Colonization (The Seamus Chronicles Book 3) by K. D. McAdams Read Free Book Online Page A

like close friends. The old me would have woken him, my needs are more important than any ones. The new me lets him sleep.
    Carefully I make my way back to the break in the shrubs. I want to see where the water is and check the location of the moons and the sun. It feels weird referring to more than one moon.
    The water has receded significantly and brought the rafts with it. It looks like the ropes were not tied as well as they needed to be. Dragging the rafts across mud is going to be more work than dragging them in the water was. Having the supplies so close to the cover of the foliage was a good thing, now we’ve lost a chunk of hard work.
    I look around the ground for a branch or a fallen tree but there are none. The plants are large and much taller than me but they don’t have wooden trunks like on Earth. The stems are green and smooth and bend easily when I push on them.
    With nothing to use for leverage to hold the rafts in place I decide that my hands are our best bet. Climbing through the bushes I head out across the muddy flat towards our supplies.
    By the time I get to the rafts I’m sweating bullets. My blisters are on fire and the sun is past the halfway point across the sky. I consider going back to the shade and claiming ignorance over the receding rafts. Someone should stand here and hold them, even just for a bit until the water leaves them and they are stranded on the land. Why shouldn’t that someone be me?
    Instead of turning to leave I step on one of the ropes hanging from the raft. All I have to do is stand here. It’s uncomfortable but not torture.
    Directly in front of me is the reactor I salvaged from the rear of the plane. It looks banged up. Like it has traveled hundreds of light years since it was built, which it has. I wonder if we look as rough?
    We really are no different than the early seafaring explorers on Earth. They spent months at sea and had to bring most of their supplies with them. Water was as much a problem in the middle of the Atlantic as it is here. So was exposure to the elements, including the sun. Except they had real sails overhead that must have provided some shade.
    There is a seed of an idea in that thought, I know there is. I don’t think we brought any large pieces of cloth. There may be enough cardboard to fashion something overhead, and that would be a start.
    I hoped we wouldn’t need protection from the sun while we’re in the foliage but the radiation is only reduced, not defeated. Out here with the rafts and bringing supplies back from the plane will require some form of protection. The odds that Liam brought parasols or umbrellas are low.
    The leaves are large enough that we could use two or three to make some real shade but I haven’t tried to lift one. They look solid; they could be full of water and heavy.
    A pole or something to hold them overhead will be the biggest challenge. Weaving together some of the wilty stems may yield a thicker shaft, but it would have tensile strength and not compressive strength. Plus, how productive will we be if we have to hold a leaf parasol overhead with one hand?
    Dad will figure something out. He’s the master of a short-term fix while we wait on the permanent solution. I’ll shift my focus to a more permanent solution, like I’ve done before.
    It’s interesting to think on whether we’ll fall into our traditional roles. Our needs are new and different than anything we have ever experienced. How much of my personality is based on what I wanted to do as opposed to what was left over for me to do?
    By now the water has receded well past the edge of the last raft. The tide here came in quickly and goes out just as fast. I lift my foot from the rope and eye the rafts, nothing moves. I must have looked at miles of this lake bottom while we paddled. There wasn’t a single rock, but now I search for one to place on the rope as some form of security.
    The solution is obvious and I feel like a dolt. A box full of canned