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. . . .