Killer

“Damn you!” shouted Ross, and he was up on his feet and charging towards it. He caught up a lump of ice as he ran, he hurled it and missed. The whale lowered its head, slid back a little and waited. Its head alone was larger than the man, but Ross didn’t hesitate. He hurled himself at it, left arm raised. The whale waited, unaccountably, unbelievably, until he reached it. His left arm came down like an axe, crashing on to its scarred nose. He raised his arm to strike again. Forty feet away, the killer’s tail slammed down. The huge body lurched forward. The mouth, opening, slammed into Ross’s stomach and hurled him backwards to sprawl helplessly on the ice. The huge head rose above him, mouth gaping.

Job and Kate moved together, running towards it, hurling chunks of ice. It paused, hesitated, slid back out of sight into the quiet ocean. Kate and Job took an arm and picked him up.

“Very brave!” sneered Quick. “I suppose you’re going to tell us you’ve driven them off again!”

“For Christ’s sake, Simon!” snapped Kate. “Will you grow up!”

His face worked. He turned away. To say that he was motivated only by hate for Ross and lust for Kate would be a gross over­simplification. Like many people, his ability to convince himself that he was the true hero of every situation he was involved in, and to explain his mistakes and meannesses to his own satisfaction, was almost infinite. He saw nothing wrong with his regard for the girl, and was only surprised that she did not obviously return it. Could she fancy that cripple Ross? No. She was only sorry for him. And now they were all on Ross’s side, in spite of the fact that it was all his fault; he had said the whales were gone; he hadn’t stopped Preston fishing. They ought to be chucking the big murdering sod off the ice, not nursing him. God; when would they learn? How many more of them would go the way of Robin and Charlie before they realised Ross was quite unable to lead anyone anywhere other than to hell?

Out of a mist, surprisingly close, there loomed an iceberg. He remained lost in his thoughts for a moment. Then his mouth opened. It was a huge berg, looking like a million tons of glass, towering hundreds of feet into the air, sculpted by wind and weather into buttes, cliffs, ice-pebble beaches . . . He looked towards the others, still grouped round Ross. None of them had seen. He felt the great bubble of excitement building up inside him. If he could get them off this melting death-trap and on to that . . . IF he could . . . Why, it was like getting out of a leaking lifeboat and into a drifting battleship.

He looked up at it again: a huge standard mesa-type iceberg, flat-topped, steep-sided, doubtlessly spawned by some glacier on the north coast of Greenland. He had some experience of icebergs, enough to know that the ice beneath the water would be plunging to untold depths into the ocean, in strengths and thicknesses which would reduce even the power of the killer whales to less than nothing . . . He walked back towards the huddled group.

Ross was sitting up when he reached them, regaining his breath. Kate glanced up at Quick, wondering briefly at the change in his face, from the thunderous frown he had been wearing moments earlier. He was smiling now, and his eyes were sparkling even behind the slit-eyed mask.

“Colin,” he said, “I think I can save us . . .” He beamed round them all. “If you’ll just look out to sea, you will see the answer to all our problems.” He gestured towards the iceberg as though he had personally arranged it.

They all looked up. It was still several miles away, but it towered like a glass mountain, floating nearer as they watched. “I’d like to see those damn whales getting up through that!” he said.

Ross nodded: Simon was right. If they could get on to that, they would be safe from the sea and clearly visible to rescuers. “All right, Simon. That’s a great idea . . .”

But even as he spoke, there came a sound like a muffled explosion, followed by a rumble which made their teeth rattle in their heads and a towering cliff on the approaching berg slowly crumbled and hurled thousands of tons of ice and snow into the foaming water. The berg rocked from side to side with the shock, becoming almost completely lost in a fog of disturbed ice crystals and spray. They sat, bemused by the scale of the thing, while the waves spread towards them as though a gigantic stone had been hurled into the ocean. The floe was too big to ride over them like a boat, and so they broke, several feet high, against the ice, sending a shallow wash of freezing foam over the surface towards them.

The echoes of the rumble died like distant thunder. The foam halted, receded. Quick, not knowing what to say, was silent. Ross got to his feet with a great deal of agility. “Right. We’d better get back to the camp. We have to think this thing out.”

“What is there to think about?” demanded Quick, trying not to sound aggrieved.