He remembered the words she had said the night before he left. He could hear her voice speaking to him once more: Be very careful, Spencer… I will pray for you every day.
Prayer cannot help me, thought Spence, then reflected that probably very little else would help either. At least prayer would not hurt. The idea seemed somehow appropriate to him now, and proper. He wished that he had the right words to say so that his first, and likely last, prayer would not be the feeble simpering of a dying agnostic.
He felt a rush of emotion. and the tears brimmed up in his eyes to roll down his cheeks inside the helmet. He could not brush them away.
With the tears came the words, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry…" which he repeated over and over again. "Forgive me," he whispered. "Help me."
That was the prayer he prayed, though why he was sorry, and for what he should be forgiven, his heart alone knew.
Scarcely had the words crossed his lips when he felt himself slammed to the ground by a blast of cold wind with the force of a rocket thruster and the scream of a beast in agony.
He lay unmoving as pebbles and small stones tumbled over him. He could not raise his head much inside his helmet, but with the cold sweeping over him he knew he must keep moving to remain warm. Snakelike, on his belly, he inched forward.
He had not gone far when he felt the wind lessen. He pushed himself to his knees and stood. He tottered a few more steps and the wind hit him again, this time tumbling him forward and rolling him in a ball.
He felt himself rolling and rolling, as if all support had been yanked out from under him and he would go on forever. But he did not stop rolling, and it was then that the wind no longer assailed him. He had fallen headlong into an arroyo-one of the small canals which creased the surface of the planet. Here he was out of the wind and safe from the blast of windblown projectiles.
He could see only slightly better than before; thick clouds of dust filled the arroyo, rolling in on the wind. Spence put his head down and scuttled forward over the rocky terrain of the dry river bottom. Darkness increased rapidly and he could feel the cold increasing its hold with the setting of the sun.
Gradually he became aware of the downward slope to his path. The arroyo deepened and, from what he could see when the dust clouds parted, widened as it grew into a rift canal.
He walked woodenly on with no other thought than to keep walking until he dropped from hypothermia. He knew that death would follow quickly and he would not feel it. That at least was preferable to being blasted into particles by the wind.
The grade descended rapidly and then flattened out completely. Spence stopped and at the same instant the billowing clouds of red dust parted. In the last glimmering light of day he saw before him a sight which made his mind reel. His knees buckled as he made to draw away.
He had wandered to the very edge of the rift. He now stood on the brink of a canyon stretching out before him hundreds of kilometers and carved deep into the crust of the planet. Another step would have sent him plunging to his death.
His reaction to this new danger was purely physical. In his mind the prospect of falling to his doom held less significance for him than it might have at another time. He was simply too exhausted, and too benumbed by the cold to care anymore; a fact, he noted, that indicated hypothermia was already beginning to affect him.
It would not be long now.
So this is what it is like to die, he thought. To feel the life force slipping away and to be acutely aware of it. He wondered if he would find the release others talked about, if he would meet his mother among the ranks of souls who had passed into the great beyond-or whether those, like so many other things, were simply the superstitions of a fading age.
He had no particular thought about the moment. He noticed how the shadows deepened to violet on the canyon walls and how the depths of the canyon were already sinking into darkness as black as any pit. Simoom wind above him shrieked like all the demons of hell released to vent their fury on the desolated land.
There came a rumble beneath his feet, a vibration of the rock shelf on which he stood. He turned to look behind him and his eye caught a glimpse of a churning mass moving down the rim of the rift toward him.
A rock outcropping, eroded by the wind, had broken free and started an avalanche that was now sweeping down the side of the canyon toward him. Spence had time only to throw himself to the ground before he was swept away in the sliding jumble of rocks and dirt.
The rock slide carried him tumbling far down into the canyon. Miraculously, the grinding, twirling, thundering mass did not crush him outright. When the slide stopped he lay panting on the topmost layer. Rocks and pebbles continued to pelt his body, but he had neither strength nor will to move.
The cruel Martian night closed its fist around him and he knew no more.
…. ….
..TSO.. …. ….
1
… IT'S No USE, ADJANI. He's gone. We've got to turn back." Packer's big hand flipped a switch and he talked into his headset. "Sandcat 2 to Sandcat 1-we are returning to base. Repeat. We are returning to base. Over."
"Just one more pass along the rift valley," pleaded Adjani. His eyes did not leave the thermograph screen. The Sandcat swayed on its springs as the Simoom screeched around them.
Packer, blue in the light of the thermoscreen, turned his face toward his friend. He placed a hand on his shoulder and gripped it firmly as if to establish a physical hold on reality. In a voice deepened with fatigue and sadness, he said, "It is twenty below out there and only an hour after sundown. In another hour it will be fifty below. The storm is bucking to full force by morning-we haven't seen the worst of it yet. We lost visual four hours ago, and the thermograph shows a solid blue field. If we don't head back now, we won't make it."
He paused and added, squeezing the shoulder once more, "It's over."
"I let him get away. I am responsible," protested Adjani.
"You're lucky he didn't injure you for life. There was no stopping him. God knows we've done everything humanly possible."
"He's out there somewhere-alive. I know it. I feel it."
"If he is still alive, he's past help." Packer turned the Sandcat and watched the instruments as he punched the return course into the onboard navigator. He took his hands from the wheel and let the computer guide them home.
Adjani buried his face in his hands and began rocking back and forth in his seat. Packer turned away. Neither one spoke for a long time. They sat and listened to the rattle of the sand and rocks upon the shields.
The radio on the overhead panel squawked to life. "Kalnikov at I-base. MAT units 1 and 2 return to I-base immediately. Acknowledge."
The message was repeated and Packer responded, giving their ETA to the base. There was a long pause; static crackled over the speaker. "Your loss is to be regretted…"-more static_ "I am sorry." The transmission was lost once more to the storm. Packer reached up and switched the radio off.
"I guess I'll send a report as soon as we get back to base. I don't exactly know the proper procedure-this has never happened before."
"Couldn't we wait a few days? I want to look some more." "Sure, we can wait. But it won't make any difference." "I would like to find the body at least."
"Adjani, the storm is likely to blow for days. By the time you are able to search again there would be nothing left to find." "It is the least I can do. Please…" "All right. I won't stop you."
They sat silent until the computer flashed the outline of the installation on the vidscreen. "We're almost there," sighed Packer heavily.