Aurora by David A. Hardy Page B

and spreading. A wave of relief washed over her. “The Blimp!” she shouted, rushing towards the light. Of course! They’d have asked Claude to look for her when she was overdue.
    She operated the built-in wiper inside her faceplate, and at the same time flicked on the radio. There was a crackling hiss of static (a diminishing roar; a blue-white flash against a dark sky). The light, now that she could see more clearly, seemed peculiar. It could only be described as white tinged with reddish blue. It was brilliant, and she could not make out the outline of the airship behind it. Yet the light itself seemed to be spherical, with—yes—with scintillating points moving inside it, like tiny glittering mirrors. And a mist swirled around its edges. What was going on?
    She stopped, still several meters away from the light. It moved up and down, quite rapidly. She took a step towards it, still uncertain what to make of it. It moved away from her, undulating with a strange, switchback motion. She spoke into her microphone: “Come in, Claude. Is that you? This is Anne Pryor—stop messing about, will you? I’m about done in!”
    The only answer was a rushing noise which grew louder and faded, it seemed, with the motions of the light. With startling abruptness, it blinked out, only to reappear fifty meters away. It pulsated, and now appeared more orange in color. Suddenly it swooped upwards, hovering near the rim of the canyon, so that she could see every detail of the rocks. Then it either shrank in size or flew away from her so rapidly that she couldn’t tell which.
    It dwindled to a spark, and vanished.
    Aurora sank to the ground and wept; with disappointment, with frustration, with sheer exhaustion. Yet even as she tumbled into the depths of despair part of her mind was nagging at her excitedly.
    If this hadn’t been the airship—and it obviously hadn’t—then what had it been? Could it be some form of life, or maybe even a Martian machine?
    But her brain was overloaded—with memories, with sensory input, with wild theories and, again, with exhaustion. It responded with the gift of unconsciousness.
    * * * *
    The search party had reached a place where three canyons branched off from a wide amphitheater.
    â€œHow on Earth—damn that expression!—how the hell are we going to find which branch she took?” asked Robert Lundquist.
    Orlov, as he had done time and again, tried to contact Anne on his radio, with no more success than before. His flashlight beam swept into one of the branches, moved on, then swiftly swept back. He gasped.
    â€œI think there’s a—a— plant over there!” he exclaimed, moving towards the green object. For a second he thought it was some sort of phosphorescent fungoid growth. Then the virtual image of his imagination flipped his vision to reality and he recognized it for what it was. A golf ball.
    â€œI think I know which way she went,” he said. “And, if one of us tunes in our RDF, we might be able to find her more quickly. You do it, will you, Minako? I want to keep this frequency clear for speech.”
    Not too long afterwards they found Aurora lying slumped against a low hill of sand. At first they feared she was dead, but Lundquist quickly checked for vital signs and pronounced her alive, if not completely well. He connected a new oxygen tank. Orlov and Minako lifted her onto a collapsible stretcher, and the party made its way carefully back to the Igloo.
    * * * *
    Aurora’s fears that she might have lost her powers of recuperation proved groundless. After only a day in bed she became restless and wanted to be up and about again. Lundquist allowed her to take on the task of keeping an eye, or ear, on the intercom, in case of urgent messages—a very light task.
    There was something she had been wanting to do. She got out her paintscreen and gazed at it for a moment, wondering when she would have an