“Well, the settlers aren’t around anymore,” I said.
Anatoly looked as if he had never heard anything so heretical from one of my generation. He flashed me a sudden smile, then glanced over his shoulder to make sure no one from the governing committee was listening.
“What will it be like, traveling?” Edie asked me.
“Cold,” I said. “Dark.”
She was waiting for more, so I said, “We’ll be traveling in the dark for three shifts to every two in the light. Halfway through night, Umber rises, so we’ll have to wear protective gear. That’s the coldest time, too; it can get cold enough for CO2 to freeze this time of year. There won’t be much temptation to take off your masks.”
“We can do it,” Anatoly said resolutely.
Davern gave a nervous giggle and edged closer to me. “You know how to do this, don’t you, Mick?”
“Well, yes. Unless the shroud parts and Umbernight comes. Then all bets are off. Even I have never traveled through Umbernight.”
“Well, we just won’t let that happen,” Edie said, and for a moment it seemed as if she could actually make the forces of Nature obey.
I stepped back and watched while Edie coaxed them all into making a series of sensible decisions: a normal work schedule of ten hours on, ten hours off; a division of labor; a schedule leading up to departure. Seabird and Davern never volunteered for anything, but Edie cajoled them into accepting assignments without complaint.
When it was over and I was rolling up my map, Edie came over and said to me quietly, “Don’t let Davern latch onto you. He tries to find a protector—someone to adopt him. Don’t fall for it.”
“I don’t have maternal instincts,” I said.
She squeezed my arm. “Good for you.”
If this mission were to succeed, I thought, it would be because of Edie.
Which is not to say that Amal wasn’t a good leader. I got to know him when he came to me for advice on equipment. He didn’t have Edie’s extrovert flair, but his relaxed manner could put a person at ease, and he was methodical about thinking things through. Together, we compiled a daunting list of safety tents, heaters, coldsuits, goggles, face masks, first aid, and other gear; then when we realized that carrying all of it would leave Bucky with no room for the cargo we wanted to haul back, we set about ruthlessly cutting out everything that wasn’t essential for survival.
He challenged me on some things. “Rope?” he said skeptically. “A shovel?”
“Rationality is about exploiting the predictable,” I said. “Loose baggage and a mired-down vehicle are predictable.”
He helped me load up Bucky for the trip out with a mathematical precision, eliminating every wasted centimeter. On the way back, we would have to carry much of it on our backs.
I did demand one commitment from Amal. “If Umbernight comes, we need to turn around and come back instantly, no matter what,” I said.
At first he wouldn’t commit himself.
“Have you ever heard what happened to the people caught outside during the first Umbernight?” I asked him. “The bodies were found in spring, carbonized like statues of charcoal. They say some of them shed tears of gasoline, and burst into flame as soon as a spark hit them.”
He finally agreed.
You see, I wasn’t reckless. I did some things right—as right as anyone could have done in my shoes.
When we set out just before dawn, the whole of Feynman Habitat turned out to see us off. There were hugs and tears, then waves and good wishes as I ordered Bucky to start down the trail. It took only five minutes for Feynman to drop behind us, and for the true immensity of Dust to open up ahead. I led the way down the banks of a frozen rivulet that eventually joined the Let’s Go River; as the morning warmed it would begin to gurgle and splash.
“When are we stopping for lunch?” Seabird asked.
“You’re not hungry already, are you?” Edie said, laughing.
“No, I just want to know what the plan is.”
“The plan is to walk till we’re tired and eat when we’re hungry.”
“I’d rather have a time,” Seabird insisted. “I want to know what to expect.”
No one answered her, so she glowered as she walked.
It did not take long for us to go farther from the habitat than any of them had ever been. At first they were elated at the views of the river valley ahead; but as their packs began to weigh heavier and their feet to hurt, the high spirits faded into dogged determination. After a couple of hours, Amal caught up with me at the front of the line.
“How far do we need to go this tenhour?”
“We need to get to the river valley. There’s no good place to pitch the tent before that.”
“Can we take a break and stay on schedule?”
I had already planned on frequent delays for the first few days, so I said, “There’s a nice spot ahead.”
As soon as we reached it, Amal called a halt, and everyone dropped their packs and kicked off their boots. I warned them not to take off their UV-filtering goggles. “You can’t see it, but Umber hasn’t set yet. You don’t want to come back with crispy corneas.”
I went apart to sit on a rock overlooking the valley, enjoying the isolation. Below me, a grove of lookthrough trees gestured gently in the wind, their leaves like transparent streamers. Like most plants on Dust, they are gray-blue, not green, because life here never evolved chloroplasts for photosynthesis. It is all widdershins life—its DNA twirls the opposite direction from ours. That makes it mostly incompatible with us.
Before long, Anatoly came to join me.
“That valley ahead looks like a good place for a satellite community in the spring,” he said. “What do you think, could we grow maize there?”
The question was about more than agronomy. He wanted to recruit me into his expansion scheme. “You’d need a lot of shit,” I said.
I wasn’t being flippant. Dumping sewage was how we had created the soil for the outdoor gardens and fields around Feynman. Here on Dust, sewage is a precious, limited resource.
He took my remark at face value. “It’s a long-range plan. We can live off hydroponics at first.”
“There’s a long winter ahead,” I said.
“Too long,” he said. “We’re bursting at the seams now, and our leaders can only look backward. That’s why the Committee has never supported your explorations. They think you’re wasting time because you’ve never brought back anything but knowledge. That’s how irrational they are.”
He was a good persuader. “You know why I like being out here?” I said. “You have to forget all about the habitat, and just be part of Dust.”
“That means you’re one of us,” Anatoly said seriously. “The governing committee, they are still fighting the battles of the homeworld. We’re the first truly indigenous generation. We’re part of this planet.”
“Wait until you’ve seen more of it before you decide for sure.”
I thought about Anatoly’s farming scheme as we continued on past his chosen site. It would be hard to pull off, but not impossible. I would probably never live to see it thrive.
The sun was blazing from the southern sky by the time we made camp on the banks of the Let’s Go. Edie recruited Davern to help her cook supper, though he seemed to be intentionally making a mess of things so that he could effusively praise her competence. She was having none of it. Amal and Anatoly worked on setting up the sleeping tent. It was made from a heavy, radiation-blocking material that was one of our lab’s best inventions. I puttered around aiming Bucky’s solar panels while there was light to collect, and Seabird lay on the ground, evidently too exhausted to move.
She sat up suddenly, staring at some nearby bushes. “There’s something moving around over there.”