Chapter 16

The rest of the stuff on the trailers was unloaded as quickly as possible and moved into that first chamber. Once the unloading was complete, preparations were made for the return trip. Everybody spent one last night together, then the tractors and trailers left to make the next pickup.

As soon as those people had left, the remaining people began organizing to shift furniture into available chambers. At the moment, there were enough chambers available leading from the main chamber to house the four families easily. Actually, they could readily handle three more families as soon as they were there.

Currently, there were only enough males for five families, and Adam would have to age a bit more before he could start his own family. For some strange reason, girls seemed to come in spurts, then boys, and back to girls. Coupled with that, there was the approximate ratio of four girls to each boy. Were they fated to remain that way? There was no way to tell and no way to change it, so they would just have to learn to live with that ratio.

The current residents of the cave set out to make a home there and to prepare for the arrival of the next group. The two things they needed to do were to arrange the water supply and to provide a chamber for processing the human shit. Jeff had realized that they would need blasting powder for the mining operations, so they had to save their shit to extract the potassium nitrate (saltpeter) for gunpowder. Now that they had discovered a sulfur deposit, it was going to be possible to make gunpowder, and Jeff was not in the mood to waste time getting started.

The return trip turned out to be anything but routine. There were no problems until they got to the plain where the "tanks" were living. The first day, they saw some family groups in the distance, but none up close. The morning of the second day was a different story.

They had broken camp and were moving across the plain at a sedate pace when they spied a huge tank keeping a close eye on their progress. At first, the tank was just walking toward them from well off to their right. However, as it got closer, the tank sped up, until it finally appeared to be running at full speed straight at them.

Alarmed, Alice ordered the convoy to speed up. Henry and Kitty were the two drivers. They increased their speed until the tank was quite close, but their maximum speed was about equal to that of the tank, since it never got any closer. The firemen had to swap off fairly often, as they were getting pretty tired from throwing wood into the firebox.

Alice was busy planning a defense for the time when the tank finally caught up to them or they got to the one-lane bridge across the stream. If the tank caught up to them, she planned to have the two tractors run parallel, but separate courses so that one machine gun or the other would have a shot at its side. She hoped they would have the same luck they had in their last battle when the tank finally died after enough bolts were pumped into its side.

On the other hand, if they reached the bridge, she was going to send the other tractor across the bridge, and, once it was safely across, they would cross, themselves. The bridge did not seem strong enough to Alice to support the weight of the tank, so she felt secure once they were across. The biggest danger came from the fact that they would have to slow down to get over the bridge safely.

She waved the other vehicle up close to their side and shouted out the plan to the people on the other tractor-trailer. Once she was sure that they understood the plan, she sent them a little bit away to increase the gap between the two vehicles, but still keep them at her side, just safely separated a little bit more.

Dammit, didn't that tank ever get tired? It had been running for quite a while, and its insides should be heating up pretty hot. Surely, it would have to stop soon, or cook itself from its own internal heat. Hardly had she thought this than they started to pull away from the beast. They needed to slow down, too. They were running low on fuel and water, both of which they could conserve if they could slow down a little bit. She thought that they had enough fuel and water to make it to the bridge, but it was going to be close if they had to hold to maximum speed.

They desperately needed a more powerful weapon than the current machine gun. They also needed a more powerful poison if they got chased by many tanks. Alice idly wondered at the relative potency of spider poison. She remembered reading or hearing that Daddy Long Legs poison was very strong, relative to the poison used by other creatures. Maybe they needed to use spider poison to fight the tanks. She would have to ask Jeff about her memory, since this kind of inherited memory was not as strong as memory from personal learning. If it was useful, they would not have much trouble collecting Daddy Long Legs poison.

The tank had pretty thoroughly pooped by the time they reached the bridge; it didn't even chase them that last mile. They crossed the bridge at a sedate pace and stopped long enough to top off their water and fuel. They were close to home by the time it started getting dark, and there was a lot of moonlight scheduled for that night, so they decided to keep going. It was past supper time by the time they got home, but they were able to sleep in their old beds this night, and that was worth a lot. They were pretty pooped, so they just ate a snack and fell into bed. They were virtually asleep by the time they got their few clothes off.

The next morning, the travelers ate a monstrous breakfast to make up for the food they had missed the day before, and Alice took the opportunity to talk to Jeff about her idea of using spider poison. Jeff agreed that it would be worth a try, so an expedition was sent out the next morning with the specific idea of collecting spider poison. The hunters found three spiders and had no trouble killing them, so they were able to collect the desired poison.

Sarah had heard the discussion about the poison, so she asked if a more concentrated poison might work even better. She had been able to make a vacuum pump from parts salvaged from the car engine, so she suggested that she try to concentrate the poison by evaporating some of the water under vacuum. Jeff agreed that it was worth a try, so she set up the equipment and started to work on some old scorpion poison that they had in storage. Her idea was to experiment with this poison while she was waiting for the spider poison.

The procedure was a little tricky with her primitive equipment, but she was able to cut the volume of the scorpion venom in half without obviously causing any harmful effects, so she was ready to try with the spider venom by the time the hunters returned.

Meanwhile, Jeff had talked to Jeff, Jr. on the FM radio about routine matters. Then he brought up the tests on the poison and said that the second trip might be delayed for a few days while they worked on the poison business. Jeff, Jr. had no problem with that, so they had time to work out what to do with the spider venom.

While they were working on the venom concentration question, Jeff again looked into the question of bronze points for the bolts. Connie, the mechanical engineering expert had worked with him on a point design which would provide maximum penetrating force. They had even worked up a mold for a prototype. This would be useful to produce the few bronze points they would need to work out the bugs and prove the concept. Jeff made up 20 of the points for each of the machine guns and mounted them on new bolts. Now there was nothing for him to do but wait for the concentrated venom to be ready.

Two days passed before they were ready for the next run to the caves. The trailers were loaded, and everybody piled on. Each machine gun had 20 of the special bolts, but everybody hoped that they would never need to use them. The run to the little bridge was a easy as it had been on previous trips, except that they did have a battle in the swamp. The lead tractor was attacked by two large lizard-type animals, nobody knew what they were, but they were determined to bite off the front wheels of the tractor.