Metal Boxes

by Alan Black

  “Two? Oh, yeah. There is the mother and the third sister who didn’t survive. So, what do we do with them? Do you need more time to study them?” He gave a little shiver hoping he could get back inside soon. “If I remember the planetary spin and axial tilt, we should have quite a few hours of daylight left. I am doing okay so far outside.” He looked down at the sleeping drascos. “And the girls seem to like it out here.”

  Stone noticed the drascos looked more mottled with reddish spots than before. They were almost camouflaged to match the color of the grass. He reached down and ran a hand across their rough hide.

  He looked at his fingers as if the color might have rubbed off on him. “I wonder why they change color so fast. This one changes color much faster than that one.”

  Wright shook her head. “You need to think about naming your new pets. You can’t just call them ‘this one’ and ‘that one’. Anyway, I don’t know for sure why their epidermis changes color. I have some theories, though I will need to run some more scans on your drascos, but first I want to get rid of mom and the other sister.”

  “Um, I am not sure I can drag the body into the forest to get rid of it. I am doing ok here by the pod, but I don’t really want to go over by the trees, okay?”

  “Not to worry, Mister Stone. I don’t think the both of us together could move that carcass without a four horse harness team. I have a much more unpleasant task in mind for you.”

  “I don’t see how it can be more unpleasant than dragging a dead drasco into an unexplored forest.” He did not realize how wrong he could be.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Stone choked back a dry, heaving wretch as he gagged. He was covered from head to toe in bits and pieces of dead drasco that was drying to various degrees of mottled gray. He stretched his back and glanced out the view screen.

  Commander Wright was turning long strips of drasco meat over a low burning, smoky fire. She looked up to see Stone and waved back with a grin. Stone almost shuddered at the thought that this woman was actually enjoying herself. Night was beginning to close in as she slid another log from the fallen tree toward the fire. Rather than toss the log into the fire, she laid it on the ground and slid one end into the coals, leaving the other end in the grass. There were several other logs placed in the fire. She nudged several of them farther into the smoldering heat. The fire was more heat and smoke with very little open flame.

  Earlier, this healer of animals had gutted the mother drasco with ease, piling parts known and unknown into a heap in the middle of the cabin deck. She had set her scanner to record every piece and part. She started tentatively, being very wary of the little drascos reactions. No matter how they tried to keep the little ones out of the cabin, if Stone was in the pod so were they. They sniffed the body a few times and then sat down to watch Wright and Stone cut up the body. Eventually the two little ones fell asleep.

  Stone did try to help Wright with cutting up the dead mother, but he was so inexperienced he got in the way more than he helped. Not to mention the whole activity nauseated him. He had tried to act macho, but she saw through him right away. She told him her father had taken her hunting at a very young age in the Colorado Mountains. He father had insisted she learn to respect what she hunted and that meant you dressed your own kill and ate what you killed. She had bagged her first elk at twelve years old and had been a hunter ever since.

  After explaining to Stone what ‘bagging an elk’ meant, she described a Colorado Elk to Stone. He was amazed a twelve year old girl was able to stand up and take the three shots required to bring down a sixteen ton rampaging beast the settlers of Colorado called an elk. It took one shot to the head and one shot to each of its two hearts. She explained earth elk were only a thousand pounds of muscle, horns and bad attitude, but the Colorado Elk her father taught her to hunt was a huge carnivore that would have eaten an earth elk for breakfast and still been hungry.

  She told him it was her father’s love of the outdoors and hunting that fueled her desire to become a veterinarian. From him, she learned that animals provide much more for humans than just meat and humans are responsible for managing and caring for the animals around them. Hunting thinned wild animal populations, keeping their numbers in check so they did not starve or become diseased, just as proper breeding protocols were necessary for domestic herds.

  Her father taught her not to be wasteful of a domestic animal’s life and never kill a wild animal for sport. She grew up learning to make use of as much of an animal’s body as possible, from their skins, feathers or pelts inward.

  It took her a long while to skin the drasco. The survival knives barely cut the tough hide, but she managed to keep the hide in one piece. She cut the meat from the bones, tossing each bone into the pile of offal. She laughed and talked the whole time she cut away until there was not much left but what looked like three or four hundred pounds of meat.

  She shook her head in sorrow at the pile of meat. She separated a smaller pile of about a hundred pounds. It was the small pile she took outside to smoke over the fire. She lamented loud and long that they did not have any refrigeration available to save the rest of the meat.

  She and Stone each ate a large drasco steak and she was making something called ‘jerky’ out of the rest. Stone hoped it tasted better than it sounded.

  Wright ordered Stone to dispose of the rest of the meat and the pile of graying, greasy goo in the middle of the cabin deck. Neither of them knew much about the scavengers on this planet, but neither of them wanted to leave a pile of drasco guts in the middle of their living room to find out. She told Stone to make the pile disappear before sunset.

  Stone, using the drasco hide, filled it with various disgusting bits and dragged it into the bridge cabin. His little drascos jumped up and made of game out of helping him drag the skin across the deck. Although they were practically newborn babies, he was surprised at how strong they really were. His main challenge was to get them to pull together in the right direction.

  Once in the bridge cabin he began dumping the offal into the engine room. He had wanted to devise a chute to pour the mess directly into the fuel tanks, but there was nothing on board to use. He ended up just letting it pile up on the deck, then he jumped down into the engine room and scooped the parts into the tank by hand.

  That is how he came to be covered in bits and pieces of dead animal parts. His little drascos wonked like it was the funniest thing they had ever seen when they pushed a pile of unidentified guts from the bridge through the open hatch to the engine room and onto his head.

  He filled the tank twice. Each time he set the engine to back-flush the tank, sending any liquids and gasses through to the recycler. He set the engine parameters to leave any hard material behind. He was glad drascos were not tough enough to require cooking them in the oven and sending slurry down the pipe, like they had done earlier with the metal. But, there were some parts of the drasco the engine was not generating a high enough heat to melt down. Each time he opened the fuel tank lid he could see bits of teeth, hide and bones. The engine pulled any water and oxygen away from those bits, leaving a dry, dusty pile of pieces behind.

  He initially worried about the engine sending waves of carbon dioxide into the air. They still had the rear hatch open, but being in the engine room without any real ventilation except the bridge hatch, might have been a problem. He decided he would quit and get some fresh air if he began to feel light headed or dizzy. However, other than being queasy due to the task at hand, he felt fine.

  His little drascos watched him work and seemed to be fascinated with the engine. Whenever it was running, they lay on the bridge deck with their heads hanging through the hatch to the engine room. Stone was not sure what they were watching. The engine did not have any flashing lights and it did not make any noise. The only moving parts were the spinning discs of the artificial gravity generator and they were encased and completely out of sight. The girls were happy, so he let them lay there and watch. They had both become t
he deep green that seemed to indicate they were happy. He was not sure, but there might be a correlation between their moods and their color changes.

  He finally topped off the last pile of drasco with the stillborn drasco body. He slammed the lid and climbed back into the bridge cabin to see Commander Wright wave and grin at him from her place by the fire. If she had been anywhere other than outside of the pod, he would have been jealous. As it was, even covered in dried grey goo, having climbed up and down the ladder between the engine room and the bridge more times than he could count, stumbling over his little drascos each time they got in the way, he was sure he had gotten the better part of their work load. His task was inside.

  Stone flicked on the pod’s external communications. “Commander, looks like you only have a half an hour or so before sunset. I think we should make sure we are closed up before nightfall.”

  Wright nodded. The pod picked up her response. “I agree, Mister Stone. These pieces have not cooked as long as I would like, but they have cooked enough not to spoil by morning and I can start again tomorrow. I need you to come out and help me haul this back inside. Are you okay with that?”

  “Yes, sir. I think as long as I am not too far from the pod I will be okay. I am going to bring Jay and Peebee with me when I come out. Maybe they are hungry again. They did like those tree leaves.”

  “Jay and Peebee? So you did name them. Well, come on, you’re burning daylight.”

  Stone sighed. He started for the rear hatch, calling for the drascos to follow. They rushed past him and disappeared around the side of the pod before he was halfway across the cabin. He hesitated briefly at the top of the ramp, gave a small shiver and walked around to the front of the pod, keeping his hand on the side of the pod the whole way.

  “You are going to have to let go of your blankey if are going to help me carry this jerky back into the pod,” Wright said with a grin. Stone took a step toward her. A roar and a screech filled the air of the meadow. He leapt to the pod, putting his back against the metal.

  “Easy, Mister Stone. It is just noise,” Wright laughed.

  Stone shook his head. “It is noise, but it comes from something. I know you think it is funny, but I would rather be cautious than some creature’s supper.”

  “I am sorry I laughed at you Mister Stone. That was unbecoming of me. It really was just the call of some night bird calling for a mate, marking its territory, making noise to welcome the coming night, or just to scare off predators.”

  “Well, I am not a predator, but it scared me.” He jumped at the sound of another screech.

  Wright said, “Ha! There he is.” She pointed at the top of the tree they had sheared off. “See that tiny red spec?”

  Stone squinted. “You mean that little handful of bright red feathers? Is that what made all that noise?”

  Wright looked carefully at the bird. “That is him, although I think those are probably more like hollow air tubes than feathers. He does have a big set of lungs on him, but I doubt if he is really dangerous.”

  “Maybe he isn’t, but we know darned good and well there are things out here that are dangerous,” Stone said.

  “Point well taken, Mister Stone. And with night coming on we need to get back inside and get closed up. Daylight on an unexplored planet is one thing, but night out here might be an entirely different set of challenges.”

  “Jay and Peebee seem to be content grazing in the tree leaves, so, I guess we can leave them here for a while.”

  “Strange names for drascos, don’t you think?” she asked.

  Stone shrugged. “How would I know? For all I can figure that is what their momma would have called them.”

  “Sounds logical to me. How do you tell one from the other?”

  He looked at the drascos as they shoved leaves into each others mouths. “Well, like the farmer said about his matched set of horses. The white one is an inch taller than the black one. Jay is the one that is mostly mottled reddish color. Peebee is more mixed green and brown. They are good little drascos as drascos go, but they seem to be better as a team. Like now, they are feeding each other. They seem to compliment each other, each making the other better, right?”

  “I see that. They do seem to work together well.”

  Stone smiled. “So, I named them after two things that go well together.”

  Wright looked thoughtful for a minute and then she slapped herself on the forehead. “I got it.”

  Stone laughed, “That’s okay. You are probably suffering from oxygen deprivation. First in the pod and now having to stand over a smoky fire all afternoon. You do know that you smell like smoke?”

  “Wonderful smell, isn’t it?”

  “Nope. I grew up on spaceships, remember? Smoke is an indication of fire and that is a bad thing on a spacecraft. Still, I imagine you smell better than I do.” He brushed his hands futilely at the dried, drasco goo covering him from head to toe.

  Wright leaned in and sniffed. “Humm. Kind of musky, as if you’ve just worked up a fresh sweat. Drasco guts must be different than earth critters.”

  Stone gestured at Jay and Peebee. “I don’t know how those leaves would affect earth creatures, but they seem to really like them. I guess we had better haul this stuff in; I don’t think they are interested in eating the jerky.” To himself he added, “I am not sure I am interested in eating it either.” He grabbed a double armful of smoked meat and hurried back to the pod. He deposited the jerky in the bridge and hustled back outside for more.

  He passed Wright on her way in. “I put it on the bridge. It is just a bit cleaner there. Someone made a mess of the cabin.”

  Stone came around to the front of the pod. At first he thought Jay and Peebee were playing in the fire. He ran to stop them, but realized they were licking at the ends of the logs sticking out of the fire. He squeezed between them. An amber colored slime was oozing out of the logs. He reached down, sliding a finger through the substance.

  He sniffed it. There was not any smell he could detect, but he did not want to taste it without an analyzer. He tried to wipe his finger off on Peebee’s hide, but either the hide was too rough or the goop was too sticky. He ended up letting Peebee lick his finger clean.

  He poked at the other logs and unused cut firewood. The tree sap was forced out by the heat. It seemed to be like candy to drascos.

  He mused, “Maybe that is why they like the leaves from this tree more than grass or other tree leaves.

  “Daydreaming, Mister Stone?” Wright startled him when she spoke.

  “No, sir. This particular tree seems to be of special interest to Jay and Peebee. Not just for the leaves, but they are very fond of the sap.”

  “ I suggest you cut up a few armfuls of brush and haul it inside for Jay and Peebee just in case they get hungry in the middle of the night. Babies of all species have a bad habit of getting hungry at very odd hours.” She grabbed a long stick and spread the logs apart. She scattered the coals a bit. The fire died quickly. “That will have to do. If we had a bucket we could douse the fire, but we melted just about everything in the pod. Get a move on, Mister Stone. Night is coming fast and while I am not afraid of the dark, I am apprehensive about things that live in the dark.”

  As if in answer some creature bellowed. Farther off another creature answered. Suddenly the air was awash with roars, grunts and growls.

  Stone ran to the pod, slapped open the maintenance access panel, and palmed on a switch. The pod’s exterior lights lit up the meadow like the noonday sun. Shadows melted back into the forest.

  Wright had the rest of the jerky and was sprinting to the pod’s hatch. Jay and Peebee gave quiet little wonks and sat staring at the cooling fire logs. Without heat, the sap had stopped flowing. Stone ignored the drascos. He leapt into the middle of the tree foliage.

  “Crap!” he shouted and jumped back out. He looked down at his legs. Small pinpricks of blood were seeping through his pants legs. The tree was barbed with needlelike thorns. It was no wonde
r drascos had such tough hides. They would starve to death if they did not.

  He stepped more cautiously up to the tree. Taking his survival knife, he hacked at a branch. The knife’s composite edge slid cleanly through the branch. He gingerly grabbed the branch and pulled it away from the rest of the tree. He hacked away at two or three large clumps of leaves, putting the branches behind him in a pile.

  He glanced at his drascos still sitting by the dying fire. They wonked at him. He tried to wonk back and waved at them. Peebee wonked excitedly and managed to wave an arm back, the flap fluttering in the air. Jay alternately looked at the fire logs and at Stone.

  Stone grabbed a branch, carefully avoiding the thorns, and he started dragging it toward the pod. Peebee leapt up and bounced up to him. She grabbed the branch from him and dragged it the opposite direction.

  Stone shook his head. He grabbed another couple of cut branches and dragged them to the pod. Before he was halfway, Peebee raced past him, waving her branch in the air like a victory flag. Jay followed at a more sedate trot, dragging a branch behind her. She looked at Stone on the way past, as if to say, “I would rather be by the fire than working.” Jay trailed Peebee as they came back from the pod and raced past him back to the tree.

  Stone had just deposited a pair of tree branches in a corner of the cabin on top of Jay and Peebee’s branches when the two drascos dropped another four handfuls of branches. The drascos jumped into the middle of the branches disregarding any thorns, dropped into a heap and promptly fell asleep.

  Wright looked at him from the bridge hatch. “They make me nervous, but I believe it will be okay to be in here with them. You just don’t leave me in a room alone with them.”

  “Yes, sir. Okay to seal up the pod?”

  “Okay by me, Mister Stone. Let’s get shut up for the night.”