As Dawn had predicted, the garments didn’t last long, particularly after they began to explore the jungle. Mildew and mold seemed to crumble the boots and the rest, until, within a year, there was nothing left from the past at all, save only the seemingly indestructible but inactive time belt.
It took considerable trial and error to turn some of the jungle leaves and vines into crude and primitive shelters, but they finally did so, giving them some shelter against the occasional strong tropical rainstorms that blew across the island. With that problem solved, and with no worries at all about food supplies, other ambitions seemed to fade. They became as children once again, playing games, swimming, making love and just lying around. Moosic developed a substantial beard, which Dawn seemed to like, and their skins toughened and their bodies browned dark.
They had some minor injuries and suffered some occasional aches, pains, and bruises, but nothing very serious. It began to seem as if they would never get sick, but Dawn finally developed what at first seemed to be a persistent case of nausea.
Both had put on weight, both from the lazy life and from some of the less familiar fruits which seemed particularly sugar-laden, but now she began to eat far more heavily.
“Ronnie?”
“Yes, Dawn?”
“I haven’t had a period in months. You know that?”
“I guess so, now that you mention it.”
“Ronnie—I’m pretty sure I’m pregnant.”
Even though he should have expected it, the news stunned and somewhat unnerved him. He realized sheepishly that he’d been shutting the obvious out of his mind. Now all the worries began.
“But how can you have a baby? Here, I mean. Hell, Dawn, I don’t know how to deliver a baby.”
“Well, you’re going to have to learn. I sure can’t do it myself.”
Within another month, there was no doubt of the fact, and since there was no way to date conception, they began to prepare early. There really wasn’t a whole lot, though, that could be done. Rocks were worked and sharpened to fine cutting edges, and, for the first time, he worked to find a way of making and maintaining a fire. Some coconutlike shells from jungle trees seemed able to resist being heated, and more stone was broken up and used to form a fire pit of sorts. Shells and shell fragments, some of them huge, had always washed up on the beaches after storms, and they proved to be decent water containers.
Still, he was scared to death of actually having to deliver the baby. She was not much help at that. “I’ve never had one before,” she told him.
She was in tremendous pain the night the baby came. The labor took all day and went into the night, and he feared that he was going to lose both the baby and her. But, finally, she managed to push it out to where he could get hold of it and pull it all the way. He was prepared to cut the cord and wash the baby off, but not so prepared for it to be all purple at the start and even less prepared for the subsequent delivery of the placenta. Having a baby was a painful and messy business under the best of circumstances, and this was hardly that. But now they had a child, and it quickly gained color and showed a fine set of lungs.
They named the boy Joseph, after Moosic’s father.
It was both the same and not the same after that, for now they had a purpose in their lives and it restored some of the lost ambition. He began to look for a more permanent sort of dwelling, and he found it in the mouth of an old lava tube. Dried straw and leaves formed the floor, while huge jungle leaves, held together with the bracing of small tree limbs tied with vines, created a wall that protected them from the elements while affording good ventilation. They made a primitive rope from some of the vines and, using sharpened stones and sticks, managed to create tools to do a utilitarian job. They had progressed from the Garden into the Stone Age.
From that point, Dawn seemed to enter into a state of perpetual pregnancy. After Joseph came Ginny, Sarah, Cathy, and Mark. He wound up having to build a vine and stick fence for a play area, and they found parenting, particularly on this level, a full-time occupation. Then, to their relief, there was a long period with no childen at all. It gave the others time to grow up.
There was no real way to tell time now, since they’d not started a calendar until Joseph had been born, but they knew he was ten and that they had been there a very long time now. Dawn remained fat and didn’t much care about losing it. Her focus was strictly on the home and on the children now, to the exclusion of all else. Ginny broke her leg once, and while they painfully set it, it never did heal quite right, causing her a bad limp. All of the children had visible scars, and Sarah had almost died from a deep puncture, but, all in all, they had been very lucky.
Moosic found his black beard and hair turning gray, then white, which bothered him a great deal. Despite the fact that he’d always kept himself in reasonable shape and was relatively thin now from all the work, in one sense the Outworlder squad had done him no favors restoring his body. Dawn was perhaps in her early to mid-thirties now— she herself wasn’t sure—but he knew he was in his middle fifties, and feeling it. His eyesight was getting poor, although, ironically, it was far better than Dawn’s, which had deteriorated into such nearsightedness that anything more than a couple of feet away was a blur.
They taught the children as best they could, explaining their origins as much as the parents were able—how do you explain machines to someone who has never worn clothes or even seen anyone wearing them?—and taught them the skills they knew or had learned, and told them stories both real and fanciful.
It was on a day perhaps twelve years after they had arrived that it happened. A storm was brewing; Joseph was still out somewhere in the countryside, and Dawn, after all this time pregnant again, was worried about him. Although Moosic calmed her and tried reassuring her that he was a man now and well able to take care of himself, he finally got a little concerned when the wind picked up and the other kids battened down for a blow. He went out to see if Joseph could be found.
Near the edge of the jungle, up by the fruit trees, he heard an answering hail to his call. He ran to the boy, intending to give him a scolding, but stopped when he saw what the boy had.
It was dirty, and mud-caked, and long forgotten, but it was unmistakable. The time belt, lost for some years.
“What is it, Dad? I found it over there, in the pit. I guess the last storm unburied it.”
He nodded and took it, then looked at it and shook his head. “It was the way your Mom and I got here, son.”
Joseph stared at it in wonder. “How’d it work?”
He laughed, and found to his surprise that the clasp still functioned. There wasn’t a real sign of wear or even rust on the thing after all these years.
“Ha! Maybe I should shock your mother.” He put it on around his waist. “You just put it on like this, press one of the buttons, and away you went.”
“Wow!” The boy looked closely at the belt. “Hey! That’s neat! The funny red things, I mean.”
“The what?” He looked down and froze in shock.
Although he was certain they had not been so a moment before, suddenly the small red indicators were glowing.
He started to take it off, to run with it up to Dawn, when Joseph reached out. “You mean you just punched something like this?”
He pressed the home key, then let out a sudden, terrified scream that was cut off midway.
The wind stopped. The noise stopped. Everything blanked out, and Ron Moosic felt himself falling helplessly.
The sensation, however, did not last long. He expected to arrive somewhere at night, but he suddenly stood in the middle of a brightly lit room that his memory knew well. It was the lounge of the very same Outworlder base he had seen—or thought he’d seen—destroyed.