FALLEN ANGELS

"Piranha, da. Eto Mir. We relay you. Please to be standink by."

He waited. Freedom would be below the horizon. Fortunately, there was always something in the sky. The RCA communications satellites, capable of relaying half the long-distance calls of the world, only the world didn't want them anymore. Now this splendid system, capable of thousands of simultaneous calls, served the space stations and the few people on Earth who wanted to talk to them.

"Alex, this is Mary. What is it?" Alex thought she sounded tired, and who could blame her? She had been standing by in Mission Control ever since the launch. She must have been catnapping right at the console. Quickly and concisely, he told her of their IR visibility.

"I don't know what we can do about that, Alex, except to keep you posted on troop movements so you can avoid them. Their search planes have been quartering steadily southeast toward your position."

"Give them decoys."

"Say again?"

"Give them bogeys. I've got it scoped out. Have SUNSAT beam down a few hotspots here and there around the glacier. If they're, looking for IR targets, let's give 'em their heart's desire."

Mary fell silent and Alex could sense her working through the calculations. Power was the one thing besides people that the habitats could spare. Space was full of power, supplied by a friendly, all-natural nuclear fusion generator. All you had to do was catch it…

SUNSAT did that. The U.S. government had nearly completed a demonstration power satellite before the Congress changed their minds and proxmired it. They'd needed the money for dairy farm subsidies or corporate bailouts or something else real useful. The entire space budget, start to finish, was less than what HEW had spent in a decade, less than the cost overruns at the Defense Department; but space was "frills," so they always cut there first. The station had floated in orbit, nickels and dimes away from being operational, until the crunch came and the habitats decided to cut loose from Earth.

Peace and Freedom had pooled their resources and finished SUNSAT, so light, heat and power were the few things that Mary never worried about. The space habitats might starve, or asphyxiate, or die in a solar flare; but they would have power.

"Roger, Piranha," Mary said finally. "I will check with Wi

Alex could tell when Lo

"Wi

Wi

"Understood, Piranha. I will let you know."

Alex cut contact. So far, Lo

Good old Lon. No wonder he loved him so much.

The first search planes broke the southwestern horizon to the right a half hour later. Tiny black specks in the white sky drifted slowly back and forth as they circled. Sherrine throttled back on the snowmobile and watched them.

They look like vultures," she said.

Alex wasn't sure what a vulture was, but it sounded unpleasant. "Are they coming this way?" He asked in a whisper, not because he thought the search planes could overhear, but because the cold air had made his throat hoarse.

"No," said Mike, the sledge driver. "But that's the good news."

"What's the bad news?" Alex asked.

"The search planes are moving west," said Sherrine. "Whether they know it or not, they've cut us off from Pop-pop's farm. Damn! Another half hour and we'd have been home."

"Can we go around them somehow? Or head somewhere else?"

She shook her head. "Bob and the van are waiting at the farm. If we go somewhere else, how will he know where to find us?"

Oh, that part is easy," Alex said. "Pick some coordinates--does Bob have a Navstar link too? No? Then pick a place that he'll know how to find. I'll tell Big Momma; and Big Momma can tightbeam the contact person--"

"The Oregon Ghost."

Whatever that meant. "And then this ghost can call Bob at your grandparents' place."

"That's easy?"

Alex gri

"All right. I'll tell the others." She pointed to the other sledge. "Your friend's awake."

Gordon was watching Alex from within his cocoon of blankets on the other edge. Alex tried to grin, but his face was nearly frozen.

"We live," Gordon said.

"Da. How're you feeling?"

"Not good," Gordon said. "These are droogs?"

"Da. Good friends." And they can hear anything I say, so I can't tell him Mission Control says they may be a trifle weird.

"It was--almost good landing," Gordon said. "I read once that any landing you walk away from is good. But we do not walk."

"Not just yet."

"It is cold. I see why you laugh when I think that because it only freezes water it is not cold. It is very cold." With an effort Gordon pulled a scarf over his face.

"I didn't mean to laugh--" No response. Alex drew his own scarf over his mouth so that only his eyes, protected by sunglasses, were exposed, and turned his head away from the wind. Can't blame him if he's a bit surly. All my goddam fault we're here. But we needed the goddam nitrogen.

So what about the nitrogen that was already in the tanks? Eh, Lo

"Is difficult to move," Gordon said. Alex could barely hear him. "How do people live in this? I try to sleep now."

He didn't, though. Alex could see that. Gordon wrapped himself up, but he watched everything.

The conference ended and Mike and Sherrine returned to the sledge.

"Problem?" he asked.

"We have a place. I don't like it," Sherrine said. "But it's the only possible one."

Steve Mews and Thor set their goggles, dug their poles into the ice, and whisked forth. Their job was to scout ahead for crevasses and other obstacles. "So where to?" Alex asked Sherrine when she resumed her seat.

"Brandon."

"How far is that?"

"About a hundred fifty kilometers across the Ice."

Alex didn't say anything for a while, doing some arithmetic in his head. About ten hours' travel, assuming a reasonable pace. He glanced at the sun, wondering how many hours of daylight were left. It was already high in the sky, and the earth seemed to be spi