Ben answered. “The axle has been welded too many times. If it breaks, we’re screwed!”
“If those animals catch up with us we’re also screwed.”
By the time the two jeeps reached the edge of the forest, the greyhounds were still over a thousand feet away. Marlene turned onto the old track, but the bumpy surface made it impossible to go above twenty-five miles an hour. Within moments they were surrounded by trees and bushes.
“I can’t see if they’re still behind us,” Jack shouted from the jeep behind them.
“You can bet they’re still behind us!” yelled Russell. “And they’re faster than us. Get ready for battle!”
He took out a pistol and pressed it into Greg’s hand. “You can remember how to shoot it, can’t you?”
“Yes, you taught me yourself!”
Russell nodded. Back on Earth, he hadn’t believed in letting children or teenagers handle weapons, but on this planet, you had to be prepared for all eventualities. All the children in the colony were taught to shoot as soon as they were old enough to help out in the fields. There was no knowing if a wotan or some other creature might suddenly appear.
“Only shoot when I say! Aim at the monsters that come at us from the side. Whatever happens behind us, leave it to the second jeep to deal with. Never aim at the other jeep!”
The jeep continued to judder along the track. Russell looked behind him. At any moment the first beasts would appear between the trees. The terrain would only slow them down slightly.
“I can see them, they’re coming!” screamed Jack, panic rising in his voice.
Russell cocked his weapon and aimed past the second jeep. He could already make out one of the creatures that was tearing its way toward them between two trees.
Holy crap!
The jeep was lurching so erratically that Jack—who was sitting in the passenger seat—kept moving in front of the target. He couldn’t shoot without hitting him.
Shots were fired. One of the beasts appeared as if from nowhere next to the driver’s seat of the jeep at the back. A big glob of venomous spit landed on the left fender.
Eliot ripped his pistol from its holster while holding onto the steering wheel with the other hand, and took aim. The greyhound tumbled over.
“Fuck!” Russell cried. Three more animals had almost caught up with the back jeep. Donald shot two of them and shook his gun, cursing, as it was obviously jammed. Countless more creatures came tearing out of the forest. “There are too many of them! They’re gonna get us!” yelled Russell in despair.
“Wotans! From the front!”
When Russell turned around, Ben had already opened fire. About two dozen wotans were running toward them along the track. Ben had hit one, but the rest were not deterred.
We’re dead! Russell looked down at the pistol in his holster and then at his son. The thought flashed briefly through his mind . . . he could shorten his son’s suffering and spare him an agonizing death at the hands of these monsters.
Marlene screamed as the wave of approaching wotans reached the vehicle, but immediately fell silent. Bewildered, Russell realized that the animals were completely ignoring the humans and their jeeps.
They’re simply running past us!
“What the hell . . .?” began Benn.
The horde of wotans came face to face with the greyhounds approaching from the opposite direction. Spitting and snarling, the animals threw themselves at each other, until there was just a mass of entwined bodies rolling across the mossy forest floor.
Still unable to grasp what was happening, Russell lowered his weapon. “My God!” he whispered. The sound of the creatures’ ghastly yowling sent a shiver down his spine. Beside him, Greg was crying quietly.
“That was obviously our rescue squad,” said Marlene drily.
“What was that?” asked Ben. “I don’t get what just happened.”
“It looks like the wotans were defending their territory,” replied Marlene. “Yesterday I was already wondering why they didn’t follow us into the glade.” The border between their territories must run along here. The wotans used to control the whole area around Mount Fairweather. The two species are rivals. The approaching ocean is forcing the greyhounds into wotan territory.”
“But I don’t understand why they didn’t attack us at the same time as the greyhounds,” said Russell.
“The greyhounds have probably always been the wotans’ natural enemies. We haven’t been on New California long enough and aren’t an established part of the ecology. For both species we’re just prey, and therefore pose the least danger. But when one of the groups has won, they can start to think about lunch—and that’ll be us.”
“We didn’t plan it, but we couldn’t have come up with a better tactic,” said Russell.
“What do you mean?” asked Ben.
“By luring the greyhounds into the forest, we created a diversion for the wotans. Now they’re busy and haven’t got any time to think about us. With a bit of luck we’ll make it unscathed back to the post. Otherwise they probably would have got us.”
“It’s still quite a ways to the post,” interjected Marlene. “Around twenty miles.”
“The herds of wotans seem to be well organized. Over the next hour they’ll summon up all their forces to defend the boundary.”
“Do you really think they’re that intelligent?” asked Marlene.
Russell shrugged. “It certainly looks like it. Now we’re going to pay for the fact that we didn’t find out more about these animals earlier. All we can do now is speculate. But if they are able to act with intention, it means that our observation post will be in even greater danger once they can’t hold on to their territory anymore.”
“Danger is an understatement,” said Marlene.
Russell nodded. “I’m afraid the very first wave of wotans might be strong enough to break through the barriers.”
Chapter 19
“So that’s the situation in a nutshell. Now we have to discuss what to do about it.” Marlene laid the microphone aside and sat down between Russell and Dr. Dressel.
Russell stole a quick look at Ellen, who was sitting in the second row of the assembly room. A day had passed since their return to the colony. The rest of the journey had passed uneventfully, as he had predicted. There had been only a couple of lone attacks by wotans, and those had been easy to fend off.
When they arrived back in Eridu, there had been a big commotion. Ellen had flung her arms around Greg and then, sobbing, hugged Russell. Although he was happy to see her, he had accepted the hug reluctantly; he didn’t know what to feel.
Some of the colonists snubbed Russell—in retrospect they regarded Russell’s whale ride as a selfish ego trip, which had led to the death of one of their fellow colonists. Ben did not hold back on propounding his opinion that Igor’s death was all Russell’s fault. Through gritted teeth, Russell had to acknowledge that his adversary was right on that point. Of course there was nothing he could do about the fact that Greg had fastened himself to the whale, but that didn’t change the fact that Igor would still be alive if he had not decided to make a final journey. When Sarah Deming slapped him and screamed at him after seeing her husband’s dead body, it washed over him in a daze. Once again he was the bad guy of the colony.
But Marlene had come to his defense, and pointed out that it was thanks to Russell’s journey that they had become aware of the new danger facing them. The previous day, they had sat down with John Dressel, Drew Potter, Jenny Baldwin, Dr. Cashmore, and Dr. Lindwall to assess the situation. They had quickly come to the conclusion that a danger such as this needed to be discussed with all citizens of the colony.
“Are you really sure that the situation will become as precarious as you say?” asked Travis Richards in his booming voice.
Jenny Baldwin stood up. “We don’t know how many animals there are down in the lowlands. But from the data we have, I’d estimate that there are at least a million larger animals. Marlene
is absolutely right in her prognosis. We know the topography of the lowlands well enough to know that the canyon provides the only access to the highlands.” She looked over to Drew Potter, who nodded in agreement, then continued: “It seems to be a periodic occurrence. Every thirty years the lowlands are flooded and the animals migrate to the highlands. When the water recedes again, they go back.”
“I don’t get it,” said Nathalie Grant. “Why don’t the animals stay in the highlands, if they have to flee every few years anyway.”
“Presumably because the lowlands are more fertile. Even if they are beasts of prey, we know that wotans sometimes feed on fruit that only grows in the lowlands. Now we also know why we came across wotans when we first arrived here: obviously, shortly before we came to New California, one of the flooding periods had just come to an end.”
Eliot Sargent stood up. “And what the hell causes this regular flooding? I grew up by the sea and know all about tides. But a high tide that only occurs every few years doesn’t make sense. And I also haven’t understood this thing about a new moon. I thought New California didn’t have a moon!”
“Apparently it does,” said Dr. Dressel. “At the moment it’s still hidden behind the horizon, but from the top of the nearest mountain you can already see the upper edge. In a day or two we’ll be able to see it from Eridu.”
“And where’s it been the past twenty years?”
“It moves very slowly. My guess is that the moon only moves across the firmament once every twenty years. It is my assumption that we arrived here shortly after the tides were at their highest, and only then are the lowlands flooded.”
“You mean the moon only orbits the planet every forty years? It would have to be millions of miles away!” said Dr. Cashmore.
“No, I didn’t say that. It orbits in a little less than a day, which makes its angular velocity a little higher. That’s why its position relative to the surface of the planet changes only very slowly.”
“You’ve lost me,” said Ben.
“It’s moving in an almost geostationary orbit around this planet— like TV satellites orbit the Earth. But only almost, which is why it wanders so slowly across the sky.”
“Only twenty-two-thousand miles above the surface of the planet?” asked Ellen, who as a former astronaut understood something of what he was talking about.
“Yes, the mass of New California is similar to Earth’s mass, so that’s about right.”
“Surely a moon that’s so close to a planet would develop far greater forces.”
“It’s probably much smaller than the Earth’s moon. Phobos also only moves around six-thousand miles above the surface of Mars, but it’s only eighteen-thousand miles in diameter.”
“I used to sail,” said Lee Shanker. “If the moon is rising over the horizon now, the water ought to have reached its lowest level.”
“In principle, yes—but the low tide is now over and the high tide has begun. We don’t know the geography and the coastlines of this planet, but they’re responsible for the tidal range as well as for the exact time that high tide begins.”
“And what does that mean for us? How long will the high tide last? And when will it reach its highest point?” asked Marianna Waits.
“We don’t know,” replied the physicist. “It could last for years. On the other hand, it’s possible that a huge wave preceding the actual high tide floods the lowland for a short time, and that the high tide itself is less dramatic. In that case, the water would disappear from the lowlands within a few weeks. Drew’s geological findings suggest that the water flows back out relatively quickly. But the fact remains that the lowlands will be flooded. Everything else is pure speculation.”
“And how long do we have until those beasts run us down?” asked Igor Isalovic.
“That’s the bit we really don’t know,” answered Marlene. “We can only guess. A week, perhaps? Then the first big wave of wotans will flood to the observation post, and the barriers simply aren’t strong enough to keep them out.
“And if we strengthen the barriers?” asked Ben.
Marlene shook her head. “Even the Great Wall of China wouldn’t keep out those animals. There are millions of them and they have deep-rooted migration patterns. They want to get past precisely this point. The animals at the front would get crushed against the wall, and those at the back would simply climb over the dead bodies.”
“Shit,” said Ty.
“That means we have to escape?” asked Paulina Hall.
“That’s exactly what we need to talk about,” said Marlene.
Ernie Lawrence stood up, a spark of anger in his eyes. “We’ve bust our asses over the last twenty years for our colony and now we’ve finally got it to feel half-way like home, and don’t have to worry every winter about having enough to eat. I’m not leaving here! At least not without a fight!” He sat back down.
“It probably won’t work anyway,” objected Jenny Baldwin. “We have nowhere to go. To the north are the mountains, to the west the highlands, and beyond that another range of mountains. In the space of a week we can’t gather together all our belongings and drag them somewhere hundreds of miles away. We don’t even know what lies beyond the mountains. Sure, we could take refuge in the high mountains for a while, but not for years. The fields haven’t been harvested yet and without any corn we won’t survive the winter.”
“How much do we still have in reserve?” asked Marlene, turning to Ann Penwill.
“Not enough. Jenny’s right. Fleeing into the mountains isn’t an option. Maybe we could escape through the transporter?” she added.
Linda Ladish in the row behind her snorted loudly. “Where to?”
Marlene agreed. “There’s nowhere we can flee to. In the worst-case scenario, Russell’s Planet would provide a refuge, but only for a while, until our supplies run out. And to transport enough supplies in the transporter for us all to survive in the medium term strikes me as impossible.”
“We’ve worked our asses off for our colony! We should build a wall around Eridu and protect our city against these monsters,” said Ernie Lawrence. He was in a militant mood. It was clear that he wasn’t going to give up his life here without a fight.
Marlene shook her head. “Perhaps, if we had more time. But it would be impossible to construct the necessary fortifications in the space of a week. And anyway, we’re back to the problem of the supplies. No, that won’t work either.”
Travis Richards groaned loudly. “And what do you suggest? Simply giving up?”
Marlene stood up. “No. Yesterday we put together a plan we’d like to put up for discussion.”
A hush fell over the hall. She had the undivided attention of all of the colonists.
“Instead of strengthening the observation post, we could blow up the entire canyon at the narrowest point between here and the lowlands—right where the flood reaches its highest point. It would create a new, sheer cliff-face, a hundred and sixty feet high, which couldn’t be crossed by the animals.”
“Is that feasible?” asked Ty Grazier skeptically. Back on Earth he had been an explosives expert. “Do we even have enough C-4 left?”
Marlene shook her head. “That’s precisely the problem. definitely do not have enough explosives left. Dr. Dressel proposes using one of the remaining atomic bombs.”
Pandemonium broke loose. Russell had expected this. During the preliminary meeting, he himself had told the physicist that he was mad. It would be a drastic step to take.
“You must be nuts!” cried Stansilav from the back row.
“It’s only three miles away from our settlement,” shouted Rhonda Fielder.
“You’ll contaminate us all!” said Dorothy Moore.
Marlene waited until the noise finally died down. “Let’s at least discuss the idea, because we don’t have any other options. Dr. Dressel will give you the details.”
The scientist stood up and went over to the map. “It’s true, the spot is only about three miles aw
ay. But we wouldn’t be exposed to significant amounts of radiation.” He stepped to the edge of the podium and waved his hands about nervously. “In order to cause the cliff to collapse, the nuclear explosive charge will be ignited inside a hole in the cliff face. A big part of the explosion’s energy will be absorbed by the rock. The remaining fireball will have a radius of nine-hundred feet and glaze the rock surfaces—making it too slippery for animals to get over. We’ll detonate the bomb in the early morning, when the wind should carry the radioactive fallout to sea.”
“And the colony . . .?” asked Travis Richards.
“Eridu will only get a dose of gamma rays in the first seconds of the explosion—a dose too low to harm anyone. The shock wave will be deflected upward by the walls of the canyon and won’t be felt here.”
“I’m still against it,” said Julia Stetson, who Russell remembered had been an environmental activist in her youth and had demonstrated against nuclear power plants.
Marlene stood up again. “As I said, it is the only suggestion that appears to have any chance of success. According to Dr. Dressel, radioactivity is not an issue, but nonetheless, the plan still has other disadvantages.”
She paused briefly because many people were still chatting. “The animals of the lowlands won’t be able to get up here anymore. But we also won’t be able to get down. At least not until the water has receded again. That means we’ll have to manage without our oil spring and the refinery for a time. But they will be ruined by the flood in any case. Unfortunately, right now our supply of oil in the colony is as low as the tanks in the refinery are full. In order to continue operating our machines and vehicles, including the tractors, we’ll have to make another expedition to the refinery before the pass is cut off. It’s in our—”
“If the wind turns to the west during the explosion, we’ll contaminate our fields with the radioactive fallout and starve!” interrupted Julia Stetson.
“If we flee, we’ll definitely starve!” retorted Eliot Sargent bitterly.
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