monitored its body for a moment (dead still, frozen), then prodded it and finally shot it once through
the head, just to be sure.
It was in standard fleet-ground-force uniform, and it had been wounded some time ago, badly. It looked like it had suffered
from frostbite
earlier, too, before it had died of its wounds and frozen. It was a male, grizzled, its green-brown skin leathery
with age, its long muzzle-face and
small delicate-looking hands deeply lined.
He looked down the dark tunnel.
Smooth fused floor, smooth arched walls, the tunnel went on into the mountainside. Blast doors made ribs along the tunnel
sides, their
tracks and slots carved across the floor and roof. He could see the elevator-shaft doors, and the boarding point
for the service-tube capsules.
He walked along, past the sets of ancient blast doors, until he came to the access shafts.
The elevators were all at the bottom; the transit tube
was locked shut. No power seemed to be running through any of the systems.
He turned and walked back to the accommodation section,
through it and past the bodies and the flyer without giving them a
glance, and eventually out into the open air.
He sat down at the side of the tunnel entrance, in the snow, his back to the rock. They saw him from the
CAT,
and Yalson said, “Horza! Are
you all right."
“No," he said, turning the laser rifle off. “No, I’m not."
“What’s wrong." Yalson said quickly. Horza took the suit helmet off, putting it down on the snow beside him. The cold air
sucked heat from
his face, and he had to breathe hard in the thin atmosphere.
“There is death here," he said to the cloudless sky.