Solbidyum Wars Saga 5: Desolation by Dale C. Musser

you it,s Lunnie, and like her aunt, she too won’t wait to be second for anything.  Come see for yourself.”
    I went to the room, and sure enough, it was Lunnie crying as Reidecor slept soundly beside her, with no signs of distress at the noise.  I picked Lunnie up and almost immediately she stopped crying and opened her eyes, peering into my face.
    “See, she wants her daddy’s attention,” Kala said as she walked over to me with a grin.
    “She can’t really see me,” I said.  “I read somewhere that babies can’t focus their eyes for several days after they’re born.  Besides, I’m just a person to her, she has no concept yet what a mother or father is.”  I no sooner said this than Lunnie’s face wrinkled up, and she let out a loud yowl.
    “I think you better apologize to your daughter.  I think you have offended her,” Kala said with a laugh.
    I was staring at Lunnie’s face, and I swear she was staring me in the eye with a look akin to anger, and it nearly made me laugh.  I jokingly said, “All right, Lunnie, I’m sorry.  You know I am your daddy.”  To my surprise, she immediately stopped crying and looked at me with a calm and curious face.
    “Here, let me have her,” Kala said as she reached for Lunnie.  “It’s about time for her feeding.”
    “Do you need me to stay and help you, or can I go and check out the ravine for water and any signs of life?”  I asked.
    “I think I can handle things here, but don’t be gone too long.  Reidecor likes to sleep, whereas Lunnie seems to hate sleeping, but as soon as he wakes up both of them will want attention at the same time, and your help will be appreciated.”
    “I’ll try and not be more than an hour, “I answered as I headed for the exit hatch.
    It was only a short walk to the ravine; it turned out to be deeper and wider than it appeared from the ship.  It actually was more like a slot canyon than a ravine, and it was larger than I had expected.  From the top where I stood it appeared to be about 15 meters deep and about 10 meters wide, and carved out of solid rock that seemed to lay only about a meter beneath the soil.  In the bottom of the canyon, I could see a small shallow stream of water, which varied in width from 600 millimeters in some places to nearly the width of the canyon in others.  I looked about for a way down, but all I could see was nearly smooth, vertical rock walls; surely there would be side channels that would slope down from the desert around me to channel water down into the canyon.  I would just need to look about and find one.  While I was looking down into the canyon, something caught my eye.  It seemed that one of the rocks was moving.  I looked closer and noticed a trail on the sand behind the rock and realized that it was indeed moving and dragging itself through the sand, leaving a trail behind it.  My first thought was it might be a turtle, but I saw no legs, nor did I see anything that resembled footprints on the sand.  Slowly, the rock-like creature reached the water, entered and soon disappeared beneath the surface, where the glare on the water obscured its path.  I decided to move in an upstream direction of the canyon in hopes of finding a smaller ditch that might slope down into the canyon.  I hadn’t gone too far when I came across an area strewn with rubble and clearly appeared to be a portion of a wall, made by some intelligent life form, which protruded out of the sand.  As I looked around I could see outlines in the sand that indicated that at one time a number of structures had stood in this location, and from the arrangement, it must have been a small town or city. 
    I abruptly realized nearly an hour had gone by since I left the ship, and I had promised Kala I would return.  I took a shorter and more direct route back to the ship.  When I entered the hatch, I could hear a baby crying; this time I could tell it was Reidecor, as he had a clearly different sound from