“It seems to go on forever! I suppose we didn’t see it before because the air wasn’t so clear, with clouds and fog and rain, but–” Camilla shook her head in wonder. “It’s like a wall around the world’!’
“This explains something else,” Rafe said slowly. “the freak weather. Flowing over a series of glaciers like that, no wonder there’s almost perpetual rain, fog, snow–you name it! And if they are really as high as they look–I can’t tell how far away they are, but they could easily be a hundred miles on a clear day like this–it would also explain the tilt of this world on its axis. They call the Himalayas, on Earth, a third pole. This is a real third pole! A third icecap, anyway.”
“I’d rather look the other way,” Camilla said, and faced back toward the folds and folds of green-violet valleys and forests. “I prefer my planets with trees and flowers–and sunlight, even if the sunlight is the color of blood.”
“Let’s hope it shows us some stars tonight and some moons.”
Chapter FOUR
“I simply can’t believe this weather,” Heather Stuart said, and Ewen, stepping to the door of the tent, jeered gently, “What price your blizzard warnings now?”
“I’m glad to be wrong,” Heather said firmly, “Rafe and Camilla need it, on the mountain.” An expression of disquiet passed over her face. “I’m not so sure I was wrong, though, there’s something about this weather that scares me a little. It seems all wrong for this planet somehow.”
Ewen chuckled. “Still defending the honor of your old Highland granny and her second-sight?”
Heather did not smile. “I never believed in second sight. Not even in the Highlands. But now I’m not so sure. How is Marco?”
“Not much change, although Judy did manage to get him to swallow a little broth. He seems a little better, although his pulse is still awfully uneven. Where is Judy, by the way?”
“She went into the woods with MacLeod. I made her promise not to go out of sight of the clearing, though.” A sound inside of the tent drew them both back; for the first time in three days, something other than inarticulate moans from Zabal. Inside he was moving, struggling to sit up. He muttered, in a hoarse astonished voice, “Que pasõ O Dio, mi duele–duele tanto–”
Ewen bent over him, saying gently, “It’s all right, Marco, you’re here, we’re with you. Are you in pain?”
He muttered something in Spanish: Ewen looked blankly up at Heather, who shook her head. “I don’t speak it; Camilla does, but I only know a few words.” But before she could muster any of them, Zabal muttered, “Pain? You’d better believe! What were those things? How long–where’s Rafe?”
Ewen checked the man’s heart-rate before he spoke. He said, “Don’t try to sit up; I’ll put a pillow behind your head. You’ve been very ill; we thought you weren’t going to make it.” And I’m still not so sure, he thought grimly, even while he wadded his spare coat to put behind the injured man’s head and Heather encouraged him to swallow some soup. No, please, there have been too many deaths. But he knew this would make no difference. On Earth only the old died, as a rule. Here–well, it was different. Damn different.
“Don’t waste your breath talking. Save your strength and we’ll tell you everything,” he said.
The night fell, still miraculously clear and free of fog or rain. Even on the heights, no fog closed in, and Rafe, setting up Camilla’s telescope and other instruments on the flat place of their camp, saw for the first time the stars rise over the peaks, clear and brilliant but very far away. He did not know a Cepheid variable from a constellation, so much of what she was trying to do was incomprehensible to him; but with a carefully shielded light–not to spoil the dark-adaptation of her eyes–he wrote down careful strings of figures and co-ordinates as she gave them. After what seemed hours of this, she sighed and stretched cramped muscles.
“That’s all I can do for now; I can take more readings just before dawn. Still no sign of rain?”