Chapter 2

We didn't want to leave the "winged pig" to rot practically on our doorstep, so we decided to butcher it. We needed to know what we could expect from the meat we found in our new world, so this was a good place to start. There were what appeared to be some sort of tree at the edge of the meadow, so I took a saw and an ax from storage and we went to cut 3 logs to make a tripod. The plan was to use the tripod to suspend the winged pig for butchering.

Man, that wood was tough! It took both of us, working all morning, to cut three suitable logs. Eve harnessed Linda, the mare, so that we could use her to drag the logs back to the dead animal. I assembled the tripod and we used Linda to pull it upright. The dead animal was so heavy that we had to use a block and tackle to hoist it into position. Once it was hoisted, I cut it to let it bleed out while we ate lunch.

After lunch, we went back to start the butchering. I was fascinated by the "wings." They turned out to be rigid plates, so I cut them off so that Eve could dissect them while I finished the butchering. When I got through, I was very puzzled. Most of the internal organs were more like what you would find in a fish than in a mammal. For one thing, there were no lungs. I figured that the wings must be modified gills, and the winged pig was evolved from a fish that had survived the comet impact. Eve confirmed my guess about the wings being gills.

Eve grilled a couple of steaks for us, and Lucy and Lilith got some scraps of internal organs for their supper. The meat was nothing to write home about, but it was palatable, so we had found a usable source of meat. The dog and cat were satisfied, so that was another hurdle we had conquered.

We would have the stasis field for food preservation once we were set up, but we did have a lot to do before we got that far. Eve and I discussed the matter and decided to try jerking the meat from the winged pig. She made up some drying racks while I cut strips of meat from the carcass. There was a lot more meat on the animal than we could possibly use, but we jerked as much as we could manage. I was afraid that the dead animal would attract predators, so I used Linda to drag the remainder of the carcass to the edge of the plateau and rolled it over the side of the mountain. I figured on examining it the next morning to see what had visited it during the night.

The tripod had been a pain to construct, so we didn't want to waste that effort. We got some buckets of water and washed it down to remove the blood that had sloshed on it. I used a shovel to remove the bloody dirt which I pitched over the cliff; following that, I poured several buckets of water on the ground in an effort to wash away any residual blood that I had missed. We laid the tripod back on its side and pulled it out of the way until we could find a place to store it safely.

According to my watch, it was nine hours since noon and still broad daylight. That was not unreasonable for Auburn in June, so we still didn't have a measure of the length of the day. I was concerned, though, because I had not seen the moon. The moon was expected to move farther away from the Earth as time passed, but it still should have been visible. As the moon moved away from the Earth, the days would get longer, but we really had no measure of how much change that there would be. We could only wait until tomorrow to get our count of the hours between noon and noon.

It may not be getting dark, but both Eve and I were hungry, so we cooked some more of the winged pig. She had found some of the stored spices to use when cooking the steaks, so we had a better tasting supper than we had expected.

That night, we decided to christen the 0^th century with our first sex since coming out of stasis. We chased the animals out of the tent and had enough room to relax and enjoy it. Eve planned to stay on birth control for the first year or so. That way she could help get a house and whatever else we needed set up before she was tied up with child bearing. She figured that by taking care of herself, she was able to carry 10-12 kids. I wasn't so sure, but I saw no need to argue with her right now.

It was still broad daylight when we went to bed, so we decided to call our wake/sleep cycles one day until we got some better information. In any case, it was dark when we woke up. By dark, I meant that the sun was not yet visible, but the sky was so clear that we could see well enough to start the day. At last, we did see the moon, and it was a good bit smaller than we had expected. The moon was only about half the apparent size it had been when we last saw it before the comet hit, but we did not know the significance of that. It probably was not important to us.

We went through our morning routine of a little gentle loving before we got up. No chance for showers, yet, so we just lived with it. Eve fixed breakfast while I fed the dogs and cats. Lilith did not eat her breakfast, I wondered if she had hunted successfully during the night. Lucy ate everything I gave her. Linda appeared to be happy munching on the local foliage, so she did not need any additional food.

I felt that we needed to explore before we committed to a final location for our "homestead." We could move the stasis chambers if we had to, so that was not a problem. I hoped to find a cave that we could use, since that would provide us with a ready-made house, but it also would go a long way toward helping us survive extremes of heat and cold. Eve agreed to join me in an expedition of exploration after the sun came up.

Finally, the sun came up, but the mountain blocked off the direct rays for a while, so we couldn't tell anything about it until we could see it better. Meanwhile, I checked my stake for telling when noon was upon us, and it looked like it had survived the night without harm, so I was anxious for noon to arrive.

We figured to take a short walk while we were waiting for noon, so we collected our essentials and set out. The horse, the cats, and the puppies were penned up and Lucy joined us for the walk. We decided to follow the trail of that "flying pig" that we had butchered the day before, so we took off across the flat area on the mountain. We got to the other side of the plateau and found ourselves facing a trail running down the mountain to a river, we guessed that it was the one formed by the waterfall. Anyway, we started down the trail and realized that the mountain must be formed largely of limestone. That was encouraging to my idea of finding a cave—at least it was possible.

We got about half way down the mountain and did, indeed, find a small cave opening. It was about a meter and a half high and a meter wide. I looked inside with my flashlight and saw that it was a fairly large cavern, but the floor was not very smooth. Walking on that would be tricky, but I wanted to explore it. Eve was less enthusiastic, but she followed me when I crawled inside; Lucy was more reluctant, but came when I called.

I had some string in my pack, so we used that to mark our trail. It was a large roll, about 200 meters, so we could go that far without fear of getting lost. We went slowly, both because we were unsure of our footing and because we didn't want any unpleasant surprises from cornered animals. There was some sign of animal use of the cave near the entrance, but nothing after the first 10 meters or so. We continued on until we reached the end of the string, and then we turned back. The most attractive thing about this cave was that it was a cave, but it was not the sort of place to encourage housekeeping. We started back toward our base camp when we exited the cave; we had spent more time there than I had expected. Shit, I hoped that we hadn't missed noon.

When we got back to the base camp, I checked the noon finder stake. It looked to be almost noon, so I checked my watch. A few minutes later, it looked like true noon, and my watch said that it had been 29 hours and 43 minutes since the previous noon. Well, 5¾ hours was a significant change in the length of the day, so we were going to have some trouble getting used to it. The moon must have moved farther away than we expected for the day to have gotten that much longer. Oh, well, it was not like we could change things, so we would just learn to live with it. I wondered how our children would feel about it.