It was steep and slippery, and once Camilla lost her footing on the icy leafmold and slid, rolled and floundered to a stop against a great tree trunk; she lay there half-stunned until MacAran, flashing his light around and calling, caught her in his beam. She was gasping and sobbing with the cold, but when he reached a hand to help her up she shook her head and struggled to her feet. “I can manage. But thank you,” she added, grudgingly.
She felt exhausted, utterly humiliated. She had been trained that it was her duty to work with men as an equal and in the usual world she knew, a world of buttons to push and machines to run, physical strength was not a factor she had ever had to take into account. She never stopped to reflect that in all her life she had never known any physical effort greater than gymnastics in the exercise room of the ship, or a space station; she felt that she had somehow failed to carry her own weight, she had somehow betrayed her high position. A ship’s officer was supposed to be more competent than any civilian! She trudged wearily along down the steep slope, setting her feet down with dogged care, and felt the tears of exhaustion and weariness freezing on her cold cheeks.
MacAran, following slowly, was unaware of her inward struggle, but he felt her weariness through her sagging shoulders. After a moment he put his arm around her waist, and said gently, “Like I said before, if you fall again and get hurt badly we’ll have to carry you. Don’t do that to us, Camilla.” He added, hesitatingly, “You’d have let Jenny help you, wouldn’t you?”
She did not answer, but she let herself lean on him. He guided her stumbling steps toward the small glow of light through the tent. Somewhere above them, in the thick trees, the harsh call of a night‑bird broke through the noise of the beating sleet, but there was no other sound. Even their steps sounded odd and alien here.
Inside the tent MacAran sagged, gratefully taking the plastic cup of boiling tea MacLeod handed him, stepping carefully to where his sleeping bag had been spread beside Ewen’s. He sipped at the boiling liquid, brushing ice from his eyelids, hearing Heather and Judy making cooing sounds over Camilla’s icy face, bustling around in the cramped quarters and bringing her hot tea, a dry blanket, helping her out of her iced‑over parka. Ewen asked, “What’s it doing out there-‑rain? Hail? Sleet?”
“Mixture of all three, I’d guess. We seem to have lucked right into some kind of equinoctial storm, I’d imagine. It can’t be like this all year round.”
“Did you get your reading?” At MacAran’s affirmative nod, he said, “One of us should have gone, the Lieutenant’s not really up to that kind of climb in this weather. Wonder what made her try?”
MacAran looked across at Camilla, huddled under a blanket, with Judy drying her wet, tangled hair as she sipped the boiling tea. He said, surprising himself, “Noblesse oblige.”
Ewer nodded. “I know what you mean. Let me get you some soup. Judy did some great things with the ration. Good to have a food expert along.”
They were all exhausted and talked little of what they had seen; the howling of the wind and sleet outside made speech difficult in any case. Within half an hour they had downed their food and crawled into their sleeping bag. Heather snuggled close to Ewen, her head on his shoulder, and MacAran, just beyond them, looked at their joined bodies with a slow, undefined envy. There seemed a closeness there which had little to do with sexuality. It spoke is the way they shifted their weight, almost unconsciously, each to ease and comfort the other. Against his will he thought of the moment when Camilla had let herself rest against him, and smiled wryly in the dark. Of all the women is the ship she was the least likely to be interested in him, and probably the one he disliked most. But damn it, he had to admire her!
He lay awake for a time, listening to the noise of wind in the heavy trees, to the sound of a tree cracking and crashing down somewhere is the storm‑-God! It one fell on the tent, we’d all be killed-‑to strange sounds which might be animals crashing through the underbrush. After a while, fitfully, he slept, but with one ear opera, hearing MacLeod gasping in his sleep and moaning, once hearing Camilla cry out, a nightmarish cry, then fall again into exhausted sleep. Toward morning the storm quieted and the rain ceased and he slept like the dead, hearing only through his steep the sounds of strange beasts and birds moving in the righted forest and on the unknown hills.