Twistor by Cramer John; Wolfe Gene;

Author:Cramer, John; Wolfe, Gene;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dover Publications
Published: 2016-11-27T05:00:00+00:00

17

Wednesday Evening, October 13

The fading light through the door-hole was almost gone. David looked at his watch, noting that it was just after 7:40. Sunset came at the same time in this universe, he thought. He peered into the darkness. He thought he could make out vague shapes flitting among the trees. Bats? Or something else? He shrugged and pulled up the ladder, rolling it into a rough cylinder and placing it on the floor near the opening. He covered the door-hole for the night with a large circle of aluminum-covered Fiberglas insulation, secured in place by several horizontal wooden branches tied to the nails driven into the wall.

David felt a sense of satisfaction. The children had been adequately fed, and he'd had enough also. He'd built a cook fire on the forest floor. At first he'd been very careful with the fire, concerned that a larger oxygen fraction in the air or combustibles in the wood might make a fire in this world more dangerous and harder to control. He remembered that some archaeologists had found air bubbles in eighty-million-year-old amber that had a very high oxygen content. But the fire was very Earth-normal, so David had proceeded with dinner. They had dined on their small supply of instant soup, Vickie's peanut butter, and selections from David's sack lunch. He'd set the CCD camera to make stills of them all sitting together at their first dinner.

David had also sampled some 'experimental' items: nuts, berries, several mushrooms, and some tuberous roots they'd found growing in the forest near the tree-house. He had made careful notes on where the various items had been found, their appearances, and their flavors. Several items he had rejected after a tiny taste. His small taste samples indicated that one of the nut varieties was quite delicious. A variety of pink berry was very sweet and tasty. One of the mushroom types looked exactly like the morels that grew in the Cascade forests near Seattle. Fried with a dab of peanut butter, it tasted truly wonderful. Nevertheless, he limited his intake to small amounts consumed at fifteen-minute intervals, and he'd refused the children's requests to share in these 'snacks.' He explained that explorers had to be extremely careful about poisonous plants.

Now they were all in their beds. David had decreed that they must be in bed by sundown. The children had not been happy with the early bedtime. Melissa suggested that they sit down below around the cook fire and sing songs, as her family often did on camping trips. David had rejected this suggestion because of the possibility of dangerous animals. She was unhappy and suggested that a high priority should be given to the making of lamps and candles so they could work in the treehouse in the evenings. He complemented her for having a good idea. Some of Sam's tools did have rechargeable batteries, and there was a small solar recharger in the toolbox, but candles seemed a better solution to the problem of illumination.

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