“Hi mum,” said Zotz, knowing full well she could not hear him.
Wak shuffled away to give his son some privacy. Zotz missed his mother more than either of them would ever admit.
“Hello Zotz,” said the figure on the screen. Zotz smiled at the sound of her familiar Welsh lilt. “I’m sorry you weren’t here when I called. Your father told me all about what happened to the Dandridge Cole and I’m glad you’re safe and sound in Newbrum. As you can see, I’m no longer down on dad’s farm,” she continued, waving a dismissive hand at her tropical surroundings. “I’m in French Guiana, the other end of the continent, at the space centre. My old boss heard I was on Earth and asked for my help on a new type of engine they’re fitting to a test rocket, so I’m afraid I won’t be on my way home to Barnard’s Star just yet. Of course, you’re always welcome to come and join me here before then!”
“Go to Earth?” murmured Zotz, as he settled down to watch the rest of the message. He did not see the perturbed look of his father.
Back on Ascension, the display on the console in Fornax’s hotel room declared it to be well past midnight. The slowly rotating planet beneath her bed had other ideas and above the dome the bloated sun was high in the sky. Barnard’s Star was much smaller and dimmer than Sol, but Ascension orbited far closer to its star than did Earth and the crimson disc of the red dwarf loomed large above the kilometre-wide glass and steel dome. The scarlet glowing strips between the slats of Fornax’s window blind were eerie and irritating in equal measure and despite her weariness, the reporter had failed to get any sleep.
Philyra had long gone, though promised to return the next day. Fornax was reluctant to wander around Newbrum without a guide, but nonetheless found herself pulling a black-and-grey tunic and a pair of leggings out of her suitcase after deciding that an exploratory walk around the city was a better use of time than staring at the ceiling. Her slate had the latest guide and street map of Newbrum, which had the shortest tourist information section she had ever seen. Her finger paused upon a grey blob on the map along Curzon Street.
“BBC local office,” she mused. “Then find a café that serves a decent cup of coffee.”
Fornax slipped on her boots, grabbed her battered pseudo-leather jacket and bounded downstairs to the hotel foyer. Other than a lonely janitor robot, the reception was deserted. The multi-limbed wheeled robot scrubbed at a stain on the threadbare carpet, but judging by its heavy-clawed stance was probably doing more harm than good. Pushing open the door, Fornax skipped nimbly over a dead rat and into the street.
The local gravity took some getting used to, but she liked the weird sensation of being light on her feet. Her map revealed the street plan of Newbrum was pleasingly logical. The town inside the main dome was split into four quadrants by the main thoroughfares that emanated from Circle Park Road: Corporation Street, which ran north and on through the dome wall to the spaceport; Sherlock Street to the south; Broad Street to the west; and Curzon Street to the east. Four concentric routes linked these roads together; Circle Park Road being the innermost, followed by Paradise Circus, Queensway and then an unnamed service road that hugged the inside of the dome wall. Her hotel was on Paradise Circus in the centre of Colmore, the north-east quadrant, next to a dingy alleyway that offered a short cut to Queensway. Fornax looked at the broken-down hovertruck outside the hotel, the crumbling concrete walkway and the tatty apartment-block frontages along the road and decided that the Paradise Hotel was probably not in the best part of town.
The British Broadcasting Corporation’s office was in Digbeth, the south-east quadrant, on the south side of Curzon Street near where it intersected Paradise Circus. The streets were surprisingly busy given it was supposed to be nearly one o’clock in the morning, but Fornax guessed that those who lived with the lengthy Ascension days and nights had long decided to ignore what time it was supposed to be, or else gone mad. For this reason, she hoped to find someone at the BBC despite it technically being the middle of the night.
The buildings were a lot smarter on Curzon Street. The concrete apartment blocks were painted in elegant pastels, many with colourful floral hanging baskets alongside the numerous ultra-violet street lamps installed to boost the sun’s weak rays. Most of the shops at street level were open for business, the road looked freshly-swept and there was even the occasional anachronistic wrought-iron bench waiting to provide the weary with somewhere to rest. The people walking the street looked slightly less stressed than Fornax had seen at the spaceport and elsewhere, but she was struck by how no one looked truly content. There was a sign: ‘SORRY, NO CHOCOLATE’ in a nearby store window, which she considered a good enough reason for Newbrum’s malaise.
The BBC office was above a shipping insurance broker. The window of the latter was dominated by a large holovid screen and Fornax paused to watch a surreal sales pitch aimed at those importing sheep to the high-gravity world of Taotie, Epsilon Eridani. A noise behind made her turn and she was startled by the appearance of a bizarre and ancient-looking wheeled robot, somewhat reminiscent of a laboratory bench on wheels, trundling up the road with its camera mast pitifully outstretched. She watched as the robot stopped outside the shop opposite and cautiously extended a probe to knock upon the closed door. Fornax jumped as the robot suddenly spoke in coarse metallic tones.
“Photographs!” the robot warbled. “Please print my photographs!”
“Weird,” muttered Fornax.
She turned to continue her own mission and accidentally stepped into the path of a young Chinese woman bustling towards the BBC office ahead.
“Whoops!” said Fornax. “Sorry about that, kid.”
“I should watch where I am going!” apologised the woman. “Clumsy me!”
“Hey, no problem,” said Fornax. She nodded towards the robot. “What’s with that hunk of junk?”
The woman smiled. “A friend told me it’s an old rover some jokers lifted from Mars a few years ago. They fixed it up and programmed it to roam the city taking photographs.” She gave an apologetic grin and stepped away, then hesitantly followed Fornax to the door of the BBC office. “Are you a reporter? I mean, do you work here?”
“Yes and no,” Fornax replied. She held out her hand. “Felicity Fornax, from Weird Universe. You may have seen me on the hit holovid show Cosmic Cooking?”
“Err… no,” the woman admitted. “I’m Ostara Lee, private investigator.”
Fornax raised a surprised eyebrow, then gestured towards the door. “Shall we?”
Ostara was blocking the doorway. With a nervous smile, she pushed it open and held it for Fornax, before following the reporter up the stairs beyond. At the top was another door, upon which a simple sign read: ‘BBC ASCENSION’.
The first thing Fornax saw when they entered the office was the holovid screen. An entire wall was covered by a single expanse of illuminated glass, dwarfing the man who stood before it with his back to the door. The screen displayed a variety of moving images, text documents and photographs, which the man was scrutinising and rearranging by waving his hands in front of the motion-sensitive screen. The tiny room was otherwise furnished with a desk by the window and a couple of easy chairs that left little space to stand. Fornax tried not to look too disappointed when the man turned to greet them, but there was no denying she had expected the BBC’s only outpost in the Barnard’s Star system to be a tad more impressive. The reaction of her companion took her by surprise.