Chapter 417

The Prison Planet

... As soon as the light was on, Morales saw the red eyes glaring back at him from the entrance channel.

“Oh, shit!” Then, “Wait, Lobo!” he screamed as the big wolf leaped toward the bars.

Whatever it was, it was coal black and was obviously determined to get in, because it attacked the bars with a vengeance. Forcing down panic, Morales yelled again for the wolf to stop, and amazingly, he did at least hesitate. “Wait,” Morales repeated. “I can’t shoot with you in the way.” Adrenalin surging through his body, he forced himself to take the time to throw a quiver of crossbow bolts over one shoulder and a quiver of arrows over the other. He didn’t take time to get a bow because he always kept one of them close to the entrance, anyway.

With the lantern casting long shadows from where it sat on the ground twenty feet behind them, Morales cautiously approached the bars with his crossbow ready. He remembered letting loose a panicked bolt that shattered on the hardwood of one of the bars when he had shot at the saber-tooth the first time. The urge to fire was intense this time too, especially with the squalling and hissing of the beast as it tried unsuccessfully to dig under the bars before again returning to smashing itself into them. So far they held, making him immensely glad he had dug the end holes deeply into the walls and used all hardwood for the barrier.

Just as his finger took up the slack on the trigger, the cat moved again and the bars interfered with what would have been a clean shot. Damn you, he muttered as it again backed up a couple of feet and lunged into the barrier. The poles flexed a little, causing Morales’ heart to skip a beat, but they held.

Finally, his mind put together what he was seeing and he remembered the black panther he had seen on the plains, but even though he had thought the thing was big then, he now realized that this beast was even bigger. Huge came to mind as it hissed and gnawed on one of the poles, moving it a little in its hole. He wasn’t even sure the thing was the same species, but it was black, big and royally pissed. Then it made its fatal mistake – it stopped to snarl at him, pushing its head against the bars to do so, and he took the shot.

He had never fired a crossbow before being sent to 2214, and only then began to truly realize the raw power the weapon possessed. Reloading was slow and cumbersome, though, which caused him to make certain of his shot before pulling the trigger since a miss or only wounding a charging animal could be a death sentence for the shooter. But this time, the bolt flew true, digging through the panther’s sloping forehead into its brain and leaving only a third of the bolt sticking out. The big animal collapsed with a grunt as a small trickle of blood seeped past the shaft.

Lobo went over to smell the beast, then with a grin, looked back at Morales who had already re-cocked the crossbow and positioned another bolt ready to fire. Only then did he succumb to his curiosity and approach the bars. His grin was short-lived, though. “Now, how in the fuck am I going to get this big bastard out of the entrance passageway?”

The animal, although certainly smaller than the saber-tooth, was much larger than the panther that he and Lobo had fought. It wasn’t exactly wedged into the narrow channel, but there surely wasn’t much room on either side. “No way can I drag this big bastard out of here, unless I use the block and tackle to do it. Otherwise, I’ll have to cut the thing up and take it out piecemeal. Shit! That would be one hell of a mess,” he said with a grimace as he envisioned blood and guts mixed with the dirt of the passage floor. “And cutting the beast to pieces will also destroy that beautiful pelt. So, I guess I’m back to pulling it out of here with the block and tackle. But I got my fill of that thing when I pulled the resupply case up the hill. I sure wish there was another way because that thing is slow as crap. Shit, there’s bound to be a faster way.”

He wasn’t sure of the time, but knew that sleep would not happen for what was left of the night. “Fuck it,” he said with a sigh. “I’m going to put on a pot of coffee before I get into this.”

Retrieving his lantern, he hung it in its usual position so the light would better illuminate the surroundings. The first thing he noticed was that the new hens were as far down the cave as their tethers would permit, and he could barely see Gertrude and her chicks even farther down into the darkness of the cave.

“It’s all right,” he called out to the chickens as he grabbed an ear of corn to shell for them. But throwing corn on the ground near the nests proved futile. The chickens weren’t coming near as long as the panther was there – dead or not, well, other than Junior, that is. It cheeped several times, then hesitantly covered the distance until it was standing on Morales bare foot, shivering.

“It’s okay, Little Guy,” Morales said with a grin as he picked the chick up to hold in front of his face as he talked to it.

“Cheep!” it loudly exclaimed as it turned its head to stare at the dead beast.

“Yeah. My sentiments, too,” Morales said with a chuckle as he put the chick on his shoulder without thought. But when Junior’s toes with their sharp little claws dug into Morales’ bare skin, he decided that clothing would be before coffee. “Easy, Little Guy,” he said as he gently removed the chick to put it back on the ground. But it became obvious very quickly that Junior wasn’t going to leave if it could help it.

When Morales went back to his bed to dress, Junior followed along in the human’s footsteps, cheeping almost continuously. “Okay. Okay. Let me get my clothes on. Besides, that thing isn’t going to bother you; it’s dead,” he responded, trying to make his voice as soothing as possible while hastily pulling his pants on.

As soon as Morales had his shirt on, Junior backed up a bit and jumped, his little wings a blur as he tried his best to reach the man’s shoulder, but his undeveloped wings just weren’t up to the task, and he collided with Morales’ chest. Digging in his claws, his wings going full blast, the chick hung there for a second, giving Morales time to cup his hands around the little creature and bring it to his shoulder.

“The panther can’t hurt you. It’s dead,” he tried again, but Junior just snuggled against Morales’ neck and cheeped contentedly. A moment later, Gertrude squawked indignantly from her position at the edge of the light.

Grumbling good-naturedly about chickens running the show, Morales got a cook fire started and a pot of coffee going, all the while Junior continued to cling to the fatigue shirt with the chick’s body leaning against Morales’ neck.

He stood, hands on hips, looking at the big panther. “Or whatever the fuck you are,” he said as he tried to think of a way to get the animal out of the entrance passage without cutting the beast into pieces or using the block and tackle. “Dammit, I want that beautiful black hide, but I don’t want to spend the time pulling the cat out of here with the block and tackle. Surely there’s a better way.”

As he stood staring, he addressed the dead animal that blocked the passageway. “Shit, you’re even bigger than the one Lobo and I killed, and your hair is so black it shines.” Then, “I wonder,” he said as he hurried to boot his laptop. “Shit, some civilization built the pyramids thousands of years ago. If they figured out how to move those giant stones, surely I can find a way to get this big bastard out of here without the block and tackle or cutting the beast into pieces.”

Morales barely realized it, but with all the studying he had been doing, his reading abilities had improved considerably. As he kept putting in phrases while he tried to find something in the database that would give him another idea about how to move the beast, he lost track of his cursor as he typed and a selection popped up: “Getting started with your new computer.”

After staring at the options for thirty seconds or so, he cautiously clicked on one and was off and running. Later, with a grin, he clicked on an icon and a clock appeared at the bottom right of the screen. He didn’t know if the time was correct or not, but it seemed about right, he supposed. He even found a timer. “Well, I’ll be damned,” he griped. “They could have fucking told me,” but the grin stayed, anyway.

Thus began a more systematic search for knowledge on how to use his laptop.

Eventually, he got back to his search for a method to move heavy weights. That led to articles on leverage, but nothing he found would work for something like a panther jammed into his entrance passageway. Frustrated, he stopped to cook breakfast.

Gertrude eventually returned to her nest but would not come any nearer, even while he was cooking. Abigail and Hortense remained at the end of their tethers, refusing to come nearer no matter how many times he called or offered them food. Junior seemed content to stay on Morales shoulder, but if he walked anywhere near the panther, the chick began cheeping loudly.

“All right. All right,” Morales grumbled, “As soon as I finish breakfast, I’ll get it out of here, one way or another.”

He had almost resigned himself to the block and tackle, when he found it. It, being the cover picture on an e-book for teens, although he knew without an internet connection, he couldn’t download the book. It was obviously fiction and what was pictured would probably never work in real life, but it just might for what he wanted to do, and it would kill two birds with one stone. The picture showed a small tracked vehicle almost submerged in a lake. The tree was in the process of falling with one end of a cable tied high into the tree and the other to the vehicle that was being jerked onto dry land by the falling tree.

“I don’t have any cable,” he told the wolf, “but I have some high-test rope that I can double. I’ve put off taking down the tree that blocks the light for my solar chargers, but this is a good excuse to get the tree out of the way and remove the panther at the same time. Kitty-cat is going for a ride.”

After he and Lobo crawled across the dead panther to get outside, he stood staring up into the tree. “Climbing that is going to be a bitch, but that’s what my climbers are for,” he said aloud, before returning to the cave. Back a few minutes later, he sat to strap the climbers to his feet and legs. “I don’t like climbing trees, but I need to get that beast at least fifty feet from the cave before I butcher it.” Then after a moment, he continued as second thoughts assailed him. “If you don’t climb up there,” he told himself, “then you won’t fall out of the fucking tree.” But he picked up the rope he had brought from the cave, stretched out a section, then doubled it while making sure the length was sufficient and then some.

At the tree, he hugged it in order to circle it with the climbing belt before snapping it to his belt rig. Lobo sat to the side, his tongue hanging out of his mouth as he watched his master. “If I bust my ass, you’re in charge,” Morales tried to joke.

Lobo looked up the tree, obviously knowing that Morales was going to climb the thing and just as obviously, nervous about it. Unknown to Morales, Lobo was more worried that Morales was going to hoist him (Lobo) up there with him like he had done before.

With the rope slung over a shoulder and the crossbow dangling on its lanyard, Morales sighed and slammed the first climbing spike into the tree, tested it, and began his slow climb.