when Langenschmidt had forced the speed down low enough, and plunged into a night black as space, where she felt as though the stars were below her and the white winter landscape above. Hitting the air-brake release on her suit then the trigger of the tiny altimeter-computer controlling the jets. The reaction-mass ran out when she was twenty feet above the ground, but it was deep snow she tumbled into and she was unhurt.
She lay there quiescent for perhaps an hour, until her hands and feet were numb even through the insulated suit. It took her that long to readjust to the fact that she was still alive, and afterward to convince herself that there was some point in getting up, even though she was alone on a strange planet with no resources bar what she had on, and her intelligence.
There was no telling what had become of Langenschmidt. She could not even recollect at first whether she had seen the landing-craft again as she hurtled ground-ward. The odds were strong that it had crashed. Perhaps Langenschmidt had baled out before it was too late; perhaps not. Certainly at the speed they had been traveling he would have landed hundreds of miles away even if he had left his control chair directly. She herself had jumped.
The cold and shock combined to make her mind sluggish. She had to struggle for a long time before she solved the simple problem of working herself out of the snowdrift in which she had sunk up to elbow-height. At last she realized that by moving with a kind of swimming motion she could prevent herself from sinking any deeper, and after a hundred yards of crawling she was able to stand up on solid rock. She looked about her. It was hard to accept that she was on a planet where human beings could live. The desolation was total.
She felt herself sliding toward hysteria as she strained her eyes into the dimness, and cast about desperately for a straw of hope. What light there was came from a moon about quarter-full and a fairly dense patch of stars showing through a rift in the otherwise general cloud-cover. There was also a distant furnace-like glow illuminating some of the clouds in the direction she was facing. Polar lights, presumably.
Her desperation lessened as she realized that if she could see enough of those stars she could determine at least a few facts about her predicament: where north lay, for example. They had provided pictures of the local star-patterns as part of her briefing. Was there a distinctive constellation up there in that small, clear patch?
For a long moment she was afraid there were too few stars to make sure. Then there came a hot surge of excitement and relief. She could see two of the three stars composing the Northern Triangle of this planet’s sky—unmistakable because there was the dim, fuzzy blur of a globular cluster exactly midway between them, a combination unique in either hemisphere.
So she could set her suit’s gyrocompass, at least. Fumbling with gauntleted fingers site freed the catch that held its float fixed when not in use, and heard its very faint humming begin immediately. It was powered by the warmth of her body inside the suit, and required no further attention.
Obviously the thing to do was to head south, failing any visible landmarks in this icy desert. The ship that brought the refugees here from Zarathustra had crashed in the Arctic, that was known; it had become the focus of some kind of mystical cult. When the refugees’ descendants migratedaway, the only direction they could logically take was to the south, to more fertile lands. Provided only that she was on the same side of the pole, there was a chance she might stumble across habitation fairly soon.
There was no point in just standing here, anyway. She considered waiting for daylight before making a start, but then realized that since she had been coming to the planet at the end of its northern summer, for all she knew the polar night at this latitude might have set in already. She might have to
She lay there quiescent for perhaps an hour, until her hands and feet were numb even through the insulated suit. It took her that long to readjust to the fact that she was still alive, and afterward to convince herself that there was some point in getting up, even though she was alone on a strange planet with no resources bar what she had on, and her intelligence.
There was no telling what had become of Langenschmidt. She could not even recollect at first whether she had seen the landing-craft again as she hurtled ground-ward. The odds were strong that it had crashed. Perhaps Langenschmidt had baled out before it was too late; perhaps not. Certainly at the speed they had been traveling he would have landed hundreds of miles away even if he had left his control chair directly. She herself had jumped.
The cold and shock combined to make her mind sluggish. She had to struggle for a long time before she solved the simple problem of working herself out of the snowdrift in which she had sunk up to elbow-height. At last she realized that by moving with a kind of swimming motion she could prevent herself from sinking any deeper, and after a hundred yards of crawling she was able to stand up on solid rock. She looked about her. It was hard to accept that she was on a planet where human beings could live. The desolation was total.
She felt herself sliding toward hysteria as she strained her eyes into the dimness, and cast about desperately for a straw of hope. What light there was came from a moon about quarter-full and a fairly dense patch of stars showing through a rift in the otherwise general cloud-cover. There was also a distant furnace-like glow illuminating some of the clouds in the direction she was facing. Polar lights, presumably.
Her desperation lessened as she realized that if she could see enough of those stars she could determine at least a few facts about her predicament: where north lay, for example. They had provided pictures of the local star-patterns as part of her briefing. Was there a distinctive constellation up there in that small, clear patch?
For a long moment she was afraid there were too few stars to make sure. Then there came a hot surge of excitement and relief. She could see two of the three stars composing the Northern Triangle of this planet’s sky—unmistakable because there was the dim, fuzzy blur of a globular cluster exactly midway between them, a combination unique in either hemisphere.
So she could set her suit’s gyrocompass, at least. Fumbling with gauntleted fingers site freed the catch that held its float fixed when not in use, and heard its very faint humming begin immediately. It was powered by the warmth of her body inside the suit, and required no further attention.
Obviously the thing to do was to head south, failing any visible landmarks in this icy desert. The ship that brought the refugees here from Zarathustra had crashed in the Arctic, that was known; it had become the focus of some kind of mystical cult. When the refugees’ descendants migratedaway, the only direction they could logically take was to the south, to more fertile lands. Provided only that she was on the same side of the pole, there was a chance she might stumble across habitation fairly soon.
There was no point in just standing here, anyway. She considered waiting for daylight before making a start, but then realized that since she had been coming to the planet at the end of its northern summer, for all she knew the polar night at this latitude might have set in already. She might have to
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