“Or three, Mark,” Broberg said low. “In spite of your brave words, you could come to grief yourself.”

  “Oh, well, I’m an oldish man. I’m fond of living, yes, but you guys have a whole lot more years due you. Look, suppose the worst, suppose I don’t just make a messy landing but wreck the boat utterly. Then Luis dies, but he would anyway. You two, however, you should have access to the stores aboard, including those extra fuel cells. I’m willing to run what I consider to be a small risk of my own neck, for the sake of giving Luis a chance at survival.”

  “Um-m-m,” went Scobie, deep in his throat. A hand strayed in search of his chin, while his gaze roved around the glimmer of the bowl.

  “I repeat,” Danzig proceeded, “if you think this might jeopardize you in any way, we scrub it. No heroics, please. Luis would surely agree, better three people safe and one dead than four stuck with a high probability of death.”

  “Let me think.” Scobie was mute for minutes before he said: “No, I don’t believe we’d get in too much trouble here. As I remarked earlier, the vicinity has had its avalanche and must be in a reasonably stable configuration. True, ice will volatilize. In the case of deposits with low boiling points, that could happen explosively and cause tremors. But the vapor will carry heat away so fast that only material in your immediate area should change state. I daresay that the fine-grained stuff will get shaken down the slopes, but it’s got too low a density to do serious harm; for the most part, it should simply act like a brief snowstorm. The floor will make adjustments, of course, which may be rather violent. However, we can be above it—do you see that shelf of rock over yonder, Jean, at jumping height? It has to be part of a buried hill; solid. That’s our place to wait…Okay, Mark, it’s go as far as we’re concerned. I can’t be absolutely certain, but who ever is about anything? It seems like a good bet.”

  “What are we overlooking?” Broberg wondered. She glanced down to him who lay at her feet. “While we considered all the possibilities, Luis would die. Yes, fly if you want to, Mark, and God bless you.”

  —But when she and Scobie had brought Garcilaso to the ledge, she gestured from Saturn to Polaris and: “I will sing a spell, I will cast what small magic is mine, in aid of the Dragon Lord, that he may deliver Alvarlan’s soul from Hell,” says Ricia.

  -4-

  No reasonable person will blame any interplanetary explorer for miscalculations about the actual environment, especially when some decision has to be made, in haste and under stress. Occasional errors are inevitable. If we knew exactly what to expect throughout the Solar System, we would have no reason to explore it.

  —Minamoto

  The boat lifted. Cosmic dust smoked away from its jets. A hundred and fifty meters aloft, thrust lessened and it stood still on a pillar of fire. Within the cabin was little noise, a low hiss and a bone-deep but nearly inaudible rumble. Sweat studded Danzig’s features, clung glistening to his beard stubble, soaked his coverall and made it reek. He was about to undertake a maneuver as difficult as rendezvous, and without guidance.

  Gingerly, he advanced a vernier. A side jet woke. The boat lurched toward a nosedive. Danzig’s hands jerked across the console. He must adjust the forces that held his vessel on high and those that pushed it horizontally, to get a resultant that would carry him eastward at a slow, steady pace. The vectors would change instant by instant, as they do when a human walks. The control computer, linked to the sensors, handled much of the balancing act, but not the crucial part. He must tell it what he wanted it to do.

  His handling was inexpert. He had realized it would be. More altitude would have given him more margin for error, but deprived him of cues that his eyes found on the terrain beneath and the horizon ahead. Besides, when he reached the glacier he would perforce fly low, to find his goal. He would be too busy for the precise celestial navigation he could have practiced afoot.

  Seeking to correct his error, he overcompensated, and the boat pitched in a different direction. He punched for “hold steady” and the computer took over. Motionless again, he took a minute to catch his breath, regain his nerve, rehearse in his mind. Biting his lip, he tried afresh. This time he did not quite approach disaster. Jets aflicker, the boat staggered drunkenly over the moonscape.

  The ice cliff loomed nearer and nearer. He saw its fragile loveliness and regretted that he must cut a swathe of ruin. Yet what did any natural wonder mean unless a conscious mind was there to know it? He passed the lowest slope. It vanished in billows of steam.

  Onward. Beyond the boiling, right and left and ahead, the Faerie architecture crumbled. He crossed the palisade. Now he was a bare fifty meters above surface, and the clouds reached vengefully close before they disappeared into vacuum. He squinted through the port and made the scanner sweep a magnified overview across its screen, a search for his destination.

  A white volcano erupted. The outburst engulfed him. Suddenly he was flying blind. Shocks belled through the hull when upflung stones hit. Frost sheathed the craft; the scanner screen went as blank as the ports. Danzig should have ordered ascent, but he was inexperienced. A human in danger has less of an instinct to jump than to run. He tried to scuttle sideways. Without exterior vision to aid him, he sent the vessel tumbling end over end. By the time he saw his mistake, less than a second, it was too late. He was out of control. The computer might have retrieved the situation after a while, but the glacier was too close. The boat crashed.

  “Hello, Mark?” Scobie cried. “Mark, do you read me? Where are you, for Christ’s sake?”

  Silence replied. He gave Broberg a look which lingered. “Everything seemed to be in order,” he said, “till we heard a shout, and a lot of racket, and nothing. He should’ve reached us by now. Instead, he’s run into trouble. I hope it wasn’t lethal.”

  “What can we do?” she asked as redundantly. They needed talk, any talk, for Garcilaso lay beside them and his delirious voice was dwindling fast.

  “If we don’t get fresh fuel cells within the next forty or fifty hours, we’ll be at the end of our particular trail. The boat should be someplace near. We’ll have to get out of this hole under our own power, seems like. Wait here with Luis and I’ll scratch around for a possible route.”

  Scobie started downward. Broberg crouched by the pilot.

  “—alone forever in the dark—” she heard.

  “No, Alvarlan.” She embraced him. Most likely he could not feel that, but she could. “Alvarlan, hearken to me. This is Ricia. I hear in my mind how your spirit calls. Let me help, let me lead you back to the light.”

  “Have a care,” advised Scobie. “We’re too damn close to rehypnotizing ourselves as is.”

  “But I might, I just might get through to Luis and…comfort him…Alvarlan, Kendrick and I escaped. He’s seeking a way home for us. I’m seeking you. Alvarlan, here is my hand, come take it.”

  On the crater floor, Scobie shook his head, clicked his tongue, and unlimbered his equipment. Binoculars would help him locate the most promising areas. Devices that ranged from a metal rod to a portable geosonar would give him a more exact idea of what sort of footing lay buried under what depth of unclimbable sand-ice. Admittedly the scope of such probes was very limited. He did not have time to shovel tons of material aside in order that he could mount higher and test further. He would simply have to get some preliminary results, make an educated guess at which path up the side of the bowl would prove negotiable, and trust he was right.

  He shut Broberg and Garcilaso out of his consciousness as much as he was able, and commenced work.

  An hour later, he was ignoring pain while clearing a strip across a layer of rock. He thought a berg of good, hard frozen water lay ahead, but wanted to make sure.

  “Jean! Colin! Do you read?”

  Scobie straightened and stood rigid. Dimly he heard Broberg: “If I can’t do anything else, Alvarlan, let me pray for your soul’s repose.”

  “Mark!” ripped from Scobie. “You okay? What the hell happened?”

  “Yeah, I wasn’t too badly knocked around,” Danzig said, “and the boat’s habitable, though I’m afraid it’ll never fly again. How are you? Luis?”

  “Sinking fast. All right, let’s hear the news.”

  Danzig described his misfortune. “I wobbled off in an unknown direction for an unknown distance. It can’t have been extremely far, since the time was short before I hit. Evidently I plowed into a large, um, snowbank, which softened the impact but blocked radio transmission. It’s evaporated from the cabin area now. I see tumbled whiteness around, and formations in the offing…I’m not sure what damage the jacks and the stern jets suffered. The boat’s on its side at about a forty-five degree angle, presumably with rock beneath. But the after part is still buried in less whiffable stuff—water and CO2 ices, I think—that’s reached temperature equilibrium. The jets must be clogged with it. If I tried to blast, I’d destroy the whole works.”

  Scobie nodded. “You would, for sure.”

  Danzig’s voice broke. “Oh, God, Colin! What have I done? I wanted to help Luis, but I may have killed you and Jean.”

  Scobie’s lips tightened. “Let’s not start crying before we’re hurt. True, this has been quite a run of bad luck. But neither you nor I nor anybody could have known that you’d touch off a bomb underneath yourself.”

  “What was it? Have you any notion? Nothing of the sort ever occurred at rendezvous with a comet. And you believe the glacier is a wrecked comet, don’t you?”

  “Uh-huh, except that conditions have obviously modified it. The impact produced heat, shock, turbulence. Molecules got scrambled. Plasmas must have been momentarily present. Mixtures, compounds, clathrates, alloys—stuff formed that never existed in free space. We can learn a lot of chemistry here.”

  “That’s why I came along…Well, then, I crossed a deposit of some substance or substances that the jets caused to sublime with tremendous force. A certain kind of vapor refroze when it encountered the hull. I had to defrost the ports from inside after the snow had cooked off them.”

  “Where are you in relation to us?”

  “I told you, I don’t know. And I’m not sure I can determine it. The crash crumpled the direction-finding antenna. Let me go outside for a better look.”

  “Do that,” Scobie said. “I’ll keep busy meanwhile.”

  He did, until a ghastly rattling noise and Broberg’s wail brought him at full speed back to the rock.

  Scobie switched off Garcilaso’s fuel cell. “This may make the difference that carries us through,” he said low. “Think of it as a gift. Thanks, Luis.”

  Broberg let go of the pilot and rose from her knees. She straightened the limbs that had threshed about in the death struggle and crossed his hands on his breast. There was nothing she could do about the fallen jaw or the eyes that glared at heaven. Taking him out of his suit, here, would have worsened his appearance. Nor could she wipe tears off her own face. She could merely try to stop their flow. “Goodbye, Luis,” she whispered.

  Turning to Scobie, she asked, “Can you give me a new job? Please.”

  “Come along,” he directed. “I’ll explain what I have in mind about making our way to the surface.”

  They were midway across the bowl when Danzig called. He had not let his comrade’s dying slow his efforts, nor said much while it happened. Once, most softly, he had offered Kaddish.

  “No luck,” he reported like a machine. “I’ve traversed the largest circle I could while keeping the boat in sight, and found only weird, frozen shapes. I can’t be a huge distance from you, or I’d see an identifiably different sky, on this miserable little ball. You’re probably within a twenty or thirty kilometer radius of me. But that covers a bunch of territory.”

  “Right,” Scobie said. “Chances are you can’t find us in the time we’ve got. Return to the boat.”

  “Hey, wait,” Danzig protested. “I can spiral onward, marking my trail. I might come across you.”

  “It’ll be more useful if you return,” Scobie told him. “Assuming we climb out, we should be able to hike to you, but we’ll need a beacon. What occurs to me is the ice itself. A small energy release, if it’s concentrated, should release a large plume of methane or something similarly volatile. The gas will cool as it expands, recondense around dust particles that have been carried along—it’ll steam—and the cloud ought to get high enough, before it evaporates again, to be visible from here.”

  “Gotcha!” A tinge of excitement livened Danzig’s words. “I’ll go straight to it. Make tests, find a spot where I can get the showiest result, and…how about I rig a thermite bomb?…No, that might be too hot. Well, I’ll develop a gadget.”

  “Keep us posted.”

  “But I, I don’t think we’ll care to chatter idly,” Broberg ventured.

  “No, we’ll be working our tails off, you and I,” Scobie agreed.

  “Uh, wait,” said Danzig. “What if you find you can’t get clear to the top? You implied that’s a distinct possibility.”

  “Well, then it’ll be time for more radical procedures, whatever they turn out to be,” Scobie responded. “Frankly, at this moment my head is too full of…of Luis, and of choosing an optimum escape route…for much thought about anything else.”

  “M-m, yeah, I guess we’ve got an ample supply of trouble without borrowing more. Tell you what, though. After my beacon’s ready to fire off, I’ll make that rope we talked of. You might find you prefer having it to clean clothes and sheets when you arrive.” Danzig was silent for seconds before he ended: “God damn it, you will arrive.”

  Scobie chose a point on the north side for his and Broberg’s attempt. Two rock shelves jutted forth, near the floor and several meters higher, indicating that stone reached at least that far. Beyond, in a staggered pattern, were similar outcrops of hard ices. Between them, and onward from the uppermost, which was scarcely more than halfway to the rim, was nothing but the featureless, footingless slope of powder crystals. Its angle of repose gave a steepness that made the surface doubly treacherous. The question, unanswerable save by experience, was how deeply it covered layers on which humans could climb, and whether such layers extended the entire distance aloft.

  At the spot, Scobie signaled a halt. “Take it easy, Jean,” he said. “I’ll go ahead and commence digging.”

  “Why don’t we together? I have my own tool, you know.”

  “Because I can’t tell how so large a bank of that pseudo-quicksand will behave. It might react to the disturbance by a gigantic slide.”

  She bridled. Her haggard countenance registered mutiny. “Why not me first, then? Do you suppose I always wait passive for Kendrick to save me?”

  “As a matter of fact,” he rapped, “I’ll bargain because my rib is giving me billy hell, which is eating away what strength I’ve got left. If we run into trouble, you can better come to my help than I to yours.”

  Broberg bent her neck. “Oh. I’m sorry. I must be in a fairly bad state myself, if I let false pride interfere with our business.” Her look went toward Saturn, around which Chronos orbited, bearing her husband and children.

  “You’re forgiven.” Scobie bunched his legs and sprang the five meters to the lower ledge. The next one was slightly too far for such a jump, when he had no room for a running start.

  Stooping, he scraped his trenching tool against the bottom of the declivity that sparkled before him, and shoveled. Grains poured from above, a billionfold, to cover what he cleared. He worked like a robot possessed. Each spadeful was nearly weightless, but the number of spadefuls was nearly endless. He did not bring the entire bowlside down on himself as he had half feared, half hoped. (If that didn’t kill him, it would save a lot of toil.) A dry torrent went right and left over his ankles. Yet at last somewhat more of the underlying rock began to show.

  From beneath, Broberg listened to him breathe. It sounded rough, often broken by a gasp or a curse. In his spacesuit, in the raw, wan sunshine, he resembled a knight who, in despite of wounds, did battle against a monster.

  “All right,” he called at last. “I think I’ve learned what to expect and how we should operate. It’ll take the two of us.”

  “Yes…oh, yes, my Kendrick.”

  The hours passed. Ever so slowly, the sun climbed and the stars wheeled and Saturn waned.

  Most places, the humans labored side by side. They did not require more than the narrowest of lanes—but unless they cut it wide to begin with, the banks to right and left would promptly slip down and bury it. Sometimes the conformation underneath allowed a single person at a time to work. Then the other could rest. Soon it was Scobie who must oftenest take advantage of that. Sometimes they both stopped briefly, for food and drink and reclining on their packs.

  Rock yielded to water ice. Where this rose very sharply, the couple knew it, because the sand-ice that they undercut would come down in a mass. After the first such incident, when they were nearly swept away, Scobie always drove his geologist’s hammer into each new stratum. At any sign of danger, he would seize its handle and Broberg would cast an arm around his waist. Their other hands clutched their trenching tools. Anchored, but forced to strain every muscle, they would stand while the flood poured around them, knee-high, once even chest-high, seeking to bury them irretrievably deep in its quasi-fluid substance. Afterward they would confront a bare stretch. It was generally too steep to climb unaided, and they chipped footholds.

  Weariness was another tide to which they dared not yield. At best, their progress was dismayingly slow. They needed little heat input to keep warm, except when they took a rest, but their lungs put a furious demand on air recyclers. Garcilaso’s fuel cell, which they had brought along, could give a single person extra hours of life, though depleted as it was after coping with his hypothermia, the time would be insufficient for rescue by the teams from Chronos. Unspoken was the idea of taking turns with it. That would put them in wretched shape, chilled and stifling, but at least they would leave the universe together.