Petra gave him two alerts in the next few hours. The first was for a small deposit of half a dozen elements in the low 60s. If Nick wasn't on a time limit he would have gone to dig those up right away.

  The second alert was for a cluster of a bunch of elements around 90, mostly element 92. That was a fairly large deposit, but it was pretty spread out. He'd have to dig out a lot of that mountain to get enough to use. Still, an important bottleneck was going to get relieved soon. This was already a worthwhile trip.

  Nick passed more and more ruins, things that looked like entire towns. The Death Star was setting, so he changed course and headed slowly down what looked like the main road of one of the towns. It had been paved with cobblestones. He wasn't sure whether that meant ancient technology or just a rural area that couldn't afford asphalt.

  Then again, doesn't asphalt get soft when you heat it up a lot? Nick wondered whether asphalt could turn liquid and run off somewhere. Maybe these were paved roads and this is the layer that can survive the Death Star.

  He looked around with the cameras, and as soon as the shadow of the mountain to the west covered the ruins, Nick took a deep breath and got out to look around. I'm really taking my chances with germs, here. He carried Petra and the display tablet with him, and had Petra eat and save bits of the first broken wall he came to. I'll find out what it's made out of later, maybe.

  He could make out the remains of half a dozen buildings. Each one had had five sides instead of four. They were shaped like a home plate, so apparently these aliens liked right angles too. The pointed bits all faced the road. Nick went through an entryway with some debris below it that probably used to be the door. Standing in the middle of the one room building, he asked Petra for a scan.

  Iron and elements 47 and 79 were the surprises. He tracked down the iron to small bits in the walls, and a little of Petra eating stuff away soon revealed something familiar. He took one as a souvenir. I guess a nail is a nail, the whole universe over. He imagined seeing it in a museum on Earth someday, with a little card saying “the first crafted work discovered of the natives of Planet BigBall.”

  He moved to the back. The thing there made of stone looked suspiciously like a fireplace and broken chimney. This place really has the feel of a ghost town in the Wild West. Nick shuddered. In the 1800s, we wouldn't have stood a chance if the Sun had turned into a Death Star.

  This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  The deposit of elements 47 and 79 was small, concentrated, and under a pile of the big rocks that had fallen off the maybe chimney. Nick shaved pieces off the rocks until he could move them without straining too hard, which took him maybe fifteen minutes. There was something an awful lot like wood underneath, only the grain looked really weird, with zigzags interrupting the lines. Nick took another sample and cut through it to find the deposit.

  What...the hell...is that?

  There was a bag under the floor, but Nick had no idea what it was made out of. For some reason it creeped him out. It was an animal hide of some sort. Are those scales...or feathers? He opened the bag gingerly and peeked inside.

  Deposit is the right word for it, I guess. The bag was full of gold and silver coins. Nick pulled out one of each and examined them in the fading light. They were flat and round. The shape probably just made sense if you were going to carry them around a lot. There were markings on the coins, but Nick had no hope of reading them. He couldn't even figure out what the picture in the middle was supposed to be.

  Nobody came back for their money because it was buried under big rocks and they didn't have the time or the strength to dig it out. Or maybe, the owner just died. Wait...

  Nick looked around, then quickly searched in and around the other buildings. There weren't any bodies. No skeletons or anything. Maybe it really was a ghost town, everybody left instead of dying here.

  Behind three of the buildings was a pit, maybe twenty feet across and four feet deep, in a bowl shape. The edge was lined with stones, and it had a solid look to it. Some of the stones were carved. He had no idea what it was for, so Nick just took pictures of everything and got back into Rockhunter.

  An hour later, he steered farther south. He didn't want to point the way to Petra's dungeon like an arrow. He would approach the source of the transmission from the side.

  A bit nervous, Nick checked a few times that Rockhunter's transmitter was turned down low enough that it wouldn't be picked up even from the dungeon. He fidgeted with a gold coin while he waited for the hoped-for third transmission.

  Nails. Coins. Radio, maybe. Are the aliens just like us, but with pointier houses? And creepy fucking creatures they skin for leather?

  “You have a message.”

  Nick yelled a moment in surprise. He had been in almost total silence for maybe an hour, and Petra suddenly speaking up spiked his heart rate for a few moments.

  “A message or a call?”

  “...Yes.”

  Nick's jaw dropped. Did Petra just make a joke? Nah. It must have just been some weird parroting thing. My own sarcasm biting me in the ass.

  “Accept the call.”

  Showtime.