sole-plate of the strider slipped with a dull grinding sound, sending great numbers of stones rolling down, knocked from their ice settings, but these slips did not threaten a fall. Parvis merely changed his gait so as to fix each step into the frozen snow crust, using the spikes of his heels, which made him proceed more slowly than before. He descended a bulging slope between two gullies, stamping with stubborn exaggeration, until arcing sprays of ice rattled on his shin guards and knee shields. He strained his eyes to see into the valley, whose bottom now appeared through gaps in the mist, and the lower he went, the more the black finger of the Promontory towered over him, rising above the distant, milky clouds. In this way he reached the level of the fluffy fog that floated evenly and slowly as over unseen water; it flowed around his thighs, his hips; one puff of cloud enwrapped him and the cabin, but vanished as if blown away. For a few moments yet the Black Finger loomed above the feathery whiteness—like a club of rock jutting out of an arctic sea, unmoved amid the foam and floes. But then it disappeared, as from the view of a diver submerging.
He stopped, listened; he thought that he could hear an intermittent thin, high tone. Turning the Digla now to the left, now to the right, he waited for the plaintive note, quite clear, to sound in both ears equally. This was not Grail itself but the directional radio beacon of the Promontory. He was supposed to head straight for it, and if he deviated from that path, the intermittent signal would split in two, depending on the deviation: going too far to the right, in the perilous direction of the Depression, he would hear in his right ear a warning squeal; and if he strayed the opposite way, toward the impassable, sheer walls, the signal would sound in a less urgent but nevertheless error-indicating bass, in the left ear. The odometer read a hundred miles. The greater, mechanically more difficult part of the trail was behind him. The more treacherous part lay before him, wrapped in depths of mist. Massive clouds now darkened overhead; the visibility was to several hundred meters; the aneroid barometer verified that the syncline trough of the Depression began here—or, more precisely, its mercifully solid rim. He walked, using his eyes as well as his ears, since the region was brightened by snow—frozen carbon dioxide, of course, and the anhydrides of other solidified gases.
Sometimes an erratic boulder protruded from their whiteness, the mark of a glacier that had once come from the north, packed itself into the rift of this volcanic massif, deepened it southward with its creeping body, like a plow, and put into the ground ice great hunks of rock. Later, retreating, or melting from the magma heat that came from deep within Titan, the glacier spat out and left behind a moraine, scattered in a disorderly retreat. The landscape reversed itself: as if laying out a wintry day at the bottom and then covering it with a night of impenetrable clouds. Parvis did not even have his own shadow now for a companion. He stepped steadily, sinking into the snow his steel boots, covered with the dust of tiny crystals, and in his wide-angle rearview mirrors he could see his own tracks, tracks worthy of a tyrannosaur, that greatest of the biped predators of the Mesozoic. Glancing back, he checked that his trail was staying straight. For an indeterminate time, however, he had an odd feeling, an impression that grew in strength but which he dismissed as impossible: that he was not alone in the cabin, that behind his back there was another man. The presence of the man was given away by his breathing. Finally, the illusion made him so nervous (he did not doubt that it was an illusion, caused, perhaps, by the fatigue of listening to the same, monotonous radio signal) that he held his breath. The other gave a long, unmistakable sigh. This could not be an illusion. In his astonishment, Parvis tripped,
He stopped, listened; he thought that he could hear an intermittent thin, high tone. Turning the Digla now to the left, now to the right, he waited for the plaintive note, quite clear, to sound in both ears equally. This was not Grail itself but the directional radio beacon of the Promontory. He was supposed to head straight for it, and if he deviated from that path, the intermittent signal would split in two, depending on the deviation: going too far to the right, in the perilous direction of the Depression, he would hear in his right ear a warning squeal; and if he strayed the opposite way, toward the impassable, sheer walls, the signal would sound in a less urgent but nevertheless error-indicating bass, in the left ear. The odometer read a hundred miles. The greater, mechanically more difficult part of the trail was behind him. The more treacherous part lay before him, wrapped in depths of mist. Massive clouds now darkened overhead; the visibility was to several hundred meters; the aneroid barometer verified that the syncline trough of the Depression began here—or, more precisely, its mercifully solid rim. He walked, using his eyes as well as his ears, since the region was brightened by snow—frozen carbon dioxide, of course, and the anhydrides of other solidified gases.
Sometimes an erratic boulder protruded from their whiteness, the mark of a glacier that had once come from the north, packed itself into the rift of this volcanic massif, deepened it southward with its creeping body, like a plow, and put into the ground ice great hunks of rock. Later, retreating, or melting from the magma heat that came from deep within Titan, the glacier spat out and left behind a moraine, scattered in a disorderly retreat. The landscape reversed itself: as if laying out a wintry day at the bottom and then covering it with a night of impenetrable clouds. Parvis did not even have his own shadow now for a companion. He stepped steadily, sinking into the snow his steel boots, covered with the dust of tiny crystals, and in his wide-angle rearview mirrors he could see his own tracks, tracks worthy of a tyrannosaur, that greatest of the biped predators of the Mesozoic. Glancing back, he checked that his trail was staying straight. For an indeterminate time, however, he had an odd feeling, an impression that grew in strength but which he dismissed as impossible: that he was not alone in the cabin, that behind his back there was another man. The presence of the man was given away by his breathing. Finally, the illusion made him so nervous (he did not doubt that it was an illusion, caused, perhaps, by the fatigue of listening to the same, monotonous radio signal) that he held his breath. The other gave a long, unmistakable sigh. This could not be an illusion. In his astonishment, Parvis tripped,
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