Then dreams of another kind claimed him, and he let go his clawgrip on reality.
For the latest of too many times Albumarak muttered, “Why couldn’t he have crashed where a floater could get to him?”
Perched forward of her in the snowrither’s haodah, empty but for the two of them, some hastily grafted warmplants, and a stack of emergency supplies, Presthin retorted, “We don’t even know he’s where we’re heading for! Slah could be wrong about the point where the meteor hit—our wind-speed estimates might be off—someone may have calculated the resultant position wrongly anyhow … Not that way, you misconceived misbudded miscegenate!”
She was navigating through a blizzard by dead reckoning, and had to ply her goad with vigor to keep their steed on course. Like all the folk’s transport, snowrithers had been forcibly evolved, from a strain naturally adapted to polar climate and terrain, but the original species had only spread into its ecological niche during the comparatively recent Northern Freeze, and despite expert pithing this beast, like its ancestors, would have preferred to follow a spoor promising food at the end of its journey.
“Now I’ve got a question,” Presthin went on, peering through the forward window, on which snow was settling faster than the warmplants could melt it. “And it’s a bit more sensible than yours. I want to hear why you volunteered to come with me! No guff about your ‘moral duty,’ please! I think you’re here for the same reason I am. You want to see one of these famous space-cylinders, and there aren’t apt to be any of them grown on our side of the world!”
“That has nothing to do with it! Anyway, they aren’t grown! They’re— well—cast, or forged, or something,” Albumarak concluded lamely.
“Hah! Well, it’s not because you’re so fond of my company, that’s for sure. Then it must be because you want to get out of Quelf’s claw-clutch for a while.”
“That’s part of it”—reluctantly.
“Only part? Then what can the rest be?”
Albumarak remained silent, controlling her exudations. How could she explain, even to unconventional Presthin, the impulse that had overcome her after she heard the crowd at Fregwil greet the failure of Karg’s mission with scornful jeers? Suddenly she had realized: she didn’t believe that a person willing to risk his or her own life in hope of ensuring the survival of the species could truly be as nasty as her teachers claimed. So she wanted to meet one, well away from Quelf and all her colleagues.
Of course, if she admitted as much, and they didn’t find him, or if when they did he were already dead, as was all too likely, Presthin’s coarse sense of humor might induce her to treat the matter as a joke. Albumarak had never liked being laughed at; mockery had been one of her parents’ chief weapons against their budlings.
Nonetheless she was bracing herself to disclose her real motive, when Presthin almost unperched her by jerking the snowrither to a convulsive halt.
Why? The blizzard had not grown fiercer; on the contrary, they had topped a rise and suddenly emerged under a clear evening sky.
“Look!” the goadster shouted. “They steered us to the right place after all!”
Across the next valley, on a hillside whose highest and steepest slope, still snow-free bar a thin white powdering, caught the last faint gleam of daylight: the multicolored rags and tatters of burst gas-globes.
“Just in time,” Presthin muttered. “By dark we could have missed it!”
Inside the cylinder the luminants were frosted and everything was foul with drying ichor. At first they thought their mission had been futile anyway, for they could find no sign of Karg. Presthin cursed him for being such a fool as to wander away from his craft. And then they realized he had only grown crazy enough to slash open the body of his hauq and burrow into it for warmth. It was long dead, and so within at best another day would he have been.
IV
Ever since Karg’s arrival at Fregwil the university’s healing-house had been besieged by sensation-seekers. Over and over it had been explained that the pilot would for long be too weak to leave his bower, and even when he recovered only scientists and high officials might apply to meet him. The crowds swelled and dwindled; nonetheless, as though merely looking at the place where he lay gave them some obscure satisfaction, their number never fell below ten score. Some of those who stood vainly waiting were local; most, however, were visitors to the Festival of Science, which lasted a moonlong and was not yet over.