The blizzard runs out of breath overnight. I wake even earlier than usual, after another restless night in the string of restless nights that has plagued me with increasing frequency since we landed here. Not that I ever slept particularly well on the F-300s or overly plush hotel rooms they put captains up in between flights, either.
I eventually find myself in the common room, watching a watery dawn light leak through the clouds and run up against our snow-caked windows. We're still two and a half months from Qalupalik's aphelion—the most distant point in its orbit—but already the light from Mu Chaons' twin suns feels thin and chilly. By the time we reach that depth of space, temperatures here will be blizzard-cold at the best of times, and the suns' glow will barely filter through Mahaha's clouds. I once looked forward to those days for their hostility towards field trips, even if a lack of sunlight sends me spiralling as often as not. Now I would rather have warmer weather and communications back than neither.
The panel on the wall is still blank, the error message pinned up in its corner like a lost bookmark. The loss of data from outside makes me twitchy, especially when the last thing I want to do is walk out and check the weather myself. It's harder on Mahaha than on earth to gauge the temperature by the crispness of the sunlight and clarity of the air. The clouds here, of course, are perpetual. I can't even tell reliably when they plan to start snowing again.
Krüger sets his alarm to Aventureros time every day now, and today is no exception. He passes me wordlessly and starts breakfast preparations with a clatter of pots in the kitchen. Even the smell of oatmeal isn't enough to stir me from my place. I'm not hungry.
We're going to need to go outside this morning. I need to check the Pod for damage, and loathe though I am to admit it, I really do want Krüger to see to his frozen—or broken—instruments. The tension between maintaining the slimmest view of the outside world and lowering the risk of danger makes me sick to my stomach. I rest my forehead against the window glass. A threat of bodily harm to any one of us is more than enough to tip that balance, but Kwon is right that Mahaha hasn't hurt any of us. Not yet..
The question is how much longer that will last.
The rest of the team rises one by one. Krüger finishes with his breakfast and disappears into Kwon's workshop in search of our defroster; he knows we're going out. I force myself to eat before he returns. Then I get Kwon to turn as many of the external cameras as she can on the places we'll be walking. She takes up her post in the comms room as Krüger and I suit up and venture out into the calm, biting cold.
When we stop at the instrument panel, I'm really glad we brought the defroster.
"Jesus," grumbles Krüger. "It had to go ahead and bury them all, did it?"
Snow lodged on some of the instruments piled up on itself during the storm, turning the panel into a fat, white tumor. Krüger swats off most of the buildup, then slows as he nears the instruments. The snow has gotten denser, with more ice. I tip the defroster towards it, and he nods.
It takes us most of an hour to melt out the instruments. I'm as unnerved as I am relieved to find them entirely intact beneath the ice. Mahaha, clearly, doesn't equate them with the Isoptera. Is it because they're smaller? Less invasive? Closer to the Pod? Most whirr dutifully back to life, but Krüger removes and pockets three for further maintenance. When he's checked the rest one last time, I notify Kwon and wait for confirmation that she's watching us before we set out together to inspect the rest of the Pod. Patches of thin ice cling to its sides, but there's no real damage. I melt the ice I can reach and hand Krüger the defroster to get the rest. I don't want the patches providing footing for a thicker ice shell.
We're back at the airlock when I happen to glance towards the instruments again. The streams of water our efforts sent tricking down the Pod's side have frozen again. At the base of each is a finger of snow, plastered up the wall like it's following the trickles. I mentally kick myself for not scanning the spot before we started. I'll have to check it next time.
We make it back inside without incident, though I imagine butterflies around Krüger at least half a dozen times. The wind picks up not long after we disperse to our respective corners of the Pod. I while away time until exercise rotation comes up and gives me something to do, then return to the common room when it's over. I want to jump on the treadmill and tack another ten kilometers onto my distance goal, but I can't bring myself to leave the windows. My mind imprints shapes onto the blowing snow outside.
What does Mahaha want with us?
I can't escape the question. Every way I parse it, I come up with a different answer, each with its own wildly different set of ramifications. What kind of conscious being destroys the supplementary instruments of an intruder on its surface, but leaves the intruder itself untouched? Krüger calls it "jumping to conclusions" to assume that the moon is stalking us with malicious intent, but prioritizing any other possibility leaves us vulnerable. I'd rather expect the worst and be proven wrong than assume the opposite and get caught off guard by an attack.
"Gallegos, out."
I look up. Kwon is standing behind me, her face firm and a fist on one hip. In her other hand is a broom.
"You have been fretting for the last three days, and it is making me nervous," she says. "Go listen to a book, or draw a picture, or run. Nothing is going to attack us just because you stop watching every snowflake that falls."
The way she's standing, I have no doubt she'll use that broom on me if I fail to comply. I slip surreptitiously out of reach.
"And no pacing, either," she finishes, wagging the broom-handle at me as I make for my room.
That doesn't leave me with many appealing options. I have no focus or mental capacity for a book right now—I rarely do at the best of times—so I settle for the best Kwon-acceptable option and check that the gym is empty before occupying it. I almost never find the others in here when they're not mandated to be. It's the best place other than my room to spend time by myself.
I'm so lost in the slow-motion whirlpool of my thoughts that I lose track of reality in general until Kwon knocks on the door. I come back with a start and check the time. I've been here for an hour and a half. I'm starting to get thirsty, and I didn't bring my water bottle.
Kwon is still waiting at the door when I open it. She drops a mug of tea in my hands and smiles. "Come to the common room when you have washed up. We are having a mental health break."
That announcement out of the blue is enough to knock my worries off-kilter. Has Kwon been in secret contact with Yahvi? Their methods are becoming eerily similar. Kwon marches off, presumably to find Liu. The other mug she's carrying smells like hot chocolate.
The mental health break is a movie night, and I have to admit it helps. Even if I spend half of it with one eye on the windows, until the sun sets and wipes my view.
We finish the night with board games. I finally crack a smile by the time we reach our second round of UIS Pandemic, Liu having slaughtered all of us at most other games involving competition rather than cooperation. We crank the game up to the highest level of difficulty and destroy it together. I think Krüger could be an epidemiologist if he really wanted to. He directs the whole thing without missing a beat.
We're interrupted when Kwon comes back from her usual eight o'clock check of the outside cameras. "I think we should move the Pod," she says. "The snow is piling up again."
When did more snow sneak up on us? It hasn't even been windy outside. Trepidation sinks in its claws and wraps itself around me, snake-like, as I get up. Krüger starts after me with a questioning look, and I nod for him to come, too. He grabs the defroster again before we head outside.
The move this time isn't about finding higher ground: we've somehow managed to hold ours for the last week without ending up in a valley or falling down a hole. Krüger and I circle the Pod to find the problem before we fetch Samson. I stop mid-step as we come around the back of the station.
There's no snow pileup. The ground around the back of the station is swept clear.
I tap a button on the side of my helmet to connect to the comms desk inside. "Kwon? What did you see out here?"
There's a hum as she pulls up some feed or other, then a startled silence. Her finger taps a screen, and an image flashes across the small display on my goggles. It's a top-down view from the periscopic camera on the roof of the Pod. It shows a great, white drift climbing the back wall, threatening to swallow the station. The time stamp dates back less than fifteen minutes.
"It was there," she says. "It disappeared."
"Yeah." I survey the spot where the snow-pile once ended. The smoothness of the ground is definitely suspicious.
Krüger taps my arm and tips his headlamp up the side of the Pod. It sparkles.
"Kwon, watch our backs and make sure all video feeds are recording." They're all set to do so by default, but I want a double-check on this one. "There's something we need to check here."