Paw-Prints Of The Gods (36 page)

* * *

Zotz placed his
screwdriver upon the bar, reached to the back of the humanoid
robot’s head and flicked its power switch to the ‘on’ position.
Quirinus and Momus had left him to his own devices whilst they
scoured the deserted depot for clues to Ravana’s whereabouts. As
the long Falsafah night wore on, Zotz gravitated towards Morrigan’s
Bar and its battered mechanical bar steward. His initial
conversation with the robot left him in no doubt it had been
tampered with, whereupon he had used more prosaic devices from his
portable toolkit to find and remove the AI bypass module fitted by
some unknown saboteur.

He heard a reassuring
gentle hum from the robot and settled back to see whether his
repairs were successful. Beside him, Ravana’s electric cat sat upon
the bar top and chewed thoughtfully upon the removed circuit board.
The bar steward’s eyes lit up and with a faint metallic groan
swivelled its head towards the seated Zotz.

“Welcome to Morrigan’s
Bar,” it said. “Would you care for a drink, sir?

“What have you got?”
asked Zotz.

“I am able to serve
all the usual hot and cold beverages from reconstituted powdered
sources,” the robot informed him. “Alternative products are
available from the molecularisor in the transit lounge. I am unable
to offer you micro-brewery products as your juvenile stature and
voice pattern suggest you are not yet of the legal age to be served
alcohol.”

“Are you saying I’m
short and have a squeaky voice?”

“My intention was not
to cause offence, sir.”

Zotz heard a distant
yell and guessed Momus had found yet another dead rat amidst the
stacked equipment and shipping containers. Quirinus poked his head
from the door of the nearby habitation module, stared across the
dome in the direction of Momus’ cry, shook his head and disappeared
back inside. Zotz had asked the bar steward about Ravana before he
switched it off to do repairs but to no avail. He decided to pose
the question again.

“They’re looking for
Ravana,” he told the robot. “Do you remember seeing her here?”

“Would you like an
orange juice, sir?”

“She was with the
archaeologists,” said Zotz. “One of the students.”

“I can add ice and a
little umbrella if that is to your liking,” the robot offered.

“I don’t want a drink!
I want to know about Ravana. Was she here?”

“I have no memory of a
person by that name. Doctor Jones and an unknown male were here
four days ago. They were the last people to visit this
establishment.”

“So you do remember
things,” mused Zotz. Four days had passed since Quirinus learned
Ravana never arrived to meet the
Sir Bedivere
, but he
recalled from conversations back on the
Dandridge Cole
that
the rest of the expedition assumed she returned to Ascension on the
previous flight, a fortnight before. “What about previous
visits?”

“Doctor Jones was here
eighteen days ago,” the robot confirmed. “The unnamed male also
came to Morrigan’s Bar that day but at a different time. He was
with a young female.”

“A girl?” Zotz
exclaimed. He dropped his voice to an excited whisper. “Taller than
me, with dark hair, brown skin and a scar on her face?”

“Your limited
description concurs with the visual image in my records, sir.”

“That was Ravana!”
cried Zotz. “Where did she go?”

A sudden crash made
him jump. Zotz’s exchange with the unsuspecting mechanical bar
steward had reached Quirinus’ ears and at the mention of Ravana’s
name, the pilot leapt from the cabin and rushed to the bar,
knocking over a crate of engine spares on the way. He was not
usually so clumsy but the heavier gravity of Falsafah compared to
that of Ascension, especially after two days in deep space, was
taking them all a while to get used to.

“Where is she?”
Quirinus demanded breathlessly, facing the robot’s blank stare.
“Come on, you lanky strip of rivets, tell me! You must have seen
where she went!”

“I do not have the
information you require.”

“You have eyes and a
memory!” retorted Quirinus. “Tell me!”

The robot shuffled
closer. “Would you care for a drink, sir?”

Quirinus grabbed hold
of the bar steward’s neck in exasperation and tried to throttle it
into submission. The robot at first appeared blissfully unaware of
what was happening, then all of a sudden the light in its eyes died
and it slipped lifelessly out of the pilot’s grasp to land face
down upon the bar. Ravana’s cat leapt away in alarm.

“I think you knocked
the power switch,” Zotz said cautiously.

“Dratted thing,”
muttered Quirinus. “Do you reckon it knows anything useful?”

Zotz scratched his
head. “Whoever programmed it left things pretty basic. I don’t
think it can do much more than take orders for drinks.”

“You’ve still done
better than we have. There’s no security cameras in the depot and
I’ve yet to make sense of the system data logs,” replied Quirinus,
looking glum. “We’ve searched the dome at least twice. There’s no
transport in the hangar to get us to the dig, no one listening on
the short-range transceiver and not a living soul in sight! I can’t
believe we’ve come all this way just to find a dead end.”

Zotz solemnly digested
Quirinus’ growing frustration. They were interrupted by the arrival
of Momus, who was covered in grime and scowling more than usual.
His grimace deepened when he saw the prone body of the bar
steward.

“I was looking forward
to a nice cold lager when we finished,” he grumbled.

“Did you find
anything?” asked Zotz.

Momus frowned.
“No.”

“Then we haven’t
finished,” Quirinus retorted. “Ravana was here. There must be some
clue as to where she is now. There has to be!”

Momus put a friendly
hand to Quirinus’ shoulder and sighed when the pilot shrugged it
away. Zotz was surprised to see Momus’ expression soften until it
almost became a smile. This was the closest he had ever seen him
looking kindly and sympathetic.

“We will find her,”
Momus reassured Quirinus. “But I’m guessing I’m not the only one
who’s tired and frigging starving. Once we’re fit, we’ll do a bit
of reconnaissance in that crappy freighter of yours, find this dig
and see if there’s any chance of landing a bit closer. I don’t
fancy traipsing all that way on foot just to find another bloody
empty dome.”

“You’d walk across
that desert to find my girl?”

“If it came to
it.”

“My dear Momus,” said
Quirinus. “I’m almost glad I brought you along after all.”

* * *

The aged food
molecularisor in the transit lounge was a bulky frontier model with
half its nutrient cartridges missing, but Momus nevertheless
managed to coax a decent spread from its output tray before
Quirinus and Zotz retired to the habitation module to get some
sleep. Momus surprised them again by offering to keep watch whilst
the pilot and his young charge rested, pointing out that Quirinus
had been at the helm of the
Platypus
most of the way and had
not rested once since landing. The heavier gravity aside, it had
been a tiring day all round and Quirinus had to agree that he could
not have stayed awake if he tried.

Several hours later, a
thump on the wall of the cabin woke Quirinus from his slumber. It
turned out to be from Momus’ head, who had fallen over outside
whilst trying to remove his boots. Quirinus found his hired pilot
swaying unsteadily in the doorway of the cabin, suspiciously wobbly
on his feet, though that particular mystery was solved by the sight
of the bar steward busily tidying away a stack of empty tumblers
from the bar.

“Nothing to report,”
slurred Momus. He burped and gave a lopsided grin. “All quiet on
the Falsafah front, Captain Quirinus, sir.”

“Go to bed,” Quirinus
hissed irritably. “And do it quietly! Zotz is still asleep.”

Leaving Momus to
stumble into the cabin, Quirinus made his way across the dome and
up the short tunnel to the transit lounge. The dull pink light of
dawn was breaking and he went to a window to get his first proper
view of the alien world outside. Beyond the
Platypus
on the
apron at the side of the runway, the wind-pump tower and the fresh
wheel tracks leading to the hangar, there was nothing to show that
humans had ever trespassed upon the bleak monotony of the endless
red dunes.

Quirinus paused,
crossed to the window nearest the hangar and gave the tracks a
puzzled stare. The twin gouges in the sand looked fresh and were
still full of water where they ran near the leaking wind pump. The
stiff breeze that had greeted them upon leaving the
Platypus
continued to bluster hard against the walls of the depot, yet that
same wind had barely begun to obliterate tracks that at first he
had assumed were several days old. Quirinus craned his neck to
follow their trail to the bottom of the wind-pump tower and gave a
low whistle of surprise. Parked almost out of sight, at the side of
the depot’s dome, was a green six-wheeled personnel carrier that
had definitely not been there before.

“Nothing to report!”
he muttered. “Too drunk to notice a transport visiting in the dead
of night, more like.”

The vehicle’s running
lights were off. A tense minute of scrutiny revealed no sign of
movement inside. His mind made up, Quirinus hurried to retrieve his
survival suit from the rack next to the hangar door, left there
after disembarking from the
Platypus
. He pulled on the suit
and helmet, opened the door and was halfway across the hangar when
an unexpected movement brought him to a surprised halt.

The mysterious
transport was forgotten as he hastened towards the two wriggling
and hooded human shapes lying upon the floor. Removing his helmet,
he knelt by the first, pulled away the hood and gasped in shock at
the furious and scowling features of a dark-haired young woman.
Lifting the hood from the second, he gave a cry of disbelief,
recognising the face beneath. The girl’s eyes, wild with fear,
melted into relief at the sight of her rescuer. Both captives were
gagged with tape and lay with their wrists and ankles bound by
cords.

“Philyra!” Quirinus
exclaimed. Putting down his helmet, he ripped the tape from the
girl’s face. He did not remember her having purple hair. “It is
you, isn’t it?”

“Yes!” shrieked
Philyra. “I nearly suffocated under there!”

“Who’s your friend?”
asked Quirinus. He pulled the tape from the other captive’s mouth
and got to work untying their bonds, his mind whirling.

“Felicity Fornax!” the
woman snapped. “Where the hell are we?”

“She’s a reporter,”
added Philyra. “She got us into this mess.”

“You’re on Falsafah,”
he told them, his hands busy with the knotted cables. “Arallu
Depot, to be precise. Otherwise known as the middle of
nowhere.”

He pulled free the
last of Philyra’s bindings and moved to help Fornax. Philyra gave a
whimper and began to massage her limbs to get the blood flowing
again. By the time Quirinus had unfastened the cords securing the
reporter’s ankles and wrists, Philyra had regained the use of her
legs and was pacing nervously around the hangar.

“Do you know this
man?” remarked Fornax.

“This is Captain
Quirinus,” Philyra said proudly. “He took us to the Epsilon Eridani
peace conference last year. His daughter Ravana is one of the
students at the dig.”

“Enough about me,”
Quirinus said impatiently. “Why are you here?”

“It’s all her fault,”
Philyra said and glared at Fornax, still sat wearily on the floor.
“She thought it would be a good idea to pretend to be Dhusarians so
we could get on that ship. We were barely out of Ascension orbit
when they realised we were fakes. They trussed us up to stop us
escaping, then when we landed dumped us here.”

“Stop us escaping?”
scoffed Fornax. “From a moving spaceship?”

“Dhusarians?” asked
Quirinus, confused. “What ship?”

“Can we go somewhere a
little more comfortable?” asked Fornax, climbing to her feet. “This
place makes my hotel room look luxurious.”

“Of course,” said
Quirinus. “Though the rest of the depot is not much better.”

He led them into the
transit lounge, where Fornax promptly crashed into the nearest
chair with a groan. Philyra continued to pace restlessly back and
forth while Quirinus tried to persuade the food molecularisor to
produce something comforting.

“Hot chocolate?” he
said at last. He handed them each a plastic cup emanating
sweet-smelling steam. “I couldn’t get it to serve tea.”

Fornax gave a grunt of
thanks, tasted the bitter drink and scowled. Philyra looked equally
unimpressed by the offering but was a little more gracious.

“Thanks,” she said.
She turned to the window and looked across the concrete apron to
the berthed
Platypus
. “Is that your ship? It looks
different, somehow.”

“It’s a long story,”
admitted Quirinus. “But you still haven’t told me yours.”

“I was in Newbrum
doing a piece on the dig and chasing rumours of alien artefacts on
the black market,” Fornax said wearily. “The trail led us to a ship
owned by the Dhusarian Church, which we boarded and ended up
here.”

“I’m her personal
assistant,” Philyra added.

“That’s your freighter
out there?” asked Fornax, eyeing Quirinus suspiciously. “It has
smuggler written all over it. Doing a bit of black-market trading
yourself?”

“I am looking for my
daughter,” Quirinus replied frostily. “She went missing from the
dig over two weeks ago.”

“Ravana’s gone
missing?” Philyra’s face fell. “I’m so sorry. Can we help?”

“You can tell me if
there’s anyone in that transport parked outside,” said Quirinus
impatiently. “It’s a delight to meet you again, my dear Philyra,
but you may have noticed that we’re nowhere near wherever the
action is. If I am to steal someone else’s wheels, it would be nice
to know if there’s anyone inside ready to object.”