Chapter 33

After all the work they'd put in everyone wanted to see both the takeoff and the landing. It worried me a little since I wasn't sure the landing strip would remain clear of animals with no one in the back valley to make sure of it. I was embarrassed, but only to myself since I told no one else, but I had ignored the obvious solution.

Since they all loved the idea of our big bird I'd nearly missed an excellent chance to put on an impressive show. I was on it now though.

I had a short talk with Chris and Mary and they agreed to help, then I made the happy announcement.

A change in plans was put forth. First I'd take off with everyone up in the first valley to watch and then I'd do one touch and go and finally I'd land again. The takeoff, touch and go, and landing at the same place was explained as to make sure it would be safe for me to take Chris and Mary with me for the next takeoff.

After we were airborne we would circle around and examine the area more closely while everyone else returned to the back valley to make sure the runway was clear of animals. It would give us an hour or so of flight time to get a real good look at where we were and it was a good stall for while they were moving.

The change of plans was very well received and all I could think of now was getting on with the show.

We were going to wait until tomorrow to get an early start, so we headed back to our new digs and spent the rest of the day doing mostly nothing but talking about tomorrow's excitement.

The next morning it was quite a job to keep everyone calm enough to eat. I wouldn't budge without some coffee though and that was final.

Soon enough we were on our way. Things were nearly at a fever pitch by the time the PBY had been hand rolled to the head of the strip and I hadn't even started the engines yet. When I finally fired up the first one most of our people were frightened at first, but they caught on it was part of the show and they actually roared some type of cheer when I started the other one.

The preflight cockpit checks flew by and then I ran the engines up and released the brakes when the time was right. The rollout was a little longer than I'd expected and I guess it was from the grass and semi-soft ground, but I had no trouble getting airborne.

About two thousand feet seemed enough to me and I made a long circle and came back for the touch and go. It went perfectly and when I took a glance at the crowd every one of them was waving fanatically at me. The landing a few minutes later was even more excitement for most of them and they were spellbound when I simply turned around and taxied back to the starting place.

Everyone was happy again when Chris and Mary came and got in for their part. Mary said she'd been patted on the back for encouragement until she thought she might be bruised over it and Chris echoed her comment.

"Wait until we land down there. They all love this and it's making us heroes," I said.

"Maybe. You must make damned sure you don't crash us and give them even more excitement," Chris said.

This takeoff was uneventful too, but once we were in the air and had some altitude we had work to do. I flew us back to the lake first thing and we made sure there were no new arrivals. I hadn't expected any since there'd been no unusual weather events since the last time we were there.

Things seemed just the same as we'd left them so we flew back to our valleys and worked a spiral pattern out from the center with all of us trying to get a look below us and wanting to make sure we remembered what we saw when we were back on the ground.

"Dammit, we should have brought at least one of the digital cameras," Mary said, and it was the first time I'd thought of them since our crash.

Carl had made sure we had the best available before we left and he'd planned on taking thousands of pictures, at least. I could remember being as happy as could be over the cameras since he'd bought one for each of us and I was sure we'd be taking them home after the trip. He'd also loaded up on the memory modules.

"Don't worry, we're barely using any fuel at all and we'll have plenty for another flight later to get a more permanent record of our surroundings.

At the moment I was looking over the reason for our running water. The mountains we were living among weren't extremely high, but they were containing a glacier field, or at least up against one anyway. It was almost certain the water we were getting was being melted out of the glaciers by the tremendous weight of the ice. Sadly our water supply would probably be exhausted within five or six thousand years.

Now, since we had more time and more observers we spotted a large clearing near the rear end of our current home valley. It was easily twice as large as the clearing just outside our front door and it showed us where the animals went when they seemed to be absent in front. It also showed us there were easily twice as many as we'd thought before.

We spotted several places we'd like to investigate later, but nothing that screamed for us to make the effort in a hurry. We were already doing very well where we were and I thought another flight with the cameras and some of the longer lenses Carl had found so necessary would tell us much more about what we might expect to find.

One thing we didn't spot was more people. Strangely it didn't bother me a bit. The lack encouraged me to feel we wouldn't be bothered with un-neighborly neighbors any time soon and we had plenty of people to conduct our business now.

The rest of our friends were into the back valley by now and so I made a trial run down to within ten feet of our new runway. It went even better than I'd thought it would. A small bunch of aurochs had drifted out of the wooded area and they were within a couple of hundred yards of where we'd end up. Buzzing the strip changed their minds and they cleared the area at once.

After I climbed out again we turned and went over the downwind leg again, turned again and lined up for landing. I lowered the gear and we dropped in and I put it on the ground. Rolling out in the moderately high grass seemed exciting, but we didn't find anything nasty. As we came to rest I saw everyone on the ground was running to reach us so I killed the engines quickly to make sure they didn't encounter the spinning death in their excitement.

We were able to exit before they reached us and it was a good thing because it took about half an hour to get them settled down. Of course everyone wanted to help push the plane to the place I'd marked out for it near our cave's entrance.

Chris and Mary culled the volunteers and to keep from disappointing the children she tied a long rope to the nose wheel so they could pull. It was so long they'd probably be hard pressed to keep it from dragging the ground, much less be able to actually help much with the pulling.

It was a wonderful idea though since it kept them busy and also had them far enough in front of me so I could stop easily if one or more fell down in my path. They picked out ten men to do the actual pushing and they stayed out to give directions while I took my seat at the controls again to do the steering.

Fifteen minutes later the plane was in place and tied down to some hastily installed anchor points. Getting the helicopter back here wouldn't be nearly as exciting nor as easy. We had things to do though and people to see and we harnessed some real horsepower and plenty of us headed back to the front.

Reela, Keela, Mary, Chris, Mecha, and I rode so we could have extra mobility as we provided an armed escort. The trip there was uneventful and getting the helo hitched to ten horses wasn't as difficult as you might imagine. Our trip to the back was tricky in spots though and especially getting the damned thing through the last gap. We had it parked by two PM though and it was damned sure time for lunch and a break.

We still had plenty of things to move from the front cave back to these we were using now. Almost everything we'd unloaded from the PBY was still stacked inside the horse cave and there were a lot of furs and food still stored up there too. I decided we'd put it off until tomorrow though. We'd done enough for today.