"Hot stuff!" I shouted.
"Huh?" said Duke.
"I said, `Hot stuff!' This liquid nitrogen is hot stuff!" I strode forward over crackling ice.
Duke followed me, grumbling and shaking his head. "Liquid nitrogen is anything but `hot stuff."'
"You know what I mean-"
He grunted something unintelligible in response. I didn't ask him to repeat it.
The liquid nitrogen had frozen a crust in the powder. Where the powder was lightest, it was just cracked and crumbled away, but deeper down, where it was almost dense enough to walk on, the supercold turned the dusty quicksand into a texture more like dry snow-and that we could walk on. There was resistance now. The frozen powder crunched under our feet. Every few steps I stopped and froze another patch ahead of us. We were carving a deep furrow through the high dunes.
We couldn't see anything but powdery drifts all around us. They were piled up like walls. Apparently, we had come down near the center of a large shallow depression-probably an old dry riverbed. We were in the center of it and couldn't see out-assuming, of course, that there was something to see that wasn't pink.
The bush we were heading toward was actually on a high rise of ground. As we climbed up through the dust toward it, we found ourselves climbing out of the powder as well. Toward the top it was only waist deep.
Perhaps this slope was the western shore of the riverbed, but it was hard to tell. Some of these California riverbeds could be as wide as a kilometer across. This felt like being in a deep desert. Or in a lunar crater. Or on another planet. I wondered if they had places like this on Chtorr?
The air around us was pink with smoke. The wind was stirring up small powdery whorls that rose and dissipated into the air. The clouds of it spread out and became a gentle haze. I looked up. The sky was turning rosy.
And it was impossible to see the horizon. Everything just blurred out in the distance. The only difference was that the sky was slightly brighter than the ground, and the sun was a bright pink glow in the middle of everything.
I glanced back at the chopper. It had carved a long uneven furrow through the pink dunes-I could see where we'd bounced. Already the sides of the soft pink scar were collapsing and sliding inward. The aircraft itself was canted gently forward, its nose halfway buried in one of the highest of the dunes. The silken shroud of the parafoil had draped itself across the slope ahead of the ship. Already, the pink dust was sweeping over it, burying it from view. Its lines were barely visible now.
And beyond the chopper-there was only more pink. Pink whipped cream dunes and rosy pink sky, all fading off into an oppressive, bright pink blur. Everything was pink.
We crested the slope-the powder was only knee deep here and moved around to the other side of the bush. "Look-there're its tracks."
"Looks like some kind of paddlefoot," Duke said. "Four toes. The center two are the longest." He spread out the fingers of his hand and held it over the closest footprint for comparison. "He's a little fellow, whatever he is. My hand just covers this print."
"He went down that way," I pointed. I followed the tracks toward the trees.
"Jim-I don't think that's such a good idea-"
"Why not?" I paused and looked back.
"We'd better not get too far from the chopper," said Duke. "If we lose our way, we'll never get back."
"We'll follow our own path," I said.
Duke shook his head and pointed back the way we'd come. "Look-" Already the dust was filling in our trough. "It's still coming down. We're not aware of it, because we're stirring up so much of it, but if you watch something that isn't moving, you can see this crap is getting deeper. That cloud-" he gestured at the sky, "-is dumping most of its load right here. This stuff can't get past the Sierras. The wind can only carry so much of it. It's got to drop somewhere. This is the place."
"Damn," I said. "We'll have to hurry. Come on."
"That thing could be anywhere by now," Duke said.
"We've got to take the chance. We've got to see what that critter was! You can go back if you want-" I was already heading deeper into the pink forest. The creature had plowed a furrow through the dust, just like us. It zigzagged back and forth through the bushes.
Duke grumbled; but he shrugged, sighed, and followed. There are disadvantages to having a headstrong science officer. We twisted through the frosty trees, Duke muttering quiet obscenities.
"This is what I get for letting them assign you to me," he said.
"You asked for me." We'd had this argument before.
He waved it off. "You were the lesser of two evils. The alternative was a morally retarded sociopath who had fragged his commanding officer. The only reason they didn't shoot him was they couldn't prove he had actually tossed the grenade. Frankly, I just don't care to have that kind of man in my command." Duke changed his tone then; he became more serious. "Listen-whatever it was, it'll turn up again. Someone else will spot one. You don't have to be the guy who brings in all the animals. Besides, it's probably terrified of us and heading for the hills as fast as its fat little feet can carry it."
"I don't think so," I said, following the next turn. "It was studying us. That wasn't just an animal I saw. There was intelligence in those eyes. And where there's one, there're probably many. We're probably being watched from all sides right now." I stopped and pointed. "Look-I was right. There's another track-" A second line of paddlefoot tracks crossed the first. The dustfall indicated we were following the older set of prints. I turned to follow the newer furrow. It twisted and turned like the first.
"Don't these creatures believe in straight lines?" I asked.
"They must be descended from politicians," Duke replied.
"Or comedians," I said.
I came around what might have been a pine tree and stopped. Duke came up beside me. The furrow we were following headed straight into the center of a wide clearing
-and into a whole switchyard of crisscrossing paths! It was impossible to tell one from another.
"Damn!" said Duke. "I knew it."
I looked at him. His expression was impossible to read behind the goggles and O-mask. I said, "What are you talking about? This is incredible! There must be a whole colony of these creatures."
"-Unless your critter doubled back over his own path."
"Why would he do that?"
"To confuse us," Duke said. "Are you confused?"
"Uh... I don't think so."
"Uh huh." Duke looked at me funny. "Then which way is back?"
I pointed past his shoulder. "That way."
"You sure?"
I looked at him curiously. "Do you know something I don't?"
He turned slowly, studying the dunes. "Remember Shorty? He and I were in Pakistan together. The black pajama boys used to do this exact same trick. They'd let one of their number be seen. As soon as he was spotted he'd take off into the trees. There was always at least one jackass stupid enough to chase after him, so he'd leave the most complicated, zigzag, twisty, serpentine trail he could-but he always made sure it was clear enough to follow. As soon as you were deep enough to be confused about the way back, the trail would stop. That's when his friends would come out to play. We lost an awful lot of jackasses that way."
I glanced around nervously. A steady breeze rustled the surface of the dust, stirring pink wraiths into the air. Everything looked pink. There was no horizon any more, no sky, no ground-just a fine pink haze. We had some bleak-looking bushes and dunes. Nothing else.
I shuddered. For some reason, frosty pink things weren't charming any more. I looked back to Duke. "Do you think that's what's happening here?"
Duke looked grim. "I don't know. I didn't see your creature and I can't guess what he wants or how his mind works. And this isn't Pakistan. But that's what I keep thinking of. Sorry, son-that's the only thing I have to compare it to-Pakistani Poker."