Chapter 1

Jorie almost threw his scraper in frustration as the sat-phone at his hip buzzed with an incoming call. The formation was unnatural; there was no other plausible answer for the walls and spires. Yet, when he scratched off the first layers of weathered stone, he only found more sandstone. This was his third site in as many months that produced the same results.

He flipped open the phone.

"Hello," Jorie said, trying to mask his irritation with a calm tone of voice.

"I've got a job for you, if you're interested," the voice said.

Jorie let out a sigh of defeat.

"Yeah, you know I'm always up for a gig, Vantis. What have you got for me this time?"

Vantis didn't have a sense of humor. He presented himself as a man who was doing his job and making money. The fact that he was one of the assistant administrators for the Government Survey Services Administration didn't squelch his entrepreneurial drive in the least. The civil service code didn't explicitly ban his various enterprises, which was as good as condoning his side business as far as Vantis was concerned. Besides the posting at Tourmaline was too small for a full administrator who would notice the doings of its civil servants?

"We have a couple arriving on a private yacht from the central system in two days. They are seeking a nature tour with a side trip to exo-archeological sites. You're the perfect tour guide for this one," Vantis said.

"It would seem so," Jorie said. "How much and how long?"

"They're looking for a week's excursion. Your fee is 1200 credits plus tip."

The money was good, Jorie had to admit, and he needed the credits. The problem was his excavation permit was only good for three more months and losing one week out of the twelve left was going to hurt. He had had doubts before whether he would have time to produce enough data to convince the GSSA to extend his permit. He couldn't start over somewhere else because these GSSA archeology contracts were few and the contractor had to produce results. Time and credits, or the lack thereof, were damning him. He slammed his scraper deep in the sandstone.

"Yes, I'll take it," Jorie said. "I'll swing by your office late tomorrow to pick up the details."

"I'll see you no later than 16:30, Jorie. These are mega-rich clients and attention to detail and protocol is important," Vantis said as if to remind Jorie of his proper manners. "Bye."

The line went dead before Jorie had a chance to reply. Vantis had manners for the clients, but not for his sub-contractors, so it seemed. Jorie stared at his embedded scraper as he tried to organize his thoughts. Of course the clients were the richest of the rich. Who else could afford to send a yacht through light years of vacuum for a trendy frontier vacation?

Jorie wasn't feeling very trendy at the moment as he swatted at the flying bloodsuckers that kept dive-bombing his ears and face. Reaching to grasp the handle, Jorie wondered if he was really cut out to be an exo-archeologist, especially a freelance one. He had earned his university degrees with relative ease. However, when it came time for university slots and exploration teams, Jorie appeared to be the odd man out. The writing was on the screen when his credits were spent and the loans were about to come due. Lowest of the low, he had signed on with the GSSA for contract exo-arch work. He had no team, no back up, and he had to pay for his own tools.

The scrapper was stuck. The tool wouldn't budge with its head buried completely in the wall of sandstone. Jorie considered taking his trowel and digging out the tool, but he couldn't bring himself to simply deface the wall when it was an alien ruin. Well, he was pretty sure it was an alien ruin except for the lack of certifiable proof.

Stepping back from the wall to retrieve his canteen, Jorie felt a sense of impending defeat wash over him. He gazed upon the valley that spread out beneath his perch on the small mountain. Tourmaline was a stupid name for a planet, but the landscape was diverse and beautiful. When Jorie had received his mission packet, he first thought tourmaline was the energy-boosting additive in laundry detergent, even though he knew it was a semi precious gem. Okay, he realized later that tourmaline was a gem, after he had embarrassed himself at the bar in front of his more successful colleagues with his stupid one-liner...

He brushed the humiliating memory aside as he watched a Tourmaline winged predator swoop down from high above and strike the top of the forest canopy. The bird emerged with something brown and wiggly in its claws. Carrying on as if Jorie wasn't there, the bird aimed for a perch further up the mountain over Jorie's head.

Jorie turned back to the wall. Staring at his latest problem, Jorie realized that his tourists had probably already arrived. Acclimatization Protocols took up to 45 hours to reach their full strength, which meant two days on Tourmaline with her 25 hour, 12 minute and 44 second daily rotation on her axis. He toyed with the idea of returning earlier just to collect the scuttlebutt on the new arrivals. With less than five hundred people on the planet, anyone new was bound to stick out like a warning beacon.

A small flock of blue somethings with wings rose from the trees further out in the valley and turned west. Their alien calls echoed off of the mountains with an eerie reverberation. The exo-biologists had argued many times at that poor excuse for a bar whether the creatures were birds or mammals. Their blood was neither warm nor cold, but cool. The feathers were primitive compared to bird species on other planets. When Jorie added his two credits to the conversation by suggesting they were dinosaurs, he got a stiff punch in the arm from the woman next to him and a cold shoulder from the rest of the lot.

He liked the woman, too. Kita was a junior member of the biology team and one of the few unattached women on Tourmaline. She had sandy brown hair which she kept in a ponytail. Unlike her senior members who sported laboratory tans, Kita was a field specialist and spent most of her days in the sun, which made her all the more appealing.

The breeze on his cheeks brought him back to the choice of the moment. Letting his frustration win, Jorie decided to pack it up and go back to base. He left the scrapper where it was but placed a locator beacon beneath it on the ground for his return. In fact, he could add the site to the tourist itinerary and kill two flying dinosaurs with one stone.

Flying over the forest canopy in his assigned vehicle, Jorie peered down through the leaves, catching sight of meandering streams and clumps of twisted bushes. Once in a while he would see some of the larger animals, all of them herbivores, as they trotted through the underbrush. While he had seen photos of the larger predators, he hadn't seen a live one yet.

Besides the whisper of the wind slipping past, his craft was silent as it slid through the calm air. The modified fusion core engine (Fusion Adapted Device or FAD) barely vibrated unless the afterthrusters were engaged for an emergency boost. Only the shadow of the craft disturbed birds and animals in the top of the canopy as he flew past.

Descending out of the mountains into the rolling foothills, the thick forest canopy began to thin out into isolated clumps. Meadowlands bloomed with vines and flowers beside the great trees. The biota was the most diverse in these meadow clearings according to Kita.