“Coating my blade in old Big droppings would be fun?”
“Well, we won’t know until you do it.”
He gives off a very male sigh. Then he puts the point of his five-foot long sword into the ground and leans on it, pushing it in all the way until only the hilt is above the surface.
“I’m not laughing yet,” he points out.
“But I am,” I assure him. “On the inside, I mean. Having a great time. Okay, pull it out.”
He grabs the hilt and slowly pulls the blade out of the ground with a wet, squelching sound that is too disgusting for words. The otherwise shiny blade is totally coated in a waxy, dirty white substance.
I move closer. “Hold it out.”
He holds the sword so I can smell it. It’s very intense.
“Okay,” I say, wiping the water from my eyes. “That is very interesting. We’ll bring home a couple of pots of that stuff, too.”
Brank’ox considers his carefully maintained and sharpened sword, now completely coated in old dinosaur dung. “I feel I must inform you that this is not sap.”
I can’t hold back a smile. “I know. This is better than any sap. Because this is guano.”
- - -
After a while Brank’ox jumps to stick his head out of the hole. No dactyl tries to peck a hole in him, so he powerfully hoists his giant bulk out of the cave and does a short patrol in the nearby area. Satisfied that the dactyls are in fact gone, he brings back two of the pots.
I fill them with the guano, using my knife and bare hands and trying to think of something else.
Finally, Brank’ox reaches a strong arm down and lifts me up as easily as a kid lifts a rag doll out of a toy chest.
He tries to clean the blade of his sword of the stinky matter, using leaves and sticks, but it will probably need a thorough cleaning and an encounter with a sharpening stone before it will shine again.
“Sorry about that,” I offer as we walk back to the rubber trees. “I just had to know how much there was.”
“It is of no concern,” he replies bravely. “It can still be used.”
The two pots are only about half full of sap, and the steady stream has slowed to one drop every couple of seconds.
“I think that’s all we can get from them for now,” I decide. “I’ll have to bring it back home and check that this actually is what I’m hoping.”
“Guano and sap,” Brank’ox says drily. “Truly, our mission has brought a rich harvest.”
I put the lids back on the pots and tighten them with leather straps. “Oh, shush. It doesn’t look like much, but it’ll be good. You’ll see.”
We carefully load the full pots into Brank’ox’s backpack.
I look up at the edge of the old spaceship. The success of my search makes me energetic. Probably the tequila helps, too.
“Do we have time for a little exploration?”
“As long as we stay away from the highest points,” Brank’ox says. “That’s how the irox spotted us.”
“Maybe we can walk around it, to the broken part? That’s much lower. We might be able to get in, too.”
9
- Dolly -
Brank’ox puts the backpack on and starts walking. “Very well.”
The vegetation is not as dense on the incline as it is on the lower part of the spaceship, and the going is much easier. Here and there the alien material is bared. It’s not quite metal and not quite plastic. If I could figure out how it works and how it’s made, it would be valuable knowledge for when I get back to Earth. But I wouldn’t know where to start.
It takes us less than an hour to reach the part where the crash broke the structure of the ship so it partly collapsed in on itself.
I peer in among the cracks, some barely large enough for a finger, others wide enough to allow a person to pass through. It’s actually not as badly collapsed as I thought.
Inside, it’s a dark chaos of alien construction, probably not safe at all. Still, I feel drawn to it. It’s unexplored alien technology. I may never return here, and whichever secrets are in there might be lost forever. And of course, Brank’ox makes me feel safe and brave.
“Shall we go inside?”
“It appears dead and deserted,” he observes. “As long as I have room to swing my sword.”
I take a step through the widest crack. The sun illuminates the upper parts very