52 Marooned! (1/2)
Rafi Susanto and Gabriel Cruz sat side by side on beach and looked at the ocean, well out of earshot of the others. They were talking in soft voices, just to be on the safe side.
They'd spent a full month on the island, and they looked it. They were dirty - washing in the thin stream of brackish water they'd found was highly problematical. They had both lost weight - Cruz was happy with that because he'd been seriously overweight, but Susanto wasn't. Their clothes were stained and torn, here and there. They had haggard faces and bloodshot eyes, constantly irritated by the salty ocean air.
Although they'd kept watch around the clock, they hadn't spotted a single passing ship, a single aircraft. A three-man team of sailors from the Golden Dawn had been dispatched to the island's southern coast a week earlier with a supply of food, binoculars, a flare gun, and a dozen flares. They were to keep their eyes peeled for a boat from Adamstown on Pitcairn Island, just over a hundred kilometers to the southwest.
Gabriel Cruz had argued for moving the camp to the southern shore of their island, Henderson Island, many times. But Susanto successfully opposed that move, pointing out that his grounded ship, the Golden Dawn, contained plenty of stores and equipment that might yet prove useful.
As of the previous day, that argument became null and void. The tide had finally dragged the Golden Dawn out into the ocean. Not very far: parts of it superstructure were still visible above water at low tide. But it had definitely ended its life as a supply depot.
Its loss hadn't been the tragedy it might have been for its stranded passengers and crew: all food, water, and alcohol supplies that had been already taken off the doomed ship. What was far worse was that those supplies had dwindled alarmingly. Cruz and Susanto estimated that they would be gone within a week. After all, there were eighteen mouths to feed.
”We have to move camp to the southern shore, Rafi,” said Cruz.
Susanto shot him a quick glance. Cruz was staring at the ocean, his mouth set in a bitter, disappointed line. He added:
”Or maybe it's time we sent out our boat to Pitcairn. There's a northwestern wind. The boat already has a mast. I know it's small and intended for the emergency beacon, but we could still rig a sail. Half a dozen men would be enough to man the oars around the clock. For a couple of days, anyway. And we won't need more than a couple of days to reach Adamstown.”
”Not with eighteen people aboard.”
”I'm not saying we should all go. What I have in mind is sending an expedition that will bring help. Six of the strongest oarsmen in your crew, and one of us. The rest stays here.”
”I don't know,” said Susanto. ”If something happens to the boat... There is no guarantee of success, right? You saw the map. You know Pitcairn is less than half the size of our island. It's easy to miss it. And then the next landfall is on the fucking Antarctic.”
”We have navigational instruments.”
”Yeah. Instruments that no one knows how to use properly.”
”I'm not talking about the sextant. We've got a compass, haven't we? In fact we've got two. All we need is to set a course, and stick to it. Even if we miss Pitcairn by a short distance, we should still at least see it.”
”Unless we pass it at night, and there's a storm,” Susanto said darkly.
”There is no other option, Rafi. I know it and you know it.”
”What about all that stuff?” asked Susanto, jerking a thumb over his shoulder. They both turned their heads to look at the huge mound of items taken from the cube. There were exactly sixty one thousand of them: fifty thousand timon implant kits, ten thousand hiber beds, and a thousand documentation scrolls.
They'd stopped taking items from the cube a week earlier. They'd both become convinced the cube could dispense an unlimited amount. It still stood there, just a few steps from their camp. It continued to glow softly even in bright sunlight.
”We'll leave everything as is,” said Cruz. ”There's no sense carrying it all across the island. The cube can't be moved, anyway. We'll just return here when we've straightened out our own situation.”
”What if the cube is gone by then? And someone comes along and takes all this stuff that we've unloaded? It took days, Gabriel.”
”It seems unlikely someone will, as you put it, come along and take anything at all. We haven't seen anyone come along for a whole month, haven't we?”
”Gabriel, we can't risk anyone else discovering the cube. Because if they do, they'll replicate in the New World just like we did. They will find gold just as we did. And they will find timon just like you did. And it seems to me that in the very near future timon will be much more precious than gold.”
”They'll also find that the place is full of dinosaurs and other interesting, man-eating fauna. Just like we did. And give it a rest, just like we did.”
”You don't want to go there again?”
”Of course I want to go there again. But much, much better prepared. It would also be a good idea to try a different spot for replication.”
”But you found timon and gold on that hill right next to the beach on which we'd replicated.”
”It will be present elsewhere, I'm sure. It seems that this island is huge in the New World. And finding timon and gold isn't enough. We have to find that stone called tiger rock, too. I hadn't seen any.”
”Neither have I. But maybe we didn't look hard enough. It was difficult, with all these, with all these distractions.”
Cruz laughed.
”Distractions is right,” he said.
They fell silent for a while; they were both thinking about their last visit to the New World. It was the first time they'd gone together, with eight crewmen from the Golden Dawn. Susanto wanted to see with his own eyes the timon deposit Cruz claimed to have found.