Chapter 10

On the wrong side of the river on an unknown planet.

It was dawn outside of the grotto when the boy woke up curled on his side, feeling refreshed and needing to pee. As he turned and looked out over grassy lawn, he could hear the annoyingly loud song of several sun-beckon birds beginning to start up. Their loud, noisy char-char-char-reet! calls began somewhere in the treetops above the steep forested slope behind his small sleeping cave.

The clan storytellers claimed it was the duty of each of the blue-gray birds with the reddish-orange head crest and yellow beak to call for Father Sun to rise up every morning so he did not oversleep. The boy was glad he'd just awoke before the obnoxious birds had started their raucous noise. He hated to sleep anywhere near where the birds nested, because that meant a person would be called out of his second life of dreams by those birds just before Father Sun came up. Ureeblay found that to be very disconcerting. Thank the spirits the sun-beckon birds found better things to do shortly after the first light of sunrise bathed the tree tops, the boy told himself.

Somehow, those birds also seemed to know the weather. The birds never called for the sun while it rained or if it were going to rain during the morning. And the big birds always flew off to the Warm in the fall of the year along with the rest of the migratory birds, taking the heat of Father Sun, but not his light, with them.

The boy noticed almost all of his fire had burned down to ash-covered coals. The two big limbs he had set over the fire ring burned completely through during the night. Now the charred ends of both had a few tendrils of thin bluish-white smoke curling up from the whitish-gray ash cover. Ureeblay knew there were burning hot coals hiding under the soft-looking layer on the ends of the fire-eaten limbs.

The boy was very glad to be able to smell wood smoke in the dawn air again.

As he got up, it seemed there were small depressions in the sandy soil around where the boy had made his sleep wallow. Part of him recognized the small indistinct tracks could have been made by a small wolf. He was shocked, as the wisp of a vision from his second life came back to him, of warm fur against his back. The little wolf had slept against him?

Amazing, the boy thought; this was a tale even he wouldn't believe.

Shaking his head, Ureeblay quickly picked up his spear-caster and second best spear from behind him and then looked about as best he could from the mouth of the grotto for any signs of danger. Seeing none, he moved beside the fire pit and pushed the smoking ends of the limbs into the center of the remaining hot ash-covered coals. He place twigs and small sticks from his small woodpile down against the smoking logs. Holding his long hair back with his left hand, he knelt close and blew on the coals under this new, if thick, tinder.

The twigs smoked. He took deep lungs full of smoke-tinged air and blew controlled and long a second time. The twigs ignited, the lower fire-sculpted ends of the logs began to burn again, and Ureeblay felt the pleasure and confidence of mastering sacred fire on his own.

With his fire burning again the boy hurried off the elevated shelf, jogged past the pool, up the bank, and through the sandy soil and bushes. He stopped, and getting out his young man part, he peed against the trunk of a tree. Then he made his way to the pool and knelt beside it. After washing his hands, he drank a double handful of cold, refreshing water.

He felt he was being watched again. Looking up from his drink, on the other side of the pool just above the bank down to the water, the boy saw the honey-colored juvenile wolf, sitting on her back haunches looking at him with her head tilted to her left. The sun-beckon birds were still loud up the hillside, and the small wolf didn't seem to be bothered by their racket.

The only good thing Ureeblay could think about the birds was if they suddenly went quiet, he would know there was danger about in the forest. Well, something the birds considered much more dangerous than they seemed to feel this spirit wolf was. He wondered why the presence of the wolf, or even himself and the smoke from his fire hadn't bothered the birds.

With a little embarrassing shock, the boy realized he'd left his weapon back beside his fire pit. If she had been a real wolf, he would now be in mortal danger, he chastised himself. He took the time to examine her as best he could from across the nice sized pool. He noticed she seemed skinny as animals went, but not sickly. Her bright blue eyes looking almost, the boy chuckled, as if she was giving him the same close evaluation. He noticed how both of her ears seemed to move a bit, almost as if the wolf were maintaining her vigilance, listening for any approaching danger in the area while she keenly watched him kneel by the pool.

The boy slowly got up and notice small paw prints in the sand near him. The wolf seemed to have explored all around this side of the pool not long ago. And he could see where she must have gotten a drink.

This wolf was acting like no other real animal he'd ever heard about. Ureeblay wondered how long she had been out on her own, away from her mother and the other members of her pack? What had happened to cause that separation? He had heard that sometimes a male or female wolf might be shunned or even driven out by other wolves. And if this little wolf had gotten her unique coloring from her mother, might that coloring have been enough to cause the mother to be cast out to live as a lone wolf?

The wolf looked from the boy, over toward the elevated lawn behind him and then back at the boy. She must be hungry again, he decided. He knew he certainly wanted food to break his night's fast. So Ureeblay stood up, walked over and climbed up the rocks to the lawn. The boy went over to the grotto to bring out his things so he could be on his way after he ate and fed the wolf. Feed a wolf! The boy laughed to himself. The only time a member of his clan had ever fed a wolf before was when parts of that unfortunate person ended up in a wolf's stomach!

Feed a wolf indeed. The members of his clan would be dumbfounded when he told this part of his long travel story.

As he found the skewering sticks he had used the night before in his small woodpile, he questioned what she had been eating before the spirits had guided them to cross paths. He decided not to use any of the smoking skewers he'd brought with him and cooked his evening meal. If he tossed the meat to the wolf still on the stick, he would lose the skewer. She seemed to be skinny, he told himself, because whatever she had been eating, it had barely been enough.

The boy knew that wolves were an animal that suckled their young until they were weaned, just like babies of the clan. But also like babies of his clan, did the older wolves bring food to the youngsters until they were capable of taking care of themselves and finding and catching their own food?

He realized that before he'd accidentally floated down the Toolie, every adult in his clan, which could be considered his pack he guessed, hadn't really seemed to think he had been capable of taking care of himself either. His test of manhood was supposed to take place at this coming summer's congregation. Compared to this misadventure, Ureeblay told himself, that test would just be another day.

That was why he and his two friends had gone out with the big game hunters, to get some more practical experience at hunting large game. He hadn't had anyone to take him hunting since his sire had died, other than accompanying friends about his own age. And then they only hunted babbits and other such small game, or went fishing. So Ureeblay knew hunting babbits and the like wasn't the same as hunting bison, or deer, or something big like that.

But now he told himself with a smile, look at this fine smoked pork he'd taken by himself and was now putting over his own fire! With good food and his fine fire, he would even put up with the sun-beckon birds. And, he admitted, there was nothing he could do about their calls anyway.

It was true that he and his two friends had been fishing when his adventure began. Even though fishing was something that women and children could do, along with all of the men, the boy knew when winter came and ice covered the water, a man must know how to hunt for large food animals for himself and his family. Any extra food beyond a person or family's weekly needs, of course, would be shared with those in need.

It was the responsibility of the camp to assure the old with no one to lookout for them, widows and their young children, and such as those had food to eat through the winter. Maybe not all that they would hope to eat, but his camp did not let any of its members go hungry, much less starve.

Suddenly it hit him, his mother was a widow now. She could trade for food using the fruits of her many talents. But without his sire to bring home the abundant game he'd been able to kill and their skins, his mother would soon run out of pelts, leather, and furs to trade for her needs, and his sister's. She might find someone who would provide her with the materials she would need to prepare what they desired, but the return for her labors in that type of trade would be meager.

His sire's death had been very hard on Ureeblay, he'd had an especially close relationship with that knowledgeable, skilled, wonderful, fun-loving man. But now he was realizing how much more hardship he'd heaped on his mother's shoulders with his stunt on the Toolie. He had to find a way across the river and return to her and his sister with as many of the fruits of his good fortune as possible, he told himself.

If he could return from this adventure with the hide of a large food animal, some of the meat he had now in plenty, along with the bog apples, his test of manhood would surely be fulfilled if the rest of the hunters voted in his favor. If, after hearing his adventures they were still unwilling, the frozen lightning should guarantee a favorable vote, Ureeblay felt certain.

From the lawn near the climbing stones the small wolf softly yipped, almost as if it wanted to show good manners while breaking into Ureeblay's musings. The boy retrieved a good slice of meat from inside his woven grass carrier, and using his belt knife, cut a good-sized hunk for the little female and tossed it half way between her and the fire pit.

The wolf bobbed her head twice and looked at him, almost as if she were inviting him to toss a second piece of meat to entice her into approaching him while he was awake.

"So," the boy said, "be that way, young lady."

And he cut off a smaller bit of meat and tossed it over the wolf's head and off the raised lawn a good ways and into the bushes by a huge tree trunk. In a flash the honey-colored animal jumped off the lawn and landed in the sand and ran toward the tree, her nose near the ground. Her sense of smell must be incredible, the boy told himself with admiration, because she went right to the meat. She looked back at the boy, picked it up off the ground, and trotted across to the stones and up onto the lawn.

She went down on her stomach with her front paws out and her rear haunches and feet underneath her and she slowly ate the meat as she eyed the food in the grass closer to the fire pit.

The boy cut another small piece and tossed it out off the lawn in a slightly different direction, the morsel landing on a large mossy boulder. The wolf followed the flight of the food with her head, and looked back at the boy once the meat slipped off the moss and into the grass by the pinkish granite stone. The boy made a gesture with his right hand holding his flint knife and the wolf bounded off the lawn after meat.

The boy was amazed. Ureeblay cut another piece of meat while the skinny wolf trotted back up onto the lawn with the last piece of smoked pork in her mouth. He waited until she'd eaten that, and for no other reason than being the natural tease he'd always been, the boy picked up a small stick from his woodpile. He cast the stick even farther than the last piece of food and the wolf bolted after the missile without waiting. He heard her snort when she reached it.

But was he surprised when the young wolf trotted back up onto the lawn with the stick in her mouth and put it down near the first piece of food still waiting in the grass for her to retrieve. She looked at him, plopped down on her stomach and then started eating the meat.

Hungry himself and unsure about this interesting behavior of the skinny female wolf, the boy tossed the rest of her piece of smoked pork to the wolf and started to eat his own portion of wonderfully smelling hot meat. And now, overhead the calls of the sun-beckon birds were beginning to lessen as the morning sun colored the tops of the tree canopies, almost as if they had developed manners when it came to not disturbing his meal.

Third Mission, outbound aboard the Federation space vessel DSE Glenndeavor, 2401 CE

We were at the far back bulkhead of the Hydroponics supply compartment 001, at the end of the aisle-way. Shellbee, Arrbra Die Florrie and I were gathered facing the right bulkhead shelving, and the first row of double stacked supplies were to our backs. Actually, Arrbra Die Florrie and I stood behind the cream-colored back of First Lieutenant Shellbee, as she the bent-over the case where the soldier bees discovered the infestation. Now she had her hood and face plate thrown back between the shoulder blades of her Class-Three suit.

I held an LED work light over the left shoulder of her protective outfit so she could examine the lock mechanism on the meter wide, by half-meter deep, by three-quarters-of-a-meter high, dull-yellow composite case. The thing rested on top of two even longer and deeper gray cases on the bottom level of the shelving.

There was the small taped-over hole in the bottom right rounded corner. Before it had been taped over, Arrbra Die Florrie's soldier bees had used the opening to enter the case when they first discover the infestation. Arrbra, to my right, had placed a large, sophisticated tool kit Shellbee had gotten out of the donk on a handy clear-wrapped pallet of bagged sphagnum moss. She was acting like a surgery nurse and handing Shellbee the tools she asked for by their labeled number from inside the big kit. I thought that was a very cohesive way to organize a tool kit for people who didn't know the names of the various tools and test equipment. And I had a label-maker back in my quarters...

"The insecticide will be inert by now," Arrbra told us as Shellbee was finishing her last scanning pass over the case with her Heavy. Arrbra already held another device for the First Lieutenant to use on the lock when she finished her preliminary scan of the case.

"Anyway, it would just give you a rash," the fortyish woman told us, "if it were still active and you got any of it on your exposed skin. So I guess those clunky suits you guys decided would be your best cover story for this investigation might actually come in handy after all. You guys realize don't you, I am one of only, say, six other people on the Ship, who would have noticed you were bogus exterminators. So I'd say you can keep using that as your ploy if you need to employ it anywhere else. If you feel you need help to tighten up your cover, just ask me; I'll be glad to help you two pass as real exterminator hacks."

"I don't think we'll run into any of those other five people," the Marine officer said as she put her Heavy back on the web belt of her protective suit. "May I have that number eighteen and the wand probe please, Arrbra?"

"So you know what is all yours in here, supply-wise, and what they brought in?" I asked Arrbra, more to pass the time while First Lieutenant Shellbee set up to start scanning the lock on the big case using a small wand plugged into number 18. Number 18 was a hand-held device with the ubiquitous control-information pad with a data touch screen. This unit also hosted three small analog looking dials and a small analog meter.

"Of course, Jameson," the G2 Hydroponics Tech told me in her quiet voice as she shifted her weight on her feet and smiled at me. I felt a flush of pleasure at hearing her using my name. "I've got a data pad back at my office that has a copy of our complete inventory database on it. I could printout site maps showing you what was ours in all three compartments back here. They would have all the bar code info, serial numbers, physical descriptions, amounts, bay locations, and any specific handling information on the listings, also."

With her left hand she pointed down behind me at the deck near the base of the row of floor-stacked items. I saw faint, half-meter long, and five-centimeter wide, white lines on the deck in the half-illumination of the compartment about every two meters down the deck starting from the bulkhead. Halfway between the first line and the bulkhead were white designations that read 'HDS-C001 R2b B84.'

"We have all of our storage back here," Arrbra said in a matter of fact voice, "mapped using those deck and shelf coordinate indicators. So it ought to be easy. That one stands for Hydroponics Department storage compartment oh-oh-one, row two-b, bay eighty-four. This is the first mission, now that the research is in phase two, we've used all of our allotted storage on the Ship, what with the dramatic increase in plantings and all."

"Storage site maps will really help us with what we've been assigned to do," Shellbee said from in front of us, I could hear the concentration in her voice as she now had the number 11 that she'd asked for earlier and had kept it clipped to one of her cargo pockets. Number 11 was a flat key-like probe with a control cable plugged into her Heavy. The First Lieutenant pushed the blade of the probe inside the data-key-receiver of the case she was trying to open. She watched a spinning readout on her Heavy's data screen.

"This type of lock sometimes carries a tamper-deterrent inside the case," she told us. "This one doesn't seem to have anything installed."

"What kind of deterrent?" I asked, making conversation, and tired of holding up the lightweight but bulky LED array to light her work.

"Usually," Shellbee said, as her screen went green as she pulled the probe from the data-receiver and the lock snapped in its release.

" ... it is some kind of powerful explosive device that not only incinerates the contents, but also blows-up whoever is trying to break in."

She stood up, unhooked the cabling and gave the probe back to Arrbra. Shellbee then tapped through a few menu screens on her Heavy.

"That ... could have blown us up ... to the Thirty-Seven Hells?" I asked, sounding sort of peevish, even to my own ears as the reality of what Shellbee had just casually announced hit me. "My wives will kill me if I get blown up. Then, they'll start looking for you, First Lieutenant. You don't want to face that Polka Fireball when she is committed to attaining something, or pissed-off ... or both..."

"So that bruise on you face would indicate," First Lieutenant Ashley Shellbee said to me over her shoulder, not even trying to hide her snicker.

"Now Ashley," Arrbra said, using that tone of voice like my mother would use when my brother and I would be aggravating each other as little kids. "Jameson does have responsibilities now. From the way I see it, the two of you are going to be in each other's company for a while in this compartment if you don't have anybody else to help you. So make nice. I noticed that bruise earlier, and you didn't hear me asking the boy any embarrassing questions about what was going on that had him all distracted when he received it, now did you?"

"Okay, Mom," Ashley Shellbee said, "I'll take pity on him, this time."

I could feel anticipation building in the air around the three of us now that this mystery case was unlocked.

"You guys ready for this?" Shellbee chuckled, shaking her head. She was guiding her Heavy up near the lid seam with her right hand and taking the spring-loaded metal handle on the front of the lid in her left hand.

She didn't wait for our reply. She lifted the lid about two finger widths upward and slowly swept the Heavy across the entire open gap between the lid and the rest of the container from right to left. She closed the lid and looked at the data screen.

"What?" I asked as Arrbra just shifted her weight on her feet again beside me.

"Let us look and see," Shellbee said, flipping the clamshell closed and belting her Heavy as she slowly lifted the lid completely open.

I wondered if opening a treasure chest would have struck us as dumb as we were right now.

As the light from the LEDs I was holding aloft flooded the inside of the container, we saw the length of it was divided into three unequal chambers. The padded dividers came up to within a handbreadth of the lid, so the ladybugs and soldier bees had been able to get into all three sections I figured.

The right section was as wide as my hand from my wrist to the tip of my index finger, and I have fairly large hands. The right section of the case had four panels going front to back hanging suspended from the top edges of the case. There was hanger space for two more next to the divider, but those two spaces were empty. It was clear to me the hanging panels were arranged to be lifted out.

On the side of the exposed hanging panel we could see perforated plastic bubbles, like pill carriers. I saw there were fifteen bubbles from front to back and an unknown number deep on that exposed hanging panel. But instead of a pill under each bubble, there was a square of dark-green jelly-like material about the size of my thumbnail and as thick as three poker chips. Each sealed-up green jelly I saw was wrapped in some fragile-looking clear cellophane-like material. With all the recent talk of bees, the hanging bubble-carrier panels reminded me of the removable slats for honeycomb in a beehive.

The larger center section of the contraband container had a thin divider that only came about halfway up the center part of the case. On the right side were what looked to me like filled, thin-square transparent-plastic bottles of some kind, and the liquid filling each one of the plastic containers was clear.

Each bottle was a little bit bigger than a poker chip. There was a threaded nipple on one of the corner edges of each bottle. At one time they all had been in thin cardboard trays. But now, two of the top trays were empty and crumpled up. They had been tossed down on top of a full third tray that also had some extra filled bottles scattered around on it. I didn't know how many trays were stacked below the third tray.

On the other side of the short divider in the center compartment was a tray with 10 plastic throwaway hypodermic needles, each one had a long clear-plastic shield covering the needle. There was a pre-measured dose of some amber-colored liquid in each one. There were two empty indents that sure made me think two hypos were missing. There were trays of hypodermic needles stacked under the top tray on that side of the middle chamber

The largest section was the left section. And it was stacked almost three-quarters of the way to the top with flat, two-finger thick, six-sided dark-gray or dark-blue acoustical tile looking things. They were about the size of the palm of my hand. I'd seen them before. I reached around Shellbee and picked one up.

"What are you doing?" Shellbee asked me, sounding scandalized at my action. "You don't know what that is ... what it could do."

"Sure I know what it is," I said, and held one up so the bevel-sided flat front was toward us. "These are the acoustical tile sections they put up in different designs against the bulkhead walls and up on the overheads in some places as sound dampeners. You know, in the Enlisted Mess, and the Enlisted Pub, and the lounges and stuff to deaden the ambient reverberation in those big compartment spaces. They cut down the reflected sound waves and help reduce background noise levels."

Shellbee picked one up and flipped it over to look at the back. On the black plastic back, there was what looked to me like a clear adhesive backing with a clear plastic tear-off covering it. There was also a small, hinged tab on one edge of the black plastic back.

Shellbee pulled on the tab on her sample, and the back panel with the covered adhesive strip clicked and came away from the tile exposing the hollow interior of the fake acoustical tile. Inside the back of the tile was a thin flat, clear plex panel. On part of the panel was a circuit board with an attached small round battery. There was a tiny slide on-off switch, a tiny touch pad, and two indented areas. One indent had a short flex tube with a screw-on top. I recognized the IC chips on the thin green circuit board and realized I was looking at a small programmable control circuit.

That was really old-fashioned technology; but it was cheap and reliable.

Looking closer at the back of the tile, I was sure the screw top on the flex tube would mate with one of the flat little plastic bottles from the center of the case. It looked like you could snap the bottle down into the matching sized indent once you attached the tube to the bottle.

I clipped the articulated LED light to the raised, hinged lid of the contraband container with my left hand. Then I pulled the back off of the tile I was holding. Through the clear plex panel, I followed the tube from where the bottle indent was located to the point that tube connected to one side of what must be a tiny pump-powered distribution hub. There were two power leads going from one end of the small rectangular hub to the little circuit board that joined the touch pad and there was a data cable returning to the hub from the circuit board.

Also coming out of the other side of the hub were seven thin tubes. One tube attached to the other indent that had an LED mounted in the base of it with a thin power wire running back to the circuit board. The other six small tubes coming out of the hub attached to each of the hexagon sides of the tile.

Looking closer at the LED I realized it was not a light emitting diode after all. It was a tiny infrared emitter.

That second indent appeared as if it would accept one of the green-jelly containers perfectly. That indent had small holes around the sides and the bottom of the indent. The holes opened to the interior of the hollow tile under the plastic back plate. Examining the sides of the hex tile, I saw small holes around the outside edges, too. Anything really small, such as a gnat, could crawl out of the indented area through the holes, travel across the open space of the hexagon, and get out into the air through the holes in each of the six sides of the fake acoustical tile, my geek factoid engine decided.

"I don't want to sound like an alarmist," Arrbra Die Florrie told us in a quite voice, after she finished looking at the inside of my tile. She moved and released the hanging bubble pack carrier panel against the side of the contraband case and pulled it gently up out of the container. After a quick look at the individually packaged jellies, she exhaled.

"But that acoustical tile mechanism looks like a very well thought out, if I might say," the Bee Lady told us, "covert delivery system for not only a possible aerosol application of some unknown agent held in those plastic bottles, but also as an incubator for the Gammin gnats. You see," and she pointed at the square of jelly in one of the bubbles, "each one of those square segmented jellies we see here, are growth media. And the little dots all through the jelly are Gammin eggs.

"I would venture to guess that those eggs are just waiting for the correct amount of heat from the infrared emitter in that media holder in each tile to warm the media to the correct temperature to promote their hatching. Then, the larva feed off of the media, wiggle out of the jelly, become gnats, and fly out of the tile looking for human hosts. Wherever this tile is placed, the clear aerosol fluid seems intended to infect the gnats before they exit this incubator as well as spray into the atmosphere."

"This is not good," First Lieutenant Shellbee said to no one in particular. "I need to inform Major Luce before our watch is over, Mister Sitwell."

On the bottom of the carrier Arrbra had lifted out, about eight bubbles of the three bottom horizontal rows of bubbles had been ripped open. I would say it was done by what ever had punctured the corner edge of the case. There was a once frothy green goop that was now dried where it had oozed a short way down the plastic from each torn-up bubble. In the dried goop were packed together white, maybe, larval cases, some looking like very tiny rice grains.

"And what I know about Gammin gnats," Arrbra told us, "—besides their normal cooties—I would say by spraying them with the contents of the clear liquid, they could easily be used as a vector for introducing a biologic agent into their human hosts as they lay eggs just under a person's skin. Sort of like mosquitoes that carry diseases and infects you when they draw your blood. And ... Gammin gnats are small as gnats go. Most people might not even notice them if they weren't looking for them. Most gnats draw attention to themselves by flying near a person's eyes or ears. Gammin gnats are reported to go for exposed skin on the back of the neck or hands and arms for some reason."