He kept plodding along, one foot after the other. One step at a time. I can outwalk any mule deer in these mountains. I can walk all the way around Mars if I have to. Show me how, Grandfather. Lead me.
Jamie remembered the fetish, stuck in his coverall pocket. He wished he could worm his arm free and reach into the pocket for it. He knew its power would warm him, bring him strength.
The cable suddenly pulled taut, yanking Jamie off his feet. He toppled over backward and hit the ground with a thud.
“Holy shit,” he muttered.
“What?”
“What is it? What’s wrong?”
Vosnesensky in one ear, Joanna in the other.
“Cable’s stuck,” Jamie said. He struggled up to his knees, tugged on the cable. “Christ, it feels as if…” he had to take a gulping breath “… as if the winch motor’s frozen.”
“That should not happen,” Vosnesensky snapped.
“Right. Tell me.” Jamie pulled on the cable again, leaning his full weight against it. It gave a little, stuck momentarily, then suddenly freed up. He staggered backward ludicrously, arms flailing to regain his balance, a string of obscenities he had not used since undergraduate days flowing from him.
“Jamie!” Joanna’s voice was pitched high with anxiety, almost a scream.
“Okay… I’m okay…,” he gasped. “It worked loose again.”
“The motor of the winch is self-heating,” Vosnesensky said, as if to prove that what had happened had not happened.
“Right,” said Jamie. He looked down at the ground to get his bearings, then started out again, keeping the sand a dozen paces to his right.
Sure, the motor’s self-heating. Down to what temperature? Fifty below? A hundred below? A hundred fifty? Jamie did not want to look at his thermometer again. The numbers would be meaningless. It was cold. He could feel his life warmth seeping out into the thin keening night air. Numbers. Numb. Cold and freezing and numb.
His feet felt as if they no longer belonged to him. Cold and numb. He kept plodding forward; at least his legs obeyed the dogged commands of his brain. He leaned into the harness, dragging the cable behind him. If the winch motor goes I’m really stuck. Damned cable weighs too much for me to drag all the way without a motor helping me.
He heard a humming sound in his earphones, almost rhythmic, droning.
“What’s… that?”
“‘The Song of the Volga Boatmen,'” Vosnesensky’s voice answered solemnly out of the darkness. “It has been used for ages by men pulling barges up the Volga river. I thought it would help you.”
“Sounds like… a funeral dirge.”
Vosnesensky stopped his humming. “If you do not appreciate my music, then let me hear you speak. I want to hear you.”
“No breath for talking.”
“Make breath! I want to know that you are conscious and making progress.”
“You can hear my gasping, can’t you?”
“Yes, but I-wait! I can see your light! Jamie, you are getting close enough for me to see the light from your helmet lamp! Where are those binoculars? Yes! It is your helmet lamp! You are getting closer!”
Vosnesensky was being ridiculous. What other light could he possibly see out on this frozen empty slope?
“Keep moving, Jamie.” Tony Reed’s voice. “Don’t stop now.”
“Don’t stop now,” repeated Vosnesensky, with even more fervor in his voice.
“What’re you… going to do… if I stop? Come out… after me?”
“If both my legs worked,” Ivshenko said, “I would gladly come out to greet you.”
Jamie shook his head, knowing that they could not see his gesture even if they were standing beside him in the full warm light of noon. Ivshenko can’t walk and Mikhail can’t even stand up, from what he had heard.
“Jamie,” Joanna called, “talk to me, please. Tell me about your home in New Mexico. I have never been there.”
“Not my home. I don’t have… any home. Not in New Mexico… not anywhere. Except here. Maybe here. Mars is my home.”
“Tell me what we will do once we return to Earth, then,” she said.
“I’ll tell you about Coyote.”
“Coyote?”
“The trickster. Always causing trouble.”
“Yes,” Joanna said. “Tell me.”
“You know… the patterns of the stars? The constellations?”