Page 92 of Pets in Space 10

“Do I have to lick it?” she asked, taking the sample.

He grinned and shook his head. “You can take my word for it.”

That felt like a challenge. She licked her fingertip and lightly rubbed it on the rock, then tasted it.

“It is salt.” She agreed with his assessment, though she didn’t know why it mattered. He’d sounded surprised.

“Do you think your father collected these here?” He gestured vaguely around.

“Probably.” She bent over. Each sample had been labeled. She vaguely recognized some of the names. Crysalithe. Solvate. Ferrocryx. Digs dealt with rock strata, too, but there was always an onsite strata scientist for that. She frowned.

The last time she’d been here, her father had still been deep into volcanics. Some of these minerals were associated with volcanics, but the others were new to her. Next to the names were a series of numbers.

“What do the numbers mean?” Dr. Walker asked.

“Well, if this were an archeological site, those would be locations. We use a grid map to keep track of where we found things.” She studied the numbers. The first number was usually a grid, then next the grid square, and the last would be a depth reading, if applicable.

She told him this and then looked around, still puzzled. Where was her father collecting samples from? The facility was enclosed and it was all ice outside, unless he got close to the volcano. And that was over the mountain range.

“Depths,” Dr. Walker’s voice was thoughtful.

She spotted a familiar notebook and went over and picked it up. Inside were her father’s notes, but he used a kind of shorthand. He’d have a voice recorder, too, somewhere. She flipped a page and a folded sheet dropped out.

Dr. Walker picked it up and unfolded it, holding it so she could see it.

“It’s a map,” she said. “Well, a kind of map.” It wasn’t like the ones she used on digs. It was hand drawn for one thing.

“May I?” he asked. She nodded and he spread it on the table near the rock samples.

She watched him for a few minutes, then went back to studying the pages. Back when, she’d learned to read his shorthand, but it had been a while, and his handwriting had gotten worse.

She did recognize the dates. She flipped through the book until she got to their current date and then began to work her way back.

Three weeks ago, something had happened. His handwriting had gotten worse for one thing. She lifted the book closer. She couldn’t be sure and yet…she had a feeling that there’d been a big tremor. She turned a page and found a small drawing. It looked like a ball, or part of one.

She noticed that Dr. Walker had looked up and was looking around him, then he’d look at the map again as if trying to orient himself. Then he’d pick up a rock and study it.

She edged over and looked down at the map. It had to be connected to the notebook somehow. Maybe her father had sketched out the epicenter of the earthquake?

“There are numbers that seem to match up to some of the rocks,” Dr. Walker said. “And then this,” he pointed to what had appeared to be a list written on the edge, but it was also numbers, she saw.

He was frowning, the salt sample in his hand.

“Is something wrong, Dr. Walker?”

He looked up and then smiled. “Please call me Miles, ma’am.”

Without conscious thought, she smiled back. “If you’ll call me Lira.” Ma’am? What was that all about?

“Deal,” he said. Then he held up the salt but also picked up another rock. “This rock shouldn’t be in close proximity to this salt, but if I’m reading this correctly, they were found together.”

“Found where?”

“That’s a good question. Is there another dig site?”

“That would require heavy equipment,” she said. Her father couldn’t afford as much light equipment as he’d like to have, let alone anything heavy.

“That’s what I thought.” Miles looked around him again.

Lira noticed he had another of the samples in his other hand, his fingers rubbing the surface. “Can I?” she asked. He held it out to her, and she took it. It was smooth. “That’s not natural,” she said. “I wonder where he found it.”

“I was wondering the same thing,” Miles said. “What’s below?”

She half frowned. “Do you know something?”

He ran a hand through his hair and the frown faded. “I know a lot of things. Not sure what’s relevant to the situation though.”

“I meant about my father.”

“Oh, no. I don’t know anything about him.”

He sounded certain, but… “Then why are you here?”

Now he looked discomfited. “We picked up a sensor alarm, a seismic sensor, in this area.”

She arched her brows. “Only one? There is a lot of seismic activity here.” She glanced at the crack running down the wall behind him.

“This was a special alarm. A concerning alarm.” He hesitated. “What’s below?”

“As far as I know some shallow storage. It’s not that easy to go deep here.” Surely, he noticed all the ice outside.

“Can you show me?”

“Of course. I think there is access off the kitchen.”

She led him out, T'Korrin hopping after them.

“Does your father spend a lot of time here?” Miles asked, his tone casual.

She looked at him. “He lives here.” He really didn’t know anything about her father.

“Oh.” He paused. “Interesting.”

Lira stopped and faced him, her hands on her hips. “Is there something going on that I should know about?”

Dr. Walker cleared his throat again. “I’m surprised anyone would live here.”

Well, she couldn’t blame him for that, or the look he cast around him.

“He’s eccentric,” Lira said. Her slight, wry grin earned her a very nice smile from Miles. A small shiver ran down her spine at the sight of it. The moment stretched out and then they both started at the sound of approaching footsteps. Harold came into view.

Was it her imagination that Miles now looked relieved?

Her brows creased, she resumed walking for a few more steps and pushed the kitchen door open.

It was chaotic. Pans and dishes were all over the floor and covered with a layer of dust. Nothing was broken because they couldn’t break, but it was a mess.

There was a big crack in the ceiling and one of the refrigeration units had fallen forward.

“You should let us go first,” Miles said.

“I will go first,” Harold said.

“We should let Harold go first,” Miles said. “He’s very good at going first.”

“All right,” Lira said, repressing a smile. She wasn’t sorry to let the robot go first, just in case there were bugs down there. Even in the southern pole there were crawling critters. “The storage room access is on the other side.”

The robot picked its way forward, shifting debris aside with its feet, clearing a path for them to follow.

Miles set out after it and she followed him.

About halfway, Harold turned. “This facility is remarkably stable.”

What was remarkable about that? She glanced around at the chaos and wondered why it thought that. Then they reached the access door. A red light over it was flashing.

***

Miles stared up at the red light.

“It doesn’t mean anything,” Lira said.

He looked at her.

“I mean, it means that,” she faltered, “that it’s been breached. The storage isn’t secure. But it’s not a real problem. Not really.”

Was that what it meant? Miles wasn’t so sure, but Harold didn’t seem to care. It reached for the handle and pulled the door open.

The puff of air held the scents of earth, some food going bad perhaps, and something he didn’t recognize.

No, he did recognize it. Salt. It smelled like a salt flat.

But, as he previously noted, salt formations and volcanics weren’t typically found together.

That was true on Earth, of course and this wasn’t Earth.

But that had been consistent on the other planets he’d been asked to geologically assess.

And the sample that Lira had agreed with him hadn’t been formed naturally? But if he was reading her father’s notes correctly—which he might not be—both the salt and that sample had been collected at the same depth. Here somewhere.

Since he couldn’t answer his own question, he stepped through the door after Harold and immediately had to duck his head. The low ceiling was heavily beamed and was definitely a basement. But the smell of salt flats was stronger here.

“Over here,” Harold said.

Miles went to him but stopped at the sight of the jagged scar at the end of the room. A faint glow seemed to come from the hole. He stepped closer, kneeling to examine the edges. Harold gave him extra light to study several of the stones scattered on the floor.

He heard Lira join them.

“My father didn’t mention that when I talked to him,” she said, sounding resigned.

Miles looked up at her. “Do you think he went down there?”

“I don’t want to think it,” she said. “But it is likely that’s where he is.”

Lira sounded both resigned and unhappy. Miles felt relieved. Their seismic signal was down there, and he’d been wondering how they were going to reach it.

The bird came up to the edge of the hole and gazed down, then hopped out of sight.

“I guess we’re going in,” Miles said.

Harold lowered itself down into the hole and then looked back up at Miles. “There are stairs but there is also more debris.”

“Stairs?” Lira rubbed her face. “Stairs.”

He should have let the lady go first, but he wasn’t sure that good manners worked the same in another galaxy when descending into an unknown cavern.

He braced his arms on the side of the hole and lowered himself down next to Harold.

He turned to help Lira down, then stepped to the edge of what was definitely a flight of stairs.

There were more signs of damage here, too. More cracked walls and piles of rubble partially blocking portions of the stairs.

Low light came from somewhere and when he stepped up to the wall and felt it, it was smooth like the unnatural stone sample.

Someone had built this access. They hadn’t just carved their way through.

But then why had the facility been built over this with no sign of access or even awareness it was here?