Blue Mars - Kim Stanley Robinson [34]
Eventually the nausea of the disorientation passed, and in the end he stood and took off in the direction suggested by the wristpad, feeling horrible about it, listing a little uphill just to try to make himself feel better. But one had to trust instruments over instincts, that was science. And so he plodded on, traversing the slope, shading somewhat uphill, clumsier than ever. His nearly insensible feet ran into rocks that he did not see, even though they were directly beneath him; he stumbled time after time. It was surprising how thoroughly snow could obscure the vision.
After a while he stopped, and tried again to locate the rover by APS; and his wristpad map suggested an entirely new direction, behind him and to the left.
It was possible he had walked past the car. Was it? He did not want to walk back into the wind. But now that was the way to the rover, apparently. So he ducked his head down into the biting cold and persevered. His skin was in an odd state, itching under the heating elements crisscrossing his suit, numb everywhere else. His feet were numb. It was hard to walk. There was no feeling in his face; clearly frostbite was in the offing. He needed shelter.
He had a new idea. He called up Aonia, on Pavonis, and got her almost instantly.
“Sax! Where are you?”
“That’s what I’m calling about!” he said. “I’m in a storm on Daedalia! And I can’t find my car! I was wondering if you would look at my APS and my rover’s! And see if you can tell me which direction I should go!”
He put the wristpad right against his ear. “Ka wow, Sax.” It sounded like Aonia was shouting too, bless her. Her voice was an odd addition to the scene. “Just a second, let me check! . . . Okay! There you are! And your car too! What are you doing so far south? I don’t think anyone can get to you very quickly! Especially if there’s a storm!”
“There is a storm,” Sax said. “That’s why I called.”
“Okay! You’re about three hundred and fifty meters to the west of your car.”
“Directly west?”
“— and a little south! But how will you orient yourself?”
Sax considered it. Mars’s lack of a magnetic field had never struck him as such a problem before, but there it was. He could assume the wind was directly out of the west, but that was just an assumption. “Can you check the nearest weather stations and tell me what direction the wind is coming from?” he said.
“Sure, but it won’t be much good for local variations! Here, just a second, I’m getting some help here from the others.”
A few long icy moments passed.
“The wind is coming from west northwest, Sax! So you need to walk with the wind at your back and a touch to your left!”
“I know. Be quiet now, until you see what course I’m making, and then correct it.”
He walked again, fortunately almost downwind. After five or six painful minutes his wrist beeped.
Aonia said, “You’re right on course!”
This was encouraging, and he carried on with a bit more speed, though the wind was penetrating through his ribs right to his core.
“Okay, Sax! Sax?”
“Yes!”
“You and your car are right on the same spot!”
But there was no car in view.
His heart thudded in his chest. Visibility was still some twenty meters; but no car. He had to get shelter fast. “Walk in an ever-increasing spiral from where you are,” the little voice on the wrist was suggesting. A good idea in theory, but he couldn’t bear to execute it; he couldn’t face the wind. He stared dully at his black plastic wristpad console. No more help to be had 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