Tired, he was getting so tired. It was tempting to lie down and let the snow cover him for a while as he took a little rest.
"Alex, you're here." she said suddenly, breaking off in the middle of the sentence.
"I'm where?" he said stupidly. He was so tired.
"You're here, the entrance to the tunnel is somewhere around there." The urgency in her voice woke him out of the kind of stupor he had been in. "Feel around for the rock face. The tunnel may be covered with snow, but you should be able to find it."
That was something he hadn't even thought of! What if the entrance to the tunnel had filled in? He'd be stuck out here in the blizzard, nowhere to go, out alone in the cold!
Stop that! He told himself sternly. Just stop that! You'll be all right. The suit heaters won't give out in this. They're made for space, a little cold blizzard isn't going to balk them!
Unless the cold snow clogged them somehow... or the wind was too much for them to compensate for... or they just plain gave up and died...
He stumbled to his right, hands out, feeling frantically in the darkness for the rock face. He stumbled into it, cracking his faceplate against the stone. Fortunately the plate was made of sterner stuff than simple polyglas; although his head rang, the plate was fine.
Well, there was the rock. Now where-
The ground gave away beneath his feet, and he yelled with fear as he fell, the back of his head smacked against something and he kept falling-
No. No, he wasn't falling, he was sliding. He'd fallen into the tunnel!
Quickly he spread hands and feet against the wall of the tunnel to slow himself and toggled his headlamp on; it had been useless in the blizzard. Now it was still pretty useless, but the light reflecting from the white ice above his face made him want to laugh with pleasure. Light! At last!
Light, and more of it down below his feet. The opposite end of the tunnel glowed with warm, white light as Tia opened the airlock and turned on the light inside it. He shot down the long dark tunnel and into the brightness, no longer caring if he hit hard when he landed. Caring only that he was coming home. Coming home...
CHAPTER NINE
The whisper of a sensor-sweep across the landscape, like the brush of silk across Tia's skin, when she'd had skin. Like something not-quite-heard in the distance.
Tia stayed quiet and concentrated on keeping all of her outputs as low as possible. We aren't here. You can't find us. Why don't you just fill your holds and go away?
What had been a good hiding place was now a trap. Tia had shut down every system she could; Alex moved as little as possible. She had no way of knowing how sophisticated the pirates' systems were, so they were both operating on the assumption that anything out of the ordinary would alert the enemy to their presence, if not their location.
Whether or not the looters' initial carelessness had been because of the storm or because of greed, or whether they had been alerted by something she or Alex had done, now they were displaying all the caution Tia had expected of them. Telltales and alarms were in place; irregular sensor sweeps made it impossible for Alex to make a second trip to the ruins without being caught.
And now there were two more ships in orbit that had arrived while the blizzard still raged. One of those two ships had checked the satellite. Had they found Alex's handiwork, or were they simply following a procedure they had always followed? She had no way of knowing.
Whatever the case, those two ships kept her from taking off, and she wasn't going to transmit anything to the satellite. It was still broadcasting, and they only hoped it was because the pirates hadn't checked that closely. But it could have been because the pirates wanted them lulled into thinking they were safe.
So Tia had shut off all nonessential systems, and they used no active sensors, relying entirely on passive receptors. Knowing that sound could carry even past her blanket of snow, especially percussive sounds, Alex padded about in stocking feet when he walked at all. Three days of this now, and no sign that the looters were ready to leave yet.
Mostly he and Tia studied holos and the few artifacts that he had brought out of the cache area, once Tia had vacuum-purged them and sterilized them to a fair thee-well.
After all, she kept telling herself, the pirates couldn't stay up there forever. Could they?
Unless they had some idea that Tia was already here. Someone had leaked what they knew about Hank and his cargo when they were on Presley Station. The leak could have gone beyond the station.
She was frightened and could not tell him; strung as tightly as piano strings with anxiety, with no way to work off the tension.
She knew that the same thoughts troubled Alex, although he never voiced them. Instead, he concentrated his attention completely on the enigmatic book of metal plates he had brought out of the cache.
There were glyphs of some kind etched into it, along the right edge of each plate, and a peculiarly matte finished strip along the left edge of each. But most importantly, the middle of each page was covered with the pinprick patterns of what could only be stellar configurations. Having spent so much time studying stellar maps, both of them had recognized that they were nav-guides immediately. But to what, and far more importantly, what was the reference point. There was no way of knowing that she could see.
And who had made the book in the first place? The glyphs had an odd sort of familiarity about them, but nothing she was able to put a figurative finger on.
It was enough of a puzzle to keep Alex busy, but not enough to occupy her. It was very easy to spend a lot of time brooding over her brawn. Slumped in his chair, peculiarly handsome face intent, with a single light shining down on his head and the artifact, with the rest of the room in darkness, or staring into a screen full of data.
Like a scene out of a thriller-holo. The hero, biding his time, ready to crack under the strain but not going to show his vulnerability; the enemies waiting above. Priceless data in their hands, data that they dared not allow the enemy to have. The hero, thinking about the lover he had left behind, wondering if he will ever see her again.
Shellcrack. This was getting her nowhere.
She couldn't pace, she couldn't bite her nails, she couldn't even read to distract herself. Finally she activated a single servo and sent it discretely into his cabin to clean it. It hadn't been cleaned since they'd left the base; mostly Alex had just shoved things into drawers and closets and locked the doors down. She couldn't clean his clothing now, but as soon as they shook the hounds off their trail.
If they shook the hounds off their trail, if the second avalanche and the blizzard hadn't piled too much snow on top of them to clear away. There were eight meters of snow up there now, not four. Much more, and she might not be able to blast free. Stop that. We'll get out of this.
Carefully she cleaned each drawer and closet, replacing what wasn't dirty and having the servo kidnap what was. Carefully, because there were lots of loose objects shoved in with the clothing.