Chapter 20

Two days were spent in trying to recover the machine gun ammunition, but they had only been able to find about half of it. Of the ammunition fired by the machine guns, 45% had missed becoming buried in an ant, thus, it was lost for all practical purposes. They were able to recover most of the crossbow bolts, but some of them had been broken when the ants went into convulsions from the scorpion venom. Clearly, something needed to be done to provide more effective protection for the expedition!

A long conference via radio convinced everybody that they needed to return to Cavopolis and to rethink how to arm the expedition. The expedition needed two days of uninterrupted daylight travel to get home, and the heavy hauler needed an overhaul after that much strain had been put on it.

The question of more protection for the expedition was answered by the sledge hammer method. A machine gun was installed on the trailer immediately behind the heavy hauler and Cynthia was trained as the gunner, with Audry as the loader.

Connie worked with Jeff on a way to increase the rate of fire of the machine gun and got it up to 14 shots per minute. Anything faster than that put too much strain on the machine gun's mechanism, so they had to be satisfied with that. That was nearly a shot every four and a quarter seconds, so it wasn't too bad.

The final change was to raise the ammunition level to 2,000 bolts per machine gun and 150 bolts per personal crossbow. This did cut down some on the free space on the trailers, but that they could put up with.

Sarah had finally collected enough saltpeter from the family's shit to be able to make a little extra gunpowder. She was able to supply them with 10 hand grenades. She reminded them that they had to light the fuse before they threw the grenade. The fuse was not completely reliable, so she could not promise anything beyond a nominal 10 seconds burn time. Therefore, they had to get rid of that damned grenade as soon as the fuse was lit—no trying to time the burn rate for a more useful explosion. It was a case of "just light the fuse and throw the grenade, preferably, as far as you can."

They loaded up and set out on another try to travel west. The first two days were easy, just a repeat of the previous trip. They camped in that same cave they had used in the fight with the red ants. This time, there was no sign of the ants. The bodies of the dead ants had even been removed, eaten, probably. The next morning, they returned to the routine they had started out with.

The cliff was still mostly limestone, so Henry didn't have much to do besides drive. As far as the cliff was concerned, they didn't see much of interest except that the number of caves increased until they were seeing a new cave on the average of every quarter mile. This was unusual from the standpoint of 21^st Century geology, so Henry was at a loss to explain it. It was interesting that almost every cave had a small stream of water issuing from its mouth, so they were crossing a lot of small streams as they traveled. Henry wondered where all of that water was coming from.

There were plenty of dragon flies around, and they seemed to be coming from the top of the cliff. With all of the water they observed and all of the dragon flies they had to contend with, they had to assume that there was a large body of water at the top of the cliff, but they did not know if it was a lake or a massive swamp. The only way to know was to go up there and see.

Their second week on the trip was marked by another battle with red ants. This time they were sort of ambushed, though it could not have been planned, since ants are not that smart. They had just come into sight of one of those caves when they were attacked by a swarm of ants that charged at them from the other side of a fairly tall hill.

Mary ordered, "MAKE FOR THE CAVE!" Fortunately, both tractors were almost side-by-side when this happened, so they were able to stay together and support each other by shooting at the charging ants as they ran for the cave. Three machine guns were mowing down the charging ants, but they were going through bolts pretty damned fast.

Mary decided on a desperate measure. She lit a fuse on one of the hand grenades and dropped it on the ground beside the heavy hauler. The heavy hauler was going flat out at 7 MPH so they had traveled a safe distance in 10 seconds. The grenade actually exploded after 11 seconds, but that was quibbling. The first of a mass of ants had reached the grenade as it went off, and over 10 ants were killed or badly injured.

It was nice to cut the number of the ants by that number, but the explosion had no other affect on the ants. They completely ignored the dead ants and the hole in the ground. Mary resolved not to waste any more hand grenades on the ants if that was all that was going to happen. She didn't have the hand grenades to spare. On a cost per dead ant basis, the machine gun was by far the more effective weapon.

The ants must have been getting tired, because the humans were gradually pulling away from their pursuers. At the time of the hand grenade explosion, those ants had been only about 100 feet behind the humans, but there was a 200-foot gap by the time they reached the cave.

The ants never got any closer than that during the fight which lasted until it was almost dark. For an unknown reason, the ants broke off their attack when the sun went down, but the humans would be eternally grateful, no matter what the reason.

The humans were pretty tired after this running battle, but they still had the strength and energy to explore a little bit of the cave. One of the new items they had with them were portable lights. They were pretty anemic compared to what was available in the 21^st Century, but they did provide enough light for cave exploration, provided the humans did not push their luck.

Cynthia and Henry took Audry along as a gofer while they explored some of the cave they were in. They had gone back into the cave about 125 yards when they came to a strange mineral deposit making up most of one wall. Henry said, "There is the strangest mineral vein I ever heard of. I have no idea what it is. Cynthia, can you identify it?"

Cynthia examined it as best she could and was at as much of a loss as was Henry. Cynthia did have some test solutions along with her, so she tried them out and drew a complete blank. Neither one of the two experts could come up with an identification, and they were getting totally frustrated. There was a lot of discussion between the two experts, but they could reach no conclusion. Audry was a little bit amused at the antics of the other two, so she facetiously suggested, "Why don't you try burning a little piece?"

The two experts looked at each other for a minute or so, and then they both started laughing. Henry said, "Why not, we've tried everything else we can think of?" He used his hammer to break off a little piece and put it into his compression-ignition fire starter along with a little bit of tinder. He compressed the air inside the chamber and had a small explosion take place, strong enough to blow the device right out of his hand!

"GOD DAMN! What was that?" Henry asked in a stunned voice as he examined his hand for serious injury, it certainly hurt enough. They looked around and found his demolished fire starter. Inside was a small bit of ash and nothing else.

Not long after the explosion, Esther came running up to them. "Mary wants to know what caused that explosion and was anybody hurt?"

Henry replied, "I had a small accident with that strange mineral. I need to work on it some more. Tell Mary that there may be more minor explosions, but we'll be careful. We should have something to report within the hour."

Ester left with the message, and Henry and Cynthia dropped into a deep technical discussion that Audry couldn't follow, so she just leaned against the wall and kept an eye out for trouble. After about 15 minutes of discussion, the two scientists decided on another experiment.

Henry broke a small chunk of mineral off the wall and held it near where Cynthia was lighting a small piece of tinder. Once the tinder was burning, Henry dropped the mineral chunk onto the burning tinder and jumped back. It was a good thing that he did, because there was a flare of flame that shot up about 10 inches and consumed the tinder in a few moments, much less than a second.