Cold, frigid blackness had shrouded the Ice-Cap Mountains in a veritable cloak of obscurity.
The shivering Jeanette, who had never experienced such freezing numbness in all her life, had little more than a thin, full-bodied cotton jumpsuit to keep her warm. The soughing wind whipped her long, tangled mat of hair sloppily about her shoulders. Jeanette had long since lost all feeling in her hands, fingers, and toes (none of which, aside from a pair of open-toed sandals, had any coverings), and she was no longer certain if she had a nose. Jeanette, who had at first been so grateful to be alive after the harrowing plummet of their battered escape pod into the dense, misty atmosphere of this esoteric world, now would have welcomed Death with open arms. Her teeth chattered, her muscles had gone rigid, and the mushroom-like puffs of breath that escaped her lips froze into tiny ice-sparkles, which shattered with a fine tinkle once they struck the ground.
Only the young soldier, Julian, who had snatched Jeanette into the pod with him in the final moments before the U.S.S. Celestial had met its demise, pressed on grimly as though life still had purpose. Jeanette could barely see him now; he was but a small speck perhaps three hundred yards away, partially hidden by whorls of snow-flake laden wind that transformed the foreign, alien-looking plant life into looming stumps that twisted forebodingy. She could only make out the dull, digital print of his U.S. Army AC uniform and the ratty headful of thick, auburn hair, pulled this way and that by capricious gales. Julian had wrestled a thick, gnarled bough out of a partially frozen stream at the beginning of their ascent up the mountain to help him climb from ledge to rocky ledge; he had entreated the miserable Jeanette to do the same, but she hadn't had the strength.
I wasn't made for this, Jeanette thought darkly as she struggled to heave herself up on a particularly slick boulder. The painful nip of frigid ice burned her palms, and she bit her lip to keep from crying out. She could not seem like a helpless girl in front of this Julian-- not now. Not when he was potentially all she had left.
This wasn't supposed to happen. The U.S.S. Celestial was indestructible. General Ames had said so himself! Oh, how could I have been so naive?
"Julian! Julian, are you still up there?" She shaded her eyes and strained to peer up into the rocky trail that wound through the gray rock of the mountain range, but the wind carried her thin voice away, and she could no longer see him. It was as though the blinding snow had simply erased him; she was alone. Panic fought to set in.
"Julian, wait!" Desperate now, Jeanette hopped down from the boulder, painfully twisting one ankle, and struggled on to the next obstacle: a series of slippery stones that dotted the way across a frozen creek on the way to higher ground. The frozen banks were speckled with stiff shrubbery and wilted blossoms whose petals had long since fallen away and died; Jeanette approached the creek timidly and peered inside, shocked when she could see the large outline of what looked like an enormous, dark fish meandering slowly through the waters beneath the frozen layer of ice. So there was life on this world: alien life. She had seen the first evidence of it; what other enemies lurked? Where there humanoids, like the E.T.s that Dr. Zales had sometimes employed in his gynecology office? Or were the native life more threatening-- more deadly?
Would the two of them have to fight for their lives? Would the handsome Julian protect her, or would self-preservation set in, leaving her to die alone?
"Julian!" Jeanette cupped her blue-tinged fingers around her mouth and called until she was hoarse, but there was still no answer. Well, no matter; she didn't think he could have gone too far. The mountains where they had landed appeared steep. The only way to go seemed to be up (the way down would have been too slick and treacherous.) Eventually, they would have to come across some sort of shelter and a source of food-- or at least water-- lest they die here, where their mummified corpses or bleached bones might never be discovered.
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In The Lair of the Draca (Book 2)
Science FictionTwo tiny girls, on a quest to find Earth, survive a devastating airship crash and find themselves on a seemingly desolate world...where they are not alone.