Green Mars - Kim Stanley Robinson [182]
He pursed his lips and concentrated on the icescape, driving with a ruthless touch he had not known he had. The hours passed and he did his best not to think of Hiroko or Nadia or Art or Sax or Maya or Dao or any of the rest: his family, neighborhood, town, and nation, all under that one small dome. He bent over his twisted stomach and focused on the world of driving, on each little bump and hollow to be dodged in the vain attempt to make it a less rattled ride.
They had to go clockwise for three hundred kilometers, and then most of the way up the length of Chasma Australe, which in late winter narrowed and became so choked with ice blocks that there was only a single route through, marked by weak little directional transponders. There he was forced to slow down, but under the dark mist they could drive at all hours, and they did so until they reached the low wall that marked the refuge. It was just fourteen hours after their departure from the gate of Gamete— an accomplishment, over such jagged frosty terrain— but Nirgal didn’t even note it. If the refuge was empty—
If it was empty . . . The numbness in him was eroding fast as they approached the low wall at the head of the chasm; there was no sign of anyone or anything there, and his fear was breaking through the numbness like orange magma out of the cracks in black lava, it gushed out and billowed through him, became an unbearable ripping tension in every cell of him. . . .
Then a light flickered from low on the wall, and Jackie cried “Ah!” as if stuck with a pin. Nirgal accelerated and the car bounded toward the ice wall, he almost crashed the car right into it; he slammed on the brakes and the big wire wheels of the car skidded very briefly, then ground to a halt. Jackie popped on her helmet and dashed into the lock, and Nirgal followed, and after an agonizing suck and pump they dropped out of the lock onto the ground, and hurried to the lock door in a shallow recess in the ice. The door opened and four suited figures leaped out holding guns; Jackie cried out over the common band, and in a second the four were hugging them; so far so good, although it was conceivable that they were just comforting them, and Nirgal was still in an agony of suspense, when he saw Nadia’s face behind one of the faceplates. She gave him the thumbs-up sign, and he realized that he had been holding his breath for what seemed like the last fifteen hours entire, thought no doubt it was only since he had jumped out of the car. Jackie was crying with relief and Nirgal felt that he wanted to cry too, but the sudden disintegration of the numbness and then the fear had left him merely shattered, exhausted, beyond tears. Nadia led him into the refuge lock by hand, as if she understood this, and when the lock was closed and pumping up Nirgal began to understand the voices on the common band: “I was so scared, I thought you were dead.” “We got out the escape tunnel, we saw them coming—”
Inside the shelter they took off their helmets and went through a hundred rounds of embracing. Art slapped him on the back, his eyes popping out like eggs: “So glad to see you two!” He pulled Jackie into a rough hug, then held her out at arm’s length and looked at her wet snotty red-eyed girlish face with approval and admiration, as if just this moment accepting that she was human too, and not some feline goddess.
As they staggered down the narrow tunnel to the refuge’s rooms, Nadia told them the story, scowling as she recalled it. “We saw them coming and got way up the back tunnel, and then brought down both domes, and all the tunnels. So we may have killed a good number of them, but I don’t know— I don’t know how many they sent in, or how far they got. Coyote’s out shadowing them to see if he can tell. Anyway, it’s done.”
At the end of the tunnel was a crowded refuge of several little chambers, roughly walled, floored and ceilinged by insulation panels, set right against