An Accidental Alliance by Jonathan Edward Feinstein Page A

so.”
          “A month?” Arn protested.
          “Are you planning to go anywhere?” Park returned. “Look, we should be fairly easy to find if you need us. We’re going downstream. Just look for the repeaters if the river splits up into different channels.”
          How about getting back here?” Arn asked. “Tributaries can be difficult to keep track of. Downstream may be one way, but coming back is another matter. It can be difficult to remember the course if you don’t have marker buoys.”
          “Good point,” Park agreed, “but the repeaters can also serve that purpose. I’ll take a couple cans of a bright paint, so the poles the repeaters are on will be easy to spot.”
          “What are you going to eat, then?” Arn asked. “Those boats in storage aren’t very large, just oversized rowboats, really.”
          “I saw them,” Park replied. “They’re twelve feet long and wide enough in the beam to sleep four comfortably if we must, although I plan to take a few half-shelters out of storage too. We can rig them as a pup tent or a sun shade on the boat. Of course first we need to get a boat out of storage. Getting the helicopter out one piece at a time was murder.”
          “Well, there I can help,” Arn told him. “While you were out flying around today, I organized a detail to dig a ramp to the storage level. It was only about ten feet below the surface and once we had an opening we were about to use some of the heavy machinery inside to speed up the work. It’s still a bit rough and we’ll eventually pave the ramp and build some proper doors for the big hole in the wall, but you’ll be able to drag the boat up that ramp rather than hoisting it   up the elevator well on a   block and tackle.”
          “I wish you’d thought of the ramp before we had to do that,” Park chuckled. “Well there’s still a lot of stuff to unpack, so I appreciate it. We’ll launch and equip the boat tomorrow and then the next day Iris and I will start out down the river.”
          “But what about food?” Arn pressed.
          “We’ll take what we can and a few of those food test kits I found in storage,” Iris told him. “If we don’t find anything edible out there by the time our supply is half gone, we’ll just have to turn around and come back. Oh, and Park, “I finally ran that program you asked me to. Van Winkle Base is situated at twenty-six degrees, thirty-one minutes and five seconds north latitude.”
          Park whistled. “That’s further south than I expected. It might explain the apparent savannah conditions out there, though. The only green vegetation we saw was directly along the rivers.”
          “Well if that is a savannah out there we should have a lot of animal life as well,” Arn told them. “Hopefully some of it is edible. Although I would prefer you not try to find the mouth of the river this trip. It’s too soon, I think.”
          “It may be reckless,” Park considered. “Tell you what we’ll only be gone a few days this trip. Consider it a shakedown cruise and also get to know our river a bit before doing the whole Lewis and Clark thing.”
          “I appreciate that,” Arn told him.
          Iris caught the exchange, although she was certain only she and Park understood the significance. Unconsciously Arn had just recognized Park as an equal in Van Winkle Base. They were not competitors, and deep down, she suspected Arn knew it. Everyone else in the project was in Arn’s chain of command, but Park and his team had somehow slipped beyond the conventions.
          On launching the boat, Park decided he ought to rig the canvas covers while he still had a machine shop to use and made a strong frame that he could cover with the canvas half-shelters. When finished he had a frame that could be covered in a number of ways to afford him and Iris sufficient shade during the day and shelter