Killer

Incredibly – to himself at least – he still did not panic. He refused, consciously and absolutely, to acknowledge the picture which rose unbidden to his mind of the killer coming up again, mouth agape to tear away the floor of the tent and take his legs. Ross still held his hand in an iron grip. Once again their arms were at full stretch, and Ross, with a guttural grunt, jerked him free.

Then, with a great roar, even as Quick’s feet kicked clear, the whale’s head filled the tent, stretching the reinforced canvas, tearing the whole thing up into the air: five feet, ten feet. They staggered back across the net. The tent shook, billowed, began to come to pieces in the air.

“Guns!” yelled Ross. Job ran; Quick followed, still full of his heady courage.

The tent fell away revealing the great glistening black and white cone of the head, face unmarked, teeth gleaming. It was a young male. It looked at them, then sank a little.

“Hurry!” yelled Ross.

From the storage tent, the heavy Remington spoke. The side of the whale’s head split. It lurched forward on to the net, teeth snapping. The Remington spoke again. The top of its head seemed to explode as the heavy bullet, flattened by the impact, glanced off the top of its thick skull. It sank back, and vanished into the black water.

They stood, silently, listening as the whale sobbed quietly beneath them. The water in the hole where the tent had been began to freeze.

“He won’t be back,” said Job, lowering the rifle.

Kate said bitterly, “One tent gone and all of us nearly killed, just because of you two . . .” She swung on them both, blazingly angry. “Well you can damn well settle your differences later when we’re all on dry land! Do what you want then! I don’t give a damn if you beat each other’s stupid heads to pulp then, but we’ll all die if you keep this lunacy going much longer!”

Ross looked back at her levelly, meeting her hot eyes with his own until her gaze switched to Quick. But Quick, buoyed up by the strength given to him by his courage under pressure, also looked back without wilting until she swung on her heel, swept up her jacket, trousers and glasses and headed for her father’s tent. The others began to follow her. Quick’s eyes were drawn to the angry swing of her buttocks, loosely outlined by the heavy denim of her jeans. Suddenly he felt sick, and yet oddly at peace. He picked up the coat he had saved, one of the sleeping bags he had saved. He had saved them: jackets, gloves, trousers, sleeping bags, masks, all. He had saved them. He hummed as he followed the others.

In Kate’s tent they sat down again, silently.

“Right,” said Kate, “we’d better have this out. Colin, tell us what happened.”

“But . . .” began Quick.

“Shut up, Simon; you’ll get your chance later. Colin, will you please tell us about Antarctica?” Kate’s voice held rock-hard authority.

Ross looked at her. Blue eyes, still warm, met cold green in another level stare. This time Ross looked away. He looked down and nodded. He held up his hands, one blackened, blistered, twisted, part-melted, glistening with metal pins, struts, and strings; the other a great square, blunt fingered, thick knuckled, black haired. He studied it for a moment, remembering.

And then he told them.

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EIGHT

Ross studied the flesh of his two hands as he held them up towards the faint warmth of the stove. How white and thin they looked, the black hair on their backs made deeper, thicker, by the whiteness of the skin. They looked almost skeletal, the fingers thin, knuckles bulging unnaturally. He couldn’t keep them still. Half cold, half the pain of his split nails. The nail on each of his index-fingers was split to the quick. The nails on the other fingers were long – there had been no real chance to cut them since the team had started back from the South Pole – but they were strangely clean. Ross knew about city dirt which collected under the nails from grubby handles on street-doors, dirty trains, black newsprint, but here there was no dirt at all. He had been pulling a sledge day after day for longer than he could clearly remember, unable to wash properly, unable to shave, sometimes too tired to even eat, and yet he had perfectly clean fingernails. He studied them in silent, stupid wonder. They were so perfectly clean.

Outside, the storm raged as it had been raging for over a week, pinning them, helpless, to the unforgiving ice, as another storm had pinned Scott and his men more than half a century before, almost in the same place. Scott. It all came back to Scott.