Chapter 19

The expedition left, headed east in the general direction of that end of the cliff. Whether or not they would find it was currently open to question. Henry kept the armed car in its lowest gear so that he could keep the speed down to the 5 MPH that the heavy hauler could comfortably make. Once they had gotten beyond the country they knew, the armed car would speed up and scout ahead. Communication would be maintained by use of the FM radios in both tractors.

The first 20 miles were well known territory, so the people relaxed as they traveled that far. Mary called a halt and they ate a meal while they reviewed the "orders for the day." Becky was reminded that they should stay no more than 10 miles away from the heavy hauler, and should double back often, since they were the only real protection the heavy hauler had. Of course, the five people on the heavy hauler had their personal crossbows, but they wanted to be able to depend on the protection of those two machine guns. Becky promised to keep that in mind and not to get carried away with exploration unless given specific permission by Mary. Becky was reminded never to allow her load of fuel and water to fall below 50%, and she should report any problems immediately.

They left at the same time, but Becky had Wilma speed up to 15 MPH and they pulled away from the other crew. They paid attention to their primary objective, which was to look for any sort of problem that the heavy hauler might run into. This was both irregularities with the ground and dangers from any bugs they might find.

Becky had them pull to the right, south, when they reached the 10-mile limit. They slowed down to 10 MPH and traveled south for three miles. They did not see anything special as they went south, but they did not expect to. They turned west with the intention to run about 10 miles before turning north to get close to their previous path from there, they would turn east again and catch up with the other tractor.

The idea was that this would give them a pretty good idea of the territory within that 10-mile by 3-mile box. The tentative plan was to run this kind of route for the entire expedition. It was understood that everybody was going to get very bored with this routine pretty soon, but they would do what they had to do.

The armed car caught up with the heavy hauler. There wasn't much to say since they were keeping in touch over the radio. Of course, the radio operator back at Cavopolis was monitoring the banter so that she could call Jeff in case of trouble; she would keep listening as long as the expedition was within range, which they hoped would be for the duration of the trip. The limitation would be the whip antennas on the mobile rigs, but there was nothing anybody could do about that.

Becky had them speed up and they cut in ahead of the heavy hauler to move out ahead of them near the cliff. They stayed within five miles of Mary's tractor until they reached their previous turnoff point. They stayed at the five mile distance until Mary's tractor reached the turnoff point. Then they sped up to run out the 10 miles to turn south and repeat the previous routine.

Hardly had they turned south when they ran into something interesting. There was a fissure in the ground, there was no other way to describe it. The damned fissure was so deep that, with the current angle of the sun, they could not see the bottom. They stopped, and Becky dropped a rock into the crack to listen for it to hit bottom. It fell for what had to be over 150 feet and she never heard a thud of it hitting the bottom of the fissure. Shit! This was scary!

Becky called on the radio to inform Mary of what they had found, and to tell her that the fissure might well run clear back to the cliff. It was angling southwest, so Mary might run for several more miles before she saw it. Becky proposed to turn around and follow the fissure back as far as it ran. She would report what they found when they found it.

They traveled all the way to the cliff and found the fissure extending into the cliff wall. At this point, they stopped while Becky and Mary discussed the possibilities. The two decided that they needed for Henry, the geologist, to examine what they had found before they went any farther. It was a cinch that they were going to need a bridge to get across the fissure, since it was 10 to 12 feet wide at its narrowest point.

It took about 90 minutes for Mary's tractor to arrive, since it had only been traveling at 5 MPH. Henry shut the tractor down and came over to examine the fissure. He spent several hours looking at various aspects of the fissure and declared that he thought it might be two tectonic plates splitting away from each other. The fact that the fissure extended up through the cliff face and back as far as they could see indicated that they would have to cross the same fissure again if they managed to get to the top of the cliff. Furthermore, it looked like the fissure was around 20 feet wide up there. With all of this in mind, Henry recommended that they follow the fissure south west to see where it led and to forget about crossing it for now.

Mary used the radio to discuss this with Jeff, and they decided to follow Henry's suggestion. By now, it was so late in the day that they decided to camp where they were and start out in the morning. Being stymied so soon after leaving Cavopolis was disappointing, and put a dampener on the usual round of sex that night. Neither Cynthia nor Wilma were all that disappointed, since their turn would come up, again, in a few days.

The next morning, they had their usual breakfast and fixed the two lunches they would eat en route. The armed car stayed closer to the heavy hauler for this phase of the trip, since they were in the rolling plain where tanks might be found.

The fissure turned more directly south and then veered southwest. They had gone about 25 or 30 miles, and it was getting late in the day. They stopped at a grove of trees by a stream where they could restock their fuel and water. The rest of the afternoon was spent in gathering as much fuel as they could carry on the otherwise empty trailer behind the heavy hauler. All of the water barrels were also filled, both those used for potable water and those used in the steam engine.

Cynthia and Audry had been lucky with a short hunting trip and brought in a scorpion. This suggested that they were getting close to a large body of water, possibly that lake they knew was somewhere to their south and east.

They resumed their trip and, 11 miles later, came to a place where there was a natural bridge across the fissure. Dirt and rocks had fallen into the fissure from a rather tall hill that was sort of split by the fissure. Unfortunately, they could not use the bridge because the remainder of the hill was blocking the way. The only way to use the bridge would have been to spend a lot of time with pick and shovel clearing a path to make it wide enough for the vehicles. This was just plain impractical, so that idea was given up without much argument.

This plug of dirt and rocks was acting as a dam. The fissure on the south side of the dam was filled with water, indicating that the fissure ran into the lake. They decided, after a lot of discussion over the radio, that the expedition should return to Cavopolis and try the western route. The people of the expedition were very disappointed that their trip was being cut so short, but they had to agree with the logic of the choice.

They did decide to travel straight to Cavopolis, rather than try to retrace their old route. As expected, they encountered a family group of tanks. Only one of these was aggressive, probably a young male. Young or old, he was large enough to do some serious damage, so they were forced to kill it, since the heavy loader was not fast enough to run away.

The tank did charge at the heavy loader and they tried to run away, but Becky had the armed car cut between the two and distract the tank, which started chasing the smaller vehicle. The armed car was somewhat faster than the tank at its maximum speed, but they slowed down to match the speed of the tank. Becky had the machine gunners fire bursts at the eyes of the pursuing tank. The third burst sent a bolt plowing into the left eye of the beast and it tumbled tail over teakettle. By this time, they were well away from the rest of the tanks, so they did not react to the death of the young tank.