Whatever the structure was, the walls had been very thick, over a meter from what I could see. Possibly the thickness was intended as a means of protecting against the radiation from the solar flares. I didn’t see any pieces of metal, but there were some dark stains and holes in the blocks that suggested that metal bars or rods may have once been there; over the millennia they had oxidized and weathered away.
My walk about the rubble pile seemed to have helped, and with my stomach feeling better, I crawled back into my shelter, pulled out my sleeping bag and got myself situated inside and, faster than I would have expected to, fell asleep. The thermocouple nanofibers in the sleeping bag maintained the temperature inside perfectly and I slept soundly. When I awoke I discovered that it was midafternoon.
I decided to check in with Kala using my communicator.
“Kala, are you there?” I called. There was a pause and then Kala’s voice came back, sounding a bit out of breath. “I’m here, Tib. I was just changing Reidecor’s diaper again. I think that boy enjoys messing himself. How are you making out? Did you find a good shelter to sleep in?”
“Yes, I found what I first believed to be a huge pile of rock rubble. However, it turned out to be the ruin of some old building, the only thing that remains of it is broken pieces of its very thick walls. I was able to crawl into a space under some of the pieces and had a really good sleep. How about you? Is everything okay there?”
“Yes, fine. Between feedings and changing and in the few minutes when the babies are asleep I’ve been doing some reading on the computer about the scientific team that was here centuries ago. I found one entry in one log where a scientist mentions finding a number of muralam bones at one location and theorized that some predator had caught and eaten them. His fellow scientists, however, didn’t concur with his theory, saying no life form bigger than muralams survived on the planet and that the muralams were most likely cannibalistic, and that one was killing others and bringing them back to that one location to eat.”
I answered, “It sounds like the woewe to me. They must have never actually seen one or its tracks.”
“Yes,” Kala continued, “from what I can see in the logs, they never really looked outside much after the sun set. Their reports of life of the planet are reserved to things that appeared shortly after sunset, and they never investigated what other life forms appeared later at night.”
“Some team of scientists they must have been.” I replied.
“Well in their defense, they weren’t here to study the life forms. They were looking to see if there was anything here worth exploiting-- minerals or scientific discoveries. The team consisted mostly of geologists, and archeologists, with one linguists trying to study and decipher any writing they could find. And that was only to see if there were any scientific discoveries the natives here may have made that might be of use to the Federation. They had little interest in the life forms. Also, they weren’t here very long.
“So what are your plans tonight? Will you try to enter the canyon or follow the cliff walls?” Kala asked.
“I’m thinking of starting out just a bit before sunset and getting down to the stream bed. I need to refill my water bottles before I move on. After that I will examine the canyon, and if I can find a way to move in it, I will try to follow it upstream. What’s the weather forecast? I don’t want to get stuck in that canyon if it rains.”
There was a pause while I assume Kala checked the computer. “The ship's computers aren’t indicating any major signs of rain over the next few days. In fact, it looks like it’s going to be pretty hot and dry.
“Well then, I guess I will try the canyon and hope I can find something in there worthwhile. Tomorrow night I will start my return to the ship.” I said.
“Be safe, Tibby. I love you.”
“I love you too Kala, kiss and hug the babies for me.”
I sighed as I ended the conversation and began packing my gear. I left the small water filtration unit on the top of my backpack so it would be easy to get to once I reached the stream. With everything packed and having taken a small bite from the food bar, I checked the charge on my rifle and headed down the slope toward the canyon.
When I arrived at the point where the canyon turned and went through the mountain, I saw what I had not seen the night before. Just at that point the canyon began to cut through the mountain, there was a dry wash along the outer cliff face that sloped down into the canyon, obviously from water that collected along the cliff face during rain storms and then flowed down into the canyon. While it was a gentle slope, it was strewn with a lot of rocks and boulders that made walking difficult, though there were patches of dammed up sand here and there that made it easier to walk when I came to them. The canyon was already shaded from the setting sun, and the small trilobite-like animals were already starting to come out and scurry about searching for food and getting water from the stream. I worked my way carefully down the slope until I reached the water.
At this point, the stream was shallow, no more than 300 millimeters at the deepest points and not more than a meter to a meter and a half wide at the widest points. I noticed that there were trilobite looking creatures in the water plowing about in the sand. The computer had indicated that these creatures had sweet edible meat under their shells, but I could see it would take a dozen or more to make a meal. The one I had seen downstream near the ship on my first venture outside was much larger than these, and I wondered if they were newly hatched or if the greater ones were only found further downstream.
The canyon, where it started going through the mountain, was about 20 to 25 meters wide at the base and I would estimate 200 to 300 meters wide at the top. I estimated that the canyon running through the mountain had to be close to 300 to 400 meters high where it entered the mountain. Though there were boulders and rocks strewn along the stream bed, there also was a lot of sand piled up on both sides of the stream that made walking easier.
I knelt beside the stream and retrieved my water filter from my backpack. It had a collapsible cup like device at one end and a plastic tube about 600 millimeters long on the other with a small clamp on it. By dipping the cup end in the water and holding it up so the tube extended below it, one could either place the tube in your mouth and drink the filtered and purified water directly from the tube, or you could place the tube in a container and open the clamp to fill the container with clean and pure water. In this instance, I did both. I had expected the water to be cool, but it wasn’t. In fact, it was tepid enough that bathing in it would not have been terribly uncomfortable. Temperatures so far on Desolation were warm, with days often bordering on hot. Nights had not gotten much cooler and the temperatures since we had crashed here had not dropped below 20C. I had read that in the northern parts of the planet temperatures dropped well below freezing, but we were nearer the equator of the planet. There was no seasonal wobble to the planet so temperatures remained pretty much constant.
I had just finished filling my water bottle when I heard a noise behind me and a chattering sound. I spun about quickly to see a muralam sitting up on a rock in an alarmed position. There was something in its posture that reminded me of a creature we had on Earth called a lemur, and while the muralam’s head and body coloring was nothing like a lemur, its body shape and movements were very similar. The muralam looked at me and chattered again. I noted one of the small trilobite like boilatee in the stream and remembered seeing the muralam back at the ship crack one open and eat it. I decided to see what this one would do if I offered one to it. I picked the animal out of the stream and using two rocks at my side cracked its shell and then tossed it in the direction of the muralam.
The muralam looked at me a moment and then at the cracked shell nearby. “Go ahead, take it. You can have it.” I said softly so as not to frighten the animal.
The muralam looked at me again and then back at the cracked shell on the ground by it; finally after giving me one last look, it hopped down off the rock and went over and pi
cked up the shell and began picking the meat out of it and eating it. While it was doing this, I captured another of the creatures and cracked the shell and tossed it to the muralam. As soon as it finished the first one it ran to the second and picked it up and began eating. By now, the sun was setting fast and only the top-most peaks of the mountains had sunlight hitting them. The muralam, which now was about 2 meters from me sat up on its haunches again, its ears turning from side to side as it sniffed the air. From deep inside the canyon I heard a rushing sound and for a minute I feared it was a flash flood roaring down the canyon. The muralam didn’t seem frightened by whatever it was, so I relaxed a bit thinking that animals that lived in this environment would naturally react to any dangers they might face regularly and a flash flood certainly would be one, but what was the noise?
The sound continued to grow as I stared up the canyon. By now, I had dropped the visor on my helmet, so I was seeing things clearly. The sound grew, and then I was hit with a strong blast of wind like a small gale that rushed down the canyon. I relaxed as I realized this was a natural phenomenon. I recalled once being on a fishing trip with buddies from the Navy where we had experienced something similar along the Salmon River in Idaho back on Earth. Every morning and evening, just as the sun reached the peaks of the mountains surrounding the river, the change in temperature as the sunlight, or loss of it, affected the temperatures of the mountain sides it would change the air currents. In the morning, , the sun's heat would warm up the mountain sides causing the colder air at the summits to drop and fall down into the valley, where they would rush downstream. In the evening, the reverse would occur as mountain sides and canyon would still be warm from the sun but the loss of sun on the peaks would cause them to cool quickly, and the warmer air in the canyon would begin to rise and rush up the canyon. Something similar was going on here, though I didn’t fully understand the dynamics.
The muralam chattered, and I looked down to see it was now sitting upon its haunches at my side and looking at me in anticipation of another boilatee.
“Sorry fellow,” I said, “much as I would like to sit here feeding you, I must be moving on.” Then seeing a boilatee moving through the stream, I stepped on it, mashing its shell. I used the toe of my boot to push it up on the bank. “Here you go little fellow… one last snack,” I stated as I started off upstream.
I kept examining the banks of the stream and walls of the canyon as I walked along. It was obvious that during rains, the water in the canyon got quite deep, and I could see marks on the canyon walls indicating at times the water must have been at least 50 meters deep coming through the canyon. It didn’t look good or like anyplace where one would want to try to live. Hopefully, this canyon went all the way through the mountain or climbed up into the mountains where the water levels during a rain would not be so dramatic. I heard chattering behind me and looked back to see the muralam hopping along behind stopping every so often to sit on a rock, and scold I was getting too far ahead, and I should crack some more boilatees. Finally after moving about 1 kilometer up the canyon the chattering ceased, and I didn’t see the muralam anymore.
Just a little further on the canyon it took a turn to the left, and I saw a long flowing stair case of rapids that descended from a higher elevation. The canyon narrowed a bit here, and the rocks were wet and slippery as I worked my way slowly up the stream and a couple of times I nearly fell. When I reached the top, I found myself on a plateau with an imposing rock wall on one side that reached up several hundred meters. The stream wound around snake-like though the plateau, sometimes close to the cliff wall and other times out in the center on the plateau. On the opposite bank of the stream was a slight slope that went up in elevation about 50 meters. All about the plateau sisoma trees were lighting up as now dark. I noted the temperature here was a bit cooler and I also noted that there seemed to be grasses growing on the plateau as well. I decided to walk along the top of the hill away from the cliffs to see what might be visible. I walked about a half a kilometer before I reached the crest of it only to discover that is sloped off sharply on the other side for about another 100 meters and then ended abruptly in a sharp drop-off. I stared off into the distance out across the desert floor. From here I could see the canyon ribbon its way across the desert. Somewhere out there were the ALI and Kala.
I activated my com unit. “Kala, can you hear me?” I waited.
“Yes, Tib, I hear you.” Her voice came back a few seconds later. “Is everything all right?”
“Yes, fine. I’ve made it up to a plateau on one of the mountains. I am looking out over the desert. I’m sure I can see where the ship is from up here, but I can’t locate it with the distance.” I answered.
“If the ship's lasers are still working I may be able to fire one of the ones on the upper hull that you could see. Let me check the weapons console.” she replied.
A moment later, I saw a beam shoot straight up into the sky. “There, did you see that?” she asked.
“Yes, yes I did. I know right where you are now. You’re actually a lot closer than I thought. I can see the ship.” The course I had taken through the mountain, and canyon had practically circled back and partially around the ALI, and I wasn’t all that far from it. I had expected the ship to be much further out in the desert, apparently the desert was a lot larger than I had realized. Had Kala been standing outside, I would have been able to see her, though she would have appeared quite small.
“Have you found any place that would make a good shelter for us?”
“I think there should be some place good up here, but I just arrived and need to look about more.” I answered. “Any signs of the woewe?”
“Not a one. I’ve checked the cameras and reviewed the recording and not a sign of it,” she responded.
“Great, I think it’s dead.” I said.
“Let us hope so,” Kala responded.
While I was chatting with Kala, I had been looking about, and off to my right about 50 meters, I spotted a pile of rocks strikingly similar to the building ruins I had seen, and spent the day in down on the desert floor. “Kala I need to go. I just spotted something I need to investigate. I’ll contact you before I go to sleep at sunrise. I’ll be starting back tomorrow night.”
“Okay, Tibby, I love you.”
“I love you too.” I replied.
As I neared the pile of rubble, I could definitely see that this had indeed been a structure similar to the one below in the desert. This one had maintained its shape better and was not as demolished. As I got closer, I could see that only part of it was above the ground and that a good portion of it still was below the surface. I walked nearer portions of the wall that still extended vertically above the ground. Like the ruins down in the desert the walls appeared to be about a meter and a half thick. There was a flat floor that extended between the few portions of a wall that stuck out above the soil, and in the center on the floor, there was a square hole.
I was about to go over and look at the hole when a head popped up out of the hole and glanced about. It was a woewe, and this one looked even bigger and meaner than the one I had shot earlier. It hadn’t seen me yet, as it was facing in the other direction. I raised my rifle at it as it unexpectedly leapt out of the hole and sniffed the air. As I was taking aim, I realized the wind was at my back, and the breeze was carrying my scent toward the woewe. Just as I realized this, the woewe turned its head looking right at me and instantly began moving rapidly in my direction. I only had time to get in one shot. Thankfully, it hit dead center in the beast's head, and it dropped just a few meters from me. I was shaking inside and quickly looked about to see if there were anymore. I still didn’t know if these animals were solitary or lived in packs.
I waited a few minutes before walking over and taking a closer look at the beast. I expected it to be a smelly creature, but it wasn’t I’ve smelled domestic dogs back on Earth that smelled far worse, and the woewe seemed to be well groomed as animals go. I didn’t like the looks of it
s teeth though, and could only imagine how they ripped through flesh. The paws were very fascinating with six toes that were more like fingers on the front paws, and it looked like the outer two served as thumbs, which meant the creature would be able to grip things with them. The animal was large and must have weighed close to 400 kilograms.
I slowly walked around it and carefully over to the hole it had come out of. Had it not been for the light amplification unit built into my helmet, I would have been unable to see down into the hole, but as it was I could see quite clearly what lay below. Over the years, dirt must have blown in and piled up below the hole through the floor until it formed a natural ramp down into the portion of the building below the ground. I moved down the ramp slowly, looking about in anticipation that there might be more woewe inside, but I saw none. The air inside was a bit warmer than outside. The room itself was about 10 meters square with the hole I had entered through being in the center of the room. The ceiling height was about 4 meters above the floor. The room itself seemed to be bare of all furnishing and other than for the pile of dirt in the center, there was nothing else present. I noted one place on the floor in a corner where the floor seemed to have a swept and polished look, and I reasoned that this must be where the woewe had been sleeping and that it obviously was a very clean animal, because I didn’t see any signs of excreta about, so the animal must have gone outside to perform that task.
There were no windows along the walls but on one wall, I noted a large round stone that got my attention. I had remembered seeing documentaries on TV back on my home world of cultures that used round stones as doors, rolling them to open and close. I wondered if these might function similarly. I went over to the stone disk and pushed on one side; the stone budged a little and then seemed to freeze. When I removed my pressure on the rock, it seemed to move back into place again. I took a closer look at the rock and realized that there was some dirt and small rocks wedged under the side that prevented it from rolling. Carefully I knelt down and removed the dirt and tried to move the stone again; this time when I pushed there was no resistance, and it rolled relatively easily, revealing another room behind it.
Solbidyum Wars Saga 5: Desolation Page 11