Three days into their trek, Diane collapses. In desperation, Tim drags her into an ice-ant nest. The air in the nest is above freezing, and the ice-ants ignore them since they find the Vicks' foam-rubber clothing inedible. Tim wakes the next morning to find that the ice-ants have eaten away the leather bag holding their flame-orchids, and all but one of them have been washed away into the depths of the subterranean ice-ant hive. The eclipse slowly begins, and when the sun sets that night, Tim knows he won't see it again for four days. The temperature drops past a hundred below that night, and only rises to seventy below the next day.