They had also found a large wheeled cart. By laying the cart back on its four trucks, and tying some nylon leads to the handle, they converted the device into a wheeled “sled.” The many supplies they required, including two tents, a chemical heater, first aid kits, and their four sleeping bags, couldn’t be moved without the sturdy, roomy cart.
Hauling the sled across the rough plain would be an arduous task. Everyone would have to take turns pulling, two by two.
She stared out the open door, looking at the stars. Orion glowed vividly, showing Sol with uncaring, seemingly taunting, abandon.
What secrets did this unfamiliar world, Bode, contain? What sinister fact kept eluding her consciousness, something she had known once, but could no longer remember? She wished the sims had not been about Elara, but of Bode. Such wasn’t the case, as Teacher had often said to her frequent questions, for Bode was little known—certainly enough of an unknown to be unusable for good survival practice. Basically, Elara had many more tricks.
Growing tired, she drifted off, her uncertainties mocking her, forgotten ideas flirting with her consciousness, insisting she stay awake….
Digging through the small scattering of debris left on the bent shuttle floor, she noticed that the large storage bay door had cracked open during the crash landing. A whimpering sound emanated from the narrow opening. She looked inside. After her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she saw luxurious animal pens. “So that’s what they were doing,” she whispered to herself. The crew had been preparing the shuttle as a transport for the few pets that had been taken on the interstellar voyage. Most species useful to humans had their genomes frozen for future cloning, she knew, an efficient method of transport. Yet some people couldn’t part with the animals they owned, and had their companions brought along.
The paddocks contained a collection of limp forms which she realized were the dead bodies of canines. Refusing to see the horror, she turned from the corpses, thanking the gods silently for the dark room, and for her own survival in a crash that obviously could have been lethal. She saw the puppy as she looked away, just as the tiny fuzzface saw her. With a sustained series of whines, the little blue-eyed mammal waddled over to her and dropped on her feet. His furry gray body quickly warmed her toes.
Considering the terrible shock the pup must have sustained from the death of his comrades, her heart opened to him. “Oh, you poor puppy!” She reached down and picked him up. He whined in delight, and when she held him up to her face, he warmed her cheek with a tiny, red tongue. She held him tight, enjoying his warmth and softness.
“Hey,” Wildwind irritatedly called, “what’s taking you so long in there? We don’t, as you said, have enough food to last forever!”
The puppy cringed from the loud voice, pulling back his fuzzy pointed ears and letting out a little questioning whine.
“OK! OK!” Annwn gratefully stepped away from the lifeless forms lying inside the dark pens. Not wanting Wildwind to order her around, she chose a slow walk. Trampling cautiously across the debris-covered bay, she stepped out into the warm midmorning sun.
At the sight of the puppy, Wildwind asked, “What’s that?”
“Xavier,” explained Annwn.
He looked angry. “We can't take him. We don’t have the food.”
Shocked at his words, Annwn said, “We can too! And I am going to take him, no matter what.” Xavier gently licked her hands.
“How are we going to feed him? We’ve barely enough for ourselves.”
“How can you leave him?” She held out the loving puppy for everyone to see. “Would you want to be responsible for his death? A slow, torturous one by starvation?”
Both Kwazar and Miranda smiled at the little canine, but refrained from saying anything. Annwn understood that they did not want to add to a potentially volatile situation, but was disappointed by their neutrality.
Wildwind, unconvinced, said, “I don’t want to die because of some stupid puppy. He’s not getting any of my food.”
Annwn grew angry at him. “I’ll give him part of my share, OK? Is that good enough for you?”
“Fine then.” Wildwind turned away, grabbing the lead of the makeshift sled. “It’s your damn stomach.”
“Sure are many different plants,” commented Kwazar as they trudged along the broken rock, slowly dragging the cart over the rough terrain.
Annwn recognized his sarcasm. “Right. One. The same old agave-like weed that appears to prefer cracks in the rock.” Her shoulder hurt. She adjusted the rope that connected her to the cart.
Kwazar smiled. “You think there’d be a few more.”
“Maybe most of the plants only grow in the spring.” For some reason, her words were bothersome, but she let the feeling go.
Miranda ran ahead of them, watching the large, very bright disk of Bode’s sun. “Here we go!”
The entire landscape darkened, as if a shadow of some great thing passed over them. The sky shifted from indigo to black, and stars glowed brightly. She looked up and saw that a very great thing really was casting a shadow on them: Bode’s huge moon, Brahe, a world she had completely forgotten about until this moment.
“Isn’t it great!” Miranda jumped up and down in excitement at the sight. “No eclipse on Earth would compare. Look at how dark it’s getting!”
The temperature dropped noticeably. A deep silence ensued, as if the shadow had blanketed the landscape. Even the wind died.
“How long do the eclipses last?”
“Oh,” replied Miranda, “fifty-ish minutes. Depends on where you are. And just think, it happens on a daily basis, maybe even where we are, but I’m not sure about that. Autumn is a time that I’d expect the eclipses to happen over most of the planet, I think, so I wouldn’t know until winter solstice.”
“You won’t have a long wait,” replied Annwn in downhearted tones, afraid of what winter would bring. Yet for some reason, winter, with its prospects of cold rain, freezing wind, and long nights was not her biggest worry. Something else even more sinister lurked on Bode. But what? She wished she could remember.
“Of course, since our world is tidally locked to that huge moon, only certain parts of Bode even have such eclipses.”
“How do you know so damn much?” asked Wildwind, still engrossed with the suddenly dark sky.
“I just read a lot, I guess.”
“Hmph.”
Annwn stared at her trudging feet, preparing herself for another night. Last night's camp, with Bode’s unending night, had been torture. And she was tired and grumpy all day long, her painfully sunburned face and arms not helping the mood. She really despised having to go to the bathroom in such open, sharp terrain. Fortunately Miranda helped by holding up her increasingly battered cloak as a barrier against curious eyes.
Evening approached, slowly, methodically, with the giant disk of Barnard’s Star dropping behind the destination mountains, a process that took almost a quarter-hour. Brahe’s ruddy half disk shone brightly above, marked by vast craters, twisted, snowcapped ranges, fleecy clouds and frost-filled valleys, dwarfing even her most grandiose memories of a full Moon rising over the Berkeley Hills.
“Sunsets last forever here,” observed Kwazar.