Footsteps in the Sky Read Online Free

over. There could be only limited access to the sky Kachina and the land-bound telescopes, and many clamored for it.
    Hoku stopped for an instant to close his outside door. The dawn had become Palatala, a rim of fire on the far edge of the sea, a cinnamon cloud expanding above it to lighten the eastern quarter. Hoku allowed himself a brief grin, so boyish that for an instant he really looked his twenty years. Then he snapped down his determined mask and strode off towards his own coming dawn.
    V. Traitor
    The door closed fast, creating a moment of silence, a sacred space where only mind moved. Not for long: there was much to do. Nevertheless, when everyone else was panicking, stillness—and the rationality it might bring—was an advantage.
    How long had this planet been home? Five Terran years. Five years since the circuit ship had passed close enough to leave behind a landing craft. A craft now hidden deep, deep in the ocean. Five years on a planet which offered, on the one hand, a pack of pseudo-savages intentionally living at the edge of habitable lands, and on the other a bitter, driven lot who knew their days of petty power were limited. Five wearing, acrid years.
    Fingers danced, an identification code which had never existed as input sputtered into a crystalline brain, unlocked faded secrets.
    No one knew, that was certain. Even on a planet whose population did not exceed a hundred thousand, it was possible to appear from nowhere, if one were clever with people and machines. If one were an orphan, the child of clanless loners who lived on the sea. There had been such a couple, such a child. A predecessor, making way for his replacement.
    The alien ships. Who could have predicted that? But they could not fall into colonist hands. The Vilmir Foundation—or the Reed as they so charmingly called it here—would either have them or destroy them. The terraforming technology those ships carried was far, far ahead of anything human beings had developed. In point of fact, nine of the ten settled worlds had apparently already been terra­formed by whoever these aliens were: nine planets with the same kind of atmospheric chemistry and plants that were demonstrably related. Nine planets with the same—non-Terran—genetic code.
    And the tenth was Earth.
    In orbit, a computer, cold for five years, awoke. A flexor shifted, aimed the lens of a powerful laser towards a dim yellow star. It stuttered with a tongue of light.
    Afterwards, there was no trace that the message had been sent. Now there was another job. The team from the Paso observatory would certainly be first to the alien’s landing sight. What could be learned there would be. That was in the job description.
    The pension had better be worth it.
    VI. Pela
    Pela opened her eyes, fearing they would reveal the nightmare still livid behind her lids. But what she saw was blue sky and a man’s face.
    â€œShe’s awake,” the man called. His accent was funny, some kind of lowlander dialect.
    â€œKeep her there,” a different man answered. “We’ll need to ask her some questions”.
    Pela sat up quickly. The vestiges of a hangover and a stabbing pain in her arm made her wish she hadn’t.
    â€œTake it easy,” the man said. He had a round, kind face, not quite handsome. His voice sounded nervous.
    â€œOh, shit,” Pela gasped. “Shit. The Kachina. …”
    It was there, where she had seen it … this morning? A blackened cylinder resting on four legs. Nearby an enormous flag—a parachute, she supposed—lay flat on the ground, fluttering slightly in the awakening breeze.
    â€œHow did you get this mark on your arm, Isiwa?”
    Younger sister, he called her. He was trying to be nice.
    â€œIt touched me,” she replied, staring at the bandage that the man must have put on her arm. The bandage and the soil near her were soaked with blood. “The Kachina touched me.”
    â€œOh. Stay