Chapter 29 Checking Spoon Orientations
The next morning they put the Rardat back out to intercept some of the solar blast energy two more times, which enabled it to build itself up to full size and be fully charged. They asked it to pulverize just a small amount of the cave being bored, enough for Geodon to fill his backpack; and then the Rardat set to fabricating a sandwich, which was quite a long job with no water on hand. But it was slowly finding the atoms for making the sandwich anyway.
They again checked their "spoon orientation" system for reminders of memory erasure and relationship with each other in stashed notes; then Nansella stayed in the hut while Geodon headed back to town. First he went to his house, the easiest; and sent the load of lava powder to the store. Even before waiting to see if the bank recorded the receipt of payment for the load, he went out the back way and began the long maze pathway to Nansella's House. Arriving there he found that it did not seem to have been disturbed anymore; he got out the measuring cup they had stashed there, and then he headed back to the hut at their outcropping, traveling by flashlight close to the ground as it had been dark for an hour by then.
Arriving at the hut, he gave the measuring cup to Nansella, and she began to use it as a sample for making a new mold, making it there by flashlight until too weary to continue on the project any more. Geodon had also brought some food from his house to add to their hoard of food; lots easier than using the Rardat's fabricated food. He also made a mental note to send for more supplies, from his house, next trip.
Nansella asked the Rardat to examine the various foodstuffs they now had, and asked which ones would be easiest for Rardat to make with the materials on hand. Rardat commented that it now had the composition of all those foodstuffs documented and could make any of them; pointing out that all Rardats were interlinked and of one mind and any of them could now do the same thing. This now included all the Rardats in hibernation in the airplane, as the container of water that Geodon had brought to the airplane, was enough to resupply all the Rardat's there back to minimal conscious interlinking with the rest of them.
Rardat also said that this had enabled them to approximate how long they had been sitting there in the airplane before Geodon and Nansella had revived them, about a hundred and fifty thousand years. Rardat also said that one of the fully charged Rardats that had been left at the hideout had briefly gone out to the open area one night and had uplinked to the Rardat's elsewhere in the star system, and advised them of the situation here, too. That Rardat had then returned down below and concealed itself. They all could communicate with each other through this amount of rock, but were still able to hide in case their rival aliens happened to come by. They pointed out that if that rival alien group did come past this planet, that humans would be at risk of being attacked by them; but there had been no sign of danger in this area in recent times, it added.
Geodon had almost stopped listening to this new report from Rardat's world, he being worried as to their own immediate future at the hands of their own species. Humans could be quite wanton predators too, historically speaking and present circumstances too. It was doubtful that they could remain here too long without getting the attention of PE which no doubt was aware that they had not erased memories again recently, after the most recent removing of the molds and casted measuring cups from Geodon's place once again.
A couple days later and they were getting cabin fever, even though they felt it safe enough to be outside on the outcropping direction out of view from town, as escape from the little hut some of the time. Nansella had made two more molds from the sample cup and had cast a half dozen new cups from those molds. And she had experimented with finding out what help Rardat might be in their situation, by having it pulverize some of the rock face where their hut was built against the lava outcropping, for use in making the cups; then she had it make a substantial cave of two meters depth, making the edges look like a possibly natural formation of the rock, and then she had it make hollows in the side of that short cave extension and make storage facilities in there In one of them she put one of the new molds and one sample measuring cup, before sealing the wall up to look like there was nothing there.
Geodon had the Rardat use its great pulverizing skills to pulverize a tube from the blasting area all the way to under the hut. Then he spent several days shoveling that tube out, and having Rardat use more solar blast energy to re-fuse the heap of powder back into ordinary looking lava rock, sealing up the entrance there too. It would be many months of solar blasting before that area would risk being re-opened. Back inside the hut, they asked Rardat to use some of its stored energy to pulverize a passageway from the floor of the small cave in the back of the hut, and when Geodon had dug that out, they were able to go down in the new tube way deep under the ground level of the outcropping. They also had Rardat bore small holes at each end of the new cavern all the way to the top of the outcropping, which would be used to circulate air in and out, once they had the means to move the air. Geodon made a trapdoor so they could go down into the cavern and the trapdoor hopefully looked enough like ordinary rock that it would not be noticed, a further hideaway prepared.
Rardat suggested that they also make a shaft from the cavern up to the top of the high lava outcropping, which was unscalable from the ground. Not safe from PE's helicopters; but they were rarely seen in the area. The tube would enable Rardat to go up and bask in the sunshine, ever alert for helicopters in the area, and would seal the top cover before going back down into the cavern. Geodon put some of their drinking water down in the cavern; it seemed to be the only thing the little critter needed. It would be able to remain in the cavern indefinitely if need be; it was kept there routinely now, except when a project was needed done by Rardat. It did not mind the isolation, reminding them that it was in constant communication with the other awake Rardats on the planet; and the latest adventurers it was having here with Geodon and Nansella had been providing entertainment for the Rardats.
Geodon asked just how small a Rardat could be reproduced and yet be able to do some things and eventually reproduce itself full sized at some future time. Rardat could make one of its kind about the size of a marble; it would be able to communicate with the other Rardats while that size, and its battery enough to make a pulverized hole in lava of only about a square meter before being depleted, while that size. So they had the Rardat reproduce itself also into these two tiny versions of itself, one for each; then they took the Rardat out and let it use solar blasts to rebuild itself and recharge its batteries, before returning it to the cavern.
Their supplies had gotten down to only about one person-week's supplies remaining, so Geodon readied himself to go do the routine again. He would first go to Nansella's house and return the sample measuring cup to its hiding place there, and get a few items from food stores there and one canister of water. Then he would go to his house, put the newly fabricated measuring cups onto the conveyor belt marked for delivery to the store, order a new supply of groceries mostly non-perishable but not entirely so, but food that would keep without being refrigerated for several days. Then he would leave this house as soon as he could do all that rapidly, and leave by the front door to head down the short path to their trail out to the outcropping, backpack stuffed with food and water, and carrying another sack of more such items.
Checking their spoon orientations and stashed notes to themselves, once again Geodon headed out toward town. And once again, he managed to return to the outcropping with the new supplies, enough for a person month, or two weeks for the two of them. But he reported that it appeared that his house had been entered again, things moved around as if investigating, but nothing else had been removed; the moneymaking molds and already made product had all been taken away before, so probably the intruders were looking for more of the same. Or they might have been looking for where Geodon might be, too. They both were getting increasingly nervous about getting apprehended again; they knew too much now, and the knowledge of the Rardats dare not fall into the wrong hands if they could prevent it.
Rardat eagerly took the assignment of spending time up on the top of the outcropping and being a lookout to provide a warning if anyone was headed this way; it got to sun itself up there as reward for this duty. They had the Rardat tote a small solar panel up to the top of the outcropping, and wires from it went down the tube to provide electrical power for lights down in the cavern, and ran a small blower that pulled air down one of the vent holes, which pushed it out of the other air vent so as to circulate fresh air in the cavern, when the humans were in it. Asking Rardat to record the pattern of the solar cell and wires, one day they had the Rardat duplicate it, and was stored in the cavern as part of their supplies. Geodon's communicator would not work down in the cavern, but he could keep its batteries recharged anyway, from the solar cells's output.
Geodon and Nansella developed a way to be in voice contact with each other via the marble-sized Rardat's they each carried, so Geodon could leave his communicator safely down in the cavern, while he went out on his food gathering trips. He hoped that the lack of communicator would be one less means for tracking him down. But he felt quite uncomfortable without his communicator; it had always been a constant presence for him his whole adult life, his connection to the larger world.
He would make one more foray to his house to get the supplies he had ordered, and take a new batch of both spoons and measuring cups - the two items which they had retained samples for which to make new molds - to be sent to the store for sale. People would want the knives and forks and plates too but for now they could not make more of them, until Geodon manually made new ones for samples for making a new set of molds. Then coming back here, they would stash all the food and supplies in the cavern, leaving the full sized Rardat to keep a lookout from there, while the two humans would go to town and then directly to the pylons and on to the lake area.