Starship X-15

by Alan VanMeter

  “How long will it hover for?”

  “About a day.” He shrugs.

  “So, I guess the million dollar question is; do you know anything about wilderness survival, because I sure the hell don’t. Another thing Star Command should have taught us.”

  “Actually they did teach the line officer’s survival skills under a wide variety of circumstances. I paid attention, don’t worry, we’ll be alright.”

  “Say it again, like you mean it Rick.” I ask.

  “We’ll be fine. Unless of course there is some sort of dangerous carnivorous life living here, then we’re screwed.” He chuckles.

  “Crap.” I groan. What the hell happened? Just hours ago I had it made, now it sure went south. I remember the motto, ‘To boldly go’… I don’t feel so bold all of a sudden.

  Chapter 7

  We make our first camp about fifty meters from the ship, near the tree line. The trees are similar looking to pine trees, in that they have needles instead of leaves, but that is where the similarity ends. Many trunks reach into the sky from each base, giving some really bizarre shapes. We hear insects, and some bird calls, then we even see some very colorful green birds flying away from us. By the time the yellow sun sets, we still haven’t seen any other life-forms than these.

  Breakfast is the same as dinner was, baby food in a tube, and some water. Because we don’t even have a tarp to cover us, we slept under the stars, but stars that are totally unfamiliar to me. Rick seems to be in good spirits, better than I am, as I’m just a tad bit grumpy this morning.

  “You snore like a damned Harley Davidson idling, asshole.” I let into him just for sport, and to relieve my tensions. “From now on you’re sleeping outside of camp.”

  “If you say so.” He is calm, and that just lights my fuse.

  “I do, I mean it!”

  “Sure, no problem. Sorry if I kept you awake last night.”

  “You’re going to have to find something for us to eat real quick like Mister. We don’t have all that much of the baby food.” I keep after him.

  “I’m going to see if there are any fish in the river. It looks like it’s only a couple kilometers down to where its’ head waters begin. Maybe I can spear some of them.” He offers with a smile.

  The smile disarms me, and I nod in approval. After he eats, he takes the multi-purpose knife from the tool kit, and heads off. We are both still wearing our pressure suits, with the helmet off. The suits are water proof, and extremely durable, at least Star Command got that right. It’s quiet in camp now, and I look around. What the hell am I going to do? Have to do something, I can’t rely on Rick for everything. That’s it; I’ll build a fire. We need a constant fire from now on. Last night we were both too tired to even care.

  I head into the trees in search of fire wood. There is plenty right near the camp, so I start bringing bundles back. Next I know I need some kindling, and tinder, so off I go. Once I get a fire pit made from rocks around the area, then I build my wood tee-pee, with a smaller tee-pee of kindling inside the bigger wooden one, and a bunch of tinder inside the smaller tee-pee. Now all I need is a lighter, or matches.

  Okay, I’ve searched everything three times completely, and there isn’t one lighter, or one match at all. Now I am really pissed at the clown who organized the ship’s contents.

  “Come on!” I yell to the trees.

  There’s nothing! No flint, no magnifying lens, nothing. I did see a show on pioneer skills once, and they showed how to make a fire by rubbing two sticks together. Guess we are stuck with the caveman way.

  I get a nice dry chunk of flat bark from the forest floor, and then a good hard stick to rub on it. Next I get a little pile of the tender, mostly dried grasses, next to my work area, and I press down on the hard stick, rubbing it up the bark away from me. I rub as hard as I can, and as fast as I can. It’s exhausting work! It takes me twenty minutes of continuous effort until I can see some hot ash building up at the top of the stroke on the bark. A little more… Then I grab the pile of tinder, and scrape the ash from the bark onto the tinder cupped in my hand, just like on the show. It’s burning the tinder, yes! No flames yet, so I gently blow on it, and suddenly flames erupt. I giggle as I quickly dump the tinder pile onto the bunch of tinder under the kindling tee-pee. It catches quickly, and I have a fire!

  “Yes!” I shout to the sky.

  Suddenly I am jolted by a loud thud from behind me. The ground shakes some even, and I just about jump out of my skin. I turn to see the ship had crashed to the ground.

  Well, at least now I know what my next project will be. I stoke and tend to the fire until I see we have a good pile of coals burning, then I grab the only digging tool I can find, a long thick screw driver, and I head over to the ship. I remember where the air-lock was, and I plot the shortest dig to get to it. The suit’s gloves are very durable thankfully, and they save my hands from getting torn up. Also the soil isn’t too rocky, and I am sure glad about that.

  Some hours later I have a three foot deep and two foot wide hole dug right by the edge of the ship, and now I start to dig straight towards the airlock. I hear Rick shouting when I have dug about four feet directly under the ship. I pop my head up and shout back. The look of relief on his face is priceless. He does care. I should be nicer to him, after all; he’s all I got here.

  Rick is holding a straight stick with four fish like creatures impaled upon it. It’s a good reason to take a break, so I climb out of my hole and go to greet him.

  “I hope these are good to eat.” He hefts his hand made spear with the fishy things.

  “How are we going to determine that?”

  He looks and sees the fire smoldering. “Nice, you got a fire going already. I’m glad you found the laser torch in the tool kit. I should have set it out for you.”

  “Laser torch?”

  “You didn’t use the torch? How the hell did you start the fire then?”

  I know my smile is beaming proudly, as I show him the primitive fire maker I made.

  “Well I be screwed like a bitch in heat! You do have some survival skills Devon. Nice!”

  “I started digging a tunnel to the airlock too.”

  “Well then pardner, I’ll just get these fish things on the fire.” He goes to start cooking.

  “You still didn’t tell me how we’re going to know if those are safe to eat.”

  “I’m going to eat a bit of one, and then we wait a while and see.” He smiles.

  “Wait and see if you die… right?” My sarcasm just came back.

  “Or get sick. Then if I don’t, I’ll eat some more.”

  As I ponder this, I realize that he has to do it. “We really don’t have a choice, do we?”

  He shakes his head.

  Rick gets some long dry sticks, and skewers the things which are lengthy like a fish, but they also look like an eel in some ways.

  “I already cleaned them at the river. Left the guts out on a rock, to see if something eats them.”

  That is a good idea, he’s thinking way ahead of me. “What if something does?”

  “Then we set some traps, and catch it.”

  “More food.” I nod.

  “More tools too, and maybe some pelts.”

  That makes me laugh. “I can see us running around in skins like cave people.”

  The smell of the water creatures cooking, that I decided should be named ‘eesh,’ is actually very enticing. I sure hope it doesn’t kill Rick to eat one. His face speaks of a good taste as he nibbles a little bit. Now we wait, and see. After a half hour he eats three more bites, and we wait. He decides they are safe and finishes the ‘eesh’ he had started. Now it’s my turn, so I go for it, and take a nice big bite. It’s good, like a dark meat fish, very rich and fatty. That is just what the doctor ordered, the survival doctor.

  “Were there a lot of the ‘eesh’ in the river?”

  Rick smiles, “Oh yeah, bunches. We should have no problem with food for a while.”

&nbs
p; “Good, that’s important.”

  Evening and then night comes quickly, then we sleep again under strange stars.

  First thing in the morning I go to put some wood and kindling on the coals, to get the fire going again. The fish carcasses from yesterday are gone, all of them!

  “Hey Rick! Something took the ‘eesh’ bones.”

  He comes trotting right over, and looks real close at the ground where they were.

  “Look! Tracks. Whatever it is, it seems small.”

  The sun is just risen when the sound of large flapping wings startles us. A group of five large birds flies over us towards the lake. They are very much like geese from the quick view we get, so I quietly go through the grove of trees to watch them. I see them swimming out on the lake, and it appears they are diving down for food. When I go back to report this to Rick, who I assumed would follow me, I don’t see him anywhere in camp.

  “Rick!”

  “Over here.” He shouts back. I see his torso in the hole I was digging.

  I go to him. “I just watched those birds diving in the lake for food.”

  “I bet they would taste pretty good too.” He chuckles.

  “I thought about that too, but then I also remembered the Prime Directive. Do we just give up on that?”

  Rick raises his brows, and cocks his head. “I would say no, we don’t give it up, but we do have to eat. I guess we’ll have to be observant of any life form before we consider it for a food source. See if they exhibit exceptional intelligence, or ability of some sort.”

  “Agreed.” I nod and smile.

  He goes back to digging, and I decide to go look for possible plant food sources. I know with each different species we will have to do the taste testing, and I’m going to have to be the first Guinea Pig too. The grove of pine like trees has some thin weedy plants covering much of the ground, so I pull one, and discover they have a thick bulbous root. Into the back pack it goes. The trees themselves are covered with small green buds near all the tips of the branches. A couple of those go in the sack as well. Then I exit the grove by the lake. The geese like birds are still there, but now they seem to be content and just floating about. My presence doesn’t seem to bother them in the least.

  As I walk along the shoreline, heading towards the foot hills of the nearby mountains, I come across some wild flowers. There are white ones, yellow ones, blue ones, and even some red ones. I pick a few of each for the sack, and then head onward. The mountains are rugged and beautiful. I can see a rushing stream cascade over a cliff back in a valley, and what is that? It’s big, dark brown, and it’s moving. Too far away to make out anything really, wish I had the binoculars. I must be a half a click from camp though. It will be gone by the time I got back with them. Looks like a quadruped maybe. It’s alone, that means it is probably a predator, something like a bear maybe? Rick will certainly want to know about this. Crap, what the hell do we have to defend ourselves with? The laser torch? I’ll ask him.

  When I get back to camp the back pack is nearly full of various plants for me to taste. I go see how he’s doing with the tunnel.

  “Hey, take a break miner.” I call into the hole.

  “Give me a second here.” He grunts, and then I see him crawl from under the ship. I give him a hand up from the hole. “So, did you find us some breakfast?”

  “Just some morsels for tasting I’m afraid. I did see a large animal though. It was walking across a hillside before the mountains.”

  “Oh, how big?”

  “Not exactly sure because it was so far off, but I’d say cow sized.”

  “Just one?”

  “It was alone as far as I could see. Hey, is the laser torch able to be used as a weapon?”

  “Sure, I suppose. At point blank range though.”

  “We need a ranged weapon Rick.”

  “I’ve been thinking about that. I can try to make a bow, and some arrows.”

  “I’ll help with what I can, but we do need something.”

  “I can make some better, heavier duty spears too.”

  “What I wouldn’t give for a rifle right now.” I sigh.

  He grimaces, “Ditto.”

  I show him the plants I brought back, and I take a slice of the tuber’s root from the first specimen that I had gathered. Rick watches me for a good half an hour after I eat it. I feel fine, and the root, though fairly bland, has a nice crunch as well as moist texture. So I finish the tuber, all except the very bottom of it, because it’s tough and fibrous. Then Rick decides to try one of the small green buds from the pine like trees. The face he makes as he tastes it tells the story.

  “That’s real strong, bitter! Not edible, unless maybe we try cooking them somehow. I bet boiling them might work.”

  “How are we going to boil anything, I sure haven’t found any pots or pans.”

  “That’s also why we need some skins. We’ll have to make a raw-hide bowl.”

  “Won’t that burn?”

  “We don’t put it on the fire. We put hot rocks into it to boil the water. That’s what we are going to have to do for drinking water too. Which reminds me; don’t drink straight from the river or the lake.”

  “Now you tell me.” I tease him.

  “You didn’t already, did you?”

  “No, there’s still plenty of bottled water.”

  It only took Rick two days to finish the tunnel, and then we have a roof over our heads, as well as power from the solar panels on the ship he deployed. There isn’t any galley or kitchen on board, but there is a bathroom with a small shower stall. We have hot water inside, but once the reservoir is empty we’ll have to refill it with local water. Also we can shut the airlock to keep any animals out, and that makes me sleep much easier. The two acceleration couches are wide enough, and they recline to a prone configuration, making them our beds.

  Rick started making some weapons right after he finished the tunnel, and he shows me some snares he has fashioned, mostly from the primitive materials on this world. That makes me think.

  “What do you think we should call this planet, this new home of ours?” I interrupt his work.

  He ponders it for a moment, “How about New Home?”

  “I like Devon’s Planet better; got a nice ring to it, don’t you think?”

  That makes Rick laugh. “Okay sure, it’s named after you woman.”

  I turn and walk away, saying, “I was going to call it that regardless.” I throw a glance back at him over my shoulder, and see that his eyes are fixated on my ass. Good. I put a little extra jiggle into my walk.

  I realize that not only are we stuck here for good, but that Rick and I are destined to be lovers, what else are we going to do? So I guess I will tease him just a little bit longer, so he is insane with lust for me, and then I will possess him. His ass is mine. I can’t help but think about Alicia though, and often. I’ll never see her again. To Star Command we are dead. She made me see that I prefer women to men, any day, but I am having a hankering for some fun regardless.

  Before the first week is out, Rick has snared some small game. The guts from the ‘eesh’ were eaten by something as well, so he used some more as bait, and trapped a small rodent looking critter. He cooked it and tasted the meat first. Right away he spit it out, and told me that there is no way past that horrid taste. At least we can use the pelt, and the bones, so the poor thing didn’t die for nothing. So we eat the ‘eesh’ and save the limited rations of baby food for a rainy day.

  Rick has some strange project he is working on. He’s taking branches of different types of trees, and cutting them to fit together nice and smoothly. I ask him what he’s making, and he just says, “You’ll see.”

  I have my own projects; gathering the plants that have been edible so far, and preparing camp for a long term stay. It is fun, and keeps my mind busy so I don’t get depressed. Rick said that he was taught that the first and most important tool for survival is our attitudes. You have to really want to live, to do so. He’
s right, it only makes sense. I do know of something that will cheer both of us up. Tonight after dinner.

  I cooked my first soup in the raw hide pot that Rick made from some larger pelts he trapped. He’d dug a small hole, and lined the fresh hide into it and let it dry a couple days to form a bowl. Finally I can cook something. I add water, and the veggies, and then I start adding hot rocks from the fire into it. Rick has made a pair of tongs for this. After it comes to a boil I wait a few minutes before adding some fresh ‘eesh’ meat. In an ingenious stroke he comes up with some bowls for us. They are some spare engine parts for the drive, but they work. We don’t have spoons or forks, just a multi-purpose tool; another thing that irks me.

  The soup, or ‘eesh’ stew is pretty good, but needs seasoning. We have no salt, pepper, or spices at all.

  “How are we going to find salt Rick?”

  “We either need a source of salt water, ideally, or we dig a salt mine.” He raises his brows.

  “How about an old dry salt lake bed, or sea bed?”

  “Yeah, that might work too.”

  “I remember seeing what looked like it could be an old lake bed, as we were surveying the landing site.”

  “We still have all that data recorded, let’s go take a look.” He gets up for the ship, and I follow. “Plus we can have the orbital probes begin to look for sodium spectral lines too.”

  We have been wearing mostly our flight suits since we re-occupied the ship, keeping the pressure suits stored away. The thinner flight suits are much more comfortable around the casa.

  He calls up the video files, and I point the dry bed out to him.

  “That’s over a hundred clicks, we have to try to find something closer.”

  “Let’s run this data through a spectral analysis, and look for strong sodium lines.” I work the program and soon we see that the dry lake bed has very strong lines of sodium, but there is also a source much closer to us, though the lines aren’t as strong as the lake bed.

  “Let’s zoom in on that closer one, and get the exact coordinates.” He is excited as he works the controls. “Got it!”

  While he’d been doing that, I backed over to my couch, and slipped out of my flight suit.