"No, Jane, I don't think I brought us here." He was trying gently not to increase her fright, until he saw in her uplifted eyes that she knew all his own overpowering dismay.
"Maybe the humanoids did it, with that new grid." His mind shuddered from that.
"They were using us for test animals, you know. Maybe they wanted to see how you keep alive out here.
Maybe they mean to pull us back again, just before we die - to save us for some other test."
Quickly lifting one small bare foot and then the other away from the searing cold of the gravel, she stood straight and tiny in that worn leather coat too big for her, a white dust of frost on her stiffly frozen hair. "
'Scuse me, but you did it.
You fought that new brain machine to take me from it, and you teleported us both out here."
Her dark eyes held a solemn plea. "Mr. White would say you're awful good - but I'm still afraid we're going to die. Can't you find a warm place for us, with air?"
"I can't do teleportation," he insisted bleakly. "Or anything else.
But you can go - somewhere." He pushed her slight body from him.
"Better leave me, and look for some safe place."
"No - please - there isn't any!" She clung to him desperately.
"You did take me away from the machines, even if you don't remember.
You're still fighting that brain thing to keep me, even if you don't seem to know it.
So we must stay together - don't you see?"
"We'll keep together."
Die together, he thought, nodding to an uneasy acquiescence.
"Can you tell me how you hold back the cold, so I can help?"
She only shook her head, shivering against him, already exhausted.
She didn't know, not consciously, and her unconscious psychophysical adaptation could keep them both alive no more than a few minutes longer.
Beyond that, his blurred and stinging eyes could see no hope.
For the silent fangs of cold had sunk deep into him.
His empty lungs burned, and his stiffened fingers scarcely felt the limp tug of her small body, slipping down beside him.
He forgot his own despair, and bent to pick her up. His bad leg buckled. He fell, searing his hands on the gravel, and lurched feebly back to his knees.
He lifted her tenderly, trying to shield her with his arms, for he knew nothing else to do.
He could feel her straining effort to hold back that implacable emptiness of cold, but he knew no way to share the burden.
She seemed to flinch and quiver, and instantly the cold slashed at them with new fury, as if her life and her power had almost failed.
Swept with an infinite helpless compassion, he wished he knew how to help her.
"The door!" She stirred weakly in his stiff arms, trying to point. "See it - there!"
Turning painfully where he knelt, he found a faint new gleam above the rim of those changeless, ancient cliffs.
Dimly, his fading vision made out the smooth curve of a transparent cupola there, washed with the pale cold radiance of the far galaxy.
Against the dark rock below, he saw a green light burning.
He shook his head stiffly, and peered again.
Because it couldn't be a light.
Nothing could be still alive to light any sort of beacon on this dark world, and he was certain that cupola hadn't been there, anyhow, when he first saw the cliffs.
He blinked and gaped, mistrusting his dimming senses.
But the light continued to glisten incredibly on polished metal surfaces, beyond a round opening in the dark rock.
"Please!" Jane was sobbing.
"Hurry-"
He didn't wait to wonder any longer.
Swaying laboriously to his feet, he picked her up again.
A frozen numbness tried to hold him, and a painful roaring was increasing in his ears, but he staggered with her toward that green-lit opening.
The sharp gravel no longer hurt his feet, and even the ache in his knee had ceased, but a dead stiffness tripped him.
He fell, and came heavily up again with the child still whimpering in his arms, and stumbled on until he fell again.
And again he carried her on until at last, somehow still alive, he lurched across a shining metal threshold.
Inside the tiny chamber where the green light burned, he saw that it must be an air lock.
His bleared and throbbing eyes found a row of buttons, one glowing dimly green.
He punched it clumsily, with a finger that had no strength or feeling left, and a massive valve slid up to shut them in.
Air screamed in, a warm and kindly hurricane.
He filled his burning lungs, and breathed.