Killer

For several moments they stood in silence, searching the quiet sea for the black fins. They each had a box of matches, but only Job and Simon held sticks of dynamite. The minutes stretched on to agonising length. They all began to shift uneasily from foot to foot as the tension became harder to bear. At last Kate turned to Ross and said, “Colin . . .”

“There!” he snapped, pointing. At some distance, perhaps two hundred yards, the three fins silently pushed into the air, like the thorns of some huge rose. Again in unison came the three blasts of air puffing into clouds as the sound came.

Job had his fuse alight. Simon’s match blew out. He fumbled, trying to light another. Job took a little run and hurled the stick with all his great strength. It curved up into the air, turning end over end, spitting venomously against the dull sky, and began to fall, far too short. It exploded too soon, a yard above the surface, sending back a wave of air, but hardly disturbing the water. Simon got his fuse burning and turned towards the water, but the whales had vanished. He paused.

“Just throw it,” said Colin conversationally.

“What? Oh.” He hurled it as far as he could, a long low throw, the dynamite vanishing under the surface before it exploded. They didn’t have long to wait, however, before the surface heaved up into a brief powerful column which lingered in the air as the waves washed towards the floe.

“That wasn’t very good,” said Colin.

“Well, I . . .” Simon, angrily defensive.

“No, Simon, not you. The whole thing. Look. Kate and I will light the matches, or, better still, Kate, get some torches from the fire, would you?” She nodded and was on the way. “Then we’ll hold the torches and you two can light and throw more easily. OK?”

“Fine,” said Job.

Simon nodded.

BOOM!

The floe heaved. They all staggered with the shock. Two of the whales came through the rotten ice among the walrus corpses to the south of the camp. Simon was in action before anyone could stop him. This time his matches did not fail and the short fuse sputtered into life. Ross reached for the dynamite but Simon had turned and hurled it impulsively at the two distant killers.

The stick of explosive curled lazily up into the air over the camp, hissing its bright yellow flame, spitting its cloud of sparks, leaving pale trails of its progress on the eyes of the men who watched it. Ross yelled, “Kate!”

Kate looked up from the fire, and saw it beginning to fall, well clear of the camp now, towards the ice. She saw the heads of the two whales vanish as they jerked under the water. She dived for cover, rolling well clear of the hot tray with its dangerous pile of smouldering sticks to where the tent might afford a little protection.

The stick of dynamite fell through the lower air on to the thin tongue of solid ice between the two holes lately occupied by the killers. When it hit, it skidded along the smooth surface until it wedged itself under the bulk of the largest of the dead walruses.

Then it exploded.

The walrus vanished into the air in a red-brown column.

The sound washed over the floe with the wind, tearing at the tents, taking a great cloud of sparks from the fire tray. It knocked the breath out of Kate’s body, and she lay stunned for a moment. The three men looked through narrowed eyes, Job and Simon at the south of the floe, Colin at Kate. She began to pick herself up . . . and was thrown flat again. There was a grating, slopping sound which seemed to fill the air. The floe heaved and rocked. A curtain of spray roared up through the crack under the tent. The lines holding the net in place, holding the camp together, groaned and stretched. The orange square twisted out of shape, then slowly reformed.

The hill to the south-west of the floe began to fall over.

The force of the explosion, though not particularly great, was strengthened immeasurably by the body of the walrus which sent almost all of its power down into the ice. The ice here to the south, and in an arc right up to the west of the camp was soft and rotten. The force of the explosion was sufficient to make it break as far as the ice hill, and the forces set up as that began to move were enough to do the rest. The sections of the floe to the south and west of the camp slowly detached themselves and began to move away. The ice hill, with nothing to balance its overhang, slowly toppled over and vanished into the water.

The floe was now shaped like a bullet with its blunt tip facing west. It was one hundred and fifty feet long and one hundred feet wide, held together by the firmly anchored net. The camp took up almost the whole of it, with its forty-foot long ropes stretching very nearly to the water in all directions. At the two northern corners of the net there were holes where two tents had stood.

“Jesus Christ,” whispered Simon, pale and shaking.

“Where are they?” demanded Job. Wherever they came through now it could only spell disaster.

“Kate?” yelled Colin.

“OK.” She picked herself up again. Colin felt better.