Solbidyum Wars Saga 5: Desolation (10 page)

Inside the ship, we were not able to see or hear the rain, but our instruments could tell us of the storm outside.  The rains grew in intensity and if the readings the computer gave us were to be believed, it was raining as much as 150 to 300 millimeters per hour.  At one point, we felt the ship lurch a bit and settle into a more level position, and I wondered if we might be floating away.  I tried to visualize what it looked like outside, my mind imagined that the small canyons must be filled to overflowing as surely they could not carry that much water off quickly enough.

The hard rain lasted nearly a day, then reduced to a drizzle for about six hours and finally it all was gone.  The next morning I decided to venture out and when I opened the hatch, it was as though we had been transported to some other place.  Most of the sand in the valley had vanished, and everything seemed to be a smooth rock surface with occasional boulders and rocks strewn about here and there.  In the few depressions in the rock, some pools of water collected and mounds of sand could be seen in them in some locations.  The Sisoma had mostly disappeared, swept off either by the dust storm or by the rain, and those that I did observe were laying down on the hard rock.

The dirt that had been piled around the ship was almost entirely washed away and in the process, the dirt under the outer edge of the rock that prevented the closing of the airlock door had eroded away, leaving the rock cantilevered half in and half out of the ship.  By piling smaller stones on the far end of this rock I was able to get it to tip, and with a slight effort on my part by lifting the end still inside the ship, I was able to get the entire rock to slide out of the ship.

Leaving the ship was not quite as easy because there was a drop off from the lower edge of the hatch to the ground below of nearly 2 meters.   Fortunately, there was a retractable ladder at the hatch, and even though it’s electrical circuit was damaged in the crash, I could crank it down manually from inside the air hatch, but first I had to hand scoop the mud which had accumulated inside during the storm.  It took about half a day’s work to get all this done, but by midafternoon I had managed to clean out the airlock, get the big rock out and could get the outer door functioning again.  I had planned to do some more exploring, but both Reidecor and Lunnie seemed to decide they wanted the focused attention of both Kala and me, so after cleaning up, I found myself holding Lunnie and talking to her as Kala sang to Reidecor.  By now, two weeks had passed since our crash, and both babies were becoming more alert, although Lunnie had seemed to be very alert from the start.

One-day, Kala asked me, “Tibby have you noticed that as soon as you enter the room that Lunnie only seems to look at you?”

“Now that you mention it, yes, but isn’t it usual for a baby to look at anything that enters a room?”  I observed as I answered that Lunnie was staring intently at me once more.

“You don’t see Reidecor staring at you like that.”

I answered, “No two children are alike; look at you and your sister.  The two of you were totally different.”

“True, but this is different.  It’s like she is totally fixated on you.  I’m starting to wonder if maybe Lunnie’s soul hasn’t reincarnated in her namesake.  I’ve never really believed in reincarnation before, but now I am starting to wonder.  You and Lunnie died together.  We were able to bring you back to life, but Lunnie perished.  With her last message to us, Lunnie said when we had a little girl to name her after her.”

I had to admit that in the back of my mind, I had similar thoughts, but didn’t want to admit it.  Lunnie had appeared to me in dreams at other near death moments and had hinted that she might be back again one day.  I walked over to Lunnie where she lay in the bed and said.  “What about it Lunnie, are you a reincarnation of your name sake?”  As I asked this, my hand brushed hers, and unexpectedly she gripped my finger with her little hand and hung on tightly while staring me in the eye with an intense look.

“There, Tib, see that’s what I’m talking about!  My sister was the type of person who would not let go of something until she got her point across.”  Lunnie didn’t let go until she fell asleep nearly 20 minutes later.

The next morning when I went outside I became convinced I was seeing more Sisoma, only now they were standing upright again and were more than I had seen the day before.  Many of them seemed to be moved from their previous locations.  I walked closer to some of them and noticed that most were in shallow depressions on the rock surface where both water and sand had pooled from the storms days earlier.  I noticed that the trees had roots that spread out across the surface like long tentacles.  I was about to turn and walk away, when I noticed one of the roots slowly repositioning its self.  Further observation revealed that all the roots were leisurely moving and repositioning themselves and that the trees were capable of moving from one place to another.

When I turned away from the trees, something else caught my eye, a straight line of some structure outline that ran along the surface that was about 20 meters in length.  Upon investigation, I could see that it clearly had once been the foundation for some intelligent designed structure, but there wasn’t enough of it to determine just what it had been.  As I examined the area, I also discovered what I believed to be bits and pieces of a street or highway, but there wasn’t enough of it to tell where it went or just how wide it may have been.

I had planned to investigate the site of the building foundation again the next day, but there was another dust storm during the night, and it was two days before it was decent enough to go out again.  When I did, I discovered that much of the sand that had been removed days earlier was now back, and it was impossible for me to tell just where the foundation was located.  I was trying to find some signs of them when I discovered large tracks in the dirt.  They were unusual tracks in that they had aspects of both a great ape and a cat.  They seemed smaller than an adult human but larger than that of a child. The foot obviously had six toes and from the indentation in the dirt at the front of each toe, I was sure the animal that made it had claws.

I followed the tracks for about a half a kilometer to a place where it neared the ravine.  There I found what I had been seeking days earlier, a narrow sloping groove eroded out of the rock that gradually widened into a gully sloping down into the slot canyon.  My first thought was to enter the gully and follow it into the ravine, but my instincts told me that until I knew what the creature was that left the tracks and had a better idea just were it might be, that I might be better off staying out of it.  I did walk over to the ravine and looked down into it, hoping I might get to see the animal that had left the tracks, but I saw nothing but the stream that wound itself through the gorge.  Though I did think I could see a few tracks in the sand at places along the stream, I was too far away to know for sure.  As I returned to the ship, I decided that in future forays, I would bring along one of the assault rifles from the arms locker just to be on the safe side.

I wanted to get a better idea what was going on outside the ship at night, but with external ship’s sensors damaged, I didn’t see any way I would be able to do so without actually spending some time outdoors, and I didn’t feel too comfortable doing that after seeing the tracks earlier that day.  I tried the computer to see if I could find any information on the animal that made them, but there was nothing in the computer that matched the tracks.  Kala entered behind me carrying one baby in each arm.

“Tib, could you take one of these two?  My arms are getting tired.”

“Certainly,” I said as I turned, and she leaned down handing Reidecor to me.”  No sooner was Reidecor my arms than Lunnie began crying.

“There, there now, we’ll have none of this.”  Kala said to Lunnie.  “Your brother deserves time with his daddy too.  You can’t have him all to yourself.”  I know that babies at this age are too young to understand what people are saying to them, and certainly too young to know what is going on.  However, Lunnie stopped crying and gave Kala a hard look before looking at me and sort of whimpered.  Reidecor on the other hand, simply lay in my arms with his eyes moving about randomly looking at the lights around the control room and acting just as one would expect any normal baby to perform.

“What are you searching for, Tib?”  Kala asked once Lunnie had quieted down.

“I’m trying to find out what animal made the tracks I found today,” I answered, “they’re much too large to be any of the animals listed on the computer as being a native here.”

“It’s possible it may be an animal that was missed in the original surveys.”  Kala replied, “The study that was being made here was 600 years ago at a time when the solbidyum wars were taking place, and from what I read from the reports the planet survey was cut short because of the war.  There are parts of the planet that they never really got to.  It’s very possible that your track maker is an animal they missed in the survey.  It might be rare or at least scarce at that time and has since increased its numbers.  Do you think it’s something dangerous?”

“I’m not sure, but I got a very uneasy feeling looking at the tracks that this was something I didn’t want to mess with.  I wish the external visual sensors were still working.  I would like to see what’s out there at night without actually being outside."

Kala rocked Lunnie in her arms as she said, “You could put a remote visual sensor outside.”

“Where would I get it from?”  I asked.

“There should be one in the supply locker; most ships have at least one for emergency repairs.”

Kala paused her rocking of Lunnie, who was now asleep, just as Reidecor started fussing.  I began trying to rock him in my arms as Kala said.  “He needs a changing, not rocking.”

“Oh!  How can you tell?”

“By the way he is crying, and by the way he wrinkled up his face, also by the smell.  How could you miss that?” she said with a grin.

Much as I hated the task, I honestly didn’t think it was fair passing diaper duty to Kala all the time, so I headed to the replicator to get a fresh diaper.  Baby diapers in the Federation were similar in function to those on earth but were shaped more like a small pair of underwear than diapers.  They were made of a light material but were extremely absorbent and thickened as they absorbed liquid and most solid waste.  This usually meant that very little manual cleaning was required, and then only a wiping with a damp sterilized cloth, also provided by the replicator.  I say usually, but young Reidecor seemed to be an exception to the rule, if I didn’t know better I would have believed that someone had spread a very sticky peanut butter like substance over his bottom.

As babies went, Reidecor and Lunnie couldn’t be more different.  Reidecor seemed content to eat and sleep and showed only passing interest in things when he was awake.   Lunnie was the opposite, she seemed to never sleep and when she did it was only for a brief period, and she seemed to study everything intently.  Lunnie was always twisting and turning looking at things while Reidecor was content to lie in your arms, staring at your face until he fell asleep again.

By the time I had finished cleaning Reidecor up and had him into his second fresh diaper, (he’d managed to mess the first one up before I got it on him completely), Kala had gone to the supply locker and returned, still carrying Lunnie in one arm, but now she had a small case in her other hand.  “Here, Tib, you should be able to set this vid sensor up outside and view the images on the screen in the control room.  It has a light amplification unit so it will be able to work at night and let you see what’s going on outside.”

By now, Reidecor had fallen asleep again, and I took him into our cabin and placed him on the bed, although he hadn’t reached the point where he could roll over on his own, I placed a pillow on each side of him to prevent him from rolling off the bed should he unexpectedly learn to do so.  Lunnie, conversely, had somehow learned how to roll over far sooner than was normal, or at least so I thought.  Once Reidecor was safe on the bed, I took the case Kala had handed me outside and looked for a good vantage point where I could set the unit up.

The vid unit was quite small.  Only about the size of my thumb, the tripod that held it up was another story.  It was a sturdy piece of equipment that could adjust the camera height from 1 meter to 4 meters off the ground.  I decided that 3 meters might be the best to try.  Vid sensors have no lenses.  I’m really not sure how they work or record images.  From the little that I could understand, the surface of the vid sensor acted just like any light sensor would in a digital camera back on Earth.  However, unlike cameras of earth where a lens focused the image, a tiny computer inside the sensor assembled the images from the data it received; this resulted in being able to get visual images in all directions at once.  The sensor could produce a 360 degree display on a screen, or one could isolate the view down to a specific direction; views from the underside were achieved by a small piece that extended through a hole in the center of the tripod.

With the unit assembled, I headed back inside to await the setting of the sun.  I had intended to spend my time until the sunset, scanning data in the ship’s computer about the life forms on the planet, but I must have been tired, because before I had begun I fell asleep in the chair at the console.

I was not asleep long before I had a dream that I was back in the Navy on Earth once more, performing my duties in the catapult room on an aircraft carrier.  The scene changed and I found myself standing on the flight deck as planes were taking off, and I wished that more planes could take off at once and get into the air quicker.  While I was thinking this, the planes on the deck of the ship transformed into Federation mirage fighters and patrol ships, and the aircraft carrier itself began transforming into a spaceship that was not like any I had seen in my life so far.  It was smaller than the giant starships, but larger than a frigate and was closer to the
NEW ORLEANS
in size.