Page 94 of Pets in Space 10

“The rocks help tell the story. For instance, the salt you smell likes this kind of somewhat porous rock. Salt is light, so it rises until it reaches resistance or something blocking it.” He turned the rock over in his hands. “It takes a long time to rise, of course. But…”

“But?” she prompted him.

“It’s the proximity to the volcano.”

He’d said that before, she remembered.

He seemed to give himself a shake. “The geology could be different here on your planet. Just because we don’t usually find salt and volcanics together…” He stopped, his eyes widening.

“Your planet?” Lira knew her voice rose to a squeak.

“Oops,” Harold said.

Suddenly she couldn’t call him Miles. “Dr. Walker…”

“When you call me that it makes me feel like I’m my dad. He was a doctor, but a medical doctor, not…”

“A rock doctor,” Harold said, helpfully.

Lira waved her hands, as if she could wave their words away. “Where are you from?”

“This is going to get me in a lot of trouble,” he said, trying to run a hand over his hair and failing because of his head gear. “We’re not from around here.”

“How…not around here?” She asked it though she was pretty sure she didn’t want to know the answer to that question.

“A lot?”

Miles’s hopeful look was so…cute.

“My father told my brother he’d made first contact. Are you…” This time she couldn’t get the whole question out.

Miles shook his head emphatically. “No. I’ve never met your father. I’m only here to check on the sensor. It could be…important for your planet. Maybe. Possibly.”

“Or it might be fine,” Harold said.

T'Korrin made a derisive sound.

“It could be fine,” Miles said, as if to T'Korrin. “Or not.”

“Why would you care?” Lira heard herself ask the words, but mostly she heard her heart pounding in her chest. “You’re…aliens.”

“Technically,” Miles said.

“Technically?” Her voice rose just a bit.

“Well, I’m not alien to myself. Just to…you.” He turned away and tried to fun his hands through his hair but bumped against his headgear instead. “I’m in so much trouble.”

“Because?” Had she lost her mind? Was she actually talking to an alien and his robot?

“I wasn’t supposed to make contact with anyone. It was just supposed to be in, figure out what the sensor is whining about, and then leave.”

“But my father…”

“We detected no life signs,” Harold said. “We thought we were clear.”

No life signs?

“You think my father…” she couldn’t say the word.

“Not necessarily,” Harold said. “We are quite deep underground. It is likely our sensors couldn’t detect his life signature.”

She stared at him, then at Miles, then looked down at T'Korrin. They were all looking at her like she was the crazy one.

“He knew I was coming.” She looked around her now, as if she expected her father to suddenly appear.

“If we follow the signal, we might find him,” Miles said, hesitantly.

It was the only logical course. She nodded. And, right now there was only one way to go. If there’d been another way, the rockfall hid it.

They walked for a couple of minutes before she found her thoughts settling enough to speak again.

“Miles…”

He turned to face her, and her heart gave an odd stutter that didn’t feel like fear. “You are really only here because of this sensor? Nothing else?” Like invasion? Conquest? Something worse?

He hesitated and her heart stutter this time was from fear.

“The sensor could indicate something…worse.” He lifted his hands as if to reassure her. “But it’s unlikely to be that.”

“I believe you are overly optimistic, Dr. Walker,” Harold said. “I have been studying the disposition of the damage and I believe it is possible that it is subsidence and not an earthquake. Or an earthquake followed by subsidence.”

Lira turned her alarmed gaze on Miles.

“If there is salt present and the earthquake caused fractures and melted ice water seeped into the salt, it would dissolve and that could cause subsidence.”

“Subsidence.” She repeated the word. Did it mean what she thought it did?

“Sinking.” Miles frowned. “But there would need to be a significant amount of salt, possibly even the presence of a salt dome, but…”

“But…”

“Salt typically turns fluid in the presence of volcanics. So if there is salt, it should have already melted.”

Lira’s knees felt more unsteady than if a tremor were happening.

“What I find particularly interesting is the scan data we took before we landed…”

Lira’s heartbeat ramped up to the point where it felt like his words came from a distance. Landed.

“…there is an area of increased density compared to what’s around it, it almost looked circular, which I thought must be a scanning error. Now I wonder…”

Your planet. When we landed. Scan data. He really was from another planet.

He was from a completely different planet and had arrived by…

spaceship…to check out a sensor. She’d have thought it an elaborate ruse, but even her brothers couldn’t concoct something this outlandish, or make this cavern or whatever it was appear.

She was literally walking in a tunnel underground with two aliens who were following a sensor.

T'Korrin landed on her shoulder and rubbed his face against hers. She took a deep, steadying breath. She needed to focus. She needed to find her father. And let the aliens do what they came to do and fly away…

That made her heart contract oddly in her chest. She’d only known them for about an hour, but…she’d miss them. And that might be the weirdest thing of all

***

Lira was taking the news they were aliens better than his first time finding out he wasn’t alone in the universe, Miles thought.

He kept walking, dividing his attention between her and the rocks walls.

He stopped several times to study the patterns in the rocks.

This on-the-fly geology was frustrating.

Was he observing an intrusion of another substance in the formation?

Harold made a very human sounding throat clearing and Miles jerked out of his thoughts and started walking again.

Lira met his glance and gave him a wavering smile.

“I thought aliens would be different,” she said.

“Some of them are.” He gave a slight shudder as he thought about the spider aliens.

“Dr. Walker,” Harold said.

Miles looked at the robot over her head. “Right. First contact and I’m doing everything wrong.”

“Not everything,” Lira said. “You seem to be trying to save us from…salt?”

“It might not be salt,” Miles said, though he was pretty sure that salt was part of the problem.

T'Korrin made a sound that Miles was starting to associate with an incoming tremor. And he wasn’t wrong.

When it hit, he had to grab Harold’s arm to steady himself.

His suit said it wasn’t worse than the previous one, but it felt worse with tons of rock over his head.

The sides of the wall and the floor beneath them seemed to sway and ripple.

When it finally subsided, he looked at Lira. “You should probably go back.” She didn’t say anything, just arched her brows. “We have to check out the signal.”

“Then we should get moving.”

“Lira…”

“I agree with Dr. Walker,” Harold said.

“You know, you can call me Miles, right?”

Harold did something that might have been a shrug.

“You should go back,” Miles said to Lira, hoping this time she’d listen to him.

“My father. His home. My problem.”

“She has a point,” Harold said. “It is where her father is most likely to be found.”

Because they wanted yet another first contact. “Really, Harold?”

“It is a valid argument,” Harold said.

Miles couldn’t argue with either of them because she did have a point, even if it was a dangerous choice.

He didn’t want to go too far down that thought trail because if he started thinking about how dangerous this was, he’d be the one to turn back.

He took a deep breath and decided to change the subject.

“You said your father had made first contact…with aliens?” He should have noticed that comment, but he’d had other things to worry about. But if there were other aliens here…

“That’s what he told my brother,” Lira said. “My brother didn’t believe him. Is that a problem?”

“That there might be other aliens here?” Harold turned to look at them both. “Why would that be a problem?”

Was Harold being sarcastic?

Miles removed his weapon from its holster and checked it, then he looked up. “No, it’s not a problem.”

Yet.

***

Lira pulled her weapon, too, though she had mixed feelings about who she felt she should point it at. Her instincts on Miles told her he was a good guy. Harold? She didn’t feel afraid of him. Unsettled, uneasy, bemused, yes, but not afraid.

When Miles had stopped yet again, she asked, “Why do you keep looking at the walls?” It felt like it was getting hotter and the air felt heavier and closer.

“Karst,” said Miles. “At least, that’s what we call it.”

“Karst?” she said.

“Karst,” Harold explained, “is a topography formed from the dissolution of soluble carbonate rocks such as limestone and dolomite. It is characterized by features like poljes above and drainage systems with sinkholes and caves underground. There is some evidence that karst may occur in more weathering-resistant rocks such as quartzite given the right conditions.”

“I’m sorry I asked,” Lira said and was surprised to find she could smile.

“Karst,” Miles said hastily. “It’s a fancy word for terrain that collapses when you least want it to. Caves, sinkholes, moody rocks. Bad news if you like staying upright.”

“Or that,” Harold said.

Did the robot sound annoyed, Lira wondered.

“The signal’s getting stronger,” Miles said, rising excitement in his tone.

Ahead, the tunnel curved so that what was ahead was out of sight.

Harold’s pace quickened. “Not long now. The signal is close.”

Miles gave her a look with a question in it.

“Why not?” Even as she said the words, she felt a chill run down her back. She tried not to think the words, but her brain formed them anyway.

What could go wrong?

***

Miles had been down mines back on Earth, so it wasn’t the tunnel or even the depth making him uneasy. The silence was disturbing, as was the building heat his suit registered. He wasn’t in danger yet, but the temperature was rising. That shouldn’t be a surprise at this depth.

They were still descending, he realized, but so gradually it was almost unnoticeable. Almost, since his calves and thighs recognized it.

“There’s more pressure down here than in a peer review,” he said. This joke also fell flat. Apparently, humor wasn’t intergalactic.

He heard T'Korrin give off a startled sound. The tremor started as soon as he’d finished. There was nothing to grab onto, so he tried to brace himself against the wall. That felt like it upped the sensations of the tremor. But he didn’t fall over. So that was a win.

Harold and Lira didn’t fall either, though neither used the wall.

He pretended to be studying it, shining his light over the surface.

This time it wasn’t smooth. There were multiple color striations that his light picked out.

And traces of bubble-like formations. He wanted to get a sample, but he’d have to put his weapon away to do it. That just felt like a bad idea.

He touched one of the bubbles and it almost seemed like it sank into the stone. He took an instinctive step backwards.

“What’s wrong?” Lira asked.

Miles rubbed his face and then checked his suit for an air quality reading. It was actually okay, which begged the question, how?

“You never said if this level of seismic is typical?” Miles said, because he didn’t know what was wrong. And he could be seeing things. He had a lot of good reasons to be seeing things that weren’t there.

Lira gave him a pointed look, as if she knew he was trying to divert her, but she said, “It’s hard to say.

Our seismic incidents tend to ramp up almost seasonally.

That’s why there are some theories that our moons are a factor.

” She glanced around. “I believe that’s one of the reasons the facility was built here.

Weather and moons. I don’t think it worked out.

My father bought it sometime after it had officially shut down. ”

Miles began to say he wasn’t surprised but stopped. He didn’t know how things worked on this planet, though the physics shouldn’t be that different. With science, the problem was usually understanding what it was trying to tell you.

He wondered what it was the sensor had been installed to track. “Geologic” covered a lot of ground, even if that was kind of a dad joke to say it that way. It was a pity there wasn’t a dad around to appreciate the joke. And when they found Lira’s dad? Chances were slim he’d get the joke.

He’d assumed that the problem the sensor had identified was seismic, but had anyone actually said it was a seismic problem? There’d been a lot of talk about Arroxan Prime’s substantial seismic activity and that the sensor was potentially troubling, but had they actually put the two things together?

They reached the curve and Harold stopped to peer around it. He had a feeling he was about to find out. And based on the oddly human bracing of Harold’s body, Miles wasn’t sure he was going to like it.

***

Now it felt as if Lira did hear something.

A sort of rustling. And then she realized it was lighter ahead, even before their lights could reach that far.

She opened her mouth to call out, but her throat went dry.

She compressed her lips and walked forward, steadily, but in rising unease.

No, it was more than unease. Dread. She felt dread.

What had her father done? And where did the other aliens come in?

The rustling seemed to be all around her now. She shone her light on the walls, but nothing moved in the circle of light. She looked up and was less certain. Had there been a flicker of stilled movement?

She gave a slight shudder and edged closer to Miles.

First contact, her father had told her brother.

But with who? Or what? Her father hadn’t been afraid, or her brother would have told her, or not encouraged her to go.

He would never have consciously put her in danger.

And her father had sounded pleased that she was coming.

He’d even sounded excited—at least as excited as he could get.

He didn’t go in for huge displays of emotion.

“You can still go back,” Miles told her. He had his weapon pointed down and away from Harold.

Lira glanced back and suppressed another shudder. “No thanks.” Not by herself.

Miles glanced back, too. “Yeah, it’s probably too late for that.”

What did he mean?

“Do you…hear something?”

He hesitated. “I wondered,” he admitted. He shot a look up and then lowered his chin to give her a smile that he probably thought was reassuring.