2221:028

Lira came to with the sound of running water in her ears, which her body was urging her to imitate. Her bladder painfully full, she pulled herself to her feet. She was outdoors—no toilet available. She went behind a tree, pulled down her clothing, and squatted. As the warm stream burst from her and relief settled in, she let her senses fill her in on her environment.

A gentle breeze, cool but not unpleasantly so, played over her skin and hair. She was in the shade at the edge of a forest now, but the meadow ahead of her was filled with sunshine, tall grasses waving in the wind, and wildflowers. The sound of running water was persistent, a little fainter now that she’d moved among the trees. The breeze brought the strong scent of an unfamiliar flower, overlaid on the smell of her urine.

Temperature’s not extreme, running water, flowering plants. What’s the catch?

Predators came to mind. Lira picked up a fallen stick. It was heavy and solid, but she’d have to be close to swing it and connect with an attacking animal.

If this world was the dome at Magellan Base, how big could it be?

She looked up at the sunny sky. It didn’t look at all like the inside of a dome. Maybe she’d been taken to Earth. Experimentally, she tried a little hop. She was only able to get a few inches off the ground. Either the bugs had been worked out of the a-grav, or she was back on Earth. Lira studied the bushes and trees around her. They didn’t look like anything she remembered from Earth, and her memories weren’t fuzzy. She’d only been at Hoyle Base for two years. The leaves had a primitive look to them, like the ferny plants that had grown on Earth hundreds of millions of years ago, yet flowers of all colors covered the bushes. It looked inconsistent, those ferns with flowers.

And next, turtles will fly.

She heard a rustling in the low undergrowth of the forest floor and turned just in time to see a blur of gray coming at her about knee-high. Before she could react, she felt a rake of teeth or claws across her leg, tearing her pants and the flesh underneath. Gasping with pain and surprise, she leaned on the stick and moved out of the shade of the trees. Looking around for other attackers—what was that thing?—she used her hands to feel for damage and was dismayed to find blood soaking her pant leg.

I’ve been here five minutes and I’m already injured. I’ve got to think faster. Act faster. 

Lira reordered her priorities: Stop blood loss, get weapons, then water, shelter, food. She used the stick to beat down the tall grass in the meadow, making a tamped-down circle about five meters across. If the gray blur, which she was starting to think of as a vicious coyote, returned, she would at least see it enter the cleared area.

The material of her pants hung in shreds below her left knee. She gently felt the area, finding no swelling or protruding bones. Rolling up her pants leg, she got her first look at the wound.

There were three nearly parallel gashes, from claws probably. All of them leaked blood steadily, and one was deeper than the others, slashing not just through skin but also through the muscle underneath. Not crippling, but painful.

There was a snuffling noise at the edge of the clearing, and Lira thought she saw a muzzle poking through the grass, not at the height of her knees but at waist-height. An overgrown wolf, maybe? Then another one, at the edge of her vision on the right. The smell of blood was drawing other predators, and she didn’t really want to confront the owners of those muzzles.

If the daytime hunters were this numerous and aggressive, she wondered what the night would bring.

The thought convinced her that she’d better do something about her wound. She patted the pockets of her shirt in case she’d been given something as wonderful as a knife, but found only a flat pack of water and a thin flashlight the length of her thumb. She ripped off a piece of her pants big enough to wrap tightly around her leg, then headed off nervously through the tall grass, in the direction of the sound of running water. Sometimes the grass nearby waved, and she wasn’t sure if it was from the wind or the passage of a large animal.

Dinosaur?

The thought stopped her in mid-stride. Unarmed, she was no match for such a killing machine. Or a herd of them.

Tensely, she waited in the warm sun. If she was being shadowed by dinosaurs, she might as well squeeze the panic button on her monitor and watch her dreams disappear faster than doughnuts in the Base Security office.

Had that thing that ran at her been furry or scaly? She tried to picture it in her mind, but came up with grey and fast. She started walking again, trying to project the image of a confident predator in her own right. After walking about half an hour, she came to the source of the sound: a waterfall at least 150 meters high and the same width.

At least I won’t need that water pack.

The mist from the churning water covered her face as she stood wondering how this much water ever got to Magellan Base. It reinforced the idea that she was on Earth, and that was comforting somehow. An Earth wolf was just a wolf, and she might be able to fend it—them—off with handmade weapons.

Unless they’d been genetically modified.

Water dripped down her face, and she licked her lips. The taste was intensely salty. Surprised, she bent over, cupped one hand in the water, and lifted it to her mouth. It smelled like seaweed. It tasted like condensed seawater. She spit it out. Taking the tube of water from her pocket, she looked at it with more concern. She estimated it as no more than half a liter, not even a single day’s skimpy allotment. In two or three days, she had to find drinkable water, or give up.

Blood was 90% water. If a land animal didn’t feed on prey with a high salt content, its blood would provide enough water to keep her hydrated. Also, it might rain, and she could collect rainwater, if she had something to collect it in.

In the meantime, there was the matter of the fresh blood smell emanating from her leg wound. She dipped her hands in the brackish water repeatedly and cleaned her leg, wincing at the pain of salt hitting the wound. She kept at it until the blood was washed off and no more flowed. She bound her leg in a clean strip of cloth and threw the blood-soaked one downstream to be carried away.

To make weapons she needed wood, and that meant returning to the forest. The trip was uneventful, and Lira even managed to pick up some loose rocks at a small outcropping. Two hours later, she’d fashioned a handful of spears with rocks secured on the business end with strips of the tough meadow grass. The wood was as tough as the rocks. She had to rely on branches already fallen on the ground rather than bending and breaking saplings.

No bow and arrows, then. No fires to drive away night hunters. If she could start a fire at all, she’d have to keep it going with meadow grass. When she fell asleep, the fire would go out.

She lashed some branches together to make a sleeping platform and hauled it, heavy section by section, up into one of the trees that had two large, nearly horizontal branches that formed a V. It wasn’t as high off the ground as she would have liked, but it was the best choice available for the first night. As evening approached, she wove strips of grass into two bowls and placed them in a clearing. She might get lucky with overnight rain.

As she sat on her platform, Lira took small sips of water and nursed her scratched and blistered hands. The grass was tough to work with and had sharp edges. The only way she had to cut it was to smash the root end with a rock until it gave way. Her muscles ached from the unaccustomed work, and doing it all with the relentless pull of planetary gravity left her exhausted. Lunies kept up with their fitness routines, especially rigorous aerobic and weight-bearing exercises, but the sudden change to something approximating Earth normal was extremely stressful to joints and lungs. She felt like a rag doll with advanced arthritis that was constantly out of breath.

Night fell, and Lira took out her flashlight. She didn’t see much use for it, though, and decided to conserve the power. The sky was moonless. As purple deepened to black, stars shimmered overhead, but not in familiar patterns.

So much for being on Earth.

She was going to have to beat whatever environment had been set up to challenge her at Magellan Base. And beat it she would. No salty waterfalls or wolves on steroids were going to keep her from being on the Venture when the launch date rolled around.

Lira planned to doze as little as possible, keeping an eye out for predators, spears at hand. Her fatigued body had other ideas. The moment she curled up on the hard platform, her wadded shirt for a pillow, she fell into a deep sleep, and dreamed of the ancient myth of Little Red Riding Hood.

~*~*~*~*~

She slept until midday and awoke wanting to rest her weary body, and not struggle with the demon gravity. Her dry mouth and rumbling belly argued against lying on the sleep platform all day. Groaning, she dropped two spears over the edge of the platform, then made her way carefully down from the tree. A broken bone would be more of a disadvantage than she cared to think about. She inspected her leg wound and was pleased to see that it didn’t appear infected. It was tender, but there were no red streaks radiating from the claw marks, and no swelling. Testing her full weight on it, there was pain, but she could tolerate it.

All those fancy meds back at Hoyle Base, and a little salt water does the trick.

She sipped from her water tube but sealed it quickly, before she could give in to the desire to squeeze the whole contents into her mouth. Her rain catchers held nothing. Today she would have to hunt, or by tomorrow, she might be too weak to do it. She focused her attention on the forest. Who knows, there might be a fresh water stream just over that hill. If inconsistency was the watchword here, it might also work in her favor.

Heck, why not wish for a flock of friendly chickens while I’m at it.

As she thought about it, she heard a sound that sounded birdlike. She turned to see, half expecting to see a chicken a couple of meters away.

No chickens, but a pair of definitely feathered creatures had landed on her platform. They resembled turkeys, but had long, straggly tails, disturbing talons and no-nonsense beaks. As she watched, they tittered at each other. She hoped she wouldn’t come back to find her platform taken over with a nest.

Experimentally, she hefted one of her heavy spears, aiming at the larger of the two birds. The spear flew short of the platform, struck a branch, and fell to the ground with a thump. The birds flapped their way to a branch near her and squawked disdainfully. Her predator act didn’t fool them.

On her way to retrieve the spear, she stopped cold, staring at the trunk of the tree in which her platform rested. Almost three meters up the side were deep claw marks. The tree’s bark oozed with what passed for sap and looked more like gravy. The ground below was torn in long, raw gashes. Hind claws must have scratched the ground in frustration when forefeet couldn’t reach the juicy tidbit up in the tree, that tidbit being her.

And I slept right through it. Probably a good thing.

Her limbs finally unfroze, and she turned and headed into the forest.

~*~*~*~*~

Lira spotted numerous turkeys, but couldn’t get a spear within several meters of any of them. What’s worse, they were an effective alarm system, and sent up a squawking that alerted everything small enough to be her prey and sent it scurrying into the underbrush. No fresh water and certainly no obliging deer lying down and dying at her feet.

As she walked, she tasted various leaves, cautiously chewing a small piece and then spitting it out without swallowing. None of them seemed edible, and most of them dried out her mouth as though they were sponges intent on soaking up what little saliva she had. In spite of the abundance of flowers, the ferny plants bore no fruit, and the flowers themselves were bitter. Was it possible that plants weren’t part of the food chain in this miniature world? Every animal she’d met so far had been equipped with meat-eating equipment, including the turkeys.

She came to a hill that reminded her of half a melon. Set into the hillside was a cave. A cave would offer safety on three sides and the opportunity to barricade the fourth. There might be water dripping from the ceiling, running down the sides in clear, cool rivulets she could divert into her rain catcher. She licked her lips, which were beginning to crack, and tossed a few large rocks into the cave to see if something else had gotten the same idea. Nothing dashed out to put a stop to her annoying rock tossing, so she approached and peered in.

The flashlight! Here was a genuine need for it. Did that mean I was intended to find the cave?

The strong beam showed a cave ten meters deep. The entrance was only a meter tall, but when she squatted down and aimed the light toward the ceiling, she could see that the passage ballooned up to three meters. It appeared to be a dead end. Cautiously she entered. There was a slight musky smell, but no sign of the bones or feces she would expect if some large predator lived there. To her disappointment, the cave held no water.

By nightfall, she’d taken up residence in the cave and moved the rest of her spears from the platform, which now contained a disgusting heap of mud and grass that she took to be the foundation of a turkey nest. She put her rain catchers nearby, and piled some fallen branches over the entrance. Inside, she squeezed the last drops of water from her pack, and started to work weaving a net from the armfuls of meadow grass she’d dragged to the cave. She’d never been so tired before, and exertion caused her breath to come in short gasps. A net was slowly taking shape under her trembling fingers, as she leaned against the rocky wall of the cave and tried to conserve strength for the day ahead.

~*~*~*~*~

The branches at the entrance went flying through the air, one just missing Lira’s forehead as she sat up. A strong musty odor filled her nostrils as she rolled and grabbed for the flashlight with one hand and a spear with the other. Claws scraped on rock as the creature scrabbled toward her. It was momentarily halted by the light from the flashlight wavering in Lira’s hand. In a moment of panic, she threw the flashlight, which the creature waved out of the air like an annoying bug.

The animal advancing toward her looked like a giant weasel. At its feet, several smaller versions of itself mewled and tumbled. Lira had taken a cave that belonged to a mother and her cubs, probably the very animal that had scratched her tree the night before and left in frustration.

There was no room to swing her spear or fling it. She dove between the animal’s legs, feeling hot breaths and a heavy trail of saliva trickling down her back. Scooping up one of the wiggling young, she rolled, landed on her feet, and dashed out the cave entrance.

She had a hostage, if she could hold onto it. Narrow jaws clamped onto her arm, and dozens of needle-like teeth held on. The weight and thrashing of the young animal threatened to topple her.

Which of us is the hostage?

There was a bellow, and the mother came out of the cave on all fours, wiggling to fit through the narrow entrance.

Good planning. Mom’s between me and the spears.

There was a brief standoff as the weasel, which stood about two meters high at the shoulder, assessed the situation. Her cubs whined and drew back, evidently content to let Mom face the unknown alone. Lira’s flashlight, lying haphazardly on the rocks near the cave, provided a backlight, outlining the animal’s fur with a silvery glow.

The little one dug its teeth painfully into her arm and tried to shake its head. She didn’t dare drop it, or the mother would charge. The seconds dragged on, punctuated by Lira’s ragged breathing and gusts of foul air as the weasel snorted. Lira had to act, had to take the initiative. She pinned the squirming animal against her side, bent down, and picked up a rock. With all the strength she could muster, she brought the rock smashing down on the animal’s skull. It yelped in surprise and then went limp. Now that she could carry it without having her arm torn, Lira turned and ran. She was heading for a nearby tree, one that she had designated for an emergency escape. As she got further from the cave and its abandoned flashlight, it became darker and she couldn’t make out the path to the tree. Finally her outstretched hand slammed into the tree’s distinctive trunk, and she started to climb by feel alone, with the young weasel’s body flung around her neck, its lifeless paws crossed on her chest. Reaching a level she hoped was high enough to avoid the mother’s claws, she steadied herself on a branch, taking huge gulps of air.

The weasel bellowed at the base of the tree, and threw itself bodily against it, sending shivers up the trunk. Lira heard claws scraping, and pulled her feet up, hoping she’d guessed correctly about the height.

After a minute, it became clear that she’d made it to safety, and what’s more, she had her kill. She turned her attention to the dead animal, feeling its body in the darkness, getting her hands around its neck. There was no time to waste. Pushing down the revulsion she felt, she exposed the animal’s throat and bit into it with her teeth. The hide was tough, and it took her several tries to rip through. Although its young heart was no longer pumping blood, the animal’s body still held a quantity of it that had not yet started to coagulate and rot. Lira pressed her mouth to the wound and sucked. She gagged and spit. The mother let out a howl of outrage when her young’s blood dripped down from the tree. When Lira finally steeled herself to swallow, the warm liquid trickled down her parched throat.

She knew then she was going to make it. She was going to beat Stranded.

Next Chapter: Chapter Four ~ The Mask