"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.

"Analyze script currently in viewer. Provide translation, if possible."

"Analyzing."

"If it's gone—" Leela said.

"Then the computer analyzes the tape, just as you said. Are they gone?"

"They're still there," Floyd said.

"Translation available," the computer said.

Floyd's stomach knotted with anticipation. He bent over Bones' wide shoulders and stared at the screen.

The translation stared back. "Meet me at dawn."

For a moment, an eerie quiet filled the room. Other than the soft hum of the air generator and a gentle creak of Bones' chair, nothing disturbed the shocked silence.

Then everyone spoke at once.

"What the fuck?" Bones said.

"This is illogical. And scientifically impossible," Leela said.

"Meet who? And where?" Floyd said.

Once again, the room was silent.

"Good question," Bones said eventually. "Shootout in OK Corral?"

"It's the Pacific Alliance. They're toying with us. Gotta be," Floyd said.

"How?" Leela asked. "They haven't even arrived yet, and while they might mess with our computers, they cannot actually manipulate our environment."

The woman had a nasty tongue, but a good head on her narrow shoulders.

"Okay, so it can't be them," Floyd said. "But someone is doing something. First, we have a cavity where there was none before. It's deep underground. Until it isn't. Then, I go in, and not only do we have a sub-ground anomaly where there shouldn't be one, but we also have a female skeleton lying around where it doesn't belong. To top it all, we have a bloody mobile inscription our trusty machine identifies to be an invitation for a date."

"About sums it up." Bones nodded.

"Even computers can be wrong," Leela suggested. "We'll send this back to mission control. Let them lose sleep over the riddle."

"Nice try. I don't think we're going to wriggle out of this so easily," Bones said.

Floyd stared at the hieroglyphs. They hadn't shifted. But something about the cave was different, and it wasn't the fading daylight.

Then he saw it.

This time, the skeleton had disappeared.

***

His breath rasping at the inside of his ears, Floyd boosted from the bottom of the cave. As theories went, the idea of the camera being faulty, wasn't a bad one. Unfortunately, the thing had been functioning just fine. Skelly was truly gone, and the hieroglyphs on the wall remained stubbornly static.

As if someone was watching their every move and once they'd deciphered the script it no longer mattered.

An icy finger of fear tapped at Floyd's neck.

"Floyd to base. The camera is unfortunately not faulty. We're minus a skeleton."

"Base to Floyd, understood. Dr. Kalal here thinks the bones might have been a projection, not really there."

"They were there. I saw them with my eyes. 3D, full color, the works."

"Did you touch them?"

"No, but I stood real close. I'm not blind, you know? I'm coming back. Floyd out."

He stood at the rim of the cavity and squinted into the ubiquitous dust. He had hoped—dreaded was perhaps a better word—to find tire or track marks. Anything that suggested the Alliance was around playing silly games.

But when he arrived, the ever-shifting sands were pristine, and the only footsteps he could see were the ones he made yesterday. Most of them had been blown over, but in the lee of the rocks, some marks had been protected from the endless wind.

What was going on here?

He wouldn't solve the mystery by standing around. Floyd turned and headed for the base, using the fresh set of footprints left behind from his outward trip as a trail marker.

Footprints.

He stopped.

This was impossible. Not only scientifically, but completely and utterly impossible. It couldn't be. This shit couldn't be happening.

There was a second set of footprints close to his. 

(1127 words/5607 in total)

https://youtu.be/Jmk5frp6-3Q

Nothing like a bit of classical music, eh? This is my favourite from the whole suite. 

This chapter is dedicated to @Elisabeth_Long and her fantastic murderous Zodiac. "Capricorn Rising" is an amazing take on the contract killer theme. Check it out!