Chapter 445

The Prison Planet

... Morales fixed a quick lunch while planning to use some leftover roast that he had taken from the ice cave to make a stew for their evening meal.

He hated to take the time to do it, but he needed to bore more holes in the ice walls to have room for the final load of meat. Grumbling because he had forgotten to take the brace and bit with him on the previous trip, he fitted his biggest bit in the brace and headed back to the ice.

The walk back was boring as usual, but, despite how many times he had been in the ice cave, the place was still eerie. There were surfaces that were dull, while others were so smooth that he could see a near-perfect image of himself. Still others were faceted, which caused many different reflections, and as he moved, it seemed that something inside the ice moved as well. The more he stared at the walls, the more his mind insisted there was actually movement in there.

As he hung the lantern on a peg, “I fucking know there’s nothing inside the ice,” he groused aloud while trying to comfort himself with the sound of his own voice, “but, dammit, my goose bumps don’t seem to realize it.”

The ice was hard and, as before, it required force to drill the holes, but he persevered. Putting the hand drill aside for a moment, he slipped out of his jacket. As he turned to lay it across a rock, he thought he saw movement out of the corner of his eye and whirled around – but there was nothing other than the blueish-tinted ice wall and the brilliance of the reflected lantern light.

“Shit, I hate this place, but it surely is nice to be able to freeze the meat instead of having to dry everything,” he said as he grabbed the brace and bit to start another hole.

In places along the passageway, the walls were highly irregular with parts of the opening varying drastically in width. In addition, there were much wider areas that could almost be called rooms, and these sometimes had large ice boulders scattered about in them. Their spacing was such that he could bore holes in adjacent ice boulders that would support a long pole between them. In other areas where the passageway was too wide for his poles to cross, he used many shorter poles along the walls to hang the meat on. While drilling one of the holes, he noticed a narrow side passage that opened into what was probably best described as a labyrinth of twisting corridors. Putting down his drill, he grabbed the lantern before making his way through the opening and on a few steps into the maze. Stopping, he looked about, then quickly retraced his steps before he forgot the route back, knowing with a certainty that continuing would cause him to become impossibly lost. “When I have the time, I’ll bring a roll of fishing line to mark my return route so I can check this out without getting lost.” If I ever get the balls to plan something like that, he added mentally.

After hanging the lantern back up, he bored enough holes to use up all the poles he had previously brought into the ice cave. Done at last, he retrieved his equipment and headed back to the campsite.

Back at the entrance, he filled the canteens and added jerky to his pockets. “You two ready?” he asked the wolves.

Lobo, still wearing the harness, came to his feet, and Lila either understood Morales’ words, or figured out what was going to happen from Lobo’s reaction, because she hurried to the door to wait while Lobo pushed it open.

As soon as he stepped outside, Morales noticed the difference in temperature. It had been near freezing when they had begun their first trip of the day, but instead of warming toward midday, the temperature had dropped. How much, he didn’t know, but the wet-feeling wind was gusting even more than it had earlier in the day. One glance at the low clouds and he knew the fir st snow of the season would happen soon. He just hadn’t expected it this soon.

“Damn,” he muttered, “I had hoped to get in another buffalo or elk before it snowed, but if those aren’t snow clouds, then I’ve never seen any.”

He had noticed both Lobo and Lila sniffing the wind. Just outside the entrance, Lobo turned to Morales, then looked back toward the sky.

“Yeah, I know, Boy. Back on Earth, I would say that we had time, but I’ve been amazed at many things on this planet. I would expect the first snow of the season to be a few inches that would probably melt in the next day or two. Here, I have no fucking idea. But everything about this place is big, mean, just plain different, or all of the above, so let’s hurry.”

On the smoother places, Morales jogged while pulling the empty rolling case, slowing only when he had to for rough terrain or steep areas in the trail. Had it not been for the circling wolves, jogging would have been foolish, but he trusted Lobo’s senses, and with two of the wolves, he knew there was little chance of a threat getting near without them being aware of it.

On the way back, the heavily loaded case wore at both Morales and Lobo on the slopes, but they were home by midafternoon.

Morales stood in the entrance passageway, chewing on jerky while looking out at the clouds. “Looks like we might get a few inches of snow, but with the ground as warm as it is, it should be gone by noon tomorrow. But dammit, there’s something I want to do and, it might well be too late already.

“I didn’t realize it at the time, but I think there are some pecan trees in the next field over. I saw the trees when we were there, but didn’t think much about them just then. Last night, I remembered seeing a video about harvesting pecans, and I think the trees I saw might well be pecan trees. On the video, they used a weird looking machine that shook the pecans out of the trees, then this other machine swept them up and separated the trash and dirt from the nuts.”

While he had been talking, he had stepped past the entrance until he could see the stream below the cave. “It looks like the water level is almost down to normal,” he told the wolves as if they could understand. “I know it’s way past time to harvest the nuts, especially with all the rain we had a few days back, but I want to see if there are any left.”

Making up his mind, he threw his weapon belts back on before grabbing the other rolling case. “We either do it now, or we won’t be able to do it, period,” he told Lobo. “Let’s go to the fields.”

When they arrived at the ford, Morales judged the water to be nearly knee-deep. “You two might want to stay here. That water is cold and you will be soaked when you cross.”

Lobo looked up at the man, chuffed and bounded across, Lila right behind him. On the other side, they shook themselves, making Morales glad they did it before he got close.

Boots in hand and his pants rolled above his knees, Morales floated the empty case behind him as he hurried across the ice-cold stream, muttering curses all the way.

On the opposite bank, he wiped his feet with a piece of hide he had brought for the purpose, before putting his boots back on cold feet. “There had better be some nuts left,” he griped as he and the wolves hurried toward the field, but he worried that all the rains had covered the nuts with mud or else washed them away.

There were six of the pecan trees, and none of them were nearly as large as the trees he had seen in the video, but there were some nuts left on the ground. Whether they were any good was a worry. The deluge of water from the heavy rains had washed through the area, and he suspected that most of the nuts had been washed away, but there were some that were left under the trees. Picking up two nuts, he crushed them in his hands, pulled the outer shell off and popped a piece into his mouth; it was good.

He had brought his homemade broom that he used to sweep the cave with. The broom was really just the tops of a couple bushes lashed together with rawhide, but it worked as he swept the scattered nuts into piles.

Pulling the case near, he scooped up handfuls of the nuts and threw them in. Not as many as I had hoped for, but if they are all as good as the one I ate, the trip will be worthwhile.

Thirty minutes later as he was gathering up the last of the nuts, Lobo came running up. After chuffing at him, the wolf turned and trotted a few steps, then ran back to Morales to chuff again. “Okay, I get the idea. What have you two found?”

A hundred feet or so from the field, and at the bottom of a very slight slope was a sharp rise, and against the rise was an abundance of nuts that had been washed down by the rains to accumulate against the natural barrier. Morales knelt to pick a couple of the nuts at random. Cracking their shell by squeezing the two nuts together, he opened one of them to show two perfect halves. The grin covered his face as he tasted the nut.

After cracking several more, he gave the contents to Lobo and Lila, both becoming very interested in what Morales was doing.

“I would never have come down here without your having shown me,” he told the wolves, “so you two will share, but for now, I need to retrieve the case and get all this loaded before those clouds open up.”

Morales suspected that some of the nuts would be rotten, but he was just as sure that many would not be. They could sit around the fire, shell and eat pecans on cold days when they were snowed in.

With an occasional glance at the ever-thickening clouds, he almost frantically loaded the nuts into the rolling case. There were small sticks, leaves and gravel mixed in as he scooped the nuts up with his hands, but he would sort all that out at the cave. For now, he wanted every nut he could get.

An hour later, Morales dried the wolves as best he could before taking his boots off to sit with his feet near the fire. Fuck, he told himself, that was stupid, and we still have to make at least three trips to move the meat on into the ice cave. But the grin never left his face as he thought about all those pecans they now had.

His feet were dry, but still not as warm as he would like for them to be when he put his boots back on. “You want to help again, Lobo? We have all that meat to move to the ice cave.”

Lobo grabbed his harness and brought it over to Morales just as Gertrude, Abigail and Hortense, with the chicks following, all scrambled up from their tunnel under the wall. “Well, Ladies,” Morales said as he paused with what he was doing, “You’re in early. And before you start, it’s a long way until dinner, so don’t bother looking pitiful.”

They all stood looking at him. “I know chickens don’t have expressions,” he muttered, but somehow the hens managed to look half-starved even as fat as they were. “All right. All right. A snack to tide you over. Just let me finish putting the harness on Lobo first. Shit, I’m henpecked for real,” he finished with a chuckle.

With the chickens pecking at the wheat he threw on the ground for them, Morales secured a piece of meat to Lobo’s harness, and with his own load over his shoulders, turned to Lila. “You’re in charge until we get back,” he told her, “and don’t eat the chickens.”

Lila dropped her ears and looked so pitiful that Morales put his load of meat back across the case and dropped to his knees to scratch behind her ears. “Take care of things while we’re gone,” he said as he picked the meat up again and started toward the ice cave.

She seemed to understand me, or at least the gist of what I meant, he thought as he and Lobo trudged along. But dammit, this is the first time I’ve left her alone with the chickens in the cave with her. Of course, she could have gotten them in the brush fence if she had wanted to, but still ... Shit, she knows where the eggs come from, and she knows I take care of the chickens. I guess it’s time to trust her. She allowed me to work on her foot – well, with Lobo to help persuade her, that is. She trusted me, so now it’s my turn, I suppose.

Deliberately, he tried to think of another subject rather than worry about something he couldn’t change. How in the hell am I going to move some of the boulders out of the way so I can bring a loaded case of meat to the ice cave? There are only three or four huge rocks that have to be moved, plus smoothing up several rough areas, but the rocks are huge, and for the life of me, I can’t think how I can manage to move them. Oh, well, I’ll cross that bridge when I have to.

With the elk meat added to what we already have, there is more than enough meat to last the winter – hopefully it won’t freezer burn or whatever you call it. I’ll have enough hides to get by, but I had hoped to have an abundance of them before winter. Dammit, those clouds look like snow is on the way – and soon.