Red Mars - Kim Stanley Robinson [254]
They thought it was useless to try going to Pavonis; “They’ll either lock you up or kill you,” as Sonja put it. But when the six travelers decided to try anyway, they were given precise directions to a refuge a night’s flight to the west; it was the Southern Margaritifer weather station, the Bakhuysen people told them. Occupied by Bogdanovists.
Nadia’s heart leaped when she heard that word, she couldn’t help it. But Arkady had a lot of friends and followers, and none of them seemed to know where he was. Still, she found herself unable to sleep that day, her stomach again tied in a knot. That night at sunset she was happy to return to the planes and take off. The rebels in Bakhuysen sent them on their way so laden with hydrazine and gases and freeze-dried food that their planes had a hard time getting off the ground.
• • •
Their night flights had taken on a strangely ritual aspect, as if they were in the process of inventing a new and exhausting pilgrimage. The two planes were so light that they were buffeted hard by the prevailing western winds, sometimes bouncing wildly ten meters up or down, so that it was impossible to sleep for long even when one was not flying— a sudden drop or lift and one was awake again, in the dark little cabin, staring out the window at the black sky and stars above, or the starless black world below. They spoke hardly at all. The pilots hunched forward, expending their energy on keeping a visual fix on the other plane. The planes hummed along, winds keening over their long flexible wings. It was sixty degrees below zero outside, the air only 150 millibars and poisonous; and there was no shelter on the black planet below, for many kilometers in every direction. Nadia would pilot for a while, then move to the back, and twist and turn, and try to sleep. Often the click of a transponder over the radio, combined with the general aspect of their situation, would remind her of the time she and Arkady had ridden the storm in the Arrowhead. She would see him then, striding red-bearded and naked through the broken interior of the dirigible, tearing away paneling to throw overboard, laughing, fines floating in a nimbus around him. Then the 16D would jerk her awake, and she would twist with the discomfort of her fear. It would have helped to pilot again, but Yeli wanted to as much as she, at least for the first couple of hours of his watch. There was nothing for it but to help him watch for the other plane, always a kilometer to the right if all was well. They had occasional radio contact with the other plane, but microbursted the calls, and kept them to a minimum— hourly checks, or inquiries if one fell behind. In the dead of night it sometimes seemed this was all any of them had ever done, it was hard to recall what life had been like before the revolt. And what had it been, twenty-four days? Three weeks, though it felt like five years.
And then the sky would begin to bleed behind them, high cirrus clouds turning purple, rust, crimson, lavender, and then swiftly to metal shavings, in a rosy sky; and the incredible fountain of the sun would pour over some rocky rim or scarp, and they would search anxiously as they ghosted over the pocked and shadowed landscape, looking for some sign of an airstrip by the piste. After the eternal night it seemed impossible that they would have navigated successfully to anything at all, but there lay the gleaming piste below, which they could land on directly in an emergency. And the transponders being all individually identifiable, and pegged to the map, their navigation was always more sure than it seemed; so every dawn they would spot a strip down in the shadows ahead, a welcome blond pencil strip of perfect flatness. Down they would glide, thump against the ground, slow down, taxi to whatever facilities they could find, stop the engines, slump back in the seats. Feel the strange lack of vibration, the stillness of another day.
• • •
That morning they landed at the strip by the Margaritifer