The pace of travel turned out to be miserable, maybe three kilometers an hour, no more. The landscape never changed, sliding from what I’d just seen into what I’d seen long ago…
…something caught my eye — a glint of window glass, maybe, or the shimmer of water.
I peered into the white-red distance and turned off the path.
A hundred steps later, I spat in frustration — the glimmer vanished along with the shimmer. A mirage! Something snapped in my head, and my whole body flooded with the urge to collapse onto the sand and forget everything in the world. That same second I noticed something else odd. About a hundred meters off, on the ridge of the next dune, tracks appeared.
From where? To where?
I crossed the hollow and, reaching the footprints, froze.
The tracks were sharp, fresh, starting out of nowhere and leading to the ridge of the next dune.
How?
No answer came. Just the marks in the sand: a couple meters from me, the print of a left foot. Half a meter on, a right foot. Then left again, right again, and so on, far ahead. Shaking my head and shaking off the bewilderment, I hurried along parallel to the tracks. Crossing another hollow, I froze again. A second set of tracks had appeared in the sand, an exact copy of the first. Both pairs stretched further into the sands.
Well, would you look at that! Where did the second aeronaut come from?
I headed for the next dune and a couple minutes later saw exactly what I’d subconsciously expected. Three parallel sets of tracks stretched toward the dunes, into nowhere.
I looked around.
It couldn’t be!
Behind me stretched the same three chains of tracks. Ahead, the same thing. I looked closer at my own footprints. Unbelievable!!! I was walking alongside my own tracks!
How? Where to? Where from? No idea. No way to know…
That’s it. Enough.
Amen.
I’ll lie down and die. Rot, dry out, mummify…
After the first wave of despair, the right move wasn’t to listen for the rattle of an engine, or let myself get seduced by hope, but to lie still and not twitch, like Lenin in his mausoleum. The many-sided shape overhead would grant relief from all my troubles. The desert’s silence would offer oblivion and peace, for the very first, sweetest time. Good… Blissful…
— Nothing special. Life is just going over what you already know, only a little wiser…
I let another barely audible remark from the sky slide past my ears. Forget it, to hell with it! Everything — fear, curiosity, confusion — sank without a trace.
I prepared to die in peace and grace. Folded my hands on my chest, sighed. Closed my eyes. Relaxed, went slack…
