Tunnel in the Sky (15 page)

   
They never left him alone. Jack did the nursing and Rod hunted each day, trying to find items young and tender and suited to an invalid's palate. By the second day Jim, although weak and helpless, was able to talk without drifting off to sleep in the middle. Rod returned in the afternoon with the carcass of a small animal which seemed to be a clumsy cross between a cat and a rabbit. He encountered Jack heading down to fill the water skin. “Hi.”

   
'Hi. I see you had luck. Say, Rod, go easy when you skin it. We need a new water bag. Is it cut much?”

   
“Not at all. I knocked it over with a rock.”

   
“Good!”

   
“How's the patient?”

   
“Healthier by the minute. I'll be up shortly.”

   
“Want me to cover you while you fill the skin?”

   
“I'll be careful. Go up to Jim.”

   
Rod went up, laid his kill on the shelf, crawled inside. “Feeling better?”

   
“Swell. I'll wrestle you two falls out of three.”

   
“Next week. Jack taking good care of you?”

   
“You bet. Say, Rod, I don't know how to thank you two. If it hadn't been for-”

   
“Then don't try. You don't owe me anything, ever. And Jack's my partner, so it's right with Jack.”

   
“Jack is swell.”

   
“Jack is a good boy. They don't come better. He and I really hit it off.”

   
Jim looked surprised, opened his mouth, closed it suddenly. “What's the matter?” Rod asked. “Something bite you? Or are you feeling bad again?”

   
“What,” Jim said slowly, “did you say about Jack?”

   
“Huh? I said they don't come any better. He and I team up like bacon and eggs. A number-one kid, that boy.”

   
Jimmy Throxton looked at him. “Rod . . . were you born that stupid? Or did you have to study?”

   
“Huh?”

   
“Jack is a girl.”
  

   
There followed a long silence. “Well,” said Jim, “close your mouth before something flies in.”

   
“Jimmy, you're still out of your head.”

   
“I may be out of my head, but not so I can't tell a girl from a boy. When that day comes, I won't be sick; I'll be dead.”

   
“But . . .”

   
Jim shrugged. “Ask her.”

   
A shadow fell across the opening; Rod turned and saw Jack scrambling up to the shelf. “Fresh water, Jimmy!”

   
“Thanks, kid.” Jim added to Rod, “Go on, dopy!”

   
Jack looked from one to the other. “Why the tableau? What are you staring for, Rod?”

   
“Jack,” he said slowly, “what is your name?”

   
“Huh? Jack Daudet. I told you that.”

   
“No, no! What's your full name, your legal name?” Jack looked from Rod to Jimmy's grinning face and back again. “My full name is. . . Jacqueline Marie Daudet- if it's any business of yours. Want to make something of it?”

   
Rod took a deep breath. “Jacqueline,” he said carefully, “I didn't know. I-”

   
“You weren't supposed to.”

   
“Look, if I've said anything to offend you, I surely didn't mean to.”

   
“You haven't said anything to offend me, you big stupid dear. Except about your knife.”

   
“I didn't mean that.”

   
“You mean about girls being poison? Well, did it ever occur to you that maybe boys are pure poison, too? Under these circumstances? No, of course it didn't. But I don't mind your knowing now. . . now that there are three of us.”

   
“But, Jacqueline-”

   
“Call me 'Jack,' please.” She twisted her shoulders uncomfortably. “Now that you know, I won't have to wear this beetle case any longer. Turn your backs, both of you.

   
“Uh . . .” Rod turned his back. Jimmy rolled over, eyes to the wall.

   
In a few moments Jacqueline said, “Okay.” Rod turned around. In shirt and trousers, without torso armor, her shoulders seemed narrower and she herself was slender now and pleasantly curved. She was scratching her ribs. “I haven't been able to scratch properly since I met you, Rod Walker,” she said accusingly. “Sometimes I almost died.”

   
“I didn't make you wear it.”

   
“Suppose I hadn't? Would you have teamed with me?”

   
“Uh. . . well, it's like this. I . . .” He stopped.

   
“You see?” She suddenly looked worried. “We're still partners?”

   
“Huh? Oh, sure, sure!”

   
“Then shake on it again. This time we shake with Jimmy, too. Right, Jim?”

   
“You bet, Jack.”

   
They made a three-cornered handshake. Jack pressed her left hand over the combined fists and said solemnly, “All for one!”

   
Rod drew Colonel Bowie with his left hand, laid the flat of the blade on the stacked hands. “And one for all!”

   
“Plus sales tax,” Jimmy added. “Do we get it notarized?”

   
Jacqueline's eyes were swimming with tears. “Jimmy Throxton,” she said fiercely, “someday I am going to make you take life seriously!”

   
“I take life seriously,” he objected. “I just don't want life to take me seriously. When you're on borrowed time, you can't afford not to laugh.”

   
“We're all on borrowed time,” Rod answered him. “Shut up, Jimmy. You talk too much.”

   
“Look who's preaching! The Decibel Kid himself.”

   
“Well. . . you ought not to make fun of Jacqueiine. She's done a lot for you.

   
“She has indeed!”

   
“Then-”

   
“'Then' nothing!” Jacqueline said sharply. “My name is 'Jack.' Rod. Forget 'Jacqueline.' If either of you starts treating me with gallantry we'll have all those troubles you warned me about. 'Pure poison' was the expression you used, as I recall.”

   
“But you can reasonably expect-”

   
“Are you going to be 'logical' again? Let's be practical instead. Help me skin this beast and make a new water bag.”

   
The following day Jimmy took over housekeeping and Jack and Rod started hunting together. Jim wanted to come along; he ran into a double veto. There was little advantage in hunting as a threesome whereas Jack and Rod paired off so well that a hunt was never hours of waiting, but merely a matter of finding game. Jack would drive and Rod would kill; they would pick their quarry from the fringe of a herd, Jack would sneak around and panic the animals, usually driving one into Rod's arms.

   
They still hunted with the knife, even though Jack's gun was a good choice for primitive survival, being an air gun that threw poisoned darts. Since the darts could be recovered and re-envenomed, it was a gun which would last almost indefinitely; she had chosen it for this reason over cartridge or energy guns.

   
Rod had admired it but decided against hunting with it. “The air pressure might bleed off and let you down.”

   
“It never has. And you can pump it up again awfully fast.”

   
“Mmm. . . yes. But if we use it, someday the last dart will be lost no matter how careful we are . . . and that might be the day we would need it bad. We may be here a long time, what do you say we save it?”

   
“You're the boss, Rod.”

   
“No, I'm not. We all have equal say.”

   
“Yes, you are. Jimmy and I agreed on that. Somebody has to boss.”

  
 
Hunting took an hour or so every second day; they spent most of daylight hours searching for another team mate, quartering the area and doing it systematically. Once they drove scavengers from a kill which seemed to have been butchered by knife; they followed a spoor from that and determined that it was a human spoor, but were forced by darkness to return to the cave. They tried to pick it up the next day, but it had rained hard in the night; they never found it.

   
Another time they found ashes of a fire, but Rod judged them to be at least two weeks old.

   
After a week of fruitless searching they returned one

   
late afternoon. Jimmy looked up from the fire he had started. “How goes the census?”

   
'Don't ask,” Rod answered, throwing himself down wearily. “What's for dinner?”

   
“Raw buck, roast buck, and burned buck. I tried baking some of it in wet clay. It didn't work out too well, but I've got some awfully good baked clay for dessert.”

   
'Thanks. If that is the word.”

   
“Jim,” Jack said, “we ought to try to bake pots with that clay.”

   
“I did. Big crack in my first effort. But I'll get the hang it. Look, children,” he went on, “has it ever occurred to your bright little minds that you might be going about this the wrong way?”

   
“What's wrong with it?” Rod demanded.

   
“Nothing . . . if it is exercise you are after. You are and scurrying over the countryside, getting in and nowhere else. Maybe it would be better to sit back and let them come to you.”

   
“How?”

   
“Send up a smoke signal.”

   
“We've discussed that We don't want just anybody and we don't want to advertise where we live. We want people who will strengthen the team.”

   
“That is what the engineers call a self-defeating criterion. The superior woodsman you want is just the laddy you will never find by hunting for him. He may find you, as you go tramping noisily through the brush, kicking rocks and stepping on twigs and scaring the birds. He may shadow you to see what you are up to. But you won't find him.”

   
“Rod, there is something to that,” Jack said.

   
“We
    
found you easily enough,” Rod said to Jim. “Maybe you aren't the high type we need.”

   
“I wasn't myself at the time,” Jimmy answered blandly. “Wait till I get my strength back and my true nature will show. Ugh-Ugh, the ape man, that's me. Half Neanderthal and half sleek black leopard.” He beat his chest and coughed.

   
“Are those the proportions? The Neanderthal strain seems dominant.”

   
“Don't be disrespectful. Remember, you are my debtor.”

   
“I think you read the backs of those cards. They are getting to be like waffles.” When rescued, Jimmy had had on him a pack of playing cards, and had later explained that they were survival equipment.

   
“In the first place,” he had said, “if I got lost I could sit down and play solitaire. Pretty soon somebody would come along and-”

   
“Tell you to play the black ten on the red jack. We've heard that one.”

   
“Quiet, Rod. In the second place, Jack, I expected to team with old Stoneface here. I can always beat him at cribbage but he doesn't believe it. I figured that during the test I could win all his next year's allowance. Survival tactics.”

   
Whatever his reasoning, Jimmy had had the cards. The three played a family game each evening at a million plutons a point. Jacqueline stayed more or less even but Rod owed Jimmy several hundred millions. They continued the discussion that evening over their game. Rod was still wary of advertising their hide-out.

   
“We might burn a smoke signal somewhere, though,” he said thoughtfully. “Then keep watch from a safe spot. Cut 'em, Jim.”

   
“Consider the relative risks- a five, just what I needed! If you put the fire far enough away to keep this place secret, then it means a trek back and forth at least twice a day. With all that running around you'll use up your luck; one day you won't come back. It's not that I'm fond you, but it would bust up the game. Whose crib?”

   
“Jack's. But if we burn it close by and in sight, then we sit up here safe and snug. I'll have my back to the wall facing the path, with Jack's phht gun in my lap. If an unfriendly face sticks up- blooie! Long pig for dinner. But if we like them, we cut them into the game.