When she had finished, Kit reached for the second water bottle. “Better not,” said Flandry. “We’ve a long wait.”
“I’m dehydrated,” she husked.
“Me too. But we’ve no salt; heat stroke is a real threat. Drinking as little as possible will stretch our survival time. Why the devil aren’t these places air conditioned and stocked with rations?”
“No need for it. They just get routine inspection … at mid-winter in these parts.” Kit sat down on the one little bench. Flandry joined her. She leaned into the curve of his arm. A savage gust trembled in the hut walls, the window was briefly blackened with flying grit.
“Is Ardazir like this?” she wondered. “Then ’tis a real hell for those devils to come from.”
“Oh, no,” answered Flandry. “Temulak said their planet has a sane orbit. Doubtless it’s warmer than Terra, on the average, but we could stand the temperature in most of its climatic zones, I’m sure. A hot star, emitting strongly in the UV, would split water molecules and kick the free hydrogen into space before it could recombine. The ozone layer would give some protection to the hydrosphere, but not quite enough. So Ardazir must be a good deal drier than Terra, with seas ‘rather than oceans. At the same time, judging from the muscular strength of the natives, as well as the fact they don’t mind Vixen’s air pressure, Ardazir must be somewhat bigger. Surface gravity of one-point-five, maybe. That would retain an atmosphere similar to ours, in spite of the sun.”
He paused. Then: “They aren’t fiends, Kit. They’re fighters and hunters. Possibly they’ve a little less built-in kindliness than our species. But I’m not even sure about that. We were a rambunctious lot too, a few centuries ago. We may well be again, when the Long Night has come and it’s root, hog, or die. As a matter of fact, the Ardazirho aren’t even one people. They’re a whole planetful of races and cultures. The Urdahu conquered the rest only a few years ago. That’s why you see all those different clothes on them—concession to parochialism, like an ancient Highland regiment. And I’ll give odds that in spite of all their successes, the Urdahu are not too well liked at home. Theirs is a very new empire, imposed by overwhelming force; it could be split again, if we used the right tools. I feel almost sorry for them, Kit. They’re the dupes of someone else—and Lord, what a someone that is! What a genius!”
He stopped, because the relentless waterless heat had shriveled his gullet. The girl said, low and bitter: “Go on. Sympathize with Ardazir an’ admire the artistry o’ this X who’s behind it all. You’re a professional too. But my kind o’ people has to do the dyin’.”
“I’m sorry.” He ruffled her hair.
“You still haven’t tol’ me whether you think we’ll be rescued alive.”
“I don’t know.” He tensed himself until he could add: “I doubt it. I expect it’ll take days, and we can only hold out for hours. But if the ship comes—no, damn it, when the ship comes!—that pilot book will be here.”
“Thanks for bein’ honest, Dominic,” she said. “Thanks for everything.”
He kissed her, with enormous gentleness.
After that they waited.
The sun sank. A short night fell. It brought little relief, the wind still scourging, the northern sky still aflame. Kit tossed in a feverish daze beside Flandry. He himself could no longer think very clearly. He had hazed recollections of another white night in high-latitude summer—but that had been on Terra, on a cool upland meadow of Norway, and there had been another blonde girl beside him—her lips were like roses …
The whistling down the sky, earthshaking thump of a recklessly fast landing, feet that hurried over blistering rock and hands that hammered on the door, scarcely reached through the charred darkness of Flandry’s mind. But when the door crashed open and the wind blasted in, he swam up through waves of pain. And the thin face of Chives waited to meet him.
“Here, sir. Sit up. If I may take the liberty—”
“You green bastard,” croaked Flandry out of nightmare, “I ordered you to—”