The Inosculation Syndrome

by D. B. Reynolds-Moreton

  Soon they had all the wood they could drag, and made their way back to the compound. A crowd gathered to see what wonders Kal would produce from this useless pile of dead wood. To them it was not even suitable to make ‘beating sticks’ with. Kal was more interested in food at the moment, so they had to wait for a while.

  As he ate his meal, Kal wondered if he had bitten off more that he could chew with regard to fire making.

  He had never made fire, as there had been no need to, and the survival courses somehow missed out on that one or he had.

  ‘This should be fun, but tomorrow’ he thought, as he was tired now, and he needed to think out a method of doing it.

  ‘When you are looked upon with such high esteem, you have to produce the goods’ and he drifted into sleep.

  By morning he had several ideas with regard to the fire making caper, and after a meal he sorted through the wood, separating it into piles of soft, tough and darn right hard.

  The idea was to make a small shaft of very hard wood with a point on one end, which could be rotated very fast in a depression cut into a softer piece.

  The friction generated, if he could spin it fast enough, should cause it to catch fire or at least produce a few sparks.

  It took quite a while for him to find a natural stone with a depression in it to use as a bearing for the top end of the stick.

  A strip of tendril leather affixed to a bow shaped piece of thin branch completed his equipment for the experiment. Using a tooth blade, he scraped some very fine shavings from one of the softer pieces of wood, and he was ready.

  A little group of his new admirers stood around him, the rest seemed to be out of the compound wall building, so if it didn’t work he wouldn’t lose too much face with the whole tribe, although he suspected the word would get around sooner or later.

  ‘This had better work’ Kal thought, as he assembled the pieces together.

  The larger soft wood block was held firmly down with his feet, the point of the sharpened stick was placed in the middle of the block and the stone placed on top of the stick so that pressure could be exerted downwards, driving the hard stick into the block below.

  A little pile of the shavings surrounded the place where the stick impinged on the soft block, and with the bow string already looped a couple of times around the stick, he was ready for off.

  Kal pressed down on the stone, played the bow back and forth as fast as he could, and nothing happened except a faint squeaky noise which the onlookers didn’t seem to find amusing, by the look on their faces.

  It must have hit their resonant frequency, or was maybe an insulting sound. A desperate feeling was beginning to form in his mind, how was he going to explain this energetic rigmarole should he fail?

  The perspiration was beginning to bead on Kal’s brow, when the first tiny wisps of smoke appeared bringing a gasp from the audience.

  He ‘bowed’ even harder, and was rewarded by a larger plume of smoke and a few sparks, some of which obligingly fell onto the shavings. He stopped ‘bowing’, and gently blew on the tiny glow in the shaving, and a small flame appeared.

  Carefully sliding the ignited shavings onto an already prepared bed of fine twigs, a little more blowing and he had fire. Larger sticks were then added, and he sat back, hot, sweaty and relieved that it had worked.

  What the little people made of it, he was not sure. They had backed off a little, and then come forward, fascinated by the apparent life of the leaping flames.

  Someone must have squeaked rather loudly, as before long he had the whole tribe around him, chattering away excitedly and watching the flames in awe.

  By demonstration and pictures drawn in the sand, Kal managed to get across the danger of fire, its use to give light in the dark, and as a deterrent to hungry intruders.

  The next thing to do was build a fireplace from stones, which would allow slow burning of the wood and so keep the fire in at all times. He got this idea across to them and received the usual nods of understanding, and watched as a fire detail was selected for duty.

  Again, Kal marvelled at the very quick comprehension of these people, and wondered what it would lead to in time.

  If he could find a source of fat or oil, then lights of some kind could be constructed, as flaming fire brands were a rather clumsy way of obtaining light and have a short life.

  So far, there had been no apparent source of supply, although some of the nut like fruits might yield oil if he could press them, but of mineral oil there had been no trace.

  From memory, animal fats were another possibility, but catching enough of them to make it worthwhile didn’t seem like a viable idea. With a light source, they would be able to explore the cave system, and maybe find their own water supply therein, so removing one of the inconvenience and dangers of the twice daily trip to the pool rocks.

  Kal still had the idea of trying the frond trees as a supply of fibre to spin and weave, but had seen none in the vicinity of the compound. Sooner or later he would have to find some form of material to make clothes from, as those he had wouldn’t last forever.

  But did he really need clothes? The others didn’t seem to, so why should he? Old habits die hard, and he still liked the idea of covering his nakedness.

  The wall was coming on well, and he was thinking of some form of gate or removable barrier for it. They now had a good source of timber not too far away, although cutting it was a bit of a chore without a proper saw.

  What he desperately needed was a means of making metal, so that in turn they could manufacture some really useful tools. Kal remembered the copper stain on the first rocks he had seen, and reasoned that there should be more of the same somewhere; it was just a matter of finding it.

  If they could locate an area where gross or any other plant wouldn’t grow when it looked as though it should, then copper might be responsible.

  Trying to get over the concept of what he wanted was beyond his means at the moment, so he settled for the idea of a search party to look for new things, but that was not so easy to explain either.

  They set off early next morning, carrying a supply of food and water, and with the guards armed to the teeth.

  The first place to look was around the local area, but that didn’t produce any promising results, so they made their way up into the rock formation that skirted the cliff.

  The going was hard, more so for the little people than Kal, and they were half way up the jumble of rocks when they came to a track, not unlike the one Kal had found in the forest. The gravelled surface made travelling a lot easier, and they wound their way upwards and onto the cliff top.

  The view from the top was stunning, and it was easy to see why the little people had chosen the place they did for their camp, as it was the only place as far as the eye could see that could be defended.

  The rocks up here were of a different type to those below in the cave complex, and Kal began his search for the telltale signs of metal ore stains on their surfaces.

  It was while they were rummaging about in the broken rock formations, that Kal realized that these were not naturally formed. He didn’t quite know how he knew this, but they just didn’t seem natural somehow.

  This meant that someone else had been here, and had turned the place over looking for something, and if the something was the same as that which Kal wanted, there may well be a little of it left for him. He was right, for a while later they came across a cleared area with a quantity of smaller broken stones scattered about, as though left over from loading onto something.

  It was just a feeling he had, and his feelings were usually right. Some of the stones had green and bluish bands running through them, and these he began collecting, quickly joined by the rest of the party.

  In anticipation of making a useful find, they had brought some of the woven food carriers with them, and these were quickly loaded with what he considered to be too heavy a load, but the strength of these little people far belied their size, and the party set off for
home at a good pace.

  Going down the lower rock formations proved a trifle difficult, but they made it in the end with only a few bruises, and returned to the compound triumphantly.

  Smelting the copper ore, for that was what Kal thought it to be, would be quite difficult, but not impossible if only he could get enough heat from the charcoal he was going to make from the wood stock pile retrieved earlier.

  Charcoal making was the easy part, and before long they had a large pile, although trying to explain what it was for wasn’t so easy. Once Kal had used a hard stone to break up the ore bearing rock, the others joined in, and separated the green ore out into a pile on its own.

  Before Kal could use his furnace, he would need to make a crucible and a lining material for the fire box; otherwise he would not be able to pour the molten metal, if he managed to get any. Without a lining, most of the furnace heat would go into the stones from which the furnace was constructed.

  This needed some careful thinking out. The crucible especially, and lining, would have to be fairly strong, be able to withstand high temperatures and the shock of a sharp rise and fall in temperature.

  It seemed to Kal that one problem when solved, always led to other problems, and the sequence was never ending.

  First he would have to locate a supply of clay, or whatever passed for it on this planet. Next he would need quartz sand, and a supply of fine organic material which would burn out, so making the ‘fired’ material porous.

  It took nearly all of one day for the team to find eight samples of what might turn out to be clay, and Kal set about making test blocks of each to see how they would harden.

  He moistened a good handful of each sample in turn and made it into a flat block, about ten millimetres thick and these were laid out in the sun to dry, with a symbol on each to denote which sample they came from.

  The quartz sand was no problem, as he had seen a quantity of it in one of the water worn gullies earlier. The fine organic material, which would burn out in the firing, so leaving tiny holes in the finished material to make the lining less likely to crack and give it good insulating properties, was made by rubbing a piece of the soft dead tree with a rough stone, producing a wood flour.

  To test the clay samples in order to find out which would be most suitable, he built a fire box of stones, filling it with charcoal and placing the test samples on top.

  The fire was lit from the bottom, and as it burned through, more charcoal was placed on top of the samples so that they would be surrounded with heat. The fire took all night to burn out, and next morning the opening ceremony was attended by all those who had been involved with the mining and charcoal project.

  All the others went about their other tasks such as wall building, food gathering and whatever else they usually did.

  Kal raked out the test samples from the ash, and found that one sample had melted to a black glass like substance, and thought that it might have been a lead bearing ore.

  ‘Could be useful later on’ he thought. Most of the other test pieces had broken up into bits and showed no sign of fusing together, which was the main requirement.

  One sample however, must have been the clay he had been looking for, as it had fused into a very hard block, without shrinking too much. He could still read the symbol he had scratched on the surface, and sent a team to fetch more.

  Now he was ready to make his crucible. Kal made a mixture of the clay, sand and a little fine wood flour, moistening it with water so that he could work it up into a very stiff paste.

  This was allowed to dry a little, until he was only just able to squeeze it into long strips about ten millimetres thick.

  These were then rolled out on a flat rock, and he began to make a ‘coiled pot’ by running the long coils of clay mixture around and around upon each other, pressing the coils together as he went.

  He finished the pot off by making two handles and sticking them on the side of the pot, making sure that they were properly joined on, and of adequate strength.

  The pot was dried out very carefully in the sun, and the next day it went into the fire box. Next morning he had his crucible. Kal wondered just how much of the operation the little people had understood, and if they would now be able to do the same for themselves.

  The design of the smelting furnace was a bit more complicated. It needed two fire boxes, one to actually smelt the ore, and another one below to keep the crucible hot when the molten metal hopefully dripped into it.

  Kal set about constructing it up against the cliff face where it sloped backwards slightly, so that a tall chimney with a good draft could be laid up against the cliff, and be supported by it.

  Once the main fire boxes had been built, he lined them with a similar mixture to that which had been used for the crucible, but adding a lot more wood flour to it for extra porosity, and then the stone chimney went on up to about ten metres, using the bamboo poles for scaffolding.

  Unknown to Kal, a team of ‘miners’ had set out earlier that day, and had returned towards evening with a collection of many different coloured rocks.

  They must somehow have worked out that he prized the pretty rocks, and had done their best to satisfy his liking for them. Kal did not have the heart to disregard the gift, and so carefully looked through the samples to see just what they had found, and was very surprised to see ores of lead, tin and silver among the collection.

  The tin ore he could use, as mixed with copper it would make bronze, and this would be much harder and tougher that the raw copper he was hoping to make.

  First, the furnace had to be made ready. After letting the liner of fire clay mixture dry out, a small fire was lit in the lower section and as the steam from the chimney decreased, the fire was made hotter and hotter, until the inside of the furnace glowed red. The fire was then allowed to go out, with entrance blocked up so that it would cool slowly.

  Kal had chosen a slightly sloping sight for the casting of the molten metal, so that he could pour it into the top end of the sand moulds, and the metal would then run down to fill all the depressions he would make by pressing wooden shapes into the sand.

  He flattened the site, and covered it with a mixture of damp sand with a little clay added to it, so that it would hold any shape pressed into it. He would have liked to add a ‘binding agent’ but at the moment, he didn’t have any.

  The mining gang watched the mould making in silence, with only the occasional squeak now and then, and Kal supposed that this was one of the brighter ones explaining something to the others, but this was only a guess.

  Carefully carved wooden shapes of the things Kal wanted to make were prepared, and these included large spear heads, knives of several sizes, an axe head and an attempt at the two blades of a pair of scissors.

  After the wooden masters had been completed, he pressed them into the sand such that an imprint of their shape was left, carefully clearing away the expelled sand from around the depression so formed.

  Kal repeated the pressing process until he had a number of the shapes he wanted, and then joined them up by pressing straight sticks into the sand to leave little channels joining all the mould depressions up to a central channel.

  The whole area was then carefully covered with thin slate like stones so that the molten metal would be forced to flow from one shape to another until all the depressions had been filled, he hoped.

  Among the samples the mining team had brought him was a quantity of what looked like felspathic rock, and he knew that if this was added to the furnace at smelting time, it would act like a flux, and help the metal to run cleanly down into the crucible.

  Kal had made some ‘fire bars’ from the same material as the crucible to put into the bottom of the two furnaces, and a supply of spares, as he didn’t know how long they would last in the intense heat.

  It was light up time at last, and with diagrams drawn in the sand he tried to show the assembled crowd what he was going to do, and why.

  He was not sure that
they understood it all, but would not have been surprised if they had, as the rate at which they comprehended things seemed to be increasing each day.

  The furnace was lit, and as the heat increased more and more charcoal was added, until the inside of the top furnace was a glowing red hot mass.

  The crushed mixture of tin and copper ore was then added, layer by layer, alternating it with charcoal. The second furnace was then fired up, and the crucible placed inside to await the first drip of molten copper.

  There was a soft roar from the furnaces, as the temperature rose, and it was a full time job keeping them topped up with fuel, which was going down at an alarming rate.

  Anxiously Kal waited for the metal to flow, but there was no sign of it. They kept adding more fuel until at last something like thick red hot treacle dripped down from the upper fire bars, and into the crucible.

  Kal was disappointed until he realized that the treacle was the molten flux, and the metal should soon follow. Sometime later they had a crucible full of glowing metal, and the fires were let down a little so that they could push the crucible out of the side of the lower firebox.

  His helpers were a little afraid of the pot of molten metal, as they could feel the heat from it, and they had remembered Kal’s warning when he had explained fire to them earlier.

  Very carefully the crucible was manoeuvred with poles to the moulding area, and the molten metal gently poured into the receiving hole at the top of the mould run, the bamboo poles suffering somewhat in the process.

  It looked as if they had made enough metal to fill all the moulds, but wouldn’t know for sure until it had cooled down enough for them to remove the capping stones.

  The metal work party all stopped for a meal and a cool down, with a great deal of squeaky chatter going on among the little people. He wondered if they realized the momentous changes that were about to be brought about to their way of living, if he had been successful.

  Waiting for the metal castings to cool down took a lot longer than Kal had expected, but in time they were able to lift off the flat slates and there were the bronze castings for all to see. A squeaky gasp issued from the crowd which had gathered for the opening event, and Kal could hardly believe his luck at having got so far with only the most rudimentary equipment.