Anywhere but Here

28

The days were definitely longer here. He had hauled rocks for a couple of hours alter lunch, and spent at least two more hours taking the wheel motor off the pickup, but the sky was still as bright as ever. That wasn’t all too bright today, but the gray didn’t have that soon-to-be-dark cast to it that it got at the end of a day. Trent told himself he would turn around at the first sign of darkness, or at the end of an hour, whichever came first. He didn’t think he’d forget; he was already growing hungry. They might have to start eating four meals a day if they stayed here for long.

The stream was nearly twice as big now as it had been yesterday. He could hear rocks banging along in the current nearly continuously. Chunks of wood sailed past, bobbing over rapids and swirling around in the pools. He kept his eye out for passing helmets, but none came along while he was looking.

He did find one at the edge of the bank just a hundred yards or so downstream from camp. He picked it up and looked at the bottom, saw that it was still intact, and set it back down, telling himself he would pick it up on his way back if it hadn’t moved by then.

His boots squelched with every step. He stopped long enough to pour the water out and wring his socks dry, but within twenty minutes he was squelching again. The ground was so wet, he might as well have been walking in the creek.

The forest wasn’t as dense as a mountain forest on Earth. There were wide swaths of open ground between trees, giving Trent a good view of the whole valley as he walked. He zigzagged between helmet-shaped rocks, finding a couple of empty shells and quite a few actual stones, plus a couple of still-living slo-mos that were just weathering out the storm on patches of relatively dry ground. That gave him the idea of looking up on the slopes, where he found a lot more live ones, but none dead. Apparently sick ones or old ones flopped downhill rather than uphill with their last effort.

He went back to the stream and started scanning the bends for logjams. That’s where the shell he was using for a helmet had come from; it stood to reason that there would be more of them in similar places, if he could just find one that hadn’t washed out.

He kept checking the sky for cupids, too, but he hadn’t seen any all day. If they didn’t hunt in the rain, they were going to be hungry when the weather broke; he would have to remember to keep an even closer watch then.

He didn’t spot any more buffaloceros, either. Even thing seemed to be hunkering down, waiting for better weather. After a while, just for the sake of science, Trent crept up to a big clump of bushes and started poking around under it with an arrow, and he scared out half a dozen different kinds of lizards and rodents and even a bird. This one was a lot smaller than a cupid, with bright yellow scales under its wings that flashed like strobe lights as it fluttered off through the rain toward another bush.

There seemed to be plenty of small game around, and if the buffaloceros they’d seen wasn’t the only one of its kind, then there was big game, too, but he wasn’t finding any predators other than cupids. That wasn’t necessarily a bad thing from his point of view, but ecologically it didn’t make a whole lot of sense. Where there was a food supply, you would expect something to evolve to eat it. Unless the armor to keep them safe from cupids cut too heavily into their ability to hunt. That would make cupids the top predator in the food chain, but there didn’t seem to be enough of them for that.

The more he thought about it, the more the back of his neck began to tingle. Were there wolves out there in the mist, slinking along from tree to tree just out of sight, pacing him until they were ready to attack? Or was there some kind of Jekyll/Hyde thing going on with the slo-mos, and they would suddenly sprout teeth and legs and swarm down upon him by the thousands? It seemed unlikely, but people were finding crazy ecologies all over the galaxy, and not always returning home to tell the tale.

He told himself he was just being paranoid, but all the same he began flinching at every sound, and making 360-degree sweeps of his surroundings every few hundred feet. The two slo-mo shells that he had collected so far seemed awfully light booty to be risking his life for, except that he needed them if he and Donna were ever going to get back home.

At last he came upon a logjam that hadn’t been swept away by the rising water, and there in its lee were eight slo-mo shells. Two of them were pretty badly decomposed, but Trent fished them out and tossed them in his tarp anyway. Maybe he could seal them up with duct tape well enough to make them work.

That one windfall brought his total up to ten shells, which made him feel a lot better about his expedition. He considered going on to look for another logjam, but the back of his neck was still tingling, and he was starting to wonder just how many shells he needed, anyway. Twelve would be easiest to mount, because they would be straight across from one another at the points of two hexagons, but he could make do with ten if he had to. It wasn’t like the watershed had to be perfectly balanced.

He slung the tarp full of shells over his shoulder like Santa Claus with his sack and started upstream again. At least he didn’t have to worry about getting lost. There weren’t any forks in the stream; if he just followed it uphill, he would eventually run into the pickup.

He heard a rustle of leaves behind him and turned, expecting to see nothing like the last hundred times, but there was a flash of motion in a tree maybe thirty feet away, and a big cat dropped off one of the low-hanging branches. At least it looked like a cat in the body; long and slender on four supple legs, with a sinuous tail at least three feet long lashing back and forth behind it. Its head was more like a huge rat’s, with a long snout full of teeth and two beady little eyes set close together above it. Its ears were big for its size, and rounded, like Mickey Mouse ears, but there was nothing funny about the way it moved. It wasn’t attacking, but it was definitely advancing on him, completely unconcerned that he could see it.

Why now? he wondered. If this thing had been stalking him, as he suspected it had, why had it chosen now to reveal itself? Maybe because it thought he had already spotted it? He had just reversed direction.

He dropped the tarp and pulled the pistol from beneath his rain jacket. His hands were cold and wet, but he made sure he had a good grip and held the gun steady with his left under his right while he cocked the hammer.

“Stop,” he said, but there was no volume in his voice. He cleared his throat and said again, “Stop right there.”

The creature did, but only for a second. It tilted its head to the side in obvious puzzlement, then growled a deep, almost subsonic rumble and took another step closer.

“Stop!” Trent hollered, but this time it ignored him.

This creature was at least as heavy as him, and all muscle and teeth. If he let it get close enough to pounce, he was dead. He had no idea whether or not it was intelligent, or whether he could kill it with a .45 pistol, but he was rapidly running out of options.

The tarp had spilled its contents when he dropped it. One of the slo-mo shells had rolled right next to his feet, balancing upside down on its rounded top. Without stopping to think about it, Trent got a toe under the shell and lofted it at the advancing cat, then kicked another to tumble along the ground toward it while the first was still in the air. He bent down and grabbed another in his left hand, hurling it awkwardly after the first two, but it wasn’t necessary. The creature had already turned and fled back to its tree, leaping up the trunk and disappearing into its canopy as if it had never been there.

Trent’s hands were shaking so bad he didn’t trust himself to lower the hammer on the .45 without slipping and firing it by mistake. He just slid it into the holster, then retrieved the slo-mo shells, keeping a wary eye on the tree as he did. The shells all had the same chewed-out hole in the bottom that the ones he had turned into helmets did, and now he thought he knew where those holes had come from. Those rodent teeth would be great for gnawing through a shell.

If that’s all the rat-cat ate, then it wouldn’t have to be so sleek and fast. Trent bet it ate its share of lizards and rodents and whatever else there was around here, too. It might even go for buffaloceros if it hunted in packs. Trent didn’t know if it had been seriously considering him as food or if it was just curious, but he didn’t want to find out the hard way.

He steered wide around the leafy trees on his way back to camp, imagining cats in every one and hearing them with every noise. The stream suddenly became a liability as well as a guide, because the closer he walked to it, the more its rush of water masked any sounds that might warn him of another attack.

It was a long walk back, and much steeper than he had remembered it. He found the slo-mo he had left by the bank still in the same spot, so he picked it up and added it to his collection, but this one was still full even if it was dead, and it made the bag a lot heavier. By the time he finally saw the camper he was out of breath and sweating like a horse, but he called out to Donna as soon as he got within shouting range, “Hey, are you okay in there?”

She didn’t answer. Fearing the worst, he dropped the tarp full of shells and sprinted the last few hundred feet to the pickup, his shoulder-guards slipping around and flailing at his chest and back as he ran. He stuck his head inside the door, but it was too dark inside for him to see anything. “Donna?” he said. “Donna!”

“Mmmm?” she said sleepily.

“Are you okay?”

“Hmm?” He heard her move, then she said, “Holy shit, what happened to you!”

“Nothing. I just… I was just running. You’re all right?”

“Yeah. I guess I must have fallen asleep.” She tapped the computers keyboard and the screen lit up. It had gone to sleep, too. “Did you find what you were looking for?”

“More than that. I found this planet’s equivalent of a mountain lion. They hang out in trees.” He backed out of the camper and looked up into the canopy of the one overhead, but he didn’t see anything but leaves and branches up there.

Donna didn’t like his news. “A mountain lion! Jesus. That’s all we need.”

Trent said, “It ran off when I threw stuff at it, so I don’t think it was all that intent on gettin’ me, but we’ve got to keep our eyes out.” And of course they now had to worry about attack from above even when they were under the trees. The shine was definitely coming off this particular apple.

He went back to the tarp and retrieved his slo-mo shells, dropping them next to the wheel he’d removed. He thought about setting to work cleaning them out and tying them onto the tire, but he was still too jittery to work, and besides, his stomach was growling worse than the cat.

Donna was standing in the doorway with the blanket around her, shivering from the cold. And now that he thought about it, it hadn’t been just the lack of the computer screen to light up the camper that had made it so dark in there; it was starting to get darker outside, too.

“To hell with this,” Trent said. “We’ve got to get some hot food in us. I’ll start a fire and we can roast hot dogs or something.”

“Sounds good to me,” Donna said.

Trent picked a spot a little ways away from the truck, but still protected from the rain by the tree’s canopy, and stacked some kindling there. He would normally get some rocks and make a fire ring, but the ground was so soaked that there was no real need, and he had thrown all the easy rocks on the counterweight anyway. He got a couple of bigger logs ready to put on the kindling, then got some matches from the camper and tried to light it.

The sticks wouldn’t catch. They were soaked through, because he’d used the tarp for a ground cloth and a carrying sack all afternoon. They sizzled and popped and even blackened a little after the fourth or fifth match, but he couldn’t get a flame out of even the tiniest twig.

He tried putting some paper underneath, and that burned merrily for a few seconds, but it didn’t light the kindling any better than the match had.

“Dammit,” he said when the paper burned out. “That should have started at least the little stuff.”

“Maybe the wood’s green,” Donna said.

“It’s driftwood.”

“Maybe this kind of wood doesn’t burn, then.”

“Huh?” He looked up at her.

“It’s alien wood on an alien planet. Maybe it doesn’t burn.”

“It’s wood,” he said. “It’s got to burn.” He crumpled up another piece of paper and stuck it underneath the kindling, but it did no more good than the first one.

“All right,” he said. “Maybe this stuff won’t light, but there’s two kinds of tree. Let’s see how arrows burn.” He picked up one from the pile they’d brought over from the trees they’d cut down, digging to the bottom to get the driest one he could find, then breaking it over his knee to expose the even drier wood inside. It took a pretty good bend to make it snap, and when it did, it splintered into long fibers. Perfect.

Except it wouldn’t light any better than the other stuff. Trent used up three more sheets of paper just trying to get the toothpick-sized splinters at the ends to go, but no luck. They turned black like the other twigs, but when Trent rubbed them with his fingers he saw that the black was just soot from the paper. The twigs hadn’t even charred.

“Okay, time for a little chemical persuasion,” he said, standing up, but he stopped before he had even taken a step toward the camper. He hadn’t packed any charcoal or lighter fluid, because he hadn’t packed a barbecue. Too much weight. Neither he nor Donna smoked, so they didn’t have a butane lighter. He tried to think what else they might have that was flammable, but he came up blank. They didn’t even have a camp stove, because they had an entire camper with an electric stove in it. About the only thing they had that was flammable was their clothing and bedding. There was the cabinetry, Trent supposed, but they would have to be a lot more desperate than they were now to start burning that.

“For the first time,” he said, “I wish I had a gas-powered rig. At least gasoline is good for startin’ fires.”

Donna said, “How about booze? Alcohol burns, doesn’t it?”

That was a thought, but all he’d brought was a case of Budweiser. “We’d have to figure out some way to distill it out of beer,” he said.

“Which requires heat.”

“Not to mention wasting good beer.”

Donna squinted her eyes, obviously chasing down an elusive thought, but if she ever caught it, she didn’t let on.

“What?” Trent asked.

“Nothing. I was thinking about the sap that we got on our parachute, but we washed most of that out.”

They had, but since it was water soluble, he doubted if it had been very flammable anyway. On the other hand… “We didn’t wash out the shop towel. Let’s try that.” He opened the driver’s door and was momentarily blinded by the dome light. He hadn’t realized how dark the day was getting. He squinted so he wouldn’t blow his night vision any worse than it already was and fished around under the seat until he found the shredded remains of the towel, then he closed the door and half felt his way back to the camp-fire. He nestled the towel under the little pile of kindling, then put a match to it and leaned back.

The towel smoldered a little, but didn’t catch. Trent moved the match right under an orange spot, but that didn’t even smolder.

“Shit,” he said. “Doesn’t anything alien burn?”

“Wait a minute!” Donna said. “What about that stuff Katata’s husband gave us?”

They had never even opened the bottle. Trent wouldn’t drink the stuff on a bet, not without finding out what was in it first, but he certainly didn’t mind trying it as fire-starter.

“What the heck; let’s give it a whirl,” he said, rising to go get it, but Donna was already ahead of him. She went into the camper and came back out a moment later with the bottle of green whatever-it-was and one of their flashlights. She handed the light to Trent and struggled to open the bottle.

“Dang, the cap’s on tight,” she said, handing it to Trent and taking the flashlight.

He gripped the cap hard and gave it a good twist, but it didn’t budge. It was a twist-off, wasn’t it? “Here, give me a light on this,” he said, holding it out so Donna could shine the flashlight on it. The flashlight was even brighter than the light in the cab, but he squinted and looked at the cap. It was just a black cylinder over the narrow neck of the bottle, but he was able to tilt it so he could see up inside through the glass, and there were threads. Something didn’t look right about them, though, and after a moment’s thought he realized what it was.

“It’s left-hand thread!” he said, twisting the other way, and the cap came off with a loud hiss.

“It’s pressurized, too,” Donna said.

Bubbles immediately began forming inside, and foam started running over the top. Trent held the bottle over the would-be fire and let it drip onto the kindling and the rag beneath it, then capped the bottle again when he had enough to test whether or not it would burn. No sense wasting it if it didn’t. Or if it did, for that matter. Especially if it did.

The odor was enough to tell him for sure he wouldn’t be drinking the stuff, even if it proved safe. Distilled garlic would have been sweet compared to the stench that came off the green foam. But that was an encouraging sign, since anything that stinky had to have at least one volatile component to it, and volatile gasses were generally flammable.

He set the bottle on the ground behind him and rubbed his hands clean on the wet weeds underfoot, then dried them off as best he could on his pant legs before striking another match. Donna held the flashlight on the sticks while he stuck the match in toward them.

The stuff caught with a whoosh like rocket fuel. Trent snatched his hand back, but not before the hair on his wrist was singed. Flames roared upward at least three feet, burning bright blue all the way. The kindling sizzled and hissed, turned black, then burst into flame on its own, adding a yellow tint to the overall fire. Trent felt the heat, way hotter than a normal campfire, against his face and hands.

“Woo hoo!” he said. “That did it.”

Donna clicked off the flashlight and held out her hands toward the fire. “Don’t let it go out.”

The kindling was disappearing like ice on a stove. It didn’t so much burn as melt, dripping down to the wet ground in little rivers of fire that bubbled and hissed as they continued to bathe the wood above them in flame. Trent shoved a couple of inch-thick sticks onto the top of the pile, then set an even bigger log on top of them. The kindling burned down until the flames were only a foot high, but they curled around the new stuff and started it melting, too, adding its liquid wood to the puddle of fuel.

“It’s like plastic or something,” Donna said.

Trent wondered what kind of toxic fumes it was giving off. Plastic fires on Earth were usually bad news, but this stuff seemed to be burning clean, with hardly any smoke. And it put out enough heat that a person could stand back a ways. He wasn’t sure about cooking meat on a stick over it, but they could sure as hell put a pot of water on and boil it.

He held his hands out and let them warm up for the first time in hours. Oh, yeah, that felt good. Suddenly it was starting to look like a much better day.