Wasteland of flint

'Ah.' Smalls tried to raise an eyebrow and look knowing, but mostly he looked foolish and Gretchen felt a sudden warmth for the man. Poor kid, she thought, thinking of Delores. He's just a squeeb. Probably never had a real girlfriend his whole life before he came here.

'So Russovsky,' Gretchen interrupted, 'liked the emptiness. She liked to go out alone, in her ultralight, and just wander, looking for things. Just…seeing what there was to see.'

'Yeah!' Smalls scratched the back of his head ruefully. 'She was kind of pissed when we first got there – I mean, she's the planetary geologist, right? But Ephesus was smashed like an egg back in First Sun times, the whole planetary mantle was broken into about a million pieces and then slammed back together again. There's no geology left! Just slowly settling rubble. Everything's a jumble – you can't even get a depth reading most places – and her instruments just kicked back garbage and plots looking like an Englishman puked six pints of bitters in the street.'

'I see.' Gretchen frowned. 'So why the flights?'

'Well, that was another argument. See, Russovsky tried playing by the rules and duly reported all of this to Clarkson – and he said if she couldn't do her work, she could help someone else do something useful.' Smalls grinned, and Gretchen realized with a start he was younger than she was. Much younger. How old is this kid? Twenty?

'Now, that set McCue off like a rocket, but Russovsky kept her cool and said – and I quote – 'I believe my data are in error, Doctor Clarkson. I will endeavor to rectify the situation.' – and then she just walked out of her office, loaded up the Gagarin and took off into the blue yonder.'

Gretchen answered his smile with one of her own. 'Good for her. How many times did she go out?'

Smalls pursed his lips, thinking. 'About once a week, I guess. You can't carry too much on a Midge, but you can cover a lot of ground. So she must have been all over the place. She always tried to bring me or McCue something pretty – like that shale – or once she found these raw diamonds. She gave those to McCue, I think.'

'Did you see what she brought back the last time?'

Smalls shook his head dolefully. 'No. I was lying low! Clarkson was already in a mood about something, so when Russovsky came in and made a beeline for McCue's office with a big bundle in her arms, he was spoiling for a fight.'

Gretchen nodded. 'Why don't you show me her office?'

'Shuttle two to shuttle one, come in.' Parker tapped his throat mike experimentally, watching the newly repaired shuttle's control panels light green section by section. Most of the cockpit was still dark, or winking amber. The long grounding had played havoc with the ship's systems. A cursory examination of the hull revealed deep pitting and large sections of discolored, infected metal. 'Bandao, can you hear me? Delores, are you on this comm?'

'I hear you,' the gunner's voice answered on a crystal-clear channel. 'How does it look?'

'Good enough, maybe, sort of…' Parker wiggled one of the control panels and the black glassite suddenly flickered to life. 'This boat's all eaten up by the damned spores.'

'Will she fly?' Delores's sharp voice came online. 'Do you have an engine readout yet?'

'I have diagnostics live from the engine,' Parker replied dryly. The crewwoman was crouching in the aft engineering space, squeezed in beneath the housing, trying to match up relays and conduits in a maze of pipes and hoses. 'And I think she'll fly – at least one-way – and everyone on board had better be suited up. Our little friends have been eating away for weeks.'

'Cargo in the damaged ship, then? Passengers in this one?'

Parker nodded, attention distracted by another panel coming online. The wing and airfoil surfaces were showing only sixty to seventy percent response to a basic microcontrol flex test. 'Yeah…why don't you prep for takeoff. We can load cargo with Delores, me and the security crew. Get all the civilians up to the Palenque and into their blessed showers.'

'Understood,' Bandao replied. Parker squinted out the triangular window. Across the landing field, he could see the gunner rattling down the stairs from number one. 'Delores – I still don't have any readout from the fuel gauges. They hooked up yet?'

A grunting sound was her only response. Smiling to himself, the pilot began running through the basic systems checklist. After an hour, he looked up, lean face creased with puzzlement. A line of people was climbing the stairs into shuttle one. He tapped open his throat mike.

'Chief? Anderssen? We're going to send shuttle one upstairs. Did you want to go?'

There was no immediate response, so he checked his comm band to see if Anderssen was in range. Her proximity icon was glowing green, so Parker tried again. 'Parker calling Anderssen – hello? Anyone home?'

This time the channel chirped open, and the archaeologist's voice came back, a little thready. 'Yes, Parker? What did you say?'

The pilot repeated his question. As he did, Delores climbed down into the cockpit and slid into the copilot's seat. Her hair was streaked with oil, her face shining with sweat and her work gloves were dark with grime. She looked pissed, but Parker made a point of looking respectfully off into the distance, listening to Gretchen speaking on the comm.

'Don't worry about me,' Gretchen said, breath rasping as she scrambled up the side of an excavation trench. She squinted for a second while the work goggles adjusted to keep the flare of the late afternoon sun from spearing her eyes. 'I'm out at the Observatory excavation site with Sinclair and Smalls. I believe they do want to go upstairs today, so tell Bandao to delay liftoff until they get back to camp.' She waved to the xenobiologist, who was standing under a shining metallic sunshade a hundred meters away. 'We've got two crawlers out here, so I'll take the other one back.'

She tramped across a work ladder laid down over the trench as a bridge and passed one of the obelisks forming the main part of the observatory. The stone spire cast a long finger of shadow across the rumpled ground – each obelisk was at least twenty meters high. Four rings of the stones circled the 'nave,' which nestled at the bottom of a kilometer-wide depression in the desert floor, about three k from the camp.

A network of fresh trenches slashed across the ring arrangement. The expedition had been digging exploratory excavations at ten-meter intervals, trying to find the foundations of the edifice. Gretchen could tell from the desultory sensor grid layout in the trenches they hadn't found what they were looking for. Sinclair had admitted, as they were bouncing up the dusty road from the camp, the 'observatory' did not seem to be anything of the kind. The current thinking proposed some kind of naturally occurring phenomena. Just some rocks.

Gretchen walked quickly down the path between two trenches to the long rectangular sunshade. Sinclair and Smalls were sitting at a camp table, their goggles glittering mirrors. Cargo crates made more tables and work areas under the strip of shadow.

'They've called from camp,' Gretchen said, doffing her hat under the awning. Her skin felt tight, already dehydrated by the parched air. 'Shuttle one is ready to make a run back to the ship. You should go, I think, and I'll take the other crawler back.'

Both men shared a glance, then Sinclair tilted his head in a sort of temporizing way. 'One of us should stay – it's bad policy to go about solo – even so close to the camp.'

'I understand,' Gretchen said, taking no offense. 'But I'll be staying overnight, which means one of you would have to give up a shower and the amenities of the Palenque for another night. Besides – Parker, Blake and Delores are staying groundside with me, and I'll have the crawler.'

There was some more hemming and hawing, but Gretchen just waited for them to convince themselves, then waved as the Skoda Armadillo chuffed away down the road to the main camp. When they were mostly out of sight, she tapped her comm open.

'Mister Parker? Yes, you've got two more passengers coming into camp for your milk run. I'd appreciate it if Bandao-tzin waited for them.'

There were some disgruntled noises and Gretchen had to smile as she adjusted her hat. Despite the crestfallen attitude of the dig team, she wanted to go over their excavation herself. It had been a while since she'd had a chance to do her work, and she wasn't going to pass up the opportunity. A failed dig was almost more interesting than a successful one.