Sam began to recover. He felt much better, opening his eyes, he saw a bright light and a dark silhouette of an incomprehensible creature, more like a ghost.

  “Are you awake?”

Sam was surprised, the ghost spoke to him in a pleasant female voice in the old language of the pilgrims. The last time he heard this language was when he was working at the port on Alma.

  “I died?” Sam asked.

  “Not. You are not dead. Oh, you know what I said!” Tthe ghost was surprised.

 "Who are you?"

  “Everyone calls me a curse.” The ghost replied a little frighteningly.

  “Wait! We were told that the planet is not inhabited!” Sam remembered.

  “Do you believe everything they say?” - The ghost chuckled.

  “Why did you revive me. I'm not very happy to be in this damn place again. I wish I had died!” Sam said in a tired voice.

The ghost sat down opposite Sam and took off his shaggy mask. A girl was hiding under the mask. She looked about 25 years old. Her face was adorned with strokes of glowing paint. She looked like an ordinary girl, nothing outstanding.

 “Do not be so upset. My name is Suely. And you are another hunter for "nemurgs You have a jar full of beetles. You didn’t know that nemurges can heal? I had to let the bug bite you. And interestingly, you survived!”

 “My name is Sam. I'm glad you're human. So the luminous beetles are nemurgi. So you decided to see if I'd survive the bite or not.” Reasoned Sam. “Thank you, your curiosity saved my life! Why did the squad leader die from a beetle bite?”

 “Only a descendant of the pilgrim can survive the beetle bite nemurg.”

  Sam considered. There was a long pause in the conversation. Sam licked his dry lips and looked around for water. Suely took a cylindrical container out of her bag and opened it and poured what looked like a decoction into the lid of the container. She offered Sam a drink.

  “All the peoples and races are mixed up, no one can say whose descendant he is. How do you know?”

  “The doctor has sewn up your wounds. He said that you are a Titarian, and they are direct descendants of the pilgrims like us.”

 “Doctor! There's a doctor here! How can he know?”  Sam was surprised.

  “He's like you. He's been here more than fifteen years. The only survivor.”

  “Thank you for saving my life! I owe you one. If we get to the surface, I won't be left in debt.”

  “I'm sorry, but there's no way out of here alive. You're lucky I found you!  Accept that this planet is your home now.”  Suely got up and put on her mask. She packed her things and put them in the saddle.

  “This is my home now!”  Sam stood up and looked around. A long, wide tunnel appeared to his gaze. The light of the local sun shone through the cracks in the ceiling.

 In the tunnel, some buildings have survived, in places overgrown with bushes and moss. Rare drops of water dripped from the ceiling. Sam walked over the soft moss to the edge of the cliff where they stopped.

  “So this is a battleship, and this is not a rock, this is a weapon!” Sam exclaimed in surprise. “ How did he get here?”

  “There used to be a cargo dock here. Sit down, it's time for us to go.” Answered Suely.

Sam took a seat behind Suely. The lizard got up, quickly ran over the hull of the wrecked ship and dived into a dark passage in the stone wall of the grotto. The lizard ran through the dark cave. Sam held on to the saddle, now and then dangled from side to side. Finally, a light dawned in the distance. A few minutes later, the lizard with the passengers found themselves in a spacious grotto.

  “What's this?” Sam asked in surprise.

  “An abandoned city. There is no water on the upper level, so people left this place.”

  “How many people live underground?”

  “There are four major cities and several small settlements. There are a lot of people in cities. Five to twenty people live in the settlements.”

  “I didn’t think that there could be some kind of civilization, especially a doctor with surgical equipment.” Sam noticed, examining the neatly stitched wound.

  “What are you thinking about?” Suely asked. “ What are the savages here?”

  “Honestly, yes! Judging by your suit and spear.”

  “I have a weapon, but I ran out of ammo, I hope to use your weapon, show me how to shoot it.”

Sam chuckled. “I understand your interest in weapons, but this is a bad idea in this situation.”

  “Why?” Suely was surprised. “If you don’t want to tell me, I’ll figure out how to do it myself.”

  “Nothing will come of it. First of all, no one except me can use this weapon, you need a DNA identifier. Secondly, even if you extract this identifier from me, shooting from this weapon will be fatal to you.”

  “And for you, shooting from this weapon was not dangerous?”

  “To safely shoot from the MM3 accelerator, you need armor with an ion beam blocker.”  Sam took out a weapon and opened a round protective plate under which was a mini reactor. At that moment, the lizard turned its head restlessly and hissed.

  “Take it away immediately!” Suely shouted.

  “When closed, it is safe.”  Sam closed the protective plate and put the weapon away.

  “Don't do that anymore, Lagarchik is afraid of radiation.” Suely warned.

They drove to the outskirts of the city in silence. The monotonous landscape of rusted walls, pipes and bridges ended in ruined buildings, in the walls of which huge holes gaped. This part of the city was more like a battlefield.

  “Why is everything so ruined here?” Sam asked

  “A long time ago, the planet was attacked by colonists. They destroyed the defenses on the surface and came down here. Here they damaged the power plants that fed the cities and the predator control system. The out-of-control animals had a feast here. Those who managed to hide in urban shelters survived. The war ended very quickly, when the owners of the planet, the huge creatures, awoke.  They emptied everything under the ground, and then went through tunnels to the surface.  After a few months, the number of predators became smaller and people began to slowly get out of shelters. Out of a hundred cities, only four remain.”

  “Are you saying the animals obeyed?”

  “Not certainly in that way. The planet was divided into zones and subterranean tiers. The zones were separated by protective barriers, so people and predators rarely crossed.”

  “Wait, why did the colonians attack?”

  “Don't you know!”  Surprised Suely.

  “In the big world, history has been studied since the beginning of a new era of restoration. They say the reason for the war is because the pilgrims created the dark stars.”

  “The dark stars are not the cause of the war, but an attempt to stop the war.”

  “What is the reason?”

  “What do you care about this. Sam!” Suely sighed. “The pilgrims have a law - do not look back, leave the past and live for today.”

  “Maybe you're right.”

  “Sam, tell me why you came here?”

  “We had a team, we worked for hire.”

  “So are you a mercenary?”

  “No, I work for the warrior caste. The caste performs the functions of military controllers.”

  “What is it like?”

  “Free possession of weapons is prohibited in the galaxy; licenses are required for this. Many sovereign systems in the galaxy do not have their own militias or fleets. These services are provided by the warrior caste. But not to fight, but to maintain peace and resolve conflicts. The truth is, everything is reversed.”

  “How did you get here?”

  “This is a sad story.”  Sam began to tell. “In one of the systems there was a conflict between a mining company and local asteroid miners. The latter took the company representatives hostage. The caste intervened in the conflict, sending our team there, since our boss has great authority and experience in resolving conflicts. But something went wrong, an explosion occurred in the mine, the boss was injured, the hostages were killed, and some of our team members opened fire on the miners in the confusion. It was a complete failure. The boss is in the hospital, the team is out of work. For half a year we were under investigation and interrupted by odd jobs, until one customer came to us. He offered to solve all our problems with the law, in return he offered us to complete one task. It was rumored that this customer offered this job to many and those who agreed to it did not return, but we had no choice. The goal was to take biological samples and artifacts from the obelisk, which we can find. There were six of us, two got to the place. Me and my commander Cap. I did not know what kind of beetles they were, but they reminded me of the beetles of burial grounds, in the big world they are rarely found. They are usually destroyed because they are aggressive and poisonous. I did not understand why the customer needed these beetles.”

  “And why did you take the rod and the sword?” Suely interrupted.

  “I don’t know myself. But Cap said that we cannot go out without a staff.”

Suely picked up the staff and examined it. She saw nothing unusual in him. Then she took the sword. She twirled it playfully in her hand, which surprised Sam.

  “We may be in trouble if they find out that you took these things from the obelisk. It will not work to bring them back.” She added.

 The lizard slowly moved along the road from one grotto to another. Sam was tired and fell asleep. Passing another dark cave, they found themselves in a spacious grotto. The noise of the waterfall wake Sam up. An amazing landscape opened before his eyes, a high grotto divided by two tiers. On the first tier there was a lake with a neat stone shore like an embankment. The lake ended with a waterfall and a sheer wall with a surviving statue of a woman with a jug. On the left side of the waterfall, there is a wide road that slopes gently down to the second tier of a stone plateau, abundantly overgrown with moss. The plateau ended in a precipice. At the bottom of the grotto there was an underground river that disappeared into fog at the other end of the grotto.