FALLEN ANGELS

"I'm cold," said Gordon. "But my readouts tell me it's only minus fifteen degrees Celsius. That doesn't make any sense. Neg fifteen isn't very cold."

"Ever hear of wind chill, Gordo?"

"Wind chill. No, what is?"

Oh, Gordo, Gordo. Of course he didn't know. The only wind in Freedom was Lo

"Yes? Is why we need radiators on the station."

"Uh-huh." The main problem in the habitats was to keep from roasting. No one ever heard of too cold. "Well, what if the air around your body was constantly moved away and replaced by fresh, unheated air. It would seem colder, wouldn't it?"

Gordon thought that one over. "I guess so."

"Look, as your body heat warms the surrounding air, it reduces the heat fall and the rate of heat loss slows. So you feel warmer. But keep the cold air coming in and you'll dump your excess calories faster. It's--What did you say, minus fifteen degrees Celsius? The wind is enough to lift granular ice particles. Call it forty kilometers per hour. So the temperature feels as if it were, oh, minus thirty seven degrees Celsius."

"Alex."

"What?"

"Well, it doesn't help me feel any warmer, but at least when I freeze to death, I'll know why."

Okay, Gordo, be a snot. But he's right. We are not going to make it. It was too cold, and Brandon was too far. The space suits, with their heaters, had been left behind with the scoopship. They would have been incriminating, too hard to dispose of; and the trip was supposed to have been a short one. The suits wouldn't have saved them anyway. Sherrine and the others would freeze; Gordon and Alex could wait on their backs until the batteries gave out. Better that they all go together.

It was getting colder and the wind was picking up. And it wasn't just Gordo depending on him. There were these Downers as well. It was his fault they were out here. Sure, he was going to freeze along with them; but do passengers really feel better because the captain went down with his ship? Soon enough, he and his friends would be frozen as solid as those children in the car.

"It's not a bad way to go," Thor said softly.

Alex looked up. Thor knew. He had the most experience with the Ice, and he knew.

"You get sleepier and sleepier. Then you don't wake up," Thor said. "They say it's even easier if you don't fight it."

"And do you give up?"

Thor shrugged. "I probably won't. But I won't last much longer than you do."

The glacier at night was as dark as the leeside of Freedom Station. But Freedom Station could turn on the spotlights for EVA work. Alex didn't think any of the rescue party had realized how dark it would be. They hadn't expected to still be on the Ice come nightfall; so he couldn't blame them for not brining any flashlights. They had only the two that Sherrine's grandfather kept in the kits strapped to each sledge, and a small trouble light salvaged from Piranha. They didn't make much light; but, with them and with ropes tying everyone together, Bruce could hope that no one would get lost in the dark. If only there were some way to turn on the spotlights.

Spotlights. By God!

"Something interesting?" Thor asked.

"Damn right, if I can raise the ship. You don't need the Sun to get heat from the sky."

"Onk?"

"You'll see. I hope. Aim the ante

Sherrine looked around with a frown.

"Alex--"

"Shut up, Gordon! Big Momma, Big Momma, this is Piranha. Mayday."

Captain Lee Arteria relaxed in a chair well to the side of the meeting room, the better to watch the proceedings. One should always have a clear field of fire, just in case. Several of the other attendees threw repeated glances in that direction. Arteria, returning their gazes, could almost read their minds. Slim and fine-featured, pointed chin; short-cropped red hair; noncommittal first name, and a grip like a Junkyard dog. Gay man or butch woman? They couldn't tell. It made them uneasy.

Arteria parted her lips in a thin faint smile. They were bothered less by the thought that she might be skew than by not knowing the direction of skew. They liked to put people in categories, even unorthodox categories. It was more comfortable than dealing with individuals and their idiosyncrasies. Deny them that and you put them at a disadvantage. Arteria liked to leave it like that. It was always sound tactics to leave your opponents at a disadvantage.

"Can we take it then," said Ike Redden, "that the subjects have died on the Ice?" Redden represented the INS on the Special Task Force. He was also the chair. Inter-service wrangling and high-level compromise had left the Immigration and Naturalization Service in nominal charge of the search. The space stations had declared their independence almost a generation ago; so their residents were, ipsofacto, aliens. And illegal immigration was, according to counsel, the most impeccable grounds for apprehension of the stranded astronauts. Still, Arteria was sure that all the task force members were looking for ways to bend the mission to their own advantages.

The State Police captain shook his head. "I don't see how they could have gotten off the Ice before nightfall without being apprehended."

Arteria could think of three or four ways. She kept her peace. The others were paid to do the thinking.

"There was no one aboard the spacecraft when we found it." Air Force was reluctant to mention finding the craft; no doubt because it had taken so long to do so. Never mind that the shuttle was painted a reflective silver; that it blended into the surrounding ice; that it had apparently been deliberately buried. The failure to achieve instant results was always ammunition for one's opponents. "We assume that the astronauts wandered out onto the Ice and froze. We've done IR scans of the immediate area and found no trace of them. So their bodies must have cooled to ambient. We may never find them."

"They are not dead."

Captain Arteria sighed quietly. Staff meetings were always tedious, especially to the worker bees; but even tedium was better than listening to Shirley Johnson. Redden sucked on his lips and exchanged glances with the State Police and Air Force representatives. "Why do you say that, Johnson?" he asked.

"Ice is a crystal, and crystals focus the life power. Yes, yes, I know people have frozen on the Ice in spite of that; but all sickness comes from negative thinking. One must be open to the life-affirming powers of the crystal."

"The aliens are technophiles, pointed out Jheri Moorkith, the Green representative, and therefore life-denying. However, I agree that they have escaped. Why else would the techno-scientific elite in their artificial worlds have beamed their death rays at the search teams?"

"There were tracks in the snow," State Police admitted, "weren't there, Captain Arteria?"

"There certainly were." Arteria's voice was a husky contralto. No sexual clues there, either. Nor clues of any sort. Arteria intended to participate as little as possible in the conference. The Angels weren't any threat to the United States, and tracking them down was using resources better employed for something else.

"The tracks came to the spaceship from the south. We lost them on the hard ice," State Police continued. "But they were headed toward the interior. There's no chance of finding tracks at night, but come morning we'll start a search pattern around the projected route. The tracks looked like dogsleds, though.

Air Force spoke up. "One of our IR searches turned up a bogey to the east, on the Mi