“What are you talking about?” Lath was hobbling around offside, trying to get behind me. I waved him back.
“This is the end of the line for you. Ognath can’t go anywhere; you two might make another few miles, but the three of you together will have a better chance.”
“Where do you think you’re going?” Ognath got himself up on one elbow to call out. “Are you abandoning us now?”
“He planned it this way all along,” Lath whispered. His voice had gone a couple of days before. “Made us pack his food for him, used us as draft animals; and now that we’re used up, he’ll leave us here to die.”
Ommu was the only one who didn’t spend the next ten minutes swearing at me. He flopped down on the snow and watched me range the snow blocks in a ten-foot circle. I cut and carried up more and built the second course. When I had the third row in place, he got up and silently started chinking the gaps with snow.
It took two hours to finish the igloo, including a six-foot entrance tunnel and a sanitary trench a few feet away.
“We’ll freeze inside that,” Ognath was almost blubbering now. “When our suit-packs go, we’ll freeze!”
I opened the packs and stacked part of the food, made up one light pack.
“Look,” Ognath was staring at the small heap of ration cans. “He’s leaving us with nothing! We’ll starve, while he stuffs his stomach!”
“If you starve you won’t freeze,” I said. “Better get him inside,” I told Ommu and Lath.
“He won’t be stuffing his stomach much,” Ommu said. “He’s leaving us twice what he’s taking for himself.”
“But—where’s all the food he’s been hoarding?”
“We’ve been eating it for the past week,” Ommu said. “Shut up, Ognath. You talk too much.”
We put Ognath in the igloo. It was already warmer inside, from the yellowish light filtering through the snow walls. I left them then, and with Eureka pacing beside me, started off in what I hoped was the direction of the beacon.
My pack weighed about ten pounds; I had food enough for three days’ half-rations. I was still in reasonable shape, reasonably well-fed. With luck, I expected to make the beacon in two days’ march.
I didn’t have luck. I made ten miles before dark, slept cold and hungry, put in a full second day. By sundown I had covered the forty miles, but all I could see was flat plain and glare ice, all the way to the horizon. According to the chart, the beacon was built on a hundred-foot knoll that would be visible for at least twenty miles. That meant one more day, minimum.
I did the day, and another day. I rechecked my log, and edited all the figures downward; and I still should have been in sight of home base by now. That night Eureka disappeared.
The next day my legs started to go. I finished the last of my food and threw away the pack; I had a suspicion my suit heaters were about finished; I shivered all the time.
Late that day I saw Eureka, far away, crossing a slight ripple in the flat ice. Maybe he was on the trail of something to eat. I wished him luck. I had a bad fall near sunset, and had a hard time crawling into the lee of a rock to sleep.
The next day things got tough. I knew I was within a few miles of the beacon, but my suit instruments weren’t good enough to pinpoint it. Any direction was as good as another. I walked east, toward the dull glare of the sun behind low clouds. When I couldn’t walk anymore, I crawled. After a while I couldn’t crawl anymore. I heard a buzzing from my suit pack that meant the charge was almost exhausted. It didn’t seem important. I didn’t hurt anymore, wasn’t hungry or tired. It felt good, just floating where I was, in a warm, golden sea. Golden, the color of the Lady Raire’s skin when she lay under the hot sun of Gar 28, slim and tawny. . . . Lady Raire, a prisoner, waiting for me to come for her.
I was on my feet, weaving, but upright. I picked out a rock ahead, and concentrated on reaching it. I made it and fell down and saw my own footprints there. That seemed funny. When I finished laughing, it was dark. I was cold now. I heard voices. . . .
The voices were louder, and then there was light and a man was standing over me and Eureka was sitting on his haunches beside me, washing his face.
4
Ommu and Ognath were all right; Lath had left the igloo and never came back; Choom was dead of gangrene. Of the four men I had sent back to the boat during the first few days, three reached it. All of the party at the boat survived. We later learned that our boat was the only one that got away from the ship. We never learned what it was we had collided with.
I was back on my feet in a day or two. The men at the beacon station were glad to have an interruption in their routine; they gave us the best of everything the station had to offer. A couple of days later a ship arrived to take us off.
At Ahax, I went before a board of inquiry and answered a lot of questions, most of which seemed to be designed to get me to confess that it had all been my fault. But in the end they gave me a clean bill and a trip bonus for my trouble.
Assemblyman Ognath was waiting when I left the hearing room.
“I understand the board dismissed you with a modest bonus and a hint that the less you said of the disaster the better,” he said.
“That’s about it.”
“Danger, I’ve always considered myself to be a man of character,” he told me. “At Cyoc, I was in error. I owe you something. What are your plans?”
He gave me a sharp look when I told him. “I assume there’s a story behind that—but I won’t pry. . . . ”
“No secret, Mister Assemblyman.” I told him the story over dinner at an eating place that almost made up for thirty days on the ice. When I finished he shook his head.
“Danger, do you have any idea how long it will take you to work your passage to as distant a world as Zeridajh?”
“A long time.”
“Longer than you’re likely to live, at the wages you’re earning.”
“Maybe.”
“Danger, as a politician I’m a practical man. I have no patience with romantic quests. However, you saved my life; I have a debt to discharge. I’m in a position to offer you the captaincy of your own vessel, to undertake a mission of considerable difficulty—but one which, if you’re successful, will pay you more than you could earn in twenty years below decks!”
5
The details were explained to me that night at a meeting in a plush suite on the top floor of a building that must have been two hundred stories high. From the terrace where I was invited to take a chair with four well-tailored and manicured gentlemen, the city lights spread out for fifty miles. Assemblyman Ognath wasn’t there. One of the men did most of the talking while the other three listened.
“The task we wish you to undertake,” he said in a husky whisper, “requires a man of sound judgment and intrepid character; a man without family ties or previous conflicting loyalties. I am assured you possess those qualities. The assignment also demands great determination, quick wits and high integrity. If you succeed, the rewards will be great. If you fail, you can expect a painful death, and we can do nothing to help you.”
A silent-footed girl appeared with a tray of glasses. I took one and listened:
“Ahacian commercial interests have suffered badly during recent decades from the peculiarly insidious competition of a nonhuman race known as the Rish. The pattern of their activities has been such as to give rise to the conviction that more than mere mercantile ambitions are at work. We have, however, been singularly unsuccessful in our efforts to place observers among them.”
“In other words, your spies haven’t had any luck.”
“None.”
“What makes this time different?”
“You will enter Rish-controlled space openly, attended by adequate public notice. Your movements as a lone Ahacian vessel in alien-controlled space will be followed with interest by the popular screen. The Rish can hardly maintain their pretence of cordiality if they offer you open interference. Your visit to the capital, Hi-iliat, will appear no more than a casual commercial visit.”
“I don’t know anything about espionage,” I said. “What would I do when I got there—if I got there?”