Metal Boxes

by Alan Black

  Stone breathed a sigh of relief when the hatch finally pulled up snug against the bulkhead. He realized he had been outside more today then any other day in his life. And the biggest surprise was he was still alive to tell the tale. He knew he had to work on his fear of being outside of his metal boxes. Still, the thought of what might be out there gave him the willies.

  “You go stand over there by Jay and Peebee and face them,” Wright said.

  “Sir?”

  Wright’s voice was a tight short command. “You just do what I said, boy. Keep your back to me. You stand at parade rest or at ease or whatever it is you military types call standing still.”

  “Aye, aye, sir.”

  Stone heard Wright muttering behind him. He was unable to understand anything she was saying. He began to wonder if she was suffering from smoke inhalation or if there had been something in the air after all. He wanted to check on her but his orders were to stand and that was what he would do. Maybe she had picked up a virus or some disease. If so, it would only be a matter of time before the infection spread to him.

  After a time, Stone heard the toilet flushing and water running in the sink.

  Wright muttered as she walked past him into the bridge. “No dry towels in this crummy motel.” She was wringing water from her hair. Her utility uniform was damp in splotches.

  “Crap!” Stone said. “Commander, you have got to work on your communications skills. I thought you were ill or going off your nut.”

  “What? No, you silly boy. I just needed to use the facilities and wash up. I didn’t want you watching. Plus, I needed you in the cabin between me and those two little monsters of yours that you’re keeping as pets. Now that I am clean and fresh, I will wait on the bridge while you try to wash up as best you can. I noticed the water level in the holding tanks was higher than I remembered, so we have enough to spare, so go get cleaned up.”

  Stone nodded, “Yes, sir. Momma drasco yielded us quite a bonus in H2O.”

  “Excuse me?” Wright started.

  “Yes, sir. What do you think I did with the rest of momma drasco? I recycled her. She was about seventy to eighty percent water. We still need to…” his voice trailed off. “What?”

  Wright was glaring at him. “You mean I just took a sponge bath in recycled animal parts?”

  Stone nodded, “Of course, what did you think I was going to do with the body?”

  “You could have hauled it off to the forest.”

  “Ha! You forget who you are talking to…um…sir. There are monsters in that forest and I wasn’t about to carry their lunch to them. Besides we needed water. It is as clean as when we recycle our own waste.”

  Wright continued to glare, “I know that, just don’t remind me, okay?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Oh, before you get cleaned up, come on to the bridge. I want you to show me how to shut off those exterior lights. With them off I should be able to get an idea of some of the nocturnal fauna in this area.”

  Stone flicked off the lights. He also shut the external communications down. His drascos were asleep and he did not want any loud creature noises waking them up.

  “Thanks, Mister Stone. Now as soon as my eyes adjust I may be able to see what type of critters will wander into our open meadow.”

  Stone reached up to the light control. He tapped a small slide control knob. “Commander, this should help. We can adjust the view screen to night vision, thermal, infrared, radiation or a bunch of other settings.” He set the view screen to night vision and sat back in his command chair. “I don’t see anything.”

  Wright tried to prop her p.a. on the console so it could record the night scene outside.

  Stone took it and slipped open a panel. He snapped her p.a. into a port. A little red light came on and the p.a. broadcast a small sign in the air above it that said ‘recording’.

  “Oh.” Wright said. “I didn’t know that was there…”

  Stone smiled. “You have spent your spare time in this pod reading novels about teenage wizards and vampires. All I have had to read is the manual on pod operations. It really is quite-”

  Wright whistled tunelessly and pointed out the view screen. “That is big.” The creature ambled past the pod. It picked up the remains of the fallen tree and shoved it into its mouth. It did not appear to chew; it just swallowed the tree: leaves, trunk, bark, thorns and all.

  Stone reached over and toggled on the pod’s shields. “I don’t know how tough that thing is, but it is big enough to squash us and that male drasco without flinching. It must be three times the size of this pod.”

  The huge beast shuffled a few meters and stopped. A mass of half-dissolved leaves and shredded wood, mixed with muddy-looking goo dropped from a flap on the creature’s belly.

  Stone stifled a giggle. “It just took a dump in our front yard. How rude!”

  Dozens of creatures raced from the forest and jumped into the pile of dung before the creature moved out of sight. They were about half the size of his drascos, but did not look anything at all like a drasco. They pushed and shoved each other, each grabbing for as much of the half-digested dung as they could carry in their pincers. They rolled it into balls almost as big as their bodies and moved off in a rapid crab-like sideways run. Not all of them made it to the forest edge.

  Larger creatures jumped on them. It took two of the larger creatures to overturn the smaller ones. The small ones were doomed once they were on their backs. They would drop their bounty of dung and wave their pincers, but the larger creatures easily dodged in and out, quickly dispatching the smaller ones, by pairing up to flip them over, bite their stomachs and drag them off into the forest.

  Others of the smaller variety, raced from the forest edge, grabbed the dropped dung balls and raced back for the forest. Some made it and some did not.

  Stone looked back at the original dung pile. Creatures, even smaller still, were making smaller dung balls. They burrowed deep into the meadow floor instead of racing toward the forest. Night birds swooped into the dung ball feast and snatched up tiny, and sometimes not so tiny creatures, carrying them off into the night sky.

  Suddenly all of the creatures were gone. A pack of somethings slinked across the meadow. There were six of the somethings, but even with night vision Stone could not see any distinctive features. They seemed to blend into the dark. They did not stop at the pile of dung, but moved in the same direction as the large beast. Stone reached up to turn on the external lights.

  “No. Leave them be,” Wright said.

  “I just wanted to see what they looked like in the light.”

  “I understand the curiosity,” Wright said. “I would like to see them too, but they are on the hunt. I think they are hunting the house-sized dung beast. I would rather anything hunting something as big as the dung beast just keep going. I don’t want to attract their attention.”

  “Yes, sir. But, they couldn’t get at us. The shields are on and will hold.”

  “I don’t doubt the shields will hold. But, how much patience do you think they have? They may be fixed on a hunt and would wait for days for us to come out.”

  Stone grinned, “That is okay by me. I have seen what lives out there in the forest. I am not planning on going outside anyway.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Stone grunted under the weight of bamboo buckets. He balanced them on the ends of a pole braced across his shoulders. Jay and Peebee raced past him, causing him to slosh water over his tattered utility uniform. The fabric should have lasted for years without tearing or fading. But the designers had not tested the material against the thorns, spikes, prickles and barbs growing on almost every plant, shrub or tree on this planet. Even the tough hide of his drascos acted like an abrasive sandpaper whenever they rubbed up against him.

  The drascos ran ahead of him, each carrying four buckets of water from the stream. Neither of the drascos would get to the pod with full buckets even though they only had a few meters to go. They were only a
month old and still spent more time pushing each other and Stone than they did worrying about not spilling the water.

  Wright had been nervous the first night with the drascos locked in the pod with them. She insisted the drascos sleep in the main cabin. She and Stone tried to sleep in their command chairs on the bridge with the hatch sealed. However, even the thick bulkhead did not block the sound of the drascos whining and clawing at the hatch trying to get to Stone. Finally, he had given up sleeping and gone into the main cabin with the drascos.

  The next morning Wright found him asleep on the deck, tangled with the two drascos. Although they were no longer little, both beasts managed to rest their heads on Stone’s chest. They had not grown to the size of their birth mother yet, but the drascos were getting to monster size in their own right, easily topping the scales at over 160 kilograms.

  Jay and Peebee looked at her that first morning when she opened the hatch, but they did not move until she stepped toward Stone to wake him for the day. Jay jumped up, reared up and hissed at her. Peebee stood protectively over Stone, tapping the deck with her tail spike. Wright froze, afraid to move forward or back.

  The action awakened Stone. Both drascos settled down as soon as he spoke to them. He was sure they did not understand the words he used, but they seemed to understand the tone. Stone patted Wright on the shoulder and told Jay and Peebee that she was a friend. They practically ignored her since that day.

  The drascos enjoyed any activity Stone was doing. Most of the time they were more underfoot than a help, but he was more than happy to have them along. Especially on any activity that involved being outside. He still would not walk out of sight of the pod, but the drascos were very protective of him. He was sure they would not be much of a help against many of the creatures they had seen in their short time on this planet. But most of the really dangerous creatures, like the night stalkers, only came out after dark. Everything else stayed out of his way.

  He and Commander Wright moved the pod a couple of times since their landing. Fuel was easy to get. The engine could convert almost any mass to energy. Trees, grass, rocks and dirt were plentiful. Their first move had been to a series of cliffs a few hundred kilometers from touchdown. They had been using the pod to map the local terrain when the scanners had picked up an outcropping of metallic ore.

  Commander Wright decided they should try to get back to known space. Stone explained how dangerous it might be to even try. Just because the little engine in the pod had been converted to hyperspace jump capable and back did not mean they could pull the trick off again; mostly because it should not have worked the first time. They needed a large quantity of heavy metal enriched fuel to try another hyper-jump. Grass clippings, which were fine for short atmospheric jaunts, would not generate the power levels the engine required to manufacture an overload. They also needed to find a sealant to replace the blown gaskets. And most of all, they needed to find a way to fix the CO2 buildup problem. They agreed they needed to work towards the goal of getting home. If they could solve those problems, they would make the attempt, whether they survived or not.

  Stone realized he wanted to get back, not just because he missed his family, not just because he needed bigger metal boxes to live in than this pod, not just because he needed a working shower, not just because he missed Allie, not just because someone was stealing from the Emperor, but someone had tried to kill him. He knew for the first time in his life he was very, very angry at someone. He did not know who had tried to kill him, but he would find out and he would make them pay or die trying.

  They settled the pod next to the metallic ore outcropping on the cliff. They expected it to take months to extract enough ore to smelt the metal enriched fuel the pod would need to reach planetary escape velocity and travel to the nearest null gravity point. It would take much longer to extract enough ore for two hyperspace jumps and extended sub-light space travel. They were surprised that once the drascos saw what Stone was doing they jumped in and dug rocks as if it was a life’s passion. The talons on their hands cracked through rock like jackhammers. Chips and splinters flew every which way. They were even capable of carrying many times more weight in ore to the pod than either of the humans.

  Early on, Stone discovered a bamboo-like tree. Each branch, limb or trunk was segmented when cut. It provided them with scoops, shovels, buckets, barrels and even the molding form for making raw metal ingots for storage. The ingots would become extra fuel reserves when tossed into the fuel tank or fed through their oven slurry system. The pod could easily calculate the fuel for sub-light travel, but it did not have any reference for figuring out how much fuel might be used in a hyperspace jump. Stone wanted as much extra fuel as he could convince Wright to pack aboard the small pod.

  Jay and Peebee bounced with excitement every sunrise, anxious to begin digging. As long as Stone was outside, they would dig all day, stopping only to eat, drink or poop. Feeding the drascos was easy. Stone just had to walk to a tree or a bush and point. The two drascos would leap on it and strip any leaves, stuffing it into each other’s mouths until Stone was not sure how they could stuff more.

  He found getting to their eating favorite tree was a bit more difficult than just pointing at it. It was the same type of tree the pod had broken on initial touchdown. Each tree was surrounded by a ring of brush with such thick tough thorns even the drascos could not get through it to reach the tree. Drascos skin was hard and rough and it was getting more abrasive and thicker as they got older. Stone’s survival knife cut through the ring easily enough, but his uniform suffered at every encounter, as did any exposed skin.

  He was scratched, scraped and punctured in more places than he could count. As a result, Jay and Peebee only got to get at their favorite tree on special occasions, like any day the sun came up in the east. Wright said he was spoiling them, but he found it hard not to give into to them when they looked at him with those big eyes and wonked so plaintively.

  Since Stone was outside mining with the drascos all day, it had fallen to Wright to smelt the ore into fuel. They had re-rigged the slurry pipe into the engine and Wright fed the ore into the oven, cranking it so high she spent most of the day outside on the ramp to avoid the residual heat. She only ventured back inside to feed the oven and check the fuel settings.

  Stone reset the fuel mixture requirements so the engine would discard all material but the heaviest metals. They had to keep the engine running to keep the mixture liquid so it would feed through the fuel lines while they were smelting. The heat from the oven made the pod almost unbearable for the two humans. The drascos did not seem to notice the heat.

  After seeing the creatures that had come out on the first night, even Wright was convinced to seal the hatch by sundown. She did not know if a roaring fire would deter the night stalkers, but she did not want to sleep outside by a fire to find out. They shut the engine down at night because they were both very concerned about the engine emissions. But neither of them had felt any ill effects from the engine running all day. The internal sensors read the engine was pumping out CO2 faster than the life support air handler could clean it, but the CO2 was disappearing as fast as it was released.

  At first Stone thought it was because they only ran the engine when the large back hatch was open and the ramp was down. Wright discovered where the CO2 went on their fourth day. She was sitting on the ramp, reviewing data on her p.a. and she called Stone over to show him a video of her cutting into a lump of green flesh that was filled with hollow tubes. She explained that it was a piece of lung from the momma drasco.

  After verifying the flora in the surrounding area, she determined the reddish plants took in oxygen and gave off carbon dioxide, which was backwards from most other planets visited by humans. The greenish plants were closer to earth standard, taking in carbon dioxide and giving off oxygen. The flora had developed a symbiotic relationship with each other. The drascos favorite tree was red and it’s thorny protector bush was green. Each plant breathed out what the o
ther plant breathed in. The bush was positioned in a ring at the tree’s drip-line to catch the rainfall run off. Wright admitted she was not a botanist so she was not sure, but she thought there might be other tradeoffs below ground like a nitrogen exchange.

  Wright was a veterinarian. What she was sure of was that the drascos were able to breathe in CO2 and breathe out oxygen. They were cleaning the engine emissions at night. She was sure their lungs could process almost any gaseous air, but their lungs were developed to handle CO2. They even changed color becoming greener when they breathed in CO2.

  Wright admitted she was not sure about normal drasco growth rates, but Jay and Peebee were growing faster than anything she could compare from the data on her p.a. She was sure the two were getting a higher concentration of CO2 than they might ordinarily have gotten. And she was equally sure that with Stone giving them a high concentration of red leaves, they were getting super-nutrition charged meals.

  Stone discovered an engine sealant while pampering Jay and Peebee. He hacked off a few limbs and built a fire from a particularly thorny tree. Wright had showed him how to lay the cut branches to keep the fire going, but still leave one end of each fire log free. The golden ooze was like candy to Jay and Peebee. He got some on his hands, had not wiped it off right away, and it became sticky as it dried.

  He worked to boil some down over his little fire. He wanted to use the oven, but neither of them wanted to slow the smelting process. He experimented and determined he could smear the ooze on the engine when it reached a paste-like consistency. It dried hard especially on the hot engine, sealing the gaskets and joints tight. Stone only sealed the engine intake and operational functions, leaving the exhaust area alone, allowing the CO2 to bleed into the cabin. The drascos could keep the air clear. He would be able to seal up the exhaust at the last minute when they left the planet and the drascos behind. Life support would be able to keep up with the exhaust if it was not allowed to leak into the cabin before getting into the air handler.