CRADLE OF SATURN BY JAMES P. HOGAN

Cavan asked Dan how much he could tell them about where they were and the reception area he had been talking to just before the crash.

“It was an Army mobile unit operating at a local airstrip where they were setting it up,” Dan said. “From the fix they gave me, we must have been almost there—maybe just a few miles short. The last bearing they gave me was . . . I think, one-twenty-four degrees.” He stood up and looked back, estimating the final course that the Rustler had been following and trying to reconstruct the turns he had made bringing it down. Finally, he pointed to a low pass, barely visible through the dust, a little to the left of the now-invisible ridge behind which the first impact had occurred. “I’d say it has to be that way.”

Mitch nodded as if to say that was good enough for him. “I’ll take a squad to check it out,” he said. “The sooner we leave, the better. Debating will only waste time.” Cavan agreed but said he’d stay with Alicia, who insisted on remaining to help Dash; in any case, at his age, he said, he would only slow everyone down. Mitch didn’t argue. Charlie Hu had little choice, since he would have been hard put to walk the length of a football pitch. That left Keene and Colby to go with Mitch, which seemed advisable in case their political credentials still carried weight, and Dan as the navigator. Nine fit soldiers remained, including Legermount and Furle. Mitch assigned four who were at least up to marching to stay behind under Furle’s command with the injured and the civilians. The other five would accompany Mitch and his party, Legermount acting as second in command.

Keene saw suspicion in Furle’s eyes as he watched the departing party sorting out supplies and equipment to take with them. “A couple of hours in Texas, then on to Atlanta,” he heard Furle murmur sarcastically to one of the others as they picked up entrenching tools and went back to remove the bodies from the plane for burial along with the others.

When that task was complete, the soldiers began cutting and dragging parts of the plane to bridge a narrow section of the ravine, which they fashioned into a shelter with draped camouflage netting weighted with rocks and sand. Then they got a couple of stoves going, so at least the departing party were able to get a hot meal inside them before setting off.

41

If ever there was a preview of Hades, this had to be it. The nine—Mitch and Dan; Keene and Colby; Corporal Legermount and the four troopers—trudged in single file up the slope, their bodies stiff from hours of lying pressed against the rocks, slipping and sliding on sandy gravel that rolled from under their feet, wind-borne grit stinging their faces and eyes. Around them, a desolation of humps and boulders extended away to shadowy forms of hillsides and mesas outlined dimly in the dust-laden, sulfurous air. The knee that Keene had struck in the landing was throbbing, and after about thirty minutes he had to stop to put a dressing over the burn on his calf, which was chafing painfully. He was grateful that they had accepted the Guard-issue kit in Pasadena, including boots. His civilian shoes wouldn’t have hung together for a mile in this.

At the top of the rise, Dan halted to check his compass bearing. The men stood waiting, adjusting pack straps and repositioning weapons. Then Legermount pointed; Keene looked with the others, his eyes at first narrowing in puzzlement. . . . They were looking down over what seemed to be an expanse of desert extending away into the pall of dust through which something was glowing dull red. Then, as the pattern resolved itself, his jaw fell incredulously. The size and distance were impossible to estimate, since in the murk there was nothing to provide a reference of size—but a part of the desert seemed to be burning. He felt a nudge on his shoulder and turned. Mitch handed him a pair of field glasses. Keene raised them to his eyes, adjusted the focus, and peered.

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