The next morning brought snow. The cheerless weather outside their quarters matched the atmosphere inside. Felicia was up and busy in their minuscule kitchen when Brad awoke, blurry and disturbed by his dreams.
They were a combination of the old nightmare about Tithonium Chasma, plus a new sense of impending doom. Felicia was in his dreams, Brad recalled, but he couldn’t quite grasp what she had been doing. He knew that he had felt helpless once again, torn between his guilt and his sense of duty.
Feeling tired, drained, he slipped into the lavatory, then once freshened and dressed, stepped into the kitchen area.
“Good morning,” he said to Felicia, as brightly as he could.
She was wearing a simple gray coverall, standing before the microwave as it ticked off its final seconds.
“Morning, Brad.” She did not turn to offer him even a perfunctory kiss.
“Uh … did you sleep well?”
“Not very,” said Felicia. Her face was serious, her luminous gray eyes unsmiling. “You were moaning in your sleep again.”
“Oh. Sorry.”
“The nightmare again?”
He nodded. “With some new twists.”
Her stern expression softened. “I’ve put you under a lot of stress, haven’t I?”
He reached for her, pulled her close. “No, it’s my own fault. I wish…”
“You wish what, Brad?”
Feeling nearly desperate, he answered, “I wish there was some way I could leave here and go back to Earth. Bring you back to Earth.”
Felicia smiled gently at him. “Then you’ll just have to find a way, won’t you?”
* * *
As he drove one of the buggies toward the village, through the thickly falling snow, Brad wondered what he should do. The buggy’s energy screen protected him from the snow and the biting wind that was sweeping down from the mountains. Bundled inside his hooded parka, Brad felt warm enough. Yet inside, he was bleak.
Winter, he thought. In another few months Mnnx and the rest of them will have to face the depth of winter. Can they do it on their own? They’ve gathered in their crops and they have the food supplies we made for them; will it be enough to feed them through the long winter? Or am I killing them just as the cats do, only slower, more painfully?
And over on Beta, Brad knew, the eggs holding the embryos of the cats will hibernate through the time of cold. In the spring the two planets will come close enough to each other so that those eggs will fly to Gamma and they’ll hatch and the cats will come out and start killing.
Brad had suggested to Mnnx and the others that they should defend themselves against the cats.
“We don’t have your death beam,” Lnng replied, sounding almost envious.
“It is wrong for us to disobey the will of the Sky Masters,” Mnnx intoned.
“You could make spears,” Brad had told them. “We could show you how to make bows and arrows, train you how to kill the cats.”
“Even if we could,” Mnnx had answered, “the Sky Masters would return and punish us.”
Lnng disagreed. “Better to face their punishment than to allow the cats to kill us.”
“Do you think you could kill one of the monsters?” Mnnx challenged.
“Yes! If I had to.”
Sounding sorrowful, Mnnx said, “No, my sibling. Brrd can kill the monsters. He is not one of us. But we are bound by the commands of the Sky Masters. Without Brrd to protect us, we will be killed by the monsters.”
Great, Brad thought as he recalled their discussions. They’ll be happy to let me stay and protect them. Otherwise they’ll let the cats kill them all. And argue about it until they’re all dead.
He heard Felicia’s voice in his mind, “Then you’ll just have to find a way, won’t you?”
Easier said than done, Brad told himself. Easier said than done.
The buggy reached the crest of the low hills that surrounded the village. No, Brad corrected mentally: villages. There’s two of them now, one empty.
He stopped and looked down at the villages. A layer of snow covered everything. Looks like an old-fashioned Christmas card, Brad thought. Two hundred light-years from home. Merry Christmas. He didn’t feel a holiday mood.
What month is it, anyway? he wondered.
Aloud, he asked, “Emcee, what season is it back on Earth?”
“Spring, in the northern hemisphere,” came Emcee’s instant answer, from the buggy’s control panel.
Spring, thought Brad. It won’t be spring here for another thirty-some Earth years.
I can’t ask Felicia to stay here, he realized. Not through the long winter. Not alone, just the two of us, wondering if the food will hold out.
Maybe we should try hibernating! Brad suddenly thought.
We could take a couple of cryosleep capsules from the ship and install them in the camp. Then we could sleep through the winter and wake up in the spring, when it starts to thaw.
Immediately, Brad saw the flaws in that approach. The deep freeze of cryosleep damaged the brain’s neural networks. Cryosleepers downloaded their minds into the ship’s master computer and, once they began to be revived, the neural connections were uploaded back into the sleeper’s brain.
We’d have to duplicate all the computer equipment and set it up down here on Gamma, Brad realized. We’d have to duplicate Emcee here in the camp, for god’s sake.
Shaking his head as he sat in the buggy amidst the swirling snowfall, Brad knew that duplicating the entire cryosleep system was too big a job for the ship’s crew, even if Kosoff would allow it.
No, he told himself, cryosleep isn’t the answer. As he put the buggy in gear and started down the hillside, he also comprehended that the Gammans wouldn’t be able to understand that Brad and Felicia were merely sleeping in their cryocapsule. Mnnx and Lnng and the others would think we’ve died, most likely. Committed suicide and left them to face the cats on their own.
Either we stay awake and alert with the Gammans through the whole long winter, or we go home, Brad knew. Either we help the Gammans face the cats next spring or we leave them to defend themselves—or more likely, leave them to be slaughtered.
There’s got to be a third way, he shouted silently to himself. There’s got to be!
But if there is, he admitted, I don’t know what it might be.
* * *
That evening Brad returned to the encampment, as usual. The snowstorm had died away, leaving the region covered in white. Brad followed the tracks of his own buggy through the crystal-cold night, still wondering what to do. What to do?
Felicia greeted him with an emotionless kiss as he entered their quarters, then turned her attention to the microwave cooker.
“Do you want some wine before dinner?” she asked.
Brad shrugged. “How about you?”
“I will if you will.”
Leadership, Brad thought as he went to the minifridge and pulled out a half-empty bottle of white wine.
“How’s everything in the village?” Felicia asked.
“Okay, I guess,” Brad said as he poured two glasses. “They’re getting more and more nervous about the weather.”
“They’ve never seen snow before, I suppose.”
“Guess not. By this time they’d all be dead, usually.”
Felicia started to say something but the microwave pinged and she turned her attention to it.
Brad sat at the fold-down kitchen table and watched her set two steaming plates on it. Then she sat opposite him and picked up her stemmed wineglass.
They clinked their glasses.
“The chemistry lab’s best brew,” Brad joked weakly.
“It’s fine,” said Felicia. She took a sip, then she put the glass down and turned her attention to her meal.
“What’s going on at the bio lab?” he asked, trying to make a conversation.
Without looking up at him, Felicia replied with a weary sigh, “We’re doing microanalyses of the cats’ cells now. Molecular biology. Ursula wants us to have their complete genetic map before we have to start packing up for leaving.”
“Fil.”
She looked up.
“I’ll find a way,” Brad said.
For the first time that evening Felicia smiled at him. “I know you will.”