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I didn't like to leave Marilyn and Marcel, but I knew if anything happened to me, they'd be taken care of. There were lots more men than women among us.
Nelson's orders were to go up the canyon, climb onto the plateau, find livestock, and drive them down to the people. Even Haven's day wouldn't last forever, so we were to leave right away. No one knew whether it would be too dark to travel in the canyon after sundown.
No one knew if it was possible to herd sheep or cattle down from the plateau, either, assuming we were able to steal some. We didn't even know for sure that a man could get up there from the canyon. But we didn't have any choice. If we failed, the people would starve.
We started. The top of the plateau wasn't much higher than the mesa top, but the hike was uphill. Judging from what I'd read, the partial pressure of oxygen on top was probably about the same as at 5,000 meters on Earth. That made breathing about as hard as on the Tibetan Plateau. We'd all been living at 1,800-2,500 meters on Earth-1,830 at Mescalero, I remember-but we'd just spent thirteen months on a ship with the oxygen pressure about like on Earth at sea level. So we spent a lot of time stopped, sucking air through our mouths and sweating. When we stopped for real breaks, Nelson would ask questions about Haven.
The afternoon sun didn't get down into the canyon bottom, which ran pretty much north and south, so it wasn't very hot, but the hard work made us sweat. I was glad we had a creek beside us most of the way, to drink from. I was also glad that the gravity on Haven is only 0.91 Earth normal.
Most of us were in our twenties or late teens-I was almost the oldest at thirty-four-but even so, some of them got pretty sick, probably what they call altitude sickness on Earth. On top of that, a Jicarilla named Juan Cruz, up in front a ways, was charged and badly bitten by something that looked like a short-jawed crocodile. It would have killed him right there, but two Navajos started hitting it with big rocks. A couple of the rocks they couldn't have lifted ordinarily. Cruz's right leg was almost torn off at the knee, and he lost a lot of blood before we got it stopped with a tourniquet. He looked more gray man brown. Nelson assigned three guys who'd been having altitude sickness to take him back to the people.
It seemed to me he'd never make it. I'd read about land gators-that's what the first settlers had named them. They're a kind of hibernating, warm-blooded version of the komodo dragon on Earth. Usually if one of them bites you, you get blood poisoning.
It was dusk in the canyon when Nelson and I climbed over the lip and onto the plateau. We were damp with sweat, but the air was already getting cold. The sun was setting when the last men reached the top-the last of the 182 that made it that day. There were others strung out behind for maybe a couple of miles, too sick to go on. It was pretty flat on top, and the vegetation was a little different than on the mesa; there was less grass, and quite a lot of a knee-high shrub. Here and there were small patches of a bigger shrub, chest high and with lots of thorns.
We had no way to make fires, and a raiding party in unknown territory shouldn't have fire at night anyway. So we paired up for sleeping, two guys huddled together, with two blankets and a tent cloth under us and the same on top. Nelson was my partner. Most of us had been picked up as guerrilla, and had gloves, winter caps, and jackets in our bedrolls. We wore those too. I could have used some water, but the nearest we knew of was a mile and a half back down the canyon.
Nelson assigned sentry duty, two men on a shift, using watches that were either luminous or would light up. It gets dark fast at that latitude, especially where the air is so thin. It was already deep twilight when we lay down, and in spite of the hard lumpy ground, I was asleep in a few minutes.
The first time I woke up, it was with a leg cramp. I scrambled out of the covers and walked it off, being careful not to step on anyone. It was dark, and through the thin, clear air, the sky was beautiful. It was also cold, and I was cold. When the cramp was gone, I walked out beyond where the men were sleeping, and urinated, then looked at my watch. I'd slept for two hours. That was the longest single, undisturbed piece of sleep I'd have that night. The rest of the night I drifted in and out of dreams and half-dreams. Even asleep I was aware how cold it was, and while I didn't get another cramp, my legs felt strange. They wanted to squirm. Also my thighs and buttocks were stiffening up from the hiking. It was impossible not to squirm and jerk, and Nelson was as bad as I was; maybe worse. Huddling together for warmth, we were closer than Siamese twins, which made the squirming and jerking even worse. Add to that being thirsty . . . We weren't used to being so cold and thirsty. It got worse as the hours passed, and I was awake more and asleep less.
Even so, dimday took me by surprise. I'd dozed, and slept through the rising of Cat's Eye. It made a kind of dawn, and the gas giant loomed above the horizon, looking big! A lot Digger than the moon does on Earth. It was a thick crescent of reflected white, and in the cradle of the crescent, the rest of it glowed a dull, banded red, about as bright as the coals in a campfire. I could see a long way across the plateau top now, though not details; it was a lot lighter than full moonlight.
I nudged Nelson Tsinajini. "Nelson," I said, "it's morning."
He grunted, uncurled a little, and half sat up to look around. "Some morning," he said, and shivered "When does the sun come up?"
I looked at my watch; it was about ten hours since we'd laid down to sleep. "In about thirty hours," I told him. He swore in English; Nelson preferred English for swearing.
I could tell from the thickness and direction of Cat's Eye's crescent about where the sun was on the other side of Haven. It agreed with what my watch told me. "Is this as light as it's going to get till then?" he asked.
"It should get lighter," I told him. "Cat's Eye should go through most of the phases before sunup. It ought to be pretty light out when it's full."
"Well shit!" Nelson groaned, folded back the covers, and got up stiffly. "We might as well get started," he muttered, and looked around. Then, changing to Navajo, he shouted, "Everybody up!"
It took a couple of minutes. When everyone was on their feet, Nelson made us all run in place to warm up. It helped some. He took his knife and cut thorny stakes about a meter long from the biggest pieces of shrub wood he could find, and pushed them in the ground to mark where the trail was, out of the canyon. Then he had us roll our packs, keeping a ration out inside our shirts, and we started to hike again, away from the rim. He said we'd eat after we warmed up more. It seemed to me it must be near freezing, and I suspected it wouldn't warm up much, if at all, till sunup; it was more likely to get colder. After walking for about ten minutes-I remember that; I still had the white man's habit of looking at my watch-we came to a pool, and Nelson called a halt so we could drink and eat.
He was quiet while we ate. When we were done, he called three squad leaders over. "I'm going to hold most of us here," he told them, "and send your squads out to explore, to see if you can find where the livestock is.
"Frank, I'm sending Carl here with you." He put his hand on my shoulder. "Carl is Chippewa, adopted into the Mescalero, but he talks good Navajo. He's reservation raised, in Mi
Frank nodded. Frank Begay was the only man in the raiding party who was older than me. He'd been a medicine chief. Too bad I would never get to know him well.