THE ICE DRAGON'S SONG

By

Bud Sparhawk

The monstrous snow snake roared past Paul Levin at fantastic speed, leaving a falling mist of slush and ice behind. The mist was so dense that he couldn't even see giant Jupiter's rosy form above the horizon.

The habitat could only be a few hundred meters further, Paul thought. He cautiously skied ahead, probing the ice with the tip of his ski before transfering his weight forward.

Suddenly a massive jolt shook the ice pack. He was violently thrown off his feet and tossed about. It felt as if all of Europa had shifted beneath him. He was terrified as the surface continued to tremble. Paul didn't know whether he was going to live or die as the tremors continued.

It was only yesterday that he had been climbing the ladder to the cab of his father's harvester. From that vantage he saw four sets of snow snakes leaping near the horizon, five or six kilometers away. They were backlit by Jupiter's ruddy glow. The snakes were particularly active today, he thought, throwing their coils high into Europa's tenuous atmosphere. Four snakes at one time were far more than usual.

From their position Paul estimated that they had to be erupting from the minor cracks that branched from the thick width of the main Sarpedon Linea, the fissure the Levins had drawn for harvesting.

Paul knew that they weren't really snow snakes. They were really the plumes from the linear geysers that routinely spewed up gases, soft ice, and particulate matter from Europa's core. They were just slush thrown up as some ice floes were squeezed together by Jupiter's massive gravitational effect.

Still, he wished that the snow snakes he'd fantasized when he was younger had been real - that would have made this hideous dead moon a place more alive, more like somewhere a human being could live comfortably.

Paul squeezed though the harvester cab's narrow opening. The opening was barely wide enough to allow his bulky suit to clear the frame. He settled into the hard seat before the console. Through the thick insulation of his gloves he could feel Europa's angry song as the harvester tore at her skin, peeling away the dross of silicates to expose her pristine white skin beneath. It was a slow dirge that rang in his helmet, but so soft that he had to strain to hear it at all. For a moment he allowed himself to be immersed in the counterpoint of the harvester's mechanical beat and the moon's slow song.

"Paul, have you adjusted the blade depth yet?" The voice of his father startled him. Damn, just like his father to catch him daydreaming again!

"Working on it right now, Dad," he replied and started to crank the big wheel near his right side. About twenty turns, his father had instructed him, then he was to wait a minute and check the harvester's feed rate. Paul waited and then did so, and waited still another minute to be certain that he had gotten the blade adjusted properly. _He wanted to make certain that it met his father's strict standards so he wouldn't get yelled at again.

The feed rate was a measure of the depth the harvester's blade bit into the thin top-most crust of Europa's soft ice. The deep geysers that erupted from the major lineae, such as Sarpedon, were rich in particulates and minerals that JBI industries wanted, particularly the various forms of corundums - mostly rubies and sapphires - and an occasional diamond.

If the blade bit too deeply the particulate layer that the harvester scooped from the surface would be diluted by too much slush, which would overload the processors. Set it too shallow and the harvester would leave too much of the layer behind. Only by having the blade adjusted correctly to the layer the harvesters were passing through could they make JBI's quota. The layer was so variable that the harvesters required constant attention, which meant long hours working the string back and forth.

His father usually did this alone, but with the break in classes Paul was able to help out and relieve the family of some of the never-ending labor.

He checked the feed rate again, turned the wheel back a few turns, waited, and then looked at the feed rate once more. He'd learned a long time ago that he had to check everything he did for his father at least three times to be absolutely sure. His father was only interested in perfection - anything less was failure in his eyes. He wondered if Vincent, his brother, had faced the same demanding criticism before he finally left home.

His father's approval was particularly important today, because Paul was going to ask for his permission to enter the big Aphrodite race next month, the race that would show everyone that Paul wasn't a kid anymore, that he could run the ice as well as anyone.

"Pee, why aren't you done yet?" his father barked impatiently over the laser link. "I thought you knew how to set a blade."

"I do, Dad, but I... "

"If you're finished then get over to the next one," his father barked. "We need to get all of these set right before dinner!" Paul cringed at the disapproving tone of his father's voice and knew that he'd screwed up again.

It was so unfair he thought as he climbed down and put on his skis. He was just trying to do things right.

Much later, after Paul finished adjusting the last harvester in the line, he climbed down and headed across the ice fields, pushing one ski ahead of the other in a steady, efficient distance consuming rhythm. His ears filled with Europa's song as the broad skis alternately compressed the coarse-grained ice. Here in the softer ice on the fringe of Sarpedon, her song was gentle, serenading him as he headed for the family's hab.

When he had first asked about the singing that pervaded every movement of the hab across the ice, and that reverberated in his suit whenever he skied, his mother had replied that the songs were the dragons' cries, ancient legends that they sang from their caverns far below the ice. Only the strongest and best songs reached the surface, she declared, so he must listen closely and try to understand their deeper meaning.

His mother had tried to make this place acceptable to his young mind. At nights, as they huddled in the tiny habitat, she would tell him fanciful tales of the denizens of the deep oceans within Europa, of the dragons that ate stone and spat diamonds, of snow snakes that leaped in Jupiter's light. She would weave tales of the deep forests of silicon trees and calcinate grasses, speaking of vales and meadows of metallic weeds. With her words Europa changed from a dead, frozen wilderness into a place more rich and strange. With her tales Europa had become a place of wonder.

Of course now he knew that the mythical dragons beneath his feet weren't really singing. He now knew that the song was just an effect caused by the compression of the ice, the pressure of his passage momentarily boiling the thin shell of liquid that surrounded each uniform, icy grain. It was the same effect that caused the singing and booming sands on the distant Earth that he would probably never see again, thanks to his father's decision to exile them to this cold and horrid world.

The continual deep song of Europa was caused by the violent compression of floe against floe, of one continent sized mass against another. As they ground in opposition, the vibrations thundered to the surface, there to be dissipated by the covering of snow and ice.

When the song changed Paul knew that he had crossed over from the coarse- to the fine-grained, nearly solid ice of the Cadmus region, the older glacial formation through which the Sarpedon crack ran.

The smoother, more compressed ice grains allowed Paul to ski along at a faster rate. Push, slide, push, slide, push, slide; he fell into an easy rhythm, careful not to exert too much downward pressure against the ice. He'd done that too often when he was first learning how to propel himself across Europa's endless ice fields and had paid the price with embarrassed pratfalls. Since Europa's surface gravity was only a fraction of Earth's it was all too easy to launch yourself right off the ice - and pay the price by landing on various anatomical elements, none of which were padded with dignity.

The harvesters were now passing through an unusually level section of Cadmus, which meant that he didn't have to work his way up and down the ubiquitous pressure ridges that dominated the landscape elsewhere. He spotted his family's hab just a short distance away and stroked toward it, lessening the distance with each bar of Europa's song.

He noticed that his mother had once again let the mobile hab draw closer toward the Sarpedon fault, which probably meant that his father would raise hell with her when he got back. Safety was such a big thing that steering the hab too close to Sarpedon's instability was a sure way to raise his ire, just like that crap about having the emergency gear laying out all the time! As far as Paul was concerned all that safety gear took up too much of the severely limited living space inside. Still, his father always got his way, and his mother went along with whatever he said.

Paul hoped that he could correct the hab's drift before his father noticed. No sense listening to his safety-conscious father berate his mother yet again.

"Rough day, today," Abraham Levin reported as the three of them sat in the tiny galley, eating their evening meal. "Noticed there's a lot of variation in the particulate layers - seeing mostly tan stuff instead of the brown."

"You've got good eyes," Paul's mother, Sophia, replied as she wiped at her eyes. She was always rubbing at them because of the fumes at the assay bench. "The daily samples show that all we're getting are silicates, not much in the way of metallics at all, and nearly no corundum particles."

His father nodded. "I assume the volatiles have all boiled off as well?" As Sophia slowly nodded agreement, Abraham continued; "Just our damned luck to draw another worthless section of Sarpedon. Why couldn't we draw a rich section and get ahead of the game, just for once?"

"Now Abraham..." Paul's mother put out a consoling hand and rested it on her husband's shoulder. "We'll get lucky some day. God always rewards hard work."

Abraham jerked back as if struck. "Don't preach to me about God's rewards, Sophia. Not today! If God gave out rewards, I wouldn't be busting my ass out here on this frigid whore's tit of a forsaken moon where nobody can ever tell me which direction to send my prayers."

Paul watched his mother's face fall, as she blinked back her tears at the harsh rebuke. Paul was about to say something, anything, to change the subject when his father put an arm around her waist.

"I'm sorry, Sofia," he said. "It's been a hard day out there and I'm in a bad mood. I shouldn't take it out on you. Forgive me?"

Paul seethed. It was just like his father to manipulate his mother. He knew how to keep her under his control.

"Of course I do," his mother said softly and she pressed against her husband. "After all, it is my fault we are here - don't blame yourself for my sins." Sophia gave him a quick kiss on the cheek and then tweaked Paul's cheek between her thumb and forefinger. "But, Abraham, I wish you'd watch your language with the little one here."

Paul pulled away as much as he could in the tight space of the galley. He wished his mother wouldn't treat him like such a kid - next week he was going to be fourteen, hardly a baby anymore. "Aw, Mom..." he began.

"Hush!" his father said suddenly, putting up a hand to silence them.

Paul listened. All he could hear was the creaking of the hab's tractors as they pulled the hab slowly across the ice, the whirling and clicking of the various life-support machinery, and the constant hiss of the environmental unit. After a day of working in the noisy suit, the hab was practically a sea of calm silence. What had gotten Dad's attention? What had he heard?

Then Paul listened to Europa, the never-ending song that permeated everything. It was so constant that he'd stopped hearing it after a while, stopped being aware of its constant presence beneath the overlying mechanical noise.

Until it changed.

"What do you think is happening?" his mother whispered. "Are we in danger?" Europa's mid-range song had fallen half an octave and now possessed a deeper, richer quality.

"I don't think so," his father replied. "But I've never heard her sing this deep before. Something must be happening down below."

Down below! The words fired Paul's imagination as he tried to picture what could be occurring far beneath their hab, down below the fifty-kilometer thick crust of Cadmus, the crust that lay over the incredible liquid oceans of this world. Was it possible that mysterious creatures swam in seas dark beyond comprehension down below? Was it possible that somewhere down there dwelt life forms strange beyond imagination, with biologies bizarre and varied? Could there really be dragons subsisting on wisps of sulfur, perhaps with skeletons of silicon, and skins of glistening jewels in place of scales? Could it be that when the dragons moved they shook the world and changed Europa's song?

He dismissed the thought. Such dreams were childish fantasies of a moon more alive than this proved to be. He had discarded such fantasies long before. The change was probably just another shifting of the floes.

"It's probably nothing." His father confirmed his own thoughts. The words brought Paul's mind back to the present, back to the tiny galley, the constraining embraces of his too-familiar family.

"We need to get those assays uplinked by Greeley." Abraham changed the subject abruptly. "I'll put the weekly reports together. JBI should be satisfied with the progress of our harvester string this past week despite the poor assays -- we've made twenty kilometers, that's four over schedule. We can send the samples down to Simon to take with him on next week's run to Marcus."

"That's a long time to wait for... " Mom said brightly with a quick sideways glance at Paul. "Could we ask Simon to make the trip earlier and pick, uh, it up?"

"I don't think... " his father began to protest, with a quick glance at Paul.

"I could make the run," Paul volunteered quickly. "I could get the samples there quicker. I know how to drive the scooter, and I could follow the Wholephore link there and back, and it's only a day's drive each way, and could I, Dad? Could I do that?" he said without pausing for breath, so intense was his desire.

"No!" his mother said at once. "You are still too young to make such a long drive. There's no telling what could happen to you on the way."

"Yes," his father said with a rare hint of a smile barely glimpsed beneath the corners of his mustache. "You're so young and full of fresh meat that the ice dragons might get you if you aren't careful."

Paul felt his face grow red. His father had always kidded him about his belief in the dragons when he was younger. Paul could remember overhearing him complaining to his mother for filling his son's head with such nonsense when he was trying to instill some sense of survival into the boy. Did he bring it up now just to remind Paul that he was still just a child?

"Your mother is right," his father continued, heedless of Paul's embarrassment. "You're still too young. I'll ask Simon to go ahead of schedule, Sofia."

Paul shrank back; his hopes disappearing like an ice fault flexus during sunside. It was obvious that neither of his parents was in a mood to discuss him entering the race. If Mom wouldn't let him drive the scooter to Marcus Station then there was no way she would let him enter the race - no way at all! Maybe when he was alone with his father, he could ask, man-to-man. It would have to be later, when they were away from his mother's overly protective influence.

"I want you to run an errand for me," his father said casually the next morning, during breakfast.

Paul's heart jumped. For a moment he hoped that his mother had relented during the night and they were going to let him take the scooter to Marcus after all. But his hopes were dashed with his father's next words.

"I want you to run our weekly report over to Simon at Greeley station. Make sure that he knows he has to transmit it right away."

Paul felt a rush of excitement. It wasn't a run to Marcus, but just being out there on the ice with the scooter would be great fun.

"Oh yes," his father added as Paul got up from his seat to find his suit. "I'll need the scooter this morning so you'll have to ski over. Be sure to put a reserve pack on your suit - don't want you to get caught out there without backup."

Paul fumed. He was old enough to be able to take care of himself. He didn't need to be reminded to take routine safety precautions, like some dumb kid. Not using the scooter was disappointing, but Greeley was only twenty klicks away -- practically next door-- and well within range of his normal suit's twelve hour air and power supply.

He was still seething over both his father's unnecessary safety reminder and the lack of scooter as he struggled to position the massive life support pack onto his shoulders, straining his arms to jockey the thing onto the hangers at the back of his suit. He wished that he had a better build and more muscles. His brother, Vincent, had taken after their father in that respect. Vincent had his father's thick body and large hands while the slender and wiry Paul had inherited his mother's physique. He was strong for his size, but relative strength didn't seem to matter that much when you had to horse around something as bulky and massive as a suit pack with the reserve unit attached.

The pack finally slipped into place and connected with a loud clang that reverberated in his helmet. He listened to the smaller connectors clicking as they automatically locked the recycler, air supply, power, and scrubber units into place. He shifted his boots to find his balance. The extra mass of the reserve pack added half again the mass and made him somewhat back-heavy.

Paul moved through the hatch, unshipped his skis from their rack, and stepped outside. He could see Jupiter's rosy edge peeking over the western horizon. In a few weeks he'd be able to see more of the giant planet as their harvester string approached the meridian. With a rotation rate of three and a half days and Europa taking the same time to revolve around Jupiter, one side of the moon was always facing the planet.

He put the skis down on the ice at the edge of the hab's ramp and snapped his boots into the toe clamps. Leaning forward, he slid the skis back and forth to cool them down before shoving off. If you weren't careful about doing that you could easily melt into the soft ice and catch a tip when you skied forward. Cooling the skis was another trick he'd learned the hard way, much to the amusement of his older brother, who never seemed to make mistakes. Satisfied that he was ready to go, he pushed off and began striding away from the hab.

His anger quickly subsided as he fell into the smooth rhythm of the skis. His father had been letting him do more than usual this time he came home from school. Working alongside him on the harvester string was a big advance. Vince hadn't been allowed to do that until he was a year older than Paul was now. And taking the trip to Greeley and the drill rig was a new responsibility.

Greeley hab was located about twenty kilometers directly ahead. It served as one of the beacons for steering the harvester lines along Sarpedon. Although it was too faint for him to see, he could imagine the pencil-thin, blue-green navigational beam that linked the controlling harvester to Greeley. When the geysers were really active and provided a slight atmospheric mist, he could see the link's brilliant line shining in the perpetual twilight. His father, and the other harvester operators, paid a portion of their profit to Greeley for this navigational service.

The Richards, who operated Greeley, were relatively new to Europa, which was why they had the uninteresting job of maintaining the navigational hab. After a few years they could earn enough credits to qualify for a JBI loan, get a harvester string of their own, and start to earn their way to a better life.

Visiting the Richards' place would be a treat for Paul, for it would give him an opportunity to be with their daughter, Dolores, who, in his humble opinion, was the most beautiful, charming, and intelligent creature that God had ever created.

But he couldn't go directly to Greeley, which was probably why his father had wanted him to take the extra pack. Instead he had to deliver a package from his mother to the drill operators twenty kilometers to the west. "They deserve some home cooking," she had said with a smile. "Give them these cookies for me."

The drillers were melting a new bore hole to power some sort of scientific station JBI was going to move to that location. The bore would feed the Patterson cells that provided power for the station. With a ready source of water they wouldn't have to switch power units every week like the harvesters.

Paul fell into a steady rhythm as he moved along, occasionally varying his movements to impart changes onto the song of the ice. When his father's hab disappeared behind him all he could see was the ice, the stars, and Jupiter's gigantic presence peering above the horizon. A few of the smallest snow snakes accompanied him, criss-crossing his path as they followed the tiny lineae that marked minor fractures in the floes. The smaller regions of the ice were in constant motion even as the larger floes, nearly continental in size, drifted against one another with glacial force. Europa rearranged her topography more rapidly than Earth did its continents, but the principles were the same.

Soon Paul saw the tall tower of the drill. He didn't relish the idea of stopping at the station. The men at the bore were rough sorts - they'd been prospectors, they said, until they got a call from JBI to do some contract drilling. The two of them had stopped to call on his father when they passed the harvester string several weeks before. The tall one was named Jack. Rob was the short, kidding one. There was a hint of menace in their eyes and Paul didn't like the way that Rob looked at his mother.

When he drew closer Paul noticed that the bore tower was canted from the vertical. The tilt was just enough to be noticeable. He momentarily wondered if something might be wrong as he headed toward the tiny hab next to the tower.

"Something big hit `er during the night," Jack told him as they shared some warm tea with him over the opened pack of cookies. Snickerdoodles, his mother called the tiny disks.

"Ice dragons did it," Rob spit knowingly. "Something big moving around down there," he pointed at the floor. "Really big, too!"

"More likely it was just a floe shift," Jack continued, dismissing Rob's sarcasm. "I think our shaft got caught between two shifting masses."

Paul nodded toward the hatch. "I didn't see any shift in the ice cap out there. I thought Cadmus was a solid ice shield all the way down."

Both of the ex-prospectors laughed. "I wasn't talking about these little bitsy pressure floes you see on the surface. Hell, they don't matter at all! No, kid, down under the calm surface you see are the major floes, almost like continents. When they move there's a lot of energy involved."

Then Rob added, "That's where the ice dragons live, down there in the dark below." He was so serious that Paul took a minute before he realized that Rob was pulling his leg. But how had the man known of his mother's fantasy, of his own childish beliefs?

"Could that be why the song changed last night?" Paul asked, ignoring the bait.

"What the hell are you talking about, kid?" Rob said abruptly. "What `song'?"

Paul carefully explained the shift his family had heard. "But my father says it's nothing to worry about," he ended.

Jack rubbed his chin in thought. "Might be. For sure, something big is happening down there and I'm pretty sure that we're right on the edge of it. No way of telling whether it's going to bring us good or not. Maybe we'll hit bottom soon and be able to get away from here."

"Or maybe we'll tap into a thermal upwelling," Rob said. "A nice mineral well - lots of ways we could get lucky on this."

Paul considered their words for a moment and realized the note of concern beneath their bantering. Both Jack and Rob were worried, but trying hard not to show it. "You don't think there's any danger, do you?" What if something happened to his mother, his father, and the rest of the people who were in the area?

"Danger?" Rob laughed. "Listen, kid, we're sitting on a frigid ice planet with almost no atmosphere. You're sitting right over one of the major floes and right next to one of the biggest cracks on Europa's surface. Of course there's danger, but more from our own failures than the moon's. Think about it, kid: If we lose power, lose our air, if our recycler breaks down, or one of the other dozen things we depend on fails, we'll die. What's a moonquake or two compared to that?"

Paul had no answer.

Several hours later, nearly at dinnertime, he was settled into one of Simon and Rachel Richard's warm chairs, watching their daughter, Dolores fixing a hot meal. Paul loved watching her silky movements, observing the supple grace with which she moved her long legs, the darting dance of her delicate hands as she drew supplies from the cabinets and deposited them on the preparation surface. He loved the way her hair spun around her head when she turned, the way her tongue licked her lips as she read the instructions on the packages, trying to decide on which to pick. He adored the blue of her eyes, and the way the edges crinkled when she smiled. As a matter of fact, there wasn't a thing about her that he didn't think was absolutely perfect in every way.

"So, how are your parents?" Dolores asked as she puttered around. "I talked to your mom last week when she came by to send some messages."

His mother had been to Greeley last week? She hadn't mentioned that to him, but then why should she? He'd probably been busy doing one of the innumerable and endless chores his father had set for him and hadn't noticed.

"Are you going to go to Galileo Galilei for the race next month?" she asked as she finally made a decision and tossed one of the packages into the heater. "I hope you like soup."

From your hands I would eat garbage and consider it an honor, Paul thought, but couldn't say that aloud. "Sure," he replied instead.

"I think that Philip is going to enter the race, you know," Dolores continued. "You remember Philip; he's the one I've been dating at school. Tall guy, black hair?"

"Yeah," Paul certainly did remember Philip. He was everything that Paul was not - tall, muscular, mature enough to boast a thin mustache, and, worst of all, the same age as Dolores - seventeen! Paul had hated him ever since he saw Philip holding Dolores' hand in the hallway between classes. He hated the self-satisfied smirk that Philip had on his too-perfect face, and wondered if the clod really and truly appreciated the gift that this lovely girl had bestowed upon him by giving him access to her heart. If Philip ever hurt Dolores, Paul swore, he would kill him. Of course, if Phil happened to die or break up with her before then, Paul wouldn't be too torn up. He'd surely be there to comfort the grieving Dolores, to take her in his arms and hold her close in her moment of sorrow.

"I admire anybody brave enough to enter the race," Dolores went on, unmindful of Paul's wishful fantasy. "Going out there on the ice for two days of continuous racing takes a lot of guts. I just wish I had nerve enough to enter myself." She put the bowl of warm soup in front of Paul.

"Uh, yeah," Paul said, digging his spoon into the steaming container and taking a mouthful, burning his tongue. As he took a drink of cool water he wondered why he always seemed so tongue-tied around her? Why couldn't he talk to her like anyone else? Why couldn't he tell her that she had stolen his heart, his very soul, and that he was hers to command? Why couldn't she see how deeply and purely he loved her?

Dolores was still going on about the race as he prepared to leave. If he left now, he could still make it home before bedtime. Dolores was prattling on and on as if there were nothing more important in the solar system than the damn race that his mother wouldn't let him enter. He sat down in the vestibule to pull on his boots.

"I mean, being out there on the ice, all alone in the dark, racing across Aphrodite, having to keep going and going without resting - it must really be scary, don't you think?" she asked.

"I won't be scared," Paul exclaimed suddenly, the words springing from his mouth of their own accord. "Being in the race won't bother me!" he went on, his tongue forming words beyond his control. No sooner than they were out of his mouth than he immediately regretted them. Why had he said that?

Dolores smiled and quickly sat beside him, her hip touching his, her hand on his arm. "Really," she said breathlessly. "You're going to run the race?" There was no mistaking the admiration in her voice.

Paul sat back, momentarily basking in the glow of her smile. "Sure, it's just two days across the Aphrodite plain. Shoot, I've gone on runs for Dad that were longer than that." Well, it wasn't exactly an outright lie - he had gone on longer runs, but there had been places to stop, rest, and get fresh packs. Yeah, and his mother had been with him too, but there was no sense bringing that up right at the moment.

"Well, what have we here?" Simon Richards remarked as he stomped into the hab. "Down for a visit, Pee Paul?" Simon had always used Paul's nickname ever since he arrived on Europa.

"Paul brought the weekly reports for us to transmit to Marcus," Dolores told her father. "And guess what - Paul is going to race the Aphrodite next month! Isn't that exciting?"

Simon glanced at Paul and grinned. "He tell you that? Why, Paul, I'm surprised that someone as young as you are would even think about being in the race. Have you told your mother yet? And how about your father - does he know?"

Paul was trapped. On one side was his Dolores, adoring him, noticing him as a person for the first time he could remember. And on the other side was her father, a rude intrusion upon the scene, demanding truth in place of his lies, making him expose his innocent deceit to the girl he loved. His ears grew hot and he knew that he was blushing beet red from being caught in a lie. "Not exactly," he mumbled as he pulled his other boot onto his foot, stamped to the lock, and pulled the pack into place.

"Bye, Dolores," he said plaintively as he lowered his helmet. She didn't reply.

"See you at the finish line, Pee-Paul," her father grinned widely and laughed as Paul cycled through the lock, stepped into his skis and slid away into the twilight. Paul could feel Dolores' disdain boring into his back as he raced away from the hab, could feel her acid disapproval burning into his heart, searing his soul, melting away any chance that she would ever speak to him again without laughing at his childish behavior.

How could he ever get the nerve to face her again? He knew that he would have to be in that race, with or without his father's approval! Somehow, some way, he was going to prove to Dolores that he hadn't been lying, that he was as brave as she thought him to be, as capable of testing himself against Aphrodite's ice as that boob Philip and his over-muscled companions.

He glanced back once and saw the blue-green flash of the link arc through the night. His father's reports were already flashing their way along the Wholephore network on racing photons to Marcus. Ordinary radio communication was impossible on Europa because of Jupiter's intense magnetic fields and the continuous bombardment of charged particles raining down, unimpeded by the moon's tenuous atmosphere. To overcome this difficulty JBI had installed a link of Wholephore repeater stations across Europa's face. These used modulated blue-green lasers to burn through the haze of water vapor.

Some of the more well-financed JBI groups used fancy spread-spectrum radio units for short range work, but such devices were beyond the means of marginal harvesters like his father.

Which brought him back to the present. What if Simon Richards told his father about his bragging before he had a chance to talk him into giving permission for the race? His father would have a fit, and probably put more restrictions on him than usual.

There was a chime in his helmet, which puzzled him for a moment until he realized that it was the air supply warning. Damn, he'd been in such a rush to leave Greeley that he'd forgotten to check the pack. He reached back to flip over to the reserve. Then the power unit beeped, and the regeneration unit as well. Now he was really in for it! How could he have been so stupid as to forget something so basic? When his father saw that he had to use the reserve unit he'd really be pissed. Paul would probably get another lecture on safety and have to do safety drills for a week! That's what his father would really be mad about - being stupid about safety.

Paul wondered if he could come up with an excuse before he reached the hab, but his racing mind couldn't produce a credible story that he thought would fool his father.

The ice sang a sad accompaniment beneath the slow progress of his skis.

As Paul was nearing home, he looked toward the Sarpedon Linea to see if he could spot the harvester string. Aside from a lot more snow snakes than normal erupting from the minor cracks, there wasn't anything out of the ordinary. The five harvester units were creeping along at their normal pace as they chewed up the deposits on the surface and spit out the processed slush. A tiny spark of light moving among the machines told him where his father was working the line. He was probably adjusting the blades and checking the hoppers, as usual.

As Paul slid down the side of a small ridge he detected a change in the song, just like the other night, only this one dropped deeper and deeper to a bass tone. Something was happening, just like the prospectors had said - something big was happening!

Then he saw it coming from the distant horizon. It was a huge snow snake, racing along Sarpedon like a rushing freight train. As it came closer, a matter of only a few seconds, he saw that this was no snake, no tiny linear geyser spewing tiny bits of ice and slush into the air. No; this was a dragon of a geyser, a monster that was pitching its coils far into the dark sky, maybe all the way up to the edges of the thin, one hundred-kilometer deep atmosphere.

But there wasn't time to ponder escape velocity as the dragon roared past, obscuring the harvester string in a fierce blizzard of mist and snow. He felt the deep-throated thunder of the monster's passing through his boots. It reverberated in his suit and rattled his teeth. Paul's vision was blurred as the icy mist enveloped him.

Then the monster was gone. Even Europa's nearly constant voice was momentarily stilled by its fury. Paul stood quite still, hoping that he had not turned around in his excitement. He hoped that he was still facing directly toward the hab, even if he couldn't see it through the enveloping mist. He cautiously slid one of his skis forward, testing the new layer of ice, and then followed with the other ski. The ice coated his suit, forcing him to stop and wipe away the thick layer. Slowly, carefully, blindly, Paul strode toward home.

He hadn't gone more than a few hundred meters when Europa's song returned, angry and discordant. Paul scarcely had time to wonder at what this meant before a hammer blow threw him off his feet.

The ice beneath him felt as if it were alive. The surface rippled and twisted. Paul felt as if he were on a floe in some raging, storm-tossed sea. But that was ridiculous, the Cadmus ice shield was fifty kilometers thick. The raging ocean, if that was what was causing this, was too far beneath the surface to affect him! Something else must be causing this heaving and thrusting! Paul stayed perfectly still and prayed that whatever happened would spare him.

Finally the trembling stopped. Paul found himself lying on the side of a sheet of ice that sloped upwards at a thirty-degree angle. He struggled to get the skis under him so he could stand. He put them cross-wise to the slope so that he wouldn't slip back down while he got his bearings.

Which way was the hab? The upheaval had disoriented him completely and the haze of falling ice crystals prevented him from gaining any visual clue as to direction. He couldn't even make out Jupiter through the thick mist. He topped the ridge and slid down the other side where he encountered another ridge. Whatever had happened had turned the flat plain he'd been traversing into a pressure ridge. What had happened to the flat ice plain?

Paul considered. If the Sarpedon crack had been forced open then any pressure ridges would have formed parallel to it. All he had to do was follow the flexus between the ridges to maintain his original direction, parallel to the fault, or so he imagined.

After what seemed like an hour of cautious movement, but which turned out to be a mere fifteen minutes when he checked his timer, the mist began to clear. Paul climbed to the top of another ridge to see if he could get some idea of his location.

So changed was the area before him that Paul could make no sense of what he saw. Floes projected up everywhere in a random fashion, punctuating the area with their sharp forms. The only sense of order he could discern was the evenly spaced pressure ridges that rippled away from where he stood. The mist seemed to be thicker on his left, toward Sarpedon itself.

Then he spotted something two ridges over - something large and metallic. Could it be the hab? Paul decided to find out and headed in that direction. A few moments later he saw one of the hab's treads rearing toward the sky instead of being planted on the snow as it should have been. The entire hab was tilted at an odd angle into the sky. He pushed ahead, concerns about his father and mother driving everything else from his mind.

One side of the hab was half buried under several large ice sheets that had overlapped it. There were no lights, meaning that the power was probably out. Paul kicked off his skis, climbed up to the hatch, and wrenched it open. He climbed down into the lock and used the mechanical controls to cycle himself inside. He was glad to feel the pressure equalize. The hab had maintained its atmospheric integrity, which was a good sign. He found one of the emergency lamps right where his father had left it and flicked it on.

At first Paul couldn't make sense of the scene before him when he removed his helmet. Everything loose was all jumbled together. The walls made odd angles to the floor so that he couldn't quite figure out where...

Then he saw his mother on the floor, her leg bent under her at an awkward angle. "Mom!" he shouted and kneeled at her side to feel for a pulse. She was still breathing and her heartbeat seemed strong. There was a cut over her temple, and blood spotted the shoulder of her coverall. When he turned her head he noticed the trickle of blood coming from her ear and nose and wondered if she had suffered some sort of concussion. He pulled back an eyelid and saw the dilation of her pupil. He thought hard about what that could mean. Was it concussion? Or worse?

Paul snapped the med kit from its fastenings and tried to treat his mother's obvious injuries. He gently felt her bent leg, fighting his embarrassment at being so familiar with her, but forcing himself to follow the medical protocols his father had drilled into him. He thought he felt a break, just below the knee. Maybe there was damage to her knee as well, but he couldn't tell that with just a hand exam. As gently as possible, he straightened her leg, wrapped a splint, and inflated it. Sofia moaned softly as he did so, but did not wake.

The air started to get close and Paul wondered if the hab's recycler had stopped. Sure, if the emergency power hadn't come on then the recycler would have stopped as well. Damn, what else could go wrong?

Moving as quickly as he could in the mess of the tumbled habitat, Paul found the spare backpacks, disconnected his spent unit, and attached a fresh one. He made certain that the pack's air, converter, and batteries were all fully charged before doing anything else, just like he'd had to do in the drills.

Then he realized something. While the hab was maintaining its atmospheric integrity, there was no guarantee that it would continue to do so. He had to prepare for the worst.

He pulled his mother's suit from the storage compartment and slipped it over her form as gently as possible. Getting the splinted leg into the suit was the most difficult part of the job, but he managed.

Sofia had something clenched tightly in her hand. No matter how hard Paul tugged he could not pry her fingers loose. Since there was no need for her to use the gloves anyway he just stuffed her arm into the suit, clenched fist and all. When that was done he attached a back pack and made sure that the air flow was set properly. Satisfied that he could do no more for his mother for the moment, he went outside to look for his father.

At first he didn't know which way to go, the landscape had been so ripped asunder. Then he saw Jupiter's rosy rim through the diminishing murk and determined the direction where the harvesters must be. He raced up and down the ridges, pushing on the skis as much as he could, ever wary of suddenly finding himself floating from too hard a push.

Suddenly he stopped dead in his tracks. The jumble of ice fragments and floes stopped a few meters on the other side of the ridge he'd just ascended.

The previous day there had been the Sarpedon fissure, a rough, nearly straight white cleft in the ice running from horizon to horizon. On either side had been the brown and tan deposits, the detritus of earlier geysers that his father harvested. The white and dark bands of ice had gently undulated away from Sarpedon as if they were shallow, frozen waves on the icy plain.

But now there was no Sarpedon Linea, no clean cleft bounded by the lines of brown ice. There was only a smooth icy surface, a frozen river that stretched as far as Paul could see in either direction. Near the center, where he estimated that Sarpedon had been, was a bubbling cauldron of warm, erupting slush spewing up and spreading out, losing heat to evaporation and conduction with the ice beneath as it froze into an even, solid sheet, beneath which lay the harvesters.

And his father.

Paul stared dumbly at the spot where he should have seen the harvester string. There was nothing there save a widening sheet of slick ice. He continued to stare for long moments, wishing and hoping, as if sheer desire could animate the scene and bring the line of metal harvesters back into sight. Paul blinked, hoping to see his father's form climbing among the metal machines but, when his eyes opened, there was no trace of them. No matter how hard he stared at the growing river of ice could he detect even the slightest trace of evidence, the merest hint, that his father had somehow, miraculously survived the cataclysm.

Paul expected that such a shock, such a sudden loss of his father, the solid, uncompromising constant of his life, would leave such a void that he would fall into a pit of sorrow. Instead he felt nothing, an absence of any emotion whatsoever. How could he feel no sadness at this sudden loss, he wondered? Shouldn't he be crying? Shouldn't he feel an aching sense of loss? Had his father's presence meant so little that he couldn't even feel a tug of remorse that his father's body now laid buried deep beneath the ice?

Paul headed back to the hab, disgusted with his lack of emotion, disappointed that he couldn't even shed a tear for the man who guided and controlled his life for so long. He was more upset by the helplessness of his mother, at her injuries, than he was by the death of his other parent.

With that his thoughts turned to his mother's condition. He had to get her to the driller's place. Surely they wouldn't refuse to help him, to help her, in the face of such a disaster. Yes, his first priority should be to get help for his mother. He hurried across the ice to her. She was depending on him now. He was going to have to take care of her.

Getting his mother out of the hab presented problems Paul hadn't anticipated. The floor had tilted a bit more since he left and was now at a precipitous twenty degree slant - not difficult to negotiate if one were careful, but damned hard when encumbered by a surface suit. Paul struggled, climbing up the slope to the hatch. Dragging another person who was also clad in her surface suit was hard work. Her limp body was just dead weight. Paul had to handle her very carefully. He was afraid that he'd do further damage to her broken leg and aggravate her internal injuries, particularly that concussion. As he strained to lift her over the edge of the hatch he wished again that he had more muscle.

At first he didn't know which way to go, the landscape had been so ripped asunder. Then he saw Jupiter's rosy rim through the diminishing murk and determined the direction where the harvesters must be. He raced up and down the ridges, pushing on the skis as much as he could, ever wary of suddenly finding himself floating from too hard a push.

Suddenly he stopped dead in his tracks. The jumble of ice fragments and floes stopped a few meters on the other side of the ridge he'd just ascended.

The previous day there had been the Sarpedon fissure, a rough, nearly straight white cleft in the ice running from horizon to horizon. On either side had been the brown and tan deposits, the detritus of earlier geysers that his father harvested. The white and dark bands of ice had gently undulated away from Sarpedon as if they were shallow, frozen waves on the icy plain.

But now there was no Sarpedon Linea, no clean cleft bounded by the lines of brown ice. There was only a smooth icy surface, a frozen river that stretched as far as Paul could see in either direction. Near the center, where he estimated that Sarpedon had been, was a bubbling cauldron of warm, erupting slush spewing up and spreading out, losing heat to evaporation and conduction with the ice beneath as it froze into an even, solid sheet, beneath which lay the harvesters.

And his father.

Paul stared dumbly at the spot where he should have seen the harvester string. There was nothing there save a widening sheet of slick ice. He continued to stare for long moments, wishing and hoping, as if sheer desire could animate the scene and bring the line of metal harvesters back into sight. Paul blinked, hoping to see his father's form climbing among the metal machines but, when his eyes opened, there was no trace of them. No matter how hard he stared at the growing river of ice could he detect even the slightest trace of evidence, the merest hint, that his father had somehow, miraculously survived the cataclysm.

Paul expected that such a shock, such a sudden loss of his father, the solid, uncompromising constant of his life, would leave such a void that he would fall into a pit of sorrow. Instead he felt nothing, an absence of any emotion whatsoever. How could he feel no sadness at this sudden loss, he wondered? Shouldn't he be crying? Shouldn't he feel an aching sense of loss? Had his father's presence meant so little that he couldn't even feel a tug of remorse that his father's body now laid buried deep beneath the ice?

Paul headed back to the hab, disgusted with his lack of emotion, disappointed that he couldn't even shed a tear for the man who guided and controlled his life for so long. He was more upset by the helplessness of his mother, at her injuries, than he was by the death of his other parent.

With that his thoughts turned to his mother's condition. He had to get her to the driller's place. Surely they wouldn't refuse to help him, to help her, in the face of such a disaster. Yes, his first priority should be to get help for his mother. He hurried across the ice to her. She was depending on him now. He was going to have to take care of her.

Getting his mother out of the hab presented problems Paul hadn't anticipated. The floor had tilted a bit more since he left and was now at a precipitous twenty degree slant - not difficult to negotiate if one were careful, but damned hard when encumbered by a surface suit. Paul struggled, climbing up the slope to the hatch. Dragging another person who was also clad in her surface suit was hard work. Her limp body was just dead weight. Paul had to handle her very carefully. He was afraid that he'd do further damage to her broken leg and aggravate her internal injuries, particularly that concussion. As he strained to lift her over the edge of the hatch he wished again that he had more muscle.

The tiny hatch compartment presented a problem. The space between the inner and outer hatches was very constrained, with barely enough room for a fully suited person, let alone two of them. That it was on a steep angle did not help a bit.

Paul solved the problem by embracing his mother with both arms, pulling her close, and backing up and into the compartment. He was nearly lying on his back by the time he got the inner door closed.

Paul awkwardly cycled the hatch with his free hand. His mother and he were face to face, his helmet touching hers. Her slender form limp against him, so limp and submissive. How many times had his father held her so, Paul wondered, and was suddenly aware of their intimacy and the weight of her body pressing against his own. Much to his surprise he felt himself getting an erection. Shame washed over him as he struggled to suppress it, but to no avail. Finally, the air pressure dropped and their suits inflated to push them apart. The outer hatch finally came free and with it escape from his embarrassment.

Once outside Paul secured her on their utility sled. He braced her into a sitting position as best he could. The sled was made to be pulled by their little scooter, which his father usually kept at the side of the hab that was now buried in the ice. He found the short-range communication laser they used to talk to the harvesters where it had fallen from the rooftop mounting. It appeared to be intact when he pulled it from the ice and examined the case. He hooked it up to his power pack and was gratified to see the ready light glow green.

He struggled to climb to the top of the hab, which had visibly tilted even further. The ice beneath it must be collapsing, he concluded, and hoped that he had time to ping the prospector's hab. He oriented himself and pressed the unit's switch as he watched the receive light. There was no response. He held the switch closed and swept the laser back and forth, sweeping the general area where the transceiver might be in hopes of raising a response.

But there was no reply, which could mean that their unit had been damaged by whatever had happened. Worse still, he worried, perhaps their place had suffered just as much damage as his own.

Paul leaped from the top of the hab as it listed suddenly. No sooner than his feet touched the ice than he grabbed the lines he had rigged to the sled and set out toward the prospector's rig. He didn't look back once at the sinking habitat.

Nor to his father's ice-filled grave.

Paul quickly learned that the sled prevented him from going in a straight line, over the tilted, broken floes. Not only because it exerted too much drag, but because he was afraid of what the jostling might do to aggravate his mother's injuries. Instead he diverted around, dodging the blocks of ice as if he were wending his way through some dim, frozen maze. Occasionally he had to climb a floe to get his bearings from Jupiter's familiar face.

At one point he encountered an open chasm where a small linea had separated. It might be just narrow enough for him to leap across safely, but it was certainly too wide to do so while pulling the sled behind him. Apparently whatever had cracked the depths of Sarpedon to release its deep waters had also spread the minor lineae that radiated from the central rent. Paul decided to take the prudent step of finding a route around the gap, which required him to travel an hour at right angles to the direction he was heading before he found a place narrow enough to cross without endangering his mother. Then he had to trace his way back, which took as long.

Suddenly, the ice before him was pierced with sharp black daggers of all lengths, forming a forest of dark forms. The exposed portions of the daggers ranged in length from tiny pieces the length of his arm to monsters taller than he. In the middle of this strange new forest was a shattered wreck, all that was left of the prospectors' hab. A truncated portion of the drill rig still stood and, from its center, a tall, impossibly thin line extended far into the sky before it looped over and abruptly ended.

It took a moment before Paul realized that the tremendous energy released from the Sarpedon fault must have forced the drill tube out of the hole, driving it right from its icy sheath and shattering its segments, which then rained destruction as they fell. If the prospectors had been in the hab when the deadly rain of black fragments began, they wouldn't have stood a chance of survival. With a sinking heart he fought his way through the fragments toward the shell of the hab, preparing himself for the worst.

One look into the roofless hab was enough to tell him what he needed to know. Judging from their unprotected forms, both prospectors had been caught trying to reach their suits. Paul was horrified and fascinated at their bodies. Both must have been flash frozen at the moment of death and then decorated by the deposits of falling ice. They would have been glittering ice sculptures of unearthly beauty had it not been for their agonizing postures. Their frozen forms reminded him of those ash-formed plaster casts made at the ruins of Pompeii that he had seen in school.

But there was nothing he could do for either Jack or Rob as he searched for a route except recite a brief prayer over their frozen forms before continuing his trek toward Greeley station. He added a prayer that Dolores' family had survived, for neither his own nor his mother's pack were sufficient for the long trip to Marcus Station. If Greeley hadn't survived they would both die cold and alone, like his father and the prospectors.

What was he going to do now that his father was gone, Paul wondered? There was no way that he could support his mother on his allowance. There was no way that he could pay back the debt the family owed to JBI for the harvesters and the hab. He knew that his brother wouldn't be able to help; the money that Vince got as an apprentice down on Jupiter barely paid for his keep, let alone having anything to spare.

Maybe, Paul hoped, Vince could come back and take care of Mom so he could go back to school. Then reality dawned - there would be no more allowances, no more school without the harvesters. He would probably have to take some menial, low-paying job at Marcus, something suitable for a kid with no education, to support the two of them. In all probability he'd be stuck on this stupid moon for the rest of his life, unable to buy passage home!

Damn, he cursed as the tears filled his eyes, why did his father have to die? Why did this have to happen? It was going to screw up his entire life! He was so angry that he wished that he could scream at his father for his stupidity at being on the harvesters when the dragon struck. He should have been at home, with Mom. Damn him, damn him to hell and back!

The grains of ice beneath his feet seemed to chant an angry curse at circumstances as Paul slid along toward his uncertain future.

The alarm for the primary air supply pinged just as he spotted Greeley. It was a welcome sight. Best of all, the lights that marked it glowed like a bright beacon on the dim landscape. The Richards' hab had escaped the damage! Everything was going to be all right, he practically sang with joy as he skied toward the glow. Simon and Rachel would take care of his mother. They would call Marcus and have a medic come to care for his mother. With a buoyant heart he hurried across the singing ice.

As Paul drew closer to the hab he started to notice signs of damage. For one thing, the hab was at an odd angle, but not from subsiding into the surface. Instead, it looked as if the entire block of ice on which the hab was anchored had shifted to a fifteen-degree angle to the plain. The slim towers that held the navigation markers for the harvester strings were snapped off at their bases. What was worse, the laser array the Richards used to contact Lugh crater seemed to be intact, but they were canted so steeply toward the sky that they were practically useless. Paul wondered why Simon hadn't fixed it as he tugged to open their hatch. Wouldn't communications be their most important priority?

Dolores and her mom welcomed him as if he were some sort of savior come to their rescue, all smiles and joyful cries as he stepped inside. Their happiness fled as soon as Paul informed them that Abraham would not be following. Their faces fell when he told them that his father was most certainly buried beyond recovery in a frozen river that was light-minutes from the warm deserts of his birthplace.

After the Richards got his mother out of her suit and comfortable, Paul noticed Dolores' father, Simon, lying nearby. He was quite pale and obviously unconscious. There was a splint on his arm and a large bandage around his chest. His breathing came ragged and fluttery, as if he had a bad cold. Rachel Richards' eyes darted to him whenever he groaned, momentarily distracted from tending Sofia.

"Dad was on the tower when the shock hit us," Dolores explained as she helped Paul remove his suit. "He fell," she said simply, biting her lip. Then she continued; "The `quake shut off our primary generator, so we're running on emergency power. That gives us about a week, unless you know how to fix the generator," she added hopefully.

Paul tried to think of what the loss of the Patterson generator might mean. All of Greeley's power came from the forced cycle of water over the palladium pellets at its core. He doubted that the cell's core had cracked. Even so, there was no way he could fix it. It was more likely that the feed line to the heater buried beneath the hab had snapped when the ice shifted. They were lucky that the shaft hadn't rocketed up through the ice like Jack and Rob's had done. He shuddered when he thought of what that might have done to the beautiful, lovely Dolores.

"I don't think I'll be able to fix the generator," Paul explained as he slid his legs from the bottom half of the suit. "I'm not as technical as my father... was." He paused for a minute, afraid that he might suddenly burst into tears. But the momentary pang of sadness he'd felt quickly disappeared. "But a week's more than enough time for Marcus to send someone out for us."

Dolores made a face. "I'm afraid not. We don't know if what happened was local or wide-spread. Even if it was just here there is no way that Marcus would know we're in trouble. We only used the link when we had something to transmit. We could sit here for days, weeks maybe, before someone at Lugh wondered why we hadn't called in."

Paul thought furiously; with the tower leaning as it was, the Wholephore link was useless. But there had to be some way to send a message. There had to be some way to let Marcus know that they needed help!

He started to pull his suit back on. "I'm going to try to realign the laser," he announced as he tugged the bulky suit over his hips. "Where does your father keep his tools?"

The climb up the tall, leaning tower was long and hard, particularly due to the precipitous angle. At the four hundred meter mark he was nearly twenty meters away from plumb, and it would be much worse at the top, far overhead. Paul lashed himself in place to a strut once he reached the level where the laser was mounted. He pulled out a long-handled wrench and began to loosen the fittings on the mount. The barrel of the laser, which had been pointing skyward dipped slightly, warning him that the bolt was nearly too loose. Paul steadied it with one hand while he carefully loosened the remaining bolt with the other. This was no trivial lightweight unit like the one he used back at the hab. This was an industrial sized unit that massed as much as he did.

According to the directions Dolores had given, he had no trouble lining up the barrel to Jupiter's disk just above the horizon. From this spot on Europa the rings on Jupiter's face were nearly perpendicular to the horizon. Dolores had told him that the closest repeater was even with the right edge of Jupiter's disk. Because of the angle the beam's path looked as if it would barely clear one of the cross-braces.

"Fire it up!" he told Dolores over the intercom they had rigged. Although he was prepared for it, he was still startled when the blue green pencil-thin beam arced toward the horizon. It missed the edge of the brace by not more than a few millimeters.

"No ping," Dolores said over his suit intercom. "Try moving it a little from side to side." After Paul did so, by using the handle of the wrench as a lever, she suggested, "Try moving it up a hair and then going from side to side."

"It's no use," Paul finally admitted when nothing they did seemed to work. "The repeater tower must be down as well. Can we aim this at the next one?"

Dolores sounded puzzled. "I don't think that would work. Even if the next repeater farther down the link is still working we can't see it. It's below the horizon from here."

"Well," Paul answered after thinking for a minute, "If that repeater is working, then somebody could go there and use its transmitter to let Marcus know that we need help."

There was short silence as Dolores considered his suggestion. "That's a good idea, Paul, but my Dad's not in any condition to do that, so who do you suggest - Mom or me?"

Paul considered the options as he climbed back down to reenter the hab. Mrs. Richards couldn't go because either she or Dolores had to stay to take care of Simon and his own mother. What's more, neither Rachel nor Dolores had the experience with the ice that he had accumulated over his years on Europa. And his mother certainly couldn't do it, not with a broken leg she couldn't. He smiled as he reached the only logical conclusion.

"I'll do it," he announced as Dolores helped him pull the top part of his suit off. Dolores' mouth formed a small "O" of surprise, but she said nothing.

Paul settled down on a bench and let her help him with the boots. "I'll go down the line to the first working repeater and use it to ping Marcus. If I can use your scooter it should only take a few hours to get there."

Dolores rested her hand on his arm and squeezed gently as she smiled. "That's very brave of you, Paul. But think about it for a little bit before you decide. I'll fix you something warm while you think it. I think it's too dangerous."

As Dolores turned away Paul swore that he would never wash that arm again, no matter what. He wondered how long he would feel the warmth where her hand had momentarily rested. Only when she glanced over her shoulder and smiled at him did he start thinking about what he would need for the brief trip. There was no turning back now - he'd look like a coward if he didn't go.

The first Wholephore repeater should be almost two hundred kilometers away. That would be at the limits of a single power pack if he were skiing, but well within range if he used a scooter. He pulled down a fully charged pack, strapped on a reserve unit, and dragged the heavy pack to the hatch. He was about to turn away when he recalled his father's frequent cautions against taking unnecessary chances. Yes, better to be safe, he thought and decided to take two packs and one emergency unit with him. That way he could make it back after he sent the signal, even if he had to ski the whole way.

He drank the soup Dolores had prepared as quickly as he could, not even pausing to chew the solid bits that floated in the broth. He washed the soup's taste away with a few quick swallows of water and a piece of bread.

When he finished, he noticed the two women hovering around his mother. When he came close, he heard his mother mumbling something over and over. "My fault, my fault, my fault," she kept saying, broken only occasionally by a sob so heart-rending that Paul wondered if, despite here unconscious state, she knew that Abraham, her husband - his father - was dead.

"She had this in her hand," Rachel said as she handed Paul a small square of worn cloth. It was no bigger than the palm of his hand.

"It's my father's," he said softly and took it from her. He brushed the soft silk threads with the fingers of his other hand. "This is the last bit of a rug my father said that he'd brought from Earth," he explained. His father always kept a tiny piece of it with him in the knee of his suit. That way he could pray in the tradition of his family. Whenever the old one would wear out, Paul's mother would take another small bit of the rug and sew it into the suit. Perhaps she was doing so when the hab was struck.

Paul realized that he was holding a piece of his own family history in his hand, perhaps the last physical trace of his father that he would ever touch.

And still the tears, the sadness would not come. The emotional void remained in his heart. He carefully handed the little fragment back to Rachel. "Keep this for when she wakes. It will mean a lot to her."

He certainly didn't deserve to keep it.

"I am not sure that you should go," Dolores' mother announced when she heard of his plans. "The ice is dangerous, and for one so young even more so! No, I think that all of us should wait here until they can get to us."

Paul was furious. "You can't just sit here in the hope that someone will come for us. You know that they won't realize anything is wrong until they haven't heard from you for a few days."

"Mother's right. Maybe someone from the other habitats..." Dolores began.

Paul didn't wait for her to finish. "For all we know, the other habs might be in worse shape than we are, so we can't depend on them for help. We have no way of knowing how extensive the destruction has been! No, we cannot depend upon anyone coming to help us except Marcus."

"But what if Marcus station was destroyed as well?" Rachel wailed. "What if there is no help?"

Paul smiled. "Marcus station was built in the Lugh crater, right on top of the biggest undersea mountain on Europa. It's the most stable place on the whole moon, the only place there's any sort of solid ground.

"Besides," he added quietly and with resignation, "If Marcus is destroyed then we are all dead anyway." With that sobering thought he began to don his suit for the long trip. Dolores helped him as her mother sat between Simon and Sofia and cried uncontrollably.

"She'll be all right," Dolores whispered bravely. "It's just that this is such a shock to her." The sweep of her hand took in the damaged hab, the emergency lighting, and the unconscious forms of her father and his mother.

"I understand," Paul said sympathetically. He wondered what her reaction would be if he took her into his comforting arms, but was afraid to try. "Take care of all of them until I get back," he added as bravely as he could. Somehow their roles had become reversed, the children had become responsible for their parents.

"I will," Dolores promised and then, impulsively, leaned forward, just as Paul was lifting his helmet into place, and kissed him quickly on the cheek. "Good luck and..." she said quickly as she stepped back. The helmet clicked into place and cut off her words.

Paul was so shocked by Dolores' sudden display of affection that he nearly forgot to double-check the status of his pack as the hatch cycled. Was it Europa's faint gravity that made his steps so light or his sudden feeling of euphoria? What did it matter - Dolores obviously thought of him as a hero, someone who would rescue her from the destruction wrought by the ice dragon.

The ice sang a gay song as he attached the utility sled to the scooter and strapped the packs in place. He could hardly wait to discover what Dolores' welcome might be when he returned.

The surface seemed to grow smoother as he followed the blue-green strobe that flashed overhead toward Jupiter's red grin. He'd asked Dolores to strobe the laser every hour on the hour to provide a guide that would keep him on track. He drove cautiously along for there was no telling if the dragon would awaken once again and turn the ice beneath the scooter's treads to fluid. Caution was his watchword.

The monotonous landscape of pressure ridges soon lulled Paul into a dreamy state. Up one slope he would go, tip over the crest, and speed down the reverse side. Then he would cross the valleys between and repeat, again and again. It felt as if Europa was breathing, as if the moon's breast was heaving and falling in time to the ice dragons' slow movements beneath. He recalled how wondrous Europa had once seemed to him - the barren ice plains, the cold stars above during the three-day-long sun cycles, and the ever-present brooding giant of Jupiter forever peering over the horizon between.

When they'd started this year's harvester string over two hundred kilometers further away from the meridian, Jupiter had been hardly more than a slim frown at the horizon. Now, he was so close that nearly one-third of Jupiter's face could be seen.

Paul increased the scooter's speed, ashamed for being so slow and cautious while Simon and Sofia were desperate for medical aid, possibly dying, behind him. Not even when the scooter shot off the top of one sharp crest and floated softly to land mid-way down the slope did Paul slow down.

The suit's timer chimed and Paul glanced up to see the scheduled blue-green strobe. At that moment the scooter hit something and tilted wildly to one side. Paul twisted the handlebars to the right as the machine bucked from side to side, but succeeded only in rolling the vehicle.

Over and over he tumbled, the thick suit pack thudding hard every time it hit, wrenching his shoulders time and again. He was afraid that the scooter would crash into him, smashing his suit, cracking his helmet, or tear off an arm or leg. All of these possibilities flashed through his mind as he rolled down the slope.

Finally he stopped.

He found the scooter twenty meters away. It was lying on its side. It had hit so hard that its nose was buried in the tilted slope of the next ridge. Paul walked around it, trying to figure out how to right the machine so he could continue. He located the sled a little further along. Apparently it had become detached at the moment of impact and continued over the ridge and up the next, where it perched on the crest. Surprisingly, it was still upright with its load still attached.

He'd struck a sharp shard of hard ice, which had sent the scooter out of control. From where he stood the shard looked like nothing more than a large tooth of some primitive carnivore. Perhaps it looked like a dragon's tooth, Paul thought fancifully, remembering his earlier dreams of Europa's dark beasts.

He discovered that he could tip the scooter by grabbing one handle and leaning backward, using the combined mass of him, his suit, and the backpack to counterbalance the scooter. After several jerking motions he managed to tip the machine far enough that it came free and settled on its treads.

Paul attached the sled before setting out once again. No more daydreaming, he promised himself. He would stay alert. He would use caution. He would keep his eyes on the ice just ahead of the scooter.

Which was why he nearly missed the first repeater tower and had to double back to find it. The line-of-sight Wholephore repeaters were spaced just near enough that the arrays on their tops could be seen above the horizon from the next one in line.

But there was no way that he could use the tower to spot the next in line. The remains of the repeater tower were scattered over nearly a kilometer. One of the tall tower's anchors had torn loose during the cataclysm and, when the surface shifted, had allowed it to fall. The huge laser housing was buried a meter deep in frozen slush with just its leads showing where it had landed. It was far too heavy to lift and, even if he could have moved it, he wouldn't be able to place it high enough to see over the horizon. Neither could he locate the unit's power supply.

Paul considered his options. The two additional packs would easily last until he reached the next tower. He'd still have enough left to make it back to the hab and Dolores. He was glad that he'd thought to bring the extras along with him.

The going was easier the closer he got to the meridian. The ridges were not so sharp, nor so tall. Whatever had caused the dragon to roar seemed to have played out as it travelled along. Perhaps he could get back to some flat ice plains further along and make better time.

Paul began to be concerned when the scooter began to slow down two hours later. There was enough power, according to the instruments. He began to worry that something had been damaged by the crash, something that he hadn't noticed until now. Maybe the slowing was due to nothing more than a connection that had jiggled loose. He decided to check. He brought the scooter to a halt.

Paul could hear the song as he stepped onto the ice a muted, bitter tune that seemed to hint at trouble. He'd heard that song once before, but, at the moment couldn't place where that had been. He vaguely recalled something his father had warned him about...

Then it struck him; this was the song the slush made as it was in transition. He glanced overhead at the brilliant dot of the sun. Of course, the slight radiation from the distant sun was enough to sublimate certain types of grains during the day cycle. He glanced at his boots and saw the ice creeping around the edges. If he stood here long enough he'd sink into the surface. Well, he probably wouldn't be here long enough for that to happen, he thought. He lifted the lid of the scooter's power unit to see which of the leads had come loose.

He wiggled the connectors but all of the leads seemed to be tight. He checked the battery and, when that looked like it was supposed to, checked the power train connections. Surely something had to be loose to cause the scooter to lose power like that. What could it be?

Then it dawned on him. Of course; if it hadn't been for his helmet he would have smacked himself on the forehead. It was the slush itself that had been slowing the scooter - apparently he had been driving all this time right into the middle of a polyna, one of the pockets of warm, unhardened slush that occurred this close to the meridian. That's what his father had warned him about, that's why it sounded so familiar.

Ruefully, he closed the lid and started to throw a leg across the scooter when he noticed that it seemed to be sitting a little lower than before. He glanced down and saw that the slush was coming up, over the scooter's foot rests! The heavy mass of the scooter had been sinking while he'd been fooling around with its innards. He leaped into the seat and threw the power onto high.

A plume of slush shot from beneath the scooter. It buried the sled behind it in a glistening coating of ice, but didn't impart any forward motion to the scooter. Paul gunned the scooter again and again, pulsing the drive belts and applying as much torque as he could get out of the motor. All he managed to do was dig the scooter deeper and deeper into the polyna.

When he took a quick look back, Paul saw that the sled was beginning to tip forward into the growing depression. In a panic he slid off, untied the sled, and pulled it to one side, where it would be safer, he thought.

He dashed back and tied a line to the scooter's cowling, backed away, and wrapped the other end around his waist. He pulled with all of his might, but he could not pull the scooter loose from the tightening grip of the slush sink, not with his limited strength. He continued to pull, each tug driving his boots deeper into the slush, but the scooter remained trapped in its hole, its nose tilting skyward.

Paul was pulling his boots free and trying to figure out what to do next when he noticed that a larger depression was growing around small one the scooter had dug. It looked as if the whole area, the entire polyna was going to subside!

In a moment of sudden terror he untied the line about his waist and threw it free. He scrambled away as fast as he could move, panicked by thoughts of sinking into the ice. He pulled the sled with him and made his way to a nearby floe - an outcropping of hard ice adjacent to the sink. No sooner than he had reached the refuge when the center of the polyna abruptly collapsed, consuming the scooter in its cold maw as the surrounding slush closed in to fill the depression. In a matter of seconds the scooter had vanished. The polyna resumed its placid, non-threatening appearance.

Paul cursed himself. If he had just taken it easy and not panicked maybe he could have pulled the scooter free. What if he had taken it slowly after detaching the sled instead of gunning the power? What if he had locked the drive on and simultaneously pulled on the line? Yes, surely that would have worked. A dozen other possibilities that he had not tried came instantly to mind, all seemingly foolproof methods of saving the scooter, all unrealized, all futile speculation. If only he had been smarter, stronger, faster.

Like his father.

The plain was cold and lonely. Because he had long since passed beneath the horizon of Dolores' hab he could no longer see her hourly strobe signal and had to rely on the face of Jupiter to guide him. He kept heading toward that fifth band from the right, the tan one. The one where, Dolores had promised, the tower was located.

He had been walking for hours, sliding his skis slowly over the ice and listening to Europa's angry song about his stupidity. If there were ice dragons beneath the ice they were probably laughing themselves silly over his actions. Imagine, he could hear them giggle in their dragonish way, a mere child trying to best the ice. How ridiculous, how insane. How futile!

But Paul continued to push onward. He had no choice but to reach the next tower if he was to send his message. He couldn't make it back with the air and power in the remaining packs.

An hour later he arrived at the second repeater. This one was just as useless as the former one. The tower was erect, but the laser housing had shifted so that the Marcus-side barrel was canted at a steep angle toward the ice. Although Paul tried mightily, he could not shift the heavy unit back into position. Even the wrench was an inadequate lever.

He tried pulsing the unit a few times by shorting the power leads, but the beam hit the surface just a few hundred meters away. It made a tiny puff of sublimated ice where it struck.

Paul considered his options. He had enough air and power left in the packs to maybe make it to the next tower, just barely. But that shouldn't be a problem; the rescue squad could pick him up on their way to the Richard's hab. They could even take him with them to save time.

For a moment he relished how Dolores would react when she saw him riding to her rescue; a brave knight who had gone forth to slay the ice dragon. Well, not really slay the dragon, but to beat it, perhaps, he added wistfully. Then she would throw her arms around him and kiss him long and deep, pressing her body against his as if promising greater delights to come.

Yes, he decided, he would certainly ski to the next tower. After all, it was only another hundred and fifty klicks or so. So he, Dolores' brave hero, would go on for her, for his mother, and the others! He would save them all!

The snow snakes grew less frequent as he plowed along, denying him their fickle company. All he had besides the constant movement of one ski before the other was Europa's constant song. He started to imagine that a huge green dragon was following him, hissing about all of the stupid things he'd done. That was as it should be. If his father had been around, he would have cursed Paul for being so dumb and unmindful of his own safety.

And Paul would have stood silently by, listening to the sad iteration of his mistakes - his stupid errors - and be shamed to tears, wilting under his father's harsh criticism.

Why had he panicked when the scooter was trapped? He knew that panic was just proof of his lack of courage. Behind the brave exterior he had displayed to Dolores and her mother was the reality of his hollow, shivering, shaking, cowardly self.

You are a pitiful creature undeserving of your mother's love and affection, let alone someone as wonderful as Dolores, the green dragon whispered in his ear.

Then a blue dragon joined the first. The true story of your bumbling will eventually come out, the blue dragon promised him. You'll never be able to tell a consistent lie, it said.

Yes, Paul agreed, and Dolores and the others would all laugh at him, ridicule him for thinking that he could win against the ice. How did he expect Dolores to ever believe that he would race the Aphrodite if he couldn't even drive a stupid scooter a few hundred klicks and make a simple signal, the green dragon asked?

Paul's fantasies of Dolores' admiration faded away like the sublimating mist before the green dragon's harsh revelations.

The ice dragons' songs were a critical chorus, repeating over and over as he ploded along.

Paul felt that he had to rest. It had been nearly twenty hours, he realized, since he'd slept. It seemed an eternity ago. His legs were burning up and sweat was pouring down his back. In a way that was funny. Here he was standing on the surface of a moon whose average temperature was nearly 140 degrees below zero, surrounded by hectares of ice and standing on a frozen crust a hundred kilometers thick and he was working up a sweat! He settled onto the sled, wedging his behind into the space between extra packs.

He felt hungry. After all, that bowl of Dolores' soup had been the last food he ate. He sucked on some ProGoo - Protein Paste, Type IV, Edible - the JBI label read. The stuff tasted like gritty dough, and tasteless dough at that. But he was hungry, so he gulped some more, not stopping until the tube was empty. He washed the last mouthful down with a swallow of tepid water from his recycling unit. It tasted faintly of ammonia, as usual.

The ice for the last few kilometers had been singing a different song. The surface appeared less grainy and he'd encountered stretches of solid ice. On those occasions he'd been able to slide nearly effortlessly, with just slight pressure on his skis. But those stretches had been rare. Most of the past kilometers had required the tiring push and slide.

Jupiter appeared to be slightly higher now, or was that just wish fulfillment on his part, he wondered? As he lazily watched, the ruddy planet seemed to wink at him and then slide to one side, tipping over and drowning in a darkening sky.

The blue dragon erupted from the snow with a mighty heave of its coils. The green one followed close behind, moving in concert with the blue's. Paul understood that their cries were of responsibility and duty, of his failures and his shame, even if he couldn't make out their exact words. He winced beneath the dragon's assault. He put his arms above his head, trying to protect himself as their sharp words rained down.

But the dragons would not let up, would not give any quarter, so fierce was their attack. Paul felt like crying. There was nothing he could do, nothing to stop their words.

He glimpsed a rose-colored dragon moving behind the other two. Its graceful form hinted of promise, of fulfilled dreams and desires. Paul knew in the depths of his heart that the rose would give him peace, that it was love made real. He reached out a hand to beckon it to him and...

Paul snapped awake. The ice was empty. The stars and brooding Jupiter dominated the sky. There were no dragons.

How long had he slept? He glanced at the time and realized that he'd been sleeping for nearly three hours. That was three precious hours that could have taken him that much closer to rescue. He flogged himself to full wakefulness with a curse. The snow song chided him for his laziness as he trudged along. He could still feel the hot breath of blame from the dragons on the back of his neck.

The air alarm chimed a little later. Paul kept going until the air grew stale in his suit. He wanted to stretch his pack's resources as far as he could, but didn't want to push his luck too far. "Better to lose a little air than your life," his father had always cautioned him on their long trips. It was good advice so Paul detached the spent pack and attached his suit to a fresh one. He debated carrying the spent pack with him, but decided against it. The sled was growing increasingly difficult to pull as he tired, and less weight translated into more speed and less energy expended. Without the added weight of the pack maybe he could make up for the time he'd lost while napping. He perched the used pack on a crest of ice, where it could be easily spotted for later retrieval. He skied away as rapidly as he could, the dragon's cries and the song filling his ears.

Four hours later his left calf started to hurt. It started with a tight feeling in the back of his leg, which he dismissed as nothing more than weariness - another sign of his physical inadequacy, or so he thought. Neither Vince nor his father would have allowed the ice to tire them so easily. He tried to ignore the occasional stabs of pain and growing heat in his left leg as he pushed relentlessly forward, heading always toward Jupiter and Jupiter's frowning face.

When the cramp struck he thought that something had struck his leg, hard. He pulled his left leg up to relieve the pressure without thinking and pitched forward. He rolled across the ice in agony as his calf muscle kept tightening and tightening. It felt as if the cramping muscle was going to pull his leg apart. It felt as if the contractions were going to rip muscle from bone at heel and knee. The arch of his foot screamed in pain. He tried to clench his foot to relieve the stress, but it did no good. He reached down to massage his leg but his gloves only struck the unyielding outer skin of his suit, beneath which his leg was surely tearing itself apart.

Paul beat on his leg, hoping somehow that the pressure of his blows would penetrate the suit and help relax the rock-hard muscle. But his blows were futile as the leg continued to throb and pull in agonizing waves of pain. Relax, he told himself and tried to will his muscles into relaxation, tried to order them to cease, to rest, to do anything except continue to pull, pull, pull until he felt as if he would scream.

Then he did - long and loud, protesting against this attack by his own muscles. He cried out, protesting the failure of his body to respond as he wished. But the screaming did no good, neither did the steady stream of orders for his muscles to relax. Nor did his attempts to ignore the pain that seemed to grow to fill his mind.

What were the blue and green saying now? Where was the rose that promised so much? Were the two dragons laughing at his woes, at his pitiful whimpering over a little physical discomfort? Surely they must be joking at his puny efforts, at his attempts to conquer their domain.

How had his father fared in the depths he wondered, half out of his head with agony. Paul could imagine Abraham battling these dragons as he descended into the ice, fighting them all the way, forcing them back with each breath of his limited air, fighting his cooling suit, denying them his dying body as long as possible. Yes, his father wouldn't have submitted easily - he would have fought to the very end, using every fiber of his body, every bit of his energy to try to escape, to evade the greedy monsters of the deep and deny them their victim. And it had all been for nothing. The dragons had won after all. His father had died.

And still the tears did not come.

A long, agonizing time later, the vise finally released his leg muscles. Paul rested for a few moments as the cramp relaxed. He reveled in the cessation of pain, enjoying once again having control. He wiggled his toes and, with great caution, tested his leg. It hurt to move, but not so much that he couldn't continue. He slid the skis forward and back, wary of putting too much stress on his sore leg and causing it to cramp once more. He continued his trek more slowly and cautiously than before.

The snow snakes blew by him several times. The larger ones warned him of dangerous cracks in the ice, the small ones indicated tiny lineae that were no problem. After a while he stopped paying attention to them. After a while he stopped noticing anything except the texture of the ice immediately ahead of his skis and the ever-present tan band on the face of Jupiter.

His hunger had grown to be nearly unbearable over the last few hours. His belly growled continually, echoing within the hollows of his empty stomach. He regretted eating the entire supply of paste. He should have saved some for later, when hunger struck again. The reflection did little to still the growling cries of his stomach.

Paul recalled the last time he had eaten real food: It was that bowl of warm soup that Dolores had fixed for him before he left. Yes, he recalled, the soup had potatoes, carrots and peas in it, plus either chicken or turkey or beef. He could remember the thick broth in which the various components floated. It had been a rich brown fluid that was spotted with circles of fat that had merged and separated when he stirred them with his spoon. He tried to recall the smell from the wisps of steam that rose from the soup's surface as he drank, but he could not.

Why had he wolfed the soup down so quickly? He should have taken his time. He should have savored every morsel, every sip of the rich broth. He should have paid attention to every single one of its complex flavors. He should have carefully extracted each slice of potato, each pea and carrot, each floating bit of celery, and tasted them individually, rolling them around in his mouth, indulging his taste buds in their natural flavors and the way they blended indescribably with those of the total mixture. He should have...

A sudden snow snake erupted to one side, spewing a geyser of slush higher than Paul's head. Paul tried to dodge away from the falling ice and, in so doing, struck the edge of a crevice. The ice under his skis gave way and he felt himself falling as the horizon whipped around him.

It was over in a matter of seconds. Paul found himself wedged in a crack just below the surface of the ice. He was lying on a thirty- or forty-degree angle to the surface, with his head at the lowest point. His skis were still near the surface. The tip of the right one was still caught on the edge.

Paul checked himself to make certain that he hadn't broken anything, that the fall hadn't harmed the integrity of his suit, that the impact hadn't damaged his survival pack. Everything seemed to be all right.

He felt so stupid. Why had he been daydreaming about that damned soup instead of paying attention to where he was going? There would be plenty of time to eat, to enjoy much finer food than instant soup when he led the rescue party to Dolores and his mother. Daydreaming - it was just another one of those things his father had criticized him for. Why was he always thinking of something else instead of paying attention to what he was doing? Paul could practically hear his father saying those words - and, for a brief second, imagined his large form standing at the edge of the crack, peering down and shaking his head at this latest evidence of Paul's ineptitude. Paul thought that it served him right. He had been daydreaming instead of paying attention.

Well, no sense staying here chastising himself, Paul thought and tried to pull himself up. He tugged again, trying to rotate his shoulders to extend his reach. But it was no use. No matter what he did he could not budge.

It was ridiculous. His head couldn't be more than a meter below the surface, resting in a crack only slightly wider than his shoulders. Why couldn't he move?

Paul carefully reached up with one gloved hand and took hold of the edge of the fissure and pulled while trying to bend his right leg. He moved a little and then stopped. No matter how much pressure he exerted he could not get loose. It was as if there were something holding him back.

Paul wiggled his hips and moved his left ski. Everything from his waist down seemed to be free, so whatever was holding him in place must be located higher, somewhere around his shoulders. He rotated his shoulders, extending one arm and then the other. From what he could feel, it seemed as if it was his back pack that was stuck. All he had to do was release it and climb out.

Right, all he had to do was cut off his air and the power that kept his suit warm. That would be smart, wouldn't it. It would also limit his survival to about five minutes, give or take a few breaths of freezing air. Dropping his pack was as smart as opening his helmet to take a breath of barely present, but fresh, atmosphere of ammonia and methane.

Yet, what choice did he have? He couldn't just lie here and wait for the end. Maybe, just maybe, he could retrieve the pack once he got himself out of the crack and reattach it in time. He put his hand on the pack's release handle and then hesitated. If he tugged the release he could be signing his death warrant. He could be committing suicide out here on the icy plain where no one would find his body. Then he imagined how stupid they would think he'd been if they did find his frozen form. He could hear their words of scorn - Only a fool would release his pack without having a spare handy!

Wait a minute! Perhaps the sled with the extra pack hadn't fallen into the crack. Maybe it was up there on the ice, out of his sight. Sure, it was just sitting there, waiting for him to attach it once he was free. In that case releasing the pack would let him reach the emergency pack, that was all.

As the certainty of the sled's existence grew in Paul's mind his hand clenched on the release. Paul took one deep breath, wondering if it was the last bit of fresh air he would ever experience, and pulled. The releasing connectors clicked off, shutting down air, power, and recycler.

Paul grabbed the edge of the crack and pulled, half afraid that he would still be unable to move, fearful that he had not only cut himself off from his only chance of survival but had failed to consider something obvious. He pulled hard wit both hands at the same time that he flexed his right leg and swung his left. With great relief he felt himself break free.

Within seconds he was climbing out of the crack and scanning the ice for sight of the sled. But it was nowhere in sight! Paul panicked and threw himself belly first on the ice. He reached down into the crack. He grasped the sides of the wedged pack and tugged hard. When it didn't immediately move, he twisted it this way and that, shifting it back and forth as he desperately tried to get it loose from where it was stuck.

The pack moved slightly, but Paul had difficulty pulling it to the surface. He considered the situation for a minute as the air in his suit began to chill and grow close. He wondered how many minutes of life remained to him. Was the air running out already? Was the cold creeping in on him?

He had to get that pack out! He tried to slide it to the side as he twisted, and then tried the opposite direction. Then he alternated, switching it right and left as he tugged furiously. Finally, the pack came loose and flopped onto the ice beside him as he went over backwards.

Paul, gasping for breath, brushed the shards of ice from the pack's connectors, making certain that there was nothing to interfere with their seating properly. He positioned himself over the pack and leaned backwards. He shifted slightly and arched his body to bring his suit parallel to the face of the pack. He wiggled around, praying for the connectors to slip into their receptacles before he died from lack of oxygen. Why wouldn't they click home? What was he doing wrong?

Then he felt the primaries click home, followed quickly by the secondaries. Immediately he felt a welcome rush of fresh air flow into the helmet. He breathed deeply. Nothing had ever tasted so sweet.

He pulled himself to his feet and looked into the crack. Farther down, below where he had been wedged, was the sled. There was no way he could reach it, no way he could retrieve it.

He checked the time he had remaining on his pack. It had been eight or nine hours at least since he had activated it. That only gave him another three hours, four at the outside, to find the tower, call Marcus, and be rescued. If he didn't get the tower to send that signal he was going to DIE!

He quickly oriented himself to the giant disk and set off as quickly as he could. His eyes scanned the horizon for some sign of the tower, some evidence that he was nearing his goal. His mother was depending on him, Dolores was depending on him. If he died then they would too - and he would be responsible!

The green and blue dragons continued to curse Paul as seven kinds of a fool. Look at all of your mistakes since setting out, they scoffed. Why had he thought that he could do such a stupid thing? He was just a kid, as his father had told him so many times in the past. He had no business setting out on this insane rescue mission.

Paul wondered; had all this merely been to prove to his father that he could do something brave and difficult - to give his father a reason to be proud of him? But that was a stupid reason, he corrected himself - his father was dead and frozen into the depths of the ice. His critical father was now the companion to the ice dragons. No matter what Paul did there was no way he could ever again impress his father.

There is no way that you will ever hear words of praise from his frozen lips, the dragon promised.

But perhaps it had been Dolores, not his father, that he had been trying to impress. Paul recalled that how he had puffed with pride as he announced that he would bravely set out to save them all. He remembered the admiration that he saw in her eyes. He recalled that brief, sweet touch on his arm, and the quick kiss that followed. Was it for those things that you set out? the dragons asked.

Paul wondered if Dolores had encouraged him to do those things while laughing inside at his childish pretensions. Maybe the kiss was only to encourage him. She knew full well that he probably wouldn't succeed but was willing to let him take the chance to save her life and that of her parents.

What a fool you've been, the dragon crowed as Paul plowed onward, slide and step, slide and step, slide and step until the ice, the song, the keening voices of the dragons, and the steady hiss of the recycler and air blended into a single orchestration of self-pity.

All Paul wanted to do was lie down and rest. After he had something to eat, that is. And drink. To conserve air he was trying not to breathe too deeply. To stretch the pack's power supply he'd cut back on the suit's heaters. As a result his feet were so cold that they'd stopped hurting and felt more like blocks of ice. He could no longer feel his toes. He had to look down to see if his boots were still attached to the skis.

He kept sucking on the dry water nipple but, with the recycler on low, water production was slight to none. Occasionally he managed to get a drop or two out of the reservoir, but it was never enough to slake the fierce thirst he'd developed. He could go without water, he knew that, and the hunger pangs were nothing to worry about. Right now his body was probably burning the fats and sugars in his cells, cannibalizing his own tissues to fuel his efforts as he pushed himself beyond endurance. He tried to ignore his protesting belly.

The ringing in his ears occasionally managed to drown out Europa's song and the dragons' cries, but he didn't know which was preferable.

His hands were numb from the cold that penetrated the gloves. His fingers felt like swollen sausages - deep-frozen sausages at that. Damn, have to stop thinking about food, Paul cautioned himself. Can't risk losing concentration again. Don't want another accident. Had to push on! Had to get to the tower! Had to send the signal that would save his mother and the others! Had to show her that he was as good as his father!

The snow sang a slow tango in time with Paul's heavy movements.

The emptiness in his stomach was constant, nearly overwhelming. It was matched only by the soreness in every muscle of his body. He no longer noticed the pain in his legs, although always alert for any sign of another imminent cramp. He didn't know what he would do if that happened. He didn't have enough time left to deal with another delay. If he fell he would die, he would simply die!

The possibility wasn't that fearful now. Dying, he realized, would provide relief from the hunger, the pain in his arms and legs, and the constant cries of failure from those damned dragons that he still heard whispering in his ears, crying their triumph over his puny efforts to best the ice. He tried to ignore their mocking voices as he pushed forward, driving his legs beyond anything he had ever imagined he could do, driving himself beyond his physical limits.

He started to see the dragons in the murk, or perhaps they were simply snow snakes transformed into fierce and glowering dragon shapes. The green hissed menacingly of his failures to measure up to the standards his family set for him, his physical inadequacies, his lack of foresight, his daydreaming, his false pride. For some reason the blue dragon said little. It remained aloof and cold, intimidating him with its huge, overwhelming presence.

The smaller rose dragon still lurked behind the others. It was a quiet one, scarcely making a sound as it coiled itself over and around, twisting sinuously on the ice, presenting itself in ways at once inviting and menacing. Paul tried to get a clear view of the rose dragon as if faded into and out of sight behind the others. Why, he wondered, wouldn't the blue and the green move out of the way so that the rose could reach him? He tried to focus on it, tried to mentally force the dragons aside so he could understand what the rose promised. He thought that she resembled Dolores in the face, a lovely dragon indeed. Yes, definitely a she dragon!

Paul halted suddenly, teetering to a stop on the edge of a high cliff. It was almost a hundred meters to the plain below. It took a moment for the meaning of the cliff to sink into his weary mind. Somewhere along this ridge must be the tower he was supposed to reach. Paul tried to figure out where the tower might be if not here. He was pretty sure that he'd maintained the right heading, had kept his track as close to a straight line as possible to the tan line. But, if he had done that then where was it? He scanned the ridge from horizon to horizon, searching for some sign of the tower.

It was nowhere to be seen.

He looked across the plain toward Jupiter's giant face. From this close to the meridian he could see nearly 70 percent of the planet's face. He tilted his head to better observe the ruddy planet's glowing orange and brown disk, a friendly globe of apparent warmth among the icy diamonds of its companion stars. He could clearly see the curve of Europa's too near horizon, nearly twenty kilometers away at this height, against the bright rose disk

On the plain down below, halfway to the horizon, was a glint of light, a bright speck in the rosy murk. That, he knew, would be Marcus station, humanity's main habitation. Down there were hundreds of souls, people who could help him, if only he could reach them. If he squinted, he could just barely detect the outline of the Lugh crater in which Marcus station rested. He estimated that the station was merely fifty or sixty kilometers away from the bottom of the cliff. He would have thought that quite close, under normal circumstances, that is.

But before he could traverse that short distance he had to climb down the icy cliff before him. He prayed that he had enough time left on the pack. He was afraid to check his telltales for the grim truth they might reveal.

Nearby he found a rough shelf that ran downward on a slight, twenty-degree slope. It was wide enough for him to walk sideways, but he had to remove his skis to do so. There was no way he could climb down the cliff with them attached. He felt the dragons' critical eyes upon him as he stepped onto the ledge and started down.

The emptiness in his stomach was constant, nearly overwhelming. It was matched only by the soreness in every muscle of his body. He no longer noticed the pain in his legs, although always alert for any sign of another imminent cramp. He didn't know what he would do if that happened. He didn't have enough time left to deal with another delay. If he fell he would die, he would simply die!

The possibility wasn't that fearful now. Dying, he realized, would provide relief from the hunger, the pain in his arms and legs, and the constant cries of failure from those damned dragons that he still heard whispering in his ears, crying their triumph over his puny efforts to best the ice. He tried to ignore their mocking voices as he pushed forward, driving his legs beyond anything he had ever imagined he could do, driving himself beyond his physical limits.

He started to see the dragons in the murk, or perhaps they were simply snow snakes transformed into fierce and glowering dragon shapes. The green hissed menacingly of his failures to measure up to the standards his family set for him, his physical inadequacies, his lack of foresight, his daydreaming, his false pride. For some reason the blue dragon said little. It remained aloof and cold, intimidating him with its huge, overwhelming presence.

The smaller rose dragon still lurked behind the others. It was a quiet one, scarcely making a sound as it coiled itself over and around, twisting sinuously on the ice, presenting itself in ways at once inviting and menacing. Paul tried to get a clear view of the rose dragon as if faded into and out of sight behind the others. Why, he wondered, wouldn't the blue and the green move out of the way so that the rose could reach him? He tried to focus on it, tried to mentally force the dragons aside so he could understand what the rose promised. He thought that she resembled Dolores in the face, a lovely dragon indeed. Yes, definitely a she dragon!

Paul halted suddenly, teetering to a stop on the edge of a high cliff. It was almost a hundred meters to the plain below. It took a moment for the meaning of the cliff to sink into his weary mind. Somewhere along this ridge must be the tower he was supposed to reach. Paul tried to figure out where the tower might be if not here. He was pretty sure that he'd maintained the right heading, had kept his track as close to a straight line as possible to the tan line. But, if he had done that then where was it? He scanned the ridge from horizon to horizon, searching for some sign of the tower.

It was nowhere to be seen.

He looked across the plain toward Jupiter's giant face. From this close to the meridian he could see nearly 70 percent of the planet's face. He tilted his head to better observe the ruddy planet's glowing orange and brown disk, a friendly globe of apparent warmth among the icy diamonds of its companion stars. He could clearly see the curve of Europa's too near horizon, nearly twenty kilometers away at this height, against the bright rose disk

On the plain down below, halfway to the horizon, was a glint of light, a bright speck in the rosy murk. That, he knew, would be Marcus station, humanity's main habitation. Down there were hundreds of souls, people who could help him, if only he could reach them. If he squinted, he could just barely detect the outline of the Lugh crater in which Marcus station rested. He estimated that the station was merely fifty or sixty kilometers away from the bottom of the cliff. He would have thought that quite close, under normal circumstances, that is.

But before he could traverse that short distance he had to climb down the icy cliff before him. He prayed that he had enough time left on the pack. He was afraid to check his telltales for the grim truth they might reveal.

Nearby he found a rough shelf that ran downward on a slight, twenty-degree slope. It was wide enough for him to walk sideways, but he had to remove his skis to do so. There was no way he could climb down the cliff with them attached. He felt the dragons' critical eyes upon him as he stepped onto the ledge and started down.

The ledge narrowed to hardly more than a boot's-width when he was just a hundred meters down the cliff. To continue onward he had to turn to face the cliff. That way his pack wouldn't force him outward over the emptiness. He moved carefully sideways, solidly planting each frozen foot before putting his weight on it. He flexed his body to throw his weight inward, toward the cliff. He moved step after tiny step as his gloves constantly searched for handholds to stabilize and balance him. It was difficult to feel the holds with his frozen fingers, but he managed.

Then his left foot came down on emptiness. The shelf had run out and he was barely one-third of the way down the cliff. Paul strained his neck as much as he could to look along the cliff. He could hear the dragons hissing their poorly concealed humor at his predicament.

Just to his left there were some projections that looked as if they might support his weight, but to reach them he had to reach out further than the tiny steps he had been taking. Once his foot rested on the nearest projection there would be no way that he could recover. There would be no way for him to return.

You've been a fool, the green dragon hissed. Taking foolish chances without checking first. You don't deserve to survive!

Go forward, the blue dragon ordered and offered a coil for Paul to step upon. Come dance with me, the blue invited him. You will die anyway, so you might as well die trying, just like I did.

Paul snapped awake! Was that what the dragons were, phantasms of his father, his critical, unbending, demanding father? But the green wasn't like his father, not at all. His father had been a hard-working, loving man who cared deeply about Paul - that was what all the criticism had been, a way of molding Paul into someone who could defeat the ice. His father's advice had helped him come this far. The blue was right - better to die trying, better to fight to the end!

As best he could tell, it looked as if there were a wide ledge just beyond the footstep. To reach it he would have to step and then, using his momentum, step again to gain the ledge. He would have to dance with the dragon. It would only take one misstep, one missed grip of either hand to send him crashing to his death.

Paul held back for a few minutes to gather his remaining strength. If he moved his right hand over to grip the hold under his left hand, moved his right foot closer, and then moved his left hand to that first bit of projection, then he just might be able to cross the gap to the ledge on the far side.

Paul could feel his heart racing, taste the acid bitterness of his empty stomach in his mouth, and feel the contractions in his scrotum. He had never been so afraid in all of his life, never faced the certainty of his own death so directly.

Dance with me, said the blue dragon. What have you got to lose?

Yes, what were his choices: to return to the top of the cliff and die while watching Jupiter or to hang here until his pack expired and he blacked out? No, he had to make the attempt to reach the shelf. He HAD to dance with the dragon!

He moved his feet into position, braced himself, switched the handholds and lunged. The instant his left foot extended over the precipitous gap, his left hand reached out and he pushed with his right foot as hard as he could.

His left boot struck the projection and he pushed on it, not taking time to even wonder if it would hold, and swung his body over the pivot point. Both hands scrabbled for a hold on the frozen face of the cliff as his momentum continued to carry him across.

Then his left hand contacted something. He pulled desperately just as the projection under his left foot collapsed. For one stomach-wrenching microsecond he was supported only by that single grip, that single point of contact with Europa. His shoulder felt as if it had been pulled from its socket from the strain. He felt his fingers slipping, opening despite anything he could do. He screamed and felt his bowels spasm with raw fear.

His feet struck first, a solid thump as the left and then the right boot struck the ledge. For a moment he teetered on the edge, the pack threatening to overbalance him and tip him backwards into the void. Paul dropped to his knees, his fingers dug into the ice in desperation even as his brain was trying to catch up to events.

Paul pressed his helmet against the surface of the ledge, breathing raggedly as he hugged the ice. He had made it! He had survived the gap. He had danced with his dragon and survived!

He wiggled around so he could sit up and regain his composure. He had to rest for a few moments before he could continue. He stared back at the gap he'd crossed, unbelieving of his good fortune. Had the ledge been on the same level, as he'd thought, there would have been no way he could have reached it.

He gazed across the plain. Marcus was just as close as before. At the same time, Marcus was just as far away. He still had to get down the rest of the damn cliff. He looked to the right to plan his next few moves.

The ledge where he sat continued for another few meters and then disappeared around a corner. Paul struggled to his feet and carefully maneuvered himself to the corner. He peered around to see what his next steps must be.

The corner was the edge of a large crack that ran from the top of the cliff to somewhere far below. The depths of the crack were so dark that he could not tell if the shelf continued further back or not. Certainly it looked as if the crack was getting narrower toward the back, near where it disappeared into the dark. Paul worked his way around the corner, turning once again to face the cliff so that his pack wouldn't get in the way. He proceeded cautiously, feeling blindly with his foot as he moved forward.

Paul was already throwing his weight forward when he stepped onto empty space where he'd expected solid footing. The shelf had stopped abruptly. He reached out desperately, seeking a handhold even as he felt himself falling, falling, falling into the dark.

There was a beeping in his ear when he came to. It was the power supply's warning signal. It must have been damaged in the fall. He couldn't feel his feet and his fingers felt as if they were made of pure ice. He realized that he was lying on his side. He rolled over so that the pack provided a back rest. He willed his left leg to move as he stared at his boot. It didn't move. Nor did his right one. He couldn't even feel the pressure on the backs of his legs. Strange.

Paul looked around. Behind him was the dark crack in the cliff's face. On either side was a steep slope of icy regolith, a shelf formed from the material that must have fallen from the cliff when it cracked. A few meters below his boots was the edge of yet another cliff. Had he slid another few meters more he would have plunged over the edge to his death. He'd been pretty lucky, he thought and laughed for having such a foolish thought.

Lucky! His legs were useless. His power unit was shutting down, judging from the shrill warning beeping that still sounded in his ear. Once that went he would succumb to the cold, or lack of oxygen, or simply sheer exhaustion. The sharp drop-off would have been a merciful end instead of this slow creeping death.

Paul slumped, defeated despite all he had done. He had let his mother and the others down after all. He would die alone, here on this ridge, and they would die waiting for him as their emergency systems ran down and finally failed. No doubt Dolores would curse herself for encouraging his foolish attempt at rescue. She would die cursing him for being so immature. She would curse him for failing her.

One twist and you can end it all, the green dragon whispered temptingly. Paul reached up to touch the fastenings on his helmet. He would die in seconds when the air rushed from his lungs and his skin froze. He gripped the helmet's fastener between thumb and finger and took a deep breath.

Go ahead, what are you waiting for? the green prompted. But Paul's hand would not move. He didn't have the guts to end it all. He didn't have the courage to admit defeat.

If you do this, the blue dragon asked, will your mother cry over you? Will she know how very much you love her?

How could she ever know? Paul cried. You were always the one she loved. You were the one who stood between us. You were the one who kept me in the role of a child who could never measure up!

Before the blue could respond to his accusations a strobe of blue-green shot from the station toward the cliff away off on his right. Of course, Paul realized as he recognized the Wholephore link's signature, he must have come far to the left of the tower. He'd drifted more and more off course as he came along. He'd probably been heading toward the wrong one of Jupiter's bands all along. Well, that wasn't surprising, considering the other ways he had screwed up on this trip.

He wished there was some way he could let Marcus know of their problems, of their desperate need for rescue. He wished that he had a laser to flash at them, a signal to let them know his location. If he could just do that...

But there was no way that he could hope for people from Marcus to reach him in time. The beeping had stopped, meaning that he had only ten minutes or so remaining before the heaters failed and the cold would begin to penetrate his suit and turn him into a frozen corpse. It mattered not that he still had enough oxygen to sustain him for an hour, the cold would kill him before then.

Oxygen? Yes, you have more oxygen than you need, so why not use it for some useful purpose? the blue dragon suggested.

Paul thought furiously, his mind clearer than ever before as the chill began to reach inward. After only a moment's thought he came up with a solution. He could survive for about five minutes on the suit's air and that was long enough to do what he wanted.

First, he carefully wrote out a message for those who would find him, telling them of his mother's desperate plight at Greeley. When that was done he began his final preparations.

With calm assurance he detached his pack and pulled it around into his lap. It was a matter of seconds to remove the recycler and set it on the ice beside the pack. He used his gloved fist to smash a hole in one end and expose the charcoal mixture inside. He next disconnected the twin hoses of the oxygen supply and switched them so that the flow was reversed. This way the unit would send the oxygen back into the recycler and across the charcoal mix.

Paul pulled the battery leads out and positioned them above the hole in the canister, said a brief prayer, opened the feed valve on the oxygen supply, and touched the wires together.

A bright spark jumped across the gap, but nothing else happened. Paul wondered if he had miscalculated. Had he misunderstood the chemistry involved? He touched the wires once again. And a third time.

There was a sudden gout of flame that shot ten meters up into the darkness, a brilliant blue flame that threw the entire area into stark relief. Why blue, Paul wondered, and then realized that the tiny amounts of methane in the atmosphere must be burning as well.

Paul laid back on the ice as the blue flame danced above him. In the flickering shadows he could see all of the dragons dancing, only this time they were dancing in celebration at his joining them.

They were all there, Paul imagined as the cold penetrated his suit and began to creep up his limbs. But the cold was his friend, he realized. The cold would turn him into an ice dragon so that he could join the others who dwelt in the depths of Europa. Yes, he could see the dragons clearly now. He could hear their sweet voices as they sang of Europa's promise and the terrible price she extracted from those who tested the ice.

The blue dragon and the green danced around him, drawing closer and closer. For the first time he could see them clearly. Both had his father's face.

Paul could clearly hear the dragons' voices over Europa's sweet song now.

You have done your best, the blue said. You have conquered the ice, far beyond my-- our --expectations . The blue did a dance to display its pride at this son who had braved the icy wastes to the end of his resources and never gave up in defeat.

Paul noticed that he could no longer feel his arms. Was this a step in the process of being converted to an ice dragon, he wondered? He marvelled at the ease of this transformation as the air grew close and his breath faltered. He was filled with pride for finally gaining blue dragon's acceptance. His heart swelled with joy at the blue dragon's final acceptance of him and he rose to join the dance.

And, as he did so, he began to cry for his poor, dead father.

The rose dragon slid gracefully into the dance. Her delicate movements were full of forbidden promise and loving comfort. She drew closer and closer, singing her lovely, enticing song as she wrapped her sensual coils around Paul, squeezing him in her warm embrace, encompassing his body, and giving him the release and rest that he needed so desperately. As the blue light faded and the darkness rushed in, Paul could finally look directly at the rose dragon.

She had his mother's face.

"Are you awake, Paul?" she said.

Paul jerked. The voice was so different, so harsh compared to her earlier song. What had happened? It felt as if his skin was on fire, as if a thousand pin-pricks were spotting his body. "Wha..." he said in confusion.

"Take it easy. It was touch and go there for while but you made it."

"Father?" Paul asked as he tried to force his eyes open and see the dragon's lair. Surely the rose dragon had brought him to her den to live with her forever and ever. But, why did he feel his arms? Dragons didn't have arms!

A sharp smell of disinfectant and medication assailed his nostrils. In the background he could hear other conversations and the clink and rustle of many people. Then he felt the bandages across his face and the wrappings that covered his hands.

He still couldn't feel his legs.

"They found you from the flare you set," his mother's voice continued. "That was very clever, using your pack as a flare to let them know where you were."

"They rescued you?" Paul mumbled. For some reason he still couldn't seem to open his eyes. His message had worked! His sacrifice hadn't been in vain!

"Oh yes, the rescue party arrived about twenty hours after the quake," his mother continued. "They would have gotten there sooner but there were a half dozen other habs that were affected. We weren't the last, nor the first. They sent out people to find you right away."

"Dolores?" Paul said. "Is she all right?"

"Yes, and her boyfriend says he really wants to thank you for the help you gave her. She is so proud of you - wants to make you her honorary little brother, she says."

"Wonderful," Paul grumbled, starting to feel more like himself. Little brother indeed. What did she know anyhow? He didn't need her anymore. He didn't need anybody anymore.

"It's such a pity," his mother said, shaking her head sadly as she stroked his cheek. "Such a shame that you had to go through all of that for nothing."

Nothing? How could she say that, Paul wondered? His trek hadn't been in vain. He had won against the worst that Europa had thrown at him! He had defeated the ice and the dark! He had conquered his inner fears!

He had danced with dragons.

Web site © 2001 BiblioBytes, except where otherwise noted. Literary works presented with permission of copyright owner. All rights reserved. Transcript by New Look on April 2001.