We walked down the hill to the plain that was between us and the northern hills. It was dry and poor and boring land, and the sand was red because of all ferrous compounds. Nothing much grew there because it was also acidic soil, and the winds blew dust around freely. Luckily the weather today was mild, as in a sand storm the plain became almost inpenetrable. It continued dozens of kilometres to the East so it could be really dangerous to get lost there. But we were heading North to the valley, and in this weather it was just a pleasant twenty-minute walk.
Enembe did the orienteering, and we slowed down when we approached the place from where the bang had been heard. There could also be signs of a thunderbolt or a fire, but everything looked just normal. Small dry bushes were growing between rocks on the hillslopes, and there was dry grass on the valley floor. That implied that there was at least some water available during the rainy season.
Enembe stopped, and we knew that this was the exact spot we were looking for. The valley made a slight turn so that we just could not see the hill where the Floating Rocks were, and thus our camera could not see here.
- Look at the grass, Ismen said after a while. I tried to look, but it was just lying there, dry and flat just like dead grass. - It is bent toward the ground, but always away from this place. There was indeed an explosion here.
Enembe kneeled down and put his face into the grass. He crawled around and stopped and observed and went on again. After a while he stood up.
- There are no signs of any burns on the grass, but there is a smell of sulfur, not like gun powder but more like pyrite. That is strange, because pyrite does not explode.
- But it looks like pyrite dust on the grass, and on this rock as well, I said.
I remembered when we had collected pyrite from a river sediment when I was child. It was on the rocks and in the river sand, and we had thought that we had discovered a huge motherload. I had been so disappointed when my brother had told me that it was just cat gold, not real gold.
- OK, it seems that something has exploded a pyrite-containing object into dust, and that dust has then settled on surfaces. Do you think that it could be the Floating Rock that the Dark Probe took?
We looked at each other. Ismen was right. The Rocks don't explode by themselves, so it must have been somehow caused by the Probe - or someone who was steering the Probe. And the Rocks did contain a lot of pyrite, we had checked that with XRF just a few days ago. We started looking for any signs of human activity. And indeed, there were footprints in the sand. We followd them, being carful not to mess them with our own feet. The sand was too dry and coarse to reveal any details of the shoes, but clearly a human had walked up and down the hill toward a large rock.
Behind the rock we found a pair of earplugs, several cigarette butts and burned matches. Someone had been here, probably waiting for some time, and having been prepared for a bang. We concluded that this person had exploded the Rock on purpose in the valley, and they also owned the probe because if they hadn't owned, they would have had to stop the probe violently and we would also see remains of that around.
All that had happened less than two hours ago. Where was this person now? And where was the probe? We looked for any signs of footprints around the area, and indeed we saw a faint trail continuing from the waiting place further up the hill. We started following the tracks. The trail was straight and thus easy to follow, and we came to the top of the hill. On the other side we saw another valley. It was not as deep, but there was a steep cliff, and a tent was erected below the cliff. A white cane was placed beside the tent door.
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The topic for tomorrow is Discovery.
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