Chapter 25

The Cactus Flower continued to shadow, sometimes literally, the two men on the ground as they searched for the source of the oil slick. They had walked for about half a mile when the geologist let out a hoot of triumph. He had earned his name of Oil Finder.

They found a fairly large pool of oil lying on the surface and they could see where it was seeping out of the ground. Doug silently pined for a GPS position locater right then, since the pool was hidden from the air by a number of trees; that was why they had not spotted it from the The Cactus Flower when they had flown directly over it a few hours earlier. The question was: how would they find the pool again, once they had left. Unless somebody could come up with an idea real quick, they would just have to find the pool the second time the way they did the first time. Doug mentally kicked himself for not insisting on some decent navigation instruments before they left. He had made the naive assumption that he would recognize landmarks from the air.

Doug wanted to look for more oil and, hopefully, people before they returned home. They collected a five-gallon sample from what Doug named Pool #1, and resumed their flight, looking for other potential easy sources of crude oil. They decided to fly toward the west, since the farther west they found oil, the shorter the distance they would have to transport it.

They had followed the shoreline of the monster lake for about 30 miles, fighting a headwind as they did, when they came in sight of a village. Fortunately, they were up about 500 feet, and nobody from the village happened to be looking up at that time. Doug was not adverse to letting other people know about the flying machine, but he wanted to introduce it after they had a chance to meet him and get used to the idea of new things.

They backed off a couple of miles and landed in a small meadow among some tall trees. Doug and Oil Finder planned to walk to the village while The Cactus Flower stayed hidden. Pilot and the navigator, who did not yet have a name he liked, were to take the balloon high in the air and watch for a message sent by signal mirror. Doug and Oil Finder built a pair of travois and loaded them with the items that they would need for their short trek and the items that they would use to impress anyone they met. They had not had time to examine the terrain carefully before they dropped back out of sight, so they just assumed that they could walk to the village within two days, so they packed six days worth of provisions to give themselves a comfortable safety margin.

They left about noon on the first day and had little trouble getting very close to the village. Both men were in excellent physical condition and the ground offered easy walking conditions, so they were able to move much faster than they had dared hope. They reached the village by mid-afternoon the next day. They signaled their location to The Cactus Flower just before they made contact.

The first man they met was completely nonplussed to meet strangers out here in what amounted to open country. There was the expected communication problem at first, but both sides were able to make themselves understood by struggling with the common trade language. The local accepted their claim that they were traders looking for new customers. He knew he had a winner when he was introduced to the fire starter and the atlatl. He was ecstatic when he finally understood that the foolish traders would swap METAL items for that stupid damned oil that was such a nuisance.

The local led Doug and Oil Finder to the chief and quickly rattled off what these crazy strangers wanted to trade for and what they had to offer. The chief was equally intrigued and invited the strangers to stay the night. They could feast that evening and start negotiations the next day. As a token of good will, Doug gave a fire starter to their guide and to the chief; both were startled by his generosity.

That night, after a couple of drinks of an amazingly good beer, Doug told the chief about their means of travel and offered to have it land at the village the next day. Now, the chief was certain that Doug was a liar, as well as crazy, but he would go along in hopes of getting more fire starters for his people. Doug promised to bring the balloon in to land before the negotiations got started to show his good faith.

They spent the night after the banquet in the chief's hut and were entertained by two unmarried young ladies of the village. Their medical capabilities had increased by leaps and bounds, so Doug thought that they could handle any STDs; therefore, he and Oil Finder graciously accepted the young ladies' kind offer.

In the morning, Doug signaled The Cactus Flower to land at the village, and the rest of the morning was spent in calming down the villagers. The chief was even given a five-minute ride to a height of 100 feet, and his loyal friendship was firmly established by the increased status the ride brought him among his people, though he vowed to himself never to get on that damned contraption again as long as he lived. He hid it well, but he had never been so frightened in his life, not even when the shaman circumcised him at his introduction into manhood on his 12^th birthday.

That afternoon, they came to a satisfactory agreement, and the chief sent out a guide with Doug and Oil Finder to point out the most readily accessible oil pools. They took some jugs along and picked up samples of oil from five more pools. This was more to impress his hosts than for any other reason, since he had no way to tell which, if any, oil would be superior or inferior. By the time they were through visiting the oil pools they could reach that day, Doug had around 35 gallons of crude oil and was ready to return home.

Doug promised the chief that he would return within 12 weeks with the trade items he had promised and concrete plans to establish a permanent trade with the locals—oil for finished goods.

Doug had shown the navigator how to use a vertical stick to find true noon and how to measure the height of the sun at noon, so they could tell their approximate position. The navigator had been working on this for the past two days and figured that he could find the village again without too much trouble.

Doug was afraid that they were running short on time, so they left for home, traveling at their maximum speed and keeping a constant lookout for landmarks they could use to correct their path if they drifted too far north or south. He guessed that they were about 600 miles from home and could make the return trip in two days if they did not have to waste too much time hunting for land marks. If they really ran into trouble, they could find the railroad track and follow that home.

Well, they did get lost a couple of times, but they found the railroad and were only about 50 miles south of home, so they did get home inside the estimated two days. Doug had spent almost all of his time on the return trip planning how to get land vehicles to the oil pools. By the time he landed at home, he had a tentative plan he was ready to present to Charles and his wives for comments and discussion.

They agreed that the plan was workable, so they got busy on it right away. The basic plan was to take as many large jars or tanks as they could with them to the oil source and stock up. When they returned, they would use a simple still to separate the crude oil into stuff that would burn easily in the diesel engines and use the rest as raw material for the chemistry miracle workers. Once the bugs were worked out, they would try refining on the spot and shipping only the stuff they really wanted. This would probably take five years to work out completely, but they needed the fuel component as soon as they could get it.

The only way they could transport the crude oil was overland, air transport was totally impractical. Their technology for hot air balloons just did not have the lifting capacity. Based on Flower of Spring's tests in the laboratory, they needed 10 trailer-loads of crude oil to break even. Life would be a whole lot simpler if the railroad could be run to the oil field, but that just was not possible right now.