He didn't argue. He just stuck out his hand, and Dorrie took it. With her help he stumped, half-hopping, toward the clean-up. Actually Dorrie had already done the worst of the job of getting him clean before he woke up, but he splashed a little water on his face and swished some around in his mouth. He was pretty well recovered when he turned around to look at me.
"All right, Walthers, what is it? Do we give up and go back now?"
"No," I said. "We'll do it a different way."
"He can't, Audee!" Dorrie cried. "Look at him. And the con-
dition his suit is in, he couldn't last outside an hour, much less help you dig."
"I know that, so we'll have to change the plan. I'll dig by myself. The two of you will slope off in the airbody."
"Oh, brave heroic man," Cochenour said flatly. "Are you crazy? Who are you kidding? That's a two-man job."
"I did the first one by myself, Cochenour."
"And came into the airbody to cool off every little while. Sure. That's a whole other thing."
I hesitated. "It'll be harder," I admitted. "Not impossible. Lone prospectors have dug out tunnels before, though the problems were a little different. I know it'll be a rough forty-eight hours for me, but we'll have to try it-there isn't any alternative."
"Wrong," Cochenour said. He patted Dorrie's rump. "Solid muscle, that girl is. She isn't big, but she's healthy. Takes after her grandmother. Don't argue, Walthers. Just think a little bit. I'll fly the airbody; she'll stick around to help you. The job is as safe for Dorrie as it is for you; and with two of you to spell each other there's a chance you might make it before you pass out from heat prostration. What's the chance by yourself? Any chance at all?"
I didn't answer the last part. For some reason, his attitude put me in a bad temper. "You talk as though she didn't have anything to say about it."
"Well," Dorrie said, sweetly enough, "come to that, so do you, Audee. Boyce is right. I appreciate your being all gallant and trying to make things easy for me, but, honestly, I think you'll need me. I've learned a lot. And if you want the truth, you look a lot worse than I do."
I said, with all the contemptuous command I could get into my voice, "Forget it. We're going to do it my way. You can both help me for an hour or so, while I get set up. Then you're on your way. No arguments. Let's get going."
Well, that made two mistakes.
The first was that we didn't get set up in an hour. It took more
than two, and I was sweating-sick, oily sweat-long before we finished. I really felt bad. I was past worrying about the way I felt; I was only a little surprised, and kind of grateful, every time I noticed that my heart was still beating.
Dorrie was as strong and willing as promised. She did more of the muscle work than I did, firing up the igloo and setting the equipment in place, and Cochenour checked over the instruments
and made sure he knew what he had to do to make the airbody fly. He flatly rejected the notion of going back to the Spindle, though; he said he didn't want to risk the extra time, when he could just as easily set down for twenty-four hours a few hundred kilometers away.
Then I took two cups of strong coffee, heavily laced with my private supply of gin, smoked my last cigarette for a while, and put in a call to the military reservation.
Amanda Littleknees was flirtatious but a little puzzled when I told her we were departing the vicinity, no fixed destination; but she didn't argue.
Then Dorrie and I tumbled out of the lock and closed it behind us, leaving Cochenour strapped in the driver's seat.
That was the other mistake I had made. In spite of everything I had said, we did it Cochenour's way after all. I never agreed to it. It just happened that way.
Under the ashy sky Dorrie just stood there for a moment, looking forlorn. But then she grabbed my hand, and the two of us swam through the thick, turbulent air toward the shelter of our last igloo. She had remembered my coaching about the importance of staying out of the jet exhaust. Inside, she flung herself flat and didn't move.
I was less cautious. I couldn't help myself. I had to see. So, as soon as I could judge from the flare that the jets were angled away from us, I stuck my head up and watched Cochenour take off in a sleet of ash.
It wasn't a bad takeoff. In circumstances like that, I define "bad" as total demolition of the airbody and the death or maiming of one or more persons. He avoided that, but as soon as he was out of the slight shelter of the arroyo the gusts caught him and the airbody
skittered and slid wildly. It was going to be a rough ride for him, going just the few hundred kilometers north that would take him out of detection range.
I touched Dorrie with my toe, and she struggled to her feet. I slipped the talk cord into the jack on her helmet-radio was out, because of possible eavesdropping from the perimeter patrols that we wouldn't be able to see.
"Have you changed your mind yet?" I asked.
