“Peter!” Maclaren called. “Are you okay? Hang on, I’m coming down.”
“Nuh, no. I’m okay. Stay there.” He lay there for a moment, assessing his bumps and bruises. His ribs were sore from where they’d hit the tree, and his hands were raw where they’d scraped the ground, but there were no sharp pains. He moved his arms and legs experimentally. No, nothing broken. He felt a sudden wave of sympathy for the slide Tyrell had taken in the ravine where they’d found the spear point.
“You’re sure?”
“Nothing damaged but my pride,” he managed. He shifted around so he could get his hands on the tree trunk, and used that to help himself stand. His palms felt like they’d been burned. “Ow,” he said. “I take that back. Scraped my hands a bit.”
“Shall we go back down?”
“No, just give me a moment.” He used the backs of his hands to brush the dirt and torn foliage off his front, then straightened up and looked about. The tree’s roots extended about a meter up-slope, but beyond that the dirt was bare, a shallow trench scraped clear where he had slid. “Naomi, I’m going to see if I can get a sample,” he called up. “Give me a minute.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
He pulled his geologist’s hammer from its sling and, leaning forward, tried again to dig through the soil to the underlying rock. He found it on his third swing, the hammer stopping abruptly as it hit something hard about twenty centimeters down. That wasn’t good for the tip, he hoped he hadn’t damaged it. He scraped at the dirt until he’d cleared an area about ten centimeters square. As he dug down, the soil became lighter in color, as though mixed with a layer of volcanic ash. Interesting. The underlying rock was quite flat, but still with a thin layer of dirt or ash on it.
“Well, I found rock. I need to clean it off so I can get a better look.”
“Okay,” Maclaren called back. She had found a tree to prop her feet against and had turned to sit on the slope.
Finley pulled a bottle from his pack and poured water over the rock until the loose dirt was gone. The wet rock was a dark, pinkish-gray color. It would be lighter when dry. He gave it a whack with the flat end of his hammer. It didn’t seem to have any effect, but he hadn’t really expected it to. A rock would have to be pretty soft to break from a flat on blow, and a soft rock would be substantially more eroded. It looked like it might be granite, although he couldn’t see any differentiation of the minerals that would make up that rock. This must have cooled rapidly to be so fine-grained, if indeed it was granite. He gave it a few scrapes with the pick end, with no obvious result. Must be pretty hard stuff, he thought.
He called back up to Maclaren. “Okay, that wasn’t very helpful. It’s flat, and hard, and dark pink. Let’s try a little further up slope.” He replaced his water bottle and hammer.
“What?” she called back, “you’re not taking a sample? You’re just taking it for granite?”
“Gneiss,” he said. “If I had a dollar for every time I’d heard that pun....” He started back up the slope. His palms still hurt, but it was tolerable.
“You still couldn’t buy a coffee. Not here, at least. And you don’t have to give me schist about it.”
“Aargh! You’re incorrigible.”
“So don’t incorrige me.”
“Humph. At least our coffee supply hasn’t quite run out yet.”
“Yeah, we don’t want to be digging into the emergency rations for ‘instant breakfast beverage’. I hear that stuff’s awful.”
He reached the tree where Maclaren sat. “If we don’t get a pick-up or supply drop soon, I think it’s going to come to that.”
She stood up and they began to ascend the slope again. “Supply drop?” she said. “I hadn’t thought of that. I just reckoned when they came back it would be for a pick up.”
“You’re probably right, but if they were having problems getting a refueling pod or another lander together, they might try to bring a reentry capsule and just drop supplies.”
“Makes sense. Too bad we can’t send them a wish-list.”
“Well we can, but delivery time is a bitch. They won’t get it for four-and-a-third years.”
The conversation tapered off as they continued climbing, each of them saving their breath. The climb wasn’t getting any easier. In fact, the trees were getting further apart, and smaller, which meant fewer hand and foot holds. Maclaren slid once, not as badly as Finley had, but they were still twenty to thirty meters shy of the peak when the surface became so unstable that they were sliding back almost as fast as they were climbing.
“This isn’t working,” Finley said.
“Yeah, too right. This is tougher than it looked.”
“All right then, I’m calling it. We need better gear or a different route to get to the top. I’m not sure that we’ll find anything significant there anyway.”
“So, back down then?”
“Yep. Let me have another try at a rock sample first, though.”
“Sure.”
Finley repeated the digging he’d done earlier. The soil was even thinner here, explaining the sparser vegetation, with same ash layer beneath it. The underlying rock looked no different from that down-slope.
“That is bloody flat,” Maclaren said. “Not polished, but smoother than I’d expect.”
“Me too. I’d buy it in a water- or ice-eroded boulder, but not a flat surface like this. It is odd.”
“So, artificial do you reckon?”
“If it were on Earth, I’d say maybe yes. But here? Not likely.” A wave of déjà vu swept through him. Hadn’t he had this conversation with Tyrell, about that spear point? But it made no sense. “This stuff is at least as hard as granite, that’s not something a primitive species is going to shape easily. Limestone, sure, but not granite, not this big.”
“Didn’t the Egyptians do granite?”
“They did, for small statues and things, not pyramids. And they had some pretty advanced techniques, even if not iron.”
“Fair enough. Another item for the ‘weird stuff on an alien planet’ list. Ready to head back?”
“Yep.” Finley checked the time. “That took longer than we’d planned. It’s going to be dark by the time we get back to our campsite.”
“Right. Let’s go.”
Heading back down the slope was almost as challenging as climbing it, but with gravity working with them, not as tiring. They managed to reach the forest floor again with only a few minor slips and slides.
∞ ∞ ∞
“Well, that was disappointing,” Finley said as they trekked back toward their camp. “My hands are scraped, my ribs are sore from hitting that tree, and we still have no idea what the damn thing is.”
“Where did the dirt come from?” Maclaren asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Like you said earlier, on a stepped pyramid there are places for leaf debris and dust to settle and turn into soil. With the sides on that thing, I don’t see how that could happen without trees already there. So how did the dirt build up enough for trees to start growing on it in the first place? Did somebody pile it up?”
“Deliberately buried, eh?” Finley shook his head. “I don’t think so. There was a thin layer of ash, so it must have been exposed when the volcano exploded. Normally I’d expect that the entire ground level here was hundreds of meters higher when it formed, then slowly it eroded away. The harder rock was left behind, but there would always have been vegetation above it that just sort of conformed itself to the rock as the surrounding ground lowered. The same as any monadnock, but with vegetation.” He could see a few holes in that theory, and the ash layer didn’t fit, but he wasn’t about to voice them. Anything else sounded even crazier.
“Huh,” was all Maclaren said.
They continued in relative silence. They were tired after the climb, and want
ed just to get back to food and rest. The only sounds were their footsteps and the rustle as they walked back through the underbrush, guided by Maclaren’s return beacon and the trail markers Finley had blazed on the way out.
“Wasn’t it noisier on our way out?” Finley asked, when he noticed how quiet it was.
“Yeah, now that you mention it. More bird and insect noises. It’s getting near dusk, they’re settling in for the night.”
“We should step up the pa—” Finley cut himself off at the sound of a deep, short cough from somewhere ahead. “What was that?”
Maclaren had stopped at the sound too, and unslung the weapon from her shoulder, bringing it up to a ready position. “No idea mate,” she said in a whisper. “Not sure I want to know. It sounded big.”
“Yeah. Like a bear. Or a lion.” Finely kept his voice low too, and drew out his geologist’s pick. It was better than nothing.
“If it is a predator, we aren’t its usual prey. Maybe it will ignore us if we just keep going.” As she said that, Maclaren flipped a switch on the gun, and Finley heard a faint high-pitched whine as the capacitors charged.
“Okay. Let’s go easy and quietly. And check behind every now and then.”
“Roger that.”
They walked on, listening attentively and scanning from side to side, seeing and hearing no sign of whatever it was they’d heard earlier. Finley began to relax. He turned again to check that nothing was creeping up behind him.
Just as he turned, he heard a rustle from ahead, of something large in the trees. “Peter, down!” he heard Maclaren yell, then an ear-shattering BLAAAAT! as Maclaren elbowed him aside and fired her weapon. Something else, big and heavy, hit him from the front, knocking him down, and he felt something sharp rake his right side. He rolled away from it, a large, furred animal, all teeth and claws.
Another loud BLAAAT! and the animal convulsed, uttering a confused “meowrr-yelp!” sound as it lay spasming a meter from where he lay. It was cat-like, with spots reminiscent of a large ocelot or leopard. In its side stuck a taser-dart from Maclaren’s gun. As he noticed this, the dart shook loose.
The felinoid rose and shook itself. It turned toward them, snarling. There came another blare of ear-splitting sound from Maclaren’s gun, and the beast turned and ran off into the forest. Finley heard a whining, like the capacitors charging again. He put his hands to his ears to block it, but it didn’t help.
“What was that?” Finley said, uncovering his ears.
“Something cat related, I think. It leaped out of that tree when you turned. Sorry I missed with the first dart. I think it fancied you.”
“Yeah, for dinner. But I actually meant the sound. Since when does a taser sound like an air horn?”
“Oh, that. Ulrika’s idea. The shock should keep the animal away, but it associates the loud noise with it too. Most animals tend to shy away from loud noises anyway. It obviously worked, I didn’t fire a third dart.”
“Clever. Loud, but clever.” He shook his head in a futile attempt to clear the ringing from his ears.
“Sorry about that, but you were kind of in my line of fire. It was loud to me too, but I’m behind the bloody horn. That must have hurt.” She noticed his slashed shirt, and the blood welling up from the scratches beneath it. “Oh, crap, you are hurt.”
“A bit.” It hurt like hell, but as far as Finley could tell, it was just surface scratches, not even to the muscle. “No permanent damage done, I think. And a lot less than if that cat had really got me. Thank you. I’m lucky you saw it.”
“No worries, mate. Any time. But we should clean those wounds, no telling what nasty stuff was on its claws.”
“Let’s hope there’s no next time.” He was already pulling out the first aid kit from his pack. “Could you give me a hand?”
“Right.” Maclaren said, helping him with his shirt. Four parallel scrapes crossed his right ribs, the blood now flowing down his side. “Hold still, let me rinse that off.” She took a water bottle and poured it down his side, clearing the area around the wound.
“Ouch.”
“Don’t be a baby. You survived Australia, right?”
Finley had to laugh at that. It hurt his ribs. “That’s enough. Throw some antiseptic and quick-clot on it. I don’t want to hang around here.” He scanned the area, it was still clear.
“No worries.” She sprayed the wound then taped gauze over it. “That should hold you for a while. I’ll check it again when we get to the tent.”
“Thanks, Naomi.” He flexed and rotated his waist and arm. It still hurt but he could move. He helped Maclaren finish repacking the first aid kit. “We should get back. The noise should have scared anything nearby off, but we don’t want to be out here after dark.”
“You got that right, mate.” She stepped forward and after a brief search, found the dart where it had shaken loose. “Don’t want this to go to waste, I can reuse it.” She pocketed it and checked that her gun was ready to fire again.
“Okay,” she said. “Let’s go.”
The rest of the trip back was relatively uneventful. They heard something rustling parallel to them at one point, but another blast from the horn scared off whatever it was. Alpha Centauri A was below the horizon when they made it back to the clearing, with the last gleams of twilight showing where it had set.
∞ ∞ ∞
They both slept like the proverbial logs during the night. Between the hiking, climbing and the adrenaline rush of the felinoid attack, they were too exhausted to do much more than check over the gear and eat before going to bed. Finley half woke up once during the night, when Maclaren, in the sleeping bag beside his, rolled over and threw her arm over him. He went back to sleep smiling.
Neither of them said anything about it the next day, even when one would occasionally catch the other looking at them and grinning. Finley told himself that it was because they were both still tired. They packed up their gear, flew back to the dome to recover the sensors to re-deploy at another site, and finished the days tasks with little conversation that wasn’t mission related.
But as they landed back at the Anderson, Maclaren turned to him. “So, mate, got any more survey sites that need an overnight trip?” Then she winked at him.
“I think I can find something that doesn’t require a hike through the forest,” he said, and grinned.
Chapter 29: The Sawmill, and Other Projects
Camp Anderson, two days later
“You want to do what?” Sawyer said when Maclaren broached the idea of cutting up part of the Anderson to make saw blades.
“You heard me. I can’t make saw-blades from the deck plates, they’re composite and will wear down too fast. And we’ve got no way to spin them up fast enough to work anyway.”
“Don’t we have motors?”
“The only motors we have that are heavy duty enough are in the planes, and they’re optimized for lower RPM to make the props efficient.” Maclaren took a breath. “Face it, the Anderson is never going back into space anyway.”
Sawyer sat back in her seat and shook her head. Maclaren had a valid point. “No,” the energy went out of her voice. “No, you’re right, it’s not. I knew that, I think we all know that, but nobody wanted to admit it.” She looked up at Maclaren. “Frankly, I’m surprised you were the one to bring it up.”
“Why not me? Just because I was mopey and bored and frustrated a while back?” Maclaren crossed her arms and shook her head. “Nope. That was because I knew it then. I’m an engineer, mate. I know sooner or later reality will kick me in the teeth no matter how much I wish or pretend otherwise, unless I do something about it.”
Sawyer nodded, sitting up straighter. “Right. And there’s no point fooling ourselves any longer about this. I will need to break it to the others first. I think everyone suspects it but I’m going to have to
dash any false hope. This isn’t going to be fun.”
“Tell them Father Christmas, or Santa Claus, isn’t coming this year. Maybe that will put it in perspective.”
“Ha! It might, at that.” Sawyer sat quietly for a moment, thinking. “You said something about a water wheel?” she asked Maclaren.
“Yeah, we don’t have one. If we had cut lumber, we could build one, but.... Well, you see the problem.”
“Indeed. But if we’ve decided that the Anderson is never going to go anywhere....”
“What’s your point? Build a water wheel out of deck plates? Might work, but it’ll make walking around in what’s left of the ship a bit awkward. The Anderson may not fly but it’s still useful. We need the labs.”
“What about the turbo-pumps?”
Maclaren didn’t say anything for several moments. Then, to make sure she had understood, said “You mean, disassemble the engines? Those turbo-pumps?”
“Unless there are others I don’t know about. I know they’re not optimized for it, and we won’t have a huge head of water pressure to work with, but we’re not trying to push them to ten-thousand RPM either.”
“No, no we’re not.” Sawyer’s points were valid. The pumps were designed to be pushed by high-pressure gas and in turn pump fuel under pressure into the engines. This would be taking moderate pressure liquid, water, and using it to force the pump to turn. Geared right, there was no theoretical reason it wouldn’t work to some degree. In fact, if she could come up with a boiler, she might make them into a steam-turbine. “I’ll have to run some numbers. And it’ll be a pain in the arse to disassemble the engines and get the pumps out, but yeah, I think it could work.”
Alpha Centauri: Sawyer's World (T-Space: Alpha Centauri Book 2) Page 14
