Paw-Prints Of The Gods

by Steph Bennion

  “Do you think they’ve really been eaten by mutant rats?” he asked. “Perhaps having a frigging mad moggy at my side might be handy after all.”

  * * *

  Quirinus stood in the hangar, moved his gaze along the hull of the Platypus and thoughtfully stroked his beard. The scaffolding around the bow was gone, most of the inspection hatches were bolted back in place and in his pocket was a light unit, stolen from a fitting in one of the abandoned rooms of Dockside, ready to be installed in the ship’s toilet cubicle. He and Wak had worked almost non-stop on the ship ever since Momus’ departure and nine hours on, it finally felt as if they were making progress. Wak and Zotz stood beside him, both of whom looked as tired as he felt.

  “Well?” asked Quirinus. “What do you think?”

  “Let me get this straight,” Wak said wearily. “You want to strap three rockets to the side of the hull? We are talking about those dodgy industrial thrusters the miners use to bring ice asteroids back to Ascension, are we not?”

  “I found five of them in the other hangar,” Quirinus told him. “Along with a herd of cows and more manure than I’ve ever seen in my life! They must have been brought here for repairs and never collected. I’ve checked the power ratings and reckon I’ll need three to provide the extra thrust needed to blast us into orbit from Falsafah.”

  “Three cows?” Zotz asked innocently, teasing him.

  “Don’t be silly,” retorted Quirinus. “Three cows are barely two horsepower.”

  “You’re mad,” Wak declared. “The hull won’t take the strain!”

  “The chassis already has proper mounting points,” Quirinus pointed out. “Early Mars-class freighters were built on Earth and they used boosters to get into orbit. We’ll fit one either side and one on top, a hundred and twenty degrees apart. It’s perfect!”

  Zotz looked puzzled. “Wouldn’t having rockets on the side block the door?”

  Quirinus looked flustered. “Of course not! Maybe. Okay, yes it would. It just means having to use the roof docking hatch to get in and out, that’s all.”

  “Which means finding somewhere to land on Falsafah that has someone waiting with a long ladder,” mused Wak. “No, I can’t see any flaw in your plan at all.”

  “Do you have a better idea?” retorted Quirinus.

  “Yes! Leave it to the proper authorities!” said Wak. “Or wait until the University’s ship heads out there again. I’m sure they won’t mind you hitching a ride.”

  “I can’t leave it another two weeks,” said Quirinus. “You know that.”

  For a moment there was silence, broken only by the gentle bleating of sheep in the corridor outside. Quirinus saw Zotz’s gaze move to a mangled white shape in the corner of the hangar, which looked like a man-sized artificial lobster with a glass canopy and giant metal claws. It was the Platypus’ single-seat extra-vehicular pod from the small bay beneath the flight deck, used to perform repairs in space. Its crumpled outline was testament to the fact it had borne the brunt of the impact with the sun.

  “You could use the pod bay door,” Zotz suggested. “Or hang a rope ladder from the roof hatch. That means you could use the mining rockets like you said.”

  Quirinus looked from the discarded pod to the hatch beneath the beak-like nose of the Platypus. Ravana had used the pod bay as a way off the ship before, though doing the same on Falsafah whilst wearing survival suits would not be easy.

  “Good idea,” he said. “I’m glad someone from your family is trying to be helpful.”

  “Helpful?” exclaimed Wak. “You’re as mad as each other!”

  * * *

  The job of retrieving the mining boosters from the hangar on the far side of Dockside took Quirinus longer than he would have liked. The bulky rockets had to be transported through the main cavern, where the oxygen content had dropped to virtually zero and the air was cold enough to freeze his blood. Not only did he have to wear a survival suit, but he also had to stop the cows from wandering outside whilst winching his cargo onto Professor Wak’s battered blue hovertruck. The vehicle was not really up to the task and could only carry one booster at a time. The cows, bred for low gravity and freakishly huge, did little to help.

  Quirinus had just made his third trip back to the Platypus when he was interrupted by a beep from his wristpad. He was surprised to see he had a message from Administrator Verdandi, requesting that he contact her as soon as possible. The thought that it may be news of his missing daughter immediately led him to fear the worst. He quickly extracted himself from the bulky suit and hurried to Wak’s workshop to use the holovid booth.

  Verdandi had not expected him to respond so quickly and Quirinus suffered several minutes of tedious conversation with her apathetic secretary before the Administrator herself came to the screen. The chickens clucking at his feet did little to ease the tension.

  “My dear Quirinus,” she greeted, looking solemn. “You are not an easy man to track down. I’m afraid I’ve had a rather disturbing message passed to me regarding the excavation on Falsafah and I wondered if you’d heard from your daughter.”

  Quirinus gripped the arms of his chair and braced himself for bad news. “I was hoping to speak to Ravana earlier today but she missed our regular holovid chat,” he said slowly. “What have you heard?”

  “Your daughter went missing from the expedition a fortnight ago. Her colleagues thought she had returned to Ascension the last time the ship was at Arallu. It was not until one of the students asked the pilots where she was that they realised no one knew.”

  “Two weeks?” exclaimed Quirinus, then remembered that the pilot of the Sir Bedivere had said pretty much the same thing. “How do you know all this?”

  “A student called Xuthus raised the alarm when he spoke to his father earlier today,” Verdandi replied. “His father didn’t know how to get hold of you and so contacted my office instead. I’m making further enquiries, but I’m having to go through Que Qiao police channels on Aram. As yet, they’ve heard nothing back from their agents on Falsafah.”

  “Two weeks,” he murmured. He had never been to Falsafah but knew it to be a hostile, unforgiving place. On those sorts of worlds you were lucky to survive two minutes outside without protection, never mind a whole fortnight.

  “I’m really sorry to be the bearer of bad news,” she said and gave a sympathetic smile. “I must say you’re taking it all rather well. You must be worried stiff.”

  “Believe me, I am.” Up until then, Quirinus had not appreciated the depth of his fear and for a moment fell silent. He absent-mindedly pushed away a chicken with his foot. “Could you send one of your own police units? Or get the expedition’s ship to return ahead of schedule? You could pick me up on the way.”

  “You know better than that,” said Verdandi. “My jurisdiction barely reaches to the end of the runway at Newbrum! Even if I could sanction such action, all our officers are tied up with the Sky Cleaver investigation. By the way, if you have plans to send your tanker, I strongly advise you to wait until the new crew arrives. Fuelling operations are suspended.”

  “Sounds like there’s trouble all round,” Quirinus said thoughtfully. He decided not to mention that Momus and the Indra were already on their way. “I may as well tell you that I intend to take the Platypus to Falsafah. It’ll take another day or so to finish repairs but I mean to be on my way as soon as possible.”

  “I can’t stop you, of course. I will take it for granted that you are not flying without a licence as long as that pilot you hired is with you.”

  Quirinus managed a smile. “Thank you. Let me know if you hear anything else.”

  “Just one more thing,” said Verdandi. “Is it me or can I hear a chicken clucking?”

  * * *

  Momus gingerly pulled himself through the Indra’s outer airlock door and shuddered. The dimly-lit steel corridor that ran the length of Sky Cleaver’s docking pontoon creaked ominously. The cloud-mining station was one of the oldest human constructs in the Ba
rnard’s Star system and Momus tried not to think of what would happen when the years spent orbiting in Thunor’s fierce gravity well finally took their toll.

  The passageway was deserted. Directly opposite was another hatch, with two more on either side of the corridor several metres away to his left. Momus drifted across to peer through the small viewing port in the door opposite, then gave a startled yelp as the Indra’s hatch suddenly hissed closed behind him. He grabbed a handrail, pulled himself along the corridor and paused. He had heard a distant clunk and murmur of voices.

  “Hello?” he called. “Is there anybody there?”

  The quiet groaning of the superstructure was unnerving. His heart racing, Momus strained to listen for signs of life, but all he could hear was the omnipresent murmur of life-support systems and occasional beep of a control panel. Then he heard another thump, this time from the far end of the pontoon. His glance darted from one end of the corridor to the other, but saw nothing. A muscle on his face seized the opportunity to develop an annoying nervous twitch. He pushed back a floating lock of hair with a trembling, clammy hand.

  Momus cursed. In his startled movements back and forth, he had lost all sense of direction and forgotten which of the four hatches led back to the comforting familiarity of the Indra. It was then he heard a scratching noise, followed by another thud as something soft bumped against a nearby airlock door.

  “Who’s there?” he whispered. “Stop playing frigging games!”

  The scratching came from the hatch behind him. Momus turned, slowly raised a hand to the nearby control panel and pressed the switch to open the door.

  A black bundle of fur shot through the opening towards his face, hissing violently. Momus released a blood-curdling scream and leapt away from a sudden onslaught of flailing paws and claws. The electric cat shot across the corridor, bounced off the opposite wall and with another hiss wrapped its limbs around a convenient handrail.

  “Crappy frigging cat!” yelled Momus. “You evil spawn of a waste-disposal unit! You mangy heap of fake fur! You scared the bloody frigging life out of me!”

  He heard another series of thumps from behind him and in a panic turned again.

  “Stop right there!” came an angry voice. “Put your hands where I can see them!”

  Momus grabbed the edge of the airlock door to stop himself spinning and stared at the two police officers standing at the far end of the passage. The men were clad in matching pressure suits in starless black, with the only concession to high visibility being a fluorescent yellow stripe up the arms and legs. They had removed their helmets and carried them in a net fixed to their bulky backpacks, ready within arm’s reach in case of unexpected depressurisation. Both wore magnetic boots and stood firm in the pontoon corridor, leaving Momus feeling distinctly at a disadvantage as he bobbed uncertainly before them. The eyes of the men were concealed by enhanced-reality shades; only police-issue visors worked on the various networks in the Barnard’s Star system and the god-like omniscience it gave officers unnerved Momus. He knew their unprofessional smirks were for his benefit.

  “Who are you!” The officer who spoke sported a neat goatee, short blond hair and a terrible attempt at fake tan. Momus thought he seemed strangely nervous. “This facility is...”

  “What are you doing here?” his colleague interrupted. He looked young for an officer, with smooth pale skin and slick jet-black hair. “Speak up, man!”

  “I’m here for bloody fuel,” retorted Momus. His heart thumped hard after the surprise attack by the cat. “Who the crapping hell are you? Where are the crew? More to the point, if you want to talk and wave frigging guns, can we do it somewhere with some gravity?”

  “I am Captain Nyx of the Newbrum Police Department,” the dark-haired officer said.

  “And I am...” began his colleague.

  “We haven’t got time for this!” snapped Nyx. “Sir, I must respectfully warn you that you are trespassing at a crime scene. I insist you leave immediately!”

  Momus warily regarded the percussion rifles pointing his way. He had not forgotten that there was very little between him and the station’s huge storage tanks of highly-explosive hydrogen. “Aren’t you supposed to use plasma guns or something?”

  “Plasma rounds cost money,” the blond officer replied, sounding rueful.

  “As do bullets!” Nyx said angrily. “Please do not give us a reason to waste any by making holes in you.”

  “Shouldn’t we question this man?” suggested his colleague.

  “No need,” said Momus. “Just give me a frigging moment to connect up the hoses and I’ll go back to my ship and stay out of your way. Do I bloody look daft enough to disturb the work of Newbrum’s finest? I’m sure you have good reason to be out at the back-end of crappy nowhere. As do I,” he quickly added, acutely aware that he was sweating profusely and babbling like an idiot. “Did I mention I’m only here for frigging fuel and not for anything even remotely connected to whatever it is that brought you here?”

  “We’re here on official police business,” Nyx growled. “This is an inquest.”

  The blond officer looked confused. “You said we were here to avoid this becoming an official inquest and to cover up any evidence that...”

  “Thank you, sergeant,” Nyx interjected quickly. Momus got the impression that unlike his colleague, the dark-haired man had a rather cavalier attitude to applying the law. “We were not expecting visitors. If there’s one thing I hate, it’s mysterious strangers.”

  “His name is Momus,” the sergeant replied. Momus saw him smile and guessed the man’s visor had matched his face to a police file. Whatever was on record was apparently amusing enough for the officer to recover from his earlier confusion.

  “Captain Momus,” the reluctant pilot of the Indra corrected meekly. “As in space captain, not a proper police captain like your good self,” he added to Nyx.

  “It says here your ship is currently grounded at Newbrum for failing safety checks,” the sergeant mused, contemplating the text scrolling before his eyes. “Last summer you were fined and had your licence suspended for a month after crashing a shuttle into Stellarbridge. Then there was that time...”

  “Oh,” said Nyx and grinned. “That Momus.”

  “And now I’m flying a crappy tanker,” retorted Momus. “I’m glad I amuse you.”

  * * *

  Zotz sat in the VR booth, mesmerised by the view from the Indra’s flight deck as seen through the eyes of a cat in zero gravity. By now, Momus had been aboard Sky Cleaver for over an hour, but instantaneous transmissions were not possible from the Indra and the communication delay meant the screen was still relaying the tanker’s final approach into dock. Zotz too had noticed the two other ships on the pontoon and was intrigued by the huge silver cylinder lashed to the station. He had a pretty good idea of what it was, but wanted to make sure before he told his father and Quirinus the news.

  Seeing the other spacecraft docked nearby gave him an idea. While neither the Indra nor Sky Cleaver had extra-dimensional drives, Zotz recognised the police cruiser as a type of ship that did. Endymion had once shown him a useful hack that allowed any wristpad to bypass usual security protocols and lock onto the nearest available ED transmitter. This was something meant to be used by emergency services only, but the short sequence of code given to him by Endymion opened the channel for all transmissions from any network device. In this instance, Zotz hoped it would allow him to get a real-time link to Ravana’s cat via the police cruiser’s ED drive. It was a sneaky thing to do, but in his mind this sort of hacking was mischievous rather than malicious.

  “Hey Jones,” he murmured. “It’s time to go exploring!”

  He paused and peered from the VR booth, wary that his father or Quirinus may be about to disturb him, but apart from the goose he was alone. Satisfied, he tapped at the screen of his wristpad and found the file containing Endymion’s hack. Only then did he pull out the VR unit’s keyboard, bring up the booth’s terminal tex
t screen and begin to type.

  * * *

  Despite a great deal of grumbling from the police officers, Momus insisted on doing his job. Under their wary gaze, he checked that the Indra had successfully connected with Sky Cleaver’s refuelling gantry and the pumps were running normally. Only then did he allow them to lead him away for questioning.

  The torus of the mining facility was a hundred and fifty metres in diameter, which like that of the larger Stellarbridge rotated twice a minute to generate the illusion of gravity. The main wheel was joined to the hub by four spokes, each of which contained a walkway ladder descending to the cabins at the rim. Once there, the centrifugal force became around two-thirds that of Ascension’s surface gravity or a third that of Earth.

  The crew cabins were long and narrow with a floor and ceiling that curved up in a most disquieting way. Momus was reminded of his uncle’s narrowboat, having once many years ago spent several weeks of his school holidays navigating along the heritage waterways of Birmingham. Then he realised he was actually thinking about his uncle’s hamster and the way it kept running pointlessly around its wheel.

  The officers led him to the facility’s medical unit. There, upon the examination table, he was greeted by the alarming sight of a long shape beneath a blood-stained sheet.

  “Don’t mind him,” said Nyx, nodding at the sheet. “He’s dead.”

  “One of the crew?” Momus asked nervously. “Only I couldn’t help noticing it’s a bit too frigging quiet around here for my liking.”