We headed for the road.
Molly led the way, leading and dragging Mabel and carrying the light. We needed the light. The night, too bright and too clear a few minutes before, was now suddenly overcast. Shortly we couldn’t see Jupiter at all, and then you couldn’t count your fingers in front of your face.
The road was wet underfoot, not rain, but sudden dew; it was getting steadily colder.
Then it did rain, steadily and coldly. Presently it changed to wet snow. Molly dropped back. “George,” she wanted to know, “have we come as far as the turn off to the Schultz’s?”
“That’s no good,” he answered. “We’ve got to get the baby into the hospital.”
That isn’t what I meant. Oughtn’t I to warn them?”
They’ll be all right. Their house is sound.”
“But the cold?”
“Oh.” He saw what she meant and so did I, when I thought about it. With the heat trap gone and the power house gone, every house in the colony was going to be like an ice box. What good is a power receiver on your roof with no power to receive? It was going to get colder and colder and colder ….
And then it would get colder again. And colder….
“Keep moving,” Dad said suddenly. “We’ll figure it out when we get there.”
But we didn’t figure it out, because we never found the turn off. The snow was driving into our faces by then and we must have walked on past it. It was a dry snow now, little sharp needles that burned when they hit.
Without saying anything about it, I had started counting paces when we left the walls of lava that marked the place where the new road led to our place and out to the new farms beyond. As near as I could make it we had come about five miles when Molly stopped. “What’s the matter?” yelled Dad.
“Dear,” she said, “I can’t find the road. I think I’ve lost it.”
I kicked the snow away underfoot. It was made ground, all right—soft. Dad took the torch and looked at his watch. “We must have come about six miles,” he announced.
“Five,” I corrected him. “Or five and a half at the outside,” I told him I had been counting.
He considered it. “We’ve come just about to that stretch where the road is flush with the field,” he said. “It can’t be more than a half mile or a mile to the cut through Kneiper’s Ridge. After that we can’t lose it. Bill, take the light and cast off to the right for a hundred paces, then back to the left. If that doesn’t do it, well go further. And for heaven’s sakes retrace your steps—it’s the only way you’ll find us in this storm.”
I took the light and set out. To the right was no good, though I went a hundred and fifty paces instead of a hundred, I got back to them, and reported, and started out again. Dad just grunted; he was busy with something about the stretcher.
On the twenty-third step to the left I found the road —by stepping down about a foot, falling flat on my face, and nearly losing the light. I picked myself up and went back.
“Good!” said Dad. “Slip your neck through this.”
“This” was a sort of yoke he had devised by retying the blankets around the stretcher so as to get some free line. With my neck through it I could carry the weight on my shoulders and just steady my end with my hands. Not that it was heavy, but our hands were getting stiff with cold. “Good enough!” I said, “But, look, George—let Molly take your end.”
“Nonsense!”
“It isn’t nonsense. Molly can do it—can’t you, Molly? And you know this road better than we do; you’ve tramped it enough times in the dark.”
“Bill is right, dear,” Molly said at once. “Here—take Mabel.”
Dad gave in, took the light and the halter. Mabel didn’t want to go any further; she wanted to sit down, I guess. Dad kicked her in the rear and jerked on her neck. Her feelings were hurt; she wasn’t used to that sort of treatment—particularly not from Dad. But there was no time to humor her; it was getting colder.