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systems don't pack up completely, and if we don't get picked off by whatever
destroyed the module, and if we aren't blown away by our own people, we're
saved.
'Do you feel like going on now?'
'What?'
'We'd better be on our way, don't you think?'
'Oh. Yes. All right.' I lower myself to the desert floor. My feet ache
intensely for a while, but as I start to walk the pain ebbs. The slope looks
just the way it did kilometres back. I
am already breathing deeply.
I have a sudden and vivid image of the base as it might be, as it probably is:
a vast, steaming crater, ripped out of the planet during the same attack that
downed us. But even if that is the reality, we agreed it still makes sense to
head there; rescuers or reinforcements will go there first. We have a better
chance of being picked up there than anywhere else.
Anyway, there was no module wreckage to stay beside on the ground; it was
travelling so fast it burned up, even in this thin atmosphere, the way we very
nearly did.
I still have a vague hope we'll be spotted from space, but I guess that's not
likely now.
Anything left intact up there is probably looking outwards. If we'd been
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noticed when we fell, or spotted on the surface, we'd have been picked up by
now, probably only hours after we hit the dirt. They can't know we're here,
and we can't get in touch with them. So all we can do is walk.
The rock and stones are getting gradually smaller.
I walk on.
It's night. I can't sleep.
The stars are spectacular, but no solace. I am cold, too, which doesn't help.
We are still on the slope; we travelled a little over sixteen kilometres
today. I hope we'll come to the lip of the escarpment tomorrow, or at least to
some sort of change in the landscape. Several times today, while I walked, I
had the impression that for all my effort, we weren't moving anywhere.
Everything is so uniform.
Damn my human-basic ancestry. My side and belly are hurting badly. My legs and
feet held out better than I expected, but my injuries torment me. My head
hurts as well.
Normally, the suit would pump me full of painkiller, relaxants or a sleeping
draught, and whatever it is helps your muscles to build up and your body to
repair itself. My body can't do those things for itself, the way most people's
can, so I'm at the mercy of the suit.
It says its recycler is holding out. I don't like to tell it, but the thin
gruel it's dispensing tastes disgusting. The suit says it is still trying to
track down the site of the leak; no progress so far.
I have my arms and legs inside now. I'm glad, because this lets me scratch.
The suit lies with its arms clipped in to the sides and opened into the torso
section, the legs together and melded, and the chest expanded to give me room.
Meanwhile the carbon dioxide frosts outside and the stars shine steadily.
I scratch and scratch. Something else more altered humans wouldn't have to do.
I can't make itches go away just by thinking. It isn't very comfortable in
here. Usually it is; warm and cosy and pleasant, every chemical whim of the
encased body catered for; a little womb to curl up in and dream. The inner
lining can no longer alter the way it used to, so it stays quite hard, and
feels - and smells - sweaty. I can smell the sewage system. I scratch my
backside and turn over.
Stars. I stare at them, trying to match their unblinking gaze through the
hazy, scratched surface of the helmet visor.
I put my arm back into the suit's and unclip. I reach round onto the top of
the blown-out
chest and feel in the front pack's pocket, taking out my antique still camera.
'What are you doing?'
'Going to take a photograph. Play me some music. Anything.'
'All right.' The suit plays me music from my youth while I point the camera at
the stars. I
clip the arm back and pass the camera through the chest lock. The camera is
very cold; my breath mists on it. The viewer half unrolls, then jams. I tease
it out with my nails, and it stays. The rest of the mechanism is working; my
star pictures are fine, and, switching to some of the older magazines from the
stock, they come up bright and clear too. I look at the pictures of my home
and friends on the orbital, and feel - as I listen to the old, nostalgia-
inducing music - a mixture of comfort and sadness. My vision blurs.
I drop the camera and its screen snaps shut; the camera rolls away underneath
me. I
raise myself up painfully, retrieve it, unroll the screen again and go on
looking back through old photographs until I fall asleep.
I wake up.
The camera lies beside me, switched off. The suit is quiet. I can hear my
heart beat.
I drift back to sleep eventually.
Still night. I stay awake looking at the stars through the scarred visor. I
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feel as rested as
I ever will, but the night here is almost twice standard, and I'll just have
to get used to it.
Neither of us can see well enough to be able to travel safely at night,
besides which I still need to sleep, and the suit can't store enough energy
during the hours of sunlight to use for walking in the darkness; its internal
power source produces barely enough continuous energy to crawl with, and the
light falling on its photopanels provides a vital supplement.
Thankfully, the clouds here never seem to amount to much; an overcast day
would leave me doing all the work whether it was my turn or not.
I unroll the camera screen, then think.
'Suit?'
'What?' it says quietly.
'The camera has a power unit.'
'I thought of that. It's very weak, and anyway the power systems are damaged
beyond the junction point for another source of internal energy. I can't think
of a way of patching it in to the external radiation system, either.'
'We can't use it?'
'We can't use it. Just look at your pictures.'
I look at the pictures.
There's no doubt about it; education or not, once you've been born and brought
up on an
O you never quite adjust to a planet. You get agoraphobic; you feel you are
about to be sent spinning off, flying away into space, picked up and sent
screaming and bawling out to the naked stars. You somehow sense that vast,
wasteful bulk underneath you, warping space itself and self-compressing,
soil-solid or still half-molten, quivering in its creaky, massy press, and
you; stuck, perched here on the outside, half-terrified that despite all you
know you'll lose your grip and go wheeling and whirling and wailing away.
This is our birthplace though, this is what we deserted long ago. This is
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