Killer

“What do you mean by leaving us in there like that? Quite a fright I had when I woke up. Nobody much there, only that Preston fellow and Kate all covered in blood. Made me feel quite ill. She’s all right though. Anyway, that’s not what I wanted to say . . .”

“Dr. Warren, would you excuse us a moment?” Ross’s face was pale with the strain of holding the box. He was in some pain. “If we drop this we’ve lost several days’ worth of food . . .”

“Food? You’re saving FOOD? What about my equipment? We’ll be picked up before we’re even hungry, but that equipment is very expensive and would take months to replace! Have you people no sense of priority?”

Preston slid down the wing. Ross had a brainwave. “We think a lot of your equipment fell out as we crashed, Doctor. Would you take Mr. Preston here and look down the ice for more boxes, please?”

Warren stopped dead, turned round, and saw the crate beside the line of the crash. “Jolly good idea.”

He trotted off, Preston following. Ross and Job moved the box to safety, and put it down carefully.

“Doctor!” called Ross. Warren stopped and half turned. “Just remember there’s nothing under us except seven hundred feet of freezing water; and this ice isn’t very thick.” He kicked down with his foot: it sank in to the ankle. The doctor waved to show that he understood, and carried on in exactly the same belligerent way. Preston followed behind as though on eggshells in hobnail boots.

Ross and Job went back to where Quick was wrestling with the remaining food boxes. He had moved them back now, and had some access to the open hatchway door. The door was partially blocked with more boxes.

“Took your time,” said Quick.

“We met Warren and Preston. Sent them to look down the crash-path for more crates,” said Ross.

“Good. Now I don’t think we need move the boxes too far; we’ll be staying pretty near the plane: that’s standard procedure in these situations, but I do agree we ought to move them to the other side. This side’s very messy.”

“Look Simon, I hate to disagree this early . . .”

“Then don’t!”

“But I don’t think it’s too good an idea to stay beside the plane. There’s a lot of fuel about, and it’s just waiting to blow up.”

“Nonsense! It hasn’t blown up yet. I see no reason to believe it ever will. It’s quite steady . . . The engines are off. It’s quite safe.” He thumped the silver fuselage. The wire swung in the dark hold. The blue spark arced through the shadows and the petrol fumes.

Ross shrugged. He and Job picked up the next case without further comment, but they carried it well clear on the other side.

Warren’s voice carried back to them from the distance. “Bloody dynamite in this one!”

Ross shook his head. Job said seriously, “God must love us very dearly: we should be dead ten times over.” They went back. As they reached the port engine they heard, “Hey! Mr. Ross; Job.”

They turned, and Kate Warren was hanging out of the door, her feet just short of the wing. They went over. “Let go,” called Ross, “we’ll catch you.”

“Right,” she said without a second’s hesitation, “here I come.” She slid down the wing on her stomach and hit both of them surprisingly hard. They all went over on the slippery ice.

Kate sat up first. “You two should really play cricket for England,” she said. “They need a couple of fielders like you.”

“And what’s your sport?” asked Ross, trying to catch his breath. “Weightlifting? Shot? Heavyweight boxing?”

“If it was,” she said as they got to their feet, “I’d thump you first.”

Ross noticed she had brushed the stiffness, most of the blood and many of the rats’ tails out of her hair, given her face a good scrub and found a pullover somewhere. She had changed into jeans, and with these and the thick pullover she was by far the most suitably dressed of them all. They took her to Simon Quick, who was just opening a way into the hold.

“Excellent,” he said when he saw her. “You’re just the one I need. Slip in this hole like a good girl, and move the boxes from the other side.”

“Right-oh,” she said, and went forward.

She wriggled between the boxes and into the dark hold. She closed her eyes tight, trying to get them used to the darkness; and so she missed the sudden blue light which flashed briefly far above her head. After a few moments, she could see. It was as though she was standing at the bottom of a cluttered chimney. There was no light from above, except from a thin tear in the metal of the fuselage, and the walls seemed to gather around her. She had a moment of claustrophobia, but shook it off. She began to move the crates. They were not heavy, and she soon had them into sufficient order to begin passing them out to Simon Quick. He was sorting them out into piles on the ice, after which Ross and Job carried them well clear of the plane.

Preston and the doctor brought one or two more back from further down the ice, the doctor becoming sufficiently hungry to admit that perhaps Ross had a point. At last a tent came out, and the first of the boxes containing clothes.