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

Neanderthal

Bones pressed buttons on the robo-medic, and the cuff around Floyd's upper arm deflated with a hiss. Frown lines on Bones's usually cheerful dark face showed something was wrong, but then Floyd had known that already. Middling nausea churning in his stomach, he asked, "What is it?"

"As far as I'm concerned, nothing. our vitals are fine, even if the blood pressure is too high." Bones pulled the stethoscope from his ears and let it dangle on his broad chest. "But other than that, there's nothing to write home about. That's what worries me."

"Why are you worried about there being nothing to worry about?"

"Because you're obviously having hallucinations."

"We all have them, right? We might have imagined those bones in the cavity."

"We have recordings of them. We know they were there. The tracks don't show on your camera. There's just nothing, nada."

"They were there! As were the handprints on the panels."

"Sure, sure," Bones said soothingly.

"I'm not nuts."

"I don't think you're nuts. I just think you need to take it easier for a couple of days. You've been running around like a blue-arsed fly, and that's no good for anyone."

"Have some OJ," Leela said. A yellow tube appeared in Floyd's peripheral vision, and he snatched it.

"What I need is a large beer."

"We haven't got that," Leela said. "It's against protocol." She pursed her mouth and examined the cupboards in the broom cabinet that passed for a surgery as if they hid contraband alcohol.

Well, there was some, but that was for disinfecting things.

"Someone should change the protocol, then." Bones shut down the robo-medic and rolled it back into the compartment where the thing lived. "Once in a while, a glass of a decent red for medicinal purposes can work wonders."

Floyd slumped in his seat and massaged his temples. The tracks had been there; he knew it.

Did he really? Somehow, the events of the last couple of hours melted and blurred into a puddle of doubt.

Through the open door that connected the surgery with the work-space pinged an alert.

"Incoming message from Mission Control."

As one, the prep-team sprang up and entered the work-space.

The communication screen flared and displayed the upside-down triangle of the Atlantic Association in yellow on bile-green.

Fortunately, the psychedelic logo was immediately replaced by the stubbled face of a sour-looking man in his fifties.

"Mission control to Mars base. Do you copy?"

Leela took her seat and flipped the lever that opened the comms channel. "Mars base to Mission Control. We copy."

"It's about your skeleton. The one you mislaid."

A wave of red-hot anger stabbed into Floyd's head, and it started throbbing like a faulty rocket. "We didn't..."

"Communication protocol!" Leela shot him a glance that could have frozen acid, so he shut up.

She smiled at the screen. "Continue, Dr. Paulsen."

The man scowled from the screen. "I can't say I was happy with your find, but I thought it might have been the remains from one of the, eh...failed landing attempts. We lost an awful lot of people there."