Paw-Prints Of The Gods (22 page)

“I’m bored with this
game,” she said. “Get out of my sight.”

“Fine,” muttered
Kedesh, looking pained. “Next time, don’t lure me here under false
pretences. A promise of tea is not one broken lightly.”

Kedesh retrieved her
suit’s helmet and quickly made her way to the airlock before Ininna
could change her mind. Before long she was outside and limping back
to the green transport ahead, parked forward of the police vehicle
on the long gravel road.

“Did you have to hit
her that hard?” asked Yima. “She seemed to be telling the
truth.”

“Kedesh doesn’t know
the meaning of the word!” retorted Ininna. “The charlatan could
hardly deny being there given satellite evidence, but do you really
believe her story that she found that transport empty? If so, why
is she now in such a hurry to head west? It’s all tied up with
whatever’s going on at Arallu, mark my words.”

“You don’t know
that.”

“Something has rattled
the Dhusarians,” she pointed out. “Someone steals a transport from
their dome, abandons it in a crater in the middle of nowhere, yet
no one falls over themselves to get the authorities involved? We
know that idiot activist Dagan has been out causing trouble at
Arallu. I’m convinced there’s a connection.”

“There’s also that
missing person report,” added Yima. Ininna could tell he was still
not sure what she was getting at. “The one raised by the boy at the
dig?”

“I tried to make
contact with a professor on site who’s on the Que Qiao payroll but
had no luck. Our people on Aram are being very cagey about him,”
she said thoughtfully. “By the way, I get the impression they’ve
found something quite spectacular out there.”

She lapsed into
silence and watched as Kedesh clambered slowly up the steps into
her transport, encumbered not so much by her survival suit and
helmet but by the pain of fresh bruises. An hour in the company of
Que Qiao agents was often not a pleasant one. Ininna smiled, then
realised Yima still looked at her with a vague expression upon his
face.

“The Dhusarians are
harassing the archaeologists,” she said. “A Grand Priory spy is on
the loose. There’s an abandoned transport no one wants to talk
about and all of a sudden we find Commander Kedesh rushing off the
map towards Arallu. Coincidence?”

“Something spectacular
in Arallu,” mused Yima. “Maybe we should check it out.”

* * *

[Chapter Six
]
[
Contents
] [
Chapter Eight
]

MOMUS GAZED IN WONDER
at the enormous churning ball of gas in a thousand shades of brown
that filled the view before him. Thunor was the fourth planet out
from Barnard’s Star and the second largest in the system after the
mighty Woden. It was slightly smaller than Saturn in the Solar
System and lacked that planet’s magnificent icy rings, but there
was no denying it was still one of the most breathtaking sights
Momus had ever seen. The planet went from huge through massive onto
truly gargantuan, until the scale of what lay before him became
simply far too large for his brain to contemplate. Thunor’s moon of
Eostre was but a dark dot far away on the
Indra
’s starboard
bow, yet even the knowledge that this rocky satellite was as large
as Earth’s own moon did little to help his sense of perspective.
The tiny speck ahead that was
CSS Sky Cleaver
looked as lost
and alone as a cork bobbing in the middle of a storm-wracked
sea.

“Wow,” murmured Momus,
not for the first time. “That’s a frigging big planet.”

The
Sky Cleaver
cloud-mining facility worked in the tenuous upper atmosphere of
Thunor, orbiting fast and low on the very edge of space. It was of
a similar wheel-and-axle design to
Stellarbridge
, though
slightly smaller and with a longer static pontoon that extended
from the wheel on both sides, perpendicular to what passed for the
surface of the planet below. The mast extending towards the gaseous
mantle of Thunor served as an anchor for the kilometres-long cable
of high-tensile piping that descended into the planet’s atmosphere;
on the other end, a huge conical net ionised the swirling gas and
sucked it up the pipe by way of electromagnetic induction. Powerful
compressors at the top of the cable pumped and separated harvested
hydrogen and helium-three through the station’s axle to the huge
gas tanks on the far-side pontoon. It was an impressive piece of
engineering and one that in various guises guaranteed a
virtually-unlimited supply of fuel for spacecraft and fusion
reactors across the five systems.

Sky Cleaver
’s
docking area was on the pontoon pointing away from Thunor, next to
the cluster of spherical reservoirs that were hopefully full and
ready to replenish the
Indra
’s own tanks. Momus settled back
in his seat, content to let the automatic guidance controls handle
the final approach. It became apparent that of the four docking
positions, two were taken. At one was a large, odd-looking vessel,
in the shape of a monstrous silver cylinder with the largest rocket
nozzle he had ever seen protruding from the rear, secured to the
pontoon by cables and a flexible tubular walkway. A sleek
Mars-class spaceplane in the blue livery adopted by Newbrum police
was docked at another.

The presence of the
police vehicle was worrying, but more so was the absence of the
heavy-duty shuttle that served as
Sky Cleaver
’s emergency
lifeboat. As the
Indra
drew nearer, Momus began to wonder if
he should have paid more attention to the disturbing rumours going
around Newbrum spaceport. Just then, he heard an electronic purr
and saw Ravana’s electric pet float into view from behind the
co-pilot’s seat.

“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.”