Very weary, very cold. He looked at his wristpad. It was four P.M. He had been walking in the storm for just over three hours. He would have to survive another fifteen or twenty hours before he could expect to be rescued. Or perhaps in the morning the storm would have abated, and the location of the rover become obvious. One way or another he had to survive the night by huddling in a snow cave. Or else venture out again and find the rover. Surely it couldn’t be far away. But until the wind lessened, he could not bear to be out looking for it.

He had to wait in the snow cave. Theoretically he could survive a night out, though at the moment he was so cold it was hard to believe that. Night temperatures on Mars still plummeted drastically. Perhaps the storm might lessen in the next hour, so that he could find the rover and get to it before dark.

He told Aonia and the others where he was. They sounded very concerned, but there was nothing they could do. He felt irritation at their voices.

It seemed many minutes before he had another thought. When one was chilled, blood flow was greatly reduced to the limbs— perhaps that was true for the cortex as well, the blood going preferentially to the cerebellum where the necessary work would continue right to the end.

More time passed. Near dark, it appeared. Should call out again. He was too cold— something seemed wrong. Advanced age, altitude, CO2 levels— some factor or combination of factors was making it worse than it should be. He could die of exposure in a single night. Appeared in fact to be doing just that. Such a storm! Loss of the mirrors, perhaps. Instant ice age. Extinction event.

The wind was making odd noises, like shouts. Powerful gusts no doubt. Like faint shouts, howling “Sax! Sax! Sax!”

Had they flown someone in? He peered out into the dark storm, the snowflakes somehow catching the late light and tearing overhead like dim white static.

Then between his ice-crusted eyelashes he saw a figure emerge out of the darkness. Short, round, helmeted. “Sax!” The sound was distorted, it was coming from a loudspeaker in the figure’s helmet. Those Da Vinci techs were very resourceful people. Sax tried to respond, and found he was too cold to speak. Just moving his boots out of the hole was a stupendous effort. But it appeared to catch this figure’s eye, because it turned and strode purposefully through the wind, moving like a skillful sailor on a bouncing deck, weaving this way and that through the slaps of the gusts. The figure reached him and bent down and grabbed Sax by the wrist, and he saw its face through the faceplate, as clear as through a window. It was Hiroko.

She smiled her brief smile and hauled him up out of his cave, pulling so hard on his left wrist that his bones creaked painfully.