From the top of the little hill they could see far over the new black flow and its shifting network of fiery orange cracks. The noise was considerable. It seemed clear that any new lava would run off the other side of the black mass, the downhill side. They were on a high point in the bank of a stream, with an obvious watercourse running left to right as they looked down on it. Of course a sudden great flood might overwhelm them, but it seemed unlikely, and in, any case they were in no more danger here than they had been in the car.
All such calculations disappeared as Jackie pulled her hand free of his and began to take off her glove. Nirgal did the same, rolling the stretching fabric up until the wrist was exposed and his thumb free. The glove popped off his fingertips. It was about 278 degrees, he reckoned, brisk but not particularly cold. And then a wave of warm air buffeted him, followed by a wave of hot air, perhaps 315°K, which quickly passed and was followed by the jostling cool air his hand had been exposed to first. As he peeled off his other glove it became clear that the temperature was all over the place, each knock of the wind distinctly different. Jackie had already unzipped her jacket from her helmet, and down the front, and now as Nirgal watched she pulled it off, baring her upper body. The air struck her and goose-pimples ran over her skin like cat’s paws over water. She leaned over to get off her boots, and her air tank lay in the hollow of her spine, her ribs standing out under her skin. Nirgal stepped over and pulled her pants down over her bottom. She reached back and pulled him to her and wrestled him to the ground, and they went down together in a tangle, twisting fast to get onto the thinsulate pads; the ground was very chill. They got their clothes off, and she lay back with her air tank above her right shoulder. He lay on her; in the chill air her body was amazingly warm, radiating heat like the lava, buffets of heat pushing him from below and from the side, the wind airy and cooked, her body pink and muscular, wrapping him hard with arms and legs, startlingly tangible in the sunlight. They bonked faceplates. Their helmets were pumping out air hard, to compensate for the leaks around shoulders, backs, chests, collarbones. For a time they looked each other in the eye, separated by the double layer of glass, which seemed the only thing keeping them from fusing into one being. The sensation was so powerful it felt dangerous — they bonked and bonked, expressing the desire to fuse, but knowing they were safe. Jackie’s eyes had a strange vibrant border between iris and pupil. The little black round windows were deeper than any mohole, a drop to the center of the universe. He had to look away, he had to! He lifted off her to look at her long body, which, stunning as it was, was still less stunning than the depths of her eyes. Wide rangy shoulders, oval navel, the so-feminine length of her thighs — he closed his eyes, he had to. The ground trembled under them, moving with Jackie so that it felt as if he were plunging into the planet itself, a wild muscular female body — he could lie perfectly still, they both lay perfectly still, and still the world vibrated them, in a gentle but intense seismic ravishment. This living rock. As his nerves and skin began to thrum and sing he turned his head to look out at the flowing magma and then everything was coming together.
They left the Rayleigh volcano, and rolled back down into the fog hood’s darkness. On the second night after leaving Rayleigh they approached Gamete. In the dark gray of an especially thick noon twilight they came up and under the great overhang of ice, and suddenly Jackie leaned forward with a cry and slapped off the autopilot, then kicked down the brake.
Nirgal had been dozing, and he caught himself on his steering wheel, staring out to see what the trouble was.
The cliff where the garage had been was shattered — a great ice fall spilled away from the cliff, covering where the garage had been. The ice at the top of the break was heavily starred, as by explosion. “Oh,” Jackie cried, “they’ve blown it up! They’ve killed them all!”
Nirgal felt as if he had been punched in the stomach; he was amazed to find what a physical blow fear could wield. In his mind he was numb, and seemed to feel nothing — no anguish, no despair, nothing. He reached out and squeezed Jackie’s shoulder — she was shaking — and peered anxiously through the thick blowing mist.
“There’s the bolt-hole,” he said. “They wouldn’t have been caught unawares.” The tunnel led through an arm of the polar cap to Chasma Australe, where there was a shelter in the ice wall.
“But— ” Jackie said, and swallowed. “But if they didn’t get any warning!”
“Let’s get around to the shelter in Australe,” Nirgal said, taking over the controls.
He bounced them over the ice flowers at the car’s top speed, concentrating on the terrain and trying not to think. He did not want to get to the other shelter — get there and find it empty, taking away his last hope, the only way he had of staving off this disaster. He wanted never to arrive, to keep driving clockwise around the polar cap forever, no matter the torque of apprehension that was causing Jackie to hiss as she breathed, and to moan from time to time. In Nirgal it was only a numbness, an inability to think. I don’t feel a thing, he thought wonderingly. But unbidden images of Hi-roko kept flashing before him as if projected on the windshield, or standing ghostlike out in the driving mists. There was a chance that the assault had come from space, or by missile from the north, in which case there might not have been any warning. Wiping the green world out of the universe, and leaving only the white world of death. The colors drained from everything, as in this gray-fog winter world.
He pursed his lips and concentrated on the icescape, driving with a ruthless touch he had not known he had. The hours passed and he did his best not to think of Hiroko or Nadia or Art or Sax or Maya or Dao or any of the rest: his family, neighborhood, town, and nation, all under that one small dome. He bent over his twisted stomach and focused on the world of driving, on each little bump and hollow to be dodged in the vain attempt to make it a less rattled ride.
They had to go clockwise for three hundred kilometers, and then most of the way up the length of Chasma Australe, which in late winter narrowed and became so choked with ice blocks that there was only a single route through, marked by weak little directional transponders. There he was forced to slow down, but under the dark mist they could drive at all hours, and they did so until they reached the low wall that marked the refuge. It was just fourteen hours after their departure from the gate of Gamete — an accomplishment, over such jagged frosty terrain — but Nirgal didn’t even note it. If the refuge was empty—
If it was empty … The numbness in him was eroding fast as they approached the low wall at the head of the chasm; there was no sign of anyone or anything there, and his fear was breaking through the numbness like orange magma out of the cracks in black lava, it gushed out and billowed through him, became an unbearable ripping tension in every cell of him…
Then a light flickered from low on the wall, and Jackie cried “Ah!” as if stuck with a pin. Nirgal accelerated and the car bounded toward the ice wall, he almost crashed the car right into it; he slammed on the brakes and the big wire wheels of the car skidded very briefly, then ground to a halt. Jackie popped on her helmet and dashed into the lock, and Nirgal followed, and after an agonizing suck and pump they dropped out of. the lock onto the ground, and hurried to the lock door in a shallow recess in the ice. The door opened and four suited figures leaped out holding guns; Jackie cried out over the common band, and in a second the four were hugging them; so far so good, although it was conceivable that they were just comforting them, and Nirgal was still in an agony of suspense, when he saw Nadia’s face behind one of the faceplates. She gave him the thumbs-up sign, and he realized that he had been holding his breath for what seemed like the last fifteen hours entire, though no doubt it was only since he had jumped out of the car. Jackie was crying with relief and Nirgal felt that he wanted to cry too, but the sudden disintegration of the numbness and then the fear had left him merely shattered, exhausted, beyond tears. Nadia led him into the refuge lock by hand, as if she understood this, and when the lock was closed and pumping up Nirgal began to understand the voices on the common band: “I was so -scared, I thought you were dead.”