“All of which gets us nowhere,” Mildred said. “Look, Dean’s got a point. Did you ever trade in these areas?”
Ryan and J.B. thought long and hard. Finally, the one-eyed warrior spoke. “Yeah, I see what you mean. J.B., can you give me a rough idea of how many miles to where Jak’s old place is?”
The Armorer shrugged and took out his minisextant. Using the position of the sun, time of day and his knowledge of prior readings in other places, J.B. calculated that the ranch Jak had briefly called home, before his wife and daughter were brutally slain and he rejoined the group, was some six days away in a southwesterly direction.
Ryan greeted the knowledge with a grunt. He squinted his single piercing blue eye to the horizon in a southeastern direction.
“I remember Trader taking us somewhere over there. I also remember, from what he said, that this is a fireblasted big desert we’ve landed in…but I figure we should hit a group of villes about three days away. There are some old blacktops that still run through parts of here, as well. If we hit one of those, we might hit an old gas station for shelter at night.”
“It’s our best option,” J.B. commented.
Mildred fixed him with a stare. “John, it’s our only option,” she said steadily.
” ‘Fraid so,” Ryan said. “Either that or risk another jump.”
Jak shook his head. “Not want do that soon. Rather fry.”
But there was no way he could have anticipated the intense heat of the day.
It was the perpetual dilemma of traveling across scorched earth. Did they try to keep up a rapid pace, hoping that their water would see them through as they lost more water from exertion, or did they keep to a slower pace, and hope that they could fend off sunstroke at the height of the day?
And then there were the nights… Desert nights could kill. They chilled to the bone and caused hypothermia to set in and take effect long before the morning sun could warm frozen flesh. In many ways, the nights were more dangerous, more insidious. During the days, temporary shelters could be constructed, any scrub used to give some kind of shade during rest periods. At first the cool of evening would be welcome, lulling the unsuspecting into a false sense of security before the bitter cold took hold. The scrub was even more vital at these times, as a source of firewood.
But there was little scrub and little chance to shelter. The chem-scoured and rad-blasted skies above them afforded no respite from the burning ultraviolet of the sun, and the deep freeze of the moon. Time began to lose meaning as there were no landmarks along the way, no visual relief from the unrelenting monotony of the desert, spreading all around in brownish, red dust that soaked up the rays of the sun and beat them back out. The heat burned the soles of their feet even through their heavy boots, radiating through the heavy clothes they used to cover the ground when they rested in whatever shade they could find or manufacture from their surroundings.
J.B. had taken regular readings to try to keep them on track. It would have been too easy to end up wandering in circles in a place where there were few landmarks. They kept heading in the direction they had chosen, but by the time they reached the remains of the road even Ryan began to wonder if somehow they had wandered off track and would end up frying in the desert dirt.
Doc was the worst hit. His time-trawl-ravaged body needed water at regular intervals, intervals that began to grow shorter with even greater regularity. He began to lean heavily on the lion’s-head swordstick that also doubled as a cane, and Dean hung back to aid him.
“Don’t worry, Doc, it’ll soon be better,” he said at one point.
Doc’s answer chilled him. He fixed him with a blank-eyed stare and said, “Jolyon, you’ve come back to me at last. How is my dear Emily? And Rachel? Is my hell finally over?”
Dean didn’t know what to say, but his eye met Mildred’s, and he could see that the woman was concerned about the way that Doc was deteriorating.