The occupants of the transport were safely sealed away from the cold and poisonous atmosphere outside, which had too little oxygen and far too much carbon dioxide for humans to survive outside unaided. Yet the unforgiving air buffeting the vehicle was almost as dense as that of Earth and Ravana had switched on the exterior microphones to flood the cabin with the eerie high-pitched hiss of the desert winds. Falsafah was as barren a planet she had ever seen, with a bleak natural beauty all of its own.
“I don’t like that noise,” grumbled Artorius, screwing up his face. “It’s horrible.”
Ravana pulled herself out of her reverie, deactivated the audio sensors and looked at the scanner display for any signs of pursuers. They had left the road and turned into the uncharted desert after the scanner picked up another transport hot on their trail. There had been a third signal hovering on the very edge of the scanner’s range for hours, one Ravana was convinced belonged to someone or something watching them but being very discrete about it. She had planned to keep moving until sunset, but Falsafah days were almost twice as long as those of Earth and she was desperately in need of some rest. When she tried to engage the transport’s automatic pilot, the navigation computer flashed a message telling her of its failure to locate some satellite and refused to do anything useful.
“We’re going to stop for a bit,” she said wearily. “I can’t drive anymore.”
She brought the transport to a halt in a dip between two dunes, pulled the gear lever into the ‘park’ position and switched off the engine. The roar of the hydrogen plant had dropped to a murmur once free of the dome airlock, but the sudden absence of even this noise now they were out in the desert was startling. With a sigh of relief, Ravana stretched her aching arms and turned in her seat to see three expectant faces staring back at her.
“I’m hungry,” Artorius declared, looking glum.
“Thraak,” croaked Nana, seemingly in agreement.
“Fwack,” added Stripy. A spindly finger scratched what passed for a nose.
“Did you look in the lockers like I told you to?” Ravana asked Artorius impatiently.
The boy responded with a sullen stare. He had barely spoken during their travels and too many mysteries remained. Exasperated, Ravana clambered out of the driver’s seat and winced in the aching pull of gravity. She desperately wanted to sleep, but like her companions needed to eat. She was annoyed Artorius had made no effort to help.
Ravana gingerly made her way into the main passenger cabin and opened the nearest overhead locker. Her heart sank when she saw it was empty, even more so when the next one proved likewise. Dejected, she turned to the third and was relieved to find it contained a box of emergency rations, enough to feed herself and Artorius for a couple of days. Continuing her search, she checked the lockers on the other side of the cabin and found more food packs, a variety of drink cartons, a basic medical kit, blankets and a bundle of tatty overalls.
“Beef with noodles,” she said, handing a ration package and carton to Artorius.
He snatched it from her without so much as a word of thanks, greedily tore away the wrapper to activate the heating elements and scuttled into a corner to eat the now-steaming dish. Ravana became aware of two pairs of huge eyes staring at her and frowned. She had no idea what the greys ate.
“Don’t give them meat,” Artorius mumbled through mouthfuls of food, seemingly reading her mind. “It makes them be sick.”
“Thanks for the warning,” remarked Ravana. She examined the labels on the rations. “Mushroom risotto?” she suggested to the watching creatures. “Either that or some sort of nut roast. As usual, there’s not much choice for us vegetarians.”
The two greys cautiously shuffled forward and took one each of the offered packets, ripped off the covers and stared mournfully into what was inside.
“Fwack fwack?”
“Thraak.”
The greys swapped rations and began to eat, fingering the heated morsels into their mouths with much more delicacy than the frantically-shovelling Artorius. It was the first time Ravana had studied them properly and she was struck by their human-like movements and mannerisms. The greys were remarkably ape-like, albeit with the curious scaly skin that looked more like that of a lizard, with a stocky build and loose limbs that reminded her of an orang-utan. The Dhusarian Church’s cult-like worship of alien gods unsettled many people and most mocked the cliché of humanoid grey aliens. Experts in exobiology, such as those on Ascension studying the exotic flora and fauna in the Eden Ravines, also dismissed sightings of greys on the sensible grounds it was highly unlikely for a complex and intelligent alien life-form to have developed away from Earth yet still on a similar evolutionary path. Sitting before Ravana was living proof the experts were wrong.
She selected a mushroom risotto for herself, then frowned when she saw how few vegetarian dishes were left amongst the meat-dominated rations. Her legs throbbed and it was with some relief that she sat down to eat. The food tasted rubbery and had an odd smell she could not quite place, yet nevertheless was the best meal she had eaten in ages.
The ration pack restored Ravana’s spirits but did little for her weariness. She yawned every other mouthful and could barely keep her eyes open, her thoughts now on the long narrow bench and foam cushion just waiting to serve as a bed. Once she finished eating, she pulled a blanket from the locker, fashioned a pillow from the overalls and the transformation was complete.
“I need to get some sleep,” she told Artorius. His disapproving stare followed as she settled down upon the makeshift bunk. “You should rest, too.”
“I’m not tired,” he protested.
His words fell on deaf ears. Ravana’s eyes closed even before her head touched the pillow and moments later she was fast asleep.
Ravana awoke to darkness. For several frightened moments she was convinced she was back in her room at the clinic, then saw the star-spangled night through the windscreen and remembered where she was. Moving quietly, she slipped from under the blanket and stifled a curse as her bare feet found the broken remains of a dish on the floor. The jarring memory of the shattered flower pot quickly gave way to the realisation that Artorius must have clumsily rifled through the cupboards whilst she was asleep. As she knelt to pick up the pieces, she found herself smiling at the memory of Doctor Jones complaining that the one thing the Falsafah dig lacked was bits of broken pot.
Her mind felt rested and her tranquilised memories had returned in full. Her dreams brought back the real reason she had come to Falsafah, but for the moment she wanted to keep it to herself. Artorius lay asleep on the other bench with Stripy curled at his feet. For a moment Ravana could not see Nana, then saw the creature’s squat silhouette in the cockpit.
After a brief visit to the transport’s tiny toilet cubicle, she headed up front and sat next to the grey. Nana wore an old pair of overalls with the legs and sleeves torn away. It had not occurred to Ravana before now that the greys did not like being unclothed.
The grey’s gaze was upon the dark world outside. The sun that was Tau Ceti had set during Ravana’s slumber and the night sky glittered with the distant jewels of the universe.
“So which one is yours?” she whispered, not expecting an answer.