which was no-trespass territory, as John well knew. She lay down in some agitation. That smile – that ‘Ah’ – the whole incident irritated her so much that she had trouble falling asleep. And the double star, one blue, one white, returned her stare all the while.
The next day it was Eileen and Roger’s turn to pull the waggon. This was the first time they had pulled together, and while the rest ranged ahead or to the sides, they solved the many small problems presented by the task of getting the waggon down the canyon. An occasional drop-off was tall enough to require winch, block and tackle – sometimes even one or two of the other travellers – but mostly it was a matter of guiding the flexible little cart down the centre of the wash. They agreed on band 33 for their private communication, but aside from the business at hand, they conversed very little. ‘Look out for that rock.’ ‘How nice, that triangle of shards.’ To Eileen it seemed clear that Roger had very little interest in her or her observations. Or else, it occurred to her, he thought the same of her.
At one point she asked, ‘What if we let the waggon slip right now?’ It was poised over the edge of a six- or seven-metre drop, and they were winching it down.
‘It would fall,’ his voice replied solemnly in her ear, and through his faceplate she could see him smiling.
She kicked pebbles at him. ‘Come on, would it break? Are we in danger of our lives most every minute?’
‘No way. These things are practically indestructible. Otherwise it would be too dangerous to use them. They’ve dropped them off four-hundred-metre cliffs – not sheer you understand, but steep – and it doesn’t even dent them.’
‘I see. So when you saved the waggon from slipping down that slope yesterday, you weren’t actually saving our lives.’
‘Oh no. Did you think that? I just didn’t want to climb down that hill and recover it.’
‘Ah.’ She let the waggon thump down, and they descended to it. After that there were no exchanges between them for a long time. Eileen contemplated the fact that she would be back in Burroughs in three or four days, with nothing in her life resolved, nothing different about it.
Still, it would be good to get back to the open air, the illusion of open air. Running water. Plants.
Roger clicked his tongue in distress.
‘What?’ Eileen asked.
‘Sandstorm coming.’ He switched to the common band, which Eileen could now hear. ‘Everyone get back to the main canyon, please, there’s a sandstorm on the way.’
There were groans over the common band. No one was actually in sight. Roger bounced down the canyon with impeccable balance, bounced back up. ‘No good campsites around,’ he complained. Eileen watched him; he noticed and pointed at the western horizon. ‘See that feathering in the sky?’
All Eileen could see was a patch where the sky’s pink was perhaps a bit yellow, but she said ‘Yes?’
‘Duststorm. Coming our way, too. I think I feel the wind already.’ He put a hand up. Eileen thought that feeling the wind through a suit when the atmospheric pressure was thirty millibars was strictly a myth, a guide’s boast, but she stuck her hand up as well, and thought that there might be a faint fluctuating pressure on it.
Ivan, Kevin and the Mitsumus appeared far down the canyon. ‘Any campsites down there?’ Roger asked.
‘No, the canyon gets even narrower.’
Then the sandstorm was upon them, sudden as a flash flood. Eileen could see fifty metres at the most; they were in a shifting dome of flying sand, it seemed, and it was as dark as their long twilights, or darker.
Over band 33, in her left ear, Eileen heard a long sigh. Then in her right ear, over the common band, Roger’s voice: ‘You all down the canyon there, stick together and come on up to us. Doran, Cheryl, John, let’s hear from you – where are you?’
‘Roger?’ It was Cheryl on the common band, sounding frightened.
‘Yes, Cheryl, where are you?’
A sharp thunder roll of static: ‘We’re in a sandstorm, Roger! I can just barely hear you.’
‘Are you with Doran and John?’
‘I’m with Doran, and he’s just over this ridge, I can hear him, but he says he can’t hear you.’
‘Get together with him and start back for the main canyon. What about John?’
‘I don’t know, I haven’t seen him in over an hour.’
‘All right. Stay with Doran –’
‘Roger?’
‘Yes?’
‘Doran’s here now.’
‘I can hear you again,’ Doran’s voice said. He sounded more scared than Cheryl. ‘Over that ridge there was too much interference.’
‘Yeah, that’s what’s happening with John I expect,’ Roger said.
Eileen watched the dim form of their guide move up the canyon’s side-slope in the wavering amber dusk of the storm. The ‘sand’ in the thin air was mostly dust, or fines even smaller than dust particles, like smoke; but occasional larger grains made a light tik tik tik against her faceplate.
‘Roger, we can’t seem to find the main canyon,’ Doran declared, scratchy in the interference.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, we’ve gone up the canyon we descended, but we must have taken a different fork, because we’ve run into a box canyon.’
Eileen shivered in her warm suit. Each canyon system lay like a lightning bolt on the tilted land, a pattern of ever-branching forks and tributaries; in the storm’s gloom it would be very easy to get lost; and they still hadn’t heard from John.
‘Well, drop back to the last fork and try the next one to the south. As I recall, you’re over in the next canyon north of us.’
‘Right,’ Doran said. ‘We’ll try that.’
The four who had been farther down the main canyon appeared now like ghosts in mist. ‘Here we are,’ Ivan said with satisfaction.
‘Nobleton! John! Do you read me?’
No answer.
‘He must be off a ways,’ Roger said. He approached the waggon. ‘Help me pull this up the slope.’
‘Why?’ Dr Mitsumu asked.
‘We’re setting the tent up there. Sleep on an angle tonight, you bet.’
‘But why up there?’ Dr Mitsumu persisted. ‘Couldn’t we set up the tent here in the wash?’
‘It’s the old arroyo problem,’ Roger replied absently. ‘If the storm keeps up the canyon could start spilling sand as if it were water. We don’t want to be buried.’
They
