Chapter 437

The Prison Planet

Shivering, Morales awakened somewhere around 2:00 in the morning. He tried going back to sleep, but he had never been able to sleep when cold, and tonight was no exception. Grumbling, he turned the light on before hurriedly dressing, then quickly donned the fatigue jacket. Junior stood with his feathers fluffed out looking up at Morales, then ran to snuggle with Gertrude and the rest of the brood. The cook fire had long since gone out and it was cold in the cave, at least, relative to the hot summer he had become accustomed to.

With few exceptions, he had continued to use his flint and steel to start fires, saving the lighters that came with the original supplies for emergencies. He had amassed plenty of nicely combustible tinder, and, over time, had become quite proficient in starting it burning with his flint and steel. Smiling as he thought of his first stumbling attempts at using the simple method, he struck flint to steel a few times, then cupped his hands over the smoldering embers as he blew gently on the tiny sparks. Those sparks quickly became strong enough for him to add bigger chips of wood, then kindling, and eventually, full-sized pieces of wood. This morning, however, the process seemed to take longer as he waited for the warmth of the fire to spread throughout the immediate area.

“Shit,” he mumbled. “I’ve got to close off the entrance passageway, or I’ll freeze my ass off when it really gets cold.” Glancing in the direction of the stack of logs, cut to length, that he had brought in for firewood, he continued, “So far, I’ve only needed small fires to dry meat or cook my meals, but I guess I’ve put off bringing in wood for winter as long as I can. Probably a good portion of it should have already been split and drying, but with the deadfalls I’ve brought in and with others within fairly easy gathering distance, I should have enough dry wood to last until the other has dried enough. I know I can use some of the logs as is, but I’ll also need some of them split for hotter, quicker fires.”

Still looking at the pile of wood, he tried to calculate how much he would need, but soon gave up. “Shit. I’m a city boy. I have no fucking idea how much wood I’ll use per day when it gets cold, but I do know it’s going to take one hell of a lot of wood to get me through the winter. I need to bring in more of the deadfalls to get me by for a few weeks, then a whole lot more green logs, sized to length and split for drying. And ... I need to get my door made and hung, as well as lining the log wall with hides to keep out the wind.”

As he thought about his food supply, he continued to mumble to himself, “Wouldn’t hurt to get another pig or two in and salted down for bacon, but I think I have enough of the other meat in the ice cave to see us through. Hmmm, make that us three, now that Lila is with us. I don’t imagine she’ll decide to leave once her foot is well. She and Lobo look like they’re bonded. Hell, she doesn’t even growl at me anymore.

“But back to winter. Of course, I’m expecting it to last somewhere around the length of time it does in the northeast U.S. on Earth. But, guessing wrong could get me very dead, so I have to, as they say, err on the side of caution.”

Lobo and Lila were still lying snuggled against each other, but now that the fire was going strong, Lobo came over to settle near, but the female stayed well back. “Come on, Lila,” Morales coaxed, patting the ground near him as he squatted to bask in the warmth. “The fire won’t hurt you if you don’t get too close.” Then to himself, Fuck, how do I tell a wild wolf about fire? Come to think of it, she has stayed well away from the cook fire since she got here. Hmmm. Guess I never thought about it, but chances are she’s never seen fire until she came in here, well, unless she was around the scientists’ camps, that is. Oh, well, she’ll figure it out when it gets colder.

He had built the fire bigger than he did for cooking, and it had warmed the area enough for him to think about making coffee. He was wide awake, and would never go back to sleep now. Coffee, as always, was first in the mornings, so he put a pot on to perk. When it was ready, and not having heard any rain, he dropped the bars and walked out the entrance passageway after having strapped on his weapon belts. Cup of freshly perked coffee in hand, he stood holding the lantern high as he looked out into the night. The rain had stopped – at least for now – but a cold wind was gusting strongly out of the north, and he could hear the roar of the stream in the near-total darkness. He knew the moon should be up and about half full, giving some light, but there was no sign of it, so it must be cloudy still.

“Fuck,” he grumbled as he listened to the angry sound of rushing water, “I wanted to get more of the cane in, not to mention wanting to check out the next field over. After all this rain, there’s no telling how long it will be before I can use the ford to get across the stream. Oh, well, I have enough cane to make several jugs of syrup. And that’s something else that I’ve been putting off. I need to cook up what cane I have before the stalks dry out too much. Maybe I’ll get a chance to get more of the cane in before spring. There just wasn’t enough time to do everything I wanted.”

Back inside, he poured another cup of coffee, putting the cup close to hand as he began cutting up cane stalks into the tiniest sections he could manage. When his biggest pot was full, he added water and put the pot on the side of the fire to begin slowly boiling the contents.

Since the light was on, the hens were up and walking around as they awaited breakfast. He had not used the eggs he found yesterday, and with two more today, he decided to have eggs for breakfast. He had steaks thawed that he had brought up from the ice cave last night. After peeling and cutting up a pile of potatoes, he added an onion before putting them on to cook.

When the other food was almost done, he scrambled the eggs and cooked them, portioning them out for the wolves and himself. As he always did, he picked the onions out of the wolves’ potatoes. He didn’t know if they would hurt wolves, but he knew that onions and garlic were toxic to dogs, so he always made sure there were no onions in Lobo’s food. He still didn’t have any bread, but he would correct that today.

Lila continued to inch closer long before he had all the wolves’ breakfast on their food boards. Eventually, he had their steak, potatoes and scrambled eggs ready. When he put Lila’s laden board in front of her, astonishingly, she hesitated.

“Go ahead, Girl. Eat up.”

Lila looked first at Morales, then at Lobo. When Lobo whined at her, she attacked the food.

“Now that’s different,” he said as he put his coffee on the ground beside him and sat on his padded rock to eat, his plate balanced on his knees. Then pondering it, Looks like she asked Lobo if she could eat, but ... she did look at me and hesitate. Hmmm. Come to think of it, lately, Lobo has begun waiting until my food is ready before he eats, although I’ve never tried to make him do that.

While eating, he watched the two wolves. They, of course, didn’t have hands, so their table manners as such, didn’t exist. After having watched Lobo put a foot on his meat to tear off a piece with his mouth, Morales had begun cutting the meat up into manageable pieces – not that the big wolf needed any help, but it just seemed the thing to do, particularly after he and Lobo had begun to communicate so much better.

But this is way too quick for Lila to start something like this, Morales thought. As he sat going over things in his mind, he recalled Lila looking to Lobo for guidance more and more, although this instance was much more noticeable. That’s just more indication that they communicate mentally – at least to some extent – and their communication with each other is probably a damn sight better than Lobo’s and mine. And ... Lila is smart – maybe really, really smart. Lila, I think you’re going to like living here.

When he thought her name, her head snapped up to stare at him. Oh, shit. Was that coincidence, or did she just hear me say her name mentally?

“Cheep. Cheep. Cheep!” Junior allowed as he landed on Morales’ shoulder.

“Okay. Okay. Keep your pants on. I’ve saved you some steak.”

The hens and the other chicks were standing a few feet away staring at him, so he put Junior and his steak pieces on the seat and went to feed the chickens, but as he began to walk away, he kept an eye on Lila. When she came to her feet, her focus on the chicken and/or Junior’s bits of steak, Lobo snarled at her before Morales could intervene.

With a quiet whine, she turned away from the chicken and laid back down.

Shit, Morales thought. Was she after the steak, or Junior? I still don’t dare trust her around the chickens. How the hell will I ever trust her not to eat them?

The living area of the cave was warm as long as he wasn’t near the entrance, but he assumed that the whole cave would cool off to some extent come winter. However, he had no clue just how much or how far the temperature change would affect the cave. As his mind continued to worry at the old subject, he realized that he was assuming the cave came out of the other side of the hill, since there was a gentle draft of air blowing out his entrance, but he immediately wondered if his reasoning could be off.

I think I went back far enough that I would have been on the other side of this big hill I’m on, but there was no indication that I was near another entrance or even that the cave was about to end. I know that I went downhill for some distance, but with the poor lighting I had at the time, I just got ... Shit, I might as well face it. I was scared shitless that I would get lost or step off a ledge in the dark. With those improvised torches, I could only very vaguely see the floor of the cave in front of my feet. So ... the bottom line is I have no fucking clue how far back the cave goes, or how deep it goes, for that matter.

The branch that goes toward the ice cave drops quickly, and it’s cold as hell in there, not to mention spooky, he admitted. I guess I need to do some research on caves, but just because something is true on Earth is probably no reason to expect it to be true here – or is it? Shit, I don’t’ even know how far north I am, or how long to expect the seasons to last. For all I know, they might last for Earth years. But surely, if they were that much different from Earth’s seasons, the General’s people would have told us before we left – well, maybe. Somehow, I don’t think they expected us to live that long. Then with a chuckle, Robinson didn’t.

But dammit, there is airflow coming out of the cave. Surely that means there’s another entrance of some kind – some-fucking-where. Then again, more than once, I’ve awakened in the middle of the night dreaming of hearing water running. It was very faint, but as I lay there just barely awake, I could still hear it – at least I thought I could – but when I was fully awake, I couldn’t. I’m beginning to think that somehow I hear better just at the point of awakening than I do when I’m fully awake, or maybe it’s just a trick of the – what do you call it? – acoustics of the cave. Dammit, Morales, you need to get over being afraid of the fucking dark and explore this place. But the next thought was, Yeah, and what happens if what I’m walking on is hollow underneath and I step through it? Is that water I’m hearing coming from an underground river that I might be walking over? Aren’t you supposed to have a buddy with you and be tied together to explore caves? Shit. I need to get this off my mind and get my ass in gear. There’s far too much that I need to get done other than worrying about the rest of this fucking cave.

It didn’t take a genius to realize that the living area would never be warm unless he could close off the entrance passageway and get some insulation between his living area and the outside world. If the rest of the cave cooled off too much, he would have to block off the cave just past his living area, and that would be yet another hassle. Only time will tell, he thought.

Breakfast over and cleanup complete, he mixed some bread dough and put it aside to rise. Lobo and Lila wanted to go out, but it was still dark. With his weapons strapped on, he took the light and went out with them, but just took a piss. He would wait to drop his pants until after daylight. Deep down, he knew that the wolves would sense any large animal that was near, but he couldn’t get his mind around squatting in the dark with the possibility of a saber-tooth around.

Back inside, he checked his wood supply. He had enough of the small logs to get started on his door, but he would need a couple more that were long enough to go entirely across, plus several more sections after daylight – if the rain didn’t start again.

With his makeshift broom, he smoothed out a place on the dirt floor before sketching out his idea for the door. If I could get away with a normal door, this would not be a problem. I could just use some doubled pieces of leather for hinges and hang the thing. But ... a door that light wouldn’t even slow down a saber-tooth, not to mention the dammed bear. So, my door has to be just as strong as the log wall. Strong means heavy as hell when I’m building with logs.

The only way I can think of to have a strong door and still be able to open and close it is to have it slide. Even then, I’ll have to put a couple of bars across it to lock it closed. Shit. Why does every animal here have to be so fucking big ... and aggressive? Oh, well. I’m still alive and, by damn, I’m going to stay that way.

After moving the box over that he had made to stand on when he checked for cameras in the cave, he began digging a hole in the wall just under the ceiling – one on each side of the entrance doorway. Digging horizontal holes high up was a bitch, but he suspected that the two bottom holes in a trench below ground-level would be even more difficult.

Making holes on either side so a pole could be inserted meant making the hole on one side extra deep so the pole could be pushed in far enough to give it room to line up with the other hole. From having done this for the poles across the entrance, he knew that the pole would be loose, and that hadn’t made much difference with the entrance poles, but it would now, since the door would slide along a slot on the bottom side of the top pole. And, of course, he would have to do the same thing on the bottom pole for its slot to function properly as it supported the door. He had decided to wedge the ends of the side poles with small rocks and mud. When the mud dries, the pole should be solid – I hope. Then I get to do it again on the bottom – plus slotting the damn poles before I mount them so the door will have something to slide in.