Chapter 13

David walked and jogged for another four days, feeding himself by using the replicator. He estimated that he had managed as many as fifteen miles each day and was beginning to think that he was far enough away from the twins to consider looking for a place to set up a permanent camp.

His journey had taken him through the mountains and almost out the other side. He hadn't missed the fact that there was snow on the mountaintops and he had been thinking about what he needed to survive when the temperatures fell.

David still liked the idea of finding himself a cave to set up in and he was now paying more attention to the terrain he was walking through, looking for something suitable.

On the afternoon of the sixth day after taking the replicator, he stumbled across a setting that looked ideal. He emerged from a pass and looked down at yet another glen. This one more heavily wooded than others he had journeyed through, but there was still with some grassland on one side of the river that ran along one side of the floor.

Just above the treeline, he could see a black spot that was possibly a cave. To the left of the black spot he could see a cascade of water tumbling down the mountainside - so if it was a cave, there was water close by too.

It took several hours to descend to the floor of the glen and then to climb up again through the trees to investigate. There was indeed a cave and David took some time to build a fire so he would be able to explore it fully.

With a burning brand in one hand, he took his time searching the cave and was surprised at just how far back it went. After twenty yards there was a dogleg in the rock but then the cave seemed to go on for hundreds of yards. David persevered, anxious to make sure that there were no dangerous animals hidden away. He had to return to the fire twice to gather a fresh burning branch, but his persistence paid off when something in the wall of the cave sparkled at him.

Taking a closer look and comparing what he was seeing to his memories, David was pretty sure the rock was actually Hematite - a rock rich in iron.

He had already pretty much decided to set up in the cave. He also realised that the replicator might have a finite supply of raw material and he was already thinking about how he could supplement what it could provide him with. The valley looked as if it would have plenty of game, as well as a good supply of wood. The cave seemed dry and safe and the possibility of getting some iron ore for the replicator was the final selling point for the location.

"Home sweet home!" he thought to himself.

The second day of hunting with the sleeping tablets wasn't as successful and the boys only managed to collect some unsuspecting birds that had eaten some of the drugged berries.

"What we need to do is set-up a line of bowls at different sites and check on them regularly," suggested Adam, who was showing he had a definite flare for hunting.

Ben agreed it was a good idea and on the third day they managed to kill another two deer, a pig and a mountain lion.

Success brought its own problem though and it was clear that they wouldn't be able to store all of the meat without it rotting. The girls had set themselves up in one of the extra caves and were curing the meat as fast as they could. Ben had another idea he thought could possibly make things much easier.

"Why don't I take some trips up into the mountains with the pod and fill it full of snow and ice? If we can get enough of it, we might be able to make one of the caves into a cold-store," he suggested.

The others thought this was a great suggestion and they immediately decided to survey all of the nearby caves to find if any of them would be more suitable than the others. It turned out that one cave actually shelved dramatically downwards and it was already noticeably colder than the others were. There was unanimous agreement that this was the cave to turn into their 'fridge'.

Ben had an ulterior motive for his suggestion to gather snow and ice. He hoped to use the opportunity of going into the mountains to check out whether his dream had been accurate. If he could get his hands on some iron ore, that would be really helpful. His first trip had already been decided in his head - he would be heading northwest, hoping to find the iron bearing rock.

The group was gathered round the fire discussing their plans for the coming day. Ben was already determined to make his first trip for snow, but he had another suggestion to make too.

"Someone should make the journey back to where we found the coal too. We'll need a supply of carbon for our replicator and the coal would be ideal."

"You know, there's something about that coal that's been bothering me. According to my memories, coal is mainly carbon as you say, Ben, but it's formed over thousands of years from organic matter. If I'm right about the seeding, how is it possible that coal has formed in only twelve years?"

"I've no idea, all I'm worried about is that it's there and we need some carbon," Ben replied.

"It's weird though. I wish I could come up with an answer," said Sarah.

"Maybe there was another seeding a long time ago. Maybe something happened to the planet? Maybe the coal was actually part of the seeding - you know, to give us something to work with?" suggested Ben.

"But that would mean that we were deliberately part of the seeding! Surely Woden wouldn't do that?" exclaimed Hannah.

"I don't know, but what I do know is that we need some coal. Who's going to go?"

"Hannah and I can do it. There's no need for me to be hunting today anyway, we've already got far too much meat," said Adam.

That was agreed and some of the rawhide from the last few day's kills was pressed into service for carrying coal back from the cliffs.

Sarah had already decided she was going to accompany Ben and that left Thomas and Elizabeth to gather more wood and maybe work on the hemp.

Once they were out of the cave, Ben checked the compass and selected a landmark that was directly northwest. He led the way, pulling the pod behind him and carrying his metal tipped spear in the other hand. Sarah had sewn him another pouch, this one to hold the compass and she had rigged a sling for the telescope.

"What do we do if our bearing leads right up to the top of a mountain?" Sarah asked as they walked.

"We climb up - one of our jobs is to get snow and ice after all. I don't want to risk losing our bearing so we should try to stick to it as much as possible."

The twins had packed some food to eat on their journey and had estimated the trip would take a full two days. By the afternoon of the first day they had found what Ben was desperate to find. His first clue that they were close was when the pointer on the compass started jerking around erratically.

"Something's affecting the compass - I hope it's what I think it is," he said, his voice betraying his excitement.

He recognised the mountainside from his dream while they were still over a mile away and Sarah jumped when he shouted.

"YES! That's it, that's the mountain I saw in my dream! Yes!"

After that it was relatively easy to find the exact spot he was looking for and at last they were both standing before a slab of stone that glinted in the sunlight. Unlike in his dream, Ben could see patches of red staining the rock and he guessed this was where some of the iron had oxidised.

"It's really quite beautiful the way it glints in the sun, but it just looks like rock to me. Are you sure this is what you need?" asked Sarah

"I'm positive. Look, there's plenty of loose stuff lying around here. I'm not sure how much we'll need for the replicator - there's some weird science at work with that thing, but we can leave some room in the pod when we fill up with snow."

The climb up the mountainside to the snowline wasn't as bad as Ben had been expecting. They found a steep but fairly easy path upwards and the biggest danger was having their feet uncovered. It got so bad that eventually they decided to take off their kilts and use them to wrap up their feet.

Sarah had carried the shovel and when they reached a likely spot, Ben took it from her and began to fill the pod. He compacted the snow as much as he could to get the maximum in, but left enough space for some of the iron ore they would pick up on the way back.

The trip was relatively uneventful - apart from Ben's excitement at finding the iron - and they had only spent half an hour actually on the snow. Even that short space of time however, had brought it home how cold it was going to be once the winter hit them.

"If we can get the replicator to work, the first thing we need to manufacture is a bigger storage hopper to hook it up to. I'm not sure I understand how that works, but Thomas seems to have a feel for it."

"He said something about it being vacuum sealed," said Sarah, "I've no idea how we're going to get round that."

"Thomas seems to think that it will be fairly easy."

Their return to the cave was only slightly later than that of Adam and Hannah and a small pile of coal had now joined the growing stack of wood at the rear of the 'sleeping cave'.

Ben stacked his iron ore beside the coal and then tugged the pod down to the 'fridge cave' where he emptied the snow and ice onto the floor at the deepest point he could reach. It was a start, but much more would be required.

The two sets of twins made three more journeys each over the few weeks and by then the fridge cave had a serious stock of snow and ice and the coal and iron ore had increased handsomely too. Despite his tendency to lie about, Elizabeth had also nagged Thomas into adding significantly to their woodpile.

The youngsters' super intelligence helped them come up with ideas for how they could gather other elements and compounds for their replicator. They had already been creating lye for their soap production and that gave them a source of sodium hydroxide.

Sarah and Ben of course suggested sand and seawater as a source of silicon, sodium and chlorine and by doing so unwittingly added eighty-two other elements that were present in the water to varying degrees. The seawater had leeched all kinds of elements - some only traces - from the rock of the seabed.

Animal waste was a source of nitrogen and ammonia and bones provided calcium (and also phosphorous, but they were unaware of that, neither did they know it but the iron bearing rock that Ben had secured was also a rich source of sulphur). Finally they had an increasing supply of blood and fat - both of which were good ingredients for what they intended.

All that remained was to find a way to hook the raw materials up to the replicator. Thomas proved himself highly valuable at this point.

The second replicator had the vacuum store that the original had come with, but this one was completely empty. Thomas gambled on the replicator working even without a vacuum seal - guessing that the vacuum was more about compressing the contents as much as possible and also keeping out bacteria present in the air.

He simply used their hunting knife to break the seal and then put some of all of their materials inside the store - with coal and iron ore making up the bulk of it.

"Okay, who wants to try it?" he asked.

"Is that it? We don't have to do anything else? I thought you said something about a vacuum or something?" asked Sarah.

"I think that's only something that cuts down on the amount of space the raw material needs and maybe stops it from degrading. Give it a try someone!"

As with most of their big decisions, all eyes turned to Ben. He sat down in front of the unit and placed an order.

"One replicator please."

His order surprised them all, but when another replicator appeared the group was back to cheering and dancing a jig. They were back in business - even better than that - they were back in business with a huge store of iron ore, carbon and other elements to work with.

David also took what he knew was a huge gamble by breaking the vacuum seal on the raw material store on his replicator. Once he had the box open, he added some of the iron ore he had found in the cave and kept his fingers crossed as he prepared to make his next request. He had thought about this quite a bit and dredged his memories to come up with something that would help him hunt successfully.

He knew there was some kind of size limit on what the replicator could produce, so he'd had to scale back his thinking. Weapons were not common on Woden, as there was no such thing as warfare anymore in their society. For that reason, David had settled on something that went back quite a bit in Woden's history and now he was extremely nervous - what would he do if the replicator didn't work? What if his gamble didn't pay off? There was only one way to find out.

"Replicator, one P14."

The handgun appeared and David let out his breath. He was almost too scared to pick the gun up and sat for several long minutes just staring at it. The handgrip was made from wood - it looked like walnut to David - and it had some fine detail carved into it. The barrel, slide and trigger guard were all matt black metal but the barrel bore the code 'P14' in gold (the handgun was almost identical to a SIG SAUER P226 on earth).

At last he reached out tentatively to pick the gun up and was surprised at just how heavy it was. A glance at the left-hand side told him that what he thought was the safety was on and that gave him some comfort. He could see that there was a clip already in the gun and it took him a few minutes to figure out how to eject it. The clip had a thin base and the main body was slightly angled. David's memories told him that it held 15 9mm rounds and his first test was to see whether he could load the clip effectively.

He had chosen this particular gun because his memories told him it was favoured amongst people who shot in competitions. That suggested it would be accurate and accuracy was something he really needed.

The spring on the clip was more powerful than he expected, but he managed to empty it and then reload without too much difficulty. He looked at one of the rounds more closely. It was perhaps 3cm in length all in, two thirds of which was taken up by the brass shell casing. Holding it was enough to make his hands shake and he knew he would need to do better than this if he was ever going to manage to actually shoot something.

"Replicator, two boxes of 9mm ammunition for the P14," he ordered next.

The ammo appeared and he picked up one of the boxes. To his surprise the box was only one third full and his quick brain guessed at the cause. To test out his theory, David immediately placed another request.

"Replicator, one box of 9mm ammunition for the P14."