Walking was difficult. There was about ten centimeters of new snow on top of a hard crust, the melted top of the old snow, which was about twice as deep. All of us except Alegria were heavy enough to break the crust: step, crunch, drag; step, crunch drag. We kept getting caught in the vegetation, too, which was usually low enough to be hidden by the snow. A mat of interconnected brambles.
The ice was about two meters lower than the shore, with steep banks on both sides. We tested the ice carefully before putting our full weight on it. I went first. Figured if it would hold me it would hold anybody. It wasn’t a very wide branch and we got across without any difficulty. If the rest were as easy, we’d make it in fine shape, as long as the weather held.
The rest weren’t as easy and the weather didn’t hold. It started sleeting again, wet and cold. The next branch we came to was slushy on top with several large holes in the ice.
B’oosa shook his head. “This looks bad.”
“You don’t think the ice will hold?” I asked.
“It’s no that.” He scrambled down the bank and we followed, to rest for a minute out of the wind. “These holes are part of the winter ecology of this area. A lot of animals come to them for water; some come to fish.”
“Big animals?” Alegria said.
“That’s just it. Large predators hang around the holes to feed off the animals that come to drink. Some of them are large enough not to be afraid of five humans.” He told us about the snowbeast, the worst one. The size of a small floater, it had six powerful legs, the front pair of which could be used as hands, centaur-style, when it wasn’t running or swimming. It had large claws and teeth — in a mouth wide enough to decapitate a person in one snap — and was covered with silky white fur. Its eyes were saucer-sized and also white. In a snowstorm you could walk within ten meters of one and never see it, never know what killed you. Vibroclubs would be useless, except on the eyes or mouth.
We didn’t see any snowbeasts that day, or any animal larger than a seabird, even though we crossed four rivers with the water holes (giving the holes wide berths, admittedly). It sleeted constantly, until we stopped for the night and put up the tent. Naturally.
It was hard to tell how far we’d gone. The maps they’d given us were crude, on purpose, and one small stream looked just like any other. The visibility was too poor to see the mountains, and back-triangulate. When we got to the main river, we’d know we had covered about a third of the distance. What hat meant in terms of time would depend on the weather and the terrain.
The sky was perfectly clear the next morning, and we made pretty good time. We got to the main river after a couple of hours of slogging.
It was a lot wider than it had looked from the mountain. Ice granules floating in a scum of slush rattled along the bank, but the middle was clear except for large chunks of ice drifting lazily along. We would have to paddle about two hundred meters.
Miko took the raft from his pack and pulled the tab that inflated it. It was big enough for three normal people; we had to make three crossings.
The first two went without incident, though it was scary to be on one bank while the stunner was on the other. I kept my knife out and didn’t inflate my safety vest until the last minute, to stay maneuverable. Pancho, Alegria and Miko went over first, then Pancho came back for B’oosa. He was going to come back for me next, but he’d gotten a cramp on the second crossing, so I drew Miko. B’oosa was too big and Alegria too small. That didn’t please me too much, but I was glad to finally pop my vest and step aboard the raft.
“Current’s not bad until we get to the middle,” Miko said. “We have to put some back in it then.”
The damned thing didn’t steer at all; we paddled straight and drifted in a curving diagonal toward the opposite shore. We also used the paddles to push us off the ice floes, some of which were big enough to stand on.
Miko had more boating experience than I did, but I was in front, for being stronger. We were heading toward what looked like a whirlpool. I pointed at it with my paddle. “Does that mean there’s a rock underneath, or something? Should we —“
“Wasn’t there before,” he said quickly. “It’s no rock.”
Suddenly the water heaved and a huge mound of white fur surfaced. It swiveled around slowly and fixed one large white eye on us. It was no more than ten meters away. The stunner warbled from the opposite shore; the snowbeast turned to look at it and sank leisurely.
“That was too close,” Miko said.
I was paddling like a madman. “Idiot! What it was was too far away! You can’t drop an animal that big from —“ Suddenly we were out of the water, tipping crazily, and I had a glimpse of the thing’s massive back before I plunged into the icy black water.
A strong man might survive five or six minutes in that water. It only felt cold for an instant; then I was just numb and stinging. I bobbed up coughing, knife in hand, for what it was worth. I tried to find the vibroclub, but it was on the outside of my pack, stuck under the life jacket.
I couldn’t see the snowbeast anywhere. Miko was swimming furiously toward a large ice floe. I was closer to the raft, so I set out for it.
I don’t know how long it took. Trying to stroke and breathe regularly and not think about the mankiller swimming below, ready to kill me with one bite. Somehow I got to the raft, no paddles, and heaved myself half aboard. Started kicking my feet, moving slowly toward the shore.
After a few minutes I heard shouting. I looked up and saw the other three hollering and pointing. B’oosa dropped down to a marksman’s crouch and fired along burst from the stunner.
They were pointing at Miko, who had made I to the ice floe. He was lying on top of it, evidently unconscious. The snowbeast was just downstream, only its head showing as it swam closer.
Two paws broke out of the water and grabbed for Miko, but he had pulled himself far enough from the edge for the claws not to reach him. The beast howled and started scrabbling aboard. It didn’t pay any attention to the stunner, which B’oosa was firing steadily.
It finally got all of its bulk up on the floe. I knew I should be kicking, make it to the shore before I became dessert. But I was fascinated by the horror, frozen in more ways than one.
It stood over him, half again my own height even with four feet on the ground. But instead of grabbing Miko and tearing at him, it stood there with its arms limp, shaking its head. The stunner was having some effect. B’oosa never let up firing.
The creature’s four knees buckled and it fell, its terrible head less than a meter from Miko.
“Get him!” B‘oosa shouted. “In the raft! We’ll get a line out.” It looked like a long way. I wondered how long the snowbeast would stay unconscious.
I started kicking my way downstream. You couldn’t leave anyone to that sort of thing, not even Miko. But I couldn’t feel my legs anymore, and it was getting hard to breathe.
By the time I reached the floe I was in a sort of trance from the pain and exertion. I did mange to get up on the ice, but standing there was very strange, as if I were floating two meters off the ground, and didn’t exist from the waist down. I may have stood there for along time, enjoying being out of the water. Someone was shouting from the shore. The beast lay there with its eyes open, one nostril flap moving slowly. We looked at each other for a while. Then I came more-or-less to my senses, pain waking up my legs, healthy fear seeping into my brain. I dragged Miko to the edge and managed to manhandle him into the raft without drowning him. When I slipped into the water it was like a bath of fire, then numb again. We were about seventy meters from the shore. In the serene knowledge that we would never make it, I started kicking.
They were yelling for me to get into the raft. That didn’t make any sense, but it did look like a warmer place to be. It took a long time, everything did, and I had to be careful not to dump Miko overboard.
The exertion was almost too much. I felt a new, squeezing pain in the center of my chest. Heart attack? I lay down, using Miko
as a pillow. I blacked out, then woke up, then blacked out again.
“Can you reach it?” Miko was whispering. I was annoyed that he woke me up.
“Reach what?”
“The rope. They floated a rope, they say.” I could hear shouting, but my ears were ringing too loudly for me to understand. I levered myself up far enough to peer over the edge of the raft. There was a rope, all right, one end tethered to an inflatable life jacket, and we were slowly moving toward it. They had thrown it out to where it would hang up on an ice floe; we moved slightly faster than the ice because of the wind.
But the tight pain was still in my chest and my arms felt paralyzed. I waited until the raft touched the rope, then heaved one arm overboard. Sitting up, I dragged the arm back into the raft, and the rope came with it. My hands wouldn’t close, to hold the rope, but I managed to twist it around my arm and lean back. Miko tried to help, but all he could do was twitch.
They pulled, and the rope started to slip. I rolled over on it and the world went away, different this time, white sparks instead of blackness.
I managed to make one eye work. There was a light, amorphous and shot through with rainbows. A few good blinks and it sharpened somewhat: a blur that was recognizably B’oosa, sitting under the tent lamp, reading. Another blur, next to me, was Miko wrapped up in a sleeping bag. So was I; it took a certain amount of effort to free my hands, to rub sight back into my eyes.
“Feeling better, Carl?” B’oosa said, without looking up.
“Better than what?” My body was a collection of dull aches and sharp pains. Must be alive. “How long have I been out?”
“Almost two full days.”
“Two days!”
“You were suffering from exposure. Badly, as was Miko. It was better that you get some rest. The med kit has marvelous little pink pills for that.”
“Where are we?”
“We’re still by the river.”
“And that noise outside?”
“A storm, a bad one.”
I counted sleeping bodies. “Where’s Pancho?”
“Outside, keeping watch.”
We’d been gone five days, it occurred to me. “They ought to be looking for us by now, right?”
B’oosa shrugged. “Perhaps.”
“Did you call them on the transmitter?”
“I tried,” he said, holding up the small box, “but I got no results.”
“Not again.”
“I thought that was strange, too.. So I opened the transmitter to see if it could be repaired. This is what I found.” He opened the front of the box. Inside the shell it was empty; no wiring, no crystals. “This is not just a broken transmitter, this is a dummy transmitter. It was never intended to work.”
“It sounds almost like they were trying to kill us,” I said.
“I’ve given that some thought,” said B’oosa. “Unlikely, but possible.”
Just then Pancho burst into the tent. “B’oosa, I’ve — oh hi, Carl — I mean you told me to —“
B’oosa got up, left the tent in a hurry. Alegria followed him out. I went too, after I’d found my clothes.
Outside, I could hardly stand up, the wind was so strong. B’oosa and Alegria were bent over the tent supports. They had been braced and double-braced. Even from where I was, I could see that they weren’t going to hold for long.
“We’ll have to strike the tent,” B’oosa shouted. Alegria nodded.
“I’ll help,” I said, stumbling forward.
“Get back in your sleeping bag,” aid B’oosa. “You’re too weak.”
I started to protest when my legs gave out and I sprawled sideways into the snow. He was right, I was too weak. I crawled back into the tent.
They collapsed the tent on top of the three of us. With a low profile, the tent might stay. They lashed it down pretty well. Eventually Pancho crawled in with us.
“Where’s B’oosa?” I asked.
“He’s outside, amigo,” said Pancho. “Keeping an eye on the tent, and watching out for the snowbeast. He told me he would come in if it got too bad, but frankly, I am worried.”
“Why’s that?” I asked.
“Those two days you were out were very hard on our friend. I do not think he is well and he tried to do too much. He pulled you and Miko from the water, you know.”
I didn’t know. I would have expected it and it was like him not to say anything about it.
“Very bad out there,” Pancho said. “I saw the storm come in., It started in the mountains, and like a solid wall it came, a solid wall of ice. Then the wind came up the delta from the sea. They met in the valley and it has been getting worse every hour. When I came in, I honestly could not see my hand in front of my face.”
We had such storms on Springworld, during mid-winter. Nobody went out in them, of course. There were stories of people who stepped outside and got lost a few meters from their homes, and started going in circles, to be found at spring thaw, kilometers away. “How long does B’oosa stand guard?”
“One hour, two hours. He’ll come get me or Alegria when he’s ready.”
“Or me,” I said. “I couldn’t stand a full hour, but —“
“Only if you sleep, amigo.” He turned off the light and I could hear him burrowing deeply into his bag. Good idea.
“Wake up! Everybody wake up!” It was Alegria, and there was the sound of terror in her voice.
“What is it?” Pancho sounded fully awake.
“B’oosa! He’s disappeared!” We struggled out of the tent to be greeted by a pale blue sky, no wind, the sun almost warm. No B’oosa, no footprints. No stunner.
Miko staggered and grabbed my arm. I held him up by the shoulders. Being smaller, the exposure had hit him even harder than me. “Shize,” he said weakly. “What are we going to do now?”
“We have to look for him,” Alegria said. No one would suggest otherwise, of course, but the same thought must have possessed all of us: B’oosa pacing to keep warm, getting turned around, the steep river bank not ten meters away.
Pancho trudged to the bank and peered over. “No sign.”
“What we need is a floater,” I said. “If he’s … passed out even half a klick from here, we could search for days and not find him.” Especially if his body is buried in a drift.
“We’ll quarter the area,” Pancho said. “And search for six hours. Then we break camp and set out across the delta.”
“With the sun out,” I said, “he would start heading in the same direction. If it doesn’t start snowing again, we should run into his tracks.” I didn’t believe it and they didn’t believe it, but they all nodded.
We only had three vibroclubs. I gave mine to Alegria, then took B’oosa’s staff and lashed my knife to the end of it. Go for the eyes, sure. Pancho assigned directions and we all walked off, searching.
After an hour or so of toeing drifts, I heard somebody yelling — yelling loud, for me to hear him over the ringing in my ears. It was Pancho, back near the campsite, waving and pointing.
I looked for a long minute and finally saw the silver speck of a floater, drifting down over the mountains, heading straight for us. I started to run and fell on my face. Got up and hurried carefully.
I got there the same time as the floater. This wasn’t the simple open platform they used to ferry us around; it was a streamlined airfoil with a bubble top. The top slid back and Bruno stepped out. A man I’d never seen followed him. He wasn’t dressed for the weather; mottled green combat fatigues with a jacket. He rubbed his hands together and blew into them.
Bruno studied us. “Where’s the big black one?”
“He was on guard last night. We lost him.”
“Lost him.” Bruno turned to the other man. “Sorry. He was the best one.”
The man shrugged. “Quantity, not quality.”
They both laughed and Bruno unsnapped the holster on his belt. He leisurely drew out a squat black pistol I recognized to be a “neurotangler.”
“You’re all dead,” he said flatly, and clicked off the safety catch.
My home-made spear wasn’t balanced for throwing, and I was never that good at underhand, but I flung it at him as hard as I could. At the same instant the ‘tangler buzzed and I felt a million tiny pins prick the front of my body, and what strength I had left started to drain away.
The spear struck Bruno squarely in the chest, then fell away. Body armor. Rubbing the spot where it had hit, Bruno dropped everyone else with a negligent wave of the ‘tangler.
“He’s a fighter,” the other man nodded approvingly. “Good reflexes.”
I fell slowly back into the snow. Was this blue sky the last thing I’d ever see? “Bears are good fighters, too,” I heard Bruno say. “But they’re dumb. Let’s dump this shize into the river.”
I heard them dragging the tent; heard it splash.
“Doesn’t seem fair,” the other one said. “You get insurance for all five. I just —“
“Tough. We made a deal. Help me with the big one.`
They grabbed my feet and dragged me. My front was totally numb, but the shocking cold of the snow shoveling up the back of my tunic helped keep me awake.
They didn’t drop me in the river. Instead, they muscled me upright and tipped me into the floater. I heard my nose crack on the floor, but didn’t feel anything. I saw snow; the floor was transparent plastic.
One by one, they piled the others on top of me. Then they slid the top shut and we took off.
I watched the river drop away and traced my erratic path back to where I’d been searching when the floater came. I wasn’t looking for anything, and almost missed it — more footprints! About a hundred meters farther than I’d gone. So B’oosa had survived the storm.
But my hopes evaporated as quickly as they’d risen. It must have been still dark when the snow stopped. The steps went straight to the river, and stopped.
IV
“Come on, troops. Rise and shize.” Something hit me hard on the foot and I woke up from a confusing dream.