Steph Bennion - Paw-Prints of the Gods

“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.