He scooted eagerly across the shadows on the sands, through a few meters of shimmering sun, and into the water. It was deliciously cool—mountain ice to the solar furnace overhead.
Immediately the burning, itching grime on his hands and wrists lifted away and the fire in his side eased. Rafa loosened the zippers on his suit, splashed into every sweaty recess, and plunged his face and neck into the rolling surf. The steady lull and swell lifted invitingly, and he pushed without conscious decision into deeper water, allowing his ankle to float limply and his muscles to relax under the patient, buoying massage of the ocean.
It was half an hour before fatigue and growing sunburn drove him back to the shadows along the high borders of the beach. He struggled awkwardly out of the top of his suit and spread it to dry, then lay his bare shoulders on the gritty silica and dozed as his body dried in the heat.
When Rafa woke it was late afternoon, the sky was overcast, and the promise of rain hung heavy in the air. He brushed granules from his back and ran fingers through matted hair, then sat up and set himself to some serious thinking.
It was a relief to be out of the swampy jungle, but his troubles were far from over.
The minor abrasions, the cuts and scrapes and welts that covered his arms and torso were not particularly important. His ribs were excruciating when he moved the wrong way, but he apparently hadn’t punctured a lung or suffered from internal hemorrhage, so they could probably keep.
Likewise, his casted arm was uncomfortable in the sodden, weakened fiberglass. But it could be ignored. And symptomatically he felt much better after a dip in the water.
However, his ankle was a serious injury that required more than just first aid. The constricting fabric of his boot had prevented extreme swelling, but he guessed it also hid at least one serious fracture and possibly some external bleeding. The same pressure that restricted inflammation was also limiting healthy circulation; if the skin was broken, there might be infection and eventually gangrene. Yet he didn’t dare cut the boot away. It wouldn’t help him walk, but it was the best bandage he had for the time being.
The question was, how much of a “time being” could he afford, and could he find the rest of the crew in that interval? What about food? What about shelter?
Rain arrived while Rafa sat pondering. For a few seconds individual drops darkened the sand in random thumps. Then the skies let loose in earnest and sheets descended in pounding, blinding profusion. There was no thunder, no wind to impart a diagonal to the precipitation—just a businesslike vertical downpour that began as abruptly as the flow from a faucet.
As quickly as he could manage, Rafa crawled out under the open sky and spread his suit top. By slapping at the artificial puddle that grew in the center, he completely refilled the water pouch. Then he drank until his stomach was ready to burst.
The water kept coming.
He thought of digging a hole to store the excess, but quickly vetoed the idea. Probably there was too much salt in the sand to do any good, and everything would leach out anyway.
Besides, it had now rained twice in as many days, and judging from the muddy dampness on the jungle floor, he could expect more of the same on a regular basis. So perhaps his fear of dehydration could be retired. Now that he was out in the open it should be a simple matter to collect water when needed. He just hoped he wasn’t going to get sick from drinking it.
Rafa scooped up the dripping garment and retreated to the edge of the beach to wait out the deluge, shivering slightly.
As he was re-donning the suit, he noticed a cluster of white berries on a bush skirting the sand. Would they be edible? He was feeling weak with hunger. It had been nearly two of this planet’s days—thirty-some hours—since the feast at the module—and that had been his first solid meal after a long stretch of ration bars.
Of course, there was no immediate crisis if he didn’t eat—even a week or two without food probably wouldn’t kill him outright. But he needed his strength—and the berries were tempting.
After some thought Rafa crawled over to sever the cluster with his hunting knife. He could carry them along and eat them if he got desperate.
The motion of the branches as he cut disturbed a thumb-sized beetle that jumped onto his wrist. He flicked it off in a shudder, but it clung long enough to leave a nasty bite that immediately swelled and reddened.
Rafa retreated down the beach in the opposite direction from the bug, the berries heavy and sweet-smelling in his hand, hoping that he hadn’t received a lethal dose of venom or toxic bacteria. Many of the vikings he’d read about in public archives had perished from just this sort of minor-sounding encounter. He fished out a tube of antiseptic gel from a biosuit pouch and applied a generous dollop to the bite, then forced himself to dismiss the concern. No point worrying about something he couldn’t change.
The rain tapered off, leaving behind a gray curtain of cloud that lent a faint metallic sheen to the rolling surface of the water.
Daylight was fading yet again.
Rafa was wide awake after his nap, and felt cheated out of foraging and exploration time. How would circadian rhythms eventually adapt to such an abbreviated cycle? Would nights ever provide more than a half-hearted nap? Would days ever seem long enough?
Sighing, he collected some driftwood from just beyond the scalloped slope of sand. Most was soggy, but here and there a length of stick or branch had been buried and was reasonably dry when unearthed. He had no tinder or kindling, and it took until full nightfall, scrabbling sore-muscled and sloth-like, to collect a handful of spiky fronds and other combustible forest detritus that had escaped the worst of the shower. By then the buzzing gnats that he’d met the previous night were out full force, along with a sort of intermittently glowing dragonfly that darted on gull-sized wings, snapping up an evening meal in bite-sized increments.
Even with his fire kit, it was tough to get a blaze—but eventually a flicker rose, gathered strength, and sent licks of smoke curling into the blackness overhead. The wood crackled and popped with steam as heat spread to wetter sections and dried them out. It was a cheerful sound, comforting and familiar, and coupled with the steady crash of surf it brought tears to Rafa’s eyes. How many times had he sat like this with Julie at beach bonfires, their toes buried in sand and their fingers entwined as naturally as the overlapping waves?
What was she doing now?
There was a recording device on his wrist unit. Maybe he should save a few last words, a sentimental goodbye from a man she’d never see again. If he didn’t ever find the crew, perhaps someday they’d track his implants, locate his remains on this solitary stretch of coast, and forward a message from beyond the grave.
Just thinking about it brought a swelling constriction to his throat and quickened the trickle from his eyes.
When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes... thy sweet love remembered... So much he wanted to say. But he was no bard; words didn’t trip lightly from his lips—they emerged clumsy and inadequate and forlorn.
So instead he huddled speechlessly by the fire, his clean brown fingers clutching alien sand, tears filling the corners of his mouth, eyes fixed unseeingly at the dark expanse of lonely ocean.
After a time he attempted to sleep—not for the sake of fatigue, but to escape the bitterness of self-pity and condemnation. It didn’t work. The thoughts were too persistent, the glow from the fire too warm and uneven, the darkness too oppressive. The arm with the bug bite was sore and itchy. It felt swollen and hot to the touch, all the way past his elbow. Along the base of his neck, a severe headache began. He rolled his neck stiffly, kneaded with his fingers, wondering where the symptoms would end.
Toward morning a throaty howl bugled from the nearby fringes of the forest and raised the hair on the back of his neck. He tossed all his remaining fuel on the fire and stirred it anxiously, expecting any minute to be attacked by sharp-fanged denizens of the jungle. He was too afraid to gather more wood.
A minute later he
saw—or imagined, at any rate—a pair of unbelievably wide-set hazel eyes studying him unblinkingly from the shadows of the bushes. But the flames beside him crackled and leapt, and the orbs silently winked out, leaving him to scan in fear and dread until the first dreary streaks of dawn fingered their way into the sky.
By then Rafa was cramped and weary and feeling the renewed weakness of unrequited hunger. The site of the beetle bite on his arm had become a massive boil that itched fiendishly and oozed greenish pus from the center. The rest of the arm looked bruised. The headache was a pounding abomination that had him seeing double with even the slightest motion, and his stomach wrenched queasily. But his fire was mostly dead as well, and the prospect of remaining in a spot where prowling predators might revisit was too unnerving to contemplate.
He re-zipped his suit, pulled a smoldering branch from the fire to use as a crutch, drew his survival knife, and crawled joltingly toward the water. Even having his back to the forest for a few seconds was terrifying; he was relieved when he glanced back with a hammering heart to see only empty beach.
Rafa was up to his elbows and belly in the waves when the background nausea he’d been trying to ignore gave an especially urgent twist. No longer able to fight, he heaved miserably, over and over again, not producing anything except a few mouthfuls of acidic spittle streaked with blood. The pain in his head and neck surged with each spasm, causing ripples of dizziness.
For a while he feared he would black out and drown, face-down in the water. But finally the episode passed, leaving him panting. He crouched feebly, waited for the rhythmic ebb to clear the vomitus away, and then swabbed his lips clean.
When the nausea faded, he splashed on again, until he was out a good thirty meters from shore. The water was chest-deep and cool, and for the first time since his fall Rafa could stand without serious pain. The ache in his ankle eased immediately. Even the itch at his wrist felt more tolerable.
He set off perpendicular to the softly rolling waves, splashing with his arms and shoulders and hopping carefully on his good foot. Though it wasn’t the fastest mode of travel, it was less fatiguing and at least as efficient as crawling on hands and knees. And it got him away from lurking dangers in the trees.
Within a few minutes the sun was completely above the horizon, and the wildness of the coastal landscape was unmasked. The dim selvage that had seemed so foreboding and monolithic in darkness broke into a wicker of olive and lime, punctuated by electric blues and reds of exotic flowers. Overhead, flying lizards darted, on patrol for unwary crustaceans and other scraps of food, and rings razored across the sky. The sand along the shore shimmered against the turquoise at Rafa’s elbows.
There was a wind this morning, scudding between distant whitecaps and rippling the stiller water of the cove, pregnant with humidity that would be oppressive when the temperature rose.
As Rafa splashed awkwardly along, he wondered what would be waiting if and when he ever found the viking camp.
At the module he’d reluctantly accepted Heward’s claim of technical problems after the stampede. Not that he believed it—with all the fancy circuits and telecommunications equipment he was carrying around, it strained credulity to think Earthside could lose his signal or fail to find it again if they looked—but if that was MEEGO’s story, there was nothing he could do about it.
He had simply passed it off as their way of whitewashing their own negligence.
But the fall from the skimmer was something else again.
The more Rafa thought about it, the more he was convinced it had not been a simple accident. The supposed failure of stabilizers would be easy to fake for a skilled driver and offered a convenient way for Heward to dump his persona most non grata.
Rafa clenched his jaw angrily as he rounded the peninsula that formed the small cove. He’d chosen retreat over savagery in his confrontations with Heward, but it had earned hatred instead of peace. He was not by nature a vengeful man, but perhaps eliminating Heward was the only way to save his skin. At the very least Rafa had to watch him carefully.
So what about the unbroken static that answered Rafa’s attempts at communication? Were his implants damaged, or was Heward behind that as well? Certainly he could quash rescue operations—might he also have arranged another “technical failure” of some sort? Or would that require the complicity of someone at MEEGO headquarters?
The latter seemed more likely, though Rafa could find no reason why Earthside would deliberately abandon him.
Unless it was pure economics. Rafa had opted for salary over finders fee or a cut of company profits. It seemed the least risky way to leave Julie with a hefty nest egg. Perhaps by viking standards he hadn’t negotiated for much, but it was still twenty times what he’d been making as a professor and coach, pro-rated by day, and he could easily picture MEEGO accountants pleased to close out the account. No matter how much they stood to make off Erisa Beta II, the steady drain of a paycheck like his could not be pleasant.
Of course, such a motive would only be compelling if MEEGO felt it could afford to lose more crew members and still achieve its mission objectives. And given the attrition rate so far, that was a dubious gamble unless his employers knew something he did not...
The washboarded sand continued to plume beneath Rafa’s boots as he crept steadily westward along the shoreline. Sometimes the coastal slant was more pronounced, forcing him to within a few meters of the beach; other times it grew broad and shallow, dropping to waist level and making it tough to keep his balance on one foot. In several places he swam a painful, clumsy sidestroke across inlets and deeper pockets of water to avoid time-consuming detours for topography. His head continued to pound monotonously, though the nausea remained in check.
The water was teeming with life. He saw a school of palm-sized rays, some eels, and an aquatic bug that clung to seaweed until it felt threatened, then shot to the surface, spread its wings, and flew off in search of safer pastures. The underwater tableau was also dotted with brilliant shells and clusters of gently waving marine plants.
Once he nearly stepped on an elongated turtle creature that had been lazing almost motionless on the bottom. Its broad, soft shell was so well camouflaged that he didn’t see it till the last moment. Then he lurched abruptly to the side and apparently made enough noise to arouse it—it flicked off in a panicky cloud of silt, probably almost as frightened as he was.
Rafa’s headache steadily intensified from the surface glare, and his vision began to fuzz and distort. The sensation of swelling and irritation from the beetle bite spread up beyond his shoulder.
Near noon he thought he saw a family of sleek animals that resembled seals in size and shape, sunbathing on shore. They seemed scaly instead of furred, and they were big enough to make him nervous, but Rafa pressed dizzily onward, and they paid no attention.
All the while, Rafa was battling a creeping dread of the unknown. Whenever he saw a fish he thought of piranhas and barracudas and moray eels and wondered what might be lurking just out of sight; each time his boot sank to the bottom he thought of sting rays; every glimpse of larger animals conjured visions of sharks and salt water crocodiles.
And those were just the dangers he could imagine. What else might be out there?
After a time he reached an uneasy truce with his hammering heart. It was predicated on a sort of devil-may-care boldness that bordered on anger. What could happen worse than he’d already survived? Let Fate deal him another catastrophe and he’d either laugh in its face or be mercifully dead. Either way, he refused to kowtow to fear.
It wasn’t the most soothing stance, but it staved off paralysis and steadied the trembling of the long survival knife glinting far too weakly above his whitened knuckles.
His stomach was twisting emptily, his neck and forehead raw with sunburn as Rafa rounded a rocky promontory—the most westerly point of a coastline that now jagged decidedly south—and turned away from the streaming afternoon sunlight. Both legs were aching with fatigue—o
ne from monotonous pumping, the other from hours of flexing at the knee to protect his damaged ankle. His shoulders were knotted dully, and his ribs throbbed from stroking against the sea. The muscles at the base of his skull continued to pulse unmercifully.
How far had he come? Six or seven kilometers, maybe, in around eight hours. There was no way of knowing for certain how much further he had to go. From the way Heward had talked, it might be as much as another twenty or thirty clicks.
Three more days at this pace. If he could keep moving.
Wearily he turned toward shore for a rest. The stony rise he was skirting sloped steeply at water’s edge, leaving a narrow strip of broken rock to absorb the surf. It was an isolated spot where he could rest, safely insulated and hidden from the broad slab of beach and its arboreal backdrop.
Then he saw the beacon.
It rose thirty or forty meters on a graceful parabola of chrome, a miniature gateway arch overlooking the ocean and capped by a beam sweeping out alternating flashes of amber and violet. He’d have spotted it long before if not for the glare of frontal sun.
The crushing loneliness, the fear, and the mists of abandonment disappeared in an explosion of hope.
Completely forgetting his resolve to maneuver cautiously around Heward, Rafa struggled landward, shouting at the top of his lungs. Eagerly he scanned the near edges of the ridge, expecting any moment to see the familiar faces of crewmates peering down at him in astonishment.
Nobody came.
Everyone must be away from camp on assignments.
He flopped out of the water with a groan, limped across the slick slabs of breakwater stone, and began a painstaking ascent of the broken rock above.
Despite its dampness, the jumbled surface provided numerous hand- and footholds. A healthy climber would have been up in a trice—but Rafa had to grunt and wince and scrabble for almost ten minutes, all the while fighting the searing separation of his ribs and a renewed pinch in his broken forearm as he hauled his body skyward.
When he finally poked a sweaty, mud-streaked face above the ridgeline, he nearly screamed in frustration and disgust.
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