“Roger?” It was Doran.
“Yes.”
“We’re still having trouble finding the main canyon.”
“We thought we were in it,” Cheryl said, “but when we descended we came to a big drop-off!”
“Okay. Hold on a minute where you are. Eileen, I want you to come up the main canyon with me and serve as a radio relay. You’ll stay in the wash, so you’ll be able to walk right back down to the tent if we get separated.”
“Sure,” Eileen said. The others were carefully rolling the wagon into the lock. Roger paused to oversee that operation, and then he gestured at Eileen through the tawny murk and took off upcanyon. Eileen followed.
They made rapid time. On band 33 Eileen heard the guide say, in an unworried conversational tone, “I hate it when this happens.” It was as if he were referring to a shoelace breaking.
“I bet you do!” Eileen replied. “How are we going to find John?”
“Go high. Always go high when lost. I believe I told John that with the rest of you.”
“Yes.” Eileen had forgotten, however, and she wondered if John had too.
“Even if he’s forgotten,” Roger said, “when we get high enough, the radios will be less obstructed and we’ll be able to talk to him. Or at the worst, we can bounce our signals off a satellite and back down. But I doubt we’ll have to do that. Hey, Doran!” he said over the common band.
“Yeah?” Doran sounded very worried.
“What can you see now?”
“Um—we’re on a spine—it’s all we can see. The canyon to the right—”
“South?”
“Yeah, the south, is the one we were in. We thought the one here to the north would be the main one, but it’s too little, and there’s a drop-off in it.”
“Okay, well, my APS has you still north of us, so cross back to the opposite spine and we’ll talk from there. Can you do that?”
“Sure,” Doran said, affronted. “It’ll take a while, maybe.”
“That’s all right, take your time.” The lack of concern in Roger’s voice was almost catching, but Eileen felt that John was in danger; the suits would keep one alive for forty-eight hours at least, but these sandstorms often lasted a week, or more.
“Let’s keep moving up,” Roger said on band 33. “I don’t think we have to worry about those two.”
They climbed up the canyon floor, which rose at an average angle of about thirty degrees. Eileen noticed all the dust sliding loosely downhill, sand grains rolling, dust wafting down; sometimes she couldn’t see her feet, or make out the ground, so that she had to step by feeling.
“How are you doing back in camp?” Roger asked on the common band.
“Just fine,” Dr. Mitsumu answered. “It’s on too much of a tilt to stand, so we’re just sitting around and listening to the developments up there.”
“Still in your suits?”
“Yes.”
“Good. One of you stay suited for sure.”
“Whatever you say.”
Roger stopped where the main canyon was joined by two large tributary canyons, branching in each direction. “Watch out, I’m going to turn up the gain on the radio,” he warned Eileen and the others. She adjusted the controls on her wrist.
“JOHN! Hey, John! Oh, Jo-uhnnn! Come in, John! Respond on common band. Please.”
The radio’s static sounded like the hiss of flying sand grains. Nothing within it but crackling.
“Hmm,” Roger said in Eileen’s left ear.
“Hey Roger!”
“Cheryl! How are you doing?”
“Well, we’re in what we think is the main canyon, but . . .”
Doran continued, embarrassed: “We really can’t be sure, now. Everything looks the same.”
“You’re telling me,” Roger replied. Eileen watched him bend over and, apparently, inspect his feet. He moved around some in this jackknifed position. “Try going to the wash at the lowest point in the canyon you’re in.”
“We’re there.”
“Okay, lean down and see if you find any boot prints. Make sure they aren’t yours. They’ll be faint by now, but Eileen and I just went upcanyon, so there should still be—”
“Hey! Here’s some,” Cheryl said.
“Where?” said Doran.
“Over here, look.”
Radio hiss.
“Yeah, Roger, we’ve found some going upcanyon and down.”
“Good. Now start downcanyon. Dr. M, are you still in your suit?”
“Just as you said, Roger.”
“Good. Why don’t you get out of the tent and go down to the wash. Keep your bearing, count your steps and all. Wait for Cheryl and Doran. That way they’ll be able to find the tent as they come down.”
“Sounds good.”
After some chatter: “You all down there switch to band 5 to talk on, and just listen to common. We need to hear up here.” Then on band 33: “Let’s go up some more. I believe I remember a gendarme on the ridge up here with a good vantage.”
“Fine. Where do you think he could be?”
“You got me.”
When Roger located the outcropping he had in mind, they called again, and again got no response. Eileen then installed herself on top of the rocky knob on the ridge: an eerie place with nothing to see but the fine sand whipped about her, in a ghost wind barely felt on her back, like the lightest puff of an air conditioner, despite the visual resemblance to some awful typhoon. She called for John from time to time. Roger ranged to north and south over difficult terrain, always staying within radio distance of Eileen, although once he had a hard time relocating her.
Three hours passed that way, and Roger’s easygoing tone changed—not to worry, Eileen judged, but rather to boredom, and annoyance with John. Eileen herself was extremely concerned. If John had mistaken north for south, or fallen . . .
“I suppose we should go higher.” Roger sighed. “Although I thought I saw him back when we brought the wagon down here, and I doubt he’d go back up.”
Suddenly Eileen’s earphones crackled. “Pss ftunk bdzz,” and it was clear again. “Ckk ssss ger, lo! ckk.”
“Sounds like he may have indeed gone high,” Roger said with satisfaction, and, Eileen noticed, just a touch of relief. “Hey, John! Nobleton! Do you read us?”
“Ckk sssssssss yeah, hey! sssss kuh sssss.”
“We read you badly, John! Keep moving, keep talking! Are you all—”
“Roger! ckk. Hey, Roger!”
“John! We read you, are you all right?”
“. . .sssss not exactly sure where I am.”
“Are you all right?”
“Yes! Just lost.”
“Well not anymore, we hope. Tell us what you see.”
“Nothing!”
So began the long process of locating him and bringing him back. Eileen ranged left and right on her own, helping to get a fix on John, who had been instructed to stay still and keep talking.
“You won’t believe it.” John’s voice was entirely free of fear; in fact, he sounded elated. “You won’t believe it, Eileen, Roger. crk! Just before the storm hit I was way off down a tributary to the south, and I found...”
“Found what?”
“Well . . . I’ve found some things I’m sure must be fossils. I swear! A whole rock formation of them!”
“Oh yeah?”
“No seriously, I’ve got some with me. Very small shells, like little sea snails, or crustacea. Miniature nautiloids, like. They just couldn’t be anything else. I have a couple in my pocket, but there’s a whole wall of them back there! I figure if I just left I wouldn’t be able to find the same canyon ever again, what with this storm, so I built a duck trail on the way back over to the main canyon, if that’s where I am. So it took me a while to get back in radio clear.”