Matti-Jay walked around the Blue Defender’s bow. Right up to the robot. Dub. It was still holding out the two soil samplers. The robot bent its legs, lowering itself right down. Low enough that Matti-Jay could reach and take the soil samplers.
She did.
Both of them. They were cold. Identical. She couldn’t tell which was the original and which was the copy. Unless they were both copies. Maybe the robot had kept her one and, by way of making it up, given her copies.
“So,” she said. “Thanks, I guess.” She looked around for any sign of the pack of cats. Nope. Not around at the moment.
Holding the T of one of the soil samplers, she pressed the scoop end into the sand. She twisted, kind of drilling in and down. The tip dug in easily, then jammed a bit. Matti-Jay pulled it back up. Sand dribbled from the end like water. But there was a sample of sand in there.
“It works,” she said. “But I guess that was kind of easy. No moving parts. Nothing mechanical. What I really need is something like a cattle prod. Something to give those things a little shock if they decide I’m going to be dinner.”
Dub stayed mute. Its antenna-covered head watched her.
“This is pretty clever, though,” Matti-Jay said. “Sorry if I’m not giving you credit for...” she trailed off. Was it listening? Did it understand? No chance of that really.
She glanced back at the other one. Esgee. It was wandering off into the dunes.
That one had eaten sand. Raw material. Just about. Not fuel.
It gave her an idea. She held her hand up to Dub. “Wait here.”
Matti-Jay returned inside. She left the airlock doors open. Probably not good practice, but she didn’t want Dub to wander off into the dunes too while she was opening doors.
From the locker she grabbed a spare pair of boots. She took them back out.
Dub had come around to the airlock and was peering inside.
“You’re real inquisitive, aren’t you?” Matti-Jay said.
Dub said nothing.
“Here.” Matti-Jay held up the boots. “If you’re so clever. What can you do with these?” She braced herself for the blade and webbing.
Dub just stared at her. It did nothing.
Matti-Jay sighed. “Well, it was worth a shot. Thanks for the extra soil sampler. Can never have too many of those, you know.”
Dub just stared.
“All right. I’ve got things to do. I’m thirsty and hungry. And it’s going to rain soon.” She stepped back into the airlock. “Enjoy the rest of your day.”
She held the boots up high again. Just in case.
Dub just stared.
“Fine.” Matti-Jay went inside to see what she could find to eat. The airlock door closed with a hiss.
Chapter Thirty Three
The day progressed slowly. The Blue Defender’s consoles showed the gradual work of the microbots on the antenna, the wing strut, and the building of new microbots.
Matti-Jay ate. She showered again. She checked the external feeds to look at the surrounds. The rain came in. Hard and blustery. The sound of the big drops against the hull was kind of soothing.
Still, it was going to get boring here pretty quickly. Barely even lunchtime and she might have weeks ahead of her here.
The cabin temperature was warm, and the air was fresh. At least she was somewhat comfortable in the cramped space. Well, until she started running out of food.
Two weeks worth.
Well, there was a project that would stave off the boredom; figuring out what she was going to eat. Leaving the consoles, she checked through the locker’s supplies. It would be easy enough to have the Blue Defender’s system give her an inventory, but she wanted to see it with her own eyes.
She pulled out the rack of emergency food. It was a deep metal tray on a slider. The tray had sections and lids. Each was labeled. One meal, with a second note, either Breakfast, Lunch, or Main. The tray had four rows with twelve slots across each. Forty eight meals. Sixteen days.
Already she’d used up one day.
But there was a second tray too. Of course. Blue Defender was a two-person ship. So that made thirty-two days worth of food. Over a month.
Matti-Jay smiled at her error. Just thinking that two weeks was her limit.
But still, a month was a limit too. She glanced at the console displays again. The wing strut repairs were going to take an awful long time. She didn’t want to leave it until the last moment to figure out her food supplies.
Sure, the system could be configured to reconstitute food, but the idea made her feel icky. How could she swallow something that had already been through her?
There had to be another way.
Maybe there was something growing in the dunes that she could eat. Maybe she could catch some fish. She would have to run chemical tests on everything first. Just to make sure there were no toxins that would make her sick. Or kill her.
There were plenty of plants and fish back on Earth that were poisonous to humans. The chances out here were probably a hundred times that. Completely separate biospheres. No need for compatibility.
But it gave her a project. Something that would definitely stave off the boredom.
At the consoles, the radio speaker crackled. Then a voice.
“Come in, come in.”
Charlie.
Clear and crisp.
“Charlie,” Matti-Jay said. She darted toward the console. Waved for the system’s mic. The display brought up a little circle with dots. Supposed to be a microphone.
“Charlie!” she yelled. “Charlie.”
“Matti-Jay?” Charlie’s voice crackled.
“I’m here. What’s your status?”
“Bad shape. Delle’s got that compound fracture and she’s running a fever. Simon’s conscious now, but not doing well.”
“Yes. Are you keeping them comfortable?”
“Best I can. It rains a lot here. But we’ve got the inflatable shelter, which hooks up to the airlock, so we’ve got the space.”
Inflatable shelter? How about that?
“I wish I could help,” she said. “Is your vessel flyable?”
Almost a laugh. “Not at all.”
“Repair time?”
“No. It’s not possible to make repairs. I mean, maybe a few things. Like the radio system. We’ve–well, I have–strung up an antenna so we’re getting better comms. We’ll have to watch our satellites too. To keep track of the link.”
“All right. I’ll get Blue Defender to track them.”
“Still calling your ship that silly name.”
“Better than a designation. What’s yours? ExR7. Romantic.”
“Practical.”
“Well, maybe if you’d named your ship something better it might have hung together on landing.” Ouch. That wasn’t fair. Why was she baiting him like that?
But he laughed again. “Yeah. Should have called it The Anvil or Titanium Avenger or something like that.”
“Exactly.”
“She’s in pieces,” Charlie said. “The fuel system is broken completely out. All the flight surfaces. The propulsion system. They wouldn’t even drydock her if there was a drydock. They’d just melt her down for constituent parts.”
“The microbots, though?”
“Did you not hear me? She’s in pieces.”
Matti-Jay said nothing. She waited. If she knew Charlie, he would have more to say.”
“All right,” he said after a moment. “The cockpit is intact, so that’s something.”
“And the computer system.”
“Yes.”
“And?”
“And what?”
“And what about the microbots. I know that you didn’t just look at your broken ship and give up. That’s not like you. I bet you asked your microbots what they could do.”
“One thousand four hundred and eighteen days. That was their estimate. One of the estimates. The lowest. The longest was heading into decades. Something about having to break
down parts so they could carry them closer to reattach them and rebuild them. You do know these little bots are only the size of ants.”
“Yes. They can reproduce.”
“Only one each.”
“Sure, but you can still build up a real army. Tens of thousands of them. That would cut the repair time.”
A pause. “Sure. I think that was how they got that fourteen hundred days estimate. With maximum reproduction.”
Matti-Jay sighed. It was good to talk with him. Made her feel less alone. Even though he was a long way off.
No telling right now how long the connection would last.
“Charlie,” she said. “We need to get focused here. I’m working on getting the Blue Defender operational. It’ll take a while but... wait. How are you off for food there?”
“Yeah. Not great. I’ve actually got the microbots to build us a processor. There’s a lot of forest around us here, so I think we can avoid having to... you know, process our own–”
“I know.” Just thinking about it just about made her gag.
“Yeah.”
“At least you have a plan there.”
“Sounds like you do too.”
“Yes. I’ll get data on the satellites. We can set up our vessels to talk and exchange data. Figure out good connection times. Once I’m able, I’ll fly out to you. We can go from there.”
“What? Living off the land for the rest of our lives? Relying on the microbots and our busted vessels?”
“What?”
“We’re trapped here,” he said. “No one’s coming for us.”
“Once we’re overdue they’ll come.”
“How long were we staying here? How long do you think it will take before they decide to come out after us? And with what?”
“We were sending back regular buoys.”
“They’ll wait weeks, maybe even years. There are no other vessels ready to come. Nothing.”
“Yes. They’ll make something.”
“Not if we’re just late. The Donner didn’t send an emergency buoy.”
“So we’ll just have to send one.”
“How?” Charlie said. “Are you going to build one?”
“If I have to.”
“That’s pretty tough tech to manage. With what we’ve got.”
“I’ve tracked the wreck of the Donner. Mostly. Parts came down intact. We’ll find a buoy in there.”
“Well that’s... fine. If you... the... all the... to you.” His voice dissolved into crackles.
“Charlie? We’re losing the connection. Stay safe. We’ll talk again soon.”
He didn’t reply. All that came back was crackle.
Matti-Jay stared at the display. She felt so alone again. So very far from everyone and everything.
She looked out through the rain.
Well, she might be very far from everyone, but she could do something about it. Time to really get to work.
Chapter Thirty Four
Two days later the antenna was completed. It seemed like a long time just to string a wire, really, from the Blue Defender’s tail to her nose. But the antenna was solid and taut and it was picking up signals well.
Matti-Jay strolled on the beach near the runabout. The air was cool and damp, and the sand was heavy and damp, and the dunes glistened in the sunlight, drips of rain on the grasses picked up the light and sparkled.
She chewed on a protein bar as she observed the antenna. It was surprising thing. And it picked up the sunlight too, glinting from the middle and the high tip.
The Blue Defender was still calibrating and working, but it had traced the satellites and it was using them to get a signal out to Charlie and the others.
The satellites were in a variety of orbits. Some high and flat to the equator, others inclined, just about going over the poles. Some were on very eccentric orbits, dipping as low as a hundred and forty kilometers at perihelion, before heading way out to over two thousand kilometers at aphelion.
Those ones weren’t so much use for communications.
And none of the others was good enough alone for keeping in contact. It was taking relays, which was pushing the system.
The satellites really weren’t designed directly for communications anyway. They were simple data-gathering machines. It didn’t matter if they had constant line of sight at all. Their design meant that they could simply send big data dumps of all their imagery and telemetry and other observations all at once. When they were safely within convenient range of the Donner or whichever other vessel or station wanted that data.
Asking the satellites to talk to each other and to the ground was surely asking something big. But the Blue Defender’s onboard computer had managed it.
Right now it was working on the final systems to make that relay automated. All of the satellites were in known orbits, it was just the coordinating of the effectively chaotic relationships between those orbits to ensure good regular connections was taking some time. Parsing out which were the best linkages to use.
She was getting there.
The breeze was coming off the land now, heading out over the gentle waves. A slight smell of something woody in the air. Almost as if there was a pine forest just back from the dunes.
Matti-Jay had gotten a reasonable look when she’d gone up to the higher dune, but the fright from seeing the cats had made her take in those details poorly. Maybe she needed another expedition.
Over the last couple of days she’d seen occasional movement in the dunes, but could never be certain that it was the cats. It could have been other animals or just the way the wind moved the grasses.
Esgee and Dub had wandered around on occasion. They seemed less interested in the Blue Defender now. Sometimes Matti-Jay would see them far off in the dunes.
What was their deal? Did they have an actual job? Was it something that they were now confused about? The Blue Defender could do a whole lot by herself, from take off and landing, to docking and, obviously, self-repair. But she wouldn’t just fly around kind of randomly. She would wait.
This was undoubtedly a far more sophisticated civilization than Earth’s. And they’d gone. Leaving all this behind.
Sometime in the last fifty years.
Which kind of made sense, in terms of the machines that were still operating. After more than fifty years, surely things would be failing. It might have only been a couple of decades. Or a few years.
That would be something to investigate.
Matti-Jay had a task right now, though. She needed samples. Some of the vegetation. Surely there would be a way to process the material into something she could eat. The microbots could build a machine to turn it into something edible and nutritious. It might not be very palatable, but it would keep her alive.
Matti-Jay walked across the sand, away from the Blue Defender. She felt exposed and slightly vulnerable. Those cats could move fast. And who knew what else lurked around the place.
She had her two soil samplers. Ready to strike out at anything that might come at her. She’d left the airlock’s outer door open just wide enough to get back through if she had to sprint for safety.
Dry sand blew around her feet, coming off the dunes. It seemed counter to the way they formed. But then, everything was back and forth. Clearly the weather here came inshore. On average more sand headed inland.
Her feet sank into the soft surface as she stepped slowly upslope into the dunes. Soon she came to the first of the grasses. She’d brought a satchel from the locker, and a pair of stainless steel surgical scissors from the medical kit. She crouched to one of the plants, ready to clip a few leaves.
Probably she should be wearing gloves. Just in case there were real toxins inside. What if the plants’ sap was very liquid and dripped on her skin?
She glanced back. The Blue Defender lay on the sand a couple of hundred meters away. Matti-Jay had a small medical kit with her, with swabs and adhesive bandages.
What she should avoid was overthinking things. J
ust get the sample. Stick it into the vessel’s console analytics and figure out if she was going to be able to feed herself beyond the end of a month.
She took a quick look around for cats or other predators. Nothing. Dub was striding along the beach, right at the edge of the dunes. Heading vaguely in her direction.
Matti-Jay waved at the robot. It didn’t acknowledge her–of course. It just kept striding along.
Bending back to the plant, Matti-Jay snipped off a few leaves. She placed them in a sample bag. She stepped on a few meters, where a different kind of plant grew. This one had rounder leaves and small flowers. She snipped off some leaves and some flowers, putting them each into separate bags.
No toxic sap, so that was a good thing.
From nearby came a kind of peeping whistle. One of the cats? Might be time to head back for the runabout.
As she stood, stuffing the scissors and sample bags back into the satchel, Dub walked right up close.
“Hello there,” she said. “Where have you been lately? Haven’t seen much of you.”
Why would she, though? They’d looked her and the vessel over and gotten all the data they needed. They could continue on with whatever their job was. Matti-Jay needed to get some imagery of them. Some video and images. Record their sound. Get all the data she could.
A gust blew more loose sand around her. A loud whistle came from nearby. A couple of dunes over she saw one of the cats standing at the ridge. Not looking at her, but still too close for comfort.
Time to get back to the Blue Defender.
Dub stopped and shuffled. It spread out its front legs, lowering itself so that its head came almost level with Matti-Jay. The head tipped side to side momentarily, and lifted. A slot opened in the front of the body. Just like when Dub had stolen her soil sampler.
“What are you up to?” Matti-Jay said.
In response, something tumbled from the slot. Two somethings. They landed on the sand with quiet thumps.
Matti-Jay jumped. For a split second she’d thought they were living things. Like the cats.
But they weren’t. They were a pair of boots. Identical to the pair of boots she’d shown Dub a couple of days back. Right after it had duplicated the soil sampler.
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