We had a time of it getting her over the slabs, with Dad pulling and me pushing. Dad handed the halter to Molly. "How about the chickens?" I asked, "And the rabbits?" Some of them had been crushed; the rest were loose around the place. I felt one—a rabbit —scurry between my feet
"No time!" snapped Dad. "We can't take them; all we could do for them would be to cut their throats. Come!"
We headed for the road.
Molly led the way, leading and dragging Mabel and carrying the light. We needed the light. The night, too bright and too clear a few minutes before, was now suddenly overcast. Shortly we couldn't see Jupiter at all, and then you couldn't count your fingers in front of your face.
The road was wet underfoot, not rain, but sudden dew; it was getting steadily colder.
Then it did rain, steadily and coldly. Presently it changed to wet snow. Molly dropped back. "George," she wanted to know, "have we come as far as the turn off to the Schultz's?"
"That's no good," he answered. "We've got to get the baby into the hospital."
That isn't what I meant. Oughtn't Ito warn them?"
They'll be all right. Their house is sound."
"But the cold?"
"Oh." He saw what she meant and so did I, when I thought about it. With the heat trap gone and the power house gone, every house in the colony was going to be like an ice box. What good is a power receiver on your roof with no power to receive? It was going to get colder and colder and colder ....
And then it would get colder again. And colder....
"Keep moving," Dad said suddenly. "We'll figure it out when we get there."
But we didn't figure it out, because we never found the turn off. The snow was driving into our faces by then and we must have walked on past it. It was a dry snow now, little sharp needles that burned when they hit.
Without saying anything about it, I had started counting paces when we left the walls of lava that marked the place where the new road led to our place and out to the new farms beyond. As near as I could make it we had come about five miles when Molly stopped. "What's the matter?" yelled Dad.
"Dear," she said, "I can't find the road. I think I've lost it."
I kicked the snow away underfoot. It was made ground, all right—soft. Dad took the torch and looked at his watch. "We must have come about six miles," he announced.
"Five," I corrected him. "Or five and a half at the outside," I told him I had been counting.
He considered it. "We've come just about to that stretch where the road is flush with the field," he said. "It can't be more than a half mile or a mile to the cut through Kneiper's Ridge. After that we can't lose it. Bill, take the light and cast off to the right for a hundred paces, then back to the left. If that doesn't do it, well go further. And for heaven's sakes retrace your steps—it's the only way you'll find us in this storm."
I took the light and set out. To the right was no good, though I went a hundred and fifty paces instead of a hundred, I got back to them, and reported, and started out again. Dad just grunted; he was busy with something about the stretcher.
On the twenty-third step to the left I found the road —by stepping down about a foot, falling flat on my face, and nearly losing the light. I picked myself up and went back.
"Good!" said Dad. "Slip your neck through this."
"This" was a sort of yoke he had devised by retying the blankets around the stretcher so as to get some free line. With my neck through it I could carry the weight on my shoulders and just steady my end with my hands. Not that it was heavy, but our hands were getting stiff with cold. "Good enough!" I said, "But, look, George—let Molly take your end."
"Nonsense!"
"It isn't nonsense. Molly can do it—can't you, Molly? And you know this road better than we do; you've tramped it enough times in the dark."
"Bill is right, dear," Molly said at once. "Here—take Mabel."
Dad gave in, took the light and the halter. Mabel didn't want to go any further; she wanted to sit down, I guess. Dad kicked her in the rear and jerked on her neck. Her feelings were hurt; she wasn't used to that sort of treatment—particularly not from Dad. But there was no time to humor her; it was getting colder.
We went on. I don't know how Dad kept to the road but he did. We had been at it another hour, I suppose, and had left Kneiper's slot well behind, when Molly stumbled, then her knees just seemed to cave in and she knelt down in the snow.
I stopped and sat down, too; I needed the rest. I just wanted to stay there and let it snow.
Dad came back and put his arms around her and comforted her and told her to lead Mabel now; she couldn't get lost on this stretch. She insisted that she could still carry. Dad ignored her, just lifted the yoke business off her shoulders. Then he came back and peeled a bit of blanket off the bubble and shined the torch inside. He put it back into place. Molly said, "How is she?'
Dad said, "She's still breathing. She opened her eyes when the light hit them. Let's go." He got the yoke on and Molly took the light and the halter.
Molly couldn't have seen what I saw; the plastic of the bubble was frosted over on the inside. Dad hadn't seen Peggy breathe; he hadn't seen anything.
I thought about it for a long while and wondered how you would classify that sort of a lie. Dad wasn't a liar, that was certain—and yet it seemed to me that such a lie, right then, was better than the truth. It was complicated.
Pretty soon I forgot it; I was too busy putting one foot in front of the other and counting the steps. I couldn't feel my feet any longer.
Dad stopped and I bumped into the end of the stretcher. "Listen!" he said.
I listened and heard a dull rumble. "Quake?"
"No. Keep quiet." Then he added, "It's down the road. Off the road, everybody! Off to the right."
The rumble got louder and presently I made out a light through the snow, back the way we had come. Dad saw it, too, and stepped out on the road and started waving our torch.
The rumble stopped almost on top of him; it was a rock crusher and it was loaded down with people, people clinging to it all over and even riding the spade. The driver yelled, "Climb on! And hurry!"
Then he saw the cow and added, "No live stock."
"We've got a stretcher with my little girl in it," Dad shouted back to him. "We need help."
There was a short commotion, while the driver ordered a couple of men down to help us. In the mix up Dad disappeared. One moment Molly was holding Mabel's halter, then Dad was gone and so was the cow.
We got the stretcher up onto the spade and some of the men braced it with their backs. I was wondering what to do about Dad and thinking maybe I ought to jump off and look for him, when he appeared out of the darkness and scrambled up beside me. "Where's Molly?" he asked.
"Up on top. But where is Mabel? What did you do with her?"
"Mabel is all right." He folded his knife and put it in his pocket. I didn't ask any more questions.
17. Disaster
We passed several more people after that, but the driver wouldn't stop. We were fairly close into town and he insisted that they could make it on their own. His emergency power pack was running low, he said; he had come all the way from the bend in the lake, ten miles beyond our place.
Besides, I don't know where he would have put them. We were about three deep and Dad had to keep warning people not to lean on the bubble of the stretcher.
Then the power pack did quit and the driver shouted, "Everybody off! Get on in on your own." But by now we were actually in town, the outskirts, and it would have been no trouble if it hadn't been blowing a blizzard. The driver insisted on helping Dad with the stretcher. He was a good Joe and turned out to be—when I saw him in the light—the same man who had crushed our acreage.