Chapter 14 - Contact

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Moving cautiously and keeping a careful eye on the corridor ahead, they approached the location where they had previously discovered the desiccated corpse lying against the sidewall. To Megan's relief, it was positioned exactly as she remembered it and did not seem to have been touched since last time.

She mostly remembered the way the dirt and debris lay on the floor near the corpse and was confident that no-one had even walked close to it since she was there last. For a moment, she idly wondered if the corpse had fallen there before the build-up of dirt on the corridor's floor, lying there untouched for years, or whether it was a more recent casualty having collapsed and died in the already dirty corridor.

She realised almost immediately that the dirty floor was mostly the same beneath the corpse. There was no protected clear patch left beneath it. Of course, some of the detritus could have been residue from the corpse itself so that was not conclusive.

"We'll bag this on the return trip," she announced just before they reached it.

"What kind of hellish creature is that?" asked Tino quietly as they drew level with the carcass.

"I guess that's our first alien," Megan replied, "Or, at least, what's left of it."

"It's ugly," replied Tino. "Ekono, get a look at this thing. It's like a rotting demon."

"You'd be ugly if you'd been shot in the chest and left to rot for months," chuckled Aron.

"Shot?!" exclaimed Tino, suddenly realising the implication. "Shot by who?"

Ekono briefly paused his surveillance of the tunnel behind them and looked around at the dark carcass lying on the floor beside them. He stared impassively at the body for a few silent seconds.

"I'm guessing it was shot long before we landed in this place," Megan replied, trying to soothe Tino's nerves a little.

"You just said it was dead, back at the ship," Tino protested, "No-one mentioned a bullet wound!"

"Whatever that animal is," announced Ekono slowly and calmly, before turning back to watch the corridor behind again, "I think it has been dead for a very long time."

"Could be..." replied Tino, still sounding outraged, "But it still means that something around here has a gun!"

"It might not be a bullet wound," said Aron, "We have no way of telling what made the hole."

"Meera or Santiago may be able to answer that one when we get it back to the Arcadian," added Megan, "But for now, I want to find the next door along the corridor; see if we can find our bearings a little."

As they moved on, Megan became aware that she could hear Tino quietly mumbling a prayer under his breath over the radio. His helmet microphone was only picking up half the whispered words but it was enough to get the gist. She decided to leave him to it and say nothing.

Some sixty-metres further on, another doorway, faint in the darkness, emerged into view up ahead. Like the door to the plasma tube room, this one was also in the left-hand wall. Aron and Ekono shone their lamp beams on it as they approached. It appeared to be the exact same proportions as the last door, with an identically-formed control panel to its left. The only difference was that this door was already open.

That was enough to put Megan on alert. This was the very first door that they had found in an open state and the obvious implication was that there was someone around to open it.

"Switch off the lamps," she ordered immediately.

Everyone complied and the light level in the corridor fell to a fraction of what they were used to. All four of them had their suit lights activated, mini floodlights built into the shoulders of each E.V.A. suit, but they only lit the area a few metres around them and in a much softer light.

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