Killer

“Oh, Hiram,” Ross turned back, “the radio. Any hope . . . ?”

“ ’Fraid not, but I did get our position off before we came down. They’ll be looking for us eventually. If we just stay by the plane . . .”

“Isn’t it going to be a bit dangerous to stay too close?”

Preston sniffed the air. “My God! The fuel . . . Yes. We’d better get out, if we can. Is the door all right up there?”

“We shouldn’t have much trouble,” Ross said.

Job thrust his head above the level of the lower wall. A spear of ice came through the windscreen like some great harpoon, and went straight through the pilot, the seat, and the wall behind him. It was covered with blood, which had soaked into the cracks and faults in the slim column, giving it an almost marbled appearance. Job turned his head away.

“That is a terrible way to die!”

Ross said, “Very few ways are nice.”

Now they were at the door. Ross turned the emergency handle, and the whole section sprang free, crashing down the wing in a shower of ice crystals. Ross and Job both tensed at the noise, at the possibility of a spark.

A light breeze came in through the hole. Ross’s whole body shook. “Lord,” he said, “it’s cold.”

Job laughed. “Colin, Colin. Here we are in a plane that is full of holes in the middle of the ice pack within spitting distance of the North Pole at what must be nearly midnight. That gentle breeze will have a temperature a good deal less than nought degrees Centigrade. And we are in Washington clothes.”

Ross was assailed by a sudden doubt. “Should we leave the door closed and just wait for help?”

“No. I’m an Eskimo. I would much rather freeze than burn. And if we stay in here, we will burn; perhaps soon.”

“Right. I’ll go out and have a look around.” He moved forward gingerly to the doorway itself, and looked out. What he saw stopped him dead.

The pack.

The sight of it hurled him back through five years and over the length of the world.

There was a tongue of ice, perhaps five hundred yards long. One side was the chain of sharp ice-hillocks, the other a flat plain stretching roughly two hundred yards to the restless sea. The tongue of ice curved slightly so that the track of the plane crash, originally a straight line coming up from the distant tip, inevitably came up against the cliffs. The cliffs were transparent green, and eroded above him until they formed an overhang at the top, and from this overhang great fangs of ice bit down at the crystal air. One of them had bitten down at the front of the aircraft, and this not only held the pilot, but also kept the plane so steady on its tail. Where the cliffs curved away and down towards the sea, breaking into a series of low, sharp peaks, the steady wind lifted flags and banners of ice crystals from each crest, and the sun made them burn green and indigo, red and yellow, against the orange ice, the golden sea, and the far, copper sky.

Ross looked down. “No trouble,” he called, “the crash brought snow down from the cliff. Easy enough slide down from the wing.”

He eased himself carefully out of the door. When his feet felt the front edge of the wing he put his weight on them, let go of the door frame, wavered precariously on the ice-coated metal, managed to turn his back to the cliffs, sat down, and slid safely to the surface of the ice. Shivering violently now, his shoes instantly soaking, sinking almost to the ankles in the loose snow thrown up by the crash, he looked round.

The first thing he saw was a crate, with markings on the side. For a moment he wondered what it was, and then he heard Quick’s bored voice in his memory, as though reading from a list. Tents, canoes, sleeping bags, blankets, cold-weather clothing . . .

Of course. The cargo!

Slipping and sliding on the treacherous surface, he ran round the hump of the port engine to the high silver fin of the tail. Under the wing, as though the jet was trying to hatch them out, were more crates. As he went closer, Ross could see what had happened. Sometime during the wild ride up the tongue of ice, an edge, sharper than the rest, had torn open the belly of the plane and ripped off the loading door. The cargo had come loose and been hurled out. Five crates lay here in an untidy jumble. The rest would be inside: but they were obtainable! And in those crates lay everything they needed to survive. All they had to do was get them out, unpack them, set up camp, and wait to be rescued. It was that easy! Certainly Doctor Warren and Kate should know their way round considering their scientific specialities; and as for Simon and Job, you couldn’t wish for better companions under these circumstances! Only the co-pilot, presumably, was not used to being on ice . . .

Exultantly he pounded on the side of the jet. “Job! Job! Come out!”