“There it is,” Bandon said. “Don’t know what it’s doin’ in a treetop. But there’s plenty of stuff there to make a hut and whatever else we need. And some good rope, too. Not that it’s goin’ to do us any good,” he added.
“It’s a parachute,” Chester said in wonder. “I was under the impression that there were no aeronautics here, other than helis, and you don’t need parachutes with those. They let themselves down gently if the power fails.”
“What other kind is there?” Bandon inquired.
Chester explained to Bandon the function of a conventional flying machine.
“I never heard of any such thing,” Bandon said, shaking his head. “But it seems like I remember some kind of big gas bag some fellows put on some kind of show with, once when I was a kid back in the Tricennium. They went sailin’ right up into the sky. Damnedest thing you ever saw.”
“I wonder what happened to the pilot who came down in this?”
“Oh, him,” Bandon said. “He’s right over here.” He led the way across the carpet of leaves under the giant trees to a thicket. “In there.”
Chester parted the brush and looked into a bower of woven branches thatched with dried grass. On the dirt floor were three hand-made earthenware pots and a woven basket with the desiccated remains of what might have once been fruit. Beside the basket lay the skeleton of a man.
“Good Lord!” Chester muttered. “Poor devil.”
“Can’t figure what killed him—’less it was old age,” Bandon said. “No arrows stickin’ in him, no broken bones. Plenty of food and water, I’d say.”
“He must have bailed out of his balloon, landed here and found himself marooned,” Chester said. “But surely he could have signaled in some way . . . ”
“Must have been a long time back—before our town was built. And there’s no other Tricennium for twenty miles.”
“What about the Center? It’s not more than five miles.”
“They just built that a year or two back. Nope, he was stuck, all right. Just like us. We might just as well hunker down beside him—”
“But why didn’t he use the parachute? He could have rigged it somehow and jumped!”
Bandon eyed the sagging yellow-white cloth above. “Jump off the cliff with that trailin’ behind him, hey? I dunno. I’d hate to try it.”
Chester hitched up his belt. “You may just have to. Come on, let’s get it down from there.”
* * *
Chester and Bandon stood gazing sadly at the broad expanse of weather-spotted and puckered nylon stretched on the ground before them. Two long, dark tears in the material ran from edge to edge.
“I see why he didn’t use it,” Chester said glumly. “Well, that’s that. The material’s still sound, though. We might as well cut it up in sections for easy hauling and get back to work on our hut.”
“Don’t reckon we could sew it up,” Bandon said doubtfully.
“Not a chance. We might manage to work some threads loose and lace it back together, but it wouldn’t hold air. And with a double load—well, we’d splash when we hit.”
Bandon winced. “Let’s get busy. I’ll salvage those pots and the basket. Must be water near here, ‘s the reason he camped here.”
An hour later, having used Bandon’s bone-handled hunting knife to dissect the parachute, Chester folded the sections, coiled the lines and settled down to wait for his companion’s return. He could hear him crashing through nearby underbrush.
Bandon emerged, red-faced and scratched. “Found it,” he said. “Little pothole, damn near buried in prickle bushes. We’ll spend half our time just getting’ enough water to stay alive on.”
“I’ll use the hatchet to clear it away,” Chester said. “Let’s be going.”
“Why not built right here?”
“I like the open glade near the edge better. Then, too, this place has certain morbid associations.”
“You mean him?” Bandon nodded toward the dead man’s hut. “Shucks, he can’t hurt us.”
“I’d like to be able to look out and see the rest of the world. Let’s be moving. We have a lot to do before we can consider ourselves settled in.”
* * *
“Squirrel food,” Bandon said, spitting blackberry seeds. “Only three days on squirrel food, and my britches are so loose they’d fall off if I didn’t have ’em roped on.”
“Why don’t you finish up that bow? Then maybe you’d be able to eat rabbit for a change,” Chester said cheerfully. “Personally, I like berries.”
“Bow’s made,” Bandon said shortly. “But I can’t string it till I get a rabbit to gut. And I can’t get a rabbit to gut till I—”
“Why don’t you use nylon?”
“That stuff? Stretches like rubber. You couldn’t throw an arrow fifty feet with that. And besides, I need arrowheads and feathers and glue. Now, I can make up a swell glue—just as soon’s I can shoot a few critters.”
“Chip some heads out of stone,” Chester suggested. “And you ought to be able to find a few feathers around an old nest or some such place.”
“I’ve got plenty of nice arrow shafts ready. Good tough, springy wood. And light.”
Chester fingered an arrow. “You do nice work, Bandon. Too bad you left the part of the world where it would be appreciated. You could have fitted in nicely as an archery expert.”
“I wouldn’t have been an archery expert if I hadn’t thrown off the shackles first.”
“Still, if you go back . . . ”
“Ha!” Bandon looked out over the airy vista of distant ridges. “Unless we turn into birds, that’s not likely.”
Chester sat up suddenly, flexed the arrow shaft in both hands.
“Bandon, what kind of wood is this? Is there a good supply of it?”
Bandon raised an eyebrow at the excitement in Chester’s tone. He waved a hand. “The woods are full of it. What—”
“You say you can make glue?”
“Glue? Sure I can make glue. All you have to do is boil down a few carcasses . . . ”
Chester was on his feet. “Bandon, you get that bow of yours working. I don’t care if you string it with shoelaces. Bring me in a brace of rabbits and boil up a pot of stickum.” He picked up the hatchet, its blade bright now from use. “I’m headed for the tall timber.”
“Hold on, here. What’s goin’ on? We’ve got plenty of firewood; and I’ve lost too much weight to go traipsin’ off on a rabbit hunt.”
“For what I’ve got in mind, the lighter you are, the better. And I’m not hunting firewood; I’m after what they call aircraft spruce.”
“Chester, just what have you got in mind?”
“We’re going to leave here, Bandon. It will take a few days, but we’ll travel in style.”
“In style?”
“To be precise—in a home-built glider.”
* * *
“She’ll be built along the lines of an old-time training ship,” Chester said. “Neat and simple.”
“Simple? We’ve already got more junk lined up to go into this contraption than it would take to stock a store. Five kinds of wood, cloth, wire, string, glue—”
“And we’re still grossly understocked, believe me. But I think we can do it.”
“I don’t see the need of usin’ my knife to make that thing,” Bandon said, watching Chester take long, curling shavings from a spruce spar with a jack plane made from a chunk of wood and the knife blade.
“It’s a lot more efficient than a knife for trimming up structural members,” Chester said. “How’s the glue factory coming?”
“Oh, I’ve got enough glue to feather a million arrows. Can I quit boilin’ down rabbit now and fix a couple to eat?”
“Sure. But don’t overdo it. I wasn’t kidding when I said the lighter we are, the better. Then I wish you’d go to work stripping down that clothesline; there’s ten strands of steel wire under the plastic cover. We’ll use that for diagonal frame-bracing. And I’ll need lots of the nylon parachute lines unraveled, too. Reel it on a stick as you get it worked apart.”
Bandon set to work. “I still don’t see how you figure to flap the wings, Chester. To hold us up, you’ll have to have a spread of maybe ten, twelve feet.”
“Thirty,” Chester said. “And a five-foot cord. Not a very efficient layout, but I’m afraid it’s the best we can do with the materials at hand. Figuring us each at one-fifty—or a little less, if we eat sparingly for another week—and the airframe at two hundred pounds, that works out to three pounds per square foot. And we won’t flap our wings—unless I’ve miscalculated badly.”
“Well, I guess you know what you’re doin’.”
“Certainly. In my youth I was a fanatical model-plane builder. Free-flight, control-line, RC, hand-launch—the works.”
“You done much flyin’ off cliffs?”
“Well, if you mean in full-scale aircraft—”
“I do.”
“Actually, none.”