Page 89 of Pets in Space 10

As they started forward, he continued trying to mentally place them with what he’d seen from above.

They were on the edge of a plain that spread across a valley almost completely surrounded by jagged rocky peaks.

Okay, they were probably rock. They could be completely ice formations. Good thing he’d brought a rock pick.

***

Lira steered the air flyer between the soaring and jagged peaks that surrounded her father’s research facility.

It was as bleak and cheerless a spot as anything on Arroxan Prime—and there was a lot of bleak and inhospitable to choose from.

Her brothers thought it was crazy. Her father considered this a major positive. No one could just drop in for a visit.

He liked to know who was incoming. Sometimes that was so he could pretend he wasn’t there.

Her father wasn’t what you’d call a people person, but if she wound him up just right, he told great stories.

He distrusted the government and he tended to latch onto theories and ride them to a crash point.

The alien obsession had lasted a little longer than most, though all of them eventually looped back to the seismic disruptions Arroxan Prime experienced with disconcerting irregularity.

Her father believed in a long-term solution. He’d always been a solutions-oriented dreamer.

Over time, their people had adapted to the disruptions.

They hadn’t had another choice. Her dad wasn’t the only one looking for answers.

Most of their scientists spent a lot of time either trying to figure out how to stop the persistent and irregular tremors, or how to more effectively live with them.

So far, the “learn to live with them” track was winning the study war.

Their buildings were now constructed on specialized pressure plates designed to absorb the movement, they’d been built using flexible components, their personal items weren’t breakable, and they all had learned how to walk with that movement and not against it. Face-planting was a good teacher.

Ground transportation was rare because it got old fixing roads over and over again.

Her father was firmly in the fix-it camp, even with the divergence into alien conspiracy. If the aliens did it, then the solution to fix it was there, just waiting to be found. Problem solved. The possible first contact with aliens was new, though.

At least he’d taken her call and was happy for her to visit. He had sounded odd, however. A new odd, instead of his regular odd.

She made a small course adjustment as more of the plain came into view.

Crouched on the plain that lapped up against the mountains, the facility had been constructed almost dead center.

Just visible between two of those peaks, she saw their southern moon.

There were also theories about it, and their northern moon, and the moons’ gravitational effect on planetary seismic activity.

There were indications in the archaeological record that their ancestors had believed the moons were responsible.

Lira couldn’t say she kept up with the current theories. Her interest was the past. It was fascinating to study the signs of previous inhabitants and also discover the innovative ways they’d dealt with the tremors. The seismic disruptions had been a problem for a long time.

T'Korrin made a disgruntled noise from where he crouched under the passenger seat. He was an odd bird for sure. He had to go everywhere she went, or he made himself sick, but he also didn’t like flying. Even under his own steam.

A bird who didn’t like to fly.

When she’d told him where she was going, he’d hopped from leg to leg making agitated noises before finally deciding it would be worse to be left behind. He’d also made his displeasure known for most of the trip. She didn’t know how he did it, but he managed to sound like a whining two-year-old.

She postulated that it was because he’d been orphaned young.

She’d found him on a dig, his parents likely killed or kidnapped by poachers.

He’d bonded to her at first sight. When he wasn’t whining, he was adorable.

He was also a wonderful sensor. He gave almost early warnings of incoming tremors.

She might wish he’d do it a little sooner, but any warning was good.

She’d tried to teach him how to fly, but it wasn’t like she could show him. He had a way of looking at her when she tried to get him to use his wings that was…disconcerting. She always felt like she was the one who didn’t get it.

If she sometimes suspected he could fly? Well, so far, she hadn’t been able to catch him at it.

He blinked up at her, a soulful look in his deep, dark predator’s eyes.

“We’re almost there,” she told him.

The locater beam for incoming visitors to her father’s facility activated and she adjusted course. The landing pad was in front of the facility. She squinted at the entrance. Was there something parked there?

She positioned her flyer over the pad and began her descent, pausing as T’Korrin gave his signature “tremor incoming” squeak. She delayed touchdown as the landscape rippled and swayed.

“That was a rather long one,” she told T’Korrin when she was finally able to land.

There’d be aftershocks, but anyone who grew up on Arroxan Prime knew how to deal.

Now that she was dirtside, she could see there was definitely some kind of craft right up next to the entrance.

Of course, her father needed to get supplies from time to time.

The facility had some self-sustaining features, but he did need stuff.

She was always happy when the available food wasn’t just facility grown.

She did wonder why they’d parked there and not on the landing pad. Stuff to unload perhaps?

She waited for T'Korrin to jump onto her shoulder and then scrambled out onto the icy surface of the landing pad. She paused to get her balance as the smaller tremors continued to ripple through the ground, their impact somewhat mitigated by the pad’s design.

Usually she recognized most types of flyer. She’d been in most of them going to and from dig sites, but this one was new to her. A new type, perhaps?

Balance secured, she headed toward the flyer and the facility.

It was a two-seater, with rear space where she saw cargo containers.

A supply run? It could be, she supposed.

But lines were awfully sleek for cargo hauler.

It had a symbol on one side that she didn’t recognize. She traced it with a finger.

“What do you think, T'Korrin?”

He squawked and jumped to its roof, walking around it as if examining it. She crossed her arms and grinned. When he jumped back to her shoulder, she met his gaze.

“Well?” She would swear he shrugged. “Well, let’s go find my father.”

***

It was an odd place, Miles thought as he hesitated in the entryway. From the outside, it looked like a government standard facility. Gray, boring, ugly. Inside, there were signs of intelligent design. Light flooded down from slits in the ceiling. Natural light? It’s what it seemed to be.

The entrance was what he’d have called a small rotunda because he liked to think funny words and rotunda was definitely on the list. The decoration wasn’t inspired, but it looked like someone had tried, not very hard, but trying was trying.

The floor was plain except for the crack cutting from one side of the little rotunda to another

“That crack propagated like it had a grudge.” He glanced at Harold and then sighed. A sidekick with no sense of humor.

“No crevasse though.” It was always better if there weren’t crevasses in your path.

Two doorways led off from both sides, but when he checked one, they came together again in a short, single hallway.

Interesting.

More cracks in the walls and the next—it wasn’t a rotunda, but it was round.

An atrium? He studied the plants on the other side, looking through a series of fine cracks and impact stars in the glass.

Was it glass? He touched it, but of course, his gloves didn’t provide the kind of tactile experience he needed.

There was an acceptable atmosphere, according to his Garradian gear, so he pulled off a glove and tried again.

It wasn’t glass. He might have been surprised, but then he recalled the planet’s seismic activity and reconsidered. It was probably the smart move when the ground could move at any time.

Had they abandoned this facility after a seismic event? He lowered his faceplate and inhaled carefully. He couldn’t define what he smelled, but it wasn’t what he’d experienced in abandoned buildings back on Earth.

The plants were still growing inside the atrium, too.

“We’re sure no one lives here?” he asked Harold.

“There is no way to be certain no one lives here,” it said. “We detected no life signs.”

The careful parsing made him turn to look at Harold, but it couldn’t break out in expression.

He wished they didn’t have to enter this building, abandoned temporarily or not. But the Garradian signal was coming from somewhere directly under it. And traversing a building was probably better than trying to dig a hole in the ice crust.

He could admit to curiosity to see this sensor—if that would be possible. No way to tell how deep this facility went, but according to his suit’s reading, they were still significantly above the signal.

Past the atrium, they found a couple of offices and then some living quarters. One definitely looked occupied. Miles didn’t say anything about it. Just shut the door and moved on, hoping that the life signs scan was right and there was no one here. Or someone would be returning soon?

“We might need to work fast,” he muttered. And how would that affect our pickup time? They’d planned on camping out here until their ride came back in a few days.

He glanced around. His overall impression of what he’d seen so far was that the bureaucratic mind-set was inter-galactic.