The trooper turned away, but Captain Scithers lingered. He leaned an elbow on the frame so Bob couldn't roll the window up. "Thought you might be interested," he said. "The Red River is pretty much frozen solid north of Perley. Bad news for Winnipeg, but I heard you could drive a truck across without falling through." He straightened and nodded to them. "Good luck," he said.
Bob rolled the window up and pulled through the break in the median into the westbound lanes. Mike frowned and looked out the rear window, where the engineer captain was deep in conversation with his lieutenants. "Why the hell should we care about Winnipeg and the Red River of the North?"
"The Corps has been fighting a losing battle trying to keep I-94 and I-29 open," Bruce responded. "He probably hasn't thought about anything else but ice conditions for the last five years."
Thor ran his fingers through his beard. "Must be one hell of a dinner conversationalist."
"I don't know," said Bob. "Some of the strange stories I've heard about conditions on the Ice, he must have some weird tales to tell."
And with that they entered Fargo Gap, the ice on both sides of the highway rearing straight and high as canyon walls and sparkling with the reflections of the work lights behind them.
CHAPTER FOUR
Eliza Crossing the Ice
He woke up hard, tried to move, and thought better of it. Memories flowed back slowly.
Consciousness was a mixed blessing, thought Alex MacLeod. It meant that he was alive; but it also meant that he hurt. His left arm throbbed with a dull ache. To draw breath took immense, frightening effort, and his rib cage burned every time he succeeded.
Groggily, he took inventory. He figured that if a bodily part hurt, he still had it. By that criterion he had at least come down in one piece.
He tried to lift his head to see how Gordon was doing.
He couldn't move. Paralyzed? A moment of panic washed over him as he imagined himself lying here slowly freezing to death, unable to do anything but wait. But, of course, it was only gravity. When he realized that, he laughed out loud, which was a mistake, because his ribs hurt worse than ever.
What difference did it make why he was unable to move? Helpless was helpless.
He tried the suit radio. "Gordon?"
Static for answer. Gordon must be dead or unconscious. In either case, there was nothing he could do for him. Come to that, there wasn't much he could do for himself. He tongued the uplink on his radio.
"Big Momma? Piranha here."
Hiss and crackle. Maybe the radio was broken. He tried again. "Big Momma, do you read me?"
Mary's voice came through the noise. "Alex? Is that you?"
Who did she think it was?… Churlish. "Big Momma, this is MacLeod, I am conscious. I do not appear to be seriously injured except that I cannot move. This must be due to gravity. Tanner does not respond, I say again, Gordon does not respond. Can you give me a reading on Gordon?"
"Roger your situation report, MacLeod. Alex, I'm glad to hear your voice. Stand by one for report on Tanner."
Alex waited while she scanned the medical monitors. Medi-probes were a pain in the ass--literally--but they had their uses. He wondered if Mary had been standing by in Mission Control the whole time he was unconscious, and whether it had been from duty or something else. That's right, Alex. Build yourself a few fantasies. You've got nothing else to do.
"Tanner is all right I say again, no serious injuries," she said. "He's all right, Alex. Unconscious, but his vital signs look good. I can't tell you about broken bones or such. Your readouts are okay, too. That was one hell of a landing, Alex. The book says you can't land a scoopship."
"The book's not far wrong. Where are we, Mary?"
"On what our contacts call the Ice. Not the Great Ice, but the vanguard glaciers. You're only a few hundred meters from the Edge. If the ship hadn't stopped, you'd have gone over a ninety meter ice cliff. Do you want your latitude and longitude?"
"Sure, but I don't see how that will help."
"Sorry. We're feeding the Navstar data to your rescue party, so--Oh, I forgot, you don't know."
"Rescue party?" He started to sit up, but gravity and his ribs kept him flat. He stifled a groan. "You mean you're coming to get us?"
"No," said Mary. "You know better than that." He heard the chill embarrassment in her voice. Some things weren't talked about. There was an etiquette to being marooned.
So much for fantasy, Alex thought. They say Love Conquers All; but it doesn't conquer the fuel-to-thrust ratio or the law of diminishing returns. Peace and Freedom were barely hanging on. There was nothing that could be spared; least of all the rocket fuel needed to land and take off again, even if there had been a ship capable of doing it. "I understand." He tried to keep the bitterness out of his voice. It wasn't her fault he was here.
It was not that they wouldn't come that bothered him. They wouldn't come to get him if he were Lonny Hopkins himself. But Station Chief Hopkins would never have been on a dip trip in the first place. You don't send indispensable personnel on potentially one-way missions. Dippers were folks the station could afford to lose. Good at what they did, but not particularly useful at anything else. Janitors, gophers, day-care fathers, stilyagi like Gordon. A brotherhood of mediocrity, he thought. The habitats would still function without him. Even the variety of the gene pool, small as it was, was unthreatened. Gordon and he had already made their deposits at the sperm bank.
"Then who is coming to get us?" he asked.
"I told you we have friends on Earth. There's a team heading for you right now. They have an illegal Navstar link, so they know your precise bearing. The government search parties are still wandering around on the Ice thirty kilometers to the northwest. They don't have you located, yet. From what we can overhear of their radio traffic, they got a bum steer from a local peasant who couldn't estimate distances properly. But it won't be long before they expand their search pattern. With any kind of luck, we'll get you out of there before they read your position."
Alex grunted. Not with any kind of luck, he thought. It had to be good luck, currently in short supply. "How long before this rescue party arrives?"
"Make it half an hour. They got a late start onto the Ice. It took them a while to find enough bedsheets. Watch for them to the south of you. The team leader is code-named Robert."
Code name? Alex snorted. "Roger. I'll let you know when they arrive."
He saw no point in asking which way was south. He couldn't move, and all he could see through the windshield was a white wall of ice. They would get here when they got here. Staring southward would not make them come faster.
He closed his eyes. Maybe if he slept, he could forget how much he hurt. And how cold the cabin was growing. The space suit's heater ran on batteries. A half hour wouldn't exhaust them; but he wasn't sure how long he would need them. He decided to keep the heater on low. Just warm enough to remind him how chilly it was.
Lying there, he had the oddest sensation that Piranha was accelerating, hard; but that her engines were located under the deck rather than aft. It was gravity, of course. Gravity was acceleration and his body interpreted it as movement because one kind of acceleration felt like any other.
He reminded himself that Downers would say "up," not "forward." Crazy planet. Still, he remembered what gravity had been like. He would get used to it again. It would just take a little time.
His eyes jerked open. Bedsheets?