Paw-Prints Of The Gods (7 page)

“Gosh,” murmured
Ostara, staring at the certificate with shining eyes. Verdandi
smiled wryly, picturing it taking pride of place on her office
wall. “I don’t know what to say.”

Ostara rose from her
seat and shuffled to the door, still transfixed by the document in
her hand. The Administrator’s charitable gesture had clearly left a
lasting impression.

“Good luck,” said
Verdandi. She had a horrible feeling she would live to regret
this.

* * *

Captain Momus was a
small, wiry man with thinning dark hair, a ragged moustache and a
nasal Black Country accent peppered with minor curses that often
had others reaching to switch on their wristpad translators. He was
one of the many settlers from Great Britain’s self-governing region
of Mercia, attracted to Newbrum back when it was known as New
Birmingham, who mostly worked in the engineering workshops of the
spaceport. Momus was an astro-mechanic who had decided to train as
a pilot, which made it all the more mystifying as to why his ship
had failed safety tests due to lack of maintenance.

Newbrum Spaceport was
in a linked concrete dome, north of the main city enclosure.
Quirinus and Zotz found Momus in the departures lounge, moping by
the window that looked out into the section of dome that served as
a hangar. He wore a blue Commonwealth Space Agency flight suit that
was far too clean for someone who professed to be a mechanic. At
his feet was a large canvas bag, upon which lay a black cat, curled
up and apparently asleep. On the far side of the lounge Zotz
noticed a holovid reporter talking to a hovering camera robot and
wondered what was going on at the spaceport that was
news-worthy.

“Hullo Quirinus,”
mumbled Momus, looking downcast.

“What happened to your
ship?” asked Quirinus. Momus’ gaze flickered to the small
delta-winged freighter in the hangar, roped off from the rest of
the concourse.

“The crappy airlock
door fell off,” Momus said sullenly. “A few loose screws, it
was.”

“You don’t say. What
now?”

“I got us some tickets
for the shuttle. Free of charge, before you ask.”

“Free tickets?”
Quirinus gave him a hard stare. “I don’t believe it.”

“One-way only,”
admitted Momus. “The folks up on
Stellarbridge
seem frigging
keen for you to come and take away that crappy heap of a
tanker.”

Zotz looked up from
where he knelt next to the cat, which had awoken and was idly
chewing upon a battery-powered torch its claws had extracted from
the bag’s side pocket. He had been entrusted to look after Ravana’s
electric pet while she was away but as yet had not worked out how
to stop it eating random electrical items.

“The shuttle?” he
asked, pricking up his ears. Momus’ freighter was cramped and
incredibly uncomfortable. “We’re going in a proper spaceplane?”

“Looks like it,”
replied Quirinus. “Is there a reason why Ravana’s cat is here?”

Momus shrugged. “The
crappy mangy thing ran from your room when I collected your things.
I tried to put it back but those claws are frigging sharp.”

“Jones is not mangy!”
protested Zotz. To prove his point he picked the cat up and cradled
it to his chest, only to discover the electric pet’s fur was
covered in grease. Their lodgings at Aston Pier were next to the
spaceport’s flying boat terminal and Zotz had heard Quirinus say
that Newbrum attracted dirt from across the five systems, though he
may have been referring to the shifty pilots and down-trodden crews
who also resided there. Zotz saw both men regarded the cat with
some disapproval.

“I want Jones to come
with us,” he said meekly. He lowered the pet to the floor and wiped
his hands on his flight suit. “I sent it a message to meet us
here.”

“A message?” Quirinus’
one visible eye narrowed. “It can read now?”

“Can we buy it a book
on hygiene and frigging manners?” remarked Momus.

“I wired a wristpad
circuit to its AI unit,” Zotz explained sheepishly, referring to
the organic artificial intelligence chip inside the electric cat’s
head. “Me and Endymion have been experimenting with its
programming. I hope Ravana doesn’t get cross.”

Quirinus sighed.
Bellona’s elder brother Endymion, who worked at the spaceport, had
recently taken up lodgings at Aston Pier. He and Zotz had become as
thick as thieves.

“Let’s get on this
shuttle,” he said at last, trying to ignore the cat gently clawing
at his ankles. “We have a long trip ahead of us.”

* * *

Ostara staggered into
her office and dropped the box she carried next to the others,
perched precariously on the battered desk that was the only piece
of furniture in the dingy grey-walled room. Endymion gallantly held
the door open for her, looking exhausted and ready to drop. At the
sound of an alarming creak Ostara reached to steady the desk, the
legs of which looked close to collapse. Endymion did not look any
better.

“You look worn out,”
she observed. “And you only carried two boxes of the six!”

Endymion gave her a
hurt look. Living all his eighteen Terran years in the low-gravity
environment of Ascension had made him tall, lithe and largely
incapable of what Ostara heard his Nigerian-born parents call
‘proper hard work’, for what the low-gravity did for height was not
good for maintaining muscle. Looking dizzy, he leaned against the
desk and promptly fell over as the whole lot crashed down, shedding
the contents of the boxes across the bare floor.

“Whoops,” he murmured,
climbing to his feet. “Sorry about that.”

Ostara sighed. “The
last tenants left the desk behind, so I assumed it was already on
its last legs. They don’t make cheap chipboard furniture like they
used to.”

She knelt to retrieve
the contents of the fallen boxes. Endymion, looking guilty, bent
down to help and uttered a note of surprise when he saw what he had
helped to carry.

“Books!” he exclaimed.
“Made of real paper! Where did you get them from?”

“There was an auction
at the market hall last week,” Ostara told him, picking up the
nearest volume. “Some old woman had passed away and her next of kin
did not want to come to Ascension to collect her things. She’d
brought loads of antique books with her when she emigrated from
Earth and was a big fan of detective novels. Aren’t they
fantastic?”

“
A Study in
Scarlet
,” read Endymion, looking at the titles of the uniform
green volumes. “
The Hound of the Baskervilles
,
The Sign
of Four
. What are these?”

“A complete collection
of Sherlock Holmes stories,” said Ostara. “Published in the early
twenty-first century, back before everything went digital. Have you
never heard of Sherlock Holmes?” she added, seeing his blank
expression. “Arthur Conan Doyle?”

Endymion shook his
head. After placing the books in a neat pile upon the floor, he
reached for the picture frame that lay face-down beneath. Turning
it over, he read the title of the framed certificate and
grinned.

“A permit to inspect
the sewage system,” he said, trying to suppress a laugh. “With bits
crossed out and ‘Private Investigator Licence’ written across
it.”

“Signed by
Administrator Verdandi!” snapped Ostara, snatching it from his
grasp.

“Is that going on the
wall?”

“Of course!”

Endymion smiled and
got back to stacking the fallen books. Ostara stood up in a huff
and moved to the far wall, upon which hung another relic of the
previous occupier; a faded picture of kittens playing with a ball
of wool. Swapping this for her framed certificate, she tossed the
cute cat picture into the recycling chute and stepped back to
admire her handiwork. The certificate was if anything slightly less
impressive than the tacky artwork it replaced, but in her mind’s
eye she could see the dream, one where a broken desk and pile of
books furnished the bustling headquarters of Newbrum’s premier
detective agency.

The loud hiss of a
hovertruck drew her attention to the open window. Lifting the
blind, she gazed upon Sherlock Street below. The dome roof, barely
two hundred metres high above Circle Park, was much lower here and
the low-rise buildings intruded a little too far into the false
sky. Her office was above a row of fast-food restaurants in
downtown Newbrum, not far from the city’s southern wall. The smell
of Asian cuisine and chatter of voices wafted past the cracked
glass of her window in a soothing harmony of humanity. Two boys
kicked a football in the street, while further along an elderly man
was staggering out of the Ye Olde King’s Head public house and
yelling obscenities at a young couple hurrying past. It was a scene
so timeless it was easy to forget this slice of life existed on a
barely-habitable planet orbiting a star six light years from Earth.
It never ceased to amaze her how people seemed to be able to make
their home in the unlikeliest of places.

“Would you like me to
do anything else?” asked Endymion, interrupting her thoughts.

“I think that’s it for
now. You’ve been most kind, helping me like this,” said Ostara,
turning away from the window. She saw Endymion glance at his
wristpad, as if to check the time. “Are your folks expecting you
back? I know you’ve probably got people to do, things to see. Or
even the other way around.”

“I’m in no rush,” he
replied and sighed. “I don’t live at home now, anyway.”

“You don’t?” Ostara
was surprised. “How come?”

“I managed to get me a
place at Aston Pier. My folks argue all the time since dad lost his
job and Bellona is acting all weird with this Dhusarian Church
stuff, so I moved out,” he told her. “The room is tiny but it’s a
cool place to live, with all the space pilots and so on. The Brits
call it Aston-super-Mare. It’s supposed to be a joke but I don’t
get it.”

“Isn’t Quirinus
staying down that way?”

Endymion nodded. “I
see him and Zotz quite a lot. Ravana is away at the moment.”

“Digging up dead
aliens in Tau Ceti, I know. Would you like some tea?”

He shrugged, then
nodded. “I’ll see if I can fix the desk,” he offered, as she headed
for the small kitchenette next door.

By the time she
emerged a few minutes later, Ostara saw he had not only managed to
slot the dislodged desk leg back into position and arrange the
boxes into makeshift seats, but had also found a broom from
somewhere to give the floor a quick sweep. The air sparkled as the
dim red light from the window caught floating motes of dust.

“So,” said Ostara,
handing him a steaming mug of tea. “Do you like my new office?”

“It’s got potential,”
he admitted. “A detective agency sounds really cool. Does that mean
you’re in Newbrum for good?”

“There’s no going back
to the
Dandridge Cole
for a while,” she said. “You saw what
the
Platypus
did to the sun. Even if it can be fixed, it
will take a lot of work to bring the farms back to life and get the
hollow moon self-sufficient again.”

They had both been
aboard the freighter when it crashed into the tiny artificial sun,
which fortunately had been suffering a power loss at the time. Her
mention of the hollow moon’s farms made Endymion smile. She thought
of the animals the refugees brought with them, many of which now
terrorised squirrels and small children in Circle Park.

“There was a ship in
from Yuanshi just last week,” Endymion told her, inadvertently
revealing he too was thinking of their past adventures. “We don’t
often receive flights from Epsilon Eridani and this one was odder
than most. It was met by people from Bellona’s church, though the
passengers kept themselves hidden the whole time. Verdandi was
furious that we let them into the city without ever seeing who was
aboard.”

“They’re a weird lot
at that church,” Ostara remarked. “No offence to your sister.”

“None taken. It stuck
in my mind because of Ravana being away doing her archaeology. I
took a peek at the ship’s flight log and saw it had been to
Falsafah a few weeks before,” explained Endymion, then sighed.
“It’s been an odd week at the spaceport. The police were around
earlier, asking space-traffic controllers about any unusual
activity around Thunor. They think something has happened to the
workers on
Sky Cleaver
and are sending a ship to
investigate.”

“Unusual activity?”
Ostara asked, mildly intrigued. The
CSS Sky Cleaver
was the
deep-space equivalent of an oil rig, placed in a low orbit around
Thunor to extract hydrogen and helium-three from the gas giant’s
atmosphere.

“There’s been no word
from the crew for ages,” Endymion told her. “The police say it was
probably an accident. You know, someone forgot to close an airlock,
or rats got aboard and chewed through life support systems, or they
all got food poisoning or something.”

“That’s horrible!”

“It’s a dangerous
job,” mused Endymion, thoughtfully sipping his tea.

Ostara frowned.
Endymion was usually more than ready to go into graphic detail as
to what unpleasant and gory fate awaited the unwary in space, but
his thoughts seemed to be elsewhere. Ostara decided she was not
much of an investigator if she did not ask.

“Something on your
mind?”

Endymion paused and
gave his cheek an absent-minded scratch. “The Dhusarian Church in
Newbrum is really getting big,” he said slowly. “I thought it was
just another fad, a harmless crack-pot religion and with Taranis
gone it would fade away. But this alien god thing is becoming a
cult and drawing all sorts of people in.”

“Like your
sister?”

“Mum and dad are
worried about what she’s getting into,” he said. “So am I.”

“Is it worth
investigating? I happen to know a detective who’s looking for
work.”