Steph Bennion - Paw-Prints of the Gods

“Weird,” she muttered and glanced to Artorius. “What did you make of that?”

“A tree in space,” he said solemnly.

“Really?” she remarked, bemused. “As good a description as any, I suppose.”

With a sigh, she returned her attention to the dunes ahead. The desert was far from uniform, for occasionally they would dip into a shallow valley and the sand would give way to rocky cliffs. As she looked now, the headlamps fell upon the first of a series of black stunted columns that rose from the dunes like rotten teeth. Artorius came to slouch in the seat next to her, bored of the slapping game.

“A fossilised forest,” Ravana told him. “Millions of years ago this was all trees.”

“No way!” exclaimed Artorius. Leaning forward, he stared through the windscreen into the dark valley. “What happened to it all?”

“Destroyed by global warming,” she said. “Falsafah is strange in that the other planets occasionally flip it into a new orbit. Astronomers think it used to be closer to Tau Ceti than Aram, where it overheated and became locked inside a layer of acid clouds, much like Venus in the Solar System. It’s cooled down a lot since but the air is still very poisonous.”

“How do you know?” he asked, eyeing her suspiciously.

“I read up on it before I came,” she said. “I came to do archaeology, remember.”

“Are you digging for aliens?” he asked cautiously.

“Yes,” Ravana said solemnly. “Or what’s left of them.”

“Wow.”

“Satellite surveys keep finding formations in the desert that don’t look natural,” she told him. “It seems incredible looking at Falsafah now, but the professor leading our dig reckons that before it turned to desert it was a lot like Earth, with cities and everything.”

Artorius gave her an incredulous open-mouthed stare, his face a picture of disbelief. Ravana knew how he felt. Despite all she had seen at the excavation, she found it hard to imagine that life of any kind had once existed on such a desolate world, never mind an ancient alien civilisation. Falsafah’s counter planet of Aram on the opposite side of Tau Ceti was a lot more Earth-like, complete with abundant yet primitive native flora and fauna, but the Arab and European missions to colonise Aram had started just thirty years ago.

She was distracted by the scanner display, which had again picked up a signal at the edge of its range. The red square marking their unseen pursuer had last appeared to the east but now lay ahead to the north, directly in their path. Her fear rose when a second glance a few moments later showed the square had crept noticeably closer.

“Someone’s on to us,” she told Artorius, tapping the scanner screen.

“Thraak thraak?” asked Nana, behind them.

“How am I supposed to know?” retorted Ravana. “No one’s tried to make contact.”

Artorius peered at the screen. The transport gave an abrupt jolt as its wheels hit a rock and Ravana muttered a curse under her breath. The terrain outside was becoming more rugged and the dunes were littered with outcrops of sinister-looking boulders.

“I’ve changed course,” Ravana explained. The transport rocked again. “Our friend ahead is blocking the best route through this area. It may get a little rough.”

“The red square is coming closer,” Artorius said fearfully.

Ravana glanced at the display. Their transport came to the top of a rise and they saw a distant flashing light, with a faint glow of red and green navigation lights either side.

“Green to our left,” she muttered. “It’s coming straight for us.”

She switched on the transceiver but was again rewarded with nothing more than hiss. Ravana wondered whether it was her who was being paranoid and unfriendly, but as her hand moved to the ‘transmit’ switch she paused, though more because she did not know who else might be monitoring the channel. On a whim, she accessed her cranium implant and mentally prodded the symbol for its inbuilt communicator, but her headcom too was silent.

“Have they come to get us?” asked Artorius, his voice wavering.

Ravana, peering warily into the dark, did not reply. The bleak landscape rose towards a rocky plateau to the west and the difficult terrain offered a chance to slow their pursuer. She resolutely turned the steering wheel and the transport began to climb away from the distant lights, wheels scrabbling wildly amidst a cascade of loose rock.

The transport shuddered over the top of a ridge and the ground fell away into a void. Ravana screamed, hit the brakes a split second too late and then stared in horror as their vehicle tilted with an agonising slowness over the edge, swinging headlamp beams down into the black shadows of an impact crater. Artorius shrieked, fell from his seat and was promptly pummelled by the greys skidding down the sloping floor to land on top of him. An ominous creaking grew more insistent as the rear wheels lifted from the ground, pulled by the weight of the nose of the transport hanging over the edge of the crater.

“Fwack!”

“We’re going over!” yelled Ravana.

The transport gave an almighty groan and slowly slid down the slope. Rock clawed into the belly of the hull, bringing forth a dreadful grating that mingled with their screams. Moments later, the vehicle crunched into the crater floor and everything went dark.

The base of the rocky pit loomed large through the windscreen. The emergency lights came on, flooding the cabin with a dim red glow. Ravana released a sigh of relief and relaxed her white-knuckle grip on the steering wheel. Near her feet she heard a groan.

“The crater wasn’t that deep,” she murmured in relief. “Is everyone okay?”

“Stripy fell on my head,” complained Artorius. “Where are we?”

“Stuck in a hole,” she told him. “It could be worse.”

A sudden beeping noise filled the cabin, one that immediately raised the hairs on the back of her neck. The sound did not come from the blank lifeless screens of the console. Ravana heaved herself from her seat and clambered up the sloping floor of the passenger compartment, trying to find the source of the noise. It did not take her long.

“My mistake,” she said gloomily, as she peered at a control panel next to the airlock. “It is worse. Life support has failed. I think my detour just killed everyone aboard.”

“What?!” shrieked Artorius. “I don’t want to die!”

“Thraak!”

“Fwack fwack!”

“Quick! Search the lockers,” she urged. “There has to be emergency oxygen masks somewhere. I’m going to call for help.”

“Call who?” cried Artorius. He had gone as white as a sheet.

“Who do you think?”

Ravana dropped back into the driver’s seat and tried to switch on the communicator, but the console was completely dead. Undeterred, she activated her headcom and switched off the privacy settings to send an unrestricted public call to all within range. In the cabin behind, Artorius and the greys were frantically emptying every locker they could find and a constant stream of ration packets slid down the floor.

“Mayday, mayday!” cried Ravana. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Artorius jump as his own implant picked up her broadcast. “Can anyone hear me? This is an emergency!”

There was no reply. Yet she was sure she heard something faint in the background, as if someone was listening and debating whether to remain silent or not.

“Hello?” she called. “Is there anybody out there?”

“There’s no masks!” wailed Artorius. His voice shrilled with panic.

Ravana felt disorientated, her pulse raced and she had a blinding headache. With a sinking heart, she realised the transport’s hull had been breached. The cabin pressure was dropping fast, allowing Falsafah’s poisonous air to seep in from outside.