Chapter 3

Jane did a lot of last-minute lobbying for her water rights bill and it passed by the narrowest of margins. She gave a lot of credit to the public reaction to her botched kidnapping; the TV show seemed to help a lot, from what she heard from her fellow senators.

Along with Jim, Jane hoped that this spelled the end of the attacks on her, since the bill had passed and was now law under the Sauna government pact. The couple decided to take a vacation from legislative stress; Jim did not have to return to his farm for another two weeks. They decided to visit the mountains near the north pole; even on Sauna, it was cool enough for man-made snow there. Neither one had ever learned to ski, so they both looked forward to the opportunity.

The next day, they made reservations and packed their clothes and guns for the trip. At first, they were going to travel via the mag-lev train, but decided to save a little time by going by air. Jane was a member of a travel and vacation club, so they reserved two seats on the club's private 12-passenger jet. This was the last trip of the season for the club, so there were only four other club members on the flight, along with the two crew members.

They took off from Heinlein's airport in the morning and expected to arrive at the ski resort in less than three hours, since the jet cruised at nearly Mach 3; some club members joked that the plane was really a poor man's ICBM. Actually, that wasn't far from the truth; the plane never flew horizontally at all, except for take off and landing, the flight path was a high arc which took them out of the atmosphere for a short time. They "coasted" for a large part of the trip and had to restart the jets just before the landing. Of course, as a safety measure, the plane could glide to a landing if something went wrong and the jets couldn't be restarted, but that had never happened in the 60 years that this particular plane had been operational.

This flight was a stomach-wrenching thrill for Jim; he had never taken a ballistic flight path, before. The pressure from the high-gee acceleration at launch vanished when they went into freefall, which they experienced for most of the trip. Jim was grateful that he had a strong stomach and had heeded the advice not to eat a large breakfast before the flight. He was also grateful that Jane didn't suggest that they join the "100-mile-high" club during freefall, as he wasn't sure that his stomach was that steady.

Everything was going well when the pilot asked everybody to cinch up for the deceleration when he restarted the jets. The passengers reversed their seats and donned their safety harnesses for the landing, when the copilot announced over the PA that something was wrong with the jets and they could not be restarted. For some technical reasons that Jim didn't catch, they were going to have to dump speed by climbing again. The copilot assured the six passengers that there was nothing to worry about; they had trained in the simulator for just such a situation (he carefully didn't say "emergency").

The plane rose and dived three times before the pilot was satisfied that they had dumped enough speed, but, by now, they were well away from their planned landing site. The pilot banked for a turn to line up on the landing field when there was a sharp "crash" at the rear of the plane. The plane went into a sudden dive, headed straight for a mountain side. The pilot exhibited considerable skill in using the ailerons to keep from crashing head-first into the mountain, but the trees spelled the end of the flight. There was no telling how many miles of tree tops were pruned as they skimmed along the side of the mountain, losing flying speed all of the time, until they finally came to rest in a narrow valley.

By the time they came to a sliding stop, they were resting on the ground, minus the wings and a lot of fuselage skin. The copilot came on the PA and announced that they had better evacuate the plane as soon as possible, since there was some danger of debris falling on them off the steep mountain sides. Outside the plane, they could see trouble coming in time to avoid it.

The pilot and copilot came from the cockpit and opened the door to let the passengers outside. They gathered together a few yards from the plane and looked around to assess the situation. They had come to rest in a narrow and deep valley with very steep walls on both sides. The plane was probably invisible from the air because of the vegetation canopy which extended upwards about 200 feet. The scar left by their travel through the treetops would also be hard to see from the air, but they could always hope!

The pilot announced, "We had better assess our situation after we look through the baggage compartment to see what might have survived our rougher than normal landing."

Two of the passengers grinned at this, but nobody laughed. The copilot grimaced and they all walked to the door leading to the baggage compartment. It was bent, but it opened when three men pulled on it together. The baggage appeared to be pretty much intact, but jumbled around. The suitcases and other items were pulled from the compartment and parceled out to the owners. Jim said to the people in general, "I suggest that everybody arm himself with his personal weapons, since we don't know how long it will take for the local fauna to investigate the crash site. I, for one, don't plan to be eaten by mistake!"

"He's right! You better arm yourselves." commented the copilot.

Everybody had a pistol, but Jim had brought along his assault rifle and a shotgun for Jane. Nobody else had planned for Murphy's law, so they had not considered the need for such weapons.

The pilot said, "I'd better give you the bad news now. Our radio and GPS are broken and we never got a chance to broadcast a MayDay. I filed a flight plan before we left Heinlein, but I doubt that a search for us will be mounted before tomorrow at the earliest. As you can see, we will be damned hard to spot down in this valley, so, honestly, I don't expect anybody to find us. I think that our only good chance to survive is to walk out of here.

"The ski resort is 15 to 20 miles in that direction (pointing through the center of the mountain to their right). Over flat ground, we could walk to it in a day, if we pushed, but these mountains are going to more than double that distance. Furthermore, we don't have a lot of emergency rations; our food should last about five days, if we don't waste it. Just be sure you don't try to eat any of the native flora or fauna; it will kill you in minutes, it's so toxic.

"Let's spend the rest of the day working out what we will carry and what we will abandon. Remember, "carry" is the operative word! You will have to carry anything you take all by yourself, no one will have the extra strength to carry anything for you. If you have any spare food, be sure to take it, especially candy and other high-sugar foods.

"Any questions or comments? Now is the time, not after we start walking."

Nobody had anything to say, so they started going through their belongings. All three of the women had some chocolate stashed away, so things were looking up for energy food. Two of the men had stashed booze, and that was not to be taken, but Jim had stashed away a box of energy bars to have on the ski trails in case either Jane or he got hungry away from a snack stand.

There were seven two-man inflatable rafts in the emergency supplies in case they had to ditch in deep water; these would make excellent sledges to carry their hiking supplies. There was practically no undergrowth to contend with, so the hikers could easily drag the inflated rafts behind them while they were loaded with the necessary supplies. Their map didn't show any serious impediments to their trek, so they were light hearted as they settled into their first night of adversity.

A careful look around had shown that they were in no danger of anything falling on them, so they spent their first night sleeping in the seats on the plane. Some people were contemplating taking the cushions from the seats to use as bedding, but the wiser heads knew that this was too much bulk to be practical. Blankets and bedrolls had been found in the emergency supplies and they would have to make do with them.

The next morning, they inflated and packed the rafts, tied pulling ropes to the eyelets in the bow, and started off on their trek. The pilot led the way with his map and compass and the copilot brought up the rear of the column. The map showed that the best route around the mountain was to follow the valley as it curved around in the way they wanted to go. In general, there was plenty of room between the trees and the ground was pretty flat, so the passengers were able to walk as couples, side by side. There was a lot of laughing and joking among the couples as they walked, but every body knew that this wouldn't last; it would die out as soon as the people started getting tired.

They had walked for two hours when the pilot called for the first break. He had planned to stop for 30 minutes to give the hikers a chance to recover; he knew that two hours of steady walking was too much to do very often, but he had wanted to take advantage of the initial enthusiasm to get in as much distance as possible. They had marched about 4 miles in the two hours, so he was satisfied at their progress. He planned to alternate 30 minutes of walking with 10 minutes of rest on the first day to see how everybody held up; he would adjust the walking to resting ratio after he saw what was practical.

They were about ready to start back to walking when one of the women fired her pistol. Everybody jumped to see what was going on: she had shot one of the hyena-like scavengers as it had sneaked close to the copilot; he was sitting off a bit to himself as he watched back the way they had come. It was only a moment later that more of the creatures showed up; it looked like a small hunting pack.