Well, I guess this is a great setup if you want to safely watch the local animals, but if you want to find food and water—it’s not so great.”
    “I’m not so sure it’s so great for watching animals,” said Regan. “Do you see any? They could be anywhere on this planet.” She shook her head. “What they need is a car or tram of some sort to carry visitors around, like they had in the first Jurassic Park movie.” She paused. “In fact, I’ll bet you they do have one somewhere. They would almost have to.”
    Ryan shook his head. “Just because they had a tram in a science fiction movie doesn’t mean they’ll have one in an alien zoo on an alien planet,” he said skeptically. He thought the chances of them finding a tram simply because his sister thought there should be one were less than zero. But after looking at his sister’s eager face he added, “I guess there isn’t harm in looking.”
    Less than two minutes later they found a tram, right where Regan had guessed it would be. Ryan stared at it in disbelief and whispered, “You were right. Nice going. Let’s just hope we don’t find the dinosaurs from that movie here also,” he joked.
    They entered the small tram carefully. Inside several small holograms showed the tram performing different maneuvers. Ryan reached forward and touched one that showed the tram going forward. As he had hoped, it served as a control, and the actual tram began to glide slowly forward into the unknown woods. It passed beyond the