by Ginger Booth
Their intent was to cut planks and posts for platforms first. The hunters were amassing trimmed tree trunks for them to cut. Cope suspected captain and personnel alike would not be happy if he suggested they needed a sawmill barn, and weatherproofed at that. A raw board roof wouldn’t keep the rain out. And that generator really shouldn’t sit on the ground, or get doused with heavy rain.
Darren never visited Denali. But Cope endured five months there of outdoor projects and thunderstorms.
Of course, they didn’t know yet what forms Sylvan weather might take. But any installation crucial to progress seemed worth protecting.
He gestured for his hunters to relax for a few minutes while Darren tinkered. He opened a comm channel. “Eli? Cope. How’s your weather model coming along?”
“Skip the courtesy calls, please. Ask Zelda yourself. Eli out.”
Cope appreciated the lead scientist chucking the red tape, though he wondered how long that would survive after the full complement of the expedition’s brain trust arrived. Then again, maybe Denali academics didn’t pursue turf wars like the Mahina Actual eggheads. What a hope.
But Zelda’s response didn’t make him happier. “This is so exciting! From the satellite and orbital cameras, it looks like this rain front is the edge of a ‘weather front.’ The swirl behind it stretches five hundred kilometers!”
“OK. What kind of storm is it?”
“Um.”
“Do we expect more rain?” Cope prodded.
“Oh, yes! I think so. I see flashes of lightning, too.”
Cope would have pinched the bridge of his nose if he could reach it through the helmet. “Zelda, could you check with the hunters? How they know what kind of storm is incoming.”
“Oh, good idea! Zelda out.”
Casting around for options, Cope sighed. At least he could get a tarp over the generator and set a couple logs underneath. Those the hunters could slice off the waiting pile of trees. He got them started on that. By then Darren was ready to finish lowering the blade into its final position, and tighten the belts.
At last Darren straightened and surveyed the clearing. “At least we won’t need the water today.” He’d been concerned that the heat of the blade on the logs would require dousing to prevent combustion in this high-oxygen atmosphere. “Let’s get a log on. A short one to start.”
Cope endeavored to say nothing and let the workman puzzle out how to carry a two-meter chunk of tree. Darren’s setup included rollers and a trough wide enough to accommodate trunks up to 75 centimeters or so, although the whole table was only about four meters long, with the blade in the center. Cope trusted that was just the starter configuration until they got the thing actually cutting wood.
Darren insisted the workmen step back once the log was on the table. “Don’t hold it while it’s being sawed. Just push it along the rollers. The saw itself will pull it through once the teeth engage.”
Cope reflected that in his experience with a table saw, it never seemed to work that way. But this was a bigger saw, and the teeth on that blade reminded him of a pterodactyl beak.
The log trundled forth to meet its demise.
And their meteorologist chose that moment to get back to him. “Cope! We’re sending Zan in the shuttle to measure the central atmospheric pressure! We think the storm could be cyclonic!”
Send Zan in the…? “English, Zelda. Kinda busy.”
“The hunters think we’re in for a hurricane! Isn’t it exciting?”
The saw bit into the log and spit wads of sawdust in joyous abandon. Cope hastily took three steps back to escape the spew zone, but not fast enough. Pinkish wads stuck to his helmet, channeling the runnels of rain. A back-swipe with his glove smeared it more evenly, leaving a single visibility zone through his helmet about the size of his thumbnail. He could see by shoving his head down and to the right as far as possible. Dammit!
The hum of the saw motors raised in pitch and warbled, much the way motors did just before they…quit. The sawmill coughed, then fell silent.
Darren mused, “You ever think that attempting to rekindle an advanced technological civilization, with a handful of people on an alien planet, is insane?”
Cope tried solvent number two next on the mess coating his helmet. He was pretty sure solvent number three would dissolve the plastic. But it might be worth a shot, diluted with water. The rain poured down hard now, with backsplash from the ground bouncing to his knees. That much he could see. “Yeah.”
“Here.” Darren pulled him around and wiped a fairly clear bar in front of his eyes. “Turpentine.” He doused the rag again and handed it to Cope to wipe more of his view.
As the world returned, the Spaceways president beheld the log, about 20 cm advanced onto a 75 cm blade. He also noted that his spacesuit sported pink spitballs, which stuck like epoxy to a swipe from his original rag, but could be dislodged with elbow grease and Darren’s turpentine.
“Hey, I have an idea,” Cope offered. “Never cut this kind of tree again.”
“Good thought.” Darren peered closer at his saw, then tried dribbling turpentine down the leading edge. Then he tried to tug the log backward. “Check the dead-man’s switch, would you?”
Cope voted by unplugging the motor from the generator, then slipped the drive belts off. Dead man’s switch. Fancy way to get dead.
“Hey, Dad?” Nico hailed him. “Maybe we should get tarps over everything.”
“Darren’s your boss,” Cope reminded him.
“He looks kinda…”
“Busy,” Cope agreed. “Yeah, get everything back up on the platform and under tarps. Be sure to bungee them down good. Zelda thinks this might be a hurricane. Um, big storm, high wind. Send me over a tarp, too.” Actually, this generator should go indoors. He watched Darren for a few moments, trying to get the saw to let go. “Give up, Darren.”
“And do what? Throw away good carbon steel with the log? I’m not even sure I can get the saw to let go of the table. That’s quite a resin.”
Sass chose this moment to commence a suit comm channel drill. She told everyone to down tools and face the ship. Then switch to channel 3. On channel 3 she told them to take four steps to the left, and switch to channel 4. Step right.
Hadron told her to piss off before Cope yielded to temptation. But then Nico called to say they were stranded outside because Floki’s team was only halfway through getting a broken generator on board in a pure nitrogen atmosphere.
Thunking his helmet with the back of his fist proved a satisfying alternative for pinching his nose. Though it left an annoying little tuft of pink wood fibers just below his left eye. “Crewman, anyone in a space suit can pass through a nitrogen atmosphere.”
“Duh, Dad. The generator is blocking the way. They’re stuck.”
“Got tarps?”
“Right. Nico out.”
Darren stood up in disgust. “We’ll have to chip that out. Or start over with a new table.”
Cope replied with his hull-cutting gels. They worked fine to cut the saw free of its axle. To convince the log to let go of the table, he applied a hunter with a hand-ax.
“Point taken,” Darren acknowledged. This treatment would leave them with only those glued-on bits of bark left after the hunter was done hacking the log free. Yes, indeed, the steel on sawdust burned, and so did the resin, beautifully. While Darren and Cope leapt away, the hunter had the presence of mind to attach a couple grav-lifters onto the log. He gave a mighty heave backward. The log shot free, on fire in the rain. It jarred another waiting log a couple inches.
He shrugged and recovered his grav lifters, then gave them a wave as he continued on to the foamcrete platform.
As the resin fire died out on the saw wheel, the engineers managed to yank it free of the log. The rain seemed to keep the fire damage nominal.
They safed the blade on a small grav lifter, the same as when they brought it out here, and parked it under the foamcrete platform. Cope hopped to the top to verify e
verything seemed battened down as well as it could be. Although the platform itself could conceivably take wing. Aerodynamics wasn’t Cope’s strong suit – more of a space engineer. And Life Support and Power…
LS&P was the foundation of every Mahina engineer’s education.
Sass and Tarana’s plan was to build wooden raised platforms here, and floating platforms on the lake. Then see which was better. They seemed to think this was a minor challenge, two days tops. At this rate it would take a week to find a workable tree-sawtooth pairing.
Though the resin was a fun resource.
“Hey, Darren? Do you think we could build with resin instead of sawing wood?”
“Now there’s an idea. Wonder if it’s still flammable after it dries.”
“Like the wood isn’t?” Cope countered.
“Point.”
By now the hunters had taken shelter in the tight corridors between the containers under the ship. The wind was whipping at maybe 50 kph, higher in the gusts. A moaning keen came from the trees to the windward, followed by a resounding crack. And the first of the towering hemlocks fell. Its branches ten meters wide, it took out one of the anchor posts of the force field, which blinked out for a hundred meter stretch of the perimeter.
No, the trees weren’t tall enough to reach the generator. Probably. Dammit.
Darren made the same calculation. “I need a team of four to retrieve the generator from the sawmill.” Cope recognized Don’s team trotting out, making straight for their quarry with a grav lifter.
“Don, park it under the ship, not the platform,” Cope suggested. “Just in case.” He hopped down to the ground to join Darren, who now pursed his lips and eyed the platform above. “You have any idea how much wind before this thing flies?”
Darren pulled out his tablet to set up the problem.
Cope felt a shortcut was in order. “Hey, Floki? Are you free to run a calculation for me?”
“I can multitask.”
“How much wind would blow the foamcrete platform off its posts?”
He expected an answer within seconds. But as those dragged into minutes, Darren continued his sketch of the contributing forces. Cope watched over his shoulder amazed. He hadn’t considered that the force of the wind wasn’t a known quantity. Nor that their hastily erected posts might keel over. Nor that the profile of the objects on top presented a sail to the wind. That force applied torque on the pylons.
Darren arrived at a usable answer quicker than Floki. “A hurricane-force wind will pancake the structure before the supports break or the platform flies. Though once the supports give, they may also break. Like that tree. Say 150 kph, give or take. Yeah, nothing’s safe up there.”
The engineers sighed and set to figuring out whether to lower the platform to the ground, or pull everything off of it one item at a time. In the end, they did both, as the slashing rain mounted and the temperature rose.
16
Three days later, Sass waited anxiously for Ben’s shuttle to dock in Thrive’s bay. For the moment, her own ship’s shuttle ferried the logs that would serve as a platform for the enormous new bio-locks needed to board the colonists back onto Sardine at night – a prerequisite to letting them off in the first place.
Hopeful, Sass corrected herself mentally. Ben Acosta, lead captain for Spaceways, considered Sardine a derogatory nickname. Otherwise a fairly amiable boss, he did not tolerate anyone trashing one of his precious ships.
She glanced to Cope, who smiled crookedly. “Bet you’re looking forward to getting Clay back.” That was the holdup. Ben picked up Clay on the way here, bypassing the bio-locks that didn’t exist yet to re-board their ships. Ben’s ships. Clay would be home on Thrive tonight!
And Cope would be home on Merchant with his husband. “I’ll miss you. I don’t know what we’d have done this week without you.”
“Ain’t gone yet,” the engineer returned, but he looked thoughtful.
She spoke simple truth. Cope had been instrumental at every step this past week. Not to say that her own engineer, Darren Markley, hadn’t done a brilliant job as well. If it weren’t for the circus today of Ben’s ships landing, she rather fancied his second draft sawmill at cutting boards would work, plus the new resin grinder.
She nodded a greeting as Eli joined them at the base of the shuttle ladder, likewise wearing pressure suit with helmet racked. He’d come leagues the past couple days as well. The hurricane knocked over a hundred trees and destroyed their protective perimeter. But Eli and the hunters learned plenty by studying the upended root systems and shooing all the critters back out of their clearing. By the next day, as the deep mud began to drain, they had to burn the settlement again. No doubt remained – warmth caused ‘aspen’ saplings to shoot up fast. The new plan was a moat surrounding the colony. Sass and Thrive’s guns managed to dig about a third of the perimeter yesterday. Today wasn’t looking good.
They hadn’t failed, exactly. But before Ben landed, the plan called for Sass’s team to erect housing, simple tents, for everyone to disembark Sardine. Hopeful. But instead they were practically back to square one, with a double perimeter they’d already proven couldn’t protect them, and no housing outdoors at all.
We failed slow.
Though at least the hunters would move back to Hopeful. Or not. Actually, Sass realized, she should offer to keep them housed here. Because in an emergency, getting off the tightly packed Sardine – Hopeful! – took too long. She sighed, and Ben’s shuttle clanked in.
Clay was the first to emerge, casually grav-hopping down from the lock. He enfolded her in his arms for a kiss. She leaned into that with gusto, only wishing their pressure suits weren’t in the way.
“Tarana?” she whispered, as their lips parted. She wasn’t clear on whether the First Selectman was aboard.
Clay relieved her mind. “Just Ben. Tarana’s day of glory and a million pesky details. Cope, I’m not sure he’s coming out. Eli, great to see you! Shall we?” He waved an arm for Cope to precede them into the shuttle. They hung back to give the other couple a moment for their own reunion, then headed up the ladder.
“Sass,” Ben greeted her neutrally. “Hell of a day.” He gave her a half-hug and a crooked smile. “Clay, your helm if you want it.”
Sass’s beloved grinned like a boy, and claimed the pilot seat. She graciously ceded the copilot’s chair to Eli. They were to take an aerial tour of the neighborhood. He needed to see better than she did.
Her attention was better saved for her boss, whose expression was closed. “Go slow, Clay. Enjoy the scenery.”
The first scenery was their encampment, of course, which looked a whole lot smaller with Merchant and the jumbo Hopeful parked in it. As Clay circled, they could see the mass bio-locks already staked out. Sass made a mental note that its generous footprint would need to remain clear, including its entranceway. They could nearly use this whole clearing for the Sylvan spaceport, and cut another swath of forest for the settlement.
“We hope to cut our first boards tomorrow,” she noted.
“So Cope tells me,” Ben acknowledged, narrowed eyes on the ground.
Right. Ben had at least three informants on board her ship closer to him than her – his husband, their son, and Zan. Eli could go either way. She decided to shut up and watch the scenery until spoken to.
After three closeup circuits of the camp, Clay lifted the shuttle up for a longer view, circling 100 meters further afield above the forest.
“Can’t see any trails,” Ben mused. “How extensive is your knowledge of the surrounding area?”
“Not very. Trail-hacking proved dangerous. The wildlife love an expressway through the woods. And we were on a tight schedule to provide housing, so.”
“Of which there is none,” Ben acknowledged.
“Ben, I’m sorry but –”
“No, you’re right. Tarana and I agreed, or we wouldn’t have landed. You didn’t have the manpower to get the job done. Cart before horse. Clay, these tree
s look a lot alike.”
Clay banked the shuttle around and headed for the giant lake at the base of the mountains. Sass’s spirits soared with the peaks, and the planetary-scale glaciers of the mysterious white beyond. She leaned over to catch a glimpse of her lover’s face. Yeah, he’s falling in love, too!
Ben half-rose to get a better look at the turquoise lake, deepening to cobalt under the purplish-blue sky. “Why blue-green?”
“Ice under pressure,” Eli provided. “White stone. Not sure, really. We haven’t tested the lake water. I was hoping to get samples today.”
“That’s the contingency plan site? Floating platforms on the lake?”
“The view is gorgeous,” Sass noted. “And the trees don’t grow underneath. The lake itself is a wildlife barrier.”
“Not very protected,” Ben noted. “From storms off the mountains and glacier. Any idea how cold it’ll be, come winter?”
“No. Winter is a planet-wide phenomenon, not axial tilt,” Eli replied. “The wildcatters came in late spring, and so did we. But clearly the biota survives winter.”
Clay zoomed over the lake and paused over the center of a pretty inlet. “That headland offers some shelter.” Even this small bay offered a deeper section. The land here was more steeply folded than the rolling hills by Sylvan One. The lakefront didn’t offer beach so much as ragged piles of dead trees.
Cope pointed those out and suggested they find a safer inlet. “Hate to have dead trees fouling on a town platform in a storm. Good way to drown.”
“And lose all your supplies and life support,” Ben agreed. “Yeah, this lake is super pretty. But I’m not sold.”
Clay pulled upward and slowly cruised along the crenelated lake shore. Several more inlets along, he came across one with a different pattern. Here the southern end drained into a river, instead of slopes rising on all sides. The water was shallow, with turquoise at its deepest. Around the edges, the water was hardly colored at all, showing a stone bottom.