“Yes,” agreed Roy. He looked around. “It might be even better farther down.”
“It might be.”
They went on.
In time the stream widened out, there were no more caves, and the canyons gave way to a broad savannah, treeless except along the banks of the river. Rod sniffed. “I smell salt.”
“You ought to. There’s ocean over there somewhere.”
“I don’t think so.” They went on.
They avoided the high grass, kept always near the trees. The colonists had listed more than a dozen predators large enough to endanger a man, from a leonine creature twice as long as the biggest African lion down to a vicious little scaly thing which was dangerous if cornered. It was generally agreed that the leonine monster was the “stobor” they had been warned against, although a minority favored a smaller carnivore which was faster, trickier, and more likely to attack a man.
One carnivore was not considered for the honor. It was no larger than a jack rabbit, had an oversize head, a big jaw, front legs larger than hind, and no tail. It was known as “dopy joe” from the silly golliwog expression it had and its clumsy, slow movements when disturbed. It was believed to live by waiting at burrows of field rodents for supper to come out. Its skin cured readily and made a good water bag. Grassy fields such as this savannah often were thick with them.
They camped in a grove of trees by the water. Rod said, “Shall I waste a match, or do it the hard way?”
“Suit yourself. I’ll knock over something for dinner.”
“Watch yourself. Don’t go into the grass.
“I’ll work the edges. Cautious Kilroy they call me, around the insurance companies.
Rod counted his three matches, hoping there would be four, then started making fire by friction. He had just succeeded, delayed by moss that was not as dry as it should have been, when Roy returned and dropped a small carcass. “The durnedest thing happened.”
The kill was a dopy joe; Rod looked at it with distaste. “Was that the best you could do? They taste like kerosene.”
“Wait till I tell you. I wasn’t hunting him; he was hunting me.”
“Don’t kid me!”
“Truth. I had to kill him to keep him from snapping my ankles. So I brought him in.
Rod looked at the small creature. “Never heard the like. Must be insanity in his family.”
“Probably.” Roy started skinning it.
Next morning they reached the sea, a glassy body untouched by tide, unruffled by wind. It was extremely briny and its shore was crusted with salt They concluded that it was probably a dead sea, not a true ocean. But their attention was not held by the body of water. Stretching away along the shore apparently to the horizon were millions on heaping millions of whitened bones. Rod stared. “Where did they all come from?”
Roy whistled softly. “Search me. But if we could sell them at five pence a metric ton, we’d be millionaires.”
“Billionaires, you mean.
“Let’s not be fussy.” They walked out along the beach, forgetting to be cautious, held by the amazing sight. There were ancient bones, cracked by sun and sea, new bones with gristle clinging, big bones of the giant antelope the colonists never hunted, tiny bones of little buck no larger than terriers, bones without number of all sorts. But there were no carcasses.
They inspected the shore for a couple of kilometers, awed by the mystery. When they turned they knew that they were turning back not just to camp but to head home. This was as far as they could go.
On the trip out they had not explored the caves. On their way back Rod decided that they should try to pick the best place for the colony, figuring game, water supply, and most importantly, shelter and ease of defense.
They were searching a series of arched galleries watercarved in sandstone cliff. The shelf of the lowest gallery was six or seven meters above the sloping stand of soil below. The canyon dropped rapidly here; Rod could visualize a flume from upstream, bringing running water right to the caves. . . not right away, but when they had time to devise tools and cope with the problems. Someday, someday but in the meantime here was plenty of room for the colony in a spot which almost defended itself. Not to mention, he added, being in out of the rain. Roy was the better Alpinist; he inched up, flat to the rock, reached the shelf and threw down his line to Rod snaked him up quickly. Rod got an arm over the edge, scrambled to his knees, stood up and gasped, “What the deuce!”