Paw-Prints Of The Gods (46 page)

“Wonderful,” muttered
Urania. “More unwelcome visitors.”

The airlock opened and
a young Indian woman in a belted black jumpsuit appeared in the
shadows of the doorway. With her was a burly, bald-headed man, who
slipped out of sight behind the cabin before Xuthus saw what he
carried. The woman stared at the robot and its seated prisoners and
walked defiantly towards them, her hands held high. At first,
Xuthus failed to recognise her, then saw the scar on her face and
gasped in surprise.

“Ravana!” he
exclaimed. “You’ve come back!”

Govannon smiled
wearily. “Now there’s a sight for sore eyes.”

The android swung its
rifle towards the approaching figure.

“Halt!” Its voice was
a rattling metallic monotone. “Identify yourself!”

“My name is Ravana
O’Brien,” she replied calmly. “I am not armed.”

“But I am,” came a
voice from behind. Quirinus had circled the cabin whilst Ravana
kept the robot distracted. The cannon on his shoulder was aimed
squarely at the back of the android’s head. “With a big plasma gun
pointing right at your little metal skull.”

“Wow!” gasped Xuthus.
“A real live space pirate!”

The robot swivelled
its head through a hundred and eighty degrees and fixed Quirinus
with a cold electronic stare. “The weapon is not activated,” it
intoned. “You do not possess the cranium implant necessary to
operate the targeting controls.”

“Damn,” grumbled
Quirinus. “You noticed.”

Xuthus shifted a
worried glance from Quirinus back to Ravana, who to his surprise
gave him a wink and smiled. All of a sudden she dropped her arms,
pulled a cricket bat from where it had been wedged unseen in her
belt at her back, then with a grunt of effort leapt forward and
swung it at the android with all the strength she could muster. The
willow clanged against the side of the robot’s head and knocked it
clean from its shoulders, sending it spinning away across the dome
with murmurs of ‘Reboot me!’ trailing in its wake. Xuthus’
wide-eyed stare of disbelief went from Ravana to the robot’s torso,
which stood wavering a few moments longer before crumpling slowly
to the floor.

Ravana grinned and
lowered the bat. “How’s that?”

“Not bad,” Quirinus
said approvingly. “I’ll make a cricketer of you yet.”

* * *

Fornax scowled through
the windscreen at the domes beyond the beak-like nose of the
berthed
Platypus
. She was frustrated to be so close to the
action, only to find her story still out of reach. Sitting with her
in the cockpit was Philyra, Momus and Zotz, all of whom had been
told in no uncertain terms by Quirinus to stay aboard whilst he and
Ravana went to look for the archaeologists and Artorius. The
reporter sat in Ravana’s usual seat and so only had herself to
blame for the electric cat fidgeting nervously upon her lap.

“Are you sure there’s
no more pressure suits, kid?” she asked.

“Ravana and Quirinus
took all the spare ones,” Zotz told her, though they both knew
Momus had kept hold of his own. “They might be needed to bring
people back aboard.”

“You heard the
captain,” said Momus. “We’re supposed to stay put.”

“How about we use
these?” suggested Philyra. She held one of the ship’s emergency
oxygen masks, a two-piece design as old as the
Platypus
itself, consisting of a face mask and shoulder pack connected via a
flexible tube. She raised it to her face and promptly wrinkled her
nose in disgust. “If you don’t mind the smell of sweaty rubber,
that is.”

“Surely we need a full
suit to survive out there,” Fornax said doubtfully, irritably
pushing aside a rogue tendril hanging from a control panel.

“Ship?” asked Zotz.
“Can you analyse the air outside?”

“Exterior ambient
atmosphere is approximately eighty-two per cent carbon dioxide,
nine per cent nitrogen, five per cent oxygen and three per cent
argon with traces of carbon monoxide, methane and water vapour,”
reported the AI. “Air temperature is two hundred and seventy-six
kelvin, atmospheric pressure is eighty-nine kilopascals.”

Philyra shrugged.
“Who’s this kelvin guy?”

Momus rolled his eyes.
“To put it another way, the air’s thick enough to stop your blood
boiling but poisonous and frigging cold.”

“So you could manage
with just masks,” added Zotz.

“And a few more
clothes,” muttered Fornax, with a withering glance at Philyra.

Momus frowned. “We’re
supposed...”

“...To stay put,”
finished Fornax. “Yes, I know. But I am a reporter and inside those
domes is possibly the greatest scoop of this century, if not of all
time! I refuse to sit around in this heap of a tentacle-sprouting
spaceship, waiting for our gallant captain to return. I am going to
grab my story, whether you like it or not!”

“Me too,” declared
Philyra, standing up. “Zotz?”

Zotz shook his head
vigorously. “I don’t want to go out there.”

Philyra disappeared
through the hatch into the crawl tunnel leading to the carousel.
When she returned a few moments later, she wore a long coat and
held Fornax’s bag.

“You’re both frigging
mad,” Momus told them.

“Probably,” Fornax
admitted. Taking her bag, she withdrew her tiny camera robot and
carefully unfolded its twin rotors to make sure nothing was dented.
She saw with satisfaction that it was charged and ready to go.
“Welcome to the world of journalism.”

* * *

Ravana found the greys
inside the large black tent that in her absence had appeared in
dome two. There was no one else in sight, though she could hear
faint voices coming from the walkway to the Dhusarians’ transport.
The site was far more humid than she recalled; earlier, in dome
three, she had been startled to find a pool of water in the trench
containing the excavated tree stumps. Incredibly, tiny green buds
were visible on the blackened outcrops, suggesting that the ancient
remains were not as fossilised as they thought.

The air inside the
tent was even more stifling than the clammy atmosphere of the dome
and had an unpleasant coppery smell. The main area contained a
couple of low couches strewn with blankets, a variety of locked
crates and a freezer trunk that was chilling in more ways than one,
for the lid bore a series of bloody six-fingered handprints.

Nana and Stripy were
in a smaller inner tent, manacled to one of the tent poles and
looking very dejected in their grubby cut-off overalls. Their
restraints had implant-controlled locking mechanisms that Ravana
was able to release with ease. The greys greeted her with a chorus
of excited shrieks, which became quite emotional. Stripy gave her a
hug.

“Fwack fwack!”

“Of course I came back
for you!”

“Thraak thraak,” Nana
cried urgently. “Thraak thraak thraak thraak!”

“Slow down!” protested
Ravana. Her implant translator could not keep up with the torrent
of white noise issuing forth from the grey’s lips. The
visualisations that did appear were difficult to comprehend. “Can
we get out of this smelly hole?”

Ravana led the
anxiously chattering greys from the black tent. Her father was
across the dome, inside the walkway link to the Dhusarians’ parked
transport, busy doing something furtive with a spade and the
vehicle’s hatch. There to greet her instead were Doctor Jones, the
Que Qiao officers and her fellow student archaeologists, all of
whom having followed from dome one. All stared at the two greys
with expressions that conveyed disbelief, apprehension, amazement
and bewilderment in various measures.

“Thraak?” asked
Nana.

“They’re friends,”
Ravana said, even though she had yet to hear a civil word from
either of the police officers or Urania. “Well, mostly.”

“Fwack fwack,”
murmured Stripy uneasily.

Doctor Jones stepped
forward, took off his hat and scratched his head thoughtfully.
Xuthus and Hestia exchanged excited whispers, interspersed with
glances at Ravana filled with awe. Quirinus soon came to join them,
wearing an equally bemused expression. Govannon replaced his hat
and noisily cleared his throat.

“Are those really...?”
he started, but could not finish his sentence.

“Aliens!” exclaimed
Xuthus.

“Cool,” murmured
Hestia.

Quirinus grinned. “You
do mix with some strange creatures.”

“Freaky,” Urania
muttered. “Are they for real?”

Stripy returned
Urania’s stare. “Fwack?”

Ravana grinned. “He’s
just asked the same about you. They’re really intelligent,” she
added. “I reckon they’re as smart as you or I.”

“Don’t you mean as
dumb as you?” sneered Urania.

“You can understand
them?” asked Yima. Beside him, a scowling Ininna fiddled with her
headscarf as if trying to shield herself from the quizzical gaze of
the greys.

“The Dhusarians
developed a translator programme for cranium implants,” Ravana
replied, pointedly ignoring Urania. She glanced to Govannon, who
was staring wide-eyed at Nana and anxiously shuffling his feet. “Is
everything okay, Doctor Jones?”

Govannon gulped.
“Aliens don’t exist, see?” he said slowly. “They cannot exist! I’ve
spent my life debunking the crazy notions of people like Cadmus,
who see extraterrestrial handiwork in every ancient ruin. I freely
admit that what we’ve found on Falsafah is a puzzle, but in all my
years of archaeology I have not once seen definitive proof of
intelligent alien life. I don’t know what these creatures are,
but...”

He tailed off, lost
for words. Nana raised large beseeching eyes to Govannon’s own,
stepped forward and gently placed a six-fingered hand upon the
man’s arm.

“Thraak,” the grey
said softly. “Thraak thraak.”

“Fwack fwack,” added
Stripy.

“They like you,” said
Ravana, then glared at Urania. “But not you.”

“What about me?”
Xuthus asked.

“Thraak thraak,” Nana
said solemnly.

“I do not!” retorted
Ravana, blushing. “He’s just a friend!”

Hestia gave her a
wounded look and sidled up to Xuthus in the wake of a coy glance of
her own. Xuthus himself remained fixated by the greys, unaware he
had briefly become the centre of attention.

“Where’s Professor
Cadmus?” Ravana asked, in an attempt to change the subject.

Govannon dragged his
eyes away from the greys and sighed.

“Cadmus is dead,” he
said glumly. “He explored the chamber alone and was killed in a
rock fall. There’s some very strange stuff down there, see. I dread
to think what Dagan and his Dhusarian friends want with the place,
but they’ve claimed it as their own.”

Hestia frowned. “Two
of them looked like monks.”

“Did they have a
little boy with them?” asked Ravana. The news of the professor’s
death came as a shock, but her mind had enough to worry about
already.

Hestia nodded. Ravana
could not see the entrance to the chamber from where she stood, but
had walked past on her way to the tent and seen the scuffed
footprints inside the trench. She looked at her father, who seemed
to know what she was thinking and nodded.

Quirinus turned to
Govannon. “This is your dig,” he said. “It may get a little rough,
but your expertise would be appreciated. As for the rest of you, we
have a ship outside and spare suits in the hangar. We’ll be hitting
the runway as soon as we get back.”

“Get back?” asked
Xuthus. “Where are you going?”

Ravana picked up the
cricket bat from where she had left it outside the tent and
casually hefted it to her shoulder.

“Kedesh called it the
final innings,” she said. “Now it’s our turn to bat.”

* * *

Xuthus remained at the
edge of the trench long after Govannon, Ravana, her father and the
funny little aliens had disappeared into the green-tinged tunnel
and out of sight. He badly wanted to go with them, but Ininna stood
silently nearby and Xuthus was unsure of how the Que Qiao agent
would react if he tried to follow. With a sigh, he turned from the
pit, glanced wordlessly at Ininna, then traipsed back into dome
one.

Hestia, Urania and
Yima were at the airlock door to the hangar. To his surprise, there
were two newcomers with them, a girl and a young woman swathed in
heavy coats who nonetheless looked half-frozen to death. His
surprise grew when he realised that beneath the girl’s vivid purple
hair was a face he knew well. After that, the sight of Hestia
stroking a strange black cat in her arms was too much for his brain
to dwell upon.

“Philyra!” Xuthus
cried. “What are you doing here?”

The girl dropped her
oxygen mask to the ground, put a finger in her ear and waggled it
furiously. Philyra’s annoyed scowl became a grin when she saw
Xuthus.

“My ears popped,” she
explained, seeing his baffled stare. “Low air pressure, or
something. It’s so cold out there! How do you cope in such a
place?”

“You were outside
without survival suits?” Urania frowned. “You’re insane.”

“No, we’re reporters,”
retorted Philyra. “Well, she is. I’m her assistant.”

“Felicity Fornax,”
greeted Fornax, shivering. She too carried a mask, while in her
other hand was a device Xuthus could not identify. “Reporting for
Weird Universe
. I hear there’s some cool stuff going down
about ancient aliens. May we see?”

“I wouldn’t get
involved if I was you,” Yima said cautiously.

“And who might you
be?” asked Fornax.

“He is Agent Yima and
I am Agent Ininna,” snapped his colleague. Xuthus had not seen her
follow from dome two and jumped at the sound of her voice. Both she
and Yima had recovered their smug air of authority and her tones
were as frosty as the beads of moisture on the end of Fornax’s
nose. “This is a Que Qiao security matter. We are in charge
here.”