by D. E. Kinney
“If you’ll just tilt your head back, Lieutenant,” the medtech said, one gloved finger under his chin.
“Right,” Tommy acknowledged. My death strip, he thought.
The tech was holding a very thin clear strip of what looked like cellophane. Officially called a medstrip, it was a biologically infused microfilament that was applied to the left side of the student’s throat prior to trials that required isolation.
Tommy knew if his heart stopped beating, the transparent strip would notify the command staff and broadcast a current position.
“So we can locate and retrieve your body,” a medtech had proclaimed while fitting one of the devices back on Seardra.
Tommy smiled to himself as the tech finished up his work. He wondered if the guy actually thought that being able to recover his lifeless body was somehow comforting. The tech bowed slightly and went on to Scott, allowing Tommy to again close his eyes. At the Academy he had found the greatest anxiety came not during an exam but before. Once the thing started, it was too late to worry. What about the Pipe? he thought. The remembrance of the experience didn’t help his current situation, and it was quickly put out of his mind. Let’s get on with it, he thought and once again adjusted his position on the cushioned couch.
“We’re walking, people,” Major Eldger said, poking his head into the room, the sound of his commanding voice coming as a welcomed relief. Finally, Tommy thought.
The three men stood, almost in unison, picked up their helmets, and extended their right arm to allow a medtech to make one last check of each man’s wristcomm. Satisfied that all was within norms, Tommy’s tech patted him on the shoulder, whispered,”Good luck,” and motioned him toward the ship’s boarding tunnel.
Within ten minutes of departing, while skimming over the gray, frozen landscape, the shuttle had made an abrupt turn, slowed to a hover, and landed. Captain Chopiak, already prepared, made a quick stop before entering the airlock to speak to his lead. Then he was gone.
Abruptly as it had landed, the shuttle was away. Tommy watched as the captain quickly disappeared into the low-hanging fog and falling snow.
“You’re up,” Scott’s Lead, Major Fletcher, said, and he along with a medtech stood and moved to the lieutenant.
Tommy had turned from the bleak landscape to face Scott, who was in the process of squeezing into his helmet.
“Two minutes.” The shuttle commander’s voice broke the silence of the cabin.
Scott moved to the airlock as the ship made a high-speed braking maneuver and settled into a gentle landing.
Fletcher opened the inner hatch and tapped Scott on the helmet.
Everyone waited. The only sound was the low-idle D-drives. Lieutenant Scott did not move.
Tommy looked from the blowing snow to Scott and then to Major Fletcher. Lieutenant Scott did not move.
The shuttle’s crew chief poked his head inside the cabin, took a look at Scott, and then looked to Eldger, who held up a hand as if to say, “Hold up.” All eyes were on the airlock’s open inner hatch. Lieutenant Scott did not move.
All onboard were motionless. The only indication that time had not frozen was the constant movement of the cascading snowfall swirling around the ship’s viewing ports.
It seemed like a very long time—everyone together on the little ship but all very much alone. Tommy’s heart ached for the young lieutenant. But finally, without saying a word, Scott turned and squeezed past Tommy to his seat, took off his helmet, and sat down. For a moment, as Scott passed, their eyes met, a look Tommy would not soon forget.
Fletcher sat as well, and the crew chief disappeared toward the flight deck after Major Eldger gave him a knowing look. A look, Tommy guessed, the chief had seen a number of times before.
The D-drives spooled up, and they were off to Tommy’s stepping-off point. Lieutenant Scott did not move.
The ride to his drop-off point on the glacier was short, but long enough for Tommy to replay the look in Scott’s eyes, and the disappointment in Fletcher’s. Was it disappointment? Tommy wondered. Or something else? The death of something, maybe.
The colonel had made it very clear. Scott’s career would go on. There would be no disparaging comments placed in his record, but…
Thinking of the lieutenant riding back to the shack, getting out of his gear while the techs and Fletcher looked on, then the wait to go back to Calder. Why didn’t he decide last night? Why did he push himself? thought Tommy. But he knew the answer. It was the same reason that he knew Scott would never be the same. There was no going back—that much had been clear from day one.
“Two minutes, Major.” The pilot’s announcement jarred Tommy into action.
“Better lock it down, Thorn,” Eldger said.
Tommy stood, carefully pulled the helmet down over his head, and under the watchful eye of a tech, made sure his supplement tube and comm gear were in the correct position before allowing it to do an auto attachment with the lower seal. A rush of cool air flooded over his face, confirming the now-airtight operation even before advisory information scrolled across his faceplate, giving the suit’s up status. He also did a quick comm check, although, just as he suspected—no comm. He then headed to the airlock.
Eldger stood as the shuttle settled and hit the hatch release. “All right, Thorn, this is it. You’ve got everything you need to complete this trial, and I don’t just mean equipment.” Eldger tapped Tommy’s helmet. “You’ve got everything up here, Lieutenant—I know you’re ready.”
Tommy nodded and stepped into the airlock, anxious now to get on with it. He could hear the faint whirl of his suit fans and wondered how much juice he was using.
“Good luck, Tommy,” Major Eldger continued before closing the inner hatch.
Tommy waited for a heartbeat, thinking back to his training, trying to remember if Eldger had ever called him Tommy before. He was still thinking on this when the outer hatch slid open, and he stepped into the fierce wind conscious of a single consuming fact: his boot was on the ground.
Instantly, Tommy’s helmet visor went from clear to a yellowish tint. He had selected the auto-polarization function, and in this case, the selected hue really did help cut through the fog. Of course, he had been out in this stuff on numerous occasions. The last field exercise had been fairly recent. Still, Tommy had forgotten just how miserable this place was. Or maybe, he thought, it’s just that I’m alone. Everything was gray. There were no trees with their cheery bright blue needles. And the mountain pillars, which broke out of the frozen ground like gigantic copper-topped crystal formations, were too far away to be seen clearly in the reduced visibility of low-hanging clouds and thick blowing snow.
The shuttle disappeared quickly, although Tommy barely gave it a glance. He was too busy cycling mission data and tracks from his suit’s processor. Several different 3-D images of the terrain and his planned route to the objective were soon projected on his faceplate. “Okay,” he said to himself, “I’m burning daylight, and power.” A quick swipe on the wristcomm, and small cleats deployed on the bottom of his boots. The quest to complete the last trial and earn his Mark had finally begun.
Six hours later, six hours of plodding along over a featureless frozen plain, he came to a sudden stop—the first real obstacle. His wristcomm had shown it as a wide crevasse. But how deep? he thought. Most times these things pinched together below the surface. If so, he would just climb down one side and up the other. Not the easiest undertaking, but it would allow him to continue on in a straight path and cut precious time off his march. And time is not something I have a lot of, he thought as he cautiously peered over the edge into what looked like a very wide bottomless abyss.
Backing away from the gorge’s rim, Tommy plopped down in disgust, used his tongue to find the tube, and took several long drags while he programmed a new course to his objective.
He had covered fourteen miles, not a bad pace under these conditions, but the crevasse looked to be hundreds of miles long, and it blo
cked any kind of direct route to the little igloo. In fact, how in the hell was he going to get to the objective? Tommy looked from his wristcomm to the wall of mountainous pillars angling in from the east. If he stayed on this course, they would eventually merge with the crevasse. But that was almost—he studied the display—five clicks past his objective’s location. Plus he still had eight miles to go, more if you accounted for the amount this new path pushed him east of the recovery point!
Well, there must be a way, he thought, setting out on the new track. He would keep the crevasse on his right and just continue moving north. This has to be correct. There is no other route, he thought, glancing at ghostly gray towers of rock looming in the distance. It would be dark in another five hours, and he had no intention of sleeping out in the open, not with as many tracks as he had seen.
“Just keep moving, Tommy,” he said into his helmet while subconsciously tapping his piton blaster. “Just keep moving…”
Another, very difficult, four hours past and Tommy found himself staring across the crevasse at an ice-covered wall of sheer rock. Somewhere, almost twelve hundred feet up—he followed the cliff as it disappeared into the gray cloud layer—and just a couple of hundred feet from the cliff’s edge, was his objective. But how to get across? he thought, peeking down into the gorge. As he had walked, the thought had occurred to him that this was what Sloan’s friend had meant. He could use the piton blaster to shoot a guide wire, but the distance had remained about ninety feet, way out of the blaster’s range. And to make matters worse, the sun, which had been nothing more than a hazy yellowish blob shrouded by thick clouds and falling snow, had already disappeared behind the mountains to the east. He could continue north, but he still had a seven-mile trek to get to the merge. Or he could go east. Tommy used his visor to get a distance readout. The mountains were only a mile and a half away, but he would still have to climb once he got there—at least eighty feet to be clear of would-be predators.
“Think, Tommy,” he said, tapping the top of his helmet. He was bone-tired and although the suit kept him at a constant temperature, the hike uphill into the relentless winds had really taken its toll. Tommy looked from the pillars in the east to the cliff across the crevasse and then straight ahead through the projected path displayed on his visor. Damn, guess there will be plenty of time to sleep when I’m dead, he thought as he stepped off to the north. Again, he immediately regretted using that analogy.
The pair of small, high-intensity beams of light coming from either side of Tommy’s helmet had done little to illuminate his path. In fact, they might have made the irregular footing even more treacherous. He would not have imagined the snowfall could have gotten worse, but it had become, over the last two hours, even more dense, the wind blowing it against him like it was feed from a machine. But he should be there, at least the display on his visor said he was. This is madness, he thought as he slowly groped ahead, like a blind man feeling for the cliff face that must be there. “Come on!” he yelled into his helmet. He had been trekking through this miserable wasteland now for almost fourteen hours. His legs and back ached, and he had spent the last four hours walking bowed into the wind, staggering through the darkness and praying the display data on the location of the crevasse was correct. He was barely able to make two miles per hour—a casual pace should have yielded at least three. But that was under different conditions, he thought. Then, bump.
He had found it. Thank God, he thought, closing his eyes and falling into a heap at the face of the mountain. And there he sat, in the dark howling wind and blowing snow, slipping into unconsciousness.
“No!” he yelled. “You must not sleep. You must climb!”
Slowly, over the objections of his exhausted body, Tommy stood and, reaching as high as he could, blasted a piton into the cliff face. There were things, he knew, that hunted in the darkness of this place. Creatures that would, given the chance, tear him to shreds. “Not even enough left for the boys to come and find,” he grunted and, reaching up, blasted another piton.
It was slow going, but after another hour Tommy had managed to climb a hundred feet, where he dug a harness out of a suit pocket and lashed himself to the rock. You’ve had a pretty good first day, he thought. Then, after glancing at the power pack’s remaining charge, but you’re down to twenty-one hours. “Got to pick it up, Tommy boy,” he said before snapping off the helmet’s lights, folding his arms across his chest, and falling instantly to sleep.
What was that sound? Tommy wondered, not fully awake, and for a moment not even sure where he was, before opening his eyes to find himself staring directly into the side of a frozen cliff. The gray featureless rock, only inches from his faceplate, instantly reminded him of where he was. But that sound, like a faint growl. Tommy tapped his wristcomm, adjusting to max his helmet’s ambient speakers.
GROWL!
Tommy rolled over in his harness and looked into the snarling face of a very large and seemingly very hungry glacier wolf, a gigantic paw waving only a foot from his helmet.
“What the…” Tommy flinched and, startled into full consciousness, instinctively pulled his 203 and fired two shots point-blank into the monster’s forehead. The headless body rolled off the ledge and plummeted to the glacier floor.
In the darkness, Tommy could not have seen the wolves’ den just ten feet above where he had chosen to spend the night. A narrow ledge, giving the animals access to and from their concealed home, blended back into the mountain just above and short of where he had chosen to dangle for the night. A position suddenly full of the next wolf in line…
Two hours later, the carcasses of the destroyed pack lay far below. Heaped into an easy meal, they were beset by howlers and, by morning—there would be giant silver buzzards, but finally Tommy was able to continue with his trial, although to do so meant going up. And so, cursing the wasted time, Tommy holstered his nearly spent blaster and fired the first of many pitons into the frozen surface just above his head. He had slept for only three hours, but that had been more than enough. The combination of the wolves’ wakeup call and the whirl of his suit’s dwindling power supply provided all of the needed adrenaline to continue with the night climb.
At least the snow has stopped, he thought. It was, in fact, clear enough that the light from the two full moons allowed Tommy to switch off his helmet lights, although he dared not look at the endless stretch of smooth rock towering above. “One foot at a time, Tommy,” he said to himself. “One foot at a time.”
The morning found Tommy collapsed on the wide, flat summit. He had stopped just long enough to drink a little food and give some relief to his aching arms and legs. Eight hours left, he thought, glancing at his wristcomm. He then lay on his back, staring up through his darkened faceplate, a silver buzzard making lazy circles in the bright blue, cloudless sky above. “Not yet, my feathered friend, I’m not dead yet,” he said and then thought of Remus and the pod. Not dead yet, Mr. Thorn…
“Now what?” Tommy asked himself. He had been heading east toward the deadly crevasse for almost an hour, sure that there would be some way to cross over, when he found the stone bridge. The ice-covered span had seemed at first the answer to a prayer, but it now appeared to be just another dead end!
Tommy edged a little closer to the abrupt end of the cantilevered slab of rock. “Just sixty more feet!” he shouted and silently cursed the still-circling bird.
He was tired, having slept just three hours in the last three days, and was sick of drinking purple crap. His body hurt all over, and he was running out of both time and ideas, but he was not fearful. If it comes to it, Tommy thought looking out at the endless white vista, this isn’t such a bad place to pack it in—at least I died trying.
Absentmindedly, Tommy checked his wristcomm. Seven hours of power left, he thought and then forced himself to focus on better days. Like the day he found out that he was going to the Academy, or when he got his wings. The taste of that warm dark drink at Gary’s home on Mars. Gary, I wonder
how he’s doing? Been almost twelve hours since they dropped him off. Then thoughts of the last time he, Gary, and Sloan had really talked. Hanging off the damn cliff. I wonder if Gary will escort my body, he thought. Then he glanced up at the buzzard, the twelve-foot wingspan occasionally blotting out the sun’s glare as the bird sized up what he hoped would be his next meal.
Tommy drew his 203 and took aim on the scavenger, but then thought better of it, twirled the weapon, and let it slide back into the holster. He had never liked shooting anything with wings. Bet Sloan would shoot him, probably use his piton blaster so he could reel him in and eat ’em. Tommy smiled at the thought and shook his head. “Sloan,” he yelled—“SLOAN!”
Tommy moved to the edge of the frozen slab of rock and took another bearing. Forty-nine feet seven inches. It will have to work, he thought, taking out his piton blaster. It has to…
But it didn’t work. Sloan had been very accurate with his estimate on the device’s range. The piton had the distance but not enough force to penetrate the rock on the far side. Tommy needed to be about ten feet closer. Ten more feet!
Then, in desperation, Tommy had an idea. He would get a running start and dive toward the other side. “Surely I can jump ten feet,” he said while checking the piton blaster and backing off the edge. Besides, slamming into the bottom of the gorge would be a better way to go than slowly freezing to death, he thought. Without hesitation, he began to run toward the end of the bridge.
Reaching the edge, cleated boots digging in just enough, Tommy dove out toward the opposite cliff face and fired! But as he started to fall, the piton just bounced off the rock. The angle was too great. I’m going to die, he thought. But, as if in slow motion, he tried again, one last desperate chance. “Not dead yet, Tommy!” he yelled between clenched teeth. He aimed between his legs, at a spot lower on the cliff, a spot he thought, at the rate he was falling, would be even with him by the time it hit—and fire!