Their steps crunched over gravel and squelched through the mud, while their breath made frosty plumes in the chill air. Keene’s feet ached, his legs ached, and his shoulders and hips were sore where the pack chafed. Predictably, the ground that had looked to be smooth and easygoing from a distance turned out to be broken and boggy, slowing them down with impassable mud-filled hollows and forcing them into detours. They followed the ribs, picking out the lines of the high ground. The world contracted to become just the patch of terrain immediately ahead. Keene found himself playing games in his head, picking out some feature ahead and counting off the steps until they reached it. “Three hundred twenty less to go.” Then he would repeat it again. And again. And again . . . He asked himself why they were doing this, trying to block out the almost certain futility of it by now. All that came back was another question, asking what was the alternative. But at least the slope was downward now, aiding their progress and sparing the muscles racked during the ascent yesterday.
As their bodies warmed and stretched, their pace picked up to a steadier rhythm. And despite the soreness and the fatigue, Keene was conscious of a deep-rooted elation at the sense of being home, in contact and communion with the elements of Earth once again. It was as if this first closeness in years with the air and ground of a world being reborn were infusing part of its life into his being.
About halfway into the morning they halted by a creek to rest and snack on drinks mixed from a fruit flavoring and a confectionary cake. “We’re going to need more water,” Charlie remarked, upending one of the bottles they had brought. “Probably better to refill up here than wait till we’re lower down.” Keene agreed. Charlie scouted around to find a spot where the water was clear and flowing over rocks. A bird with blue and gray plumage was watching with jerky, comical motions of its head from a low bush. Keene flipped it a few crumbs. It hopped down and investigated them, cautiously, keeping an eye on him all the time. Several others that had been less forward joined it. Keene wondered if he had just assured them of a permanent entourage from here on. Charlie rinsed his face and then clambered back up from the creek bed with the water bottle.
“How do you figure it with the Pragmatists, Lan?” he asked as he began fastening his pack. “All this time they’ve been pushing the line that Earth distances are too extended for any sustained effort, and we should be focusing on Kronia. And then they do a sudden turnabout and want to set themselves up right here. What’s going on?”
“The usual power thing,” Keene answered. “The first story legitimized a ploy for getting a bigger share in running Kronia. When that failed, they switched it to having their own here instead. It was probably the fallback plan all along.”
“All the way out here? With just the resources they could bring on a few ships? Could that be enough to give them a realistic start?”
Keene shrugged. “Wasn’t America started from less?”
“They wouldn’t have lasted through the first winter without the Indians.”
“True. . . . Well, what can I tell you? Evidently, it was a gamble they figured they could take.”
They stood up, shouldered their loads, and turned again toward the west. “I’m still astounded that they were able to organize as much as they did and get away with it,” Charlie said.
“With Terrans, they wouldn’t have,” Keene replied. “But you know the kind of heads Kronians have for politics. Cavan tried to make them a bit more cautious and questioning, but this wasn’t his home turf.”
“You think he saw this coming?”
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that. But I know he got close to people like Xen Urzin and Jon Foy. He wanted them to set up an intelligence operation the way anyone back on Earth would have done, so they’d at least have known what was going on. But their whole background makes them take people at face value and accept what they say. In whichever sense you want to take it, they just weren’t from the same world.”