She turned toward the southwest. The land sloped downhill and rose again gradually and then almost precipitously toward a long spine. The spine extended from one horizon to the other. It was going to be a difficult climb with Nightingale and the great man in tow. The wind tugged at her, trying to blow her off the ridge. Reminding her that they had ground to cover and that time was short.
Hutch lay quietly near the fire, and Kellie saw that her eyes were open. "How we doing?" she asked softly.
"Time to go," said Kellie.
She nodded. "Let's give them a little longer."
"I'm not sure we shouldn't push a bit harder."
"It won't help us," Hutch said, "if they start breaking down." MacAllister snored peacefully with his head pillowed against one of the packs; Nightingale lay near the fire, his shoes off to one side.
Kellie sat down beside her. "We've a long way to go," she said.
"We'll make it," said Hutch. "As long as no one collapses." She looked into the fire. "I don't want to leave anybody behind."
"We could come back later for them."
"If they aren't eaten first. You really think either of those guys could stay alive on his own?"
"One of us could stay with them."
Hutch shook her head. "We're safer keeping our firepower concentrated. If we split up, we are absolutely going to lose somebody else." She took a deep breath and looked at Kellie. "We'll stay together as long as we can. And if we get behind, we'll do what we have to."
Kellie liked to think of herself as the last of the fighter pilots. She'd begun her career as a combat aviator for the Peacekeepers. When the Peacekeepers became effectively obsolete (as they did every half century or so), when the latest round of civil wars had been fought and the dictators put to bed, she'd learned to fly spacecraft and transferred to the Patrol. But the job had been surprisingly routine. The Patrol simply didn't go anywhere. They patrolled. When people drank too much or neglected their maintenance or got careless, Kellie and her colleagues had shown up to rescue whoever was left.
But she never really traveled. A zone was assigned and she just went round and round, visiting the same eight or nine stations over and over. And during those years, she'd watched the Academy's superluminals coming in from places that no one had names for yet. Or from conducting surveys of the Omega clouds. Or from examining the space-twisting properties of neutron stars and black holes.
She'd lasted less than a year before giving it up to interview for a pilot's job with the Academy. The money was about half as much, the ships were more spartan, the fringe benefits barely existed. But the people with whom she traveled tended to have wider interests than the Patrol crews. And she loved the work.
That morning, though, she was having second thoughts. As MacAllister would have put it, there was something to be said for boredom.
Nightingale sat up, looked around, and sighed. "Love the accommodations," he said. He struggled to his feet. "Back in a minute."
She woke Chiang. "Duty calls," she said. "Go with him."
Chiang made a face, took a moment to figure out what he was being asked to do, got up, and trailed along behind the older man. Nobody went anywhere alone. The designated commode was halfway down the back side of the hill, in a gully. There was just enough ground in the way to provide a modicum of privacy.
Kellie filled a pot with snow and put it on the fire.
MacAllister rolled over and looked up at her. "What time's the tour start?" he asked.
"Sooner the better," said Kellie.
Hutch rubbed her eyes, closed them again, and looked at the gray sky. "Another glorious morning on Deepsix." She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Then she fished for her cup and toothbrush.
Off to the east, something was moving. Kellie raised her binoculars and looked out across a stretch of grassland downslope. A herd of fur-bearing animals were approaching. They were big, lumbering creatures, with trunks and tusks. Their heads were extraordinarily ugly, much in the manner of rhinos. She watched them veer off and disappear into a wall of forest, but she could hear them for a long time after.
They disposed of another round of reddimeals. Kellie had bacon, eggs, and fried apples. She washed everything down with coffee.
"While we're on the trail," said Hutch, "let's see what we can hunt up for lunch."
"Right." MacAllister raised his coffee. "I suspect we're all anxious to taste the local fare." Kellie wondered if he could ask for the correct time without sounding cynical.
They trekked down the south slope, into and out of patches of trees, crossed a stream at the bottom, and started up the far side. Occasional furry creatures, the local equivalent of squirrels, showed themselves, as well as a few larger animals that looked as if they might serve for a meal. If anybody could get close enough to use a cutter. But the creatures kept their distance. "We need a weapon that'll work at long range," said Chiang.
Hutch asked whether anybody had experience with a bow and arrow.
Nobody did.
They crossed the valley and started uphill, up the long increasingly steep slope Kellie had studied from the crest of her ridge the night before. The snow became soft, and the walking grew more difficult. Nightingale's blisters got worse, and MacAllister struggled and grumbled. Hutch called a break.
The sun was directly overhead and they were still about an hour below the summit. A few donuts remained, which they divided. Mac insisted he was feeling fine and thought they should get going. Nightingale agreed, although he was obviously in some discomfort, and they set off.
They reached the crest and discovered that the land dipped sharply and then started uphill again, but at a more moderate angle. MacAllister observed that the entire planet seemed to run uphill.
They pressed on for another hour before they stopped, built a fire, and made coffee. "We can feed anyone who's hungry," Hutch said. But a nineteen-hour day was short, and lunch followed hard on breakfast. Consequently no one was anxious for an undue delay. "We'll eat an early dinner," she promised.
During the afternoon march Nightingale said that he was cold.
Hutch checked his gear and saw that his powerpak was failing. She replaced it with one of the units she'd pried out of the lander.
A freak thunderstorm broke over them, eliciting an observation by MacAllister that lightning wasn't supposed to occur at low temperatures.
That brought a response from Marceclass="underline" "Some of our people here say it's a result of Morgan's approach. It translates into unusually severe high- and low-pressure areas. Consequently, you get screwy weather."
They walked through a steady downpour while thunderbolts boomed overhead. The rain hissed into the snow, which turned to slush. The e-suits kept them dry, and they trudged on.
Nightingale seemed distracted, self-absorbed, remote. While they walked, his eyes were rarely focused. His gaze was directed inward, and when Kellie spoke to him, he invariably asked her to repeat herself.
He remained walled off from the others, resisting everybody's efforts at small talk. He did not snap at anyone, showed no sign of anger. But it was as though he walked alone through those frozen forests.
She began to notice that the lamp on his commlink was constantly glowing. She could see he wasn't talking with any of the others. Someone on Wendy, perhaps?
It gave rise to a suspicion. "Randy?" she said, using a private channel
He looked up at her and came back from someplace far away. "Yes, Kellie? Did you say something?"