Paw-Prints Of The Gods (25 page)

The console holovid
screen showed the view from the rear of the spacecraft.
Two-and-a-half pairs of eyes watched the airlock door open behind
them, revealing the long tunnel to the outer airlock and deep
space. The docking tethers released with a clunk.

“Do you want me to do
this bit?” Momus asked Quirinus. “What with you having only one
good eye, no bloody depth perception and all that.”

Quirinus scowled.
“Don’t spoil my moment.”

He punched the control
for the retro rockets. Caught off guard, Momus and Zotz lurched
forward in their seats as the
Platypus
blasted backwards
into the tunnel. Barely a minute later they were into the void and
slipping smoothly away from the slot in the nose of the hollow
moon. Quirinus ran his hands over the controls and in one fluid
movement the ship swung upon its axis, corrected its spin and
locked onto a course for the outer star system.

“That’s my girl,” he
murmured and gave the console an affectionate pat.

* * *

Several hours passed.
The
Platypus
accelerated onwards, eager to distance itself
from the gravitational pull of the planets to safely leave the
Barnard’s Star system. Finally, Momus received confirmation from
Ascension space-traffic control that they were good to go. The
extra-dimensional drive spun into life, blasted a membrane-bursting
mortar at right angles to reality and in a stomach-churning,
space-time-blurring blink of an eye they were suddenly a mere two
hundred million kilometres from the star Tau Ceti, fifteen light
years from home.

* * *

[Chapter
Seven
] [
Contents
] [
Chapter Nine
]

THE BLACK GRAVEL ROAD
ran straight as an arrow across the bleak desert sands. Almost a
whole Terran day had passed since Kedesh’s encounter with the
police, since when the view unravelling before the transport’s
windscreen had remained an endless strip of road through a sea of
red dunes. Yet over the last few hours the distant backdrop of
rugged peaks had grown ever more imposing, below which they saw the
first glimpse of the squat cluster of buildings at the abandoned
landing strip. Another long day on Falsafah was coming to an end
and the dramatic pink sunset ahead, as the yellow orb of Tau Ceti
sank inexorably below the distant mountains, was one of the most
spectacular things Ravana had seen. Artorius, standing behind the
cockpit seats, was less than impressed.

“Are we there yet?” he
asked grumpily. “We’ve been driving for ages.”

“Use your eyes!”
snapped Kedesh. Ravana suspected she was not used to having company
when travelling, though Artorius was trying everyone’s patience.
“We’ll be at the airstrip soon enough and from there it’s a short
run to the station. Once we’re there we’ll be able to stock up on
food and get some rest.”

“Rest?” asked Ravana,
doubtfully. “I’d rather keep moving.”

She and Kedesh were
taking it in turns to drive the transport. The vehicle
theoretically could drive itself, but earlier Kedesh had
demonstrated how the transport would slow to a crawl when using its
automatic guidance system, for it did not get on well with
Falsafah’s lone navigation satellite. Ravana was currently at the
controls and had hoped Kedesh shared her desire to get to Arallu as
soon as possible. She glanced at Kedesh beside her, then at
Artorius and the dozing greys in the cabin behind. All looked weary
and in need of a break.

“There’s no road
beyond the depot and the mountain pass is not well mapped,” said
Kedesh. “I for one would like to get a proper night’s sleep and
maybe stretch my legs before second innings. The next few days will
not be...”

She stared at the
scanner, her sentence unfinished, then frowned and started to tap
at the external camera controls. Ravana looked at the console
screen and immediately drew back the drive control lever to bring
the transport to a halt. The visual display showed a flying-wing
spacecraft, with distinctive engine nacelles unique to ships with
vertical take-off and landing capability, parked on the runway at
the airstrip complex ahead.

“Why have we stopped?”
complained Artorius. His voice came unexpectedly loud in the tense
silence, waking the greys from their slumber. “Are we there?”

“No,” murmured Ravana.
“But someone is.”

“That’s a Que Qiao
police cruiser,” Kedesh said wearily. “I checked the satellite scan
earlier and Ininna’s and Yima’s ship was at the Dhusarians’
airstrip, not here. When they went off in the other direction, they
must have gone back to their ship and used it to get here ahead of
us. We should never have let them leave before we did.”

“You wanted a cup of
tea before going anywhere,” Ravana pointed out. “What now?”

“If they’re paying
attention to their own scanner, they know we’re here,” Kedesh
replied. “I guess they’re waiting for us to declare.”

Ravana looked
questioningly at Kedesh. The woman brought up a map of the local
terrain on the navigation console and began to study it carefully.
Nana came next to Artorius and together they peered over Kedesh’s
shoulder. Stripy stood behind them, the grey’s spindly fingers
rubbing large tired eyes in a disturbingly human way.

“Thraak?” exclaimed
Nana.

“Please don’t do that
right in my ear,” grumbled Kedesh.

Ravana leaned towards
the console and looked for where they were on the map. A few
kilometres north of their present position, an area of close-knit
contours showed a winding valley that ran parallel to the road from
the airstrip to its attendant outpost in the north-west. As she
looked through the windscreen to match their surroundings with what
was on the map, she caught a flash of silver and for a split second
saw an indistinct shape with two yellow eyes staring at her from on
top of a nearby rock, then it was gone.

“Weird,” she
muttered.

“What’s weird?” asked
Kedesh. She spoke so sharply that Ravana wondered if she had seen
the same thing.

“I thought I saw
something out there,” Ravana said weakly. “But it can’t have
been.”

“Can’t have been
what?”

Ravana blushed. “It
looked like a cat. A tabby, no less.”

Artorius snorted with
derision. “Ravana’s gone mental!” he announced.

Kedesh gave her an odd
look. “A cat, you say?”

“I must be imagining
things,” said Ravana with a sigh. “I keep seeing these yellow eyes
out in the desert. Perhaps I need to lie down for a while.”

“I’ll take over
shortly,” Kedesh said gently. “What about the map?”

Ravana stared at the
navigation console and tried to put all thoughts of a furry desert
phantom from her mind. Using her finger, she drew the woman’s
attention to the contoured region she had identified earlier.

“What about there?”
she suggested. “The road we want goes along the top of that ridge.
If you want to avoid that ship, we may be able to drive through the
valley below. It looks quite deep, which may stop their scanner
picking us up.”

“Hmm,” murmured
Kedesh. “I wonder why that area is shaded grey?”

“Fwack fwack?”

“No, I don’t think
it’s a secret village of aliens.”

“Maybe it’s a bad
idea,” Ravana said hastily.

“I haven’t got a
better one,” Kedesh admitted. “As you said, anything that may cause
us to drop off their radar for a while is worth a try. We should
make a move before they start to wonder why we’ve stopped. I’d like
to get to the depot by nightfall.”

Ravana nodded. She
urged the transport into motion and soon they had left the road
behind and were bounding across the rock-strewn desert towards the
parched rolling dunes. As she drove, she became aware of Kedesh’s
stern glances and was left with the uncomfortable feeling she
should have kept her weird visions to herself.

* * *

Agent Yima was bored.
He wanted to fly straight to the Arallu Wastes to see what the
archaeologists were up to, but his colleague Ininna was determined
to keep an eye on Kedesh for a little while longer. Hence they were
here, sat in their ship at an abandoned airstrip, watching the red
blob on the scanner that was Kedesh’s transport as it sat unmoving
on the road a few kilometres away. The cabin of the
Alf-Sana
Booma
, the angular flying wing they used to flit around
Falsafah, was cramped and in need of a good airing if they ever got
back to Aram. Their own transport was secure in the cargo bay
behind them.

“Is she still there?”
asked Ininna, with barely a glance at the scanner.

Yima looked at the
console. “No, she’s moving again,” he informed her. “North, into
the hills. I would have gone south and followed the old coastal
plain to the pass.”

“You’re assuming she’s
alone. If she has taken on passengers as we suspect, she may be
looking to top-up supplies.”

“Yes, but the only
depot around here is... that place,” murmured Yima and shivered.
“You wouldn’t get me near there, no matter how desperate.”

“That’s if she manages
to avoid running into those things in the valley,” said Ininna and
smiled. “Don’t look at me like that! You’ve heard the stories.”

Yima looked glum. “Do
we stick around in case we’re wanted?”

Ininna shook her head.
“We’ve warned her off enough times. We’ll come back in a day or so
and see if there’s anything left to interrogate. If she does make
it through the dunes in one piece, there’s more surprises waiting
for her at the dome.”

* * *

Following Kedesh’s
directions, Ravana drove north. The dunes became hills and soon the
transport rolled through what may have once been a river valley,
but which was now no more than a barren, dusty rift in the bleak
landscape. The encroaching uplands soon blocked the dwindling light
of dusk and by the time Ravana came to swap places with Kedesh they
were using the transport’s headlamps to light the way. Artorius and
Stripy were in the passenger compartment, keeping themselves amused
with the slapping game, while Nana caught forty winks on a nearby
bunk. After settling into the co-pilot’s chair, Ravana waited until
the transport was under way once more before presenting Kedesh with
a question that had been troubling her for a while.

“Who are you?” she
asked. “Who are you working for?”

“Didn’t I say?”
Kedesh’s look of innocence was not entirely convincing.

“No, you didn’t. You
gave us some rubbish about being an eccentric adventurer with an
odd interest in Taranis,” Ravana reminded her. “You have a
transport but no ship, so how did you get here? Falsafah is not the
sort of place where anyone can just drop by.”

“Who do you think I
am?”

“A secret agent,”
Ravana declared. “Working for Que Qiao. That’s why the police
officer said something about it not being your jurisdiction.”

“You heard that from
inside the washroom? Ininna does have a big mouth.”

“The corporation is
doing horrible things on Yuanshi,” Ravana said bitterly. “It’s not
just the war; myself and some friends broke into a secret
plantation and saw the cruel things its scientists are doing to the
greys. Every time I look at Nana and Stripy I’m reminded of that.
It’s worse now I know how clever they are. And to cover it up
people are made to believe greys are a myth, invented by the
Dhusarians, or that they’re just the alien equivalent of monkeys or
apes. Looking after these two has really opened my eyes.”

“You’re looking after
them?” Kedesh raised a surprised eyebrow, as if to say she thought
it was the other way around. “So if the corporation experimented on
dumb animals, rather than clever aliens, that would be
alright?”

“I’m saying that if
you are with Que Qiao then I don’t want to know you.”

“Even after I gave you
a lift? That’s a tad harsh.”

“Well?” asked Ravana.
“Are you?”

“A spy?” Kedesh
laughed. “No more than you, by the sound of it.”

“I am not a spy!”
retorted Ravana, increasingly maddened that the woman seemed
incapable of answering a straight question. “What brought you to
Falsafah?”

“I could ask you the
same question. You say you’re a student archaeologist, but doing
digs on faraway planets is very much a hobby for the rich.
Universities expect students to pay their way. You don’t strike me
as being particularly wealthy.”

“A teacher helped me
apply for a bursary,” explained Ravana, annoyed that Kedesh had
changed the subject yet again. “Well, ex-teacher. The trauma of the
flight back from the peace conference was too much for her and
she’s taken extended leave to catch up on her Saint John Ambulance
training, or something.”

“Fine body of people,”
Kedesh said approvingly.

Ravana watched as the
woman returned her attention to the way ahead, then sighed in
exasperation when it became clear Kedesh was not about to say
anything more.

“You’ve ducked my
question yet again!” she complained.

Kedesh frowned.
Frustrated, Ravana gave her a pleading look.

“As you say, I am on
the trail of Taranis,” the woman said carefully. “Coincidentally, I
too was recently out in the field on Yuanshi, trying to catch a bit
of intelligence. I went undercover as a technical support officer
at the royalist headquarters in Lanka. It was easy to eavesdrop on
holovid conversations and it didn’t take me long to work out that
Taranis was somewhere in the Barnard’s Star system. Shortly
afterwards, the story broke of his and your own involvement in the
peace conference plot and the trail went dead.”

“Just like Taranis
himself,” said Ravana, though she did not sound sure.