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hilltop and was urging Kevin to stay calm. Another man grabbed the guide’s battery-powered CB radio and followed Kevin’s instructions. In minutes they were patched through to air search and rescue. Kevin began to shiver, but he managed to tell Clay how to administer the anti-venom and they all waited for the welcome thrum of a helicopter.
    Only it didn’t come. They took turns signaling with a mirror into the sun, and the rescue teams still couldn’t find them. They weren’t where they were supposed to be. In spite of the anti-venom, Kevin had quickly slipped into unconsciousness without telling them the name of the pass they were in.
    “It’s just a matter of time until they find us,” Holly tried to tell Jerri. “They have to expand the radius of the search, that’s all. When the sun goes down we can build a fire.”
    “Does anyone have matches?” Clay asked the question heavily, as if he feared the answer.
    Kevin had an emergency supply of them, even though fires were illegal in this part of the wilderness, for reasonable fear of forest fires. The wind began to rise.
    The sun went down and Kevin grew more feverish. “It’s just a matter of time,” Holly kept telling herself. But how much time, and would it be soon enough for Kevin?
    Their signal torches all went out in the wind in spite of the tinder-like condition of the scrub. Jerri’s husband was reporting in to the frustrated pilot that he still could not hear any sounds of a helicopter. A second helicopter was on its way from Edwards Air Force Base, but the time was slipping away. They had two cell phones among them, but they received no signal, and wouldn’t have been much help anyway.
    The stars came out, with a sudden sharpness that was unknown nearer to civilization. There were so many of them, including the North Star, Polaris, glittering magnificently. It was of no help — they had a compass and knowing where north was wasn’t enough. They needed to know where true west was. What they really needed, Holly thought, was a mariner’s sextant. A couple of readings, a little calculation, and they would know their longitude and latitude. Until the advent of radar, it was how all travelers knew where they were.
    She felt far away, suddenly, and her mind was digging through all her geometry texts, every article she could remember. The angle — it was the angle, doubled, that would tell them where any given star was with respect to the horizon. And you could find the angle through multiple reflections of overlapping star and horizon.
    “Is there another mirror?” She startled Clay, who was leaning against her back.
    “What do you need a mirror for?”
    “Not one, two. I need two mirrors. And Jerri.” She scrambled to her feet, putting the shallow sound of Kevin’s breathing out of her mind. She needed to focus.
    Jerri was on the trip to stargaze — astronomy was her hobby. She had a complete guide to the stars in her pack.
    “Holly, what are you talking about?”
    “A sextant — we can make one of our own.”
    Jerri, who had been miserably silent for the last while, spoke up excitedly. “Yes, oh yes, that would work. I’ll need a flashlight to read the star map.” They had been sparing the batteries so they would have signals when they finally did hear the helicopters.
    Jerri’s pocket telescope worked for one of the arms, and a pen for the other. Working quickly with first aid tape, Holly bound the mirrors to the arms and then set the arms to form a wedge that was about an eighth of a circle. She would have to be more precise about the angle later, when it was crucial. Using the eyebrow pencil that Jerri sheepishly produced, she drew an X across each mirror to pinpoint their centers. The star reflecting the horizon reflecting the star reflecting the horizon — when that happened in the center of each mirror, the resulting angle between the mirrors, doubled, provided longitude and latitude. But it would only be as accurate as her