IN LESS than half an hour, during which there had been no change in Jacqui’s condition, Major returned with another, much smaller Sou: barely two feet long. A robot carrying what looked like a toolbox also appeared. “My companion here is a doctor and also a biologist,” announced Major. “He will now examine your foot.”
The smaller Sou deftly raised itself up onto the dry half of the room and wriggled over and onto Jacqui’s bed, where it passed its Little Bell very gently over her foot. Jacqui could barely feel its touch and it did not increase the pain. After a while the doctor signalled to the robot, which came over with a syringe and appeared to take a blood sample. There was a surge of pain, but it soon passed. The robot did things with the specimen that Jacqui could not see. It brought out another syringe and injected something into her foot. Then Major, speaking for the doctor, announced:
“It is as we thought. It is a [indecipherable word]—I am sorry, I cannot pronounce its name in your language—it is a land-dwelling creature that burrows under the ground, leaving only its venomous spine exposed. It is very rare in this part of our world, and little is known about it. We conjecture that it lies in wait until another land-dwelling creature accidentally impales itself on the spine: then it injects venom, paralysing the victim, and waits for the proteins to dissolve into a liquid. Then it protrudes a tube-like appendage and sucks out the liquefied tissue.”
Jacqui shuddered. So like a spider, sucking nutrition out of the fly it had poisoned! But a closer analogy must be the infamous weever-fish: a friend of hers had once stepped on one whilst bathing at Newquay, and she had related the painful experience in all its gory detail. And there were stonefish and scorpionfish, even more dangerous, which she had seen at the Sea Life centre. Tread on one of those and you could end up dead meat, she’d been told.
“These creatures are a danger even to ourselves, should we venture onto the land, in regions where they are common,” Major was continuing. “You were most unlucky to encounter one here. Although the venom should not be fatal to a being as large as you, we have administered the antidote and the robot will now apply a painkiller.” As he spoke the robot came up with what looked like a sponge, and wiped it gently all over the foot. A yellowish foam formed, and the pain was somewhat eased almost at once.
“You should not try to step on your foot until the swelling and pain have subsided. I do not know how long that will take for your species, I’m afraid. Try to get some rest.” And with that, Major and the doctor departed.
Laid up! Jacqui cursed her ill-luck. And she had been enjoying her time exploring the island: it may not have been a match for the Hebrides in scenic impact, but it was interesting all the same. Would she ever be allowed to make the trip again? To a different island?
*
It was now full Night outside, and Jacqui could only lie and wait. If only she had some books to read, some videos to watch! When the robot came with her food, she signalled to it to draw the desk with the papers close to her bedside. She could at least write and draw. She spent the time writing a full account of her trip to the island and all she had seen there. She tried to sketch, from memory, the ‘moss’ growing there and the creatures she had encountered. She even produced, mostly drawing from her imagination, a sketch of what she thought the evil spine-creature might look like. A small worm-like being—worms seemed to be the ‘norm’ among body-shapes here—buried vertically in the soil with its spine at the upper end projecting above the surface. Major, when he next visited, took a close look at the sketch. He said, biology was not his subject, he could not say whether it was an accurate likeness, but he’d ask the doctor-biologist.
As it happened, the same doctor turned up a few days later to examine her foot. The swelling had subsided a bit, and, through Major, he pronounced himself satisfied, though it would still be a long time before she could walk on it again. He also explained that she had made a reasonable guess with her sketch of the spine-creature: but in reality it was two-pronged—like an inverted ‘V’—and the spine protruded from the apex of the V. That made it very difficult to pull it out of the ground, if a spine was spotted. A nasty little beast indeed!
Some days later, around local ‘midnight’, she had an unexpected surprise. A robot came and ran its tentacles gently across her uninjured left foot. She was puzzled, but did not think any more about it until, a few days later, the robot reappeared bearing what could only be described as a pair of Dr Scholl’s sandals!
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The sandals were made of the same plastic-like material as many other materials she had encountered: soles which were slightly soft on top but firm and hard underneath, with a good grip, and elastic straps to go over her instep and round her ankle. She tried on the left sandal: it seemed to be a comfortable fit and the sole was shaped to fit her foot perfectly. She tentatively tried it out, hopping around the bed: her right foot was still too painful and swollen to take any weight. Lying down on the bed again, she took off the sandal and gave a thumbs-up signal to the robot. It did not appear to understand, so she pressed the sandal to her chest and smiled. The robot seemed satisfied and took its leave.
It was several days later before Major reappeared. “Hello Jacqui,” he said. “Are the shoes satisfactory?”
“Perfectly,” replied Jacqui. “Well, the left one at any rate: I can’t put on the right one yet. Does this mean I’m to be allowed out again?”
“Indeed it does,” said Major. “Once your foot’s better and you can walk again, I hope to take you on another trip. We observed how well you managed on the first, until your ‘accident’. And to be honest, we are concerned about your mental health in particular, while you are stuck on this planet for so long. You have borne up surprisingly well, all things considered. But the excursions are of some considerable benefit for you.”
So all Jacqui could do was lie and wait, writing and sketching, eating her meals regularly, hobbling to and from the bathroom as best she could, while the swelling slowly subsided. It was well into the ‘morning’ of the next local Daytime, before she ventured to try on the right sandal—and she quickly took it off again, with a wince. She could put a little weight on the foot now, and walk more assuredly around her room—but she was not ready for any outdoor excursion.
*
Waiting, waiting, waiting. The Sun passed the meridian, so it was now ‘afternoon’ of her third Day on this planet. The doctor examined Jacqui once again, and declared, as before via Major, that she would be fully fit by sunset. So even if she was well enough, she had another Night of inaction to endure, restlessly, before any outing could be contemplated.
Although writing had been her professional faculty, she was suffering from ‘writer’s block’. She spent whole terrestrial days staring at the paper, not able to commit a single word to writing. She knew that the stalemate would pass, but what could she do meanwhile? She remembered that, as a child, she had been quite keen on origami—paper-folding. Indeed Grandad had given her several books on the art. Would this ‘paper’ accept creasing in the same way as Earth’s paper? She tested a square, and found that it held a crease surprisingly well. Quickly, from memory, she folded a ‘bird base’. Then, after thinking hard, she called to mind what the subsequent folds were, and in a minute she had a traditional Japanese ‘flapping bird’ fluttering in her hands. Success! Memories of other models came flooding back to her, and soon her desk was adorned with quite a collection of ‘paper’ animals and other objects. Having no knife or scissors, she had to restrict herself to the ‘pure’ form of origami which eschews cutting of any sort. That was as well, she thought. What would Major make of her new occupation? An idea occurred to her, and, although she was not adept at creating original models, she decided to experiment. After a lot of fiddling about she had come up with an approximation to a Sou. The result was not very life-like but it was recognisable. Eagerly, she awaited Major’s next visit. Now she would discover if Sous could laugh!
Major, when he next showed up, did not laugh—nor did he seem to recognise the model of himself—but he showed appreciation of her newly-displayed skill. Jacqui strongly suspected that he was relieved that she was finding activities to ward off the lethargy that was his big concern. She did not tell him that she had exhausted her memories of the models she had made as a child: without books to guide her, she could only repeat what she had already done—or try to create more ‘originals’.
Well, it had kept her occupied for a while—and her right foot was now fully healed up, thankfully. She tried on the sandal and found that the robots had guessed right: it was as good a fit as the left. She ventured outside for a while (Major had assured her that the sandals would withstand wetting) and had another look at the night sky. She noticed that the stars she could see were entirely different from those she had seen before. Arcturus was not visible, and staring at the zenith she could not pick out Sirius as she remembered seeing it. Ah well, she thought, she knew nothing about the ‘seasons’ here: perhaps it was now a different time of year. She remembered that, from Earth, Orion could only be seen during the northern winter.
She asked Major about this, and he quickly corrected her assumption. It was not the ‘time of year’ that counted, but the ‘time of night’. If she had waited outside for a full local Night, all twenty-three Earth-days of it, she would have seen the skies perform a complete revolution through the ‘seasons’, affording her a view of everything that could be seen from her latitude.
A sudden thought struck her. “Has this planet got a moon?” She had never seen any sign of one.
“No,” replied Major. “A natural satellite of any appreciable size would disrupt the resonance which controls our day-night cycle. We have many artificial satellites, of course, but they are too small to be visible.”