Krumangapik invited them to air out their own clothing as well. 'Normally, we do this only in the igloo. It is usually not warm enough outside. But with this wonderful heat--" He raised his arms and turned slowly, as if basking in the sun on Miami Beach.

"Aren't you even a little chilly?" she asked.

Krumangapik grinned his gap-toothed grin again. "Better to be chilly," he quote "and also be alone inside one's clothing."

Then she noticed that the women were picking through the furs for lice. It figured. There wouldn't be too many opportunities to change on the glacier. They must spend a great many days wearing the same clothes.

Sherrine looked at Thor, who looked at Mike, who looked at Steve, who looked at Doc, who looked at Bruce. No one moved. Then Steve grinned and pulled his sweater over his head. He cried, "Gentlebeings and sapients all, how can you resist? How often do you get a chance to sunbathe on a glacier?"

They stripped down practically to the buff. Sherrine and Doc both drew the line at shucking their underwear.

Thor and Steve did not; but looking at them they seemed less a pair of naked males than a pair of Greek statues, one in ivory, one in ebony. Nude, not naked. Naterk kept throwing glances at them, like she was inspecting livestock. Thor gave her a look back and ran his fingers through his beard.

"Don't even think it," Mike told him.

Thor raised his eyebrows and leered. "Think what?"

You know. Adultery is the major cause of murders among Eskimos. He jerked his head at Mala, who had watched the byplay with no expression.

"All the cartoons--"

"This isn't the suburbs. They don't give gifts, remember? Wife-swapping is the way they seal bargains. If Mala makes the offer--and remember that he has to make the offer--then you have to help him when he goes hunting. Either that or you have to offer him your wife."

Sherrine was arranging Alex atop a pile of discarded clothing. Alex was trying to smile hard enough to mask the winces caused by the pain in his ribs. She pulled the strap snug, but not tight.

"Thor," she said, "don't even think it." And she whipped around with a snowball in her hand and blasted him on the chest.

Then all fandom was plunged into war. Even the Eskimos joined in. It was such a relief to know that they would not freeze! Sherrine wondered if she might even get a tan out of it. She was laughing and dancing and dodging snowballs when the spotlight from the helicopter caught them dead center.

Lieutenant Gil Magruder studied the shapes dancing in the spotlight below. There were two sleds piled high with clothing and blankets. Nestled in the clothing, he saw two naked corpses, long dead of starvation by the looks of them. Cavorting around them in some sort of ritualistic dance were a dozen naked and near naked men and women, including at least two children. When the light hit them, they froze in place and stared up at the helicopter. Magruder pivoted the copter, keeping the beam centered.

"Sergeant. What do you see down there?"

Staff Sergeant Emil Poulenc looked and swallowed his gum. "It looks like some kind of funeral, sir," he said in a Louisiana drawl. "Those are Eskimos, aren't they? But--"

"But they're naked, aren't they, Sergeant. They're on the Ice at thirty below and they're naked."

"Well, that lady there, she has a brassiere and panties on."

Magruder gave him a stare.

"I mean, she's not completely naked." Poulenc's voice sounded wistful.

"Sergeant, what possible difference can a pair of pink panties make at thirty degrees below zero?"

Poulenc scratched his chin. "Well, sir, since you put it that way."

Magruder stared at the group on the ground. "HQ ain't never gonna believe this," he muttered. He straightened and adjusted the rotor. "You know what I think we saw, Sergeant?"

"Sir, I can't imagine."

Magruder turned off the spotlight and banked the copter away to the west. "Nothing, Sergeant. I think we saw absolutely nothing at all."

The General Mills station at Brandon was a gleaming beacon in the dark for the last few miles of the trip. Alex sighed. The madcap trip across the Ice was nearly over. Sherrine drove the snowmobile down the state highway toward the station, where Alex saw a man--presumably Bob Needleton--sitting in a lawn chair reading a magazine beside a blazing fire he had built in an oil drum. When he heard them coming, he folded the magazine and stood up.

"It's about time you got here," he said. If he thought there was something extraordinary about a procession of naked people coming off the glacier, he did not say. Instead he gave directions for loading the van.

Alex and Gordon were trundled into the back of the van and laid out flat on a pair of old mattresses. The last sight Alex saw before they slid the door closed was a bunch of naked Eskimos dancing around the blazing oil drum. It was probably a measure of how accustomed he had already become to Earth, that the sight seemed perfectly natural. So far, all the Earthlings he had met had behaved oddly.

Maybe gravity pulled blood from the brain…

Bob climbed into the pilot's seat. "That's that," he said. "Sherrine, honey, your grandparents stayed behind in Mapleton just in case you managed to get back there after all. As soon as we find a working telephone we'll call and tell them you're okay and where to find their equipment. Your pal Krumangapik agreed to wait here until they came by, if I would let him have the fire I built in the oil drum." He started the engine. "I guess that takes care of everything."

"Not quite everything," Alex said. "It's going to get cold. We told SUNSAT to turn off the beam when we got to Brandon."

"Sigh," Thor said. "I suppose we'd be too easy to locate if we kept it. But it was nice to be warm."

There was a mad scramble in the back of the van as everyone hastened to don clothes. Conditions were crowded with seven people in the back of the van. Alex didn't mind the occasional elbow or knee as the others pulled on sweaters and pants, because their body heat warmed the place nicely. He supposed that was how Krumangapik and his friends could sit around naked in a house made of snow bricks. Besides, Sherrine took charge of dressing him, and he rather enjoyed it.

Alex relaxed to the rhythm of the van over the highway. He closed his eyes. The rescue was over. For the first time since he'd seen the missile on the radar, he knew he would live for one more day.

A couple miles farther on, he felt a hand shake his shoulder. He opened his eyes and saw Steve's dark face above him.

Steve grinned. "It's too close in here to run through any asanas; and you're not up to it physically yet. So let's begin your conditioning with some pranayama. I want you to practice breathing."

Alex wondered what it was that his lungs had been doing all his life. "I already know how to breathe," he told him.

"I don't want you to breathe from your diaphragm. I want you to breathe from your little potbelly." He set his hand on Alex's stomach. "Make your stomach go in and out, not your chest."

Steve wasn't kidding. Alex looked at Gordon and Gordon looked at him and he shrugged with his eyebrows. Didn't everyone breathe from their stomachs? He studied the Earthlings surrounding him and, yes, it was indeed their chests that rose and fell. He watched Sherrine's chest more closely, just to make sure. Maybe their rib muscles were better developed. Gravity again, he supposed.