In the coldest hours of the night, their breaths froze in the air and drifted to the ground in glittery clouds, which, according to local tribesmen, made a faint tinkling melody called “the whisper of the stars.” (The coldest temperature ever recorded in the Northern Hemisphere, ninety degrees below zero Fahrenheit, would later be captured at a Soviet weather station to the east of the Lena.) Nindemann and Noros moved steadily and determinedly, but they were too weak to move swiftly. They averaged about thirteen miles a day. Noros spat up blood and began to entertain ideas of shooting himself.
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