“How is he?” Suddenly, and with overwhelming force, Ross wanted him to be dead. For five years now he had hidden behind the desk in Washington, hidden in other, darker places. And now, when he had ventured out again, it was only to face the hatred of this one man, reaching out of his very nightmares.
He hadn’t heard Job’s answer, and asked again, “How is he?”
“He’s fine.”
Ross shrugged, and continued to climb up the seats, using their backs as a ladder. The higher he climbed, the deeper became the crusted blood on the headrests. He paused when his head was level with the second seat back because a curtain, which had originally blocked off the small entry compartment, was hanging back down the plane, obscuring his view. He was out of breath, dizzy, nauseous. He hung on, trying to regain his breath. Job was behind him.
“Job? What have you done with Simon?”
“What could I do? Leave him to wake up.”
“Yes. That’s all we can do.”
“I’ll get rid of the curtain, see what’s going on.”
Job eased up past him. The curtain moved, strained, reluctantly began to tear. “Doctor Warren seems to be all right,” said Job conversationally as he worked on the curtain.
“Yes. Looks like the blood’s all coming from his daughter. That’s really bad luck. All this way to be . . .” The curtain came away. “Christ.”
He still couldn’t see much: a hand, dripping blood on to the floor; strands of long gold hair, rust-coloured now, formed into long stiff rats-tails, running with blood.
He tensed himself to pull up . . .
“AAAaaaahhyiuH!”
The door at the top burst open and the co-pilot tumbled the length of the companionway, tearing Ross’s precarious hold loose so that they fell together, with sickening force down into the tail. Colin’s ears rang. His head throbbed. There were bright lights.
“Colin? Colin!” A distant voice, drawing nearer. Job was there beside him, untangling him from Preston.
“Ouch! No; it’s just wrenched a little. I’m OK. What about him?”
“Unconscious. He seems to be all right, though. I wonder what brought that on? He seemed quite a level-headed young man.”
“Well, we’d better get back up and see what’s happening,” said Ross. “We really can’t risk hanging around in here.”
“But where else is there to go?” asked Job.
“There’s only one place we can go. Out on to the pack. We can’t stay here. This plane’s a bomb with all that fuel around. It’s a miracle it hasn’t blown up yet; it’ll only take a spark or two. God knows when it will go; but I’d rather be out there than in here when it does.” He picked himself up laboriously, and swayed for a moment, leaning against the backs of the seats. Another drop of blood fell beside his head. “Right. Up we go again.”
As though he was climbing a ladder, he moved up the body of the plane. It was several minutes before he was back where he had been when the co-pilot tumbled through the door. The girl’s limp hand brushed his shoulder as he tried to place his left foot firmly on the blood-sodden seat below; then, with one galvanic heave he was up, half-bending over her. Her head and torso were thickly crusted with red, but there seemed to be no wound on her. Ross wedged his left arm between the two seats, and felt on her cold neck for a pulse. A wave of relief swept over him as he found it almost at once, strong and regular.
But if Kate was unhurt, then whose blood was this? He looked around, and at once saw the hole in the wall immediately before her. It was not a large hole by any means, and it seemed to be blocked by something; but blood was running out in a steady stream. It had to be the pilot’s blood.
“Job?”
“Yes?”
“The girl’s all right, but she’s covered in blood. We’ll have to move her and cover her in something warm.”
“Right. On my way up.”
Together they lifted Kate out of the seat and lowered her down the plane, letting her slide the last foot or two to rest beside the co-pilot.
“Right,” said Ross, “I think we’d better cover her up as soon as possible, or she’ll be getting pneumonia; but I really must look in the cockpit.”
In the back wall of the cockpit was the door which had slammed shut behind the falling co-pilot. Ross opened this door and heaved himself up. The woodwork creaked. Job held his legs. His head and shoulders erupted into the cockpit. What he could see – the right side – was a shambles: everything clearly useless, broken glass, pieces of facia, wire, unknown equipment, all gleaming painfully in the bludgeoning brightness. Ross blinked, shook his head, slitted his eyes. Through the ruins of the windscreen he could see a hump of snow curling over like a wave about to break down on them; beyond that, gold, almost copper, marked with ghostly stars, the sky. He turned, facing the floor, to look at the left hand seat. His stomach heaved again.
“What is it?” asked Job from immediately below him.
“It’s the pilot.”
“What about him?”
“He’s dead,” said a toneless voice below both of them.
The co-pilot was standing in the tail of the plane, his hand to his head, looking down at Kate. He asked, “What about Miss Warren? All that blood . . .”
“It’s the pilot’s,” said Job. “She seems to be all right.”
“The pilot’s? Ed’s? How? . . .”
“That thing came right through,” said Ross. “Nearly into the cabin here and through her too.”
“My God,” said the co-pilot, awed.
“What thing?” asked Job.
“Would you tell him?” Ross asked the co-pilot. “You should be able to explain it a little.”
“Yes. I can.” Preston gathered himself. He had the resilience of youth; the boundless self-confidence whose strength is that it has never been tested; and circumstances had proved it right: he was still alive. So he began to explain as concisely as he could. “Ed kept her under relative control. These things do not glide without power, they falclass="underline" but he kept the nose up, which is all you can do. It really was a fine piece of flying. Anybody else would have buried us; you know? But there were hills all along one side, and the left wing touched them. This swung us to the left, with our nose into the hill, and we were still moving at one hundred knots. The nose went straight up in the air . . .” He breathed deeply, his face white.
“On the top of those hills is this overhang, and down from the overhang are huge icicles . . . maybe ten foot, some of them; I don’t know . . .”
Job looked at Ross. “Icicles? . . .”
“That’s what the man said . . . All right, you’ve done enough, thank you. Hiram is it? Could you look after Miss Warren and anyone else that wakes up?”
“Hiram Preston. Yes sir, surely.”
“Oh, Hiram,” Ross turned back, “the radio. Any hope . . . ?”
“ ’Fraid not, but I did get our position off before we came down. They’ll be looking for us eventually. If we just stay by the plane . . .”
“Isn’t it going to be a bit dangerous to stay too close?”
Preston sniffed the air. “My God! The fuel . . . Yes. We’d better get out, if we can. Is the door all right up there?”
“We shouldn’t have much trouble,” Ross said.
Job thrust his head above the level of the lower wall. A spear of ice came through the windscreen like some great harpoon, and went straight through the pilot, the seat, and the wall behind him. It was covered with blood, which had soaked into the cracks and faults in the slim column, giving it an almost marbled appearance. Job turned his head away.
“That is a terrible way to die!”
Ross said, “Very few ways are nice.”
Now they were at the door. Ross turned the emergency handle, and the whole section sprang free, crashing down the wing in a shower of ice crystals. Ross and Job both tensed at the noise, at the possibility of a spark.
A light breeze came in through the hole. Ross’s whole body shook. “Lord,” he said, “it’s cold.”