Page 95 of Pets in Space 10

It wasn’t.

Harold stepped back from the corner, and she saw it appeared to be armed, too.

“What is it?” Miles asked, easing up to the bend.

“I do not…know,” Harold said.

Miles glanced around, stiffened and then jerked back. He looked again and then stepped around Harold and out of sight.

Lira started forward as Harold walked out of sight, too.

The light grew brighter, the rustling seemed to grow louder.

She rounded the curve, Miles with her, and they both almost bumped into Harold. She stepped around the robot and then jerked to a stop.

“Father?” Her faltering voice seemed to echo around the suddenly widened chamber.

***

Miles stared, trying to process the data his eyes were sending to his brain. At first all he could see was the man who seemed to be embedded in, or attached to, the wall. He was several feet off the ground, with no visible path to how he got there. No indication of what held him in place.

His suit was similar to the one Lira wore and he looked enough like her that even if she hadn’t called him father, he’d have suspected that’s who he was.

Additionally, he knew of no other human person who was supposed to be here.

He couldn’t say he’d expected him to be stuck to a wall.

A rock wall. It shouldn’t make him unhappy.

Normally, he was on the side of rocks. But this, it was just creepy.

Her father’s eyes were open, and he appeared to be alert and okay because he waved at Lira.

“You found your way here. Well done, Lira.”

“Father?” Lira spoke again, her tone faltering and shocked.

T’Korrin sprang up the wall and settled on the man’s shoulder, rubbing its head against his face.

“T’Korrin,” the man said, sounding more resigned than pleased. The look that T’Korrin sent their way was…wicked.

Miles managed to tear his gaze away from man and bird to study their surroundings. The chamber had a rounded, dome-like ceiling that seemed to be made of thousands of the bubble-like rocks he’d seen as they walked along. In fact, there was no sign of any other kind of rock or formation.

He’d estimate these bubbles were bigger than what he’d seen and the closer they were to the wall where Lira’s father…resided…the bigger they were.

Those bubbles could have been as big as his hand. He flexed a hand, trying to estimate if he were correct.

“What’s…happening, Father,” Lira managed to ask. “What is happening to you?” She waved a hand that Miles assumed was meant to encompass the bubble wall.

“Nothing is happening to me,” said the man stuck to the wall. “I’m helping the Vorthari. They sustained damage during the earthquake. I knew something was different,” his eyes were lit with excitement, “but it took me a bit to find the access. I had to clear some rubble, too.”

“We saw it,” she said. “You came down here by yourself?” She covered her face with her hands. “Of course you did. Stupid question.”

“Of course I did. The follow-on tremors weren’t right somehow,” he said.

“Subsidence,” Harold said.

The man looked at Harold, as if he’d just noticed that Lira wasn’t alone.

“Who are you?”

“I am Harold,” Harold said.

“I’m Miles Walker,” Miles said, hoping to take some control of a situation that probably wasn’t controllable.

“They are aliens, too,” Lira said, lowering her hands from her face. “They came about the sensor.”

“Ah,” her father said, showing no sign of shock or dismay at the idea they were aliens, too, “they wondered what that was all about.”

“They?” Lira asked, strain still very evident in her voice.

“These are the,” Miles stepped closer to the wall, “the Vorthari?”

Lira’s father looked surprised. “Oh no, this is the protective barrier. It’s been damaged, too.”

“There are nanites present in the barrier,” Harold said.

“Nanites?” Lira got the question out before her father, but just barely. Their level of unease was very different though.

“Tiny,” he hesitated, “computers. Self-functioning systems.”

Lira blinked a couple of times. She was really cute. Then she frowned.

“Are they…sentient?”

Miles opened his mouth to tell her no, but Harold spoke now.

“When they are left unattended, they can develop sentience.” It turned to regard the wall. “I’m uncertain about these.”

This information might have grabbed Miles’s attention, but he made the mistake of looking at the bubble wall and got stuck — in a non-stuck way — on said wall.

“It’s fluid,” he said. A thick, in-motion fluid, as if each bubble were rotating within the wider rotation of the mass.

“The sensor is emanating from the fluid,” Harold said. It paused, then added, “it is possible the nanites are the fluid and the source of the sensor. Interesting.”

“Nanites are the sensor?” This got Miles to look away from the bubbles. “I think they sent the wrong scientist.”

He knew he sounded winded. But it was a true statement. Why send a geologist to fix microscopic computers? They should have sent a tech guy. Unless Harold was the tech guy. But that brought him back to his original question. Why him? What was his function here?

Lira’s father looked at him with interest now.

“What type of scientist are you?”

“He is a geologist,” Harold said.

“And you?” The man asked.

“I am a robotic humanoid with multiple functions.”

Aka, the tech guy. Or dude. The IT it? And probably the protocol droid. Miles rubbed his head where an ache had started.

“Oh. Well, that might be helpful.” His attention returned to Miles. “Geologist. They must have thought you could help.”

“They?” Lira asked the question again.

“Whoever sent them,” her father said, his tone remarkably even considering he was embedded in a sea of nanotechnology bubbles. “Who did send you?”

Miles shifted from one booted foot to the other. “It’s complicated.”

“It always is,” said her father. He was silent for a moment. “We’re still working out communications. It’s so tricky between alien species, isn’t it? So, I’m not entirely sure I’ve got it right, but after the earthquake, the barrier was damaged in places, allowing moisture to seep in.”

Seep in? To what?

“After that, more disruptions…”

“Subsidence,” Harold said.

“Whatever,” Lira’s father said. “It created more problems for the Vorthari. Their habitat is at risk now.”

“Salt,” Miles said. Maybe they did need a geologist. “Can’t you smell it?”

He got blank looks from Lira and her father.

“Water dissolves the salt which results in…”

“Subsidence,” Harold said.

Miles gave him a look. Was it in love with the word? Or did it just want to be right?

“It shouldn’t be here,” Miles said. When he got blank looks from the two humans capable of blank looks he added, “Salt doesn’t hang out with volcanos.

You find it in evaporate basins, ancient seabeds, not in the shadow of a lava dome.

This whole place is geochemically weird.

” He lifted his chin and added, “I kind of like it.”

He turned around to silence from humans and robots. Did the bird shake its head?

“I,” Harold began, then it shook its head. “I can’t help you.”

He should probably move on.

“This habitat,” Miles said, “it’s inside the…

barrier?” His thoughts went back to that dense mass he’d seen in their scan.

Had the Garradians installed the barrier to protect the Vorthari?

Or to protect Arroxan Prime from the Vorthari?

Of course, there was also the facility. If the subsidence continued, it was going to sink into the hole.

Along with all the rock currently residing above them.

Either way, he was back to wondering why he was here. And how they could get out of here.

“Their habitat seems to be enclosed in several layers of protection,” Lira’s father said. “The interior closest to them is composed of both stone and metal, a composition I’ve never encountered before.”

Miles’s thoughts went to the samples upstairs in his lab. He thought he knew which was that one.

“The next layer is solivite,” her father said.

Miles didn’t recognize the word, but he knew what it meant because of his suit’s translation setup.

“Salt,” Miles said. When they all flinched, he hurried on, “Why solivite?”

“It creates a hostile environment for something they call Skaridrex. But the solivite is eroding away, leaving them at risk.”

It wasn’t eroding. If it was salt, it was dissolving.

“Have they always been here?” Lira asked.

Miles heard her heightened interest pushing out fear for the moment. She was, after all, an archeologist.

“They don’t know. Their civilization goes back a long way, as far as I can tell,” her father said. “But you’d be better positioned to answer that question than me, Lira.”

As surreal as the moment was, it also felt familiar to Miles.

Scientists, in a single place together, could easily lose sight of the bigger picture—imminent crushing by tons of rock—to discuss how the rock got there.

Or what rocks might be crushing you to death.

Or what event caused those particular rocks to come together.

Or how long a species had been present. It was a scientist thing.

The looks on both their faces was one he’d seen often.

He found it kind of comforting that he’d crossed the galaxy and found himself feeling at home in the weirdest situation he’d ever been in.

They kept talking while he tried to drill down — dad joke or irony, he wasn’t sure — to the first steps.

“We need to stop the water incursion,” he said into a moment of silence. If the nanites had been damaged, it was possible that they — they being Harold — had the cure on board. It still didn’t explain his geological presence, but he’d move on from that for now.

***

“How do we stop the water seepage?” Lira asked.

Miles gave her a sudden grin. “We see what Harold can do. He is better at talking nanite than I am.”

She had to grin back. It was that or cry and she hated what crying did to her eyes. It also made her head ache.