Blue Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson Page B

there.
    For a moment he could make out snowbanks, off to his left. He
shuffled over to investigate, and found that the snow rested in the lee of a
shoulder-high escarpment, a feature he did not remember seeing before, but
there were some radial breaks in the rock caused by the Tharsis rise, and this
must be one of them, protecting a snowbank. Snow was a tremendous insulator.
Though it had little intrinsic appeal as shelter. But Sax knew mountaineers
often dug into it to survive nights out. It got one out of the wind.
    He stepped to the bottom of the snowbank, and kicked it with one
numb foot. It felt like kicking rock. Digging a snow cave seemed out of the
question. But the effort itself would warm him a bit. And it was less windy at
the foot of the bank. So he kicked and kicked, and found that underneath a
thick cake of windslab there was the usual powder. A snow cave might be
possible after all. He dug away at it.
    “Sax, Sax!” cried the voice from his wrist. “What are you doing!”
    “Making a snow cave,” he said. “A bivouac.”
    “Oh Sax—we’re flying in help! We’ll be able to get in next morning
no matter what, so hang on! We’ll keep talking to you!”
    “Fine.”
    He kicked and dug. On his knees he scooped out hard granular snow,
tossing it into the swirling flakes flying over him. It was hard to move, hard
to think. He bitterly regretted walking so far from the rover, then getting so
absorbed in the landscape around that ice pond. It was a shame to get killed
when things were getting so interesting. Free but dead. There was a little
hollow in the snow now, through an oblong hole in the windslab. Wearily he sat
down and wedged himself back into the space, lying on his side and pushing back
with his boots. The snow felt solid against the back of his suit, and warmer
than the ferocious wind. He welcomed the shivering in his torso, felt a vague
fear when it ceased. Being too cold to shiver was a bad sign.
    Very weary, very cold. He looked at his wristpad. It was four P.M.
He had been walking in the storm for just over three hours. He would have to
survive another fifteen or twenty hours before he could expect to be rescued.
Or perhaps in the morning the storm would have abated, and the location of the
rover become obvious. One way or another he had to survive the night by
huddling in a snow cave. Or else venture out again and find the rover. Surely
it couldn’t be far away. But until the wind lessened, he could not bear to be
out looking for it.
    He had to wait in the snow cave. Theoretically he could survive a
night out, though at the moment he was so cold it was hard to believe that.
Night temperatures on Mars still plummeted drastically. Perhaps the storm might
lessen in the next hour, so that he could find the rover and get to it before
dark.
    He told Aonia and the others where he was. They sounded very
concerned, but there was nothing they could do. He felt irritation at their
voices.
    It seemed many minutes before he had another thought. When one was
chilled, blood flow was greatly reduced to the limbs—perhaps that was true for
the cortex as well, the blood going preferentially to the cerebellum where the
necessary work would continue right to the end.
    More time passed. Near dark, it appeared. Should call out again.
He was too cold—something seemed wrong. Advanced age, altitude, CO2 levels—some
factor or combination of factors was making it worse than .it should be. He
could die of exposure in a single night. Appeared in fact to be doing just
that. Such a storm! Loss of the mirrors, perhaps. Instant ice age. Extinction
event.
    The wind was making odd noises, like shouts. Powerful gusts no
doubt. Like faint shouts, howling “Sax! Sax! Sax!”
    Had they flown someone in? He peered out into the dark storm, the
snowflakes somehow catching the late light and tearing overhead like dim white
static.
    Then between his ice-crusted eyelashes he saw a figure emerge out
of the darkness. Short, round,