“Thanks, Ozzie. Do you think the others made it?”
“I don’t know. Most of them were keeping up with the Silfen.”
“I hope they did.”
Ozzie opened the bag containing some of their food packages. “What would you like for supper?”
Ozzie really didn’t want to wake up when his insert alarm went off. Lying snug in the soft warm folds of the sleeping bag, every limb ached abominably, and as for his abdominal muscles… It was pitch-black inside the tent, so he switched his retinal inserts to infrared, and searched around for the kerosene lamp. It lit with a flare that made him blink, casting its dreary yellow glow around the interior. The flame from the icewhale oil they used as fuel was soon puffing out a little twist of reeking black smoke.
“What’s wrong?” Orion coughed.
“Nothing. It’s morning, time to get up.”
“You’re wrong. It’s night, still. I’ve only just got to sleep.”
“’Fraid not, man.” Ozzie unzipped the top half of his sleeping bag. His thermal undergarments had dried out, as had the checked shirt and sweaters that were squashed into the bag with him. But the heatbrick was all but exhausted, so the gradually cooling air had allowed condensation to form all over the inside of the tent fabric. He tried to put his checked shirt on carefully, but every time a hand caught the side of the tent, little droplets rained down. Orion complained some more as he struggled into action, dressing himself.
They pulled the rings on packets of scrambled egg and bacon. For a few glorious moments the smell of hot food overpowered the dreadful oil.
When they were almost ready to venture back outside, Orion asked, “Do you think we’ll get there today?”
“Honestly? I don’t know, man. I hope so. But if not, we just keep going, it can’t be far now. Not even the Silfen can survive here for long.” In his head, their own limit was a constant worry. Between them, they had another eight heatbricks, that gave them three more guaranteed safe nights. They might be able to survive in the tent without one, but it would be an evil night, and Tochee would be finished. How they’d carry the tent and food and other stuff after that was a moot point.
They emerged from the odor of the icewhale oil into the numbing cold of the dark forest. It had snowed again overnight, depositing a thin layer over the fur sheet protecting Tochee’s sledge. Once again, anxiety plucked at Ozzie as they pulled it back to see if the big alien had survived. It had. Manipulator flesh gestured happily to them from behind the windscreen.
The tent and coverings and bags were packed away within half an hour. Fortunately, the snowfall hadn’t been heavy enough to completely cover the tracks left by the Silfen. Just before they started, Ozzie held up the little friendship pendant. Its sparkle wasn’t as strong as yesterday, but tiny slivers of blue light still crawled around inside it. He took that as an encouraging sign, and pushed off.
A wind picked up, drifting through the forest all morning. It carried little flecks of snow with it, forcing Ozzie to wipe his goggles free every few minutes. Whenever he paused for his drink, he had to go and brush solid flakes off the sledge windscreen. He wasn’t sure if it was actually snowing up there above the treetops, or if this was simply residual swirls that the wind was rearranging. It had always puzzled him why the ground here wasn’t covered by several feet of snow and ice. Then Sara had told him that once or twice a year a gale would blow for days, scouring away the loose snow and tiny ice pellets. Somehow that didn’t surprise or even bother him, this whole planet was weird; privately he considered that it might be as artificial as Silvergalde.
He deliberately set a slower pace that morning. Yesterday had been a determined effort to keep up with the Silfen, grasping the faint chance that they might lead him away off the planet before nightfall. There was still an urgency to their trek, but a constant and realistic pace was more important now than pure speed. His new concern was how the little zephyrs were steadily eradicating the compacted footprints. Although, as if in compensation, it did seem like the trees had parted slightly to form a rudimentary path through the forest.
Lunch was soup again, snatched in the paltry lee of one of the clustered sphere trees; with its snow coat disguise it could have passed for a swollen Christmas pine. As before, even a short stop hauled their body temperature down, for which the hot soup seemed unable to compensate. Ozzie hated the sensation of cold sinking into his toes, he couldn’t stop worrying about frostbite. When they reemerged from behind the tree, the falling snow was thicker, eliminating almost all trace of the tracks they’d been following. To make matters worse, it was starting to adhere against the fur of their coats. The sledge was like a small lumpy mound of snow on runners.
