He slid the ladder aft, to Rikki’s end of the cockpit, leaving his hands on the rails. “Carefully, climb over the side. I’ll steady you.”
Her boot slipped off the bottom rung, and they tumbled together to the ground.
Blake was pissed at himself for not setting down earlier, when they had had better weather. He was pissed at Li for goading Rikki into volunteering, never mind that he’d intended all along to invite her. And, to be honest, he was pissed at Rikki herself. What the hell was her problem? Li? Why wouldn’t Rikki talk to him about it?
Rikki unhooked the ladder and closed the canopy with its remote while he stewed.
Unloading their gear from the shuttle’s cargo locker, he asked, “Are you ready for dinner and some sleep?”
And if you get over your foul mood, and I over mine, maybe putting an air mattress to a more communal use?
“Sounds like a plan,” Rikki said.
But not his only plan. As they ate, the staked-and-inflated shelter shimmying in the wind, he mentally reviewed the next plan’s few, simple stages:
—A leisurely morning stroll.
—Reconnoitering and approval of the nearby caves.
—Endeavour on the ground.
—Some honest labor, specifics to be determined.
And everyone lives happily ever after.
*
But as Rikki slept fitfully and Blake not at all, beneath the pitiless stare of an alien sky, the Coalsack—vast, inchoate, stygian—scoffed at the effrontery of mere human aspiration.
DECISIONS
(Landing Day, plus one)
23
“Avalanche!” Blake screamed.
Or tried, anyway. Snow down his throat choked off the warning and set him to coughing.
Rikki didn’t answer.
“Rikki!” he managed to wheeze, scarcely audible above the roar of the onrushing snow. She had come to rest, bent double against one of the jumble of boulders he had just missed. Blood dribbled from a gash on her forehead. “Rikki! Avalanche! We have to move!”
She didn’t stir as he struggled back to his feet. He shoved her, hard. Nothing.
The roar of the avalanche was palpable. The churning mass racing at them looked perhaps a minute away.
On skis—maybe—he could outrun the avalanche. Not on foot. Not carrying Rikki.
Her breather mask, like his, had been knocked off. The mask dangled by its flimsy elastic strap around her neck. He slipped Rikki’s mask up over her mouth and nose. His chest heaving, he dragged her in among the clustered boulders and leaned her up against the tallest of the stones.
Because he had to leave her! Abandon her! If the snow should bury them both—they both died.
After the avalanche blasted through, he would be lucky to see the tops of the rocks. Would he recognize this spot? Rikki’s hiking pole was nowhere in sight; he started slipping off the wristband of his pole, to wedge it as a marker among the rocks.
And paused. If the avalanche carried away the pole, he’d have nothing with which to probe for her beneath the snow.
(“We have maybe fifteen minutes to save an avalanche victim,” a ski instructor had once cautioned Blake and a half-dozen other beginners. Blake had been more attentive to the ski bunnies than to the lecture. “Do not lose your beacon. Even with a beacon, the odds of rescue are about fifty-fifty.”)
Fifteen minutes. With an organized effort and a radio beacon to guide the rescuers.
The wall of snow was no more than thirty seconds away.
In anguish, Blake unclipped from their safety line. He began running/sliding/falling across the slippery slope. He couldn’t outrun an avalanche, but maybe he could get to the side of it. With each glance over his shoulder, the chaos drew nearer.
The tide of snow crashed over the cluster of boulders. He tried to sear into his brain the configuration of the boulders.
If the snow completely buried them, he’d never find Rikki.
Seconds later, with an earsplitting growl, the edge of the snow torrent swept him off his feet. Downhill he went, tumbling like dice in a cup.
Stones and clumps of ice pounded him. The snow ripped off his hat and gloves, breather mask and headset. The hiking pole vanished, its wrist strap snapped or torn from his arm.
At least he couldn’t slam into a tree.
Snow was everywhere: down his back, filling his boots, up his sleeves. His breather mask was gone, its thin elastic strap unequal to this abuse. Snow plugged his nostrils. Each breath began by spitting out snow, and ended with another mouthful.
But the avalanche was petering out. He had stopped tumbling. Bobbing along on the surface, he dared to hope the worst was past.
Until, being denser than loose snow, he began to sink.
Lungs burning from exertion and the thin air, Blake started to swim. A knapsack strap had snapped, or in his flailing the strap had slipped off one arm. The bag, hanging like an anchor from one shoulder, dragged him into the snow. Shrugging off the remaining strap, still swimming hard, he managed to stay on top.
He came to rest somewhat vertical, leaning forward, in snow up to his diaphragm. Already, he felt the snow settling and compacting around him like concrete. He could not move his legs, not so much as wiggle a foot.
(“Fifteen minutes,” that long-ago instructor’s voice echoed in Blake’s mind.)
A rock slab, leaning, protruded nearby from the snow. The slab might have served as an impromptu shovel.
Instead, just beyond his reach, it looked to serve as a gravestone.
With his bare hands—soaking wet, his teeth chattering—Blake began to dig.
*
His hands numb with cold, Blake finally dug himself free. He’d lost his wristwatch, too, but fifteen minutes must already have passed.
He had left Rikki in the shelter of the rocks. Maybe her breather mask had stayed put.
Part of the avalanche had crashed its way to the inland sea, but to the north of their camp. A good kilometer distant, through the diminishing blizzard, both shuttle and inflated shelter looked untouched.
Half a kilometer in another direction was the boulder field in which—he was almost certain—he had left Rikki. He tugged the stone slab free of the snow, and set off.
