tok
Tok? With a glove on?
Minnie moved her hand around John’s, probing the underside of his palm. Empty.
She opened her eyes, reactivated mag, and peered through his body. It materialized instantly in the wall of snow between John and the skimmer pad—all alone, as if hovering in the air. Minnie sat up enough to extend her reach, thrust her hand into the snow, and plucked John’s fone from where it’d fallen. She held it in front of her face.
He’d extracted it, had it under his hand on the skimmer for her to find. Something he wanted her to see. But what? Something leaderly, of course. An inspirational sermon about driving on, assurances that this wasn’t her fault… or ick, a full on I-told-you-so condemnation and orders to make it right by saving herself, returning to Earth to tell the whole tale.
Whatever his dying mind had wanted her to see, it didn’t matter. Even if she wanted to, there was no way for her to access his fone. He would’ve had to—
Hmm…
Minnie sat up the rest of the way, shaking out her head and elbowing away the thickening white blanket. She dropped his fone into a zippered inside pocket, freeing her hands to wipe off the edge of the skimmer. After reaching an ice coat, a moment of scratching and striking chipped it away, revealing a few jagged scratches. A numeral 1 or lowercase L. A lightning bolt… maybe a 3 or Z, or the start of an S. A backslash. And that was it. He’d tried to give her his passcode, but failed.
Or maybe he’d realized the carving approach wasn’t working out. Minnie looked for his multitool and found its hot pink outline deep beneath the snow between him and the skimmer. Now on her knees, one hand on John’s back, she jammed her other hand down, returning with the tool. She noticed it at once. The blade had been folded back in, and the marker tip protruded from the other end. He’d written the passcode somewhere.
The question of whether she even wanted to know John’s final thoughts had yielded to the primal impulse to solve a puzzle, the deciphering of clues, and this new quest was an energizing—if cheerless—prolongation of their relationship.
She wiped more snow from the edge of the skimmer, digging out the underside, and dipped her head beneath for a look. Nothing. Flipping through optics, she searched around him for some buried fragment. Still no… maybe his suit…
Despite a dogged new resolve, her raw emotions refused to be buried as clumps of snow flew aside, exposing his contorted body. She climbed out of the pocket, shuffled around over his head, and banged a knee into a hidden boulder—the rock against which John’s face lay tilted. Numb to any new pain, she clutch his suit behind the shoulders, and threw her weight back. His upper half slid out above the snow. She averted her eyes from the impossible twist at his waist, rolling him onto his back. Her hands swiped across his chest, dusting the snow from around pockets and seams, intentionally disregarding the pack on his face.
She examined the front of his suit and sighed. He’d only had the one hand free to write. Maybe it’d been too late. Maybe he’d only managed to slide out the marker tip before succumbing.
Or…
She lifted the arm that had held the fone, grabbed the gloved hand, and turned the palm to her face. There it was in the most logical location, scrawled but legible enough, from pinky to thumb: 1SVr+33<oH. She snapped a pic and looked at the vague mold of his face beneath caked snow, imagining a smug little smile fixed there forever.
Wind howled across the skimmer and an enormous mound of snow crashed a few meters away, startling her. Through the whirling air she spotted a recently relieved epsequoia pad bobbing up and down.
Sensing anew the vise-like crush on her skull and joints, Minnie realized how utterly done she was with cold.
An incomplete plan coalesced.
She ripped the glove release line from his wrist, separating it from the suit, slid the glove off, and took the other as well. Her hands fit well despite the size, owing to her existing gloves. She clipped his multitool inside her collar, regretting it at once. The icy clip found a better home on her waist.
A hand on his chest, she closed her eyes.
You’ve never been interested in apologies, so just thank you. We’ll chat soon, I guess. I love you.
Her runners plowed through the loose pack, finding her skimmer pad completely buried. She stepped up, kicked off enough for traction, and set out toward the pin she’d dropped on her suit’s location.
Bunny jerky tore between her teeth as the heater thawed her legs. Some skin patches burned, others relished the warmth, while a few concerning spots felt nothing, even when poked with a knife. She didn’t want to think about that right now. She was doing everything she could for herself, given the snap decision to leave behind the medkit and its strewn contents. Her suit’s regulators would do a more thorough, uniform job thawing her, but it was still soaked, hanging on the skimmer, just outside her new shelter.
She aimed a wary eye through the gap in the ice. The visible strip of skimmer had her second guessing herself. If it somehow fell, she’d be utterly done for.
Maybe some kind of tether. There were certainly enough solid anchor points in the vast undercutting behind the frozen waterfall. But unless its residual warmth melted away its parking ledge, the thing wasn’t going anywhere. Or was that just her desire to stay by the heater talking?
She rose with a moan, tiptoed down the chilly, sloped, granite floor, and poked her head outside. Only a couple-hundred-meter drop to the rock-hard plunge pool below. She set her optics to kinetic—a setting rarely used outside a lab—and knelt down on the ice sheet. Focusing beneath the skimmer, kinetic drew a zoned surface map with color-coded highlights for active quadrants. The ice shelf under the skimmer wasn’t melting at all, nor had any slippage occurred since landing. The only detected motion was inside the skimmer’s battery, and to be expected.
Ducking below the side of the console, she grabbed a water bottle from a bin. Its contents were solid, of course, so she scurried back to the heater, set the container down beside it, and retreated into her still-warm survival bag.
She pressed a hand to her chest—a motion repeated no less than twenty times over the past several hours. John’s fone obviously hadn’t gone anywhere since she zipped it into the pocket. It certainly hadn’t gone into her housing. She was too afraid to see what he’d left for her. Afraid he hadn’t left anything at all, other than whatever data he considered important for any future human visitors.
Legacy.
It’d be classic John to use up the last bits of oxygen in his brain to think about the mission.
Minnie rolled onto her feet and grabbed the water bottle, slurping a few melted drops. She returned it to the heater’s side and ripped off another string of jerky. By now, her arsenic levels would probably be concerning to a doctor. No lesions or hyperpigmentation, as far as she knew. Her swollen ankles could certainly be a symptom.
Oh, well. Slow poisoning death or fast starvation?
Her fingers traced the lump in her pocket—the second time in under a minute.
Maybe it was time.
It was time.
Once everything was moved into the tent, and John’s fone installed, Minnie curled up on her side, with John’s glove lying before her resting head. She watched the fone preboot give way to the passcode prompt.
There were a few different ambiguous characters on the glove—1 or l or |, + or t—but she got it right on the second attempt.