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Kader would know
.
    Alex swung his pack over his shoulders and pulled the straps tight, then zipped up his snowsuit and headed for where the daylight was creeping in the mouth of the cave.

    “That … will … do it.”
    Alex sat down to test his handiwork. On the exposed side of the mountain he’d stacked some blocks of snow and ice against the wind. It needed more height, but he hunkered down, too tired to do more work now.
    Alex pressed the emergency button on the GPS locator and hoped that it would work. He pulled out the flask that he’d tucked between his suit layers, sipping the snow that had melted from his body warmth. Only a few drops fell into his dry mouth. He shook it over his mouth, hoping for a little more, but there was none—it was still packed with snow from the last time he’d stopped and refilled it. The hike up the mountain had taken two hours and he’d drunk the last of his water in the ascent.
    He pulled the tin cup from his pack, crammed it full of snow and placed it over a chemical fire cube sitting on the metal stand.
    Alex looked around. He was on top of the first ridge of the mountainside that soared up next to the thermal valley, almost directly above the cavern he’d sheltered in. He could not see it for low-lying fog, but the sea was somewhere to the north, over the flat expanse of snow and ice. Behind him the mountains grew taller, rocky and craggy and frozen, impassable to an amateur with no climbing equipment.
    He sat, tapped the GPS unit, and rattled it next to his ear.
    “It’ll work. Has to work. They’ll find me.”
    It was cold and windy sitting there. He re-built the snow wall to be as high as his head, so the wind whipping along from the west wouldn’t cut into him, making him even colder. He fashioned a domed roof from smaller packed bricks of snow. He ate his last biscuit and checked what he had left. Two powdered soups, tea bags, a tube of sweetened milk, a small packet of crackers and a tin of sardines.
    Eurgh
.
    Alex didn’t like sardines. He didn’t like any creature that you had to eat whole, like mussels or oysters, or bugs and insects for that matter.
    “But, if I’m still out here tomorrow,” he said, checking his tin cup full of snow over the broken chemical block that was now glowing hot, “I’ll eat them. Nibble the sides.
Maybe
.”
    He checked the radio again. There was nothing but static. He looked up at the mountain behind him.
    Maybe I should go higher, get better reception?
    It’ll have to be tomorrow … too tired … and it’s too windy
.
    He checked the wall of his snow cave and hunkered down. He flexed his fingers and toes, then pulled the hood further down over his face. He already missed the warmth of the rock cave.
    Whoever built that place was way smarter than me
.

07
    SAM
    Outside by the plane, the Guardians and Jabari finished loading the Academy’s new plane.
    Technically
, Sam thought, the aircraft wasn’t
new
.
    Nor was it, technically, the Academy’s.
    It was the aircraft that Sam had seen at Duke’s farmhouse back in Texas when Tobias had acquired it from Stella.
    Nice. Still, she’d taken it from the Enterprise, and what’s left of the Enterprise have sided with us, so I suppose it does belong to us after all
.
    “You OK?” Lora asked Sam, noticing him lost in his thoughts.
    “Yeah, fine,” he said, pulling up his collar against the crisp morning air.
    Cold? This ain’t nothing—it’s going to be freezing soon
.
    “Just thinking about this plane. About the last time I saw it … about Tobias.”
    “I know,” Lora said. “He would want this, Sam, you know that. He’d want you to go on, to see this through and finish it. He’d have loved to have been out here right now with you.”
    “Yeah, I know,” Sam said, smiling.
    They watched the flight crew prepare the aircraft. The powerful motors hummed to life.
    Jabari gave a thumbs-up that everything was ready for takeoff.
    “You guys coming?” Eva asked them