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A Camping Trip

  Mujib and Mydepa arranged to go on a camping trip to the biggest continent of the fourth planet.

  Mydepa was piloting their two person flier. Mujib was a very skilled pilot of Earth designed spacecraft, but the controls of the aircraft of the Green Planet were quite different. They landed on a beach and had a meal together while discussing interstellar travel. Mydepa had never been out of the system, but was planning to go in a few years. Despite not having any way of by passing the speed of light, her people commuted between their inhabited planetary systems on a regular basis. Their long life spans and large very fast sub light speed ships made this possible.

  This regular movement of people helped to maintain the genetic diversity of the small populations of each system as well as preventing the Idaltu language from splitting into many different ones.

  Mujib had had a succession of girlfriends for over a period of a hundred and forty years. Mydepa had also had experience of the opposite sex.

  They landed on an ocean beach. After lunch the tide started to come in. Because of the greater distance between the planet and its single moon the tides were only once a day, not the nearly twice a day of the tides of Earth before the Earth’s Moon was hit by the extrasolar comet.

  They carefully collected up their things. One of the conditions of visiting the wild areas of the planet was that no rubbish or other man made things be left.

  Mydepa flew their flier to a semi desert area near some forested mountains and they set up camp beside a lake for the night. There were plenty of wild animals descended from the ones brought from the Earth, but they rarely attacked Humans and were never hunted or interfered with. Mydepa had a little electric cattle prod like tool that could be used for self defence. It was very unusual for this to be needed; they went to sleep in their little tent without fear of interruption.

  The next day they explored the area and Mydepa was able to point out many of the animals and birds of the area. The lake was an important water source in a dry area. They did not move camp that day.

  The next day they watched the animals coming down to drink. They had little or no fear of Humans.

  The wind became stronger towards evening so they attached storm guys to the tent. The ground was hard, so they attached some of the strong cords to the flier to hold the tent down more reliably. In the night they heard a sound and got up to watch the magnificent sight of the nocturnal drinking of a herd of animals similar to Elephants or Mammoths, but about fifteen feet tall. Mujib whispered:

  “I wonder why they drink at night; an animal that big shouldn’t have much trouble from predators.”

  Mydepa whispered back:

  “Perhaps it’s just to avoid the heat of the day.”

  They went back to bed and slept longer than usual because they had been up part of the night. Mujib had got out of the tent and was thinking about making breakfast when he heard a loud bellowing and roaring. He called Mydepa and they had to run for their lives as a giant version of the animals that they had watched earlier came. This one looked to be twenty feet tall. It was clearly a male and Mujib guessed that it was on some sort of the equivalent of musth in Elephants.

  Certainly the huge animal appeared to be mad. It charged straight at their little flier and knocked it into the lake. The tent was attached to the flier by the strong storm guys and was pulled into the lake. The other ropes holding the tent were not strongly held down because of the difficulty of hammering the pegs in. All their equipment except the lightweight night clothes they were wearing was inside the tent and went into the lake.

  They watched in consternation from their concealment behind some bushes until the gigantic animal left. Mydepa said:

  “We’ve lost all the things we brought with us including our communicator, weapon and all the food.”

  Mujib suggested:

  “I’ll dive down and salvage all I can.”

  “Be very careful. The lake is deep at this point and it has little fish with very sharp teeth that move in schools and can tear all the flesh off a person or animal in minutes.”

  “They sound like Piranhas. They are mainly a problem when there’s blood in the water. I’ll be careful.”

  Mujib was a good swimmer and diver. He had learned to swim at an early age when he was a very young child in a mountain village in Bangladesh.

  Mujib came back empty handed and told Mydepa:

  “The flier went over an underwater cliff. Even when I swam down as far as I could I couldn’t even see the flier despite the good visibility. It must be well over a hundred feet deep.”

  Mydepa said:

  “It may be too deep for the automatic beacon to be picked up, even if the transmitter wasn’t damaged by the animal.”

  Mujib replied:

  “We were due back tomorrow. As soon as we are missing there will be a search for us.”

  “Yes.”

  “Meanwhile, we have no food. We’ll need to find some.”

  There was a bush with some inviting looking berries. Mujib tried one. He spat it out:

  “That was intensively bitter. Bitter taste usually indicates poison; my cousin Ali taught me that. He and his adoptive family had to survive in Siberia in winter. Siberia is a very inhospitable part of the Earth. If they could find food there we shouldn’t have much trouble in this area.”

  They tried eating the leaves of various plants, but most of them were fibrous and Mujib said:

  “These are probably not dangerous, but might be totally indigestible to Humans.”

  The only thing they found that seemed edible was a plant growing in shallow stream leading into the lake. Mujib said:

  “This tastes like the Nasturtiums that we grew in our garden at home in Bangladesh. When my father was nearly starving in India after recovering from a dangerous disease, Nasturtiums were one of the first types of food he could get so he always had a soft spot for them. I think this plant is similar to watercress.

  “There’s a marshy area visible further along the lake. There are probably more edible plants there.”

  “Mydepa warned:

  “We shouldn’t go too far from where the flier sank. If its beacon is still working it’ll guide the rescuers to us.”

  Mujib and Mydepa were both civilized people who had little knowledge of living off the land, although Mujib had bit more idea than his friend.