She must find rock, bare rock, amid a universe of ice and snow, to lose her trail on. Then she had to find some kind of shelter. She was getting tired, so incredibly tired. She stumbled over a snow-covered pile of rubble and fell, striking her shoulder against a massive boulder.
No, not a boulder. Too big. A cliff face. God, if she could only just see where she was! If she could just lie here for a second and close her eyes... Jon, dammit, where are you?
She snapped her eyes open and forced herself to her hands and knees. Move, you stupid bitch! Don't you remember? There's no one in the world you can depend on but yourself. Everyone else dies on you. Move! You're losing time and distance! The lights are getting closer.
Randi got to her feet and moved on, her right hand brushing the cliff face as a guide. What the hell did the world look like around her? All she could see were differing shades and textures of darkness.
They were well above the science station now. The cliff face was on her right, so she must be going west. Off to her left would be essentially nothing, the downslope. How steep would the drop-off be along here? Somehow it "felt" like another cliff edge. So she was on a ledge or shelf, then. What was ahead? That was impossible to say, but the ledge seemed to be tilting outward in an ominous trend.
She didn't have to look back. She knew what was behind her.
Randi could be sure of only one thing. She wasn't going to be taken. If she reached a dead end, she must find a way to make her pursuers kill her.
She heard the rattle of a machine-gun burst, and she instinctively threw herself facedown on the ledge before she realized there were no bullet strikes nearby. They weren't that close yet. Someone back there was getting trigger-happy.
Randi's relief lasted only a second. From somewhere above her she both heard and felt a deep, almost explosive crump. The reverberations of the gunfire had broken a snow cornice loose. Avalanche! Where? In front of her? Behind her? On top of her? It was impossible to tell beyond "close." She cowered and threw her arms over her face.
There was a brief whispering rumble, and the ledge trembled. Feathery plumes of sprayed snow engulfed her, but there was no crushing impact, no frozen flood sweeping her away. After a wired, panicky moment she relaxed and dropped her arms. It had been only a small one. A few tons of freed snow at most, and it had passed a few yards ahead. She shook off the thin haze of snow that had caked atop her, and got back to her feet.
The question now was, could she get over the mound of loose snow that would be heaped on the ledge without losing herself over the side? Too bad it hadn't fallen between her and the search party. It might have done her some good then.
Randi's mind locked up for a second, then raced. The slide had done her some good. Possibly it had given her a chance.
What if her pursuers found her tracks leading up to the edge of the slide and then stopping? Would they think she had been swept away? They couldn't be happy with being out here tonight, either. Maybe an excuse to quit the search would be all they'd need.
She took two or three strides forward to reach the edge of the loose slide snow. This would be it. She would have to go straight upslope from this point, and it didn't matter what the cliff face might look like even if she could see it.
And then there was the other problem: her lack of gloves. So far she'd been able to protect her hands inside the overlength sleeves of the outer shirts she wore. But she would need them to climb with. How long would she have before she started to take skin damage at this temperature? Two minutes? Three?
There was one positive. The face immediately above her couldn't be too high. The falling snow had reached the ledge in only a couple of seconds. She looked over her shoulder. The flashlights were growing brighter. She had to act, now!
Randi pulled the sleeves back from her hands and sprang upward as far as she could. Her nails scrabbled across ice-sheathed rock; one tore in a stab of pain; then she caught a handhold.