Lieutenant Diego Garza sat on a boulder outcropping on a ridge overlooking their settlement.   Someone with a cheeky sense of humor had taken to calling it Telluride after the mining town in Colorado.   Telluride was actually derived from the phrase “To Hell You Ride”.  To Diego there was no better name.  It wasn’t even midday and the temperature had already risen to 42° Celsius. 

He pulled out his canteen, opened the topper and took a long drink before splashing some of the liquid on his face.  The sky was blue without a cloud and the distant purple mountains loomed inviting as a respite from the heat.  

Replacing his canteen he removed a piece of jerky as he scanned the area for anything out of place.  Nothing.  Diego had grown up in the Mexican state of Senora so desert was nothing new to him. He didn’t care for the heat, but he understood the desert and how to survive in it.  

Still chewing on his jerky he shouldered his phaser rifle and continued picking his way around the larger rocks on the edge of the outcropping. He hadn’t gone twenty steps when his eye caught a small rock out of place. Diego kneeled closer.  It was about a fist sized rock turned over.  The imprint in the dirt where it had once rested still showed darker with moisture.   Something or someone had came through here.  

It was unlikely to be one of his security officers,  as their patrols were supposed be closer to the settlement. It could have been one of the survey teams. Standing he scanned the area. Moving slowly he found another disturbed stone. Walking in the general direction he found a shoe print in the sand.  The sand was dry so it it didn’t leave a defined print, but it was definitely a humanoid foot print and not some animal. 

Diego paused to drink more water before continuing to follow the tracks. He eventually came to a place where rocks had created a bowl shape with a larger boulder overhang.  Inside the bowl it was filled in with sand from blowing winds. The sand was heavily disturbed like someone had spent considerable time there.  Sheltered under the overhang one could observe Telluride from here even under the most extreme of conditions.  

Diego opened his tricorder and performed a preliminary scan.  There was nothing of note.  A detailed scan may have yielded something like a skin cell or but of hair. Unfortunately, he didn’t have the equipment on him for that.

Snapping his tricorder shut Diego turned away from the bowl and after a few minutes he picked up the track again.   He followed it for the next thirty minutes.   He crossed a dry stream bed where the tracks were clearly visible. Pushing through some scrub brush on the otherside panting and drenched in sweat.   

Before him stretched the wide black swath of a lava flow.  He spent the next hour trying to pick up the sign again,  but it was gone.  Sighing he looked around in defeat. Tapping his combadge,  “Diego to Commander Torin. I found something.”