Bones on Mars - A paranormal, sci-fi, fantasy romance

Words

"They've changed again." Leela squinted at the viewer and shook her head. She pinched the bridge of her nose and sagged in her chair.

This bullshit with the four words on the wall shimmying into something else had been going on the whole day.

"Let me guess, another variation on the 'squiggly scribble that makes no sense' theme?" Bones asked.

"Spot on."

The enigma of the twitchy letters brought out the human side in the woman. Last evening, when he returned to the home dome, she'd even called Floyd by his given name and not his function.

Wonders never ceased.

He stared at the domed ceiling of the science room and sucked on the tube that contained his dinner. It was bland but nourishing, like the rest of their provisions, until they harvested their first crop.

"If I think about it, I could swear the first set of words I saw down there morphed into something that reminded me of Sumerian pictographs," Floyd said.

Two faces turned at him. Two sets of eyes widened.

Only one person spoke.

"You're an expert in ancient scripts?" Leela asked.

"Not an expert, no. Before I ended up in engineering, I studied a variety of subjects, archeology among others."

Bones and Leela looked at each other.

"But why would there be Sumerian writing on the wall?" Leela asked.

"Perhaps it's biblical," Bones suggested. "Mene Mene Tekel Upharsin. Bible. Book of Daniel, Chapter Five, I believe. Maybe we've been found wanting. Or we're being warned off the planet. Can't see the Persians invading, though."

"Huh?" Leela said. She swished about on her tablet. "Oh, I see."

"Yup, King Belshazzar and his merry men."

"He was Babylonian," Floyd said. "The Sumerians ruled the roost a bit earlier than that," Floyd said. "Plus, I'm really not sure it was Sumerian, though it looked like it."

"If someone wanted us off the planet, they could have blown up the base before we arrived. There's no need for these eccentricities." She sounded as if the moving cavity, the bones, and the spooky writing were a personal offense.

"Hah." Leela pointed at the viewer displaying the wall of the cave with the annoying words. The little camera Floyd had lowered into the hole diligently did its job, even if the image appeared rather grainy.

It made no odds; the writing on the wall was as illegible as it had been from the start.

"They've changed."

"Already? That was quick." Floyd stepped up and examined the image in the viewer. Sure enough, yet another set of symbols had appeared.

Realization whacked him over the head. He pointed at the screen. "Hieroglyphs. They're hieroglyphs."

Leela pushed his hand aside. "Don't touch the screen. I told you before. You're leaving fingerprints."

"Copy them. Quick, before they vanish again."

"There's no need to hurry. We have them on tape, you know?"

"For heaven's sake, I want to know what this says."

"Can you read hieroglyphic?"

Floyd had a hard time not to roll his eyes. "No, but the computer can decipher the text."

"On it." Bones swiveled around in his chair. "Activate main computer."

"Activated," an impersonal female voice said.