Jerry Oltion - Anywhere but Here

After a minute, it dropped another pound.

“Son of a bitch,” he said. It had to be the way the rubber got pushed outward by the air rushing past it. It probably folded over, and didn’t seal right when he latched down the door again.

He used the valve in his door to let all the extra pressure out, then opened the other door, climbed out, and went around to look at the driver’s door. Sure enough, the rubber at the top had pooched out through the crack between door and frame. He went back around and popped all the inner latches, then went around to the outside again and opened the door. The rubber seal snapped right back into place.

“Son of a bitch,” he said again.

“What’s the matter?” Donna asked from her spot on the picnic blanket.

“We didn’t have to do all that dumb shit with the tires. We had one more cabful of air in the tank; if we’d just opened the doors all the way, then closed them again and refilled the cab, we’d have been fine.” He bonked his head against the door frame a couple of times. “Stupid, stupid, stupid.”

“Hey,” Donna said. “Don’t beat your self up for not pulling rabbits out of hats, either. How could you have known?”

“I don’t know. I should have, though.”

She looked at the door, then at him. “We used the same trick all the way from Mirabelle, and it didn’t start leaking until after we landed on the planet with bad air. Why would you suspect it to suddenly start then?”

That was a good question, he had to admit. Why had it started leaking then, and not before? Because he’d been more cautious at first, just cracking the seal a little bit and letting the air out slowly? He and Donna had completely vented the cab to space to get the bad air out before they’d refilled it and discovered the leak; maybe it took a lot of air to roll the rubber seal over. But if that was the case, then why had it done that just now? He’d only let out a couple pounds. Maybe because he had popped the latch all the way open, knowing that the reaction wouldn’t pitch the pickup over while it was on the ground.

It took a little experimentation to prove his theory, but that turned out to be it. If he let air out gently, it wouldn’t turn the seal inside out, but if he let it out in a big blast, even for just a few seconds, it would.

Okay, so now he knew. One more thing to cross off the list of things to do before they could fly again. That left only the two biggies: navigation and power.

Donna had gone back to the computer while he tracked down the leak. From what he could tell looking over her shoulder, she was indeed trying to teach herself orbital mechanics. She stopped long enough to help him fold up the parachute when it was dry, but she went right back to it afterward, and she was still at it when the sun hit the horizon.

“Hey, come on,” he said, kneeling down beside her. “You’ve been at that all day. Time to relax a little. Look at the sunset.” It was going down in the mouth of the valley, dropping through layers of clouds as it neared the horizon and giving them silver outlines while coloring them red at the same time.

Donna reluctantly closed the computer and put it in the camper, and the two of them stood beside the pickup and watched the sun go down over the plain beyond the end of the valley. If the ocean was out that way, it was lost in the haze of distance or completely over the horizon.

“I think the days are longer here,” Donna said.

Trent laughed. “We’ve had one hell of a long day, that’s for sure. I’m ready for a long night in the sack.”

After the sun went down, they fixed another sandwich for supper and ate it on the picnic blanket while they watched the sky grow dark and the unfamiliar stars come out, then they retreated into the camper for the night. Their surprise visit by Onnescu’s native “hoodlums” had made Trent reluctant to spend much time outside in the dark until he’d learned a little more about what kind of nocturnal animals might live around here. He made sure the air vents were open so they would have fresh air, and latched the door tight.

They folded the table down and made the bed, using the seat backs and bottoms for their mattress, but not long after they crawled in, Donna sat up and said, “I can’t sleep. I’m too close to figuring out how to do the math.” She reached for the computer, but Trent pulled her back down.

“Give it up for today. The problem will still be there in the morning. You’ll be fresher at it tomorrow anyway.”

“But I can’t sleep. I’ve got all these numbers running around in my head.”

“Like what? Seventeen? Forty-two?”

“Five hundred and thirty-seven thousand.”

“That’s a lot of number to be runnin’ loose. Why don’t you round down to half a million and then forget the zeroes? Doesn’t seem like near as much then.”

She poked him in the side. “All right, smarty pants. But if the answer comes to me in a dream, it’s going to be off by thirty-seven thousand kilometers an hour. Who knows how many light-years away from home that’ll leave us.”

“Close enough for the navigation program to recognize the stars,” Trent said. “Go to sleep.”

“I’ll try.”

She laid her head on his chest and he put his arms around her, but after a few minutes he realized he was just as wide awake as she was. He had numbers running around in his head, too. His were kilowatts instead of kilometers, but they were just as insistent. How was he going to generate enough power to recharge the batteries?

There were no windows in the camper. The three round moons of the air vents provided the only path for daylight to shine in, and with the mountain blocking their view to the east and the tree overhead, there wasn’t any morning light to speak of, either. Just a pale glow from the sides and overhead. Trent had no idea how long he’d slept, but it felt like a week, and he could have done another if his bladder hadn’t insisted he rise.

He stepped outside to find the sky gray and rain misting down silently in the meadow. The air was chilly, but not cold enough that he could see his breath. The ground was still dry under the tree. He went around to the other side to pee, but he hadn’t brought his armor, so he didn’t venture beyond the edge of its canopy. There was no evidence of birds overhead today, but those blue-gray scales of theirs would blend in perfectly with clouds, and he wasn’t willing to find out the hard way that they hunted in the rain.

The air smelled wonderful. Either the tree or the ground cover out in the meadow was giving off a new aroma now that it was wet; a crisp, minty scent that made up for the gray light and the rain.

Trent was about to go back to the camper and fix breakfast when he noticed a dark gray shape moving across the upper end of the meadow. It was hard to make out detail through the mist, but it looked like it was about the size of an elk, and it moved on four legs. Its head was big compared to its body, like a buffalo, and its back seemed segmented rather than furry. Was it armor plated? Trent backed away slow and easy, went around to the far side of the pickup to open the door and get out the binoculars, and left the door open while he leaned on the hood and focused on the new animal.

It was definitely armored. Big overlapping plates of bone or horn or some such covered its head and back. Its legs were thick and stumpy to support all that weight. That nixed the first idea that had come to mind: shoot it for the meat and for the full-body suit of armor. It might provide more complete protection from cupids than the stuff he had made yesterday, but not if he couldn’t carry it.

Trent watched the animal stump along, bending down every few steps to eat a mouthful of the low, leafy plants that covered the ground. It came to a bush and stripped half the leaves off that, too, by closing its mouth around one branch at a time and sliding it upward.