Steph Bennion - Paw-Prints of the Gods

“Where’s Professor Cadmus?” Ravana asked, in an attempt to change the subject.

Govannon dragged his eyes away from the greys and sighed.

“Cadmus is dead,” he said glumly. “He explored the chamber alone and was killed in a rock fall. There’s some very strange stuff down there, see. I dread to think what Dagan and his Dhusarian friends want with the place, but they’ve claimed it as their own.”

Hestia frowned. “Two of them looked like monks.”

“Did they have a little boy with them?” asked Ravana. The news of the professor’s death came as a shock, but her mind had enough to worry about already.

Hestia nodded. Ravana could not see the entrance to the chamber from where she stood, but had walked past on her way to the tent and seen the scuffed footprints inside the trench. She looked at her father, who seemed to know what she was thinking and nodded.

Quirinus turned to Govannon. “This is your dig,” he said. “It may get a little rough, but your expertise would be appreciated. As for the rest of you, we have a ship outside and spare suits in the hangar. We’ll be hitting the runway as soon as we get back.”

“Get back?” asked Xuthus. “Where are you going?”

Ravana picked up the cricket bat from where she had left it outside the tent and casually hefted it to her shoulder.

“Kedesh called it the final innings,” she said. “Now it’s our turn to bat.”

Xuthus remained at the edge of the trench long after Govannon, Ravana, her father and the funny little aliens had disappeared into the green-tinged tunnel and out of sight. He badly wanted to go with them, but Ininna stood silently nearby and Xuthus was unsure of how the Que Qiao agent would react if he tried to follow. With a sigh, he turned from the pit, glanced wordlessly at Ininna, then traipsed back into dome one.

Hestia, Urania and Yima were at the airlock door to the hangar. To his surprise, there were two newcomers with them, a girl and a young woman swathed in heavy coats who nonetheless looked half-frozen to death. His surprise grew when he realised that beneath the girl’s vivid purple hair was a face he knew well. After that, the sight of Hestia stroking a strange black cat in her arms was too much for his brain to dwell upon.

“Philyra!” Xuthus cried. “What are you doing here?”

The girl dropped her oxygen mask to the ground, put a finger in her ear and waggled it furiously. Philyra’s annoyed scowl became a grin when she saw Xuthus.

“My ears popped,” she explained, seeing his baffled stare. “Low air pressure, or something. It’s so cold out there! How do you cope in such a place?”

“You were outside without survival suits?” Urania frowned. “You’re insane.”

“No, we’re reporters,” retorted Philyra. “Well, she is. I’m her assistant.”

“Felicity Fornax,” greeted Fornax, shivering. She too carried a mask, while in her other hand was a device Xuthus could not identify. “Reporting for Weird Universe . I hear there’s some cool stuff going down about ancient aliens. May we see?”

“I wouldn’t get involved if I was you,” Yima said cautiously.

“And who might you be?” asked Fornax.

“He is Agent Yima and I am Agent Ininna,” snapped his colleague. Xuthus had not seen her follow from dome two and jumped at the sound of her voice. Both she and Yima had recovered their smug air of authority and her tones were as frosty as the beads of moisture on the end of Fornax’s nose. “This is a Que Qiao security matter. We are in charge here.”

“Not from what I’ve seen,” Hestia murmured.

Fornax gave a wry smile. “Are you one of the archaeologists?” she asked.

“My name is Hestia,” the girl replied meekly, stroking the electric pet. “I’m a student, the same as Xuthus and Urania. How did you get here?”

“We’re with Ravana and her father,” Philyra told her. “That dratted cat is hers.”

Fornax waved for her to keep quiet. “Can you show us what you found, kid?”

“I forbid it!” snapped Ininna. She shouldered past Xuthus and squared up to the reporter. “This is a crime scene. They took our weapons! Official investigators are on their way from Aram and our orders state everyone stays here until they arrive.”

“You said that two days ago,” complained Hestia.

“Since when, Dagan’s weirdo friends have come and taken over,” added Urania.

“She means the Dhusarians,” Xuthus explained to a mystified Philyra.

“They’re right. It’s daft to wait any longer,” Yima said defiantly. “We can’t have cultists dropping out of nowhere to do what they like. We set the rules around here!”

“Which is why I’m here,” Fornax declared. “We’re on the same side, you and I.”

Ininna did not look convinced. “We are?”

Fornax smiled. “I’m here for a story. The best news is always a tale of broken rules.”

Ravana stayed close to Govannon as they hurried down the angled passages of the star chamber. She had wedged the cricket bat back under her belt to leave her hands free to work her slate, retrieved from her belongings in the students’ cabin. Behind came Nana, Stripy and then her father, who carried the plasma cannon. Flickering biochemical lamplight glinted upon the rivulets of water that ran down the walls and trickled along the tunnel floor. Ravana touched the dark masonry with tentative fingers and found it damp and slightly sticky to the touch. A hot and humid wind wafted up from below, leaving her drenched in sweat.

“It wasn’t like this when we explored earlier,” Govannon said warily.

“The well at Arallu Depot ruptured during a quake,” Quirinus told him. “Your dig is downstream of a nice new river.”

“This place is incredible,” murmured Ravana. “Is it really an alien temple?”

“Thraak thraak!” Nana’s urgent tones echoed eerily within the tunnel.

Ravana shook her head. “I can’t make out what the translator is showing,” she said, frustrated. Nana and Stripy had been trying to tell her something important ever since she had rescued them from the tent, but the images created by the implant programme verged upon the surreal. “Don’t you have places to worship your gods or whatever?”

Stripy looked annoyed. “Fwack fwack!”

Ravana pulled a face. “Sorry for asking.”

“What did they say?” asked Quirinus.

“Definitely not a temple,” she confirmed. “They’re quite bemused by the idea they do religion. Which is ironic, coming from beings who inspired the Dhusarian Church.”

“No religion, is it?” mused Govannon. “I like them more and more. Talking of Dhusarians, are you sure whoever was in their transport won’t follow us?”

Quirinus grinned. “I jammed their hatch with a spade. They’re not going anywhere.”

Govannon led them around a corner and down another slope. Ravana had seen the other tunnels branching into the darkness and was glad the archaeologist seemed to know where he was going. She could tell by his muted sighs that he had yet to recover from the revelation that his dismissive view of aliens was wrong.

Her own thoughts dwelled upon Taranis’ notes on the slate she carried. The priest had decided the Falsafah prophecy was about a meeting between aliens and humankind, but was less clear on how this would come about, nor did his notes shed any light on why Artorius was so important. Taranis had found a description of the star chamber in another part of the Isa-Sastra , only to be baffled by the accompanying mathematical formulae. Ravana did little better, but recognised Krakenspreken’s famous theorem from her engineering classes and puzzled over this reference to extra-dimensional physics.