Before she was even out of the strand forest, she had to stop and put on all her clothes. She had never imagined such cold. She wondered uneasily if it had been a mistake to discard the bulky parka Chris had insisted she take. It had made sense at the time; the thing had taken up nearly half the space in her backpack, had made her unbalanced and awkward, and she had been sure the two sweaters, the light jacket, and the rest of her clothes would be enough for anything. But he had told her to keep the parka. He had been quite emphatic about it. At least she had her boots. They had been handy in the roughest stretches of climbing, though she had torn out the fur padding that had made her feet sweat. Like everything she owned, they had seen a lot of wear but were well-made and still intact. She rubbed snow over the acid-marked toes, hoping the corrosion would go no further once the stuff was diluted with water.

She was about to start again when she remembered one piece of equipment carried uselessly for so long that would finally come in handy. She dug in her pack and came up with a little mercury thermometer, held it close to the guttering glowbird, and squinted. She could not believe what she saw. But after she had shaken it, the thing still read negative twenty degrees. She breathed on it and saw the slender silver column rise, then slowly fall again. Now she had something else to fear. She could freeze to death if she didn't keep moving.

So get off your butt, she told herself, and eventually obeyed. It would have been nice to be more rested, she thought, but sleeping on the Thean stairs had been out of the question. Now she considered it, standing knee-deep in snow. She could go down a short way until it warmed up, sleep, and start out fresh.

In the end she did not and thought she was being cautious. There was no telling if she was safe from Thea on the stairs.

She looked again at the dying glowbird and knew she had better hurry. If she didn't get out from under the cable soon, the darkness would be complete.

She made it out, learning a few things about snow and ice on the way. Ice was a lot more treacherous than rock, even when it looked solid. As for snow ... she found enough of the properly fluffy variety to last a lifetime. In places it drifted higher than her head. Several times she had to find her way around huge piles of it.

But she saw gray light about the time the glowbird was becoming useless. She tossed the cage away and headed for it.

It was a strange sensation to see so far again. The weather was clear in Thea. The air was crisp and biting with an intermittent wind gusting up to five or ten kilometers per hour. It sucked the heat from her skin where it touched. She could see Twilight to her left, so that was west, meaning she had to circle the cable before she could go south.

Unless she was remembering wrong. It would be wise to consider it again before starting around the cable on a trip she would have to retrace if Ophion were north of the cable. She had had enough backtracking, and this time she had to consider her toes, which were already getting cold. She remembered that Thea was dominated by a rugged mountain range that reached from the north to the south highlands. Ophion, which kept to a nearly central course through the region, divided into a north and south fork somewhere near the middle of Thea. The central cable attached near the point where the streams reunited. For most of its length the south branch flowed beneath one of the two glacial sheets that covered most of Thea and would be nearly impossible to find. But the north branch was free of permanent ice. At times, during some part of Gaea's thirty-year climatic cycle, it thawed, and a narrow valley in central Thea experienced a brief, bleak springtime. Now was not one of those times. Still, even frozen, it should not be too hard to find. It would be relatively level and would be at the bottom of a wide valley.

The more she thought about it, the more she felt her first recollection had been wrong. The ground before her sloped gently down. It was too dark to tell if the river was ahead, but she now thought it was. And what the hell? The chances were even, and this way she would not have to begin by circling the cable. She started off to the north.

The wind picked up before she had gone half a kilometer. Soon snow was whipping from the tops of high drifts, stinging her cheeks. Once more she stopped to rearrange her clothing, this time wrapping her blanket around herself and fashioning a hood which she could hold tight at her neck and thus protect everything but her eyes from the wind.

While she sat, something approached her. She never did get a clear look at it through the blowing snow, but it was white, about the size of a polar bear, and had massive arms and a mouthful of teeth. It sat watching her, and she watched it until it decided to move in for a closer look. Possibly it wanted to say hello, but she didn't wait to find out. It absorbed her first bullet with no change of expression but paused to look down at a spreading red stain on its fur. When it kept coming, she emptied the magazine, and it folded up like clean white linen and did not move again. She fought the shaking in her hands as she reloaded the gun with her last clip, cursing under her breath and blowing on her fingers to make them bend. The creature had still not moved when she was through, but she did not try to approach it. She made a wide detour and resumed her downhill slog.

In a way it was good that she had not thought of what to do once she reached the river. If she had, she might still be huddled under the cable. Better to set one's goal a few steps at a time, she thought, as she stood on the wide, flat, windy plain that must be the frozen Ophion. She looked east, then west. Each direction looked equally impossible. She was in the dead center of Thea, with more than 200 kilometers to go in either direction before she reached daylight. To the east was Metis, which looked warm and inviting but was not, according to Cirocco. Metis was an enemy of Gaea, though not so dangerous as Tethys. West, of course, was Tethys, and the desert. Somehow it did not look so bad from here. She thought of the baking heat of the sands, then of the wraiths beneath those sands, and turned east. There had really been no choice, but pretending there was had given her a few minutes to stand still and not think about her feet.

The terrible thing was that she was burning up as she froze to death. She could not feel her toes while sweat ran down her back and arms. The exertion was keeping her warm-in fact, overheated-but the wind was killing her. There was nothing to do for either condition; she kept walking.

When she stumbled several hours later and then jerked her head up with the realization she had almost fallen asleep, she forced herself to take stock. She had enough experience by now with the drugged, careless rapture so common among people who tried to live in Gaea without a clock that she knew she was far gone under its spell. She had no idea how long she had been awake, but it was probably something like two or three days. She had already been tired when she reached the corridor that led to Thea, and she had been exerting herself continually since that time. It was possible to fall asleep standing up, she knew, because she had done it several times in her traverse of the cavern. She had to find a place to sleep, and fast.

Nothing looked promising. Trying to get her brain to work, she suddenly recalled something about burrowing in the snow. It didn't make sense, but then sleeping out in the wind sounded even crazier.

At the edge of the frozen river was a place where snow had drifted eight meters high. She went to the downwind side and began to hack at the snowbank. It was hard and crusty on the surface, but the digging quickly became easier. She scooped out the snow with both arms, working feverishly to hollow out something big enough to take her body. When she had it, she crawled in, fitfully tried to pack snow around the entrance, then curled up as tightly as she could and was instantly asleep.