The Pyramidsof Nod

The shadow was wrong.

David had studied it for three months from the comfort of an observatory chair on Luna, watching Teegarden b turn once every twelve days, watching the long dark line slide across red sand. He had run the geometry a thousand times. He had checked it against the photographs the probe had sent home decades ago. The shadow did not move like a mountain's shadow. It moved like a thought.

He had not believed it. Not really. Not until the moment the lander touched down and the hatch swung open onto a sky the colour of old copper, and there it was — a shape no wind had carved and no river had worn. A shape that should not have been there.

And beneath it, watching him from the doorways of their tents, the Nidacha — who had waited five thousand years for a ship that never came.

Excerpt shown is a layout placeholder — replace with the author-approved passage before launch.