//------------------------------// // Chapter 33: Mounting Expeditions, part III // Story: Onto the Pony Planet // by Admiral Biscuit //------------------------------// Onto the Pony Planet Chapter 33: Mounting Expeditions, part III Admiral Biscuit As befitted the leader of the expedition, Dr. Forsyth was first ashore. The rest of the team was still in the charter boat, stacking equipment near the stern platform, where it would be easy to offload into the Zodiac. His only duty as the inflatable drew close to the island was to serve as a lookout in the shallow water, to make sure that there were no unexpected rocks to tear the bottom out of the boat. Captain Jim said he’d run the same route in each time, and while to Dr. Forsyth there were no landmarks to make that possible, he had no doubt in the captain’s abilities. He gripped the lifeline that ran around the boat tightly as Captain Jim revved the engine, getting up a bit of speed before shifting the engine into idle and tipping it up to protect the propeller. The boat bumped on the bottom and then surged briefly over the crest of a low wave before settling back down into the sandy lakebed. Dr. Forsyth had already taken his shoes off and rolled up his cuffs—it looked silly, but dry pants won out over pride. WIth just Captain Jim in the stern, the bow rose partially free of the bottom as soon as he stepped out. He pushed the Zodiac back into deeper water, and once it was on course back to the Tiara, he picked a careful course to shore. All the smaller rocks were well-polished by the waves, and the larger ones were easy to spot and avoid. I wish I’d thought to bring a towel. It was chilly on shore, and he didn’t want to put his socks on over wet feet, but he did roll his cuffs down. Or a lighter. There’s enough deadwood here that we could have a little fire on the beach. He sniffed at the air—for just a moment, he thought he smelled woodsmoke, and then it was gone. He should have been helping and coordinating, but it turned out that they didn’t need his assistance. Dr. Clay came ashore on the second trip and promptly told Dr. Forsyth that he was taking charge of the landing and unloading process. He was experienced at this kind of thing: he and Dr. Cressida had both been on multiple scientific expositions in the past. He was also wearing shorts and Crocs, which were far more suited to the wading-ashore part of the landing. “I told Jaylen to come ashore on the next run,” Dr. Clay said. “While I’m sorting stuff out, the two of you can get a look at the lay of the land. See where a good spot for a campsite is, for starters.” “We should have come ashore further north,” Dr. Forsyth decided. “I think that we’re a bit clear of where it all happened, but not completely sure. Let’s see what Jaylen says when she’s ashore.” “I thought it was further north.” “Yeah, but—“ A little flicker of something to the southwest caught his eye, and then it was gone. “Hey, Carter, did you see that?” Dr. Clay looked over to the southwest, following Dr. Forsyth’s gaze. “I don’t see anything.” “Probably nothing.” He glanced out to the water. The inflatable raft was back alongside the charter boat, and he could hear Dr. Cresida and Dr. Yin talking and the motor quietly puttering away. I can walk around a bit, get a feel for the island . . . not too far. Dr. Forsyth kept his eyes down to the beach. Despite his rising sense of doubt, professionalism won out. It would be no good to step on an artifact by mistake. Dr. Cresida was the expert at that; it was best to wait until she landed. The beach was still wet from the rain that had come through overnight. Even though the clouds had cleared and the sun was out, it didn’t feel like it was warming anything, and he shivered slightly. There was something just on the edge of his senses that made the island feel occupied, something that unconsciously reinforced the aloneness of the place, as paradoxical as that was. He stopped, only a few dozen yards from their landing point: the little flutter of movement caught his attention again, and he glanced to the woods. There was something there, a little edge of ribbon, maybe, just alongside a tree, dancing in the gentle breeze. Probably trash. A newspaper or plastic bag. But how would that have gotten out here? Behind him, he heard the beat of the outboard, and snapped his head back around. Jaylen was sitting in the middle of the boat, surrounded by boxes and bags. Dr. Clay was already wading into the water to catch the bow rope. I should be there, helping. We’ll have plenty of time to check the island. Indeed, once the charter boat was gone, they’d have nothing else to do for days. He shivered again: whenever he looked over the water where the boat wasn’t, he felt incredibly alone, as if he’d gone so far as to leave civilization completely behind. He looked back at their landing zone, and the stacks of equipment and boxes that were already accumulating there. Did we really need all this stuff? he thought. Food, tents, clothes, scientific instruments, batteries, solar panels, sample containers . . . how much did other scientists take into the field? Or back out of it? ••• After Dr. Cresida had pronounced the landing area clear of any important artifacts, Dr. Clay and Dr. Dillamond took charge of hefting all the equipment further inland, closer to the woods, while he, Dr. Cresida, and Dr. Yin focused on setting up the solar panels. “South beach is the best spot for the solar panels,” Dr. Cresida said. “That way, they’ll have the best light for the longest.” “Yeah.” He went over to get the bags, the strange spell he’d been under temporarily broken. Did ancient sailors feel the same sense of both security and loneliness when spotting a small island? “Which boxes were they in again?” Dr. Cresida rolled her eyes. “Over there. They came on the first load, remember? You could have done that while we were ferrying equipment off the boat.” “I got distracted.” “By anything interesting?” He shook his head and picked up the box. “Nothing. Well, maybe a plastic bag or something on a tree over there. I haven’t gotten a good look at it yet.” “All the way out here. Must have come off a freighter or something. I don’t see how the wind could blow it that far, although let me tell you, I’ve been at some really remote sites before—this one time, we were in Syria, excavating ruins that hadn’t been seen or touched by humans in hundreds of years and we found a buried canteen. US Air Force issue; must have come from a bomber based in the Middle East during World War Two, or else somebody bought it surplus. A shepherd, maybe.” “I once read that any alien species who randomly visited Earth would know that there was intelligent life on it just by the plastic in the oceans,” Dr. Forsyth said. “Although, based on last year’s freshman class, I have to wonder about the ‘intelligent’ part.” “Yeah, it makes me—hold on.” Dr. Cresida held up her hand. “Do you smell smoke?” Dr. Yin shook her head. “I . . . I thought I smelled some when I first came ashore, but my feet were wet and I was thinking of a fire; I thought—” “It wasn’t your imagination.” She glanced around. “But from where?” “Could it be a hunter or something?” “I don’t know.” She set down her box of supplies and held her hand over her eyes. “I don’t see anything burning. And you’d think that if there were hunters, they’d come out and yell at us for scaring off the deer or something.” “Maybe from that other island?” Dr. Yin asked. “South Fox, Sophie.” “Yeah. And would the smoke from a small fire carry this far anyway? The wind doesn’t feel right for that. It’s coming more off the lake.” “People don’t have barbecues on boats, do they?” “This far out? Why?” Dr. Cresida sniffed at the air. “It’s gone, now. But I could have sworn I smelled it just for a second. Really faint. And . . . are those footprints in the sand?” “Not footprints, hoofprints, there are deer on the island, Captain Jim said, and—” Dr. Cresida held up a hand to silence him. Her eyes were laser-focused on the center of the beach. “Right over there, a dry spot, and if you squint at it just right, you can see a little wisp of steam or smoke or something coming from it. Native Americans sometimes buried their fires to keep them hidden”— “You aren’t seriously suggesting that there’s a native tribe on this island.” —“and it’s just good fieldcraft; smoke’s a giveaway.” The evidence before his eyes wasn’t fully clear, not yet. He wasn’t a forensic investigator nor a proper field anthropologist, so he wasn’t experienced in teasing all the meaning out of the disparate pieces around him, the marks in the sand, or the dryer spot that occasionally did emit a tiny little wisp of smoke from a nearly dead fire; it was like a magic eye picture that wasn’t quite in focus. “Dr. Forsyth, get my camera. Now. It’s in the silver duffel bag, the Yeti one. Should be near the top.” Her voice was quiet but serious, and he hastily set down the box of solar panels he’d been carrying while she climbed up on top of the crate she’d been carrying to get a better view, her cell phone out and already snapping pictures. “Hurry, we haven’t got much time. The sand’s drying.” He knew that voice; that was the voice of discovery, so he hurried back and found her camera, not caring what he tossed on the beach. “Somebody was here not too long ago,” she said as he handed it to her. “I can see prints all around, and further down the beach it looks like writing. I’m going to go there first and get as many shots as I can. Dr. Yin, go back and get Dr. Dillamond. Tell him to get his language notes—if there’s an important message here, we need to know as quick as we can. I’m going wading.” She skirted well clear of the fading tracks in the sand, and stepped into the water, moving quickly and deliberately. Dr. Forsyth glanced back in her direction a few times, just to make sure she was still there, but he mostly studied the woods. He had to tell himself to keep scanning, because as soon as he’d looked into the woods he’d immediately become fixated on two things. The first was the little white thing he’d seen dancing about—there was more to it; it was larger than he’d thought and he was sure if he moved a little bit more west he’d get a better idea of what it was. It wasn’t a plastic bag, that was certain. Below and beside it was a box. He couldn’t see all of it, and he knew full well how the human mind tried to assign patterns where there were none, but he also knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that that was a box, because there was nothing else it could have been. He had not seen a single rock on the island yet that cleaved along a straight plane, and that was the only other possibility for what it might be. Even then, the color was wrong. There were lots of ways that a box could have found itself on the island, the most obvious being that it had been carried there by waves after it washed off the deck of a ship. He wasn’t an expert on beaches, but he suspected that waves could reach the ends of the sand; if they couldn’t, something would be growing there. Other beaches were littered with driftwood and other bits of detritus that had washed up, so why not this one? That didn’t feel right, though—it was very deliberately placed. Too convenient, too obvious, and he turned to the east for a moment, where Captain Jim’s boat was rapidly receding in the distance. He’d scoffed at stories of mysterious places and ghosts and the like, but he could feel that there was something here, some kind of alien presence that had left its mark on the beach, and all of a sudden the mysterious disappearance of Kate started to feel less explainable. I really should ask them for an alarm clock. It was light in the room, therefore it was morning. Dale yawned and sat up. He could hear hoofsteps below him—probably Starlight in the kitchen. It didn’t take too long to get dressed and get downstairs, where there was already a cup of coffee waiting. Diamond Mint was also downstairs, setting the breakfast dishes out on the table. He greeted them both and briefly considered sitting down, but that didn’t feel right. There was no reason to be the only one sitting down, so he instead leaned against the wall beside the kitchen. He wasn’t in anybody’s way but could be social if the ponies wanted him to be. Every morning his new routine felt more real, more so than the memory of making his own pot of coffee at home and walking outside to get the newspaper and then sitting there to find out what latest tragedy had befallen the world or for his daily reminder that the politicians in Lansing and Washington just couldn’t get their shit together. It still felt like being back at the shop, the solitude when all the machines were off and the entire building was a sleeping beast not yet ready for orders. Two sips of coffee, and then he noticed that the mood was a little bit off. It was mostly Diamond, he decided. Starlight was harder to read; she was the one who just did her job and didn’t question it. That was a familiar feeling: Cliff had always griped when jobs got changed, but Dorwin had just rolled with the punches and done whatever he was asked without ever questioning why. Diamond’s slightly annoyed mood was nothing new, of course, but he paused for a moment marveling that he’d even picked it up, and he couldn’t say why. Was it that her tail was more active than usual, or that she was stepping a bit harder than she had to? “Is Kate being troublesome?” Diamond shook her head. “New guard.” And then she said a word he didn’t know. He could have waited for Lyra and discussed it with her, but he was here now and so was Diamond. “New guard?” He pointed to the door. “Out there?” “There.” She pointed a hoof up. “Ka-th-rin.” Dale frowned. That was a worrying development. She was getting better, and that was a good thing, but that also meant that she was more active, and he still remembered quite clearly that she’d wrecked her hospital room and had had to be pinned to the wall by Lyra. If she’d had her gun— “I need to go to the hospital.” What had he done with her magazine and ammunition? That needed to be resolved before anything else. As far as he could tell, they didn’t have anything in the embassy that she could use as a practical weapon—unless she stole a spear from the guard—which was good. His thoughts got interrupted by a Guard coming in, holding a piece of paper in his mouth. He glanced between Dale and Diamond, before giving it to Dale, saluting, and returning to his post. Should I have saluted back? Dale looked at the paper and tried to puzzle out the words. He was getting better at reading their language, but still wasn’t very good and relied a lot on guesswork to fill in what word was missing. That didn’t work when there was a high ratio of words he didn’t know to words which he did. The guard had given it to him, which surely meant that it was intended for him personally, but at least Diamond could read it, so he held it out for her. His hand tingled briefly as she took it from him and scanned over it, and then her eyes got wide. “What is it?” “Is . . .” She frowned. “Um, is meeting with, um, cow-Dales soon. Is official meeting and is important. I tell Lyra.” “Yes.” Lyra would know what to do and could give him a better explanation. He took the message back from her, folded it, and stuck it in his breast pocket. “Cow-Dales?” “Is.” She bit her lip, then turned to the kitchen and let out a quick burst of Equestrian. About the only word Dale picked up was his own name. Starlight started laughing, and then answered back. Dale took another sip of his coffee. Finally, the two came to a decision, because Diamond looked back at him earnestly. “House tack from Cow-Dales . . . house table, house chair, house desk, house beds.” She pointed with a hoof to illustrate. “Dale has not meet before—tall, two-leg walk.” She got up on her hind hooves for a moment before dropping back down and tapping her horn. “Two, go out.” She drew an imaginary line with her forehoof on either side of her head. “Not magic.” She turned back to the kitchen and asked another question in Equestrian, which Starlight answered. “Sell and go around most. Not have one big land, have many small land and guest land. Lyra know Cow-Dales. I tell Lyra.” “Go ahead.” She went upstairs; Dale took the paper back out of his pocket and examined it again. It reminded him of a telegram, the way it was printed in all block letters on a typewriter. He could feel the impression of the typebars on the back of the paper. All it was missing were the words ‘Western Union’ at the top—and it did have a logo which included a small steam locomotive. It wasn’t too long before a still-sleepy Lyra came down the stairs, following Diamond. He offered the paper to her, but Lyra shook her head. Instead, she let Diamond get her a cup of coffee and drank half of it before setting the cup on the table. “Good morning, Dale.” “Good morning, Lyra.” He grinned—no matter how urgent this message, Lyra wasn’t willing to deal with it before her morning coffee. Lyra scanned over it quickly, and looked up at Dale when she was finished. “Cow-Dales?” he asked. “Like . . . in book.” She pointed back to the office. “I get book.” She didn’t go all the way to the office, just to the door, and a moment later a small book was floating along next to her head. He recognized it before she even got it back to the dining room; she’d had it on the island. It was the book with all the languages in it. It only took her a moment to find the page. “Minotaur.” “Minotaur.” He sounded out the unfamiliar name carefully. Most things in the book weren’t ponies, so that was a different species, which—he had to admit—did look like a cow. The woodcut was only of its head, but that was enough to show the bovine characteristics and the two horns that Diamond Mint had indicated. If he’d understood her correctly, it was bipedal, and must be tall, since the furniture in the embassy was much bigger than any of the ponies would have constructed for themselves. “Lyra know, Lyra meet with before, are friends. Are nice. Are big but not scary. More bigger than Dale. Higher and wider.” “Is this meeting important?” She nodded, and then shook her head. “Some yes, some no. More important than first embassy meeting; less important than Princess Celestia meeting. Dale not worry.” That was close enough to maybe for him, especially when Starlight poked her head out of the kitchen. While he didn’t understand half of what she said, it wasn’t very long before the three mares were talking, and being a wise man, he left them to it and took his coffee to his office. If they needed his input, they’d ask him directly. Until then, it was best to stay out of their way. Setting up camp had been postponed as the new discovery was analyzed, and the entire group was clustered at the south end of the island. “That’s writing. There’s no question.” Dr. Dillamond studied the pictures intently as Dr. Cresida scrolled through them. He’d gotten a look at the beach before the letters had faded, but they were clearer on the camera. “Hmm, it’s kind of tricky. Sand’s really not the best thing to write in, you know, but I recognize most of these letters. They were in the books.” “So do you know what it says?” Dr. Forsyth asked eagerly. “No idea. I can get the gist of what they’re trying to say from some of the books, like the primer that was illustrated. Decoding a language from a small sample, though, that’s a real challenge. I just don’t have enough material to work with. But, I’ll tell you what I think. “There are two names there. That’s the first part of the message. Without any other references, I’ve got no chance of figuring out what those names are. But in the middle, I’m pretty sure that’s their word for and. That word I have seen before. “Now, after that, it gets a little bit fuzzier. This is where the context really comes in. We’ve got two names—we don’t know what they are. If I just substitute English letters for them, I get roughy baraq and caelum. Which I suppose is as good as anything. ‘Baraq and Caelum’—” “Were here,” Dr. Cresida suggested. “That’d be my guess. Possibly not exactly in so many words: ‘visited this place’ or something like that is possible; there’s a lot I don’t know about their language structure with the limited materials I’ve got. This could be idiomatic. We’ve learned a lot from Roman graffiti about how the common person spoke and thought versus how the educated person did. Sometimes they just wanted to leave their mark on something, and I think that’s what we’ve got here.” “This is ridiculous.” Dr. Clay crossed his arms. “Crop circles, Nazca Lines, they’re not aliens, and neither is this.” “Hell of a long way to come to play a prank.” “And who would see it?” Dr. Forsyth shook his head. “Nobody said it was aliens. It’s inexplicable in the grand scheme and perfectly apparent at the same time. Hooves made it, deliberately. That’s a fact. “What’s also a fact is that this could be a crime scene. Still. I don’t know what the rules are about that. If the police didn’t find it before . . . and they couldn’t have found it before; these prints can’t have been here all that long.” “Or the fire.” “Or the fire. That’s got to be fresh. So our first option is to pack up our gear, move back to the beach, call Captain Jim on the marine radio—he can’t have gotten all that far—and tell him to come back and pick us up. Call the police, report all this, and wash our hands of it.” “And they’d muddle around and take pictures and measurements and then what?” “Exactly. And I’ll bet that Copernicus never worried about the Catholic Church coming for him when he was taking his measurements and making his calculations.” “Wasn’t that Gallileo?” Dr. Yin asked. “Point still stands.” “We haven’t got half the equipment we really need,” Dr. Cresida said. “I mean, what we should really do is put the whole island in a climate-controlled box and get it back to a proper lab. We’re gonna miss stuff.” “Yeah.” “But whoever did this.” She pointed to the fading hoofprints in the sand. “They came back, and maybe they will again, and we ought to know who they are. Especially since the cops can’t figure it out. “So we get whatever we can, while we can. Take it back to the university, analyze it. What we know how to do.” She tapped her camera. “Photos first. Digital storage is cheap, we’ll take pictures of everything. If you’re not sure take a picture of it. Or a dozen. Where it is, what it is, especially things that are going to disappear, like those hoofprints.” “Yeah.” Dr. Dillamond reached into his pocket and pulled out his wallet. “We haven’t got much time, let’s get a picture of a couple of the best ones next to a dollar bill for scale—you did bring rulers, didn’t you?” “Back in our pile of stuff, somewhere.” He creased a dollar bill down the center to make it flat. “This’ll do for the moment. Not the best thing, but it’ll get the job done.” “We’re going to wind up dragging so many experts into this,” Dr. Cresida muttered, lifting her camera again. “What the hell do I know about hoofprints?” “Dr. Wight,” Dr. Forsyth suggested. “He’d know. I already showed him some pictures, and he thought that the prints in the sand looked equine.” He turned to Dr. Clay. “Can we send pictures on your iridium phone?” “I don’t think so. I think it’s only good for short data bursts. Maybe there’s some way to rig it.” “We can think about that later,” Dr. Cresida said. “Right now we’ve got other priorities.” “Yeah.” Dr. Dillamond nodded. “Do we want to try and dig up their fire?” “Yeah.” She fell silent for a moment, snapping pictures. “Carefully, if we can. Even how it’s made can tell us something—how did they pile the firewood? Are there any marks to show how they cut it? It . . . it might keep smoldering underground, and every moment we wait, more evidence is going to be lost. Watch your hands, though; it’ll be hot.” “Fire is hot.” Dr. Clay grinned. “That’s a good title for a research paper.” “I’ll co-author that. Dr. Yin, I’ve got a long measuring tape in my Yeti bag. Why don’t you go and get that, and we’ll string it out along the beach and get an idea of the dimensions of the site, while we’ve still got prints to observe. Just a rough number will be good enough for now. Maybe get some rocks—from the water—and mark boundaries with that.” “Up to the box?” “I think so.” She glanced over in that direction. “I—do we want to open that here?” “It’d be safer not to.” “It’d be safer to pretend we didn’t see it,” Dr. Clay remarked. “Somehow. But—” “But. That’s the thing, isn’t it?” “Pandora’s Box.” “Yeah.” Dr. Cresida looked over at the treeline. “Wonder what’s in it?” “I wasn’t ready for this. Not so soon.” Diamond nodded. “What do minotaurs even want? How should we prepare? What kind of service do they require?” “The telegram says that Canterlot’s sending a real diplomat for advice,” Starlight pointed out. “That’s helpful of them.” “I think it’s insulting,” Diamond muttered. “They should have asked first, and given us the option to say no.” “We’re not ready. Dale hardly speaks Equestrian, the Embassy isn’t finished, Ka-th-rin will probably want to pet them—if she can reach the tops of their heads.” Lyra scraped the floor. “She can stand on a box,” Starlight suggested. “We—I can tell them no, can’t I?” Diamond nodded. “Technically, yes, I think. As the ambassador, you and Dale both have final say in who is and is not allowed in the embassy.” “Should you?” Starlight asked. “No,” Lyra and Diamond said together. “It’s rude.” “Minotaurs are our friends.” A blush crept across Lyra’s cheeks. “I—they are—they’re—big and kind of intimidating, but not that different from ponies, really. They don’t have a princess; they have kind of a lot of loosely allied tribes. Strength, that’s a thing with them, ‘cause they’re big, but it’s not like griffons, they also value friendships and alliances and they don’t get angry easily. They’re not always the smartest, sometimes you can trap them with words, and when they make a deal they’ll honor it. They’re not usually too subtle.” She glanced around the room to make sure that there weren’t any other ears listening and lowered her voice anyway. “I—it’s a test. If we mess this up, Princess Celestia will put somepony else in my place, but it’s an easy test. It’s not the rock.” “The rock?” “Never mind.” She studied the room, and what she could see through the archway leading to the main room. “They’re smart, they know that little places sometimes have big things. We don’t have to put out all sorts of fancy stuff to impress them. They like daffodils and other yellow flowers, but mostly daffodils, if we can get those quick. The Flower Trio, we’ll get flowers from them. Dale wants a flag, Rarity can probably make one. And if we can, new clothes. I don’t think they’ll be impressed with a peplos. I don’t know what his people normally wear. Their book had lots of clothes in it, but . . . they might take too long to make. I’d hate to put all that on Rarity so quick, but maybe if it’s something simple, like another copy of the clothes she’s already made for them. “Their biggest thought will be what kind of trade goods he might offer . . . he hasn’t got much, not right now. When I—when I hosted Demis at the conservatory, he wanted to know if I made lyres, and if I did if he could sell them.” Lyra smiled. “He was disappointed when I said that I didn’t. I wonder if Dale can make anything? Maybe something Humanish that minotaurs could make, too? Even if it’s simple, they’d love that.” “What about food?” “Minotaurs mostly eat pony food, Starlight.” “I know that. Is there anything that bothers them? Fish? Or pig?” Diamond paled. “Don’t just say it like that.” “I don’t think they eat carrion. Maybe to be polite, if they’re dealing with griffons or something. Demis never said anything about it, though, and we talked a lot. I think fish would be okay, but it would probably be best to stick with plants. I wonder . . . you can’t really sell food exclusively.” “What do you mean? Lots of restaurants sell food that nopony else does.” “But anypony who figures out how to make it can. Still . . . Dale had cookies called Oreos that were really good, and had—oh, how to say it? The cookie was like a coin, almost, with how detailed the picture on them was. I’ve never seen anything like them.” “A picture?” “Sort of. A device,” Lyra said. “An embossing, I think that’s what it’s called. There aren’t any pictures of them in his book, not that I’ve seen. I wish he still had some. I think an idea like that—that would be something they’d like.” “If Dale knows the recipe, I can bake them,” Starlight scoffed. Kate tossed and turned in bed, and Nightgazer was stretched out beside her. He wasn’t asleep, even though his eyes were closed and his breathing shallow. He circled her dreams, now with the advantage of being physically linked, his hoof resting lightly on the flat of her stomach and his chin touching her shoulder. Not a terribly comfortable position, but comfortable enough. Close, her dreams were no less fragmented than they had been from afar. Brief, meaningless, senseless, hardly anything he could grasp onto and direct, try as he might. Fireflies in the night, brief bursts that faded away almost as quickly as they were seen. He could have darted after every one, but he did not. He circled patiently, ignoring the forest for the tree, and as her sobering mind worked, he finally found his opportunity, a dream hardly touched by the lingering effects of morphine. Even then, it was strange territory, layers piled upon layers, and he worked his way through, slowly easing into the core of it. While Princess Luna could see herself in dreams, Nightgazer could not see himself, so he did not know how she envisioned him as he gently pushed through. They were on a boat, he knew that much. The design was unknown to him; it could have been something she knew well or just a product of her imagination. It didn’t matter. A man stood at the helm. His identity was unimportant; he was just a set-piece. He guided the boat but not the dream. She spoke, and he understood. She was adrift, not knowing what was real and what was not, caught up in the comfort of drugs, of denial, of illusory safety and he pushed back, ever so gently, using a voice that she knew, a voice that she trusted. He did not know that voice, for it was a voice in her mind, but he could steer it ever so slightly; he could anchor it to reality and hold it fast, and he did. He felt her wake before she even moved in the bed, as her dream flew away half-remembered. He knew that he could hold no more sway and yet he still patrolled until her hand moved and brushed against his cheek, her fingers coming threateningly close to his eye. He knew, even though she had moved out of his realm, that she was not entirely present: some other memory was teasing at her mind. It was some other face her hand brushed across, and he opened his eyes before she fully awoke, watching and waiting. “What if—” Dr. Forsyth pointed to the box. “What if there’s some kind of super virus in there? Something that humans have no immunity to? What if we open that thing and doom us all?” Dr. Cresida snorted. “Don’t be ridiculous. That’s a plot to bad stories.” “I’m just saying.” He moved slightly down the beach, closer to the water. “Maybe not put there intentionally. Like, remember it was a virus in War of the Worlds that brought down all the aliens.” “Wasn’t it actually bacteria?” Dr. Yin frowned. “Might have been. Bacteria can survive harsher environments than viruses, generally. I think I read somewhere that there are likely still living bacteria on Voyager. How long do bacterial infections take to manifest anyway?” “Depends on what it is. How much food have we got?” Dr. Yin asked. “I know what you’re thinking. Enough for a week. Longer if we don’t get greedy. Could probably stretch it and make it last for month if we had to, if we weren’t moving around all that much.” “I don’t think it’s likely to be bacteria, unless this is a trap,” Dr. Forsyth said. “If it were something accidental, something like the bacteria on the Voyager, there’s good odds it would have been here the first time, too, and people would have gotten sick from it. It’s been long enough, I don’t think that we have to worry about slow-moving bacterial infections. Dr. Clay nodded. “So, let’s say it is some kind of pathogen. Most of the really nasty ones, they can’t survive all that long without a host, and if it did—if we open the box and we get sick, we use my Iridium phone and tell someone that this place is off-limits. Tell them what we know. That cop—what’s his name?” “Detective Moller?” “Yeah, him. Give him everything we’ve got, you know. And let him go from there. But I don’t think that’s going to happen.” “It could.” “Yeah, it could. Anything could.” Dr. Clay shrugged. “We’re sounding like a bunch of fools here.” “Are we? Because the more I think about this, the more I think we’re in over our heads.” Dr. Cresida held up her hand. “Listen to my points first, and then we’ll go from there, okay?” “Fine.” “First idea is what Dr. Clay suggested, that this is just some crazy hoax. There’s horses over on the other island, some kind of riding stable, and I’m sure they’ve got a boat. Anybody who lived on an island would. Let’s say that they want to do something funny, like crop circles but with horses. I bet you could train them to stomp out something in the sand, right?” “I’d imagine.” “Or even people wearing shoes shaped like hooves. That’s what I’d do. It’s simpler. “And let’s further suppose that they also put this box here, and that—I think that’s a banner or a flag—next to it. Why? What’s the point?” “Well, to, um. . . .” “Exactly. Those guys that were making crop circles, they wanted people to see them. To discover them and to wonder. Now, unless someone knew exactly when we were coming out here—” “The box could have been put there any time.” “But not the hoofprints,” Dr. Cresida pointed out. “They’re almost gone already. And what were the odds that anyone was going to see them? Unless someone was trying to prank a low-flying airplane.” “And you couldn’t see the box from an airplane, I’m sure. Maybe if they flew real low,” Dr. Yin observed. “But yeah, not much chance of that, in my opinion. Possible, sure, but not very likely. A prank with no mark, what’s the point? Unless you think that detective—Mulder—” “Moller.” “Moller was playing us for suckers all along, and why would he do that? What’s in it for him?” “But it could be.” “It could be. And that could be a death box. And maybe the right thing to do would be to call for someone to come and rescue us. See if we can convince anyone to send a hazmat team out here. Isolate the island, maybe even build some kind of a chamber over the box. I’m sure someone in the CDC knows how to do it. And then when someone eventually opens it—because someone will—maybe all that’s gonna be inside is a little note that says ‘suckers.’ I don’t know. Dr. Forsyth shook his head. “We came here to investigate, and to find out what happened here, and I think that that box is a clue. Let’s consider it logically—let’s use Occam’s Razor instead of wild speculation. Whoever left it is probably also who’s responsible for the hoofprints, right?” “I’d imagine, yeah.” Dr. Yin nodded. “That’s the only thing that makes sense.” “And we also know it can’t have been here a couple of months ago, or else the cops would have found it. So it’s more recent than that, and whoever put it there has figured that we’re all so dumb that we wouldn’t see it unless there was a literal sign in the sand, so it has to be really recent.” “If you wanted to make a sign in the sand, why not arrange rocks or something like that? It would last longer” “Exactly, Dr. Yin.” “That’s a good point. I think that the sign in the sand was either a later idea, or more likely like Dr. Dillamond thinks, it’s just graffiti; just whoever left the box here leaving their mark. Did any of the astronauts stomp out their names on the moon?” “I would have,” Dr. Dillamond said. “If I had the opportunity.” “That’s why you’re not an astronaut.” “And the fire,” Dr. Cresida said. “Let’s not forget that. Whoever did this was just here, and they left not long before we did. I wish I’d been on deck—Dr. Forsyth, you didn’t see any boats, or helicopters, or anything like that, did you?” “No.” He scuffed at the sand with his toe. “Captain Jim said that the radar on his boat stopped working, though.” “Could be related. A—never mind. I’m jumping to conclusions that we haven’t got any evidence for. Here’s what I think. Whoever made that Coast Guardsman—woman—vanish was just here, and they want us to know what happened to her.” “And if you’re wrong?” “Well, if I’m wrong then maybe that is a death box, and maybe it’d be a lot simpler to just put a bomb in it instead of a virus. Only way to find out is to open it.” The group of scientists all slowly nodded. “One more thought, then,” Dr. Clay said. “Let’s suppose it is evidence. Let’s suppose that there is no mystery here; let’s suppose that the guy who did all this never left the island and they just didn’t find him. And let’s suppose that he’s the one who made the hoofprints in the ground. He could have seen our boat coming—I bet you could see that for miles—and he’d know that we didn’t have a good view of the end of the island, so he sets up the markings on the beach that he knows we can’t miss. Let’s suppose that inside the box is—” “Kate’s severed head?” Dr. Cresida suggested. “That’s kind of morbid.” “Well, you were the one talking about a death box.” “Okay, yeah, let’s suppose that’s what’s in there. We open that thing, and pretty soon the Michigan State Police are out here arresting us for tampering with evidence.” “How were we supposed to know that that was what was in the box?” “We knew that this place was a crime scene. And we’re all professors. We should be smart enough to put two and two together. If we find evidence and even worse, mess it up somehow, we’re not going to be able to play the ignorance card.” “I’m willing to risk it. Didn’t Detective Moller say that the FBI was involved?” Dr. Yin shrugged. “I’ve heard federal prison isn’t that bad. I wonder if you get to keep tenure when you’re in prison?” “I don’t remember our contract specifically forbidding that,” Dr. Cresida said. “Although it’s been a while since I read it.” “We’re going to open the box, aren’t we?” “Of course we are, but not right away.” Dr. Clay pointed at Dr. Cresida. “She’ll want to take pictures all around it and I’ll call a friend just in case it is a death box. And I think it wouldn’t be a bad idea to get a look around first and see what else we can find, too. If they left footprints, they might have left something else behind. Like, whoever did this, if they stayed long enough to want to build a fire, they might have wanted to eat something, too, and are they conscientious enough to pack up their sandwich wrappers? Or did they leave those behind, too?” “I doubt we’re going to find any alien Ziploc bags,” Dr. Forsyth said dryly. “You’ll never know until you look.” Dr. Clay clapped him on the shoulder. “Look, if it makes you feel any better, I promise that if we get locked up together, I’ll take the top bunk. You have my word on that.” Dale watched as Lyra sketched on a piece of paper. She’d started with the head and then worked her way down the body. Once again, he was glad that he wasn’t the one trying to sketch out a creature on Earth—there were only so many ways to make stick-animals. Do their horns give them finer motor control? That seemed likely, although he still wasn’t sure exactly how they worked. He’d had trouble with some remote-controlled equipment that he’d demoed because it didn’t give him the feedback he was used to. Since he was smart enough to see the winds of change blowing, he’d invested in it anyway and simply hired a young kid who knew how to make it go . . . the kid had easily figured it out, but it had never worked well for Dale. If horns were the only thing that ponies had for dexterity, though, that didn’t explain why Starlight cooked and not Diamond. Not to mention that Ambrosia had done construction work by hoof, while Silver Spanner had used her magic to accomplish similar tasks. It was more complicated than he wanted it to be. Could Starlight draw this well with her mouth? Ambrosia made decent enough sketches with a pencil held in her mouth. And what about the ponies with wings? Where did they fit in the mix, besides the obvious advantage of being able to fly? Dale glanced back over at the sketch. Lyra had thought to include a unicorn for scale. Estimating the spread of the shoulders—which appeared to be their widest part—was a bit tricky, but it was obvious that they were a foot or two taller than he was. Probably big enough to intimidate Shaq, and with a physique that would make Arnold Schwarzenegger green with envy. I hope they don’t go for combat as a means of negotiation. If they did, humanity was doomed. “Minotaur,” Lyra said proudly, turning the drawing to face him. “Minotaurs are mostly polite and speak our language. I can teach you how to say some things in their language.” “You speak it?” Of course she does; why else would they have chosen her as an ambassador? She shrugged. “Some. Not all that well. But is nice to try, even if bad. They will understand and appreciate. “They like trade. Buy things here and sell there.” He nodded. “If Dale—” She furrowed her brow. “Dale camp had many clever things. Coleman metal ice box. Metal pavilion, metal boat, soap-metal table.” “Plastic,” Dale said. “Forty bucks at Meijer.” “Plastic?” Lyra repeated the word uncertainly. “What is plastic? What is forty bucks? What is Meijer?” “It’s something I bought. I can’t make one. I don’t know how.” That wasn’t entirely true; he understood injection molding, but if someone had let him loose in a plastics plant he wouldn’t have had the slightest idea how to set up the machine. Her ears drooped. “Dale not make camp furniture?” “I bought all of it.” He pointed to the books. “Can Lyra make a book?” She shook her head. “A desk?” He touched that. “I know carpenter.” “Yes, but can you?” “No.” “There are craftsmen—makers, builders—on Earth who can make the things I had but I do not know how. I had to buy them from somebody who does.” Lyra considered that for a moment, and then nodded. “What about food? Dale make food?” “Yes,” he said. He’d made the sandwiches. “Minotaurs will be happy with food.” “Do they not know how to make a sandwich?” “Not sandwich. Cookie. Oreo.” “Uh.” He’d forgotten about those. “I bought those, too.” “Dale not make Oreo?” He shook his head. “Oreos are like table, like icebox.” “Minotaurs would like Oreos. If Lyra get Oreos, Dale say that Oreos his idea. Dale let minotaurs make Oreos, minotaurs happy.” “Like the secret recipe to Coke.” Dale nodded. Sometimes on Earth companies paid big for production rights. Granted, in the future if he sold the right to Oreos or knockoffs he might have Nabisco naming him in a personal lawsuit, but that was a problem for later. As long as they didn’t say Oreo on them he was probably safe—the idea of a sandwich cookie wasn’t unique to Oreo anyway, and since he honestly didn’t know the recipe, there was little chance of him accidentally duplicating it. A pair of chocolate biscuits with some sort of creamy filling was the basic goal. “As long as someone else does the cooking. Can Starlight?” “And Bon Bon. Maybe Pinkie Pie; she is a good baker, too. Now, Dale also want flag. Can Dale draw flag?” “I can.” That would take a couple of tries. There were thirteen stripes, but what color came first? And how were all the stars arranged? Seven and six, he was fairly sure of that. He’d never really paid all that much attention to it; it was something that was just everywhere, sort of a background thing. Still, he’d know it when he saw it, even if it took a couple of wrong sketches. “Back in the old days, this would have been a fortune in film. My first dig, back when I was an intern, I had to pack a lot of it out.” One of the things that Dr. Cresida had brought—in spades—was SD cards for her camera. Since the data was basically free, there was no concern about taking a picture of everything. Or dozens. “Over here.” Dr. Forsyth pointed to the loamier soil at the edge of the trees. “There’s a pretty clear hoofprint.” Dr. Cresida dutifully brought over her camera and snapped a dozen different images from varying angles before laying a small ruler alongside it and repeating the process. “I wish Dr. Walsh was here. He could probably tell us a lot about what made these just from the size and the weight distribution.” “We could take a cast of it,” Dr. Yin suggested. “Do we have anything with us we could use for that?” “Not unless we MacGuyver something up. I didn’t bring any plaster of paris with me.” “How much do you figure a boat costs? One like Captain Jim’s?” “Hundred grand, I bet.” Dr. Clay frowned. “They cost more than you think.” “Payments—well, it would be like a mortgage payment probably. Six, seven hundred a month?” “You’d never get that by the university.” “Wouldn’t have to. I could swing it.” Dr. Cresida looked up from her viewfinder. “You’re seriously thinking of buying a yacht?” “Well, why not? It’d be convenient, and they can’t be that hard to drive.” “If nothing else, a shipwreck off the beach would be a good landmark for the next group of scientists.” “Oh, ha ha.” “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, gentlemen.” Dr. Cresida advised. “I think it’d be cheaper to rent an airplane for a few flights, and let’s be honest, depending on what we find here, affording a yacht isn’t really going to be an issue. Let’s stick to the plan, okay?” “The plan was to have already set up camp, and we don’t want to forget that in all the rush,” Dr. Clay reminded her. “I’d rather not just roll out our sleeping bags on the beach and sleep under the stars.” “You could have done that while I was taking pictures.” “And miss this opportunity to discover together?” “Agreed.” Dr. Dillamond pointed down to the beach. “We think they were there this morning, with their fire, but they might have wanted shelter overnight, too, and it would be in these woods, maybe in a nearby clearing. It might be worth at least getting a quick look around before we get too involved in other stuff.” “What would a campsite look like after someone had left?” “I don’t know. Matted-down grass, holes in the ground from tent pegs, maybe?” “Empty beer cans if my last trip to the Pigeon River was any indication.” Dr. Cresida said. “It’s not a bad idea, really, but I don’t think we’re going to find anything in that regard. I think that they stayed on the beach, and any marks that their camping equipment made are probably long gone, unless there was a whole company of them. “They buried their fire; they might have been as cautious about leaving anything else behind. And don’t forget they could have been here on a boat, could have left not long before we arrived. If they were around the tip of the island, I don’t think we would have ever seen them.” “We would have heard them.” “Not if it was a quiet boat. Like an electric boat.” “Do you really think that’s what happened?” “I don’t know. It could have, that’s all I’m saying.” Dr. Clay looked up and down the beach. “Swing around the west side of the island, maybe to that airfield that you said is there. We—if they’re still around, I don’t think that we’re going to find them if they don’t want to be found. Not just us, anyway. I don’t know about you, but I never got a merit badge in tracking.” “I did,” Dr. Cresida offered. “But you’re right. Let’s focus on what we’ve got and see where it leads us rather than just guessing. And let’s also think about setting up camp. I know we’re all eager, but let’s at least get the tents up and the solar panels positioned. You and Dr. Dillamond do that; the rest of us will walk around and see if I can find anything else obvious before we get into that box. “Also, all of you, remember to drink water and eat, too—I’ve seen more than one intern drop on an excavation site because they get too involved with what’s going on and forget to take care of themselves.” “Yes, Mom,” Dr. Clay said. ••• It didn’t take too long to set the tents up. There was a clearing not too far off the beach, a little ways back in the woods. A sort-of path led right to it. “Wouldn’t it be funny if they’d camped right here?” Dr. Clay said as he drove in a spike. “Who?” Dr. Dillamond asked. “Our mystery horses. It’s a convenient spot.” “Surely there are lots of natural clearings.” “The island’s pretty narrow. We ought to give them a name.” “Oh, come on. That’s jumping to conclusions.” “Well, yeah, maybe it is. But it’s a mouthful to say ‘whoever made camp here.’ Why not come up with a working name? I know Jaylen would agree with me. How about the Houyhnhnm? There were a lot of equines in that book that you were working on.” “Yeah, but I don’t want to draw hasty conclusions from that. There’s plenty of parallel in modern human literature for cartoon characters in books. Why, if you were to look at a bookstore you might think that Muppets were scholars or something.” “Who’d have thought that we’d find writing on the beach?” “You should have thought of it,” Dr. Clay said. “With all the books the police found the first time around, that’s obvious. Maybe there are more in the box.” “Not likely.” Dr. Dillamond set down his hammer. “What if it is Kate’s—” “Don’t think like that. That’s not—I don’t think that anyone would actually do that.” “If we do find something like that, we’re calling for help. I don’t care what anyone else says. Getting to the runway.” “Yeah.” Dr. Clay looked around the camp. “Well, I think we’re set up enough. Let’s go back to the beach and see what Dr. Cresida has found, shall we?” ••• They stood clustered around the box. It had been photographed from every imaginable angle by Dr. Cresida, both with and without the ruler. All of them wore disposable latex gloves. Were the box actually a death box, those were unlikely to be protection enough. If not, they would at least keep their hands from contaminating anything. The latch was simple enough, and that was almost disappointing. Dr. Forsyth would have felt better if it had been some kind of complicated cipher lock, something that was intended to keep the wrong people out. Instead, the box was inviting any curious person to open it. “Your expedition,” Dr. Cresida said. “You think we should all be clustered around like this?” He turned to Dr. Clay. “I’m being stupid, I know I am, but just in case.” “That’s actually not a bad idea. Wait until I get to the point of the beach, and then open it.” “You’re overreacting,” Dr. Cresida reminded him, but made no move to touch the latch. “You’ve watched Indiana Jones too many times.” “Yeah, yeah.” He glanced down toward the water; Dr. Clay was standing right on the very edge of the damp sand. “Well, here goes nothing.” The latch was simple enough, and the lid hinged smoothly back. Of all the things he’d been expecting, a letter written in plain English right at the top was not at all on his list.