She was smiling. "Isn't it wonderful what just a little change in the weather can do? Will it be much of a climb?"
"I don't think so. It looks from here as if we could walk straight up the slope--evidently the timberline on this planet is higher than most worlds. There's bare rock and no trees near the peak, but only a couple of thousand feet below there's vegetation. We haven't reached the snowline yet."
On the higher slopes, in spite of everything, MacAran recovered his old enthusiasm. A strange world perhaps, but still, a mountain beneath him, the challenge of a climb. An easy climb it was true, without rocks or icefalls, but that simply freed him to enjoy the mountain panorama, the high clear air. It was only Camilla's presence, the knowledge that she feared the open heights, that kept him in touch with reality at all. He had expected to resent this, the need to help an amateur over easy stretches which he could have climbed with one leg in a cast, the waiting for her to find footing on the stretches of steep rocky scree, but instead he found himself curiously in rapport with her fear, her slow conquest of each new height. A few feet below the high peak he stopped.
"Here. We can run a perfectly good line of sight from here, and there's a flat spot to set up your equipment. We'll wait here for noon."
He had expected her to show relief; instead she looked at him, with a certain shyness, and said, "I thought you'd like to climb the peak, Rafe. Go ahead, if you want to, I don't mind."
He started to snap at her that it would be no fun at all with a frightened amateur, then realized this was no longer true. He pulled his pack off his shoulder and smiled at her, laying a hand on her arm. "That can wait," he said gently, "this isn't a pleasure trip, Camilla. This is the best spot for what we want to do. Did you adjust your chronometer so that we can catch noon?"
They rested side by side on the slope, looking down across the panorama of forests and hills spread out below them. Beautiful, he thought, a world to love, a world to live in.
He asked idly, "Do you suppose the Coronis colony is this beautiful?"
"How would I know? I've never been there. Anyway, I don't know all that much about planets. But this one is beautiful. I've never seen a sun quite this color, and the shadows--" she fell silent, staring down at the pattern of greens and dark-violet shade in the valleys.
"It would be easy to get used to a sky this color," MacAran said, and was silent again.
It was not long until the shortening shadows marked the approach of the meridian. After all the preparation, it seemed a curious anticlimax; to unfold the hundred-foot-high aluminum rod, to measure the shadows exactly, to the millimeter. When it was finished and he was refolding the rod, he said as much, wryly:
"Forty miles and an eighteen-thousand-foot climb for a hundred and twenty seconds of measurements."
Camilla shrugged. "And God-knows-how-many light-years to come here. Science is all like that, Rafe."
"Nothing to do now but wait for the night, so you can take your observations." Rafe folded the rod and sat down on the rocks, enjoying the rare warmth of the sunlight. Camilla went on moving around their campsite for a little,
then came back and joined him. He asked, "Do you really think you can chart this planet's position, Camilla?"
"I hope so. I'm going to try and observe known Cepheid variables, take observations over a period of time, and if I can find as many as three that I can absolutely identify, I can compute where we are in relation to the central drift of the Galaxy."
"Let's pray for a few more clear nights, then," Rafe said, and was silent.
After some time, watching him study the rocks less than a hundred feet above them, she said, "Go on, Rafe. You know you want to climb it. Go ahead, I don't mind."
"You don't? You won't mind waiting here?"
"Who said I'd wait here? I think I can make it. And--" she smiled a little, "I suppose I'm as curious as you are--to get one glimpse of what's beyond it!
He rose with alacrity. "We can leave everything but the canteens here," he said. "It is an easy enough climb--not a climb at all, really; just a steep sort of scramble." He felt light-hearted, joyous at her sudden sharing of his mood. He went ahead, searching out the easiest route. showing her where to set her feet. Common sense told him that this climb, based only on curiosity to see what lay beyond and not on their mission's needs, was a little foolhardy--who could risk a broken ankle?--but he could not contain himself. Finally they struggled up the last few feet and stood looking out over the peak. Camilla cried out in surprise and a little dismay. The shoulder of the mountain on which they stood had obscured the real range which lay beyond; an enormous mountain range which lay, seemingly endless and to the very edge of their sight, wrapped in eternal snow, enormous and jagged and covered with glaciated ridges and peaks below which pale clouds drifted, lazily and slow.
Rafe whistled. "Good God, it makes the Himalayas look like foothills," he muttered.
"It seems to go on forever! I suppose we didn't see it before because the air wasn't so clear, with clouds and fog and rain, but--" Camilla shook her head in wonder. "It's like a wall around the world'!'
"This explains something else," Rafe said slowly. "the freak weather. Flowing over a series of glaciers like that, no wonder there's almost perpetual rain, fog, snow--you name it! And if they are really as high as they look--I can't tell how far away they are, but they could easily be a hundred miles on a clear day like this--it would also explain the tilt of this world on its axis. They call the Himalayas, on Earth, a third pole. This is a real third pole! A third icecap, anyway."
"I'd rather look the other way," Camilla said, and faced back toward the folds and folds of green-violet valleys and forests. "I prefer my planets with trees and flowers--and sunlight, even if the sunlight is the color of blood."
"Let's hope it shows us some stars tonight and some moons."
Chapter
FOUR
"I simply can't believe this weather," Heather Stuart said, and Ewen, stepping to the door of the tent, jeered gently, "What price your blizzard warnings now?"
"I'm glad to be wrong," Heather said firmly, "Rafe and Camilla need it, on the mountain." An expression of disquiet passed over her face. "I'm not so sure I was wrong, though, there's something about this weather that scares me a little. It seems all wrong for this planet somehow."
Ewen chuckled. "Still defending the honor of your old Highland granny and her second-sight?"
Heather did not smile. "I never believed in second sight. Not even in the Highlands. But now I'm not so sure. How is Marco?"
"Not much change, although Judy did manage to get him to swallow a little broth. He seems a little better, although his pulse is still awfully uneven. Where is Judy, by the way?"
"She went into the woods with MacLeod. I made her promise not to go out of sight of the clearing, though." A sound inside of the tent drew them both back; for the first time in three days, something other than inarticulate moans from Zabal. Inside he was moving, struggling to
sit up. He muttered, in a hoarse astonished voice, "Que pasõ O Dio, mi duele--duele tanto--"
Ewen bent over him, saying gently, "It's all right, Marco, you're here, we're with you. Are you in pain?"
He muttered something in Spanish: Ewen looked blankly up at Heather, who shook her head. "I don't speak it; Camilla does, but I only know a few words." But before she could muster any of them, Zabal muttered, "Pain? You'd better believe! What were those things? How long--where's Rafe?"