The Last Trump by Asimov Isaac

Author:Asimov, Isaac [Asimov, Isaac]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

12

They reached the pass late the next afternoon.

Before making camp, they had descended a good two thousand feet of the eastern slopes. Even standing on the brink of the pass, so far above the valley where Perdune lay, they could not see the tops of the gigantic mountains around them. Clouds obscured the towering peaks and gave the illusion that there really was no stopping place for them. Two thousand feet down, they found an overhang which sheltered a piece of land from the wind and from the worst of the driving sheets of snow which had become so dense as to almost bar their progress.

The cold had been unbelievable for the last several hours, dropping to forty-one degrees below zero, so that frostbite was a constant danger. The commander would have preferred to move down at least another five thousand feet where it might be as much as thirty and surely no less than twenty degrees warmer. But the men, sapped by the day-long battle with the wind and the cold and the snow which nearly blinded them, could not have managed the descent. There would have been more deaths, and no one wanted to risk that. When the overhang was found, the old man made the decision to remain there, using up all their stores of fuel in the hopes of making it far enough down the next day to be able to survive the following night without fuel.

Fires were built, and special duty rosters were established to take care of them. The windbreakers were strung across the front of the overhang, attached to the jutting rock above and driven into the stone below. The heat was held in where the men huddled, but even so it would be a chilly night indeed.

Commander Richter stopped by the spot where the Shaker and his boys sat bundled together, eating the plentiful meal that Daborot had prepared for them. “It seems like the last meal before the execution,” the Shaker said.

“I should hope it isn’t,” the commander said. “How are you? The men complain of great tiredness. Tomorrow may take us down most of the way if we don’t despair too much.”

“If they let themselves grow weary,” Mace said, “I’ll carry them. I never despair.”

“Yes, a sorrow that we don’t all have your foolish cheerfulness in times like this,” Gregor said, grinning at his step-brother.

“I’m passing an order that all men will sleep in groups of five or six during the night,” the commander said. “Each man in his sleeping bag, and each group further wrapped in a length of canvas. We will need all the warmth we have to pass the night alive.”

“The three of us will be all right together,” Mace said.

“I had thought you would not want anyone else in your wrappings,” Richter said. “It is just as well. I think the other men may be safer this way, since only two of any five or six could be the assassins. And even if they get into the same group, they will be outnumbered.

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.