"Infected?" Gretchen took the opportunity to sit down.
"Some surface dust must have gotten into the bag." Hummingbird began separating the petrified bars from those still good. "And our water is down to maybe three liters, plus whatever is in our suit reservoirs."
"We can make more water," Gretchen said, rubbing her eyes. "The fuel cells generate waste H2O as a byproduct. But they won't make food from nothing."
The old Mйxica clicked his teeth. "What progress?"
"Fuel tanks are moved and hooked up. I can't find any leaks, so I hope they're not there. If you help me lift in the second chair, I can bolt it in place. Then the rockets need to be mounted and control linkages tested."
"And then?"
"Then we'll be done and I can lie down." Her vision was getting hazy, but not from hallucinations. She started to slump over, then caught herself. "What?"
"Go lie down now," Hummingbird said. "I can do the rest."
"Okay." Gretchen wiped her hands on her thighs, which made absolutely no difference to the grime on her gloves or legs. "Think of anything else we can get rid of…I'm stumped. Weight is the enemy right now."
Hummingbird watched her limp into the tunnel, a pensive expression on his seamed old face. Then he stood up and went to the second shockchair, which was sitting beside the cockpit door. He braced himself and started to lift, grunting in surprise at the weight.
On the open plains surrounding the base camp, sunset ushered in a long dusk. There were no towering mountains to the west to swallow the sun, plunging the land into shadow. Instead, the sun settled amiably toward a brassy gold horizon. Heavily laden, Gretchen limped down a sandy gully between the half-buried headquarters building and the lab. In the soft gilded light the empty doorways and barren eyesocket windows no longer seemed so disturbing. She wondered if Hummingbird's efforts to align the camp had driven away the shadows he claimed inhabited abandoned places.
Beyond the lab building she paused at the edge of the crude shuttle field. The most recent storm had destroyed both of the vehicle sheds. The eight-wheeled Armadillo carryalls had disappeared. Did we pack them up? Did Hummingbird do something with them?
"Enough procrastination," Gretchen said to herself, sounding very much like her mother.
The Sif felt heavy in her hands. The gun carried a sense of solid menace, as though weapons obeyed some different order of density. Gretchen looked around, fretting at the thought of abandoning a perfectly good tool for almost no reason at all.
"But you're too heavy," Anderssen said, speaking crossly at the shockgun. "And useless."
Letting go proved difficult, though, and she wandered back and forth at the edge of the camp for nearly an hour before stumbling across a narrow fissure in the earth. Something about the unexpected opening convinced her this was a safe place to discard the gun.
The Sif clanked and rattled down into the shadows. Gretchen tossed the ammunition canisters in one at a time as she walked the length of the fissure. The bandolier was easier — the cheap old leather was cracked and ugly — and she just tossed it into the crumpled ruins of an equipment shed.
In the gathering darkness — more than half of the sun was now hidden behind the western horizon — Gretchen could make out familiar pale gleaming lights in the wreckage. Politely, she pressed her fingertips to her forehead before limping back toward the headquarters building. She hoped the microfauna in the sand enjoyed the meal.
"Sister…I should get rid of all this stuff." Gretchen fingered the tools on her belt and the work vest. There had to be at least six kilos of gear draped on her or tucked away in the thighpads on her suit or in the back of her equipment belt. She took out her trusty old multitool.
Grandpa Carl gave me this, she remembered, ratcheting the drill attachment in and out. Middle School graduation. Long time ago. I can't throw these things away, they're my friends. I might need them.
And, Gretchen realized with a sinking, sick feeling, she couldn't keep them either.
I'd better keep just this one, she resolved, limping back toward the main building, the multitool snug against her side. Loyal service should be rewarded.
Gretchen angled to her left, aiming to cut around the lab to the hangar entrance, when someone stepped around the corner of the low-slung building. She slowed, feet shuffling in knee-high drifts of freshly blown sand, and raised her hand to wave hello.
The figure — features obscured in a tightly wrapped kaffiyeh and respirator mask — paused, startled, one leg unusually stiff and something — she had no idea what — made her lurch to a halt. Gretchen's throat went dry and a familiar chill feeling stroked the back of her neck.
"Crow…?" Gretchen backed up, realizing the bulk of the lab building hid her from view, should anyone look out the windows of the headquarters or even go outside the main airlock. "Stand away!"
The figure stopped, kaffiyeh coming loose, djellaba flapping dark around short legs. Gretchen squinted, trying to peer past the half-mirrored facemask. Startled pale blue eyes stared back through greasy blond hair. Gretchen felt the world come unglued again.
"Oh blessed sister…" Her voice sounded queer — strained and tight — almost lost in the gusty evening wind. The sun had vanished into the west, leaving behind a glorious sky glowing orange and red and dusky purple. Along the horizon, the vast sandstorm was still visible, burning golden with the last rays of day.
"I've been copied!" A double echo vibrated in her comm.
Gretchen flinched back, her stomach burning with a chill knot of fear. Unbidden, the sight crept up on her and the figure's arm blazed with a cool flame. She shook her head violently, trying to clear her untrustworthy vision.
Anderssen was suddenly only a pace away, reaching out to take her arm.
"Are you all right?" The face behind the mask was stiff with concern.
"Stay back!" Gretchen tried to scramble backward but her feet dragged in the sand and she fell. The woman stopped, a penetrating look on her face as Gretchen crawled away. She could feel — and almost see — a familiar cool fire in the watching eyes. A sense of heat flushed her face. Gretchen recognized the sensation and both eyes grew wide, casting from side to side.
Forcing her fingers to steadiness, Gretchen switched her comm live. "Hummingbird?"
Static, warbling, rising and falling in tuneless rhythm. The voice of the wind.
She shut down the comm. The sky was darkening steadily and down among the buildings night gathered around her. Anderssen did not move. She seemed to be watching her intently. Mouthing a prayer to the Sister to fill her limbs with strength and guide her to safety, Gretchen closed her eyes. Fear boiled behind her eyelids, clinging, cold, leaching thought of motion. Now, encompassed entirely in darkness, the night felt heavy, pressing against her from all sides. There was menace hiding in the darkness. Why didn't I feel this before? None of this was here!
"I need your help," her own voice said from the night. Her face warmed again, as though a bonfire roared and leapt only meters away. "Just come with me."
Gretchen gathered her legs under her, forcing the awareness of stabbing pain in her brutalized feet away, and drifted away from the sickly heat on her face. Her hands brushed across sand, gravel and slivers of rock, searching for just the right place to settle.
The voice followed her, not too far, not too close. "It's growing cold. We should go inside. Gretchen, I know this seems terribly strange to you…"
Shuddering with relief, her outstretched hands found barren rock, exposed by the ceaseless wind and there, among chipped, splintered shale, was a sense of solidity, of rightness. Gretchen scurried onto the stones, halting when her left boot skidded out over unseen emptiness. Digging her hands into the loose rock, she exhaled slowly and opened her eyes.