Thor shucked his skis, climbed the ice wall, and pierced the car's gas tank from underneath with an ice pick. Using a funnel attached to a syphon hose, he refilled one of the depleted jerry cans with what gasohol remained in the tank.

So easy. With gravity to help, the fuel didn't have to be pumped; it just streamed toward the Earth's center. But why were Sherrine's fists clenched into tight balls while she watched Thor work?

He asked. She said, "If he slips, he could break his neck."

Right. It was just as well that he was strapped into the sledge. Free to help, he'd be worse than useless. He'd be an embarrassment. Thirty years of conditioned reflexes could not be forgotten overnight. If it had been him scavenging the gasohol, he would have tried to jump over to the car and stand on the ice wall. You can't stand on walls in a gravity field, Alex. The car didn't just drift there, it must have been lifted and held by the ice. And, if Thor lost his grip, he would not simply float away in a slow spin; he would accelerate to the ground. It did not seem a terribly long way to fall, but what did he know about falling?

When they set forth again, Thor lagged behind a bit as if reluctant to leave. He kept glancing back over his shoulder. Then he set his poles and pushed off hard, racing past Steve Mews, who had taken the point. Steve gave him a curious glance as he slid past, but did not quicken his own deliberate pace to catch up.

I-29 was poorly maintained. It had been plowed in places, but long stretches had been engulfed by the Dakota Glacier just as the car had been. Alex could see where another highway--US 83--had been cleared as an alternate route wherever the interstate was impassable.

"They don't spend as much effort on this road as they do on I-94, "Mike explained. "There are only a couple of towns in the Valley still open"--he wave a mittened hand north--"and only Winnipeg at the dead end."

They halted at the riverbank. Sherrine turned off the snowmobile's engine and stared at the turgid water choked with "pancake ice and slush--an open expanse of water even vaster than Alex had imagined from the glacier overlook. The scale of the planet was just beginning to hit him. It was huge; everything in it was immense. And it was convex. He held on tightly to his boyhood memories. At one time he had regarded all this as normal.

He wondered how Gordon was taking it. The gravity and the scale were completely new to him. When Alex glanced over at the other sledge, he saw Doc Waxman was bent over Gordon. "Gordo?" Alex fumbled for a moment with the tongue switch, then thought better of it. No point in sending a beacon for someone to home in on. "Are you all right, Gordon?" he shouted.

"Nye khorosho, Alex. Leave me alone." He moaned.

"Doc," Alex called out. "What's wrong with Gordon?"

Waxman turned his bushy, white patriarch's beard toward him. "Motion sickness," he said. "He threw up and it froze all over him. He'll be fine once he gets used to things down here." He shook his head. "I've heard of people getting motion sickness in free fall. First time I ever saw it work the other way."

No one ever died from motion sickness; they only wished they could. Yes, Gordon would get over it, just as Alex already had. It was a matter of synchronizing the sense of balance with visual perception. Gordon was born in free fall and a constant acceleration frame screwed up his motion cues a lot worse than it did Alex's. Like everyone else, he'd gone to "Spinning Kiddies." The centrifuge sessions were required for children--for bone development, Alex thought. But stilyagi like Gordon generally dropped out, and most adults avoided spin exercises when they could. Alex considered his own condition. Gone to flab, with bones of rubber, and he'd been born down here.

"There's no way across that," said Mike, pointing toward the river of slush. "We'll have to turn south."

"Can't do that," said Bruce from the other sledge. "South takes us to the interchange at Fargo Gap. There's a police barricade there now. Besides, Bob is waiting for us at Brandon."

"Pins," Mike corrected him. "Use the code names, like we agreed."

Bruce gave him a look. "There ain't nobody here but us tribbles; so who gives a--"

"And Gabe can call Big Momma and change the rendez--"

"The code name idea was stupid, anyway--"

Doe Waxman stepped between them. "This isn't helping us cross the Red," he said.

They both fell silent. Thor and Steve shuffled their skis back and forth across the ice. "We can't stay here," Thor said. "We'll freeze." He looked back the way we had come.

Mike studied the river. "Maybe we could leap from floe to floe. You know. Like Eliza crossing the ice in Uncle Tom's Cabin."

"Why, Mike," said Bruce, "what a wonderful idea. Did you hear that, Alex? You can leap from floe to floe."

Alex smiled weakly. "I'm game, but I don't think the snowmobiles are up to it."

"Well, now, wait," said Mike. "Sure the plan has a hole in it, but--"

Sherrine: "Not just a hole, Mike. A black hole."

Thor: "Yeah, the plan sucks."

Mike stuck his chin out. "You have a better plan, maybe?"

Steve Mews interrupted. "I do. Head north."

They all looked at one another. "North," said Bruce. "You mean go to Winnipeg? But that's a dead end."

Steve clapped his mittens together. "Hey, maybe I'm wrong. I don't know the local geography. But didn't that Engineer captain at Fargo tell us that the Red was frozen north of Perley? Well, that's gotta be north of here, right?"

Alex never saw so many mouths hang open at once.

Crossing the Red was easy Alex thought, if you didn't count holding your breath while doing it. The river was frozen; but the ice was ragged and cracked. A rough ride, and if the ice had given way--

Well, he didn't want to think about that. He supposed he was in less danger than he had been in Piranha. A hot ship, miles high, hypersonic speeds. Even without a missile up the arse, there were a million things that could have gone wrong. But it was one thing to face danger with your hands around the stick. It was another thing to face it while bundled into a sledge, dependent on another's skills. It was the impotence, he decided; not the danger.

The glaciers on both sides of the river growled and popped as they flowed south--an odd and disconcerting sound. Every snap made him jerk, thinking it was the river ice breaking up beneath them. He had not expected sounds. But then, he didn't suppose a mountain range of ice could slide across the landscape in silence. He wondered whether, if the glacier sounds were recorded and played back at high speed, they would sound like a rushing river.

CHAPTER FIVE

"In the Hands of Crazy People"

Bruce called a rest break atop the Minnesota glacier. Satellite recon had located a path up the side, but it had been an arduous climb. Thor and Steve were winded. The others stood around the two snowmobiles, slapping themselves with their arms, warming themselves with the meager engine heat. Everyone seemed drawn and introspective.

"I tell you," said Bruce, "that Engineer captain had to be a closet fan. Why else would he have told us about the river being frozen?"

"That doesn't make sense," Mike said. "How would he have known what we were up to?"

"He might have guessed from your questions about the Angels. One fan knows another."

Warmly wrapped and trundled by sledge, Alex chafed at his helplessness while others did the work of rescue. "I'm just not used to being so useless," he told Sherrline. Actually, I'm here because I was expendable. He thought of telling her that, but he didn't want to.