The next day, they began work in earnest.

     Twenty metres away from the habitat Andrew, Philip and Lungelo assembled a three metre tall tripod and hung a heating element from it. When the element had reached its working temperature they lowered it to the nitrogen ice, which sublimed to create a metre wide hole. As the element continued to descend, the hole became a vertical tunnel, reaching down into the darkness. Around them, as the three men stood watching in their surface suits, the vapour re-condensed into crystals of ice that fell to shatter at their feet.

     After a couple of hours, when the tunnel was several metres deep, the vapour was re-condensing before it could reach the surface. In the meantime, though, they had built a net that they lowered to just above the element to catch the ice as it fell and raise it to the surface, where they dumped it on the ground. In this way, they were able to extend the tunnel all the way down to where the water ice began. This had to be raised to a much higher temperature to melt it, in the process creating a five metre hemispherical void in the nitrogen ice above.

     The tunnel continued down until it reached the roof of the building buried below, which Andrew, hanging on the end of a tether, cut through with a power saw. Lowering a light through the hole on the end of a cable, he saw with satisfaction that the building was largely intact. The ceiling had collapsed in places under the weight of the ice above, but elsewhere it had held up, creating vacuum-filled voids below. One such void was directly beneath the tunnel and Andrew told Philip to lower him into it.

     "Looks like clerical offices," he said. "Desks, chairs, computers."

     "Any bodies?" came Philip's voice over the intercom.

     "No," Andrew replied. "Reckon they all went home to be with their families when they knew the end was coming. Who wants to be at their place of work during the end of the world?"

     He reached the floor and detached himself from the tether. His head torch swept a cone of light across the room as he looked around. Several of the windows had broken, he saw. Probably during the storms and earthquakes of Hoder's closest approach. The only reason this building was still standing was because it was far from the coast. That and the fact that the great lakes area was one of the two most geologically stable regions of the continent, along with Texas, that being the reason the two underground cities of the USA had been built there.

     Even so, though, the hurricane force winds that had assailed the whole planet had still wreaked havoc. The furniture had been thrown around like matchsticks and now lay crumpled against the far wall. Papers and small items of office equipment lay strewn on the floor, glued in place by a slick layer of ice. Ramps of snow, still as light and fluffy as the day it had fallen, ran from the jagged, broken windows half way across the floor. Above him the ceiling was sagging under the weight of the ice above. He hoped the tunnel they'd melted hadn't destabilised things. He hadn't come this far just to be killed under a collapsing roof.

     "Pretty much like Sellafield," he said. "And the destruction was mild here compared to the earthquake zones. It's a miracle anyone on the surface survived long enough to freeze."

     "If just one percent of the population survived, that's still tens of millions of people worldwide," said Philip. "And there was a period of calm between the passing of Hoder and the beginning of The Freeze. Several months for people to pick themselves up and organise themselves. There might be a floor plan out in the corridor showing the location of fire exits, that kind of thing. So we can work out where we are relative to the dysprosium storage area."

     "Right," Andrew replied. There was a door on the other side of the room, he saw. He made his way across to it past a row of storage cupboards one of which was half open to reveal the frozen, mummified corpse of a rat. Nearby, a large printer lay on its side. There was a memo trapped under it, probably the last thing that had been printed before the place had been abandoned. He crouched down to read the date at the top. September 13th 2079. A couple of weeks before Hoder's closest approach. It had loomed in the sky ten times the size of the new moon, he remembered from his history classes. Its gravity ripping the oceans from their basins and spilling them across the continents. A ruddy red globe shining dully with its own light but still with a visible day and night side courtesy of the sun. Banded like Jupiter, the cloud tops moving visibly and speckled with almost continuous discharges of lightning as they were whipped around by the supersonic winds that perpetually tormented the almost-star.

     It had been visible for years beforehand, growing from a tiny point of light seen only by astronomers, then swelling until it was visible to the naked eye in the daytime. While it had still been small, people had believed the lies told by the governments of the world; that it would pass harmlessly by. Enjoy the spectacle, they'd said. Future generations will envy you for having had the opportunity to see it. And in the meantime, support the creation of the first twelve underground cities. Experiments in green living, exploring the possibility that the majority of the human race can move underground, allowing the surface to be given back to nature.

     But Hoder had continued to grow in the sky, equalling the size of the full moon, then growing even larger until even the most gullible had realised the terrible truth. Andrew's mind shied away from the knowledge of what had happened next. How could anyone even begin to imagine the fury, the sense of betrayal, that has led to the seiges of the twelve cities? The wonder, he now realised, wasn't that so many of the underground cities had fallen despite their formidable defences, but that any of them had survived.

     "You okay down there, Andy?" said Philip.

     "Fine," Andrew replied, snapping himself out of his reverie. "Heading for the door now."

     The door was half open. It was frozen in place and quite immovable, but there was enough of a gap for him to squeeze his way through. He found himself in a corridor, blocked in one direction by a roof collapse. He went the other way and found himself in a reception area. Once again the windows had been blown in, but there was enough floor space clear of snow for him to make his way to the reception desk. There, fallen to the floor, was what he'd been looking for; a plan of the building that had once hung on the wall. The bottom two thirds were covered by an opaque crusting of ice crystals. He touched it with his forearm to allow the warmth of his suit to clear them away snatching his arm back when the cold became too great to endure. After doing this a couple of times more the map was clear enough to read and he aimed his helmet camera at it. "You getting this, Phil?"

     "Yes," Philip replied. "Comparing it with the map we brought with us, it looks like you're in building 2C. That puts the dysprosium storage area fifty metres away to the south."

     "Good," Andrew replied. "I'm coming back. We'll relocate the hot drill and sink another shaft there."

     "Take care. See you soon."

☆☆☆

     Andrew and Philip returned to the habitat and left the sinking of the second shaft to Lungelo and Halona. It took them down to a much larger building that had collapsed under the weight of the ice. They would have to melt away the ice covering it, right up to the surface, so Susan and Joe went out to help them do it.

     In the meantime, Andrew relaxed in the wedge shaped recreation area that the others had been fitting out while he'd been outside. David, Jasmine, Joe, Stacey and Izindaba were already there sprawled on the floor in front of the large, wall mounted monitor playing some kind of strategy war game together. It looked to Andrew as if Joe and Jasmine had teamed up to defeat David, who wasn't happy about it. The green markers on the screen that he controlled were surrounded by red and purple ones and the conspirators were shouting instructions at each other as they made their moves, their shoulders rubbing as they leaned against each other in their enthusiasm and bloodlust. David kept trying to persuade Izindaba to help him, but she and Stacey had formed their own alliance and wanted to remain neutral for the time being while they gathered their strength for an offensive of their own.

     Andrew plopped himself down into one of the inflatable armchairs and reached for his tablet computer, thinking to do a bit of reading while he tried to forget the horrors that the buildings under the ice bore witness too. He hadn't suffered any of this mental anxiety back in Sellafield. Back there, it had just been a job. Boring at times, exciting at other times, but never distressing. That had been before he'd seen what he'd seen in Augsburg. Before the human impact of the apocalypse had been brought home to him in all its full, graphic detail. At least there are no bodies down there, he told himself thankfully. Be grateful for that.

     Valentina was sitting in one of the other chairs, also reading something on a tablet computer. Not hers, he reflected. She'd lost all her possessions in her rover. She must have borrowed it from someone. Susan, he saw, seeing the prancing horse design on the back. He thought about saying something to her, but before he could do so James came in from the circular corridor that ringed the habitat.

     "Hi," he said as he took the chair next to hers. "You okay?" Then he jerked with alarm and guilt as he realised what he'd just said. Of course she's not okay, you idiot! Andrew saw him thinking. She's just lost her husband! "Sorry," he stammered. "Sorry..."

     Valentina smiled guiltily, as if being amused by anything was somehow a betrayal of her husband's memory. She reached forward and squeezed his hand. "Fine," she said. "I mean, considering. You?"

     "Yeah. I'm sorry. It was a stupid thing to say."

     "Not at all. You care about me. You've got no idea how much that helps. I just try to remember him as he was, when he was alive. Not..."

     James nodded soberly and a moment of silent communication took place as they looked at each other. Something that no outsider could share. Andrew felt a moment of irrational jealousy towards the woman at the knowledge that there was a part of his son that she knew better than he did. He berated himself for his selfishness. Valentina was helping his son to heal. He owed her his gratitude for that.

     Valentina gave James's hand another squeeze, then let go of it. James left his hand where it was for a moment before also withdrawing it, as if he'd wanted her to keep on holding it for a while longer. She saw it and reached out again to touch his shoulder. "You sure you're okay?"

     James's eyes flicked towards his father for a moment, then he looked down at his hands. "Yeah," he said. "I mean, I keep seeing him every time I close my eyes. Sorry, you don't want to be reminded of that."

     "I don't need you to remind me. I see it as well."

     "Yeah, you said. I told you not to look, but I suppose that was never going to happen."

     "I had to look."

     "I know."

     "I just realised, I never thanked you for saying my life." She ran her hand down his arm to find his hand again. "You saved me, Kiddo."

     "I'm not sure I actually needed to be there. Once the airlock was open we could have just dropped a tether down to you."

     "I couldn't have climbed out of the cockpit without you, and I was trying. You didn't know, you had a suit on, but the whole rover reeked of blood. I knew Li was hurt, maybe bleeding to death. I was desperate to climb up to him, to help him. I was giving it everything I had, but I couldn't. Not until you were there helping me."

     "Once you had a tether and an ascender..."

     "It wasn't the tether. It was you. Grabbing my arm and hauling me up. And when I saw... When I saw Li I don't know if I could have left him. I would probably have stayed by his side until the rover was crushed flat. You were there, though, and I had to leave so you could leave." James tried to say something and she shushed him to silence. "I don't mean I'm suicidal. I'm not. I'm glad you were there. I'm talking about the shock of seeing him like that. You understand?" He nodded. "So you definitely saved me, Kid, and I'm glad you did. Don't you ever doubt it."

     James smiled, and Andrew saw some life return to his face. Something that had been absent since he'd returned from the Yang rover. "I'm sorry I couldn't save Li."

     "He was dead the moment the quake struck. He was already gone long before you came aboard." She gave a sigh. "At least Han and Ming weren't aboard. Li tried to persuade them to come with us, but they've got their own lives now. If they'd been aboard the rover with us, though..." She stopped abruptly, as if she'd suddenly remembered that she was talking to a fourteen year old. "So, how's your remote schooling going? You must have had half your education aboard a rover by now. Are you able to keep up with the other pupils?"

     "They don't know yet," said James, half to himself.

     "The other pupils? What don't they know?"

     "Han and Ming. Your children. They don't know their father's dead yet."

     "No."

     "How do you tell them something like that? I mean, I know they're full adults, but even so..."

     "James," said Andrew, "I don't think Val wants to think about that right now."

     James gave another guilty start. "Sorry!" He said to Val again. "I keep saying stupid things. I don't know how to talk about things like this."

     "No-one does," Val told him. "I don't think there is a right way to talk about death, but the worst thing, I think, is to not talk about it. To bottle it up. So please talk about it as much as you want. It's all right," she said to Andrew as he tried to interject. "It's all right for him to talk about it if it's what he needs to do."

     "I don't want to hurt you," said James. "I'm sorry, I won't mention it again."

     "James, there's nothing you can't talk to me about," Val told him. "Any time you want to talk, I'll always be ready to listen. That's how you get over something like this. By talking about it, and I'm pretty sure it'll be good for me as well."

     James nodded but said nothing. Val put a hand on his knee to get his attention again. "You know what, Kid? I think we're both going to be okay."

     James nodded again. "Thanks for what you said."

     "Thanks for getting me out of there."

     She studied his face for a few moments longer, but it was clear that James had nothing left he wanted to say, for the moment at least. She turned back to her tablet, therefore, and Andrew went back to his while James sat in his chair, staring across the room at nothing.