The Dream Factory

Rescue Mission

Rescue Mission

Harrison dropped his kit bag down, carefully lowered his bulky frame into his makeshift deckchair, held his breath and listened apprehensively as the frame creaked under the strain. Satisfied it was not going to collapse he sat back until he lay outstretched facing up into the star littered night sky. Feeling along the ground with his hand he lifted up his bi-oculars, his recycled water drum and placed them on his stomach. Then he let out a long sigh of relief. 

Scanning the sky through his bi-ocular he picked out the stars he was so familiar with and murmured to himself.  

'Night after night, night after night 

We stuck, not breath or motion 

As idle as a painted ship 

Upon a painted ocean'

Wearily he dropped the bi-ocular from the sky onto the mountains, focused for a moment on shattered frame of the Ranger ship and finally, thrown into his vision, unnaturally large, the rock piled mound of Stilgoe's grave.  

Poor Stilgoe. How long had it been? Ten years? Must have been. Ten years since Stilgoe had gone. Ten years since he'd stumbled and fallen, the rock he was carrying going down with him with a dull thud snapping the bones of his rib cage as it went. He lay there blindly staring up at the night sky while his body spasmed up big blots of blood across his pale face. It took Harrison so long to get to him that by the time he'd reached down and picked up his hand he was dead. 

He'd laboriously dragged Stilgoe's body as far from where the Ranger had come down as possible. The ground was too hard to dig, it took him two days to cover him in rocks. When it was done Harrison didn't say anything, he wasn't a religious man. He'd set Stilgoe's bible at the grave's head like a miniature tombstone. Stilgoe had his name written in it, if anyone ever came to look. Harrison doubted that would ever happen. Afterward he was so exhausted he'd lain in his bunk in the wreck of the Ranger for a week before he could return to work on the landing pad.  

Stilgoe should have been more careful. 

Stilgoe wasn't a stayer. Not like him. When they'd first gone down Stilgoe had taken it hard. Never thought the Company would send a rescue ship. 'That little tin pot outfit,' he'd raged at Harrison. 'What do you think? They won't send anyone to find us. They'll pay our families off and then just write the cost off in the books. It'll be a dam sight cheaper than sending a ship out to search for us.'  

Harrison agreed about the Company but didn't say so. 'One day Stilgoe someone will come and when they do we'll be ready for them. Maybe not a Company ship, but someone. They'll not end up like we did, all smashed up on the rocks. We'll have it all ready for them. You'll see. When they come we'll be ready.' 

They'd started that day. Clearing the rocks for a landing circle. Big enough to get a decent sized rocket ship down on safely. 'We don't want them rolling up and deciding it's too dangerous for them to land Stilgoe. They'll come and look and see it's all flat and smooth and you and I will be ready. All set to go home.' 

For years they'd laboured under the eternal star lit sky. It was hard working under two and half G. Bit by bit clearing the rocks from the centre of the circle they'd marked out on the unyielding surface and piling them up in a ring round the edge. They'd made a wooden sledge and like pack animals they'd harnessed themselves up and pulled the rock laden sledge over the uneven surface. Hard, back-breaking work under the unyielding blackness of the night.  

Mind you both he and Stilgoe were built for the job. Both from good miner stock. Coming from the Outreaches they both knew a day's work when they saw it. They'd inherited the miner's features of the sort you'd see in the untamed mining towns of the Outreach planets. Short thick legs, wide shouldered and deep chested. Built to work.