Paw-Prints Of The Gods

by Steph Bennion

  The professor gave a weak smile. “He’s in denial.”

  * * *

  The transport parked in the hangar had been loaned to the expedition by the Que Qiao maintenance crew who occasionally visited Arallu Depot, the nearest supply base to the excavation. The six-wheeled vehicle was of the type commonly used on airless worlds throughout the five systems, though this one was more battered than most. The whole hangar had to be depressurised before the main doors could be opened, which did put a strain upon the life-support plant that maintained a breathable atmosphere throughout the complex. For this reason, trips outside were a rare and special treat.

  “I’m not coming with you,” announced Professor Cadmus, arriving late at the hangar. “I’ve noticed an error in the site report that needs to be corrected before it goes.”

  “We can wait,” said Govannon.

  Behind him, Xuthus paused in the midst of lugging the last of the empty water barrels across the hangar, perturbed by the men’s conversation. Hestia and Urania were out of earshot, busy with the job of linking the toilet and waste disposal trailer onto the back of the transport. The torrid heat and lack of air circulation fans within the metal-roofed hangar was not helping the mobile toilet unit smell any better.

  “That’s hardly fair on the students,” said Cadmus. “The ship is on Falsafah for just a few hours and you know they look forward to a bit of time away from the site. I can get the update to you via the short-range transmitter before it leaves.”

  “Don’t you want to speak to your bosses yourself? Give an oral report?”

  “I confess I’m feeling a little under the weather.” As if to illustrate his point, Cadmus gave a brief grimace, clutching his stomach as he did so. “A mild touch of food poisoning, I fear. It’s my own fault for eating that rather ripe cheese last night.”

  “Cheese? The girls used what was left three days ago when they made lasagne.”

  “In that case, it’s definitely my fault for eating something masquerading as cheese,” said the professor with a smile, then winced again. “I’ll be fine! You and the students need a break. I don’t want to keep you here on my account.”

  “You do realise we’re taking the poop-mobile with us,” advised Govannon, glancing over his shoulder to where Hestia was heaving the heavy trailer onto the towing hitch. Impressively, she was using just one hand so the other could hold her nose. “It badly needs to be emptied but that’ll leave you with nowhere to go if your bowels demand likewise.”

  “I’ll manage,” Cadmus reassured him. “You need to get going!”

  Govannon gave a shrug and watched the professor walk back into the dome. For some strange reason Cadmus had now developed a limp.

  “Is he not coming with us?” asked Xuthus, sidling closer.

  “It seems not,” mused Govannon. “Professor Cadmus appears to be inflicted with a debilitating case of bad acting and needs to lie down for a while. Shall we make a move?”

  Xuthus frowned, puzzled that anyone would want to pretend to be ill on today of all days, but nodded and trotted obediently towards the rear of the transport. Hestia was helping Urania carry the final load of empty food crates through the vehicle’s hatch. Govannon moved to close the airlock to the domes and then paused, for on the far side of the dome beyond, a distant figure was hurriedly making his way into the tunnel to dome two. Xuthus looked to see what had caught Govannon’s attention and frowned again when he saw that the professor’s limp had miraculously disappeared.

  “Fine,” Govannon muttered. “Drool in peace over your so-called aliens!”

  * * *

  Professor Cadmus paused at the end of the tunnel and listened to the dwindling roar of the hangar’s air escaping into the Falsafah atmosphere. Moments later, he felt a faint quiver at his feet and pictured the heavy transport trundling away into the Arallu Wastes, then this too faded to leave just the familiar background hum of the life-support system. On the other side of dome one, red lights flashed at the hangar entrance, warning the unwary that the airlock was sealed and the outer hangar door open.

  “Finally!” he murmured. “Time to do some proper archaeology.”

  He reached into his jacket and withdrew his slate from the large inside pocket designed for such a device, eager to read again the last message from his sponsors. Tau Ceti’s sole servermoon orbited the more hospitable world of Aram, which due to freak planetary geometrics was always on the opposite side of the sun from Falsafah. The University had been denied formal access to the Que Qiao Lagrange communication relay, which otherwise allowed non-ED signals to reach the servermoon without being swamped by radiation pouring from Tau Ceti itself, so had to rely on visits from the expedition’s ship to send messages home. What Doctor Jones and his students did not know was that Cadmus was secretly in touch with his employers on Earth via the local Falsafah police.

  As an experienced archaeologist, Cadmus was uneasy that his Alien Encounters Board sat within Que Qiao’s huge research and development agency. He had been equally disquieted when he learned his new employers knew of his standing within the Dhusarian Church, something he had concealed from fellow scholars for many years. Yet the latest message from Earth, not to mention his sneaky peek several weeks ago at what the student Ravana had on her personal slate, left him in no doubt he was on Falsafah for all the right reasons.

  In no time at all he was standing once more on the edge of Govannon’s new trench in dome two, gazing down at the exposed corner of the star chamber. Lifting his slate, he thumbed the touch-screen display and read again the all-important missive from Earth:

  Proceed as advised, preliminary survey only. Concur with recommendation that initial investigation be conducted whilst Jones off site. Findings to be reported in strict confidence.

  Professor Cadmus smiled and tucked the slate back into his jacket. A visit to the nearby tool store equipped him with an oxygen mask and a fully-charged lantern. After clipping the mask and lamp to his belt, he picked up a mattock, walked to the ladder and descended to the bottom of the trench.

  Moving cautiously, he entered the space between the excavated parallel walls and idly brushed his fingers against the smooth surface, all the way to the sharp edges of the strange hieroglyphs etched into the ancient glass. Before him stood the two-metre graceful glass arch that Cadmus knew had been raised by alien hands. Down in the pit, the resemblance to a doorway was stronger than ever.

  “Knock knock,” he murmured, lifting the mattock. “Anyone home?”

  * * *

  Arallu Depot was two hundred kilometres south of the excavation. Despite the lack of a road, the easy terrain made the journey possible in four hours. The Arallu Wastes lay on an ancient coastal plane, north of a desiccated ocean and west of a range of mountains forced up by long-dormant tectonic activity. Satellite radar imaging had long revealed a cluster of unusual structures half-buried alongside dry river beds, some of which were intriguing enough to justify maintaining a supply depot in Arallu at one of the few spots where water could be pumped from the ground. Surveys produced endless evidence of ancient plants and animals, including massive fossilised skeletal remains of creatures that defied description and awaited proper scientific study. It was these ancient bones, coupled with the fierce winds that now carved the once-fertile delta, that had led early Arab explorers to name the bleak, dreary region after the mythical abode of the dead.

  Tau Ceti hung low in the west as the expedition’s transport arrived at the airstrip. The spaceplane Sir Bedivere had landed and stood linked to the enclosed walkway projecting from the small terminal building on the far side of the depot’s dome. The silver ship was a sleek, stubby-winged Skylon Interstellar Mk IV, the latest of a successful line of Earth-class spacecraft to come from the Rolls-Royce aerospace factories of Mercia. The university had chartered the ship for the duration of the expedition, though Govannon was convinced the reason the crew never wanted to stay on Falsafah any longer than necessary was because they were flying black-market deli
veries on the side.

  The transport slipped past the wind-pump tower with its ferociously-spinning vanes, through the shallow pool of water left by leaking pump-head pipes and onwards to the rear of the dome. The depot’s transport hangar was part of the terminal building, the roof of which was covered by solar panels that powered the electrolysis plant, which in turn extracted hydrogen and oxygen from the underground stream. After getting too close to the spaceplane during an engine test, Govannon preferred to go the long way around.

  “Are we there yet?” asked Urania, teasing him. She sat next to him at the front of the vehicle, having beaten Xuthus to the seat normally taken by Professor Cadmus.

  “Funny girl,” Govannon muttered wearily. Urania had not stopped talking throughout the four-hour journey and it was this, not the long drive, that had exhausted him. “Do you want me to send you back to Ascension?”

  “Is that what you did with Ravana?”

  “Cadmus said she just got fed up and went home,” replied Govannon.

  “She left all her stuff behind,” said Hestia. “Her clothes, slate, everything.”

  “Good riddance,” muttered Urania. “Bitch.”

  “Urania!” exclaimed Govannon. “There’s no need for that!”

  “She’s one of those refugees from that crazy asteroid,” retorted Urania. “There’s hundreds of them at Newbrum, all wanting our jobs. Besides, who goes around with a face scarred like that? That sort of thing is easy to fix these days. She’s a freak.”

  “She’s not!” snapped Xuthus, shocked at Urania’s outburst. “She’s really brave and clever. I was there in Epsilon Eridani, when she and her friends made the news after finding the kidnapped Raja.”

  “It sounds like you fancy her,” Urania sneered.

  “I liked her,” said Hestia. No one was listening to her.

  “I do not fancy her!” cried Xuthus.

  “That’s enough!” Govannon said sternly. Urania’s views of the refugees were no doubt inherited from her parents, but given her own status as a recent immigrant to Ascension he was surprised at her attitude. “If I find that Ravana left the dig because she was being bullied, there will be trouble, see!”

  “But...” started Xuthus.

  “Big trouble,” Govannon reiterated, looking at each of them in turn.

  The transport slipped into the hangar airlock. It took barely a minute for the chamber to be pressurised, yet each second that ticked by seemed longer than the last. Eventually, the inner door slid open and the vehicle trundled forward into the hangar. Govannon’s heart sank at the sight of a familiar microlight aircraft parked in the corner of the hangar, then cursed as he spied its owner watching from the doorway to the transit lounge. Dagan, the eager young activist with camouflage-patterned flight suit, slicked-back dark hair and oily moustache, quite fancied himself the revolutionary. Govannon had been looking forward to a relaxing few hours at the depot’s makeshift bar, catching up with the latest news from the ship’s crew, but with Dagan around he knew that was unlikely to happen.

  “Look out,” he muttered. “There’s a Dhusarian about.”

  “What does he want?” Urania said irritably.

  “To praise the greys,” Xuthus intoned solemnly. “And bring our deliverance!”

  Govannon brought the vehicle to a halt. Urania, Xuthus and Hestia were already out of their seats, eagerly making their way to the transport’s airlock. Arallu Depot was no bigger than the domes at the excavation but it was the only change of scenery they had to look forward to until they returned to Ascension.

  “Hey!” called Govannon. “Can someone give me a hand with the poop-mobile?”

  “Hestia will do it!” called Urania, who was already at the hatch.

  The transit lounge of Arallu Depot was little more than a metal-walled shed, furnished with a scattering of plastic chairs and a battered food molecularisor that no longer served tea. By the time Govannon and Hestia entered, having spent several smelly minutes manoeuvring the toilet trailer across the hangar to the cesspool valve, Dagan was nowhere in sight. Nor were Urania and Xuthus, though Urania’s loud cackle could be heard wafting down the walkway tunnel from the docked spaceplane. Govannon knew there would be a queue to use the ship’s ED transmitter and decided to head for the peaceful sanctuary he liked to call his own. Leaving Hestia to join her fellow students, he made his way to the far side of the lounge and down the short tunnel leading into the main dome.

  The towering walls of shipping crates and discarded machinery that filled the windowless dome looked the same as ever. Near the entrance to the lounge, one empty and particularly large crate had been turned on its side and furnished with a metal counter, a row of stools and one second-hand robotic bar steward serving the best micro-brewed draft lager this side of Tau Ceti, topped by a sign that read: MORRIGAN’S BAR. Govannon had no idea who Morrigan was but admired his or her foresight in establishing such an oasis out here at Arallu. Apart from a tiny habitation module nearby, the bar was the only concession to home comforts to be found within the warehouse-like environs of the dome.

  The depot was unmanned, though visiting maintenance crews and the local Que Qiao security team made sure its life-support and other systems were kept in order. Govannon stopped short upon seeing a figure slouched upon his favourite stool at the end of the bar, then cursed when he realised it was none other than Dagan. The activist had previously admitted he had been recruited by the Dhusarian Church on Aram, with the aim of reminding the archaeologists at every opportunity of the Church’s consternation over the exploitation of ancient alien remains. Govannon was convinced Dagan had taken his task a step further and embarked upon a campaign of sabotage to drive the archaeologists away.

  “Dagan,” growled Govannon. “What are you doing here?”

  The man turned and greeted the archaeologist with a sly smile. Behind him, the robot bartender trundled to the bar in anticipation, its head swaying disturbingly as its wheels stuttered upon the uneven floor.

  “Doctor Jones,” acknowledged Dagan. “Don’t tell me you’ve abandoned your hard work out in the desert? Holy sites don’t desecrate themselves, you know.”

  “That’s a little hypocritical coming from Falsafah’s one-man terrorist cell.”

  “Terrorist?” exclaimed Dagan. “How dare you! I fight for what’s right.”

  “Any attack on a tea vending machine is terrorism to me, see!”

  “Tea is a symbol of urban decadence. It cannot fulfil your spiritual needs,” Dagan said solemnly. “Don’t get too comfortable. This bar is also on my list.”

  Ignoring him, Govannon took the seat at the other end of the bar.

  “Would you care for a drink, sir?” asked the robot. There were several dents in its oddly-contoured head. Its humanoid upper body had once worn the traditional livery of a butler but rust had badly discoloured the plates upon its chest.

  “Lager,” said Govannon. “Ice cold.”

  “What have you found out there?” asked Dagan. “The girl I spoke to last time said something about a temple, mysterious carvings and all sorts of fascinating stuff! You’ll be pleased to hear the fossils you found were warmly received by the Church.”

  “Stealing samples, is it?” accused Govannon. “What have you done with them?”

  “They are holy relics and should not have been removed from sacred ground! Your archaeology is no more than the systematic destruction of history. What else have you done in the name of science? Perhaps I need to take a closer look.”

  “You would not be welcome.”

  “No,” said Dagan. “But neither are you.”

  He rose from his seat and regarded Govannon levelly. When the archaeologist failed to respond, he walked smartly from the bar and out of sight. Govannon sighed and reached for the schooner tumbler the robot placed upon the bar. His long-awaited sip resulted in an unexpected assault upon his senses and he spluttered in disgust.

  “What the hell is that?” he exclaimed, shoving the tumbler b
ack across the bar.

  “Warm reconstituted goat’s milk,” the robot replied. “I regret that due to a recent data infection, I can no longer serve the full range of beverages.”

  Govannon gritted his teeth. Sabotaging the molecularisor and taking away his supply of tea was bad enough, but the bar was his holy ground.

  “Dagan!” he muttered. “This means war!”

  * * *

  Xuthus looked at the pilot, puzzled. The surly red-faced Englishman had on several occasions expressed distaste at being on some far-flung frontier planet and not in his old job ferrying wealthy tourists around the inner Solar System. Yet it was Xuthus’ question about Ravana that had led the man to scowl and screw his face into a peculiar defensive frown.

  “I don’t know where she is,” the pilot snapped. “She didn’t come back with us.”

  “Then where is she?” asked Xuthus.

  “Are you asking after your girlfriend?” called Urania, looking around from where she hogged the holovid console. “Are you upset she ran out on you?”

  “Ravana is not my girlfriend!”

  Xuthus wished he had waited until the girls had gone before asking. Just then, the co-pilot appeared from the airlock, having been outside to connect the ship’s fuel hoses to the depot’s hydrogen tanks. The tall Jamaican had not yet taken off his pressure suit and the bowl-shaped helmet under his arm looked far too small to contain the mass of dreadlocks tumbling from his smiling features.

  “Hey mon,” he greeted, nodding at Xuthus. “What’s your grief?”

  “He’s worried about Ravana,” said Hestia, who up until now had sat quietly unnoticed at the back of the cabin. “Nobody seems to know where she went.”

  “The freaky Indian girl?” asked the co-pilot. “Not seen her at all today.”