A moment of pain, of acute failure, and then he poised and leapt. He landed in soft snow, paining his hand on a buried tree root, rolling over and scrabbling for a hold on frozen grass and icy rocks beneath the snow. His survival pack and the dinghy lay beneath him. Snow filled his mouth and eyes, even his ears, though they were still alive to the terrible scraping lurch that meant the Firefox was moving further out, further under the surface.
Yes. He turned to look. The water had reached the cockpit — thank God he'd remembered to close and lock it — and the nose pointed to the grey sky at a more acute angle than before. He drew his knees up to his chest — the cold of the snow seeping through the pressure suit and the thin underclothing beneath — and dropped his head. He could not move. He felt it was like waiting by a deathbed — but not his father's, for that had been an impatient wait with release and the throwing off of hatred at the end of the tunnel.
It would be no more than a minute now -
He laughed; high and crazy. The noise was like the call of a rook in the thick cold air. He could not prevent it; a cackle of survival and defeat. He'd certainly hidden the Firefox, hidden it good -
He could not stop the laughter. Tears rolled down his blanched, cold cheeks, down the creases of his pained face. He cackled like a madman. He'd really, really hidden it -
Another grating lurch — some part of him remained surprised that the undercarriage had withstood the pressure upon it — and he looked up to see the cockpit now half-submerged, the water lapping towards the nose of the Firefox.
And the laughter stopped.
The locked and shut down aircraft was twenty yards from him, the black nose jutting, the cockpit half-submerged. Everything — everything electronic, every means of communication, was locked beneath the canopy, locked inside the airframe. Radio, radio, radio…
Gant swallowed, savagely wiped his mouth. The aircraft was steady again, one of the wheels, perhaps, halted against the chock of a boulder or sunk in softer mud. Tantalisingly steady -
There was nothing -
'Nothing, dammit!' he exploded, banging his clenched fists on his thighs. A bird replied in a hoarse voice from one of the trees. 'Nothing — !' He could do nothing. He couldn't sit in the Firefox until help came, he couldn't dismantle the radio and rescue it, he couldn't, couldn't couldn't -
Strangely, he heard the voice of Aubrey then. The soft, self-deprecating, insinuating tones. His final briefing, the fake transistor radio that was a homing receiver which had saved his life, listening as it had done for signals from 'Mother One', the submarine that had refuelled the Firefox. It was attached by a single adhesive strip to one corner of the instrument panel.
Receiver — ?
Transmitter, too… Aubrey had been reluctant to mention it, hovered over the words like a choosily-feeding pet until he had uttered them. In case of some — final emergency, my dear fellow… not likely, of course… but, it has an emergency signal facility if you — have to… you understand…?
Gant was on his feet, still nodding at the remembered words as he had nodded when he first heard them. Aubrey didn't want to mention crashing, injury, death, but Gant had understood.
And he had left it in the cockpit!
He slipped and scrambled down the steep bank. He undipped his survival pack, his parachute harness, the dinghy. The dinghy — ! A fringe of ice cracked beneath his weight, and he slid into the icy water. He cried out with shock. He stepped back — pebbles and larger boulders on the bed of the lake, so he moved carefully — and the water retreated. He dragged the dinghy towards him, and inflated it. It boiled and enlarged and groaned, then bobbed on the water. His teeth chattered, his whole body shuddered. A bird croaked, as if in mockery. The nose of the Firefox tilted upwards like a snub, a dismissal of his frantic efforts. He climbed into the dinghy, and paddled furiously towards the aircraft. His head bobbed up at every frantic stroke to study the unmoving nose of the plane. His body temperature continued to drop. His heartbeat raced with tension, with the sense of time lost and almost run out, with the fight to keep the blood warm and circulating.
His hand touched the fuselage, and he withdrew it as if shocked, in case the pressure of fingertips might be enough to thrust it beneath the water. He juggled and bumped the dinghy slowly along the fuselage until it was beneath the cockpit tilted crazily high above him. His hands felt for the spring-loaded steps up the side of the fuselage.
Felt, fumbled, found… He tested his chilly weight against the strength of his arms, and then heaved his body out of the dinghy, feet scrabbling — careful, don't kick, don't struggle — until they, too, discovered toe-holds. He hung there for a moment, sensing the steadiness of the airframe. It was holding. He began climbing, hand over hand, feet following with exaggerated caution, slipping more than once.
Lip of the cockpit, smoothness of the canopy…
He rested, aware of the airframe now as a see-saw. He waited for it to move. It remained still. The water covered the rear section of the canopy. Water would spill into the cockpit when he opened it. It wouldn't have to matter.
Left-hand side of the instrument panel. He unlocked the canopy, then cranked it slowly open. Water gurgled into the cockpit, splashing down instruments, becoming a pool in the well of the pilot's couch. He eased the canopy open sufficiently to insert his gloved hands, and scrabbled blindly, leaning forward, touching along the instrument panel, across dials and read-outs and displays and buttons and switches, until he felt the edge of the homing device. Like a black cigarette-case, slightly larger than that, same shape…
He tugged at it. The adhesive held it. With both hands he heaved and it detached itself from the panel. With a chilly, sodden, shivering triumph, he drew it out and clutched it against his side, hugging it to him like a prize. Still the airframe remained motionless, rock-steady. He began to crank down the canopy once more
The Firefox shuddered, and the entire airframe lurched away from him towards deeper water. The huge tailplanes sank almost to their tips. The Firefox continued to slide away. With the instinct to preserve himself and the aircraft, he cranked more furiously and grabbed with his other hand at the handhold just below the edge of the cockpit. A tremor ran through him as he heard the homing device slide down the fuselage with a clatter, then drop. He cranked furiously, closing the canopy. He dropped the cranking-handle then, in order to hang on with both hands. He knew the Firefox was going under…
He would float away. He looked around frantically for the homing device, and for the dinghy, already ten yards away. Surely he had heard the impact of the plastic on ice, not the slight splash of its falling into the water — but he could not locate it. The water mounted the canopy towards him. The airframe was steadily rolling backwards now. It would stop only when the slope of the lake-bed levelled. The water was only inches away — he would float off.