He had wandered to the very edge of the rift. He now stood on the brink of a canyon stretching out before him hundreds of kilometers and carved deep into the crust of the planet. Another step would have sent him plunging to his death.
His reaction to this new danger was purely physical. In his mind the prospect of falling to his doom held less significance for him than it might have at another time. He was simply too exhausted, and too benumbed by the cold to care anymore; a fact, he noted, that indicated hypothermia was already beginning to affect him.
It would not be long now.
So this is what it is like to die, he thought. To feel the life force slipping away and to be acutely aware of it. He wondered if he would find the release others talked about, if he would meet his mother among the ranks of souls who had passed into the great beyond-or whether those, like so many other things, were simply the superstitions of a fading age.
He had no particular thought about the moment. He noticed how the shadows deepened to violet on the canyon walls and how the depths of the canyon were already sinking into darkness as black as any pit. Simoom wind above him shrieked like all the demons of hell released to vent their fury on the desolated land.
There came a rumble beneath his feet, a vibration of the rock shelf on which he stood. He turned to look behind him and his eye caught a glimpse of a churning mass moving down the rim of the rift toward him.
A rock outcropping, eroded by the wind, had broken free and started an avalanche that was now sweeping down the side of the canyon toward him. Spence had time only to throw himself to the ground before he was swept away in the sliding jumble of rocks and dirt.
The rock slide carried him tumbling far down into the canyon. Miraculously, the grinding, twirling, thundering mass did not crush him outright. When the slide stopped he lay panting on the topmost layer. Rocks and pebbles continued to pelt his body, but he had neither strength nor will to move.
The cruel Martian night closed its fist around him and he knew no more.
…. ….
..TSO.. …. ….
1
… IT'S No USE, ADJANI. He's gone. We've got to turn back.' Packer's big hand flipped a switch and he talked into his headset. 'Sandcat 2 to Sandcat 1-we are returning to base. Repeat. We are returning to base. Over.'
'Just one more pass along the rift valley,' pleaded Adjani. His eyes did not leave the thermograph screen. The Sandcat swayed on its springs as the Simoom screeched around them.
Packer, blue in the light of the thermoscreen, turned his face toward his friend. He placed a hand on his shoulder and gripped it firmly as if to establish a physical hold on reality. In a voice deepened with fatigue and sadness, he said, 'It is twenty below out there and only an hour after sundown. In another hour it will be fifty below. The storm is bucking to full force by morning-we haven't seen the worst of it yet. We lost visual four hours ago, and the thermograph shows a solid blue field. If we don't head back now, we won't make it.'
He paused and added, squeezing the shoulder once more, 'It's over.'
'I let him get away. I am responsible,' protested Adjani.
'You're lucky he didn't injure you for life. There was no stopping him. God knows we've done everything humanly possible.'
'He's out there somewhere-alive. I know it. I feel it.'
'If he is still alive, he's past help.' Packer turned the Sandcat and watched the instruments as he punched the return course into the onboard navigator. He took his hands from the wheel and let the computer guide them home.
Adjani buried his face in his hands and began rocking back and forth in his seat. Packer turned away. Neither one spoke for a long time. They sat and listened to the rattle of the sand and rocks upon the shields.
The radio on the overhead panel squawked to life. 'Kalnikov at I-base. MAT units 1 and 2 return to I-base immediately. Acknowledge.'
The message was repeated and Packer responded, giving their ETA to the base. There was a long pause; static crackled over the speaker. 'Your loss is to be regretted…'-more static_ 'I am sorry.' The transmission was lost once more to the storm. Packer reached up and switched the radio off.
'I guess I'll send a report as soon as we get back to base. I don't exactly know the proper procedure-this has never happened before.'
'Couldn't we wait a few days? I want to look some more.' 'Sure, we can wait. But it won't make any difference.' 'I would like to find the body at least.'
'Adjani, the storm is likely to blow for days. By the time you are able to search again there would be nothing left to find.' 'It is the least I can do. Please…' 'All right. I won't stop you.'
They sat silent until the computer flashed the outline of the installation on the vidscreen. 'We're almost there,' sighed Packer heavily.
Adjani turned with an urgency, laying a hand on the big man's arm. 'Please, let us pray for him now. Before the others…' 'Of course.'
Both men bowed their heads and Adjani spoke a simple, heartfelt prayer as the Sandcat entered the installation compound, safe from the storm. …
SPENCE LIFTED HIS THROBBING head. His limbs were numb; he could no longer feel his hands or feet. Heavy vapors of sleep tugged at him, luring him to slip lightly away on their easyflowing stream to oblivion. For a moment he nearly gave in and let the stream take him where it would, but something about giving in that easily rankled him.
With an effort he pushed himself up, shifting the debris which had settled over him. He placed his unfeeling hands on the ground and steadied himself. Gritting his teeth with jaw muscles stiff with cold, he straightened and swayed unsteadily on his knees. Overhead the bright disk of Deimos shone down on him – the Simoom had abated for the moment, allowing the ghostly light to spill down into the rift canyon.
He looked around him as rattling shudders racked his body. His muscles were contracting violently in their last effort to produce life-saving warmth. These contractions would pass soon, he knew. And then he would lie still.
Spence did not want death to find him sitting down. He stood on wooden, unfeeling legs and tried to walk. The loose debris shifted and he was thrown down the incline of the canyon still further. His helmet struck a rock and he stopped.
He lay there exhausted, staring up at the black sky of Mars, imagining that he was the first man, and possibly the last, to ever lie awake under a Martian night sky.
The convulsions gradually lessened. He felt a tingling warmth spread through his frame-the illusion of warmth, the last remnant of his body's defenses exhausting itself.
A misty darkness closed around him, narrowing his field of vision, blurring the edges with a velvet softness. But the stars above, in the center of his sight, still burned hard and bright. Untwinkling, unmoving, unlike stars at all. It was as if the eyes of the universe watched him to see how a man died.
'No!' he shouted, hearing the empty ring of his voice in his helmet. 'No,' he said again; his voice was but a murmur.
Watching the stars he saw a pale white mist pass over them like a diaphanous veil. He thought it a trick of his failing eyesight. Then he saw it again-just the faintest trace of color against the night, the frailest of silken threads.
Odd, he thought. What could produce such a phenomenon?
His scientist's brain turned over this bit of novelty. He raised his head and saw, a little below him on the slope, a silver tracery on the rocks, glowing in the light of the moon.
On nerves and determination alone he stirred his useless limbs and half-slid, half-swam to the spot. He touched a gloved hand to the faint white outline of the stuff on the rocks. It gleamed in the clear light. 'Crystals,' he muttered to himself. 'Ice crystals. Frost.'
