Forest Wood
Daniel Poulin
Jack Hickel couldn’t get the engines of the Monitor Seventh Series to kick in. His ship had been without power, drifting in space, for fourteen days. Jake was a patient man, but he wasn’t immortal. This was deep space. It wasn’t very safe for him to be stranded for a long time out here. Supplies of food, fuel, and oxygen could be made to last for a month, but fuel wasn’t much worth anything without working engines.
Hoping a friendly ship would be first to hear his automatic emergency signal, Jake went to work on the engine.
There was no way to get back to his original plans now. Jake Hickel was going to be a university professor from the time he was three years old. Teach medicine and get rich. That’s all that had been on his mind for fifteen years. By then, he was a young, handsome, studious boy who was interested in sports, girls, and science. His mother and father were both teachers at the university and authors of several books on eccrinology. They had given Jake free space to follow their footsteps into medicine, and he had every intention of doing so.
But then he had to be drafted into military service, and room for medical trainees had not been available. Jake was instructed in mechanical and aeronautical engineering and sent from star bas as ship mechanic on a military exploratory vessel of the Yi class. He was a good worker when he kept to himself. He met several women, but he didn’t marry.
When his release from service was final, he signed on with Aerospace Parts Suppliers and had worked for them for ten years when they gave in to his demand to be sole pilot on one of their ships. He had, at age thirty-five, grayed at the temples. His face showed wrinkles and a couple of scars, and his hands were callused. He wore rather loose fitting clothes of matural colors.
He worked for the owner of the vessel, A.P.S., for twenty years now, and he liked to think that he hated every second of it. The people back home found him snide and arrogant. He didn’t appreciate them interfering with his duties. Just because he ran a little advertisement for a repair shop, didn’t dive them the right to transfer parts and equipment and put in older parts.
When available supply rates were marked insufficient, the ship he administered was called into dock, and some non-manditory parts were taken and replacements were made for existing part supplies where necessary. As the ship navigated space, parts used on other ships were virtually broken in and tested on in real space activity.
And furthermore, if any larger ship in deep space had docking abilities, the Monitor Seventh Series could deliver parts when necessary. At the last base, the Monitor had serviced a Thanatos ship. It had needed parts that Jake could not supply except by stripping the parts from the Monitor itself.
After, the Monitor had staggered roughly through seventy five thousand miles of near space when the auxiliary engines had stopped down completely. Before that, the main engine had given out in murky space.
“Next time,” Jake said to himself, “we will have to strip fewer parts for those damn institute crafts.”
Jake picked up the inventory sheet that had been in a drawer behind the entry bulkhead. There were none of the section needed to fix the main engine. He had already gone outboard to check the burnt out engine and auxiliaries.
Some of the parts for the auxiliaries’ repairs were on the stock lists carried aboard, but not enough to make an engine run for over two seconds. Such a run was just too close to fatal. Half the rear end of the ship could be blown away, and that would definitely cause fissures in the cabin compartment. Complete loss of air would result, and the sersa-pak he would wear to avoid loss of air supply could only last fifteen hours.
Well, he would just have to stop and wait for ----
One oh two seven to sink-pact registry Monitor seven two zero eight. Do you read?” blasted through the overhead speakers, breaking Jake’s right ear drum. Suffering from the pain, he grabbed the mike from the wall with his left hand, hit the mike against the response switch on the control panel below and said, “This is monitor two seven zero eight. What is your classification?”
There was a hiss and a pop as Jake hurriedly turned audio to a third of full volume he had pressed in hope of receiving response from maximum distance. The speaker cleared and communication said, ”This is Lantis class one oh two seven. We are within four hours of your position. What assistance can we offer you?”
The onboard emergency signal of the monitor had already given the ship’s position in space to the com-relay of the rescuing ship Lantis.
Jake, in severe pain, found the manual for Lantis ships in the cupboard. He placed his left hand over his right ear and threw the book down on the floor with disgust. Twenty years with repair shops had taught him to never trust a Lantis ship captain, but now he might make an exception.
It wasn’t that Lantis ships weren’t friendly, it was just that they were operated by a colonial company.
Originally, it had been planned that each different class of ship would be owned and operated by each venturing nation, and such national ships did exist. But most governments had opted to be launching services for private enterprises. Connections between foreign nations and competing companies had risen and led cause to at least seventeen minor space wars. Lantis ships were often involved in war and ruthless policies.
Jake picked up the Lantis manual and read twenty pages before he found certainly that he could use the Lantis’ auxiliary engine parts to repair his own auxiliary engine.
Lantis one two zero seven had called to the Monitor several times while Jake read the manual. He kneeled down over the book on the bulkhead floor, a little blood dripping from his ear.
He pulled his mike down to his mouth and said, “Monitor seven two zero eight to Lantis one zero two seven. I am in need of engine repairs. Complete shutdown of main engines and both auxiliaries yesterday at eighteen thirty hours. Presently, life support capabilities of twelve days. Your auxiliary engine parts are compatible with my engine. Can you please assist?”
Jake waited for the speaker to respond. He wasn’t expecting a simple answer, but that’s what he got.
”Rendezvous with your position in four hours.”
Jake, leaving the manual on the floor, got up, replaced the mike in its former position and flipped his response switch to off. He turned his automatic emergency broadcast signal switch to stand-by. Before sitting down to wait for the Lantis approach and docking, he opened a drawer labeled ‘MEDICAL’ and took out a small container containing cotton. No use worrying about a broken ear drum now. He could have the problem taken care of at his next base stop-over, although it would mean an extra day. Jake pushed a small ball of cotton into his right ear.
“Nope. We aren’t going in for a rescue,” Gordon Wiley said to his staff in the Lantis ship. Lantis ships were used as major transport vessels, although the major design company had built them for tourist travel when initial orders for the ships had been placed. Lantises now were outfitted with a crew of four and a cargo capacity of a large oil tanker.
Gordon continued, “We cannot take the chance that it might be a setup. You know that one Monitor has gone pirate. She blew away a Bell-star liner just to confiscate parts for future sales. Besides, Crylis base is in urgent need of the supplies we carry.
Ensign Hull interrupted, “Sir, may I ask just one question?”
“Go ahead.”
“Why, sit, did you respond to the emergency broadcast at all?”
“That should be obvious, ensign. One of our sister ships might have been in trouble.”
Hull interrupted again, “It is a chance, sir, but we have to help out this Monitor. I know Hickel, and he’s a loner, not a pirate. Let’s drop off the parts and then be back on our way to Crylis.”
After a moment, Gordon answered, “You’re right ensign. Plot a course for the Monitor’s position.”
Crylis base was a forty man operation doing mineral exploration on one planet of a seven planet system. The exploratory team had nearly exhausted present equipment supplies and was in need of replacements. Capella base, actually a large space port city, had been contacted, and Lantis one oh two seven had been loaded with industrial supplies, parts and machinery and sent out to arrive at Crylis in twenty-eight days. The Lantis ship was also on route from Capella to Chylis.
Since colonization, Capella had been involved in three political disputes and two wars of economy. The disputes and wars had not been real by Earth standards. They were just arguments with a few men using a few billion dollars worth of equipment. It seemed, in this day and age, one could never tell when approaching any base, just whose hands power would be in. Sometimes, a private industry would take cover an existing base by using force. Other times, a government would co-opt a private ecomony base to use it for its own power infrastructure. Common trade -- economic functioning -- was madness.
Jake waited five hours before trying to recontact the Lantis ship. After several tries, he turned the emergency back from stand-by to on. He knew he never should have trusted a Lantis ship! His anger furthered the pain in his ear. He moved the volume on the broadcast receiver to half level and tried to rest.
He dreamed and it frightened him:
The rocket ship had just landed, and the crew aboard scanned the horizon of the forbidden landscape. Instruments indicated no life forms, although the air would support human life. The crew prepared to disembark.
Each member for the crew carried foodstuffs, water and a weapon. As they stepped from the ship, each was met with the sensation of being here before. Fresh air and solid ground and open space could account for that. But there was something else. If they had stepped out onto volcanic terrain on Earth, they might have felt the same. Perhaps it was the color (blue) of the sky.
The crew of five drew together and walked toward and out-cropping in the distance. Its form was that of the adobes of the southwest. When about two miles from the ships, each man fell in turn to the ground. He did not get up and he made no sound.
Trees began growing where the men had fallen. Oaks, maples, aspen, pines, and firs had soon grown to heights of seventy feet and cover forty square miles.
Animals began appearing from underbrush and burrows. Hares, foxes, deer and rodents ran madly about. The animals began feeding on the plant growth and on one another.
A spring began flowing in the woods and a narrow stream formed. Clouds in the sky dumped rain and the stream grew.
Now, on the horizon, near the rock outcropping, men appeared. Fifteen men came forth and brought to the woods weapons and equipment. Some men hunted animals and killed every ones. They took their meat and skins into the rocks.
Other man pumped from the stream great amounts of water. They transferred great barrels of water into the rocks, until the string was dry.
Still other men cut down trees with massive saws. They cut until not one tree in the forty square miles of forest wood was left standing. They took the wood into the rocks.
The wastes of the animals and plants that remains were lit afire and burned until nothing but ashes remained on the ground or in the air.
The rocket ship that had landed stood as the only indication that other man had been there. It would have stood to rust there, except that it exploded and scattered metal fragments about the terrain.
After sleeping nearly twenty hours, Jake woke suddenly to sounds coming from the docking bay. Clunks and load snaps issued throughout the bulkhead. He felt a faint rush through his entire body. He went quickly to his wardroom locker and dressed in a compressured suit in case of decompression after docking. After a pause, he thought and decided to turn his emergency broadcast signal switch to its off position.
Two men crawled through the docking bay and walked to the cabin in the front section of the ship. Jake checked compression gauges and walked back to the docking chamber and closed the docking hatch. After taking off his suit, he too walked to the front of the ship. The two men who had just entered likewise took off their suits.
The shorter of the two men spoke, “Hello, captain. How can we help?”
Jake asked, “Are you part of the Lantis crew?”
“No.”
“What ship have you docked with my Monitor?”
The taller man answered, “A Sri class ship number eight four two.”
Jake explained, “My main engine is burnt out and my auxiliary engines have quit. I’m needing a couple of replacement parts that I’m not carrying on this load.”
As the other men watched, Jake opened a drawer, took out and threw on the floor several manuals on top of the Lantis ship manual that was already there. Kneeling, he pulled out a manual for Sri class ships and read for ten minutes. The other men stared silently.
Jake turned to the men and said, “If I can tear apart one of your auxiliary engines, I can repair one of mine.”
The shorter man stepped forward, put out his hand, and said, “My name’s Joe Curtis. Pleased to be of service.”
Jake took his hand and said, “Jake Hickel. This is my Monitor.”
The taller man spoke, “Cal Trubull. We will cooperate in any way we possibly can. You can go to work on your auxiliary as soon as you get suited up.”
“Thanks,” was all Jake had to say.
He worked for four hours outboard before he had disassembled the Sri engine to the point at which he could take the parts he needed. Another four hours passed before he actually took the parts and used them to repair his own engine.
When he came back inside the Monitor, the other men had gone, but, of course, the Sri ship was still docked to his vessel.
Jake unsuited, went to the front of his ship, pushed his response switch on, and said, “Where do you fells get off to disappearing on me?”
He waited for a moment, and Cal Trubull’s voice said through the speaker panel on the wall, ”We just thought you would feel better working alone. Are you in any further need of our assistance?”
“I think I’ve got everything I need. See you fellas back on Capella.”
As Sri eight four two undocked, Jake sat down, feeling exhausted. He slept for fourteen hours.
The bleeding in his ear had stopped long ago, but it still hurt like mad. He stepped to the front control panel to test the engine. When he flipped the correct switches, all indicators showed the engine responding with full power. Everything looked fine for him to make it Capella base, make additional repairs, and make good on the parts he had borrowed form the Sri ship.
Four days later, Jake landed and docked at Capella, figuring on repairing the other engines procuring replacement parts for the Sri engine he had cannibalized form the Sri ship. He would return the parts to Cap and Joe when he caught up with them.
While repairing his engines, Jake got some uncanny news. It seemed that a Lantis ship, registered one oh two seven, had, of course, been on route to deliver industrial supplies to Crylis, when a major explosion aboard had destroyed the supplies and a good part of the ship. When the explosion was reported, Capella base sent out a rescue ship to look for survivors. By the time the Sri class ship arrived there, no survivors remained.
Jake was relieved he had not been docked to her when she exploded, but also deeply regretted having thought the Lantis crew had deserted him after promising rescue. They hadn’t deserted him. They had died!
