On the Rocks

by Peter Rhodan

  The dull grey metallic looking water was maybe a kilometre wide in places and stretched maybe two kilometres in either direction. Flanking the lake were abruptly rising bare hills, or mountains partly covered in patchy green grass and there was the occasional shrub that looked very Earth like as far as he could tell in the deepening gloom but they were fairly devoid of other vegetation. Lower down on what little flat land there was below the hills grew trees and shrubs that also looked quite Earth like although the homey nature of the vegetation did not alter what was overall a fairly bleak vista surrounding him. He was sure he had never been in such a grey, uninviting place on any terrestrial world he had ever visited in his long Naval career.

  To his right the hills did become mountains. One of those peaks must have been what they had hit on their way down to their abrupt landing in the lake but he couldn't see anything from here in the darkening gloom let alone the low lying cloudy mist that obscured the probable impact point. To his left the land appeared lower and not as bleak but it was hard to tell. A burbling groan interrupted his sightseeing and glancing around he saw the tail section of the ship visibly moving lower in the water.

  "No!" He yelled, splashing through the shallow water towards the now rapidly sinking vessel. Even as he reached the hull, his feet suddenly found a drop away in the muddy bottom and he sank into the water, his loss of traction catching him by surprise as he found himself floundering trying to keep his head above water. With a sucking sound the left engine manifold, the only part of the shuttle still above the surface, sank below the grey water leaving a wake of bubbles.

  As he half floated, half paddled to try and keep his head above the grey and chilly liquid more bubbles broke the surface having escaped the sunken ship and it was so desperately cold being immersed totally in the water he quickly decided he could not face diving into the cold depths right at that moment so he made his way to the shore where he collected his salvaged supplies. Real darkness was starting to creep over the land so he made his way to a nearby rocky outcrop where he piled his things in a small hollow he discovered amongst the boulders and loose stones. Collecting some brush in the deepening gloom he made a small campfire in front of his hollow and set it alight with one of the gas lighters the emergency kit contained and draped his wet clothes on the rocks around his hollow only to find that without his clothes the cold quickly seeped into his bones despite the warmth provided by the fire.

  He spent most of the night only managing a sort of semi doze due to the biting cold and he periodically got up and added more fuel to the small fire despite it doing little to keep him warm. He was fortunate there seemed to be plenty of tree debris along the shore a nbt above the water level and which probably marked the flood level in the spring as the snow t eh mountain tops melted. The cold only firmed his decision to go in search of civilisation the next day, or at least find some real timber to provide himself with a much bigger fire at night!

  Dawn came slowly in the lake valley with the sun masked by the surrounding hills and mountains with the shadowed air remaining chill. The sky was overcast but the numerous clouds were light and high so he felt safe from being rained on at least.1 Now that he wasn’t trying to fly through them, the clouds were well above the mountain peaks of course! The next question was which way he should head. Moving up the sort of valley that ran up into the hills to the left of where his ship had sunk he determined where the sun had risen, roughly, and using the traditional directional system declared that east. Scanning the surrounding terrain he observed there was possibly smoke rising in the far distance to the west although the morning haze meant he could not be certain.

  His earlier idea to seek out civilisation started to appear less appealing now than it had the previous evening. The surrounding emptiness gave the impression of a planet not heavily settled, indeed they had remarked on the lack of modern communications traffic on their hurried approach. The complete lack of electro-magnetic communication and the couple of relatively small patches of what may have been artificial light on the night side as they had slid into the atmosphere did not auger well as for just how civilised the planet was. What they had seen from orbit did not really give much indication of exactly what level of technology he would be facing other than it was obviously pre-electricity although how people could have spread to the other continents without large and capable ships was a puzzle. The small sailing vessels they had observed on either side of this, the largest continent, had not looked big enough for serious open ocean navigation.

  If this was a colony that had regressed technologically then there was a good chance the locals may not be all that welcoming to strangers. "All right, time to move sailor." He thought to himself. It would clearly be best to work on the basis that this was a lightly settled colony that had regressed until proven otherwise. The lack of electro-magnetic traffic probably not only means a pre electric technology base, but almost certainly pre-industrial as well, the two sort of going together. To avoid undue attention, he decided he was better off arming himself with non-technological weaponry upon which thought he turned and stared out at the cold lake where the ship had gone down and shivered at the thought of entering that frigid water again. He almost certainly had to consider the possibility of hypothermia as well if stayed in the frigid water for too long. "Great!" He thought sourly.

  At least the small fire had dried his clothes, he thought thankfully as he dressed. He arranged the water purifier where it would get some light on the built in solar panels, hopefully the sun would come out but even just this cloudy light would give it some charge and taking the main container to the lake, he filled it with some of the not very inviting looking water and got the thing working on purifying it while he opened a ration pack. If he was going into that water again the first order of business would be re-stoking his fire which was now reduced to just a few embers.

  An hour later he was ready with the fire burning nicely and plenty of spare wood piled up from the dead branches he had found along the lake a bit further to the east. He stood and tried to refresh his memory of the layout of the shuttle before doing anything else, it was not going to be easy under water. Having got his nerve up he sloshed out into the frigid waters till he reached the point where the bottom fell away. He sucked in several deep breaths and then took the plunge.

  Diving into the freezing lake was still a shock but he had to find out how far down the wreck was. Surprisingly his outstretched hands reached a metallic surface in seconds. "That's good" he thought to himself as he felt along the metal edge of what he began to suspect was the right upper manifold cover. Finally he had to surface to catch his breath. He dragged himself out of the water and lay on the shore shivering for several minutes. While he lay there the sun came out for the first time since he had crash landed and the temperature rose significantly.

  He stood up and trudged out into the uninviting water once again. This time he managed to find the doorway he'd exited through. He tried to surface straight up so he could get a bearing on where it was. He memorised a couple of landscape features as he floated, shivering from the intense cold, then taking a deep breath went under again. This time he got to the doorway quickly and swam inside and to the left. Just to the right of the hatch had been a medical locker with oxygen masks. His numb fingers struggled with the latch but he got it open and grabbing the soft material his fingers found inside he scrambled out of the ship and made it to the surface, just.

  His hand held two of the emergency oxygen masks with their small built-in cylinders of oxygen which meant he'd be able to stay down much longer. But he was so cold and exhausted he decided to head back to his camp and warm up before immersing himself in the water again. Hypothermia was obviously going to a real problem for him when trying to salvage the shuttle so he had no choice but to limit himself to short trips underwater.

  Once on shore he felt so cold that he decided to spend a couple of hours recovering before attempting to liberate anything more from the sunken shuttle. The morni
ng’s activities had drained him so much he found he quite content to hunker down in close proximity to the warmth of the fire and just semi-doze. Eventually he realised he could not put it off any longer otherwise he would lose the sun behind the surrounding hills so with an emergency breath masked strapped on he returned to the frigid lake and started salvaging the shuttle as best he could. He still couldn't get to the arms locker but he found several useful items, including a thermal bodysuit normally worn under a space suit when doing external repairs or other work. He also found a rod, nearly two metres long, which he first tried using as a crowbar to pry open the route to the arms locker but unfortunately it was again without any success.

  Eventually the cold became too much and he returned to his campsite to warm up in front of the fire, the sun having disappeared behind the clouds once more just add to his discomfit. Besides his pole and the thermal suit he had little to show from his day long efforts. He arranged a couple of sticks from his stack to the side of the fire and draped the thermal suit over them to dry, hoping like hell it would be big enough. He could manage something oversize but a suit that was too small would be unusable.

  The suits came in several sizes but this one had no tag so he wasn't sure of anything other than it was a male suit, not a female one given the cut of the design, the female ones had large chest and hip areas proportionally to the much straighter male ones. He had found a few more emergency ration packs so he wouldn't starve for the next few days and he was confident he would be able to break into the galley area with a bit of work using his pole as a lever. All in all he decided was actually quite happy with his day's efforts and determined he would leave further dips in the frigid waters till the morrow. Between the lack of sleep the previous night and the day's exertions he slept like a log till some point before dawn when the cold must have awoken him, the fire having dwindled to a few glowing coals, so after adding some more wood to the fire he lay there in the darkness for some considerable time trying to warm up before eventually nodding off again.

  The following day dawned drab, cold, overcast and rainy. Joy!” The grey clouds hung low over the hills hiding the tops of the peaks in their fluffy embrace giving the whole valley a very closed in feeling like walking into a room with a ceiling much lower than one is used to. With no real cover from the drizzle Arturo decided his first task was to find something in the wreck to make a shelter out of. After floundering around achieving little he eventually remembered a storage bay near where the emergency rations were that had survival gear stored in it. Why it took him so long to remember this was a puzzle and not a little annoying, especially as he had already spent two fruitless trips to the wreck by the time he did remember. It took him another three trips to drag the contents of the kit out of the storage bay they were in and then up through the water and he was suffering from the cold quite badly by the time he finished. The constant drizzle was not only annoying but also very lowering on the spirit, much more so in this isolated location than he had ever experienced back home. He found himself succumbing to the duel feelings of loneliness and despair and it took some effort for him to shrug off the welling blackness in his soul.

  The two main items he managed to retrieve were a four man tent and one of the four sleeping bags that were held in the locker. The sleeping bag's synthetic covering shed the water readily but he found to his dismay that water had got inside anyway so he had to prop it up in front of the fire as best he could after fully opening it in order to dry it out. The tent was soaked as well but this was less of a problem once he had set it up although the task proved much more difficult than he envisaged what with his almost numb fingers and lack of any help and by the time he was finished it was late into the afternoon. Not that it was easy to tell the time of day in the oppressive grey light that covered everything like a blanket but he could tell it was getting late from the growing darkness.

  At least I've dried out, he thought to himself as he leaned back against a boulder basking in the heat from his fire and eating his ration lunch. Of course the local weather god decided then that the drizzle should turn into quite heavy rain almost straight after having that thought and he retreated into his damp tent as it continued pouring out of the sky for the rest of the day and most of the night. He did not get a lot of sleep due to the noise of the rain, the growing wind which kept threatening blow his shelter away and the fact the sleeping bag had not dried out enough to use. By morning he was cold, damp and tired before the day had even got started. The sky continued to offer a vision of nearly uniform grey overcast and the wind, while not blowing as forcefully after dawn as during the night, was still freezing. After a ration pack breakfast he first re-built his fire from the couple of large embers that had refused to succumb to the rain, a potential problem he had not even considered in his misery the night before. The damp wood put out a good deal more smoke than previously but it did at least burn and provide some heat. After warming up he then had to wrangle with himself to return to the wreck once more and look for anything else he could use.

  After two more trips under the frigid lake he gave away exploring the cabin, at least for the near future. He would need tools to get into the areas where the doors wouldn't open or the hull was really buckled and the only shipboard tools were in the crumpled part and beyond his reach, naturally. He even made a third dive to explore the outside of the shuttle but could find no entry into the areas he couldn’t access from the inside. He did find that much of the underside of the hull was badly damaged and the battle armour was flaking off which was a sign of both the over hot re-entry and the force with which he had hit the mountain. His only real find was a bit of wrecked framing or something that he felt would make a possible chisel. Besides that, all he had really accomplished was to add some more breathe masks to his collection from near the exit on the other side of the shuttle. Between the cold and the lack of progress he found himself feeling rather deflated as he returned to his camp and huddled in front of the fire. He was going to need some proper tools to make much more progress inside the ship, a screwdriver at least besides probably a hammer and a narrow chisel to open things that lacked power. And a couple of Engineers and an oxy torch while he was at it, none of which were likely to appear out the surrounding gloom!

  His lack of progress on the wreck caused him to revise his plans and so instead of returning yet again the wreck the following morning he set out to investigate the smoke he had seen when he'd first arrived. He was wary about contacting the locals but he really had no choice if he was ever going to escape this planet and it was always possible that maybe they had simply come down on the poorly settled side of the planet. Planets were big places after all, although the lack communication signals did seem to indicate that the pre-electric technology level was worldwide. It was rare for a planet to lose all modern technology but not entirely unknown, he could remember reading about a couple of colonies the Federation had found which had been started by people fleeing the Empire and who had deliberately chosen to forsake technology for one reason or another. Arturo thought giving up technology was a pretty stupid idea but each to their own he supposed. And there had been another which had been some sort of holiday resort or something under the Empire where the small population had survived but reverted to almost stone age levels.

  The morning was another one of grey overcast but lacked the steady drizzle of the previous day and the ground was starting to dry out. Without a proper backpack he decided to leave the tent, the water purifier and the remaining breath masks and he packed them up and hid the lot in a small hollow he spent some time carefully enlarging behind a boulder in the rocky gully just up from his camp site. Anyone walking along the shore should see nothing and he doubted anyone would be up on the barren mountainside rising above the lake. He had not spotted any more smoke and was even beginning to believe he may have been mistaken but had become determined to proceed with his exploration as his ration packs would only last a few days and he had no idea of how to go about trapping
wild animals. In fact, so far, all he'd seen in the way of local wildlife were some non-descript birds he did not recognise.

  The metal rod he was going to use as a staff gave him some comfort as it would make a decent weapon if needed. Like all Federation personnel he had been trained in hand to hand combat but Arturo never really liked beating up his fellow man, or woman, not personally, face to face as it were. As a result he had resisted the peer pressure to supplement the regulation training by joining one of the numerous martial arts groups attached to the Fleet Academy although in the end as a sop to his instructors when their displeasure at his non-involvement became quite obvious, particularly as he was an officer cadet and hence a future leader, he had decided to join a Kendo group. The ancient Japanese Earth culture combat system was not overly supported at the Academy but the fake sword fighting had suited him much better than any form of fisticuffs while being rather stylish, or so he thought to himself, in defence of his choice of sport.

  That was thirty years ago of course. As soon as he had graduated and been assigned to a ship he had dropped the archaic combat practice. The only time he had renewed his acquaintance with kendo had been for the year he spent at the Academy for staff training right before his promotion to Captain. His loss of skill and fitness was penalised heavily by his new instructor and after gaining his first command as Captain he had resolved to maintain his fitness while aboard ship. Despite the regular exercise and training sessions he forced himself to maintain while Captaining a succession of ships he now found himself wishing he'd exercised a good deal more as he headed along the shore to the west. The air was crisp but it was pervaded with a mossy, damp sort of smell like nothing he had ever smelled ever before. He couldn’t decide if it was something in the lake or just the way the still air hung limply in the valley under the habitual leaden skies now that the wind had largely died away. As he traversed the shore of the lake the clouds above began to break up a little allowing the occasional ray of sunlight through which had little effect on the overall chilliness of the air.