Return to Port, A Decision Made…
Spacer was getting started on his list of things he needed to get done when he heard a shout from the dock. The ship with Joe Marine and the security personnel was back. He joined the families of the people who had gone. The only fatality was known and was not much missed. The young women he had been courting was sad, but relieved. His mother was proud he had volunteered and would always remember him as having died on a mission. Joe decided not to tell her how he died. She needed her proud memory.
“Spacer, we got crossbows and bolts from the Utopians. We’ll need to send them some dried fish and of the shredded tree nut meat, but now we can feed some of those toothy swamp lizards to the lagoon fish.” Joe called out.
Joe warned the Shore Patrol that some of the bolts were treated with snake venom. They had a different color of wood in their body. They were to be saved for use on larger animals like the swamp lizards. Unfortunately, they had been traded to El Canalla and used at the wedding. The weapons were a welcome addition to their arsenal. The toothy swamp animals they encountered were getting larger each season.
“Hope they don’t want too much fish, we just sent a load to Refugio,” Boats called out. “We’re getting a load of meat in jars back.”
“Welcome to Port, Captain O’Malley.” Spacer said.
“So, this is where that nice dried fish comes from, it sure tastes better than the smoked fish we make.”
“The sun shines most days here and it’s rarely cool. Some of the crew were from planets where most all their food is preserved that way. We use some panels from some of the old GC vehicles to help the drying along. You should take a look. I understand Utopia’s talking about making whole buildings out of glass to grow what won’t grow out in the open.”
“Well, I’ve seen one or two of those, but people want window glass before they want indoor growing, so it won’t get done in Utopia anytime soon.” O’Malley said. “Have you tried using the crab glass for a growing house?”
“That was one of the first ones that got built but they found out pretty quickly that the stuff blocks some of the rays the plants need. A man from Refugio said the crabs grow what we call crab glass, and he called chitin, to protect their eggs, so some rays are blocked. We do use it on the fish drying racks if it looks like it’s going to rain.”
“We are learning so many new things from what they found in those storage containers in Utopia that I can’t keep up,” O’Malley shook his head. “That is just one more.”
“Julie and Blackie are keeping notes on where there are resources on the third land, but it has changed a lot according to Julie,” Joe said. “Their maps have different island and most of them are smaller on the map. We saw some weird stuff up close to the ice at the north, Spacer, more ice than I have ever seen in my life, and I don’t want to go back there. You can die from how cold that water is. Did you know that a human can die from the cold?”
“Seems reasonable, Joe, if you can die from the heat, you can die from the cold,” Spacer tried to keep from laughing. Joe was serious and Spacer was fond of the security chief.
***
After last meal, the visitors traded stories with the Grounders in the meeting shelter. The torches were lit for those who wanted to walk to their shelters, especially the families with littles. It had been an exciting day and tomorrow was going to be busy too. Captain O’Malley and his crew were enjoying the warm evening and a cup of the Port’s tree nut alcohol when the ground began to shake. Land shakes were common on Higgins, but this one seemed to last much longer than usual. The water in the harbor sloshed up onto the dock and the sand shifted into funny patterns. It eased up slowly and everyone just laughed. Spacer noted it was different from the normal shakes. The goats were heard squealing, something he didn’t remember happening before. He hoped the volcanoes in the area would not wake up again. He had way too much on his plate already.
O’Malley’s Dream sailed in the morning. Captain O’Malley was anxious to get back to his home port. The land shakes often caused changes in the water along the coasts, big waves, and more active water creatures. He had been told by his father that the smaller ones sometimes were just a build-up to a larger one and those were really dangerous. The waves would draw back from the shore then come rushing in higher than any wind wave. It did a lot of damage the first time it happened shortly after they landed. He wanted to get the precautions done that his father had taught him.
| ← Chapter 27 | Chapter 29 → |
Should you want to read the whole story…
Book One
Book Two
Amazon.com: Surviving Higgins World: Change or Chaos? eBook : Gibson, Patricia : Kindle Store