Biting cold itched along her scalp, sinking its icy teeth into her left eye.
She scratched the ice free of the lens before placing it back in its socket. There was a sharp pain as the nerves connected, then she had binocular vision again.
The hab was dark, shutting down for good, the airlock and cycler the only systems still running. She looked out the ice crusted windows and saw the truck on its way up the drive. The early morning sunlight glinting off the solar farm across the yard. The red flag whipping in the wind.
Ariel did not like Qilian. The world was cold, subzero at the equator, and devoid of life, the red soil stubbornly refusin