James P Hogan. Inherit The Stars. Giant Series #1

Hour after hour the thin snake of footprints, two pinpoints of

color at its head, wound its way westward across the wilderness

amid steadily lengthening shadows. He marched as if in a trance,

beyond feeling pain, beyond feeling exhaustion-beyond feeling

anything. The skyline never seemed to change; soon he could no

longer look at it. Instead, he began picking out the next prominent

boulder or crag, and counting off the paces until they reached it.

“Two hundred and thirteen less to go.” And then he repeated it over

again. . . and again. . . and again. The rocks marched by in slow,

endless, indifferent procession. Every step became a separate

triumph of will-a deliberate, conscious effort to drive one foot

yet one more pace beyond the last. When he faltered, Koriel was

there to catch his arm; when he fell, Koriel was always there to

haul him up. Koriel never tired.

At last they stopped. They were standing in a gorge perhaps a

quarter mile wide, below one of the lines of low, broken cliffs

that flanked it on either side. He collapsed on the nearest

boulder. Koriel stood a few paces ahead surveying the landscape.

The line of crags immediately above them was interrupted by a

notch, which marked the point where a steep and narrow cleft

tumbled down to break into the wall of the main gorge. From the

bottom of the cleft, a mound of accumulated rubble and rock debris

led down about fifty feet to blend with the floor of the gorge not

far from where they stood. Koriel stretched out an arm to point up

beyond the cleft.

“Gorda will be roughly that way,” he said without turning. “Our

best way would be up and onto that ridge. If we stay on the flat

and go around the long way, it’ll be too far. What d’you say?” The

other stared up in mute despair. The rockfall, funneling up toward

the mouth of the cleft, looked like a mountain. In the distance

beyond towered the ridge, jagged and white in the glare of the sun.

It was impossible.

Koriel allowed his doubts no time to take root. Somehow-slipping,

sliding, stumbling, and falling-they reached the entrance to the

cleft. Beyond it, the walls narrowed and curved around to the left,

cutting off the view of the gorge below from where they had come.

They climbed higher. Around them, sheets of raw reflected sunlight

and bottomless pits of shadow met in knife-edges across rocks

shattered at a thousand crazy angles. His brain ceased to ex

tract the concepts of shape and form from the insane geometry of

white and black that kaleidoscoped across his retina. The patterns

grew and shrank and merged and whirled in a frenzy of visual

cacophony.

His face crashed against his visor as his helmet thudded into the

dust. Koriel hoisted him to his feet.

“You can do it. We’ll see Gorda from the ridge. It’ll be all

downhill from there. . . .”

But the figure in red sank slowly to its knees and folded over. The

head inside the helmet shook weakly from side to side. As Koriel

watched, the conscious part of his mind at last accepted the

inescapable logic that the parts beneath consciousness already

knew. He took a deep breath and looked about him.

Not far below, they had passed a hole, about five feet across, cut

into the base of one of the rock walls. It looked like the remnant

of some forgotten excavation-maybe a preliminary digging left by a

mining survey. The giant stooped, and grasping the harness that

secured the backpack to the now insensible figure at his feet,

dragged the body back down the slope to the hole. It was about ten

feet deep inside. Working quickly, Koriel arranged a lamp to

reflect a low light off the walls and roof. Then he removed the

rations from his companion’s pack, laid the figure back against the

rear wall as comfortably as he could, and placed the food

containers within easy reach. Just as he was finishing, the eyes

behind the visor ifickered open.

“You’ll be fine here for a while.” The usual gruffness was gone

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