“It should be okay in that,” George said as he crawled out.

Ozzie, who was left inside, grunted agreement. He lit a pair of candles, and put them on the ground in front of the sledge’s windscreen. There wasn’t much space there, probably no more than a couple of cubic yards, but it allowed Tochee to look out, maybe take away any fear of entombment. Looking in through the pane of crystal, Ozzie could see the alien motionless behind it, front eye section aligned on him. He held a mitten out, thumb upward. Tochee’s front eye swirled with ultraviolet patterns, slightly smudged by flaws in the crystal. It translated roughly into: DON’T FORGET ME TOMORROW.

“Not a chance,” Ozzie whispered inside his balaclava.

Tochee pulled the tab on a heatbrick. Ozzie waited until he saw the brick start to glow a deep cherry red, then waved and backed out of the fur coverings.

There was probably another twenty minutes before the sun sank below the horizon. Ozzie hurried off toward the crater rim. It was achingly quiet in the moments just before nightfall. Even the Silfen’s perpetual singing had ended out here under the somber glacial sky. Ahead of him, the surface of the granular ice that filled the crater basin was so flat that the illusion of liquid was almost perfect. As he approached it, he half expected to see ripples. He knelt down beside it, and touched it with his mitten. The surface had the texture of thick oil, though the farther down he pushed his hand, the greater the resistance became.

“Careful you don’t fall in,” Sara said.

Ozzie straightened up, shaking residual grains from his mitten. “Man, you always make me feel like I’m doing something wrong.”

“People have fallen in before. We don’t risk our own lives trying to find them now. They never leave any trace, it’s not as if there could be any bubbles.”

“Yeah, figures. This stuff isn’t natural. Grains of ice like this should stick together.”

“Of course they should. But they’re being constantly churned up and kept loose, like flour in a food mixer.”

“And the icewhales are doing the churning.”

“Them, and whatever else is down there. After all, they have to eat something.”

“Hopefully just iceweed, or whatever the plant life is at the bottom.”

“You wouldn’t say that if you’d ever seen one.” She turned, and began to walk up the slight incline.

Ozzie started after her. “Why not?”

“Let’s just say they don’t act like herbivores.”

“You got it all figured out, don’tcha?”

“No, Ozzie, nothing like. I understand very little of this place, and all the others I walked through. Why don’t the Silfen allow us to have electricity?”

“Simple enough theory. They’re experiencing life on a purely physical level; that’s all these bodies we see are for, to give them a platform at this level of personal consciousness evolution. And it kills me to say it, but it’s a pretty low level, given their capabilities. You start introducing electricity, and machines, and all the paraphernalia which goes with it, then you start to shrink that opportunity for raw natural experience.”

“Yeah,” she said sourly. “God forbid they should invent medicine.”

“It’s irrelevant to them. We need it because we treasure our individuality and continuity. Their outlook is different. They’re on a journey that has a very definite conclusion. At the end of their levels they get to become a part of their adult community.”

“How the hell do you know that?”

He shrugged, a gesture largely wasted under his heavy fur coat. “I was told that once.”

“Who by?”

“This dude I met in a bar.”

“Dear Christ, I don’t know which is weirder, them or you.”

“Definitely them.” They came to the top of the small rim as the sun vanished, leaving only a flaming fuchsia glow in the sky.

“You also shouldn’t be out so late,” Sara said. “There’s no beacon to guide you back here, you know.”

“Don’t worry about me, I see better in the dark than most people.”

“You got fur instead of skin as well? Even the Korrok-hi don’t stay out at night on this world.”

“Sure. Sorry. Wasn’t thinking.”

“You’ll have to do a lot better tomorrow when you follow the Silfen.”

“Right. You know, I’m still kind of surprised you didn’t want to come with us.”

“I will leave one day, Ozzie. Just not yet, that’s all.”

“But why, you’ve been here long enough. I can’t see you buying into George’s idea about how living here as some kind of penance makes us value our lives more. And as far as I can make out there’s no one special for you. Is there?” Which had slowly begun to nag at him as his own suggestions in that direction over the months had all gone unheeded.

“No,” she said slowly. “There’s no one right now.”

“That’s a shame, Sara. We all need someone.”

“So were you going to volunteer?”

The mild scorn in her voice made him pause. After a moment, Sara stopped and looked back at him. “What?” she asked.

“Well, goddamn, I couldn’t have been any blunter,” Ozzie said.

“Blunt about what?”

“About us. You and me. Rocking the mattress.”

“But you’ve got… Oh.”

“Got what?” he asked suspiciously.

“I thought… we all thought: you and Orion.”

“Me and Orion what… ohshit.”

“You mean he’s not your—”

“No. Absolutely. Not.”

“Ah.”

“And I’m not.”

“Okay. Sorry. Misunderstanding, there.”

“Not that there’s anything—”

“No, certainly not. There isn’t. I had lots of gay friends.”

“Did you?”

“That’s what you’re supposed to say.”

“Yeah, right.”

“Well, that cleared that up, then.”

“It did.”Oh, terrific.

They hurried back up the remainder of the escarpment to the tents in silence. Everyone was inside now, thick black oil fumes were squirting out of carefully designed vents in the top as the evening meal got under way.

“Ozzie,” Sara said in a weary tone just before they went into their tent.

“Yo.”

“Tomorrow, when the Silfen hunt the icewhales, don’t get curious, okay? No matter how exciting or repellent, or fascinating you think it is, stay back, stay right out of their way.”

“I hear you.”

“I hope so. I know why you’re here, I’ve seen it in people before, you think you’re on some kind of mission, you think that makes you invulnerable. Hell, maybe it does, but take it from me, tomorrow is not a good time to test it out, okay? I understand your crazy ideas about the Silfen, and how existential they are, but tomorrow it doesn’t get more real and physical than this.”

“I’ll be careful, I promise. I’ve got the kid and the alien to worry about.”

They were woken as the first magenta glimmer of dawn appeared. Despite being crammed into the tent with ten other people, Ozzie had slipped into a deep dreamless sleep as soon as he zipped up his sleeping bag. It was the first night since he arrived that he hadn’t had to endure the ubiquitous red light.

He and Orion ate their packaged breakfasts, warding off the edgy, resentful comments from the others who were having their standard Ice Citadel meal of mashed crystal tree fruit and fried icewhale rashers. They filled their flasks with boiled water; to two they mixed in the added-energy juice powder, and to the second two they added soup concentrate. While the rest hurried outside to watch the Silfen begin their hunt, Ozzie and Orion packed their rucksacks for what they hoped was the last time on this world.

It had snowed overnight, the wisps of cirrus condensing into tiny hard flakes that drifted down to dust every surface. Ozzie and Orion brushed it off the outer sheet of fur they’d arranged over Tochee’s sledge. They dragged it back, with Ozzie partly dreading what they’d find. A stiff corpse? But the heatbrick had worked. Tochee waved at them from behind the crystal windscreen, apparently unperturbed by its night spent alone.

The pair of them stood beside the sledge, slightly apart from everyone else milling around the tents. It was a good position from which to watch the hunt play out over the land below. Ozzie also realized why the Korrok-hi had driven the covered sleds up the escarpment yesterday evening. Up here they were well out of harm’s way.