Footsteps in the Sky Read Free Page A

he finally got out. “Hoku. I wasn’t looking for them. Space is vast. It can easily hide three objects of that size.”
    â€œWe live on a planet with multiple astroblems five kilometers and more across, and you don’t keep better watch for falling rocks? How will we explain this to the councilors? To the Tech Society?” To Her? He added silently.
    Hoku bit off his last word and flattened his lips into a severe line. His nearly square face made any scowl seem like an ogre mask; now it was grotesque with tension and fury.
    But not fear. Hoku had not clawed his way up from a landless clan to his exalted position because he was afraid. It would take more than the first non-human starships ever encountered to make him fear. He was worried, but not about the aliens. Rather, he was concerned that as mother-father of this research station, he would be held responsible for Juaren’s negligence. He would have to straighten that out, even if the boy was a clan relative. Fuck that, anyway. Hoku was no mesa-trash, paralyzed by clan and family. He flung himself out of his chair and pushed past his two co-workers into the corridor. The pale yellow lighting strips flared on to limn his progress. Thirteen paces exactly brought him to his door, and he counted each one off, an exercise to calm himself. The door opened at his rap and odor signature and closed behind him on vocal command.
    The room did not slow him down. Spare, furnished only with a small table, couch, and sleeping mat, the floor was mostly bare, a place to exercise in private. Now he paced quickly across it to his destination, the outside door across the room.
    The portal whisked open and a sea-breeze caught him immediately, wrapped up his anger in a sheet of cool salt-tang. The sea was beveled grey steel, white frosted on the spines of its shallow waves. Along the eastern horizon lay a lens of pale aquamarine, the eye of dawn barely slitted. Stars still glistened overhead, but their twinklings were numbered by the lifting shadow in the east. The old men up on the mesas would call this Qoiyangyesva, the first light that human beings ever saw, the grey dawn. They would be preparing to sing a welcome to the Sun Father.
    Hoku sneered at such superstition, but not at the beauty itself. He breathed deeply of the cool air, felt calm settle across his shoulders like a mantle. When the muscles of his neck were unbound, he went to his terminal and softly commanded it to link him with the central office in Salt. He brushed his hand over the short, jet bristles on his head.
    The cube woke to life, and a woman’s features formed in it, seamed by time, eroded by care. But those grey eyes were bright with understanding. Age had sharpened them while blurring her face.
    â€œMother-Father,” he acknowledged.
    â€œReport, Hoku. What’s going on over there? We’ve already found one of your damned ships.”
    â€œYes Mother-Fa. …”
    â€œSpare me that crap. The assholes who settled this planet may have condemned us to clutter our speech with silly honorifics, but we don’t have to indulge their corpses. Or their non-existent ghosts. Just tell me what’s going on.”
    Hoku nodded. “Three ships now, and that’s probably it.”
    â€œAnd the probe, or whatever the hell the ships dropped on us?”
    â€œClose to the mesa country, out on the big plateau. My men are fueling a truck now. I’ll be on my way in ten minutes.”
    She nodded, but did not speak. She was waiting for something. He gave it to her.
    â€œI’m sorry to report that Juaren Sewuptewa must be suspended from duty. I have tried to shield him, for he is my mother’s-sister’s-boy. But his overindulgence in alcohol and subsequent neglect of duty has endangered the entire colony. I submit my resignation for failing to report him.”
    Hoku felt his heart hammering. The eerie grey eyes regarded him from the screen, iron screws turning