Chapter 50

I awoke late. It was 7:30 by the clocks and I didn’t hear any noise in the family cave. I got up showered and as I was dressing the rest of my harem was struggling out of bed headed for the showers. I stopped by the office to see if Fred was back yet. “Fred you awake yet?” I got no response, so I went into the kitchen to start coffee. I went out into the main cave and only saw a few people moving around. I thought that this was very strange. Most people got up with the sun; it seemed their bodies were attuned to it or something. I looked out and the sun was just rising. What the hell! ‘George, Caroline, Sybil, Phil? Anyone up there?’ Nothing. I went outside and at least the barrier still worked. I looked around and the sun was very bright. I went into the garage and got my sunglasses and put them on, it was still too bright. Damn what was happening and where were the aliens. I immediately went to see Lamanr. “I am sorry to wake you Lamanr, but do you feel the sky spirits this morning?”

Lamanr looked at me funny then he closed his eyes and concentrated. “Bob, I normally feel something there when I concentrate, not like yesterday morning. I felt a very strong presence then, but I do not feel anything there this morning. Why do you ask, do you think we did something to anger them?”

“No Lamanr, I don’t think that, but I do think that something is happening that has the sky spirits worried and they are trying to tend to this. Come out when you are dressed I want you to see the sun today. It is very bright. You will have to shade your eyes to see.”

I went and got my other pair of sunglasses, both pair had polarized lenses. I took my second pair and turned them 90 degrees to the pair I wore, and they should have cancelled out the majority of light. It did cancel out some of the light, but not like it should. We had a real problem here. Apparently when George sent Brabden into the debris cloud it affected some delicate balance in the cloud, and now we were suffering from those effects. I sure wished Fred was back. Lamanr came out and put his hands up immediately and tried in vain to see. I said, “Here,” and handed him my sunglasses and the second pair and had him turn the second pair a quarter turn. He could see what I saw, a very bright light, but it seemed no closer than it ever had before. It was not larger, just brighter. By staying inside the cave we would be safe, until sunset time. When the sun got low enough we would need to be completely away from the opening.

I awakened all my headmen and their seconds. We had a conference in the main cave. I had told Barb to have everyone stay inside today, until we could figure out what happened. I asked our counsel if anyone had ever experienced anything like this before. Dignar said it was like the short times (Fall & Spring) but he had never seen it this bright before. Valkorla spoke, “Bob, I have been around for many short seasons, but it has never been like this. Also I have been counting and it is too soon for the short seasons. They are still about 30 days away. What are we to do?”

Listen everyone, I have asked Lamanr about the sky spirits, he cannot feel them today, nor can I. Now there is nothing to panic about yet. I think that whatever is happening that the sky spirits are look into it and they will let us know as soon as they can. All we can do is wait. We have plenty of food, and water for all our people. We have been storing food for the long winter and we can last about two or three months with what we have. Now we have to remain calm and we have to keep our people calm too. We need to have a couple people help Bernita with the hides. She has them piled so high that some of them fell on her yesterday. She is unharmed, but I gave her rooms 3, 4 and 5 at the switch symbol on the far end over there.” I pointed to the last row of corridors. “I need someone to get with the women to see how much fruit and vegetables we have left. Joulnar, did you get any of the green sticks that we need to cut up?”

“Yes Bob we gathered a wagon load yesterday. We can start on cutting them up and notching them. I will gather about 20 people to do that once we leave here.”

“Thank you Joulnar. That will help, also I think we need make the braided rawhide and I know Keryon is in charge of that, but have someone check with her to see if she could use some help. We need to treat the next couple days at least as if it was winter and there was 4 feet of snow out there. We also need to get everyone inside their rooms, the practice cave or somewhere out of the light when the sun comes to shinning inside the cave. Our barrier cuts down on some of the light, but not enough. I will see if the sky spirits can help in any way, but we need to do this on our own.

“Wait a minute, men do you think we can fill the truck and wagon with enough of the hut sticks to be able to make a door of hides to close off the cave entrance. I don’t care about the garage, just the main cave entrance. Bernita has enough hides, plus what we remove from the huts from Grojan’s camp to be able to cover the entrance. Let’s do that while the sun is behind us. We will have to work quickly, but I think we have enough manpower to do it. What do you say?”

“Yes Bob, we can do this. Let’s go now,” said Grunto.

“Ok, every man who can, get a very sharp knife or ax or hatchet get them here and we need to go now. We load up in five minutes.”

I ran to the kitchen and grabbed all the sharp knives and brought them out and laid them on the table. I then went into the practice cave and opened every locker not already assigned and removed the bowie knives and brought them out to the table. I then went into the garage and backed out the truck and hooked the wagon up and pretty soon there was a mass exodus from the cave to the meadow. I drove down and immediately sticks were hitting the truck bed and wagon bed. When I was filled, I drove back to the cave and several men unloaded them into the main cave. Bernita and several women were constructing stretching racks and then they could stretch hides from them and overlap them until the opening was closed. I drove back to the meadow and loaded up again. After five trips to the meadow the sun was peaking over the plateau and I had everyone come back to the cave. The women and men doing the unloading had already closed off about a third of the entrance. We unloaded the last load and I drove the truck and wagon back to the garage and came thru into the main cave. All I saw was the old “assholes and elbows” expression. It looked like the insides of an ant hill, people were everywhere, building racks, stretching hides and stacking the hides to make a barrier against the scorching sun. Suddenly I heard a low voice in my head, “Bob, help.”

I immediately went into the office and I asked, “Fred are you back here?”

“Yes Bob, but I am very weak. The sun and my merge has drained much of my energy, but I seem to be better now. Sybil was able to get the ship behind the planet and has programmed the navigation computer to keep the sun directly opposite the ship and was able to merge too. We are very worried about this situation Bob, what can we do?”

“Fred, first you need to get your strength back. Draw power from my solar panels as they will probably be getting too much power and you can keep them from blowing up. Next we need to find out what happened to the debris cloud. Once we know what happened we can see about fixing it. Can you communicate to the ship at all?”

“Not right now Bob, I am still too weak but maybe in a couple hours. I will see about getting power from your power system. Wow Bob you are generating an awful lot of power right now. I will drain off as much as I need, but how about we have a few more of my people come down and drain some more so you don’t overload the system?”

“That is great Fred, please invite as many as needed to drain the excess power from the system. I’ll let you power up and I’ll check on our door to the cave.”

“You are closing the cave with a door? How are you doing that?”

“We went down to the meadow and gutted the huts and used the sticks and excess hides to make a covering for the whole main cave area. We didn’t waste time on closing the garage off. Besides the garage opening is off from the side of the main entrance.”

“That is brilliant Bob; I think it will work very well. I know that when I entered your office that I felt stronger. I feel stronger every minute, especially since I started drawing power from your grid. I will call all Hellslinth down here to recover and recharge, by the way you were right about the emotions. I played them when I merged with Kathy, the auto-doc. It was ten times more intense and we created 7 offspring and they grew almost twice as fast. I have now sent the information I received to the repository, for all to experience.”

“That is fantastic Fred, I am very happy for you. I would like to communicate with George; if possible, I need to know how, what and where he sent Brabden to the cloud. I think that is what started this whole thing, but I don’t have enough information to say for sure.”

“I will try to contact the ship, Bob and we can see about rotating all of our people down here to drain some of this power. I think the rock is shielding me somehow from the radiation outside.”

“I thought as much. I hope the hides will protect my people too. Maybe I should have them move to the back of the main cave. I don’t think tanned hides will stop the radiation. I’ll be right back Fred.”

I ran out to the main cave and they were just finishing up with the last of the hides. “People, please everybody move back into the cave or better yet everybody in to the practice cave. It is further into the hill and we will be safer there. The sun is sending out a very dangerous thing called radiation. You cannot see it, but it is there, it can burn you very badly and it burns from the inside. Anybody who has been exposed to a lot of the direct sun today, please come with me. Everyone else please stay, in here or in your rooms, don’t stay in the main cave any more than you have to. Now who has been directly in the sun a lot today?” A few people raised their hands and I had them follow me to the office.

I typed into the computer the question: ‘Fred can you scan these people to see if they have received too much radiation?’

‘Bob, I can scan them but I’m not sure what to look for.’

‘Fred look for a place that makes you weaker, that would be the radiation, since the radiation makes you weaker.’

‘Yes, I can scan them. Give me a couple minutes.’

‘I can find nothing wrong with them, except Sancret. He had the beginnings of a cancerous tumor growing in his stomach, but it is shrinking and almost gone. I do not understand this, how can this happen?’

‘Can you scan the other people and see if they have any of the radiation inside them?’

‘I think so; I will try from here and see whether I can or not.’

“Ok everybody, you can go back to the practice cave for now, I will let you know what I find out. Oh yes you are alright, the scan came back showing no damage. Thanks everybody, sorry for the scare. But I would rather be wrong than miss someone who was sick.”

After the last left, I closed the door and spoke to Fred, “Well Fred how do my people look is there anyone out there with any radiation?”

“I have not found anyone so far, but I will continue. Bob there were one or two others who had evidence of having a health problem but it is clearing up or almost disappeared completely. I do not understand how this is possible?”

“Well Fred, it looks like the radiation is a good radiation for the people of this planet. Oh yes, will you scan me and see if I have any radiation?”