Steph Bennion - Paw-Prints of the Gods

“Is that a yes?” asked Philyra excitedly. “Can I be your assistant?”

“Hell, why not.” Fornax took another sip of wine. “If nothing else, you can help me make sense of life in this crazy dome.”

The Dandridge Cole was the second of two asteroid colony ships launched towards the Barnard’s Star system a century ago and the only one to arrive. The oblong lump of detritus from the birth of the Solar System was ten kilometres long and half as much wide, inside which had been hewn a vast cylindrical chamber five kilometres long and a kilometre in diameter. At the centre of this cavern sat the artificial sun, suspended upon three five-hundred-metre radial pylons, which had the freighter Platypus not crashed into it several months before would now be shining upon a concave country landscape of farms and villages. The affectionately-known hollow moon had been Quirinus’ and Ravana’s home for over nine years. Now the pilot was back, he found it a cold, grim place in more ways than one.

Quirinus stared at the holovid screen, his heart thumping harder with each passing second. Ravana had never let him down like this before. Behind him, Professor Wak nervously pretended to be busy with various pieces of workshop equipment, with the air of someone dreading the cue to say something reassuring. Wak had spent the last few months virtually alone on the Dandridge Cole and social conventions were easily forgotten when the only regular company kept was with maintenance robots.

“Are you quite sure?” asked Quirinus. On the screen before him was the pilot of the Sir Bedivere , a rather surly man who did not seem at all pleased that Quirinus had called during a complicated orbital insertion. “She wasn’t at Arallu Depot?”

“Not as far as I’m aware,” the pilot said wearily.

“Did anyone from the excavation come to meet you?”

“Doctor Jones and three of his students,” he replied. “Professor Cadmus stayed behind at the dig for some reason. Probably because he owes me a drink, the tight little…”

“Hey, that kid was asking after the Indian girl,” interrupted a voice off screen, the owner of which Quirinus assumed was the ship’s co-pilot. “They thought she’d come back with us last time. The boy was down with some seriously bad vibes.”

“She didn’t,” reiterated the pilot before Quirinus could ask the question again. “I’m sure your daughter is fine, but if you’re worried I suggest you contact the authorities on Aram. They can put a message through to Que Qiao police on Falsafah.”

“Yes, but…” began Quirinus.

“I can’t help you,” said the pilot. “Please don’t call me again.”

“Charming,” muttered Quirinus. The screen went blank.

With a heavy sigh, he rose from his seat and walked to the window. There was little to see, for the cavern in the heart of the spinning asteroid was in darkness, as it had been ever since the evacuation of the hollow moon some months before. The light streaming from the windows of Dockside was enough to show the heavy frost upon the barren ground outside, but the streets of the deserted hamlets beyond were unlit; with fuel supplies low, Wak was running the remaining fusion plant at minimum power and doing all he could to conserve power. The only lights visible outside were the faint electric flares of welding torches high within the frame of the artificial sun, where robots were busy fitting new energy coils and reflectors to replace those damaged by the crash of the Platypus .

“Perhaps she’s busy,” Wak suggested, breaking the silence.

“Busy?” exclaimed Quirinus. “Too busy to bother with the once-a-fortnight chance to call her father? No, something’s wrong.”

He whirled away from the window. With a determined grimace, he strode across the workshop towards the door, a bemused Wak not far behind.

Dockside completely encircled the inner front end of the hollow moon, in a curious strip of ramshackle buildings wedged together in a loop over three kilometres long. As it was currently the only part of the Dandridge Cole with heat and light, many of the abandoned family cabins now housed pigs, chickens and other asylum seekers from the hollow moon’s frozen farms. The smell of hay and animal sweat mingled with that of hot oil and ozone in an uneasy alliance between nature and machine.

Quirinus stormed through the party of ducks outside the Dockside canteen, through a labyrinth of narrow corridors and into one of the two shuttle maintenance bays built into the rock of the asteroid. It was here his ship the Platypus had been docked ever since being pulled from the wreckage of the sun many months before. From its broken nose to the dented rear fins, the freighter had seen better days. The ship’s cylindrical purple and white hull was deep in dust, its undercarriage tyres were badly in need of air and maintenance hatches hung open all along the lower half of the fuselage. The beak-like sonic shield generator at the bow of the craft was encased in scaffolding, upon which a multi-limbed robot brandished its screwdriver and soldering-iron fingers, busy with repairs.

Quirinus crossed the graffiti-strewn concrete hangar to the spacecraft’s open port-side airlock, strode up the cargo bay ramp and entered the ship’s hold. The Platypus began life as a standard Mars-class interplanetary freighter, but its carrying capacity had long since been drastically reduced by the addition of an extra-dimensional drive, a centrifugal passenger carousel and additional fuel tanks, leaving the cargo bay somewhat cramped even when empty. Yet something was present, for the strange tendril-like growths that had taken over the ship were growing thick and fast inside the hold. Quirinus was not sure it was right that the cargo bay felt more like a cave made by the roots of a huge tree.

He warily dodged a swaying tendril and crossed to the ladder running up the front wall of the hold. Halfway up was the metre-wide crawl tunnel that led to the flight deck through the centre of the carousel, the latter being a narrow barrel-like passenger cabin that spun like a miniature version of the hollow moon to generate the illusion of gravity against its inner wall. The voices drifting through from the flight deck were not, as Quirinus expected, the customary heated argument between Momus and the ship’s onboard computer.

“Zotz?” he called. “Is that you up there?”

“We both are!” Zotz’s voice replied.

Quirinus scrambled up the ladder and deftly passed through the tunnel to the flight deck, taking care to not fall through the open hatch to the stationary carousel on the way. He emerged to find Momus and Zotz idly standing and staring into an open ceiling maintenance hatch, not looking at all busy. Ravana’s electric cat lay curled upon the co-pilot’s seat, idly playing with a long piece of tendril emerging from a nearby control panel. Quirinus dropped into the pilot’s seat and heard the muffled clangs of Wak’s mangled prosthetic left hand upon the cargo bay ladder, interspersed by various muttered curses.

“It’s easier in zero gravity,” Zotz remarked. He cringed at the thud of a head upon the crawl tunnel roof. “Dad hates spaceships.”

“It’s hard to love this frigging heap,” muttered Momus.

Quirinus gave him a steely glare. Wak emerged from the tunnel wearing a scowl and sullenly took a seat. With a sigh, Quirinus turned his attention to the console.

“Ship!” he called. “Report status. Just the headlines, mind.”

“System breakdown as follows.” The measured female tones of the Platypus’ artificial intelligence unit sounded far too calm, given the state of the ship. “Life-support systems are on standby and functioning normally. Port and starboard main drive turbines, fuel pumps and intercoolers show signs of wear beyond safe tolerances, as do the shattered nerves of the abused AI unit. Upper and lower plasma drive injector assemblies require manual inspection and possibly complete overhaul. Main fuel tanks are empty, devoid of purpose and symbolic of the universe at large. Radiation shield plasma pump requires recharging; sonic shield generator is currently under repair. Faults remain on carousel drive unit, forward radar detector module, forward visual scanners, flight-deck air-conditioning unit and maintenance pod door. Gaps remain in my memory banks and I am continuing to run checks on my sanity. Sensors detect a bird’s nest in the rear port undercarriage housing, damage to the starboard tailfin that requires immediate attention, a faulty light unit in the washroom, a…”