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Next they tackled the problem of an ongoing dependable food supply. Including
storage there was no reason to expect interruption of the area's bounty, but
"Just in case& " Fruits and meat could be dried tubers would store well in cool
darkness. Some other foods could only be eaten fresh, not stored.
From a childhood summer on a Canadian prairie farm a dozen of the girls at
the Care Center had gone there to work Raelle remembered and described the
root cellars. "We could dig one, Jay." When they had done so, with special
attention to a solid roof and secure door, they began stocking it.
Next came hunting. By practice Raelle attained skill with a sling and found
she had the patience to stalk her prey. Filching a coil of monofilament line
fromSearch's cargo, Jay experimented with snares until his designs began to
succeed. Small animals, seldom weighing more than five kilos, made up most of
their catch.
Drying the meat presented problems when they hung it high enough to frustrate
roving scavengers, it attracted the hive-flyers. As a compromise they moved
the drying racks well away from the living area and draped them with some of
Jay's salvaged plastic sheeting arranging it so that air could circulate but
the small flyers, baffled, bumped the plastic for a time and went away.
In their fifth week Jay and Raelle went across the hills, only a few
kilometers from the sea, before they found a way down to that reach of the
river and a suitable place for their next project. Two days of digging made a
ditch that allowed high tide to flood a shallow basin. They damned it off
again, then in a few more weeks they could return and collect salt from the
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dry pan. Salt meat would be a welcome complement to their dried stocks and
under the circumstances, no more difficult to prepare.
They devoted their evenings to design and fabrication of their "mining"
equipment. Jay's first proposals had been in the rough putting numbers to
them took longer, and actual construction sometimes turned up flaws. The big
waterwheel light metal frames covered by the salvaged plastic sheeting was one
of the few devices that worked properly on first testing. Jay brought it back
disassembled and folded from the nearer river, and said, "If we have at least
half the current downstream as we have here, I've got the torque we'll need."
He had to scrap the pump entirely, and begin anew. "The design well, it's
standard, but not with the materials on hand. It works but I wouldn't bet on
it to hold up long enough." Raelle sat with him, matching scribbles did this
design or that use less moving parts under stress? Which was least prone to
failure? Later she did not recall which of them suggested the simple device,
rotating as a whole Archimedes' Screw. But she helped him shape the aluminum
helix, held it steady while he set the supports, one for each two-thirds of a
turn, that held it solidly to the central shaft, and cursed along with him at
the perversity of simple plastic as they shaped it into water-lifting spiral
and then sealed around it the outer cylinder. At the river it did not leak and
in use it would be very lightly stressed.
Of the generator and magnets he could build only the frameworks. "Until we
bring up a load of that wire, from the beach." But at least, she thought, it
was all moving now!
One afternoon when they were nearly two months aground, Jay came running
toward the hut. Raelle, packing berries into nests of dry grass for storage,
looked up at him. "Something's wrong?"
Out of breath, he took a moment before answering. "Not sure. Sea devils first
hill above the river junction; one of them's almost to the top."
Shaking her head, she stood. "Do we know how long they can breathe air how
far from water they can go?"
"Not really all the reports are from seaside, like mine." He wiped sweat from
face and forehead. "I thought, now's a good time to find out a few things but
I had nothing to work with. I was fishing they were behind me before I saw
them. Tried to use fishline as a noose but the damned beast was too
strong almost tore my fingers off when it pulled free. Then it charged me and
I ran for daylight!" Now his breathing slowed to normal. He grinned. "The
fire's going?"
"Sure. But? Oh, of course at the beach you used a burning branch to fight
one off." She frowned. "You think we can keep sticks alight, that far?"
He laughed for the first time in weeks she glimpsed the spirit that drudgery
had dimmed. "In a bucket of coals I carry it you steady the upper ends." He
looked around. "Rocks, too the biggest you can sling. And I'll fix a noose, a
snare but with a handle I canhold ."
Once they'd decided, she thought, the preparations hadn't taken long. She
jogged alongside Jay, one hand holding the lengths of wood that nuzzled the
coals in his bucket. The bag of rocks for her sling thumped against her back
and side.
And atop the hill overlooking the river junction they saw four sea devils.
Shifting, weaving on the undulating, curtainlike fins, the creatures milled.
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One, then another turned to face their approach. She and Jay paused on sloping
ground, about level with the hilltop, and stared across the intervening dip.
The animals were dark gray above slightly tinged with green and a pale,
muddy yellow underneath. Their skins, smooth and rippling with their
movements, looked moist. "How big are they, Jay? There's nothing near them for
comparison."
"Two meters long, a little more. They stand not quite a meter high, but they
can reach those jaws up nearly as far again."
Single file the sea devils came toward them slowly at first, then gaining
speed. Jay set down the bucket, added dry grass for tinder soon his
improvised spears took flame. "Let's separate a little, so we can come at them
from two angles."
"Yes." Raelle took two of the burning limbs, along with her sling and the
rock bag, and moved five meters to her left. "And by waiting here, we make
them attack from below."
"Right. If we can't stop them well, we're fresh for an uphill run, and
they're not."
Fascinated, she watched the leading attacker. Mouth agape long jaws like a
crocodile's, but behind them a bulging forehead and widely mounted eyes. At
the sides of the neck were those gills? But in the chill air of late
afternoon, steam came from the mouth. No matter, she thought the creature's
biology wasn't of prime importance just now. The crucial item was: could these
thingslearn ? Were they a hunting pack, or merely a herd? [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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