They halted at the riverbank. Sherrine turned off the snowmobile's engine and stared at the turgid water choked with "pancake ice and slush--an open expanse of water even vaster than Alex had imagined from the glacier overlook. The scale of the planet was just beginning to hit him. It was huge; everything in it was immense. And it was convex. He held on tightly to his boyhood memories. At one time he had regarded all this as normal.
He wondered how Gordon was taking it. The gravity and the scale were completely new to him. When Alex glanced over at the other sledge, he saw Doc Waxman was bent over Gordon. "Gordo?" Alex fumbled for a moment with the tongue switch, then thought better of it. No point in sending a beacon for someone to home in on. "Are you all right, Gordon?" he shouted.
"Nye khorosho, Alex. Leave me alone." He moaned.
"Doc," Alex called out. "What's wrong with Gordon?"
Waxman turned his bushy, white patriarch's beard toward him. "Motion sickness," he said. "He threw up and it froze all over him. He'll be fine once he gets used to things down here." He shook his head. "I've heard of people getting motion sickness in free fall. First time I ever saw it work the other way."
No one ever died from motion sickness; they only wished they could. Yes, Gordon would get over it, just as Alex already had. It was a matter of synchronizing the sense of balance with visual perception. Gordon was born in free fall and a constant acceleration frame screwed up his motion cues a lot worse than it did Alex's. Like everyone else, he'd gone to "Spinning Kiddies." The centrifuge sessions were required for children--for bone development, Alex thought. But stilyagi like Gordon generally dropped out, and most adults avoided spin exercises when they could. Alex considered his own condition. Gone to flab, with bones of rubber, and he'd been born down here.
"There's no way across that," said Mike, pointing toward the river of slush. "We'll have to turn south."
"Can't do that," said Bruce from the other sledge. "South takes us to the interchange at Fargo Gap. There's a police barricade there now. Besides, Bob is waiting for us at Brandon."
"Pins," Mike corrected him. "Use the code names, like we agreed."
Bruce gave him a look. "There ain't nobody here but us tribbles; so who gives a--"
"And Gabe can call Big Momma and change the rendez--"
"The code name idea was stupid, anyway--"
Doe Waxman stepped between them. "This isn't helping us cross the Red," he said.
They both fell silent. Thor and Steve shuffled their skis back and forth across the ice. "We can't stay here," Thor said. "We'll freeze." He looked back the way we had come.
Mike studied the river. "Maybe we could leap from floe to floe. You know. Like Eliza crossing the ice in Uncle Tom's Cabin."
"Why, Mike," said Bruce, "what a wonderful idea. Did you hear that, Alex? You can leap from floe to floe."
Alex smiled weakly. "I'm game, but I don't think the snowmobiles are up to it."
"Well, now, wait," said Mike. "Sure the plan has a hole in it, but--"
Sherrine: "Not just a hole, Mike. A black hole."
Thor: "Yeah, the plan sucks."
Mike stuck his chin out. "You have a better plan, maybe?"
Steve Mews interrupted. "I do. Head north."
They all looked at one another. "North," said Bruce. "You mean go to Winnipeg? But that's a dead end."
Steve clapped his mittens together. "Hey, maybe I'm wrong. I don't know the local geography. But didn't that Engineer captain at Fargo tell us that the Red was frozen north of Perley? Well, that's gotta be north of here, right?"
Alex never saw so many mouths hang open at once.
Crossing the Red was easy Alex thought, if you didn't count holding your breath while doing it. The river was frozen; but the ice was ragged and cracked. A rough ride, and if the ice had given way--
Well, he didn't want to think about that. He supposed he was in less danger than he had been in Piranha. A hot ship, miles high, hypersonic speeds. Even without a missile up the arse, there were a million things that could have gone wrong. But it was one thing to face danger with your hands around the stick. It was another thing to face it while bundled into a sledge, dependent on another's skills. It was the impotence, he decided; not the danger.
The glaciers on both sides of the river growled and popped as they flowed south--an odd and disconcerting sound. Every snap made him jerk, thinking it was the river ice breaking up beneath them. He had not expected sounds. But then, he didn't suppose a mountain range of ice could slide across the landscape in silence. He wondered whether, if the glacier sounds were recorded and played back at high speed, they would sound like a rushing river.
CHAPTER FIVE
"In the Hands of Crazy People"
Bruce called a rest break atop the Minnesota glacier. Satellite recon had located a path up the side, but it had been an arduous climb. Thor and Steve were winded. The others stood around the two snowmobiles, slapping themselves with their arms, warming themselves with the meager engine heat. Everyone seemed drawn and introspective.
"I tell you," said Bruce, "that Engineer captain had to be a closet fan. Why else would he have told us about the river being frozen?"
"That doesn't make sense," Mike said. "How would he have known what we were up to?"
"He might have guessed from your questions about the Angels. One fan knows another."
Warmly wrapped and trundled by sledge, Alex chafed at his helplessness while others did the work of rescue. "I'm just not used to being so useless," he told Sherrline. Actually, I'm here because I was expendable. He thought of telling her that, but he didn't want to.
Sherrine laughed. "Alex, sitting in that sledge, you've done more to help us than anyone standing up."
The Angel flushed. "I'm a link to Freedom, that's all. They do the work."
Sherrine shook her head. "Don't be modest." Was Alex serious, she wondered, or was it just the usual macho self-deprecation? It seemed as if the older space pilot never missed a chance to put himself down, since putting himself down on Earth. And the kid spent most of his time in a kind of sullen silence. And these were space heroes?
Be fair, she chided herself. They were injured and in shock. Give them time to recover.
She said, "Who had Big Momma beam down the IR decoys? Who arranged the rendezvous with Bob when we couldn't go back to Mapleton? Who had the old Hubble pinpoint the best route up onto this glacier?"
"It was a rough climb anyhow. Almost too steep for the snowmobiles."
"It would have been rougher if we'd had to find our own way up, or just climb straight up the sheer wall."
Alex grunted. "We also serve who only lie and wait."
She patted him on his shoulder. "That's the spirit. Don't worry. Steve will have you on your feet in no time once we et off the Ice."
"Steve?"
"Steve's a bodybuilder. Didn't you notice his muscles?"
He had. Steve seemed grotesque, thick and bulging, like a creature from another world; but they all looked like that, more or less. "What's he going to do? Lend us a few?"
He liked the sound of her laugh. "You'll have to ask him."
"Hey!"
"What?"
"You're breathing rainbows!"
"I'm what?"
"Breathing rainbows!" She was. Sparkling circles of color came out of her mouth every time she exhaled. They reminded him of radar pulses. He said, "You're magical."
"So are you!" She bent closer to his face. "Hey, guys, look at this! Rainbow smoke rings."
Soon, everyone was laughing and puffing rainbows into the air. Even Gordon was smiling, for the first time since the crash. Steve tried to make patterns in the air by moving his head around.