On the fourteenth day of their journey they reached the lower slopes of the great glacier which Camilla had christened The Wall Around the World. It soared above them cutting off half the sky, and MacAran knew that even at this oxygen level it was unclimbable. There was nothing beyond these slopes except bare ice and rock, buffeted by the eternal icy winds, and nothing was to be gained by going on. But even as MacAran's party turned their back on the enormous mountain mass, his mind rejected that unclimbable. He thought, no, nothing is impossible. We can't climb it now. Perhaps not in my lifetime; certainly not for ten, twenty years. But it's not in human nature to accept limits like this. Some day either I'll come back and climb it, or my children will. Or their children.
"So that's as far as we go in one direction," Dr. Frazer said. "Next expedition had better go in the other direction. This way it's all forest, and more forest."
"Well, we can make use of the forests," MacAran said. "Maybe the other direction there's a desert. Or an ocean. Or for all we know, fertile valleys and even cities. Only time will tell."
He checked the maps they had been making, looking with satisfaction on the filled-in parts, but realizing that there was a lifetime to go. They camped that night at the very foot of the glacier, and MacAran woke up before dawn, perhaps wakened by the cessation of the soft thick nightly snow. He went out and looked at the dark sky and the unfamiliar stars, three of the four moons hanging like jeweled pendants below the high ridge of the mountain above, then his eyes and thoughts went back to the valley. His people were there, and Camilla, carrying his child. Far to the east was a dim glow where the great red sun would rise. MacAran was suddenly overcome with a great and unspeakable content.
He had never been happy on Earth. The Colony would have been better, but even there, he would have fitted into a world designed by other men, and not all his kind of men. Here he could have a share in the original design of things, carve out and create what he wanted for himself and his children to come and their children's children. Tragedy and catastrophe had brought them here, madness and death had ravaged them, and yet MacAran
knew that he was one of the lucky ones. He had found his own place, and it was good.
It took them much of that day and the next to retrace their steps from the foot of the glacier, through sullen grey weather and heavy gathering cloud, and MacAran, who had begun to mistrust fine weather on this planet, nevertheless felt the now familiar prickle of disquiet. Toward evening of the second day the snow began, heavy and harder than anything he had yet seen on this world. Even in their warm clothes the Earthmen were freezing, and their sense of direction was quickly lost in the world which had turned to a white whirling insanity without color, form or place They dared not stop and yet it soon became obvious that they could not go on much longer through the deepening layers of soft powdery snow, through which they floundered, clinging to one another. They could only keep going down. Other directions no longer had meaning. Under the trees it was a little better, but the howling wind from the heights above them, the creaking and heaving of branch after branch like wind is the gigantic rigging of some sailing ship immense beyond imagining, filled the twilight with uncanny voices. Once, trying to shelter beneath a tree, they attempted to set up their tent, but the gale made it flap wildly and twice it was lost and they had to chase the blowing fabric through the snow until it became entangled around a tree and they could, after a fashion, reclaim it. But it was useless to them as shelter, and they grew colder and colder, their coats keeping them dry indeed, but doing almost nothing against the piercing cold.
Frazer muttered with chattering teeth, as they held on to one another in the lee of a larger tree than usual, "If It's like this in the summer, what the hell kind of storms are we going to have in the winter?"
MacAran said grimly, "I suspect, in the winter, none of us had better set foot outside the Base Camp." He thought of the storm after the first of the Winds, when he had searched for Camilla through the light snow. It had seemed like a blizzard to him then. How little he had known this world! He was overcome with poignant fear and a sense of regret. Camilla. She's safe in the settlement, but will we ever get back there, will any of us? He thought with a painful twinge of self-pity that he would never see his child's face,then angrily dismissed the thought. They needn't give up and lie down to die yet, but there had to be some shelter somewhere. Otherwise they wouldn't outlast the night. The tent was no more good to them than a piece of paper, but there had to be a way.
Think. You were boasting to yourself about what a selected, intelligent group we were. Use it, or you might as well be an Australian bushman.
You might better. Survival is something they're damn good at. But you've been pampered all your life.
Survive, damn you.
He gripped Janice by one arm, Dr. Frazer by the other; reached past him to young Domenick, the boy from the Commune who had been studying geology for work in the Colony. He drew them all close together, and spoke over the howling of the storm.
"Can anyone see where the trees are thickest? Since there's not likely to be a cave here, or any shelter, we've got to do the best we can with underbrush, or anything to break the wind and keep dry."
Janice said, her small voice almost inaudible, "It's hard to see, but I had the impression there's something dark over there. If it isn't solid, the trees must be so thick I can't see through them. Is that what you mean?"
MacAran had had the same impression himself; now, with it confirmed, he decided to trust it. He'd been led straight to Camilla, that other time.
Psychic? Maybe so. What did he have to lose?
"Everyone hold hands," he directed, more in gesture than words, "If we lose each other we'll never find each other again." Gripping one another tightly, they began to struggle toward the place that was only a darker darkness against the trees.
Dr. Frazer's grip tightened hard on his arm. He put his face close to MacAran's and shouted, "Maybe I'm losing my mind, but I saw a light."
MacAran had thought it was afterimages spinning behind his wind-buffeted eyes. What he thought he saw beyond it was even more unlikely; the figure of a man? Tall and palely shining and naked even in the storm--no, it was gone, it had been only a vision, but he thought the creature had beckoned from the dark loom... they struggled toward it. Janice muttered, "Did you see it?"
"Thought I did."
Afterward, when they were in the shelter of the thickly laced trees, they compared notes. No two of them had seen the same thing. Dr. Frazer had seen only the light. MacAran had seen a naked man, beckoning. Janice had seen only a face with a curious light around it, as if the face--she said--were really inside her own head, vanishing like the Cheshire cat when she narrowed her eyes to see it better; and to Domenick it had been a figure, tall and shining--"Like an angel," he said, "or a woman--a woman with long shining hair." But, stumbling after it, they had come against trees so thickly grown that they could hardly force their way between them; MacAran dropped to the ground and wriggled through, dragging them after.
Inside the clump of thickly growing trees the snow was only a light spray, and the howling wind could not reach them. They huddled together, wrapped in blankets from their packs and sharing body warmth, nibbling at rations cold from their dinner. Later, MacAran struck a light, and saw, against the bole of the tree, carefully fastened flat pieces of wood. A ladder, against the side of the tree, leading upwards... .