Page 56 of HaL

Not scared.

Disappointed.

I almost laugh.

“Is there anything or anywhere you would like to see?”

“Where did you live before the compound? And does this thing not go any faster?”

I turn the cruiser sharply. Dawn lets out an excited squeal as I punch the engines. The cruiser surges forward. Iced-over lake beds and enormous ravines flash past us as we climb one frozen hill and slide down the other. I point toward different landmarks as we go, explaining what I can, though the thrusters make conversation nearly impossible.

Dawn’s eyes are everywhere.

She looks like she has been waiting her entire life to see something like this.

I come over a sharp embankment and immediately must compensate. The cruiser slides sideways as a herd of mammoths stands directly in our path.

Dawn’s voice rises over the roar of the engines.

“You have woolly mammoths here? EPIC!”

I power down immediately, easing the cruiser to a stop before we spook the matriarch. The herd is enormous. They stand together in the distance, their shaggy coats rippling in the wind as they slowly make their way across the frozen landscape.

I glance at Dawn.

“How do you know what these beasts are?”

“We had them too.” She pauses. “Well, not in my time. I mean, obviously not in my time. But they were in the history books.”

I look back toward the herd.

“It seems the gods spread the seeds of many creatures across the galaxies.”

Dawn watches silently as the mammoths disappear into one of the deeper passes.

“Where are they going?”

I point toward the mountains. “Do you see that ice blanket forming across the mountainside?”

She squints. “Yes.”

“That is what we call the frost.”

I keep my gaze on the distant mountains as a pale sheet of ice slowly spreads across the rock.

“In a matter of rotations, it will lie over every surface, and it will remain there for an entire orbital rotation.”

Her excitement fades as she listens.

“These are the coldest and deadliest moments on Hallister.”

Dawn looks toward the mammoths again.

“The animals can feel it coming,” I continue. “In the air. In the ground. They know before we do.”

“What happens to them?”

“Some hibernate. The Ice Gojira are among them.”