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By nightfall, when we reached the caves, there were only three of us left, and we had to divvy up supplies. Dozens of troopers had fallen in the flat icy wastes that day, never to stand up again. The sun had burned cold, somehow. Needles of frozen water had slashed at our cheeks, raw and exposed to the lifeless frost. We had seen nothing, nothing that could be described or even held in the mind’s eye, so lacking was this deadened place. After a long silence, Martin, the new recruit, asked if the planet was colonized yet. Just for that, Reynolds ate his ration of snow.