Operation: Outer Space Part 21

"I'm not hungry," she a.s.sured him. "What are we going to do now?"

"There's nothing to do until morning." Unconsciously, Cochrane looked grim. "Then there'll be plenty. Food, for one thing. We don't know, actually, whether or not there's anything really edible on this planet--for us. It could be that there are fruits or possibly stalks or leaves that would be nourishing. Only--we don't know which is which. We have to be careful. We might pick something like poison ivy!"

Babs said:

"But the ship will come back!"

"Of course," agreed Cochrane. "But it may take them some time to find us. This is a pretty big planet, you know."

He estimated his supply of burnable stuff. He improved the rampart he had made at first. Babs stared at him. After four or five minutes he stepped back.

"You can lean against this," he explained. "You can watch the fire quite comfortably. And it's a sort of wall. The fire will light one side of you and the wall will feel comforting behind you when you get sleepy."

Babs nodded. She swallowed.

"I--think I see what you mean when you say they may have trouble finding us, because this planet is so large."

Cochrane nodded reluctantly.

"Of course there's this burned-off s.p.a.ce for a marker," he observed cheerfully. "But it could take several days for them to see it."

Babs swallowed again. She said carefully:

"The--ship can't hover like a helicopter, to search. You said so. It doesn't have fuel enough. They can't really search for us at all! The only way to make a real search would be to go back to Earth and--bring back helicopters and fuel for them and men to fly them.... Isn't that right?"

"Not necessarily. But we do have to figure on a matter of--well--two or three days as a possibility."

Babs moistened her lips and he said quickly:

"I did a show once about some miners lost in a wilderness. A period show. In it, they knew that part of their food was poisoned. They didn't know what. They had to have all their food. And of course they didn't have laboratories with which to test for poison."

Babs eyed him oddly.

"They bandaged their arms," said Cochrane, "and put sc.r.a.ps of the different foodstuffs under the bandages. The one that was poisonous showed. It affected the skin. Like an allergy-test. I'll try that trick in the morning when there's light to pick samples by. There are berries and stuff. There must be fruits. A few hours should test them."

Babs said without intonation:

"And we can watch what the animals eat."

Cochrane nodded gravely. Animals on Earth can live on things that--to put it mildly--humans do not find satisfying. Gra.s.s, for example. But it was good for Babs to think of cheering things right now. There would be plenty of discouragement to contemplate later.

There was a flicker of brightness in the sky. Presently the earth quivered. Something made a plaintive, "_waa-waa-waaaaa!_" sound off in the night. Something else made a noise like the tinkling of bells. There was an abstracted hooting presently, which now was nearby and now was far away, and once they heard something which was exactly like the noise of water running into a pool. But the source of that particular burbling moved through the dark wood beyond the clearing.

It was not wholly dark where they were, even aside from their own small fire. The burning trees in the departing ship's rocket-trail sent up a column of white which remaining flames illuminated. The remarkably primitive camp Cochrane had made looked like a camp on a tiny snow-field, because of the ashes.

"We've got to think about shelter," said Babs presently, very quietly indeed. "If there are glaciers, there must be winter here. If there is winter, we have to find out which animals we can eat, and how to store them."

"Hold on!" protested Cochrane. "That's looking too far ahead!"

Babs clasped her hands together. It could have been to keep their trembling from being seen. Cochrane was regarding her face. She kept that under admirable control.

"Is it?" asked Babs. "On the broadcast Mr. Jamison said that there was as much land here as on all the continent of Asia. Maybe he exaggerated.

Say there's only as much land not ice-covered as there is in South America. It's all forest and plain and--uninhabited." She moistened her lips, but her voice was very steady. "If all of South America was uninhabited, and there were two people lost in it, and n.o.body knew where they were--how long would it take to find them?"

"It would be a matter of luck," admitted Cochrane.

"If the ship comes back, it can't hover to look for us. There isn't fuel enough. It couldn't spot us from s.p.a.ce if it went in an orbit like a s.p.a.ce platform. By the time they could get help--they wouldn't even be sure we were alive. If we can't count on being found right away, this burned-over place will be green again. In two or three weeks they couldn't find it anyhow."

Cochrane fidgeted. He had worked out all this for himself. He'd been disturbed at having to tell it, or even admit it to Babs. Now she said in a constrained voice:

"If men came to this planet and built a city and hunted for us, it might still be a hundred years before anybody happened to come into this valley. Looking for us would be worse than looking for a needle in a haystack. I don't think we're going to be found again."

Cochrane was silent. He felt guiltily relieved that he did not have to break this news to Babs. Most men have an instinctive feeling that a woman will blame them for bad news they hear.

A long time later, Babs said as quietly as before:

"Johnny Simms asked me to come along while he went hunting. I didn't. At least I--I'm not cast away with him!"

Cochrane said gruffly:

"Don't sit there and brood! Try to get some sleep."

She nodded. After a long while, her head drooped. She jerked awake again. Cochrane ordered her vexedly to make herself comfortable. She stretched out beside the wall of wood that Cochrane had made. She said quietly:

"While we're looking for food tomorrow morning, we'd better keep our eyes open for a place to build a house."

She closed her eyes.

Cochrane kept watch through the dark hours. He heard night-cries in the forest, and once toward dawn the distant volcano seemed to undergo a fresh paroxysm of activity. Boomings and explosions rumbled in the night. There were flickerings in the sky. But there were fewer temblors after it, and no shocks at all.

More than once, Cochrane found himself dozing. It was difficult to stay in a state of alarm. There was but one single outcry in the forest that sounded like the shriek of a creature seized by a carnivore. That was not nearby. He tried to make plans. He felt bitterly self-reproachful that he knew so few of the things that would be useful to a castaway.

But he had been a city man all his life. Woodcraft was not only out of his experience--on overcrowded Earth it would have been completely useless.

From time to time he found himself thinking, instead of practical matters, of the astonishing st.u.r.diness of spirit Babs displayed.

When she waked, well after daybreak, and sat up blinking, he said:

"Er--Babs. We're in this together. From now on, if you want to tell me something for my own good, go ahead! Right?"

She rubbed her eyes on her knuckles and said,

"I'd have done that anyhow. For both our good. Don't you think we'd better try to find a place where we can get a drink of water? Water has to be right to drink!"

They set off, Cochrane carrying the weapon he'd brought from the ship.

It was Babs who pointed out that a stream should almost certainly be found where rain would descend, downhill. Babs, too, spotted one of the small, foot-high furry bipeds feasting gluttonously on small round objects that grew from the base of a small tree instead of on its branches. The tree, evidently, depended on four-footed rather than on flying creatures to scatter its seeds. They gathered samples of the fruit. Cochrane peeled a sliver of the meat from one of the round objects and put it under his watchstrap.

They found a stream. They found other fruits, and Cochrane prepared the same test for them as for the first. One of the samples turned his skin red and angry almost immediately. He discarded it and all the fruits of the kind from which it came.