Episode 1: The Half-Buried House
The cozy red tomato-ship sailed peacefully through the stars, and inside, Emil and Tom sat together with the great ancient book of the nameless traveler spread open between them, looking for somewhere new to explore.
Emil turned the crackling pages slowly, until his finger came to rest on one that showed a vast, golden, sandy world. "Here's an interesting one," he said. "Look at this, Tom. It's a desert planet."
Tom peered at the page, his little brow furrowing. "A... dessert planet?" he said, sounding the word out carefully. "What's a dessert? I've never heard of one." He'd lived his whole life beneath the soft green grass of the worm planet, after all. "Is it something nice? It sounds nice. Is it made of cake?"
Emil chuckled warmly. "Not dessert like pudding and cake, Tom — desert. A desert is a great, dry, sandy land, with hardly any water at all. Endless dunes of sand, stretching as far as you can see, and strange rocks, and a wide hot sky. There's no grass, no rivers — just sand, and rock, and sun."
Tom's eyes went round. "A whole world made of sand? With no grass at all? I can hardly imagine it!" He wriggled with curiosity. "I've never seen anything like that in all my life. Oh, Emil — can we go? Can we go and see a real desert? I want to know what sand feels like!"
Emil grinned. "I don't see why not. The book brought it to our attention, after all. And I've always thought deserts have a strange, lonely sort of beauty to them. Let's go and have a look."
"A desert planet it is," sighed Tomato from the control panel, with its usual fond grumble. "Sand. Endless sand. In your boots, in your gears, in everything. I'll be cleaning grit out of my circuits for weeks. But by all means — let's go look at the big sandy nothing."
So they set the course, and after a time, the golden desert world swelled up before them, glowing warm and tawny against the dark. Down through its hazy sky the cozy red ship descended, until — with a soft whoomp and a puff of sand — it touched down gently on the barren surface.
Emil and Tom stepped out, and Tom stopped dead, utterly amazed.
It was exactly as the book had promised — and more. All around them stretched an endless ocean of golden sand, rolling away in great smooth dunes to the far horizon. Strange, towering rock formations rose here and there, carved into wonderful shapes by ages of wind, glowing red and orange in the warm light. The sky was huge and pale and hazy, and the air shimmered with heat. It was vast, and silent, and beautiful, and utterly unlike anywhere Tom had ever been.
"It's... it's incredible," Tom breathed, sliding down a little dune and letting the warm sand run through his fingers. "It's so big, and so empty, and so golden! And the sand — oh, it's so soft and warm! So this is a desert!" He laughed with delight, wriggling happily in the sand. "I love it already!"
Emil laughed too, watching his friend's joy. "I thought you might."
But as Emil looked around at the wide, empty landscape, something caught his eye — and he went still.
"Tom," he said slowly. "Come and look at this."
Tom scrambled over. There, in the smooth golden sand at their feet, was a line of marks — clear and unmistakable. Tracks. Footprints, pressed into the sand, leading away across the dunes into the distance.
"Tracks!" Tom gasped. "Footprints! But — I thought this planet was empty. Someone's been here. Someone, or something, has walked across this sand!"
"And not so very long ago, by the look of them," Emil murmured, kneeling to study the prints. "The wind would smooth them away in time, and these are still sharp and clear." He stood and gazed off in the direction they led. "I wonder who made them. And where they were going." He looked at Tom, that familiar spark of curiosity in his eyes. "Shall we follow and find out?"
"Of course!" said Tom.
So they set off across the desert, following the line of footprints over dune after dune. The warm sand crunched softly beneath their boots, and the strange rock towers cast long shadows across their path. On and on the tracks led them, deeper into the silent, golden land.
And then, as they crested a tall dune, they saw it.
In the distance, rising out of the sand, stood a house.
It was a lonely, weathered, old building — small and square and battered by the wind — and it was half-buried in the desert, with sand drifted up high against its walls and piled across its roof, as though the desert had been slowly, patiently trying to swallow it for years. It stood all alone in the vast emptiness, the only structure for miles in any direction, with the footprints leading straight toward its door.
"A house!" Tom whispered. "Out here, in the middle of nowhere! Who would build a house all alone in the middle of a desert?"
"That," said Emil, "is exactly what I'd like to find out. Come on."
They hurried down the dune and across to the half-buried house. The door hung slightly ajar, sand spilling across its threshold. Emil pushed it gently open — creeeak — and the two friends stepped inside.
It was dim and dusty within, with thin beams of golden sunlight slanting through a cracked window, lighting up the slowly drifting motes of dust. And the moment their eyes adjusted, they saw that the house was full of things.
There were supplies stacked along the walls — tins of food, jugs of water, bundles of cloth. There were maps pinned up everywhere, covered in careful markings and notes, charting the dunes and the rock formations of the whole region. There was travel gear — packs, ropes, boots, a wide-brimmed hat — scattered about, and strange scientific instruments on a dusty workbench, dials and tubes and devices Emil didn't recognize.
"Someone lived here," Emil said softly, turning slowly to take it all in. "And not just for a night or two. Look at all this — the maps, the supplies, the equipment. Someone made this their home. Someone lived out here, all alone in the desert, for a very long time."
"But who?" Tom wondered, exploring among the dusty clutter. "And why?"
Emil moved to the workbench and began carefully looking through the papers there. "A traveler, I think," he said. "A lone traveler — and a scientist, by the look of all this equipment. Someone who came here on purpose, to study this planet. To learn its secrets." He picked up a leather-bound book and opened it. "Look — a journal. They kept careful notes of everything."
But as he turned the pages, he frowned. Many of them were torn — ripped right out, leaving only ragged edges. The notes that remained were hurried and scattered, the handwriting growing rushed and uneven toward the end.
"That's strange," Emil murmured. "Pages have been torn out. And these last entries — they're written so quickly, so messily, as though the writer was in a great hurry. Or... afraid." He read aloud a fragment: "...readings worse today... must finish the work... not much time..." He looked up. "It mentions a scientific expedition. And then — something happened. A sudden departure. They left in a terrible rush."
Tom shivered. "But where did they go? All their things are still here — their food, their water, their gear. Nobody would leave all this behind unless... unless they had to leave very suddenly." He looked around uneasily. "There's no sign of the traveler anywhere. Just... an empty house, full of someone's whole life, and a sense that they ran out the door and never came back."
The two friends fell quiet. The half-buried house seemed suddenly very still, and very lonely, and full of a strange unspoken worry.
Then Tom, poking gently among the scattered papers on a side table, uncovered something. "Emil," he said softly. "Look at this."
It was a photograph — old and faded and curling at the edges. It showed a person: the lone traveler, standing in front of this very house, out in the desert sun. But they were not smiling. Their face was creased with deep worry, their eyes fixed anxiously on something beyond the camera. And scrawled across the bottom of the photo, in the same hurried hand as the journal, was a short and chilling note.
Emil leaned in, and read it aloud, slowly.
"The air..." he read. "...it's not right."
A cold prickle ran down both their spines. The two friends looked at each other in the dim, dusty house, the faded photograph trembling slightly in Tom's grip.
"'The air... it's not right,'" Tom repeated in a hushed voice. "Emil... what does that mean? What was wrong with the air? Is that why the traveler left in such a hurry? Is that what they were so frightened of?"
Emil looked from the worried face in the photograph, to the torn journal, to the cracked window and the endless golden dunes beyond it — and a slow unease settled over him.
"I don't know, Tom," he said quietly. "But I think... I think this traveler discovered something out here. Something about this planet. Something important — and frightening enough to make them tear out their notes and flee their home." He set the photograph down carefully. "And I have a feeling we're not going to be able to leave until we find out what it was."
Outside, the desert wind sighed softly across the dunes, stirring the sand — and somewhere in that wide, hot, empty sky, an old and hidden mystery waited.
To be continued in Episode 2...