Page 87 of Pets in Space 10

“And why am I the one who needs to go check on him?” Lira Taan shoved a hand through her hair, barely resisting the urge to pull on it. What she really wanted to do was pull her brother’s hair out, not her own.

There was a short silence on the other end while her brother tried to find a diplomatic way of saying he didn’t want to go because it would make him crazy and besides, he had important things to do.

“Your work is more flexible,” he finally said.

Lira had a feeling his wife had fed him that line. It was true. She was currently working from home compiling the data from her field work. Still, taking the time to fly down to the southern pole where their father lived hadn’t been factored into her schedule.

“What about calling him?” Lira asked.

“I tried that. He told me he couldn’t talk.”

That was never a good sign.

“He told Keyvn he was close to first contact.”

“With who?” Or was it whom? She always had to look it up and then she still wasn’t sure. And whom sounded pretentious.

“Aliens.”

Lira blinked. “Aliens.”

This wasn’t exactly a surprise. Her father had managed to not just isolate himself at the southern pole of the planet, he’d alienated—bit of irony there—all his colleagues with his theories about ancient alien ruins hidden beneath the surface of Arroxan Prime.

He believed there were multiple alien incursions, but until now he hadn’t had any proof.

And now he was claiming he’d had first contact?

Could anyone have contact with an ancient alien species? Didn’t ancient imply long gone?

Lira sighed. Maybe they should have tried harder to persuade him not to move to the southern pole. However, it was a universal truth that parents never listened to their kids. If she had kids, she absolutely planned to not listen to them. It felt like she’d earned the privilege.

“You’re closer,” her brother said, his tone coaxing now. “Just pop down and make sure he’s eating and stuff. Kevyn said he was acting a little erratic.”

That was troubling. Her father was an odd mix of eccentric and grounded. Erratic? No.

She sighed again, knowing she would do it.

As the only daughter, it was somehow her job to look after their father, to make sure he survived his various interesting life choices.

And now that she let herself think about seeing him, she realized how much she did miss him.

He was definitely quirky and often frustrating, but he was also a lot of fun.

She couldn’t explain it, but being around him made her feel more centered somehow.

The trouble was getting there. It was a pain.

The research facility where he lived hadn’t started out as conspiracy theory central.

It had originally been a weather tracking station.

Her father had gotten a real deal on it — something they only heard about after it was too late to stop him.

Though she had to admit, for a weather station, it had been a good deal.

And it was interesting in a vaguely creepy kind of way.

Now that she thought about it, it did have that weird alien vibe.

Maybe that’s why her father had gone all alien in his theories while living there mostly alone.

Early in his career, some funding had flowed his way because he had started out researching seismic activity and how it might impact weather.

Or be impacted by weather? Lira wasn’t sure which and she had no idea why he’d moved on to aliens causing it or something like that.

She’d been busy getting her archaeology degree and didn’t know all the details from when he’d gone off the rails.

Sanity might have returned to her father when the funding dried up, but apparently conspiracy theories were catching.

His funding now flowed from a variety of like-minded conspiracy theorists.

It was too bad one of them didn’t have to go down and make sure he was eating.

And then there were his attempts to confirm his theory.

She should probably make sure he wasn’t going to doom them all to some kind of cataclysmic event.

It was challenging enough living with the current level of Arroxan Prime’s seismic activity.

It rendered parts of the planet uninhabitable and the rest interesting to inhabit.

But it wasn’t as if they had anywhere else to go.

If scientists were to be believed, the other planets in their solar system were even less habitable.

So, they’d learned to make do with what they had.

“All right,” she said, when her brother let the silence apply pressure for the guilt trip. At least she’d get to pack for it before she left. “I’ll go see what I can find out.”

Her brother rang off without asking to be kept informed. Like she planned to let him off that hook. In some ways, he was as delusional as their father.

She looked at T'Korrin, her pet raptor. It fluffed its tiny wings in what looked like a shrug, then gave a tiny squawk. The look in his eyes was one she was familiar with.

“Don’t you start,” she said.

***

Dr. Miles Walker watched the runner lift off with something like relief. The pilot had been chatty in an obvious and annoying way. He also thought he was funny.

Yes, it was a bleak spot to be dropped off.

Yes, it was cold enough for him.

Probably a lot of rocks under that ice. Certainly enough rocks.

The hearty laugh followed these pieces of witticism.

The rock jokes were always the same, no matter which alien planet he was on. Of course there were enough rocks for him, more than enough rocks because planets they could land on were usually made of rocks.

No one ever asked him why rocks. Or why anyone cared about rocks. Or why send a geologist to look at the rocks of a planet without space capability. (He would like the answer to that question, too.)

They didn’t need to ask. The questions were in their expressions and their voices. Since he couldn’t, or didn’t want to answer those questions, he was happy they didn’t ask.

It wasn’t, as he liked to tell people, rock science. It was earth science. Of course, he’d have liked to point out that geology wasn’t only about rocks, but that would lead to more chatting and painful rock jokes.

It wasn’t that Miles was opposed to chatting or even chatting about rocks. It was just that chatting — particularly pointless chatting — and mentally processing data were incompatible actions. He had been sent to Arroxan Prime to determine why a seismic sensor had triggered.

An ancient seismic sensor planted on Arroxan Prime a long time ago, hence the ancient designation.

It made sense to send a geologist to check it out.

Seismic was part of a geologist’s jam and they were comfortable with time frames of plus or minus millions of years.

It made dating problematic since he and his dates counted time differently.

If he wasn’t a million years late, he should be good, right? But the answer was usually no.

That didn’t mean this mission wasn’t a head scratcher. Why had the sensor gone off now? It had been rolling happily along since it had been installed, and it chose now to go off?

“I’ll be back to pick you up in three days, doc,” the pilot said in his earpiece. “And if you get in trouble, just trigger your alert.”

“Thank you,” Miles said, instead of using one of several sarcastic remarks he’d have liked to say. Not a good plan to annoy your ride. It had only taken once for him to learn that particular lesson.

“This is a singularly inhospitable place,” Harold said, its voice still slightly robotic. It was getting better at not being a robotic sounding robot, however.

Harold was officially there to assist, but in reality it had been sent along so that no one would need to feel guilty about dropping him on an alien planet even further from Earth than the rest of the Earth Expedition, and then leaving him on that planet — a planet with an unhappy seismic sensor that probably just needed a new battery.

He stared up at the retreating shuttle. The sight gave him mixed feelings. On the one hand, he was finally — mostly — alone for this field trip. But this alone felt suddenly extremely alone when he looked at the empty landscape around him.

“I believe there are other places on this planet that are quite nice,” Miles observed, somewhat absently. He tried to mentally match his topside location with the underlying formations that the ship’s sensors had managed to identify.

It wasn’t perfect. All he could judge it by were his experiences with geology on other planets, and of course, on Earth.

But there were always those little differences trying to trip him up.

While he’d found similarities with Earth geology, each planet had its own unique way of putting it all together.

In a four-hundred-mile radius, the only human-made identifying surface marker was the facility, which was currently just out of his sightline. It had been deemed prudent to set him, Harold, and their gear down out of sight of the abandoned facility.

Miles found that ironic. If it was empty, what did it matter where they landed? At least they’d given them a surface runner to carry them and their equipment to the empty facility.

He knew beyond the rising peaks was a stratovolcano, or a composite volcano, if he’d translated the Garradian data correctly.

From the air, it had had the appearance of one.

It definitely had the conical shape and steep profile.

He’d have liked to do a flyover of it, but it wasn’t on their flight path. Maybe on the way out.

For now, his mission brief — aka field trip — appeared to be simple. The appearance of simple might worry him because geology was much more complicated than people realized. Still, it was nice to be dirt-side somewhere. A geologist wasn’t that much use in outer space.