Irritated, Wildwind asked, “How so?”
“Because we are on an alien planet where there are only a few people living in a single, small colony. They won't have many search parties. We're on our own.”
“They have satellites?” he retorted.
“Good point, but not good enough,” replied Miranda, who seemed to be getting over her initial worry. '“First, satellites are few. This isn't Earth. Second, that flare could have fried everything in orbit, meaning all satellites.”
“Also, it seems to me,” said Annwn, gaining momentum from Miranda’s support, “that, if there are many pods on Bode, it only compounds our situation. The search parties are going to find the survivors with working beacons first. We’ll be last, and that’s if anyone knows that our shuttle launched.”
“OK,” said Wildwind. ‘maybe we’re the only ones who fell. What then?”
“I doubt it,” retorted Kwazar. “We d like to think the Atlantica's OK, but those bright flashes we saw say otherwise. I bet the ship s gone, and—”
“Enough!” interjected Annwn. She didn’t want to hear the words. “We’re walking. Period.” The urgency in her voice surprised her. Something about Bode disturbed her, but she couldn’t remember what.
“OK!” retorted Wildwind yet again, angry that everyone was teaming against him. “Walking where? Where are we?”
His point stopped Annwn cold.
Wildwind smiled in satisfaction.
Miranda broke the silence. “I can answer that.” She considered Wildwind's questions, holding her hand to her chin. “Maybe.”
Exasperated. Wildwind turned to her with his jaw agape. “How?”
Miranda glanced outside, staring at sunlight gaining a hint of orange, and at a range of mountains that added a wavy ochre line along the horizon. “It’s nearing evening. I’ll show you when it’s dark.”
“Yeah, right,” said Wildwind sarcastically.
“Just you wait and see.” Miranda turned her back to him and gazed out the open door.
Annwn quickly recovered her lost momentum. “Waiting until evening gives us time to check our supplies. What kind of food do we have? And how can we move it?”
“We haven’t looked yet,” replied Kwazar.
“Well, now we have something to do. Where's the emergency food located at? In the bridge?”
“I can answer that,” answered Miranda, smug in her knowledge of spaceships.
“Somehow, I’m not surprised,” said Wildwind dryly.
“Well, tell us then,” said Annwn.
“OK. There is some in the bridge, and some under the floor hatch over there, and…”
Annwn, happy to see Miranda’s mood improved since she had just awakened, smiled despite her own fear about their predicament. It seemed as if getting Miranda s mind on survival helped her cope with her worries about the situation. Did Teacher suggest this once?
“There we go. Orion!” Smiling gleefully, Miranda pointed at the constellation glittering in the cold, black sky.
Annwn looked up along with the others. She found the sight confusing. The group of suns looked like Orion, but a very bright star added another dot to the belt, making a kink in the otherwise straight line.
Miranda laughed. “You all look confused. That extra star is the Sun! That’s where we are from!”
“Our Sun’s that bright?” asked Annwn.
“Yes. Sol isn’t average, Sol’s above average—the fourth brightest star in a radius of about fifteen light-years. Look at her shine!”
Annwn stared, silenced by the wonder. How strange to think of all the billions of people orbiting that mere point of light. The colonies on the Moon, Mars, and Callisto, filled with people, so familiar to her—she clearly remembered seeing the jewellike glow of cities on the Moon from her home in California—were hidden from sight. Even the huge, audaciously bright nexuses on the Earth were lost, shrouded by vast distance. She couldn’t see a single hint that anything of significance existed around the white dot that passed for her home Sun. She simply gazed upon a tiny fleck, silent, barely twinkling, one of thousands in the sky. Six light-years away and looking at home. So far. So alone.
“And just think,” said Miranda, “anybody looking in this direction couldn’t see the star we orbit, Barnard’s, not with the naked eye anyway. Much too dim.”
Her statement had a disturbing significance to Annwn. An old phrase, “Out of sight, out of mind” came to her, and she shivered. The thought left her feeling deeply lost, insignificant. Would they ever get rescued?
“OK,” said Wildwind, “this astronomy stuff is all neat, but how’s it going to help us? You brought us out here for a purpose, right?”
“Yes,” said Miranda, “I did. You are looking at it.”
“Orion?” Wildwind sounded skeptical.
“Um-hm. I asked Teacher to show me how to calculate where the Sun would reside in the sky. I also learned that Orion is a constellation that can only be seen in the northern hemisphere of Bode.”
“Ah,” replied Kwazar, “so we know what hemisphere we’re in.”
Miranda nodded excitedly.
“Which places us quite accurately,” he continued, “for only one large landmass occupies the north half of Bode.”
“And,” added Annwn, uplifted by the latest news, “the colony is on that large peninsula of land, on the west coast, beyond the mountains.” She pointed in the direction Barnard had set, her feeling of isolation diminishing.
“Yes,” Miranda said. “Our situation is not as bad as it seems.”
“Yeah,” replied Wildwind, “but I bet it’s a long walk.”
Miranda looked at him, frowning. “True. The coastal range over there is at least one hundred kilometers to cross—and that doesn’t count traversing the plain we’re on.”
“That’s weeks, maybe a month! Can we even do it?”
“Look at it this way,” Annwn said, “you can stay here, being cooked alive daily by the sun, bored, and alone, or,” she slowly emphasized the word, “go on a hike to the mountains, and eventually reach the colony, with us.”
Wildwind glanced at Kwazar and Miranda. The two nodded. “We need to stay together,” Kwazar said. Miranda looked expectant.
Wildwind gave Annwn’s words more thought, the strain showing clearly on his face. He finally said, “OK… OK, I’m convinced. I’m going.”
“Great!” replied Annwn, “then I guess we get moving in the morning. We don't have enough food to dawdle.” She felt good at convincing Wildwind to stay with them, seeing it as a small victory. Maybe things would go right for a change.
After some sleep, maybe even the standard eight to twelve hours, Bode’s disconcertingly long night irritated Annwn. Along with everyone else on Atlantica, she had been adjusting her sleep cycles to Bode, a process that she had difficulty with even at the beginning. Now trying to deal with the real thing, getting used to twenty-two-hour nights seemed an unreachable goal.
Sleeping next to her, Miranda moved about restlessly, occasionally mumbling items from dreams. Annwn wished she could help her friend's worries more, yet didn’t know what to do. She sighed.
She wondered whether they should be hiking right now, instead of resting—their time, she felt, was short. However, the others had acclimated to Bode’s days much better than she, and Annwn did not see any wisdom in having anyone else overly tired on account of her. Rest might slow them down initially, but would help when things became difficult, like during their future mountain climb.
Were they even ready for the journey? She mentally checked over their supplies. They had enough food to last roughly two Earth weeks, equal to about seven days on Bode, if they were somewhat sparing. Water was less portable: they couldn’t haul two weeks worth, certainly. Fortunately, they had found some filtration devices which they could use on local streams. Since they’d be heading into the mountains, she was sure they’d find some water. They just needed to survive the long trek across the volcanic plain where, unfortunately, the shuttle had crashed.