“It all got us this jet anyhow,” said her father, looking proudly round the slim interior with its twenty-four seats, shining grey plastic, deep blue carpet. “You don’t think we ride around like this all the time? Usually we have to beg lifts from all and sundry, but the Corporation in their infinite wisdom lent us one of their executive jets to play around with until we get back on our feet. The Board of Directors would have a fit if they knew we were ferrying dynamite around in it. Pilot did.”
“No, Daddy, I meant what’s the camp like to work in? How’s it run?”
“Oh, of course. You’ve never been in one, have you? Well, ours is really two camps, so it’s pretty big. Basically it’s for scientific research, so there are a lot of scientists; and they’ve given us some cold-weather men to nursemaid us, and to do the dirty work. I’m in charge of the scientists, such as they are; and Simon’s chief cold-weather man. See?”
“Yes, of course. It all seems quite logical. But what’s Mr. Ross going to do?”
“Ah, well; that is a question. The answer seems to go like this. One of their pet scientists,” his tone made it clear that he himself was nobody’s pet scientist, “has come up with a series of experiments he wants to do during the winter. Silly idea. Still, rather than give this man a completely new camp, the Board have decided it would be more economic to give him one, like ours, that was scheduled to close for the winter, from November to May. Now, if they do this, a certain amount of re-structuring will have to be done. Some of the huts, for instance, could do with a little draught-proofing and perhaps some insulation. And Ross, as their chief cold-weather man, has to design these improvements. He could do it quite adequately on his desk, if you ask me, but he wants to do it on the spot. Well, if you’d lived in Washington for five years, I dare say you’d understand that.”
After he had delivered himself of this speech, Kate’s father lapsed into an abstracted silence. Kate knew better than to distract him, and when, after a couple of minutes he took out a pocket calculator and a notepad she gave up all hope of communication, and looked out of the window.
For more than an hour she gazed at the monotony of the tundra, too far below to present a spectacular view, even in all its summer finery, but suddenly, as the plane turned to make its descent into Barrow, she found herself looking away over the Arctic Ocean. The sun was impossibly high in the clear sky, and it shone off the surface of the water, concealing its depths. Kate allowed her eyes to wander up toward the horizon, and suddenly there was a blaze of light. She blinked, and it remained constant, its hues shifting and changing only as the jet continued to turn. It was as though some unimaginable giant had set a crown of sapphires and emeralds on top of the world.
“What is that?” breathed Kate, overcome by the beauty of it; the greens shading from the deepest sea-green to the lightest crystal, the blues from the palest glimmer of a clear winter sky to the violets and indigos of a calm summer’s night, all a dancing flame set in the finest filigree of gold.
“It is the pack,” said Ross, suddenly behind her.
“It’s your birthday!” cried her father. “Katherine, why didn’t you remind me?”
“I want to see it properly, Daddy,” she pleaded, the little girl again.
“What? Oh. Yes. I suppose so. Yes. Of course you can. Certainly. Go and tell the pilot. Say I said it was all right.”
Kate dragged herself away from the window and went towards the cockpit. At the head of the aisle there was a blue curtain over a narrow doorway opening into the tiny entrance foyer. On her left was the door of the aircraft. On her right the toilet. In front, the cockpit door. She knocked, slid the door open, and entered. The little room was full of smoke. The pilot had a cigarette hanging from the left side of his mouth, and his eyes were slitted as he controlled the descent, one hand on the control lever, the other on the throttles. The co-pilot was talking to Barrow field and preparing to lower the flaps and landing gear.
“Excuse me,” said Kate, utterly at a loss: so much seemed to be going on. The cockpit canted slightly. The pack, magnificently visible through the windscreen, angled and began to slide away.
“Can we help you?” asked the co-pilot.
“Yes. Can we have a closer look at the pack, please?”
The pilot’s eyes flicked up from the instruments for a second, seeing what Kate saw as if for the first time. Without hesitation he said, “OK. Tell Barrow, Hiram. Would you like to stay up here Miss Warren? You’ll get a much better view.”
“Thank you very much. Yes, I would love to.”
She leaned lightly against the bulkhead. The pack swung back until it was an acceptable horizon and began to draw nearer as the quiet jets thrust forward.
The aeroplane sped through the lower sky at a speed in excess of four hundred knots, its passage aided by a warm, humid wind blowing steadily from the south.
Kate watched the green-blue fire as it drew nearer. After a while it began to fade, and the ice was revealed like great blobs of cottonwool half-floating in the sea, and the pack itself, its surface a wild jumble of ice blocks thrust hundreds of feet into the air. But she was not deterred. She was gripped by an excitement which reached right back to her schooldays. An excitement she had first felt in a vague and distant geography lesson when her imagination had suddenly made the dry facts about arctic climates take life. Deep within her the romance of the ice still lingered; not the hurried, tiring life she knew from her field trips to Norway and Iceland, but life in tents and igloos, hunting seal and polar bear, fishing from kayaks or leaping from floe to floe. The Eskimo: the flat-faced, cheerful, stoical people her imagination had conjured from her text books. The sea lion, the walrus, the whale.
All this was contained in the pack as it swept majestically towards them. Suddenly, away to the right, at the very edge of the pack, rose a glittering cloud of spray.
“There she blows,” cried Ross in the cabin behind her.
“Can we follow it?” Kate asked the pilot.
“OK,” he said, “Hiram, you take her down.” The plane angled, the horizon vanished for a moment and the sea drew nearer, golden and black, suddenly thrust churning aside by the monstrous back of the whale, slate-blue and streaming.
“That’s the biggest blue whale I’ve ever seen!” cried Ross.
“Over a hundred feet, over a hundred tons,” said Job.
Disaster struck just at that moment, but none of them noticed.
The co-pilot felt a slight change in the handling of the plane. Ice crystals brushed over the perspex at the front of the cockpit. The pilot was turned towards Kate, speaking. They had overflown the whale. The co-pilot began to turn.
The airspeed indicator swung up unaccountably. The co-pilot glancing at it, and seeing it high but steady, lowered the landing gear and put the flaps in full landing attitude. The plane slowed to just above stalling speed as it flew low over the blue whale for the second time. As the throttles were eased back the flow of fuel to the engines was cut. Less fuel flowed through the filter systems between the throttle valves and the jets.
Disaster was a fierce north wind blowing down off the pack, laden with ice crystals many degrees below freezing.
The pilot looked away from Kate and down at the whale, suddenly aware of some niggling doubt eating at the back of his mind. Although he had had no hesitation in telling Hiram to take them down in the seemingly safe manoeuvre, something in the attitude of the aircraft now unconsciously set his palms to tingling, telling him to take control back from the boy at once. It was not until he looked out of the cockpit window that he realised how deep they had slipped into trouble.