Pathways - Jeri Taylor [121]
Fifteen minutes into the run, Charlie, ahead of him, caught the edge of his shoe and went sprawling; Tom braked but couldn’t avoid him, and together they tumbled into the soft pack of snow. Neither took a bad fall, and they laughed like children, Tom grabbing a handful of snow and washing Charlie’s face with it as they wrestled, cublike, the way they had when they were four or five. Odile and Bruno waited patiently for them a little farther down the mountain, and soon they collected themselves, found their poles, and started off again.
Another half hour passed and Tom realized Bruno and Odile had pulled up adjacent to a bowl-shaped formation. Clearly they were concerned about the possibility of avalanche, and as he and Charlie pulled up to them, he reached for his pack.
Reacting to the expression on his face, Odile asked, “What’s wrong?”
“My pack is gone. I must have lost it when Charlie and I tumbled.” He peered back up the slopes, from whence they’d come, and decided there was no way he could backtrack. And he had no coordinates to give the transporter to put him back at the site of the fall.
“I’m a little worried about this formation,” said Bruno. “If the snow is unstable, we could be asking for trouble.”
“Well, way back when they didn’t have tricorders, people were still able to avoid instabilities,” offered Tom. He was determined not to stop now, not when he was feeling buoyed for the first time in days. The exhilarating plummet down the mountain had whipped him clean of rage, and even now, confronting the possibility of truncating their expedition, he could feel it bubbling back. He was damned if he was going to stop now.
“Give me your shovel,” he said to Bruno, who handed him the compact, short-handled digging implement. Tom began shoveling out a snow pit, working steadily until it was about a meter and a half deep and a meter wide. Then he used the shovel to shave the uphill wall until it was smooth and vertical. He blew gently to clear away loose particles, and then began to study the snow pack. This was something Henri Islicker had taught him to do long ago. “You might not have fancy technology to help you,” the old man had stated firmly. “You have to be able to rely on yourself.”
The layers of snow, always present in a terrain that has repeated snowfall, were readily apparent. Tom used his gloved hands to push on the pit wall to test the relative hardness of each layer. So far, so good. None of them seemed terribly soft, and all were well bonded together. He noted the top of what looked like a layer of hoarfrost at the bottom of his pit, and grabbed a handful. Its grains were reasonably cohesive, a good sign. Something in his mind nagged him to dig a little deeper and check that layer out more thoroughly, but he decided on a shear test instead.
Using the shovel, he carved a column of snow from the wall of the pit, about a shovel head’s width on all sides. Then, he inserted the shovel at the back of the column and tugged gently. He was already encouraged because the column didn’t collapse when he was cutting it, which would have indicated a weak layer that might give way. He was pleased when the gentle tug had no effect on the column, either. He increased the force of the pull and, finally, the column fractured at the level of the hoarfrost. But it had taken a solid tug to make it happen, which indicated a relatively stable snow pack.
Bolstered, he climbed out of the pit and reported the good news to the others. But instead of sharing his relief, they seemed to be troubled.
“We should call it a day for now, Tom,” said Odile. “We had a good run and there’s no point in risking avalanche. We can plot another course when we get back to the shuttle.”
“But—I tested the snow layers. They’re stable. There’s no need to stop.”
“Odile’s right,” chimed in Bruno. “The smart