‘There should be food of sorts somewhere in that mass of greenery,’ Glyn said hopefully, ‘and we’d better find it before our rations run too low.’ Arki just nodded, he was transfixed at the sight of so much green after days of barren rock and sand.
They still had some distance to go before they would reach the green clad area, and the thought of what they might find spurred them on at an ever increasing rate, some actually breaking into a run at the bottom of the slope where it levelled out before the next rise.
What had looked like just another ordinary hill to climb from a distance, turned out to be something quite different when they reached it.
The first few steps up the slope brought everyone to an unintentional halt, their feet sinking further into the very fine sand with every step.
‘I thought it was too good to be true,’ moaned Brendon, who had lost his balance and was now sitting on the shifting sands, and slowly drifting down the slope.
Arki made one more attempt to climb the sand slope, and sank up to his knees in the fine dust.
‘There’s no way we can get up here,’ he said, trying to extricate himself from the sucking effect of the sand.
The group assembled at the bottom of the slope, somewhat crestfallen, but not beaten.
‘How about laying the packs in a line and crawling over them?’ someone brightly suggested, with little conviction.
‘It might be worth a try,’ said Glyn, secretly doubting that it would work.
A line of backpacks were laid up the slope, but a soon as the weight of a person was added, the packs sank from view and for a few moments there was panic at the thought of the precious contents being lost for ever.
Eventually the packs were recovered, dusted off, and slung over tired shoulders.
‘We’ll have to go along the bottom of this sand slope until we find a way around it, or perhaps more stable sand which we can walk on.’ Glyn sounded as fed up as the others looked.
They trudged on for what seemed like hours, stopping once for a drink, and then on again.
The valley between the long hill they had come down and the fine sand bank wound and twisted its way eastwards, taking them well off the southern course they had intended to follow.
Disgruntled comments were beginning to fly thick and fast, and Glyn was losing patience with those who moaned but could offer no solution to the problem.
He was about to call a halt and have it out with the malcontents once and for all, when they rounded a bend in the valley bottom and were confronted by a jumbled mass of broken rock.
‘That’s going to take a bit of climbing over,’ said Arki, immediately adding ‘but I’m sure we can do it.’ in response to a withering look from Glyn.
Glyn and Arki moved forward, while the others having had enough marching for one day, tried to find a cool resting place in the shadow of the bend, and sat down.
‘There’s something odd about that rock,’ Glyn stated, ‘I’ve never seen a rock with a piece of metal sticking out of it.’
They moved closer and found other large lumps of what seemed to be rock, equally adorned with metallic rods protruding from their surfaces.
‘It reminds me of something,’ Glyn said, scratching his head and trying to recall something he had once read in one of the books a long time ago.
‘Got it!’ he exclaimed. ‘Buildings were reinforced with metal rods to give them extra strength, and these blocks aren’t rock, but concrete, an artificial building material made from something called cement, mixed with sand and gravel.
‘This must have been a building, a bit like our ship, but standing on the surface. People lived in them, and factories for making things were put in them. Never thought I’d see one though.’
‘I don’t think we’re seeing one now, just the remains after something rather powerful disassembled it,’ Arki remarked, ‘but interesting, just the same,’ he added.
‘Well, we can’t go up the sand slope, the hill on our left is too steep at this point to climb safely and this jumble of broken building is blocking our way forward. We either have to go back to a point where we can climb the hillside, or find a way through this heap of rubble, the blocks are far to big to climb.’ Glyn was trying to apply logic to the situation, but it didn’t resolve the problem.
‘There are some dark openings over there,’ Arki pointed to a gap between several massive blocks, ‘there might be a way through the pile, it’s just possible,’ he added.
T
hey shed their packs and approached one of the dark gaps at the base of the pile. Glyn entered first, cautiously, just in case there were holes in the ground which he couldn’t see.
‘Be careful not to disturb anything,’ he called back to Arki.
‘Anything likely to move would probably have done so by now, it has been like this for such a long time,’ Arki replied, as they both worked their way deeper into the jumbled mass.
‘I think we should wait here a while to let our eyes get accustomed to the low light level,’ Glyn suggested, and they sat down in the gloom, wondering what they had got themselves into and if it was wise to proceed any further.
A little light filtered down from above, glancing off some of the smoother surfaces, and after a short time they could both see quite well.
‘I think there’s a faint breeze blowing through here, I can feel it on my face,’ Arki observed, ‘and that would explain why these gaps between the blocks haven’t been filled with sand, it just blows straight through. Therefore, we should be able to get through.’ He felt pleased with his reasoning..
‘I think you’re right, come on, let’s give it a try.’
It was some time later when they broke out into daylight, and had to shield their eyes against the glare.
‘Well done Arki, that was a shrewd observation on your part, so we should be able to get the others through.’
Backtracking through the rubble of the old ruin wasn’t quite so easy, and they lost their way twice. Finally they made it back to the others, and broke the good news.
Some members of the group were none too happy about going into the remains of the old ruin, but as there wasn’t an alternative, they gave in to Arki’s cajoling and began the long struggle through.
Just before they had reached the other side of the ruin, Glyn and Arki inadvertently went downwards, having missed the original route they taken earlier. As they realized their mistake, someone called out that he had felt a wet rock, and that must mean there was water somewhere nearby.
Despite the almost dark conditions, the search for a possible water supply went ahead and almost ended in tragedy.
A startled yell echoed between the gaps in the broken concrete, followed by a loud splash. Someone had found the water the hard way.
Glyn wriggled his way through the others in the confined space between the blocks, and would have fallen in himself if it hadn’t been for a restraining hand which grabbed his arm as he lost his balance at the edge of the drop to the pool in the old lift shaft.
Somewhere in the darkness below a frantic splashing and spluttered words could be heard.
‘Don’t panic,’ Glyn called out, ‘just tread water, help’s on its way.’ Instructing the man who had saved him from a similar fate to hold firmly onto his ankles, Glyn unhitched his pack in the confined space and lowered himself over the edge of the hole to reach down to the man struggling desperately in the water below.
Cold wet fingers clamped around his outstretched his hand in a vice like grip, and a voice gurgled ‘Thanks, that was a close one.’
‘See if you can climb up my body, use it as a rope,’ Glyn grunted, as he struggled to breath in such an unnatural position.
The man climbed up Glyn’s body, Glyn was hauled up from the lip of the shaft and all three of them crouched there in the near darkness, panting for breath.
‘Did you swallow any of the water?’ asked Glyn when he got his breath back.
‘I’ll say I did, must have been several litres. Come to think of it, it tasted quite good, but very cold.’ he said, his teeth chattering as he spoke.
‘Right,’ said Glyn, ‘let’s get you up to the surface and dry you out. If you feel no ill effects from your enforced drink, we’ll all have one and top up our supplies.’
It was some while later before everyone had crawled through the tumbled blocks and reached the outside of the ruined building, and having got out, no one was very keen to re-enter it to get water.
‘The light will begin to fade soon, so we’ll camp here for the night. We can shelter in the rock pile, as it should be a little warmer than out in the open.’ Glyn was feeling his old self once more.
There was no fire that night as they sat around eating another emergency ration from the dwindling supplies, and Glyn told everyone to drink as much water a they liked, for tomorrow they would refill their containers.
‘Well, at least one of us doesn’t reek to high heaven any more, but I very much doubt if you’ll get anyone else to take a bath down there.’ Arki said with a grin. Glyn nodded his agreement, and then a vagrant twist of air wafted up from under his arm, and he nearly changed his mind.
As the sun went down and the heavens lit up with their usual sprinkle of star dust, discussions as to what the building might have been began.
Arki thought the building had been very wide and high because of the huge amount of rubble in the gully, and the water hole had probably been a lift shaft servicing the many levels below ground.
Speculation as to how far down the building had gone was anyone’s guess, but the fact that the shaft hadn’t filled up with sand over the many years since the disaster, suggested it went down a lot further than they liked to think about.
Next morning, when the sun had risen sufficiently for the light to filter down through the jumble of concrete blocks, they transferred the emergency water supplies from one container to another so that most were filled again, and the empty ones were taken down to the water shaft, the tallest member of the group reluctantly being held by the ankles over the lip of the hole to refill the empties.
The sun had now risen enough to warm everyone up, and it was a relatively cheerful band of travellers which set off along the gully, still looking for a way to go south again.
The soft sands which they were unable to climb earlier, suddenly took on a different appearance. It was now darker in colour and the grain size had increased to some extent.
‘Let’s try again,’ said Glyn, turning right and up the slope. This time he didn’t sink into the surface, and the others followed suit as soon as it was obvious that the sand would take their weight.
About half way up the slope, the radiation counter began to chirp away, warning of an increase in deadly rays well above the normal background level.
Glyn uttered a string of expletives which made Arki look up in wonder, and the pair of them came back down the slope as fast as they could, the others having already turned back towards the gully.
‘If it’s not one damn thing, it’s another.’ commented Glyn, the frustration of not being able to follow his chosen course south beginning to show for the first time.
‘This gully is bound to end sometime.’ said Arki, hopefully.
Just before they broke for the midday rest, the sand on their right levelled out and then disappeared to be replaced with small stones and gravel, and as the height of the mound was decreasing rapidly, they stayed on the gully floor as the walking was easier.
What caused more excitement than the disappearing sands, were the thin scattering of dead plant stems, which grew in frequency as they plodded along.
‘At this rate we should hit green plants soon.’ someone called out, and a little cheer went up to join the noise of the snapping twigs as they rounded a bend in the gully.
Before them a flat plain stretched out towards the green hills in the distance, the plain itself being dotted about with the odd grey green plant, the colour deepening into the distance indicating an increase of vegetation.
They all stopped to look at the first real greenery since leaving the ship and its hydroponics gardens.
‘Don’t expect to see familiar plants like those we had in the gardens, I think most of them were specially bred for our benefit.’ said Glyn, not really sure if they were or not, but it was the easiest way to convince the others that they mustn’t take anything for granted.
‘Remember, don’t eat anything without first checking it with me or Arki, it could make you very ill or even kill you.’
A murmur of acceptance rippled around the assembled group, but after the black berries, they were eager to try anything to supplement the emergency rations.
Looking up at the sun, Glyn made a few mental calculations and indicated what he thought was south, and they then headed off across the plain towards what they assumed to be some kind of forest, as something green was sticking up well above the other growth which carpeted the hills.
The further they went, the more numerous were the plants, although not all were alive and flourishing. Dotted among those still thriving were small groups of dead material, as if something had poisoned little areas of the plain, and the plants had succumbed to what ever it was after their initial growth.
So far, there were no signs of berries or other fruiting bodies, and this lack of an alternative food source was disappointing to everyone, especially Glyn and Arki, who wanted above all else to preserve some of the emergency rations in case of future problems.
What had at first appeared to be a flat featureless plain, turned out to be a series of gently undulating folds in the landscape, the plant growth being more populous in the shallow valleys, thus indicating that adequate water was only present at these lower levels.
At one point the plants were so close together that they had to force their way through them. All was going well until a scream rent the other wise still air. Brendon was clutching his leg and complaining bitterly about the thorn which had entered his calf muscle as he wriggled his way through a particularly dense bush.
‘Why don’t you walk in line like all the others?’ queried Arki, ‘then this sort of thing wouldn’t happen to you.’