Paper or Plastic

by Mackey Chandler

  "I have enough to cover traveling. We'll have to raise more funds. Enough that spending it won't raise any flags on the computers and make somebody ask where I'm getting the money. We're going to have to drive because we can't take Martee on commercial air transport yet and I'm not sure a charter wouldn't catch somebody's attention too. Too many drug runners and such use small planes."

  "Martee, can you show Josh some of the trade goods you told me you brought? I'd like to see them myself."

  "Yes, we need them pretty soon and I'd like to see my ship is OK anyway. Josh, if we show you a real starship will you promise not to take it apart? I'm scared we might not get it back together again."

  "Shucks Martee. I could probably get it all back together again," Roger assured her. "Josh here… he'd get it back together with a whole box of extra parts left over and leave it working better."

  Chapter 13

  The three of them had breakfast at Keith's. Roger was sure Martee was no longer recognizable to her former associates and now that they knew how many there were, he couldn't see them assigning someone permanently to this area, given their limited manpower. He had quizzed Martee carefully, to make sure they didn't have facial recognition software, as good as their voice programs. Josh assured him decent facial recognition software took much more processing capacity than voice.

  Josh had driven to their place and came into town with them. They were all dressed for the outdoors, with sturdy gear and warm clothing. Josh had his cane, which Roger seldom saw him use any more and his trademark dark brown felt hat he seldom traded for other headgear. His legs seemed to be working pretty good lately. But it was chilly out and they had a bit of a hike ahead of them according to Martee.

  Roger's own back tended to ache earlier on a day like today, with the temperature dipping just below freezing and a steady breeze that robbed you of heat faster than most people realized.

  They looked pretty much like the rest of the crowd at Keith's. Maybe a little more prosperous than some, in what were clearly work clothes. Roger had a light backpack he carried by the straps. All it held was his Thermos, for Mary to fill.

  "It's not hunting season quite yet," Mary pointed out when she took their order. "You going to go march around the woods like city folk?"

  "Sure are," Roger agreed. "Martha wants to take some pictures. She is a city girl after all. You have to admit it's pretty when you get a dusting of snow like now."

  "Mighty pretty," Mary agreed. "Especially looking out the window from the inside with my fuzzy slippers and long robe on," she added before leaving.

  Rog looked up to see funny looks on both his companion's faces. "What?" he asked. "Did I say something stupid?"

  "Martha?" Martee asked.

  "Martee is just not a regular name. It's one of those things that can make people remember you and that's dangerous," Rog explained embarrassed. "It just sort of came out when I had already started to name you. I wish I hadn't told the deputy your real name either. I never said anything before, but you should use something else when we get you ID. Is that a big deal, that would bother you?"

  "No, but you caught me by surprise. I hope you consult with me before you just tell someone what name to use, that I will be stuck with for a long time."

  "Think about it then," Rog suggested. "Pick something you like, but not too exotic. Josh and I will help if you want to talk about it."

  "And you – O Nerdy One. What were you smirking about?"

  "Oh I just was restraining myself from telling Mary varmints are never out of season."

  "Thanks. I'm glad you didn't. She's sharp enough she might have taken your meaning. The deputy here likes to chat her up for gossip too. No telling what she might tell him casually."

  They intended to walk across the road and upstream the couple hundred meters, to where a footbridge went across to a nature area and park. That was where the waterfalls, that gave the town its name were. They were retracing Martee's trip into town. There was a small parking lot at the trail head, but they left Roger's truck parked well to the rear of the side lot at Keith's. The big trucks came and went and nobody should pay it any attention back there

  They went across the street after breakfast, looking like city folk stretching the tourist season and into a store that had a sales area on the lower level too. They didn't just hustle through, but looked at things on both levels, before going out the back.

  The bridge tried to look rustic, with a wooden deck, but it was kind of hard to do on top of a single prestressed concrete span. As they went across Roger asked, "Martee if the bridge wasn't here how would you have gotten across the stream? It's way too deep and cold to wade safely, I hope you know."

  "I knew the bridge was here before I landed," Roger. "I flew around and looked at everything in town, trying to understand it before the sky started to get light. Then I went across and sat down for awhile, until it was light enough to see the trees OK and took it back up and found a place to park it."

  "And nobody saw you hovering around town?" Josh asked. "How high?"

  "I never came down below the tops of the building," Martee assured him. "The ship doesn't make any noise and I'm not stupid, I didn't have any lights on or anything. There weren't that many people out and people just don't look up when they are walking around in the dark anyway. They're looking down to keep from tripping in the dark, even with lights on outside."

  They walked along on woodchips, where the snow had not managed to cover the ground, or had blown away. I'm going to come back here. Roger promised himself. It was pretty country and he wasn't thrilled at the idea of going into the city for even a few weeks.

  The trail had small plaques along the way, explaining the trees and wildflowers in the proper season. They ignored them and didn't say much to each other, saving their breath for hiking. Roger tried to keep an easy pace. Josh's injuries in the Middle East had been mostly to his legs and Rog didn't want to make it hard for him, or play any macho games. For that matter he was not sure how used to walking Martee was, but at least he knew she had walked this before. She hadn't looked worn out when he met her at Keith's that first morning, so it must not be too hard for her.

  The trail they were on came to a Y. To the left it looped back to the footbridge and parking lot. To the right it went deeper into the little narrowing valley they were in and dead ended after a couple hundred meters. A carved sign showed the routes and called out distances. Martee took the single trail and stepped ahead to take the lead.

  When they reached the end there was a bench with a rain shelter and an old fashioned split rail fence in a U around the trail head. That seemed to be to discourage anyone from going further on their own. Martee was ready to duck under the fence, but he stopped her.

  "Not here. People will stop here and lean on the fence and see your tracks right there. Come back a way and we'll go around the end. They went back to where the last post had a rail angled down to the ground decoratively. Roger cut a small bush that had very few leaves still on it and turned it over to use as a brush.

  "You two walk where the grass is short at an angle back away from the trail head for fifty meters or so, then swing around to the way we want to go." As they walked in file away from the trail, he swished the bush back and forth, obscuring their tracks in the snow. It wouldn't fool much of a woodsman, but most city folk would walk right past.

  When they got even with the fence they could see off to their left Martee stopped and turned to them.

  "Don't try to talk to me for awhile. Everything looks different with the snow and I have to count off my steps to get back to where I have to make a turn." She stepped off briskly, counting them off under her breath. After a while they only heard the occasional emphasized number, that must have been a whole block like fifty and a hundred. For her it was probably seventy-two and a hundred forty-four, Rog thought. They were far enough from the fence he tossed his bush away, not worried about their tracks from this point.

  When they got to what seem
ed about six hundred paces by his count, Marty stopped and turned to the left. There were two narrow openings in the trees that ran uphill away from them. Both had massive boulders and outcroppings of naked rock poking up through the snow and even visible in among the trees.

  Martee seemed unsure which one to choose, but after looking back and forth between them finally settled on the left one. She had to angle back a bit for that one and led them in along the shadowed south side, staying close to the tree line. They were within ten meters of several large boulders when the shape jumped out at him and he realized one of them was too square. It was a bit bigger than his truck, more like a commercial step van, but not quite as high.

  "You did a really good job of hiding this, Martee," I didn't see it until we were really close." Roger admitted. "But you didn't do this in a few minutes, before walking into town."

  The ship was backed in, with one corner tucked into the space where two big rock masses protruded from the hillside next to each other. It sat just barely off the ground, with a retractable leg on each corner, with a round pad about a half meter across to distribute the weight. The space between the three was filled with pine branches and more branches were piled against the remaining flat side and front to round the shape.

  There was mud, mixed with pine needles and leaves splashed over the front canopy and top, with actual clumps of sod on the roof. The branches piled around went up, until the last ones on each stack overlapped the roof too.

  "Damn, hang four wheels on the corners instead of those jacks hanging down and put a Chevy bow tie on the front and nobody would even give it a second look tooling down the highway," Josh said, grinning silly.

  "No, I landed and spent all day hauling mud and cutting branches," she answered Roger. "I didn't want to make a path, so I had to walk a different route, each time I went down to get water. I also didn't want to cut all the branches in one place, or too close to here so I went off with my little saw pretty far away and cut a single branch from a tree and then went several trees away for another."

  "I’m just glad to see these stay green like I expected and don’t go all brown. You didn't think it was just sitting out in the open all shiny, where somebody could see it with a satellite did you? I'd be afraid your governments would see it, even if my people didn't. They have an astonishing number of satellites up there looking at each other."

  Roger had to regard her with new respect. He wasn't sure he would have had the patience to spend the whole day working so hard, to hide this so well.

  "You could hide this about as well by setting it down in a parking lot or a junk yard," Josh pointed out. "People wouldn't ask where the tires were. They'd assume somebody stole them."

  "Give me a hand," Martee asked ignoring that. She grabbed some branches in the middle of the big side and started piling them away.

  The door wasn't any exotic machinery. It was a sliding door with a recessed handle that swung inward and it had a gasket around the edge. It unlocked by voice command. Once it was pushed in about a hand's width, it rolled to the side on two tracks. There was a little expanded mesh enclosure, to make sure nobody stacked freight in the volume it needed. There was no airlock and it was plain old muscle power to push it back on its tracks. Rog took a GPS reading before they entered.

  "I didn't leave the heat on," Martee apologized for the chill as they climbed in, although there was light. "I thought it might be too easy to find if it was sitting here warm. It's insulated of course, but it still leaks some that instruments could find."

  "I agree," Josh said quickly. "Don't turn on any heater for us. I don't think we want to stay around that long anyway do we?

  "Not long enough for us to get cold from sitting," Roger agreed.

  "May I take a couple shots?" Josh asked politely getting a small digital camera from his pocket.

  "Sure," Martee agreed moving forward. "Let me sit in the control seat and start up the computer, so the screen is active showing the menu and it will be a better picture."

  "That won't start any radar or anything to give us away?" Josh worried.

  "No, everything is manual. This kind of ship has to go to a bunch of different worlds and some want you to use a transponder and some don't. Some will let you use radar and some won't. Some have traffic rules once you are down in the atmosphere and on some you can just fly by eyeball. There is a big instruction manual in the computer, telling you what you can do at different worlds without upsetting them, so you have to be able to control everything."

  "Does that manual have lessons how to actually fly the thing?"

  "Sure. It has instructions how to use all the controls and how to navigate too. Don't forget this is a rental. People might have gone without flying for a few years and be real rusty."

  "You don't have to have a license and take tests to fly one?"

  "No, they assume if you can afford to fly it you'll make sure you know what you are doing. We don’t have as many rules as you do. I know you need a license here to drive. Do you have to have one to fly too?"

  "Oh yes, Martee." Josh assured her, looking shocked. "Big time. It might be really important sometime, if Roger or I could fly it for you. Could you copy the manual on your computer and bring it back home for us to look at?" Josh asked.

  "Certainly, but I want you to figure out how to transfer files from my computer to the one Rog bought me, or one of yours. I'm running out of room on mine," she complained. Still, she brought hers out and did as he asked. The control panel did look more interesting with the screen lit up and Josh fired away trying to get a good variety of angles and distances. The only bad thing was the expanse of glass above the controls was covered with mud and leaves with just a few gaps showing branches covering them.

  Roger went forward and sat in the left seat. It had most of the same controls as the right hand seat Martee had taken. There were two more seats behind and Josh sank into one of them, when he tired of taking pictures. Roger was sort of disappointed. They were rather hard and not even as comfortable as his truck.

  "How long does it take to get to another star in this?" Rog asked, wondering how long he'd have to endure this seat.

  "A few hours usually. You need to get a little bit away from being right by the planet, then you jump toward the star you want and each time you jump the ship looks at the star and makes sure you are pointed right. If you jump from real close to the planet you can't get pointed as accurately and it takes longer the first time you stop to find out how far off you are, so it's better to cruise away for an hour or so before you hop.

  "Then also, you need to sit and let the ship get rid of some of the heat from the jump. If the coolant is still too hot it won't let you jump again until it is chilled down, but that only takes two or three of your minutes, unless you have the ship just crammed full of stuff. If you have a whole bunch of mass it might take three times that."

  "Then after anywhere from two to a dozen jumps, you have to sneak up on where you are going with a few small jumps and match velocity with how it is moving around its star and how it is turning. The ship will show you what to do pretty much, on the screen. I had more trouble learning to use Roger’s video recorder," she told them.

  "Come on back and I'll show you what I have to trade," she said going to the back. She could walk upright, but Roger and Josh had to duck their head a little to keep clear, so Josh took his hat off for clearance.

  Martee turned a muddy and very ordinary looking bucket upside down and sat on it as a stool. The men sat on the ends of a big box strapped down beside some sacks. Rog thought this was a good time to share the coffee and got out its Thermos.

  There were a half-dozen reinforced plastic sacks, leaned against the wall in front of her, behind a safety net like Roger used in his truck. The sort with coarse fiber embedded in the plastic, about the size that would hold ten kilos of potatoes.

  When she grabbed the top of one and levered it upright, it was obviously much heavier than potatoes. The draw cord on it had a slide
r and she pulled that back and opened the top, rolling the edges down. The bag was full of gravel of all sizes and shapes. Everything from a few berry-sized and more commonly about the size of a grape, with one as big as a ping-pong ball right on top. Looking at the completely unsorted sizes, Roger had the thought there must be a few even bigger than the ping-pong ball-sized one if he just dug a little bit. Josh had a really confused look on his face.

  "They're not sorted for size at all, Martee," Rog observed. "If they were sorted by machine to be clear I'd have thought they'd grade them for size too."

  "Well the robots can handle a pretty good size range," she explained. "If there was a chunk too big," she demonstrated holding her hands around a space in the air perhaps as big as a grapefruit, "the mining machines would bust it up. And this represents about what size range they need for lenses and instrument covers. If you need something bigger, it's probably cheaper to grow it artificially rather than cut it from natural. And labor adds to the cost, so asking for a narrow size range out of a batch, would make them up the price from an unsorted mix. I went for cheap."

  "It's the same with shrimp," Josh informed them still looking funny. "If you want the best deal you buy them unsorted off of the boat. You get everything from the tiny little salad shrimp, to big prawns all mixed. But if you make them sort them for you, the price goes up even for the smallest ones. I don't understand though. What are these rocks good for?"

  "They mine these rocks for abrasive," Roger explained before Martee could jump in. "Most get crushed, but they robotically separate the nice clear ones for cutting optical pieces. They are useful because of their hardness and transmission bands. They're carbon rock, Josh– diamonds," he explained, holding up the big one that had caught his eye.

  Josh reached out and took the stone out of Roger's hand. He looked remarkable like Martee did, when she went into shock at music, or a fantastic example of Earth cooking.