Chapter 4
The Journey Begins
A murmur of agreement rippled through the huddled group, and just to make sure they moved away from the tunnel’s entrance, a low rumble from within the mountain signalled that something was on the move.
‘Come on,’ called Glyn, already a few paces ahead of the others, ‘let’s get down to the water’s edge and see if it’s fit to drink, our own supplies are for emergency use only.’
They needed little encouragement as a section of the tunnel roof caved in to shower the stragglers of the party with dust and small stones.
There was no pathway down from the mountain, there may have been in the dim and distant past, but that was long gone now. Picking their way between large boulders, cracks in the ground and slippery scree slopes, they eventually reached a flatter section of the alien terrain and progress towards the distant lake speeded up.
As they approached the strangely shimmering water, it became apparent that it wasn’t actually green, but only looked so from a distance.
Arki was first at the water’s edge, waving the others back just in case it posed a threat in some form.
‘It looks clear and clean, but the bottom has a definite green colour to it. I’m not at all sure it’s safe to drink.’
The others crowded around, realizing that they were thirstier than they had realized.
‘Perhaps if one of us takes a sip?’ someone suggested.
‘Who wants to try first?’ asked Arki, and they all took a discreet step back from the water.
Small wavelets sped across the surface of the lake to plop-plop rhythmically on the sandy shore, and apart from the breathing of the assembled group at the lake’s edge, that was the only sound to be heard.
‘This place is too quiet for my liking,’ said Glyn, ‘there’s something wrong about it, but I don’t know what it is.’
‘We’re used to the ever present background hum on the ship, maybe that’s what’s missing, although I must agree, this place does have an unpleasant feel to it.’ Arki had now stepped back a pace from the water’s edge.
While they stood around undecided what to do, the matter was taken out of their hands as a long grey green shape glided towards them just below the surface of the water.
It was about as thick as a man’s arm and approximately two metres long with a large flat head, two hooded jet black malevolent eyes stared unblinkingly at them, daring them to enter its watery domain.
Someone had picked up a small stone, and thrown it into the water just in front of the creature. As the missile touched the surface of the water, the jaws of the creature parted to display a hideous double row of razor sharp teeth, and it surged forward to grasp the stone and then spit it out, all in one continuous movement.
They all stood rooted to the spot, all thoughts of a drink from the lake forgotten. The creature slowly turned and glided back into deeper water, leaving the shoreline undisturbed and as innocent looking as it was before.
‘Bearing in mind how we rely on other living things for our survival, that thing must do likewise, and maybe there are other larger creatures in the lake which use it for food. I’ll taste the water just to make sure it isn’t fit to drink, and then we had better find somewhere to shelter for the night.’ Glyn cautiously edged forward to the water’s edge, dipped a finger in and put it to his lips. The look of disgust on his face and the copious spitting out of the offending liquid confirmed once and for all that it wasn’t fit for drinking.
‘For this water to collect here, there must be a flow of water coming into the lake to make up for evaporation, so let’s go along the side of the lake to find it. It may be pure enough to drink.’ Glyn seemed to be the natural leader, and no one else seemed bothered to query it.
The little party moved off, keeping a few metres away from the lake’s edge as the ground was much smoother close to the water, and it made travelling that much easier.
After they had been walking for a while, the ground rose up from the lake to form a small cliff, and the long climb up began. A few moans and groans from those who hadn’t bothered to keep themselves fit when on board the ship accompanied the rattle of small stones as the party scrambled up the ever steepening slope in the blazing hot sun.
At the top of the climb was a small plateau, with a sheer drop on one side to the lake below, which looked even greener from this angle, and another cliff towering up above them. At the end of the relatively flat section, the ground fell away again towards the level of the lake, with another rise in the terrain in the far distance.
‘As the sun is going down, we may as well stay here for the night,’ Glyn said, ‘and after a meal, we’ll plan what we are going to do. We can’t just stay here, the land is barren and when the food runs out, we’ll starve. We must find some area where we can harvest food as we did on board the ship.’
‘How do we know where to look?’ someone asked, ‘maybe it’s all like this, and then what’ll we do?’
‘Can’t answer that, it all depends on what we find, and where. There is life in the lake, so there should be other life as well. We’ll just have to look for it,’ Glyn replied.
‘Haven’t seen any plants as yet, do you think there’ll be any, somewhere?’ the same voice asked. Glyn didn’t answer.
Several of the party had already sat down on convenient lumps of rock which were scattered about the plateau, and the rest soon followed their example, the camp for the night had been established.
An excited call from Arki quickly got everyone’s attention.
He had disappeared into a pile of rock at the back of the plateau, only one leg sticking out to show where he was.
‘I think I’ve found some water, want to check it out Glyn?’
As Glyn wriggled in among the rocks beside Arki, the others crowded around the periphery of the opening, eager to see if it was drinkable.
‘It looks clear, and there’s no sign of the green colour we saw in the lake. Shall I try some?’ asked Arki.
‘Just dip your finger in and taste it first.’ advised Glyn, feeling he should do the testing.
‘It seems just like the water on the ship, as far as I can tell, there’s no nasty taste to it.’ said Arki.
‘Right, if you feel like it, scoop some up in your palm and hold a little under your tongue for about a minute, then spit it out. That way any contaminants will be absorbed into your system quickly. If there is no reaction in half an hour, then it should be all right to drink.’ Glyn hoped he had given the right advice.
The pair scrambled back out of the rock pile and sat down with the others, all thirsty, dusty and tired. Two of the smaller children began crying, not understanding why they couldn’t have a drink despite their parents best efforts to sooth them.
With the half hour up, according to the time keeper on Glyn’s wrist, Arki went back to the rock pile and quenched his thirst, smacking his lips as he emerged, which didn’t help the others who had to wait another half an hour to be certain there would be no reaction to such a large intake.
It was getting duskish when the time was up and Arki hadn’t keeled over, so Glyn gave the go ahead to drink. How no one was killed in the scramble to get into the rock pile was a miracle, as tempers were beginning to fray at the long delay, the reason not being fully understood by some.
As the water was only a small trickle and not easy to reach, it was some time before everyone had had their fill, and then the question of food came up.
‘Right, I’m going to open my pack first to see what it contains. Remember, these are emergency rations, and when they’re gone we have no more and no way of getting replacements.’ Glyn sounded very serious, trying to drive the point home well and truly.
He undid the clasp at the top of the pack exposing a folded data sheet. A quick glance at it told him he had better read it out loud to the others after they had eaten, and felt a little more secure in their new surroundings.
Glyn pulled out the first food pack, a squat square device with instru
ctions printed on the top. In the failing light it wasn’t easy to read, but he did his best.
‘It says here, pull the tab at the top, extending the container to its maximum height, and fill with water to the level marked. Wait three minutes for the food to reconstitute. After eating, fill the container to the mark again with water and drink. This is a minimum liquid requirement. Everyone understand that?’ he asked, looking around. It seemed they did, and were eager to get on with it, a queue soon forming at the water source in the rock pile.
Scooping water from the little trickle in the rocks was inefficient and time consuming, and nearly as frustrating as waiting to see how Arki faired with his water test, but eventually everyone managed it, having little option.
Glyn waited for the caustic comments to fly forth, as the food wasn’t exactly what they were used to, but hunger had made the assembled company a little more appreciative than usual, and the only sound to be heard was the occasional click of teeth as a softer than normal piece of concentrate was encountered.
As they queued up to fill their containers to the required level with water, a little light conversation began, and Glyn then knew that the first day on Earth for the travellers had turned out quite well, all things being considered.
By the time all were seated again on their chosen piece of rock, it was too dark to read the data sheet he had found in his pack, so he advised the assembly that he would do so next morning, as it may contain some information to enhance their well-being in their new surroundings.
The temperature began to drop as the last flickering rays of the sun died, and darkness crept across the rocky landscape like a silent soft black cloak. One of the younger children began to whimper at the unaccustomed conditions, but a few soothing words from a parent eased the situation as they did their best to find somewhere not too hard to lie down on.
‘I think we should all huddle together to conserve warmth, don’t you?’ suggested Arki quietly.
‘That’s a good idea,’ replied Glyn, ‘it could get a lot colder by morning and we’re not used to such temperature changes.’
‘I think you should put it to them, as you’re the leader,’ Arki added.
Glyn looked at him questioningly in the dim light, but Arki just nodded his head, firmly. Glyn cleared his throat nosily.
‘I hope I haven’t woken anyone up.’ and the chorus of groans with ‘you’ve got to be joking.’ confirmed the fact that he hadn’t.
‘May I suggest that we all huddle together to conserve warmth, it is likely that it will get a lot colder before morning, and as yet we have no way of protecting ourselves from such a heat loss. Place the packs in a line along there, as it will act as a wind break, and then lie down this side of it.’ A cool draft had begun to flow over the plateau, with the promise of more to come.
Once the shuffling and grunts as the odd stone found a soft body part died away, the occasional snore was the only sound to break the otherwise stillness of night, keeping those unfortunate enough to still be awake in that state.
The early dawn found that a few, in the middle of the heap had slept a little, while those on the outside were distinctly bleary eyed and not a little grumpy.
Glyn had been one of the first to be up and around, and had managed to enlarge the tiny pool where the trickle of water had collected, so that is was now much easier to obtain a reasonable supply. He also reread the instructions of his food package again, and found that it was designed to provide enough nutrients to last for twenty four hours, not that it took away the pangs of hunger, which all were feeling.
It wasn’t long before everyone was ambulant, trying to get the stiffness out of their joints and a little warmth into their bodies by briskly walking up and down the plateau.
There were a surprising number of food pots in each backpack, and Arki and Glyn thought it might be judicious to start the day with a meal, just to get everyone in a good mood and feeling better for what they intended to propose.
A little queue built up at the watering hole when Glyn announced the good news, and soon all were munching away on their concentrates, grateful for something to fill their empty stomachs.
‘If you will all close around here, I’ll read out from the data sheet found in the top of my pack last night, I think it might contain answers to some of the questions most of you would like to ask.’ The sun had now broken the horizon, and a little warmth from its still weak rays cheered everyone up, and the group formed as requested.
Glyn cleared his throat, which was becoming a habit prior to making an announcement, and one of the younger children whether by design or accident, mimicked him with a degree of accuracy that brought a chuckle from some of the adults, and a resolution from Glyn not to do so again, if he could help it.
For this document to be available to you, there must have been a terminal breakdown in the project, and now is the time for the true purpose of the project to be revealed to you, the survivors.
A very long time ago, it was evident that Earth was going to be engaged in a war which would most likely terminate life as we know it.
The only hope for the survival of human beings as a species was to isolate a few in conditions where they would be untouched by the holocaust which was to come. It was reasoned that Earth would be unable to support human life for many years into the future, and so some method of prolonging the life of the species had to be found.
The only viable system we could find was to breed many generations within the safe environment we intended to create, and so the project ‘Star Search’ began.
A natural cave deep within a mountain range was enlarged to hold the ‘Star Ship’, which was in effect a self contained and self repairing series of chambers to sustain life for many generations.
It was so designed to recycle everything, as there would be no means of bringing in new materials.
It was deemed by the psychologists that the true state of things would be too much for the mental stability of those involved, and so the subterfuge of travelling to a new home among the stars was devised.
The choosing of the original occupants of the life capsule was the most difficult task for the organizers of the project. The blood types had to be compatible so there would be no problems of incompatibilities with the progeny of future generations, and the genetic make up of each person had to be as near perfect as possible.
Any faulty genes present in the first generation would compound in future offspring, and as there were only twelve males and females, the problem would be exacerbated as time went on with such a restricted gene pool.
The project would have been terminated when the outside sensors detected a return to near normal life on the Earth’s surface, but for you to read this, there must have been a major failure in the system, and the Earth may not have regenerated sufficiently to sustain you.
There is nothing that can be done by the project to ease the situation. You are advised to conserve your rations of food, using them only in emergencies. Only eat that which you recognize from the hydroponics gardens, until you devise some means of testing new food sources. Water should be plentiful, but make sure that it is clear and has no taste.
If the generations have bred true, you will be able to eat fruit, grain, berries and vegetables, and some fish from salt water. Your digestive systems are not designed to eat the flesh of animals, as was done before the project began, but this may change over many generations in the future.
It has been calculated that the areas around the equator of earth will most likely be the first to recover from the disaster which has been predicted, and a journey in a southerly direction is advised to maximize your survival.
We cannot forecast what, if any, life forms will survive to greet your emergence from the project. We anticipate that there will be heavy mutation of any species which do survive, and these may not be recognizable when compared to those contained in the data banks of the project. Extreme caution must be exercised when encountering any mobile life forms, and a
nything not easily recognizable in the way of food sources must be avoided until a means of verifying their safety has been established.
The restraint on reproduction has been automatically removed, and only applied when within the project to limit the numbers the system could sustain. You may now breed as frequently as you wish, in fact this is the main purpose of the project. Only do so in any numbers when you have established a suitable and sustainable new home land.
A limited number of simple tools have been included in the packs to help you create shelters from inclement weather and make other accessories to enhance your lives. Look after them well, they cannot be replaced once lost or broken.
We, who began Project Transplant, wish you, the representatives of our peoples, the best of good fortune. May you survive, multiply and subdue the earth again, but please do not make the same mistakes we have done. Learn from our follies, and go forth in peace.
Glyn looked up from the sheet and saw most of the listeners had moist eyes, and he had to brush a tear away to see them clearly. The utter silence which pervaded the plateau was unnerving, and he had to break it.
‘Well, now we know the truth, we know what we must do. Does anyone have any questions?’
‘Yes, How do we know where south is?’ asked Arki, thinking that if he asked a question, others might follow.
‘Well, er.' began Glyn, trying to reason the answer out. ‘You may have noticed yesterday that the sun sank over there,’ sweeping his arm across the heavens and pointing to the west, ‘and this morning it rose over there. So when it’s at its highest point, then that must be south.
‘I don’t think the sun will ever be overhead here as that only happens at the equator, or not far from it. Therefore if we take our bearings at the sun’s highest point and keep going south until it is over head, then we shall reach the equator.’ He felt pleased with himself, not a bad explanation straight off the cuff, he thought.
‘What happens if the food runs out?’ someone asked.
‘We mustn’t let it. We must do our best to find other food sources, and only use the concentrates if none can be found.’
‘Why can’t we go back to the ship, there’s plenty of food there and the chef always produces meals on time, and I thought they were great.’ Brendon said.
‘When we left the tunnel yesterday, the roof fell in. I think it was intended to do so to prevent us returning, and to make us go south. Anyway, the whole structure was breaking up as we left, so I doubt if the chef survived.’ Brendon, who asked the question looked decidedly crestfallen and began mumbling to himself, he didn’t want to believe the truth and Glyn realized he may have a difficult situation on his hands if others joined in.
He looked around the assembled group, and they in turn looked at each other. There were no more questions forthcoming he decided.
‘Right, let’s get the packs on, and make a start on our journey. Oh, before we do, fill up your food containers with fresh water and try and seal the tops over, that way we will conserve our pack supplies.’ He tried to sound as confident and jolly as he could as he knew there where those among the group who wanted to return to the ship despite his explanation of why they couldn’t.
The little band set off down the slope, the strange green lake getting closer as they descended.
‘I suppose we could try and catch that odd looking fish thing we saw yesterday,’ said Arki, ‘it wouldn’t feed us all, but there might be more of them in the lake.’
‘The data sheet did say salt water fish, so I suppose there must be a reason for that, anyway, how do you propose catching them?’ Glyn was surprised at Arki’s question.
‘Must admit, I hadn’t given that a lot of thought.’ Arki replied, looking a bit sheepish, and wishing he had.
They walked on in near silence, just the odd murmur of discontent from one or two of the travellers, and the flap-flap of their feet on the ground.
At the bottom of the slope, a small stream fed into the lake and Glyn went ahead to test the water.
‘This is good to drink, so fill up now, we don’t know when we’ll find our next water.’
Brendon, who wanted to go back to the ship didn’t make any attempt to drink, standing back from the others as they had their fill. Arki sensed trouble.
‘I think it would be a good idea for you to drink.’ he said, turning to Glyn for backup.
‘So do I.’ said the leader, turning to face the man head on and sensing his defiant attitude.
‘I don’t feel thirsty at the moment.’ he said, with an air of defiance.
‘I didn’t ask if you felt thirsty,’ said Glyn angrily, ‘I said drink, and I mean it.’
‘You can’t make me.’ came back the retort, trying to see just how far he could push his luck.
‘If you don’t drink, your pack will be taken from you and you won’t get another drink until we find a new source of fresh water, the choice is yours.’ Glyn didn’t intend to fool around, the cohesion of the group depended on discipline, so he needed to make his decisions stick for the good of all.
Eventually Glyn stared the man out, and he reluctantly made his way over to the stream. The others had all drunk as much as they could, and now stood around waiting to see what would happen.
With a final sideways glance at Glyn, he bent over to cup his hands in the water, when Arki took a couple of quick steps forward and planted his foot firmly on the other man’s rear end.
The ensuing splash was accompanied by a round of cheers and a good deal of hand clapping. No one stepped forward to help the now thoroughly soaked man out of the stream, and he then realized he was a lone voice of discontent, with no backers.
‘Drink,’ thundered Glyn, ‘I’m watching.’
The whole party got underway again, and in a much more cheerful mood than before. ‘Perhaps the grotty one has his uses after all.’ Glyn thought to himself, trying to hide a grin of satisfaction.
At midday, Glyn called a halt to the march, pointing out that the sun was now at its highest point in the sky and clearly indicating where the South was.
By now they had left the lake behind them, and the terrain looked dry and uninteresting, with no vegetation, and rolling hills right out to the horizon.
As they rested, Glyn suggested that they drank half the water in their cartons, retaining the rest for the next break. No one needed a second bidding, and some suddenly couldn’t work out what half meant.
As they put their packs back on, Arki noticed something shining off to one side on the hill they were about to climb, and everyone agreed it was worthwhile going the extra little distance to see what it was. There had been nothing but stone, sand and rock so far on their travels, discounting the lake which everyone had written off as a dead loss.
Sticking up out of the barren ground for about two metres was a tubular structure, nearly half a metre across and made of a silver coloured metal. Arki, being its discoverer, stepped forward and gave it a whack with his foot, and the metal tube rang like a bell.
‘Must be something left over from our ancestors, I suppose,’ commented Glyn, ‘so how old would that make it?’
‘Don’t have a clue,’ replied Arki, ‘Brek is good at mathematics, he may be able to give us an idea.’
He was standing nearby, a tall elderly man with grey hair and a knowledgeable look about his face.
The two consulted him on the matter, and were treated to a long diatribe of scientific terms and the threat of having an equation scratched out in the sand to enable them to understand the finer points he was making.
‘Just give us the bare outlines of what you think, that’ll do,’ said Glyn, when he could get a word in edgeways.
‘Well,’ began the tall man, wondering how he was going to explain something so involved to a couple of lay persons, ‘I have thought for some while the time we experienced onboard the ship was not the same time we would have experienced if we had been back on Earth, that was before we knew we had never left it. I managed to set up
several experiments to prove that the rate at which the plants in the hydroponics gardens grew wasn’t that which they would have experienced on Earth. Also the gestation period for birth was a lot longer than it should have been. There are several other things which didn’t quite match up, and they all point to the fact that we were being fooled into believing that ours was a common time to that of the earth we had left, which it clearly wasn’t.
‘One reason for doing that would be to disguise the fact that we were living at an extended time scale to that of Earth. Why they wanted to hide that fact from us, I don’t know.’
‘What sort of time difference are we talking about?’ asked Arki.
‘Hard to tell really, I would say about a factor of at least five, maybe as high as ten,’ the tall one replied.
‘In other words, we as a race, have been inside that mountain for about three or four thousand years,’ exclaimed an astonished Glyn.
‘At least that long, maybe as long as ten.’ The tall one seemed totally unimpressed by the idea. Glyn and Arki were quite shattered by the revelation.
‘Whatever this thing is made of, it’s certainly worn well,’ commented Glyn.
Not really knowing why, Arki took a firm grip on the edge of the tube and tried to pull it over to see what the inside was like. It didn’t move a millimetre. Before long, everyone got into the spirit of the thing and tried to lend their weight to the effort. It still didn’t move.
‘It must be part of something much bigger, buried below the ground. I’d love to know what it is,’ Glyn was going to be unsatisfied on that account, it was immovable.
‘Although it’s shiny, the surface is quite pitted,’ someone commented.’
‘Probably wind born sand over the years. Someone give me a hand up, I want to have a look inside it.’ Arki looked around for a volunteer.
‘I’ll help,’ said Brendon, stepping forward.
Arki reached up to grip the rim of the tube and Brendon grabbed his legs and heaved.
‘I can see inside,’ Arki’s voice came back with a strange echoing quality to it, ‘and it just goes on down for ever. Pass me a stone and I’ll drop it in to see how far it falls.’
The stone left Arki’s hand and disappeared from view, but there was no sound of its landing on anything.
‘Pass me another one, as big as you can manage.’
That too fell into the depths, silently.
‘The chamber below must be very big and deep, otherwise over the years it would have filled up with wind blown sand. I think I know what it is,’ said Arki, ‘it’s an air vent for whatever is below.’
‘There must be some other way in then,’ said Glyn excitedly, ‘I wonder where it is?’
‘Could be anywhere, even kilometres away. I don’t think we stand much chance of finding it easily, so there’s not much point in looking,’ Arki replied. Glyn looked disappointed again.
They left the silver tube and the mysteries it held and headed back onto their original course, Glyn making a correction allowance for the sun’s angle as it began its journey towards the horizon.
The troop managed to cover quite a distance in the next few hours, not noticing the hard work of climbing up the hills and down again as conversation went back and forth between them, speculating as to what the tube and its chamber below could have been.
‘Don’t suppose it’s another space ship project, do you?’ someone asked.
‘I doubt that,’ Glyn replied, our ship must have stretched their resources to the limit, I would think.’
They had been going along a twisting valley between the hills for some time, as it was in the general direction Glyn thought they should go, when there was an excited cry from Arki, who had taken the lead.
‘This looks like a piece of dead plant,’ pointing to a gnarled and twisted stem which lay on the ground. The others gathered around to see what Arki had found.
‘Keep an eye out for more, this is the first sign that plants are growing here, there may be some live ones.
As they progressed up the valley, more and more stems appeared, until they had no option other than to tread on them. The sharp crackle of snapping twigs broke the otherwise eerie silence of the valley, and they were all glad of something to break the monotony of the journey.
As they rounded a bend their way was blocked by a wall of rock. The valley had come to an end.
‘We’ll have to climb out, by the look of it,’ someone said. There were a few groans of dismay, but it was their only option.
‘We’ll make camp here for the night, it’s sheltered, and the light will soon be fading.’ Glyn began looking around for a favourable spot when he noticed a dark opening in the rock wall ahead.
‘Hey, that looks like a cave, we could shelter in it and get some protection from the wind.’
The prospect of the long hard climb up the hillside was soon forgotten as they all headed for the dark opening at the end of the valley.
‘Better make sure nothing else has made a home here,’ said Arki, bravely entering the opening. He looked around, but could see nothing other than a thin layer of fine wind blown sand covering the floor of their proposed shelter.
The reason no one had noticed the straggly green bushes to one side of the cave, was because their attention had been taken up by the prospect of a shelter for the night.
Someone yelled out ‘Look at that’, and they all rushed over to see the first green plant since they had left the ‘ship’.
The plant was having a hard time of it by the look of its leaves, dark green, curled at the edges and brittle to the touch, and some had gone brown and fallen off.
Someone lifted a bunch of leaves up, and hidden beneath was a large black fruit.
‘It looks like the black berries we used to grow on the ship,’ Arki said, ‘but about four times the size. Do you think we could risk trying one?’
‘OK, but we’ll do the ‘under the tongue’ test first.’ Glyn was taking no chances.
Arki pulled the fruit off its slender stem and allowed a little of the juice to trickle into his mouth. Ten minutes later and he was still smiling, and making everyone else envious by smacking his lips every now and again.
Someone reasoned that for the plants to grow at all, there must be water present in the ground. Using a flat stone, they soon had a shallow hole dug, and it slowly began to fill with muddy water.
Using one of the empty food containers, after greedily drinking the remaining water in it, the muddy water from the hole was scooped out and poured back on the ground around the bushes.
The next time the hole filled up, the water was almost clear, and Glyn tasted it, considering it fit to drink, although a little earthy.
As the light began to fade in the valley, the fruit was pronounced safe to eat, as Arki was still grinning and seemed none the worse for tasting it.
‘Listen everyone, we can save a little of our rations by using the fruits, so if every pair of you open one food container and share it, the fruits will make up the difference, I hope.’ Glyn was feeling very pleased, things were going better than he had expected.
There were just enough berries to supply everyone with five, the extra large pips being spat out around the bushes so that new plants might grow there one day.
Night was closing in when Glyn noticed two of the men crouched over something on the ground, and asked them what they were doing.
‘We think that if we rub these two sticks together hard enough, the friction created should make them catch fire, and then we can have a little warmth to see us through the night.’
‘Good idea,’ said Glyn,’ but it looks like hard work.’
It was sometime later, when most of the troop had retired to the cave that an excited squeal and a tiny flicker of flame announced the success of the fire makers.
Eager hands gathered up bundles of dead stems and soon there was a cheerful blaze lighting up the valley around the cave mouth.
Despite being tired from their long ma
rch, most stayed awake for a while, huddled in the cave watching the flickering flames and enjoying the warmth from the fire at its entrance.
Next morning, everyone was feeling much better and in a positively cheerful mood. Glyn wondered if it had anything to do with the black berries, but the only effect they had was to make a few of the group run for the cover of the rocks before nature took its course.
They wondered about taking some of the sticks with them for a fire the next night, but the only thing available to tie them up into a bundle were the stems from the living berry bush, and no one wanted to destroy the bushes after robbing them of their fruit the previous night.
Brendon came up to Glyn and said a little timorously
‘Do you think we should have a look in our packs to see what tools we’ve been issued with?’
‘Not at the moment, I don’t think we’ll need tools just yet,’ Glyn replied, ‘I’d like to get a little further towards our goal first as that’s where we’ll be making a permanent camp, then we’ll need them.’
The empty food containers were filled with water, albeit slowly, the backpacks put on, and the long climb up the hillside began.
Reaching the top, they could see a range of hills in the far distance which seemed to have a green haze over them.
‘Now that could be vegetation,’ Arki surmised, ‘and there might be other food plants among it.’
As it was in their general direction anyway, they marched on, the thought of new fresh food adding a spring to the step of even the most unhappy member of the tattered remains of humanity.
At the bottom of the hill, what had looked like a different coloured strip of ground turned out to be a great gash in the Earth’s surface. Some when in the past, the Earth must have suffered a series of earthquakes, the surface being stretched or compressed, depending on which forces were working on what, and this was stretch, and a big one.
It was too wide to jump, except for the most agile, Glyn and Arki both agreeing it would certainly be too much for two of the men and all the women, especially Mia, who was now sporting a very large bulge at her middle.
They had to go eastwards along the ravine for several kilometres before coming to a place where the gap in the ground was only a metre or so wide, and Arki reckoned that everyone could get across that.
Peering over the edge, Glyn was surprised to be unable to see the bottom of the rift, and dropped the obligatory stone down it. There wasn’t a sound for some time, and then a very distant rattle as the stone clipped the side of the rift somewhere deep below them.
The long haul up the other side of the hill put everyone in a bad mood, as the sun was doing its best to cook them and there wasn’t the faintest breath of wind.
Reaching the top didn’t help much either, as the distant green smudge seemed just as far away as before.
Glyn called a halt and gave instruction that they could drink one third of their water, but only one third. And that didn’t go down any too well, as most could have quite cheerfully quaffed their entire emergency supply.
The break was only a short one, and soon they were on their way again. Beginning the downwards slope of the hill, a wide open plain stretched out before them. Glyn really didn’t like the thought of crossing that much open space.
It seemed threatening somehow but he couldn’t quite figure out why he felt that way. He didn’t mention his thoughts to Arki, as he saw little point in getting him worried as well.
Near the bottom of the hill they saw something new. Little lumps of what looked like dirty glass lay scattered about, as if sand had been fused into small nodules by some very powerful blowtorch.
The further down they went, more of the nodules appeared, until at one point they were crunching their way along quite noisily.
Suddenly, a high pitched squealing rent the air, and everyone stopped dead in their tracks.
The noise seemed to be coming from one of the packs, and Glyn instructed the carrier to take his pack off and find out what was causing the disturbance.
The culprit was a small electronic device, and once out of the pack the noise was deafening. Glyn took it from the proffered hand and looked at the printing along the top of the little oblong box.
‘Quick everyone, out of this crunchy stuff and up the hill. Move it,’ he shouted, but Brendon was in no mood to trudge up any hill, especially the one he had just come down.
The others had begun to do as they were told, but Brendon stood his ground and opened his mouth to argue. Glyn swung around and planted his foot at high velocity on Brendon’s rear end, sending him sprawling. He managed to regain his feet, gave Glyn a filthy look and took off after the others as if the demons of hell were after him.
‘There was no need to do that,’ he whined, slowing down a little. Glyn came up behind him and he took off again as fast as his stubby little legs would allow.
‘This area’s dangerous, and we must get out quickly.’
‘I did what I had to do to get you moving. When I say move, you move, you don’t stand around arguing the toss about the finer points of moving. When I say do something, it’s for your own good, but you might be too thick to understand the reason. That’s why you must obey at once.’ Glyn was getting out of breath now, so he saved the rest of his diatribe for later, when he could deliver it with a little more emphasis and in a more dignified manner.
Once clear of the glassy nodules, the radiation monitor cut its screech back to a series of loud ticks, and as they went a little higher up the hill the device went silent, apart from the odd tick caused by the ever present background radiation.
‘What was that all about?’ asked Arki, although he had guessed most of it.
‘That area down there must have been at the centre of a nuclear explosion, or something like it. The radiation is still hanging around and I suspect that we got a good dose of it.
‘How much do you think,’ asked a pale faced Arki, ‘in round terms.’
‘Don’t really know. The line of lights which indicate the dose rate were all lit, so I think we can safely say we got a generous helping. There’s nothing we can do about it now, so we may as well get on with the march to the south and steer well clear of any areas like that in future.’
Having explained the situation briefly to the rest of the travellers, they moved along the top of the hill, the idea being to out flank the deadly sands, and then continue on with their journey towards the hazy green hills on the horizon.
Glyn and Arki were in the lead and setting the pace, while the others were strung out behind in groups of two or three, some talking, some deep within their own thoughts, Brendon bringing up the rear, and mumbling away to himself.
‘I know it may not seem important right now, but what do we do when our clothes wear out?’ asked Arki, who had obviously given the subject some thought.
‘Don’t know. If they do fall apart, it’s going to be a bit undignified, especially for the older ones, with all the dangly bits on full view,’ the visual imagery of such an occurrence had them both laughing heartily.
‘Actually, the material seems to be darn near indestructible, I can’t remember the last time I had a replacement set,’ Glyn said, the tears still running down his face. ‘I put ’em in the wash after picking up the second set, and as far as I know they just keep cycling round.’
‘Well, we can’t use large leaves as in the old myths,’ Arki continued, ‘as we haven’t found any big enough.’
‘You mean nature’s been that generous!’ Glyn responded, and the laughter rang out again, being the only sound apart from the muffled sound of their footsteps.
As the sun dipped towards the western horizon, the slanting rays lit up the area of fused sand nodules turning them into a myriad of twinkling stars, winking in and out of existence as the travellers walked along.
‘It’s surprising that such a beautiful sight could hold such a deadly threat to life,’ said Arki with a sigh.
‘I agree,’ replied Glyn, stopping f
or a moment to look at the scintillating sands, ‘at least we can now see the outline of the dangerous area, and that’ll save us quite a bit of extra walking. I had intended going right to the end of this ridge, just to be sure of missing the radioactive area.’
They now turned at right angles to their old line of walking, and headed off down hill again, Glyn considering that if they kept going straight ahead, they would safely bypass the danger area by a small margin.
Holding the radiation monitor in his hand, he lead the way past the edge of the knobbly glass area, listening out for the slightest increase in the steady tick, tick, of the sensor.
A warm breeze drifted across the deadly area towards them, carrying with it a harsh dusty metallic smell, but as the monitor didn’t warn them of any dangerous radioactivity, they carried on, oblivious to the microscopic particles they were ingesting into their lungs.
By the time they had cleared the danger area, the sun was only about two hours from disappearing below the horizon, and it was decided to seek out a suitable place to stop for the night.
The terrain was changing again, with smaller hillocks and deep gullies replacing the rolling slopes of the early afternoon, and it was in one of these that the first sign of life in that day’s travel came to light.
A blob of grey green could be seen at the end of the gully they were travelling along, and this induced an increase of pace without a word being spoken.
As they neared the strange looking plant, it became obvious that no one recognized it as being anything like those they were used to on board the ship.
It stood alone at the end of the gully, surrounded by copious amounts of dead time whitened branches, the remains of those plants which hadn’t quite made it in the dry and harsh environment in which they had tried to grow.
‘Well, we’ve got some fire wood at least,’ someone exclaimed, ‘but who’s going to gather it up with those spikes on it?’
The white gnarled and twisted branches were smothered in closely packed vicious thorns, some ten centimetres long, and with points as fine as any needle.
‘I don’t think we’ll find a better place to make camp tonight, so let’s clear an area over there of these prickly branches, and build a sheltering wall with our packs. It all came so naturally to Glyn.
Removing the dead plants wasn’t quite so easy as had at first been assumed. Some still had deep roots attached, and although the wood was dead, it still had considerable strength.
One particular dead plant was right in the middle of the area they intended to sleep on, and despite all efforts, it remained stubbornly fixed in the ground. They had snapped all the thorns off using their feet, but two men pulling as hard as they could wouldn’t free the plant from the firm hold it had in the ground.
Someone had the bright idea of digging the earth away from around the plant, and after much hacking away with a large flat stone, they had managed to make a small crater around the base, and then they saw why it was so firmly rooted to the spot.
Where the plant protruded from the stony ground, a network of thick roots spread out in all directions, some sideways and some directly downwards. There was more of the plant below ground than there was above.
Four of the biggest men grabbed hold of the naked stem and pulled in unison, but it still refused to come free, and they gave up the unequal struggle.
One of the fire makers of the previous night came forward and suggested that they burn it out of the ground, and as no one could think of a better idea, he set about rubbing his sticks together, which he had fortuitously saved.
It was several minutes later when a very hot and tired fire maker produced a small glowing bundle of tinder which he proceeded to blow on, encouraging it to burst into flame.
Once a few small twigs had caught fire, the process speeded up, larger twigs and handfuls of thorns being added to the small fire around the base of the plant.
The next event took them all by surprise. The main stem of the plant began to writhe about like a thing possessed, emitting squeaking noises amid the crackle of the general fire, and then the living bush, many metres away began to follow suit, the pair dancing and twisting like a pair of drunken ballet dancers.
Everyone backed away from the performing bushes, not knowing what else might happen.
‘Must be connected by underground roots,’ exclaimed Arki, ‘and what one feels is experienced by the other.’
‘But this one is dead, unless it’s not as dead as we assumed,’ one of the fire makers added.
There was a sudden gush of flames as a small oil storage nodule at the base of the main stem split open, expending in a few seconds the energy it had taken years to store.
Soon after that the fire died down, with just a few wisps of smoke drifting up into the still evening sky.
‘Right,’ said Glyn, ‘let’s gather up some of this loose dead wood and get a good fire going, we are going to need the heat later on, and the light will enable us to see what we are doing with the food packs.’
Everyone opened a food pack, adding the water they had saved from the last time they drank, and making up the difference from the emergency water supply, which was being used for the first time.
‘Keep all empty containers,’ Arki called out as the evening meal got under way, ‘they will be useful for holding extra water, or whatever we might find to eat,’ if we ever do he added under his breath.
After the meal, general conversation carried on for a while, but as everyone was exhausted after the gruelling march that day, they soon huddled down behind the wall of packs to get some sleep.
A few of the more fortunate ones had a sandy patch to lay on and were able to scoop out a depression for their hips, so ensuring a good night’s rest. They were only disturbed once by a strange wailing noise which drifted across the gully, and then was gone. A vivid imagination kept a few awake for a while, and then all was quiet apart from the soft moaning of a light wind across the top of the hill.
Next morning they all seemed a bit more cheerful, as they were getting better adjusted to sleeping out in the open. There were a few requests for another ration of food, but as Glyn pointed out, they may be hungry but the previous night’s ration would sustain them for twenty four hours.
After a limited drink from the emergency water supplies, they were off again.
The rising sun spread a pink glow over the tops of the surrounding hills, adding a fairyland touch to the scene and thereby disguising the true nature of the hostile land through which they were to travel.
‘I could do with a good shower,’ Arki commented to Glyn as they began the ascension out of the gully.
‘Me to, and our clothes could do with a wash. The fine dust particles lodged in the material will cause it to wear before its time if we’re not careful, so a bit of laundry is called for, at the earliest opportunity.’
The climb out of the gully was steep, and everyone was a little out of breath by the time they had reached the top, but fortunately the cool morning air had made the ascent a little more bearable.
The view from the hill top was a little more encouraging than the previous sightings of the distant green clad hills. They must have travelled a lot further than they thought, weaving in and out of the gullies the previous day. The plant growth could now be plainly discerned, with what looked like tall trees poking up out of the overall green mantle of the undulating ground ahead. On the far horizon, a jagged row of mountains poked their stark black sombre heads up into the clear blue sky of the early morning.
‘There should be food of sorts somewhere in that mass of greenery,’ Glyn said hopefully, ‘and we’d better find it before our rations run too low.’ Arki just nodded, he was transfixed at the sight of so much green after days of barren rock and sand.
They still had some distance to go before they would reach the green clad area, and the thought of what they might find spurred them on at an ever increasing rate, some actually breaking into a run at the bottom of the slope where i
t levelled out before the next rise.
What had looked like just another ordinary hill to climb from a distance, turned out to be something quite different when they reached it.
The first few steps up the slope brought everyone to an unintentional halt, their feet sinking further into the very fine sand with every step.
‘I thought it was too good to be true,’ moaned Brendon, who had lost his balance and was now sitting on the shifting sands, and slowly drifting down the slope.
Arki made one more attempt to climb the sand slope, and sank up to his knees in the fine dust.
‘There’s no way we can get up here,’ he said, trying to extricate himself from the sucking effect of the sand.
The group assembled at the bottom of the slope, somewhat crestfallen, but not beaten.
‘How about laying the packs in a line and crawling over them?’ someone brightly suggested, with little conviction.
‘It might be worth a try,’ said Glyn, secretly doubting that it would work.
A line of backpacks were laid up the slope, but a soon as the weight of a person was added, the packs sank from view and for a few moments there was panic at the thought of the precious contents being lost for ever.
Eventually the packs were recovered, dusted off, and slung over tired shoulders.
‘We’ll have to go along the bottom of this sand slope until we find a way around it, or perhaps more stable sand which we can walk on.’ Glyn sounded as fed up as the others looked.
They trudged on for what seemed like hours, stopping once for a drink, and then on again.
The valley between the long hill they had come down and the fine sand bank wound and twisted its way eastwards, taking them well off the southern course they had intended to follow.
Disgruntled comments were beginning to fly thick and fast, and Glyn was losing patience with those who moaned but could offer no solution to the problem.
He was about to call a halt and have it out with the malcontents once and for all, when they rounded a bend in the valley bottom and were confronted by a jumbled mass of broken rock.
‘That’s going to take a bit of climbing over,’ said Arki, immediately adding ‘but I’m sure we can do it.’ in response to a withering look from Glyn.
Glyn and Arki moved forward, while the others having had enough marching for one day, tried to find a cool resting place in the shadow of the bend, and sat down.
‘There’s something odd about that rock,’ Glyn stated, ‘I’ve never seen a rock with a piece of metal sticking out of it.’
They moved closer and found other large lumps of what seemed to be rock, equally adorned with metallic rods protruding from their surfaces.
‘It reminds me of something,’ Glyn said, scratching his head and trying to recall something he had once read in one of the books a long time ago.
‘Got it!’ he exclaimed. ‘Buildings were reinforced with metal rods to give them extra strength, and these blocks aren’t rock, but concrete, an artificial building material made from something called cement, mixed with sand and gravel.
‘This must have been a building, a bit like our ship, but standing on the surface. People lived in them, and factories for making things were put in them. Never thought I’d see one though.’
‘I don’t think we’re seeing one now, just the remains after something rather powerful disassembled it,’ Arki remarked, ‘but interesting, just the same,’ he added.
‘Well, we can’t go up the sand slope, the hill on our left is too steep at this point to climb safely and this jumble of broken building is blocking our way forward. We either have to go back to a point where we can climb the hillside, or find a way through this heap of rubble, the blocks are far too big to climb.’ Glyn was trying to apply logic to the situation, but it didn’t resolve the problem.
‘There are some dark openings over there,’ Arki pointed to a gap between several massive blocks, ‘there might be a way through the pile, it’s just possible,’ he added.
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