Orion set about tying blankets around the horse and pony, while Ozzie pitched their tent in the scant shelter of a big trunk. It was almost dark when he finished. He checked his watch: quarter past five. Which made the day about ten hours long. Silvergalde’s rotation was twenty-five and a half hours.
“Are you going to light a fire?” Orion asked; his teeth were chattering.
Ozzie helped the boy into the tent. “Not tonight. Get into your sleeping bag, that’ll keep you warm.”
Orion did as he was told without complaint. There were dark circles under his eyes, by the light of the kerosene lamp it looked as if his freckles were fading from his white skin. Ozzie wormed his way into his own sleeping bag, and immediately felt the benefit. He took a heatbrick out of his bag and ripped the tag. The unit was powered by a simple chemical reaction, and the top surface was soon glowing vermilion, throwing out considerable heat. They took it in turns to cook their cans, and Ozzie boiled up two large thermosfuls of tea so they’d have a hot drink waiting for them when they woke. “Get some sleep,” he said. “It’ll be dawn quite quickly.”
Orion gave him a worried look. “Is the snow going to cover the tent again?”
“No. We’ll be fine. It was definitely thinning out when we came in. But I’ll check every couple of hours. Don’t worry.”
“I’ve never been so cold.”
“You’re warmer now, though, aren’t you?”
“Uh-huh.” The boy pulled the sleeping bag up to his chin. “Suppose so.”
“Okay then.” Ozzie pulled the blankets up around him. “It’s just when we stop moving you feel it worst.”
Ozzie’s watch read five minutes to four when dawn arrived. His e-butler had woken him up at regular intervals through the night so he could check the tent. He felt as if he’d had about ten minutes sleep all night. Orion was equally reluctant to get out of his sleeping bag.
“We have to move on,” Ozzie told him. “We can’t stay here.”
“I know.”
The snowfall had stopped sometime during the night, producing a uniform brilliant white landscape. Snow covered everything, even sticking to the vertical tree trunks so that any dark twig or leaf that protruded looked strangely out of place. It was nearly two feet deep on the ground now. Ozzie put on the darkest sunglasses he had, trying not to show how much that perturbed him. It was going to be slow progress for the animals today.
“Mr. Stafford should sell sledges,” Orion said. “He’ll like that when I tell him.”
Ozzie laughed too loud at the boy’s humor, and gave him a quick hug. They were both sipping their tea from the thermos as they walked over to the animals. The precarious corral had worked to a degree; covered with snow and frozen solid it had provided a reasonable protection against drifts. Behind it, the horse and pony had trampled the snow about their feet, and were shivering heavily. The lontrus simply stood there, snorting out clouds of faint steam. If such a thing were possible, it was giving them a sullen look from beneath the shaggy strands of fur that curtained its eyes.
Orion gave their surroundings a baleful stare. “Which way?”
Ozzie frowned as the answer stalled in his throat. He tried to work out which direction they’d arrived from last night. It simply wasn’t possible, the clumps of trees all looked identical. “Try your gift,” he suggested.
The boy fumbled with his sweaters, pulling the pendant out. There was a tiny glimmer of blue starlight within the little gem. He slowly turned full circle, holding it like a compass. When he was pointing just to the right of the tent, its intensity increased noticeably.
Ozzie thought the trees formed a kind of avenue that way. Sort of. “Guess that’s it then,” he said.
“Glad I came now?”
“Very.” Ozzie put his arm around the boy’s shoulder. “Looks like I owe you big-time, huh? How do you figure you’ll cash it in?”
“I just want Mom and Dad back.”
“Yeah yeah, but like apart from that? I mean, guiding me to safety’s got to be worth a couple of mega-K’s. That’s serious money.”
“I don’t know.”
“Oh, come on, man. I knew when I was your age.”
“Okay then,” Orion said, suddenly animated again. “This is huge money, right?”
“Absolutely. Buy your own planet style.”
“Right, first off, I’d buy loads of rejuvenations, so I live as long as you do.”
“Good one, I can dig that.”
“And then I’d buy lots of smart memories, so I’d have an education and know all the complicated stuff like physics and art and banking, but I don’t have to go to school for years.”
“Even better.”
“And I want a car, a real cool one—the coolest there’s ever been.”
“Ah, that’s the Jaguar-Chevrolet 2251 T-bird, the convertible.”
“Really? There really is a coolest car ever?”
“Oh, yeah. I got a couple in my garage. Sad thing is I never drive them these days. That’s the thing with serious money, you can do so much that you never have time to do anything.”
“I’d give some away, too, to charities and hospitals and things, people that really need it.”
“Nice; that’ll prove you’re an okay kind of a guy, not just another rich bastard who doesn’t give a shit.”
“Ozzie, do you give money away then? Everyone knows you’re cool.”
“Yeah. I give some of it away.” He gave the boy a dutiful shrug. “When I remember.”
As Ozzie expected, it was slow going at first, with Polly breaking ground again. He would have preferred to send the lontrus on first, but its legs were too short. So Polly pushed her way laboriously forward, her longer legs churning up the thick layer of snow. He spent most of the morning considering options. Make some kind of snowshoes and sled, haul their food along and let the animals go? Simply turn around and return with the right kind of equipment to tackle this terrain? Except… who knew what kind of terrain he’d face next time? Assuming he could find a way back to Lyddington from here.
He just kept telling himself this was Silfen country. The aliens wouldn’t let any real harm befall anyone. Would they?
As the morning progressed, so the depth of snow gradually began to reduce. It didn’t get any softer, though, and it remained stuck to every surface. Four hours after they started he was shivering inside his multiple layers. A layer of hoarfrost caked every square inch of his clothing. There was nothing else for it, he got down and plodded along beside the horse, shoving his boots through the snow. The action warmed him slightly, but now he was worried about the rate he was burning off calories. The horse and pony were visibly in distress, despite the blankets tied around them.
Sometime after midday, Ozzie noticed what looked like tracks in the snow ahead of them. He took his sunglasses off, and found the light had become a pale pink. It turned the world into a strange grotto land, as if the forest had been carved out of brittle coral.
“Is it evening already?” Orion asked with a muffled voice. His face was completely swathed in a wool scarf, with only a narrow slit left to see through.
Ozzie checked his watch. “Don’t think so.” He bent down to examine the tracks. They were definitely footprints, elongated triangles without any tread. “These may be Silfen boots,” he said excitedly. There were perhaps fifteen different sets, all emerging from the forest; a couple had even appeared directly beneath trees, which he suspected the aliens had been climbing. They merged together and headed off along the vague avenue of snow-encrusted trees.
“Are you sure?” Orion asked. He was treading ground where he stood, slapping his hands against his sides in an effort to stay warm.
“I think so. I don’t know who else is going to be running around these woods. Besides, we haven’t got a lot of choice.”
“Okay.”