They’d just reached the crest of one small hill when Orion finally faltered, skidding erratically to a halt as he let go of the tow rope. Tochee immediately jammed his four poles into the ground, braking. The other skiers flashed past as Ozzie turned.
“You okay?” he shouted at Orion.
The boy was bent nearly double. Even through the thick layers of clothing, Ozzie could see him quaking.
“I’m sorry.” The boy was sobbing. “I’m sorry. It hurts everywhere. I’ve got to have a rest.”
“Take as long as you want.” The timer in Ozzie’s virtual vision told him they’d been going for just over five hours. The sun would set in another fifty-one minutes.
He pulled a parchment from his coat pocket, struggling to unroll the cold-stiffened sheet. With a charcoal stump held crudely in a mitten, he wrote: Boy very tired. Soon night. Make camp bottom of hill.
Tochee moved about behind the windscreen, lowering its head so that Ozzie could look into its forward eye segment. The patterns flexed and twisted. Roughly translated they told him: ALSO TIRED. CAMP GOOD.
When Ozzie looked along the path, he could just see a few twinkles of topaz and jade light through the trees below as the Silfen moved ever onward. Their singing had long since faded from the air. That was when he realized that the skier who’d fallen far behind hadn’t caught up yet. If the man had any sense, he’d try and make it back to the covered sleds tomorrow. Ozzie didn’t even know which one of the five it was. Some of them had modern camping gear with them—that might see them through the night. His own confidence was bolstered by knowing their own air-insulated tent was good enough, especially with a heatbrick.
Orion was taking a big drink from his thermos.
“Yo, man, can you make it down to the bottom?” Ozzie asked.
“Yes. I’m really sorry, Ozzie. You two should go on. I can probably make it back to the Ice Citadel.”
“Don’t be so stupid. It’s almost time to stop anyway. I want to be in the tent before the sun goes down.” He picked up the tow rope and handed it to the boy.
The track down to the bottom of the hill was undemanding. They kept going for a few minutes more until they found what passed for a small glade. The heavy ice-smothered trees soaked up the red sunlight, turning the forest floor a gloomy crimson. Ozzie pulled their tent from the back of Tochee’s sledge, and gave it to Orion to sort out, while he set up the rudimentary bone frame and fur covering. Once more he lit a couple of candles in front of the sledge windscreen. He saw the alien pull the tab on a heatbrick just as he wormed his way back out of the covering.
Orion had pitched their tent a few yards away, and was already inside. Drowsy yellow light from the kerosene lamp shone out of the open flap. As he hurried over, the impact of how isolated they truly were struck him. Alone in an arctic alien forest, without any natural light or heat, where unknown creatures possibly lurked close by. This was the eternal child-nightmare that never quite left once adulthood had been reached, not even after three hundred fifty years.
It wasn’t just the cold that was making him shiver as he crawled inside and sealed the flap. Orion made a big show of pulling the tab on a heatbrick. The two of them slowly took off their bulky fur coats and over trousers, then their outer layers of sweaters and trousers. Ozzie plucked at his cold, sweat-sodden checked shirt, wrinkling his nose in disgust. As soon as they’d stopped their exertions, he’d begun to get cold very fast, despite the fur coat.
“I’d forgotten how bad it is out there at night,” he grumbled.
“I thought we’d be away from here by now,” Orion said sheepishly. “We traveled so far.”
Ozzie squeezed the boy’s shoulder. “Remember the kind of progress we made when we arrived here? You did really well out there today. I was ready to call it a day anyway.”
“Thanks, Ozzie. Do you think the others made it?”
“I don’t know. Most of them were keeping up with the Silfen.”
“I hope they did.”
Ozzie opened the bag containing some of their food packages. “What would you like for supper?”
Ozzie really didn’t want to wake up when his insert alarm went off. Lying snug in the soft warm folds of the sleeping bag, every limb ached abominably, and as for his abdominal muscles… It was pitch-black inside the tent, so he switched his retinal inserts to infrared, and searched around for the kerosene lamp. It lit with a flare that made him blink, casting its dreary yellow glow around the interior. The flame from the icewhale oil they used as fuel was soon puffing out a little twist of reeking black smoke.
“What’s wrong?” Orion coughed.
“Nothing. It’s morning, time to get up.”
“You’re wrong. It’s night, still. I’ve only just got to sleep.”
“’Fraid not, man.” Ozzie unzipped the top half of his sleeping bag. His thermal undergarments had dried out, as had the checked shirt and sweaters that were squashed into the bag with him. But the heatbrick was all but exhausted, so the gradually cooling air had allowed condensation to form all over the inside of the tent fabric. He tried to put his checked shirt on carefully, but every time a hand caught the side of the tent, little droplets rained down. Orion complained some more as he struggled into action, dressing himself.
They pulled the rings on packets of scrambled egg and bacon. For a few glorious moments the smell of hot food overpowered the dreadful oil.
When they were almost ready to venture back outside, Orion asked, “Do you think we’ll get there today?”
“Honestly? I don’t know, man. I hope so. But if not, we just keep going, it can’t be far now. Not even the Silfen can survive here for long.” In his head, their own limit was a constant worry. Between them, they had another eight heatbricks, that gave them three more guaranteed safe nights. They might be able to survive in the tent without one, but it would be an evil night, and Tochee would be finished. How they’d carry the tent and food and other stuff after that was a moot point.
They emerged from the odor of the icewhale oil into the numbing cold of the dark forest. It had snowed again overnight, depositing a thin layer over the fur sheet protecting Tochee’s sledge. Once again, anxiety plucked at Ozzie as they pulled it back to see if the big alien had survived. It had. Manipulator flesh gestured happily to them from behind the windscreen.
The tent and coverings and bags were packed away within half an hour. Fortunately, the snowfall hadn’t been heavy enough to completely cover the tracks left by the Silfen. Just before they started, Ozzie held up the little friendship pendant. Its sparkle wasn’t as strong as yesterday, but tiny slivers of blue light still crawled around inside it. He took that as an encouraging sign, and pushed off.
A wind picked up, drifting through the forest all morning. It carried little flecks of snow with it, forcing Ozzie to wipe his goggles free every few minutes. Whenever he paused for his drink, he had to go and brush solid flakes off the sledge windscreen. He wasn’t sure if it was actually snowing up there above the treetops, or if this was simply residual swirls that the wind was rearranging. It had always puzzled him why the ground here wasn’t covered by several feet of snow and ice. Then Sara had told him that once or twice a year a gale would blow for days, scouring away the loose snow and tiny ice pellets. Somehow that didn’t surprise or even bother him, this whole planet was weird; privately he considered that it might be as artificial as Silvergalde.