Neither of us said a word in the morning; actually it was past noon. We didn't have to. There was only one thing we could do that made the slightest sense.
I got out the welder and burned off the tractor's cab, then went underneath and cut through the mountings on the useless engine and everything else that wasn't an absolute essential.
Helene dumped everything movable and non-essential from inside.
Shortly before dusk I tossed the now-useless welder on top of the other junk and climbed onto the 'dozer and pulled out. There weren't any brakes on what was left of the tractor, but that would have to not matter. We were going to have to drive 'round the clock or not get there in time. A bulldozer is not a fast vehicle under any circumstances.
Logically, I couldn't see that we had much chance of covering eleven hundred miles in that rig, without having to make at least one stop quick enough to collapse the towbar and land the tractor on top of the 'dozer.
Emotionally, I couldn't believe a word of it. I knew we were going to get there.
We did.
Forty-eight days after the crash, I drove through the blackened edge of the northernmost "marker area," and parked just inside its southern tip.
When I came up through the airlock, Helene was looking out what had been the forward port of the tractor, which now faced the area we would have to make into a landing strip.
When I had the inner layer of my suit half off, she spoke for the first time since we'd been married: "We made it, Marsh."