Mental Contact by Beth Martin

Author:Beth Martin [Martin, Beth]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: Beth Martin Books
Published: 2018-03-19T22:00:00+00:00

•••

After walking for several hours, I needed to take a break. I sat down on the soft red sand and positioned my flashlight on the ground to illuminate the area around me. I only had a few pouches of water in my kit, but enough rations to last a hundred days.

I huddled under two thin blankets and ate a chewy ration bar then washed it down with two pouches of water. Thankfully, the atmosphere on Zeta was humid. The water-collecting buds on the bottoms of each pouch would refill them. But in the extreme cold on the dark side of the planet, I didn’t know if there was enough moisture in the air for the buds to keep up with my thirst.

How far had I gone? With the increased gravity, my speed was bound to be a bit slow, but the terrain was easy, and I had been walking for at least the equivalent of a work shift. My guess was I had traveled fifteen miles or so.

Look at the stars, you idiot.

I laid back and pulled the blankets tightly under my chin, then looked from one constellation to the next, focusing finally on Sirius low on the horizon. Was it any lower than it had been when I had began walking?

Even though I hadn’t thought to reference it earlier, it wouldn’t hurt to measure the angle between the star and the horizon. Even though I couldn’t actually see where Zeta ended and the sky began, I could spot the line where the splattering of stars suddenly gave way to flat darkness.

I pulled a circle of paper from my kit which would have been used to filter running water if there had been any. I folded it in half and removed a lace from one of my boots. I tied one end to the middle of the filter and attached a ration to the other end to use as a weight. With my makeshift inclinometer, I measured how high in the night sky Sirius was. After marking where the lace hit the filter I now had the angle above the horizon.

Doing a few calculations in my head, I figured out the approximate distance to the dusk belt—about 1600 miles. It felt like my heart quit beating for a moment and my breath froze in place. There was no way I could walk that far in this cold. I started to shiver under my blankets. What was I supposed to do?

After feeling sorry for myself for a while, it dawned on me that I had heard her. “Lola,” I called out into the darkness. “What should I do?”

There’s nothing you can do. Just get some sleep.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.