Then Preston was at his side. “Here, Mr. Ross. I can get in there.”
“Good.”
Ross moved. The others were coming. “Get back,” he yelled. “You can’t help. She’s going any minute!”
He went down on his knees as the co-pilot passed the girl’s inert body through the narrow gap. Inside the plane sparks and pieces of blazing wood were falling like bright snow. Kate stirred as the cold air hit her. “The net,” she said, quite distinctly.
“Can you get the net?” Ross yelled, struggling to his feet, and slinging Kate over his right shoulder like a sack of potatoes.
“No sweat,” yelled Preston, and pulled it loose.
Then the pair of them were negotiating the crack in the restless ice at the plane’s tail, and charging clear as fast as they could, each careful of his burden.
Behind them, the flames had not found easy entry to the fuel tanks, but had been forced to spread outside the fuselage before finding abundant petrol. The snow was soaking with it, and flamed easily. The cracks were thick with it and the water blazed. The ice writhed and cracked. The jet became wreathed in pale flames. The roaring was tremendous, the ice shook, over fifty yards away the survivors felt the fierce heat.
Then, at last, with a sullen rumble, the tanks exploded. A column of fire cleft the pale sky. Metal rained all around them, striking no one. A complete wheel bounced nearby with deadly force, then rolled nonchalantly into the water as though propelled by an invisible giant, who stalked the ice, destroying the tent with insolent ease, tumbling the boxes about, beating the people into insensibility. But more than this, he attacked the ice.
The heat of the fire was concentrated along the cracks and weaknesses, into which much of the fuel had drained, and it melted and widened them until only the low ice-hills were holding the tongue of ice in place. The force of the explosion, however, rising as it did under the overhang of the eroded ice-cliffs, blasted thousands of tons of this backbone high into the air. With a rumble that echoed far over the Arctic Ocean, the crest of that frozen wave finally broke like solid surf, and tumbled down for twenty yards either side of where the jet had been. The huge plain of ice rocked slowly, jerked once or twice, then began to move, with all the inexorable grace of an ocean liner, out into the sea. More than twenty acres of ice, varying from inches to many yards in thickness, different from all the other floes only in that it boasted on its mighty surface six immobile bodies, seventeen packing cases, the wreck of a tent, and one or two pieces of debris, moved out into the Arctic Ocean, further and further away from the rigid safety of the pack.
FOUR
Preston was being shaken.
“Mr. Preston, wake up. Wake up.”
English voice. He opened his eyes, shook his head, clearing it of the brightness. The Englishman, Ross, was shaking him, frowning.
“All right,” said Preston, “OK.” He watched the tall man move towards Warren, next in the ragged line.
“Doctor Warren, are you all right?”
“Yes . . . Yes.” The doctor began to shiver.
“We’ll have a change of clothes for you in a moment, Doctor,” said Ross.
Warren turned his head. The co-pilot, whatever his name was, was picking himself out of the snow. Kate lay beyond him, quite still.
Something welled up into Warren’s throat, something which as a scientist he distrusted. The plane! It all came back to him. “My instruments,” he said.
“Lost, I’m afraid.”
Warren looked at all the boxes and crates which had been saved. “Lost? All . . . ?”
Ross nodded. He rose and went towards Simon Quick. When Warren was sure Ross was concerned with wakening Quick, the doctor stumbled over to his daughter’s inert form.
Quick had been watching Ross move down the line towards him, lying there, conscious but half-stunned. Now Ross knelt, and reached down towards him, the light of the low sun carving out hollows in the blunt hatchet of his face. “Simon . . .”
“Don’t you touch me!” he snarled, relishing the pained frown it brought.
He squirmed to his feet and stood over his enemy. His eyes swept over the floe. He caught his breath as panic gripped him. The tongue of ice had broken free: they were drifting, at the mercy of wind and tide. And the others didn’t seem to realise the danger. He opened his mouth to speak, to scream, to do something, but a feeling of helplessness swept over him, and he remained quiet after all. What could he say? What could they do? Suddenly he was desperately tired. He suspected they all were, too battered and tired even to care. His shoulders slumped, and he stared dumbly at them. Job was busy among the crates. Warren was half-supporting his daughter. Her hair was cascading onto the ice, catching the crystal light. There came a twisting of lust in his stomach. The other man, Preston, was standing looking helplessly around. It was very cold. There was a slight breeze, and the wind-chill factor lowered the temperature by a further degree for every knot the breeze blew. Only Ross and Job were properly dressed: the rest of them were in imminent danger of freezing. If Ross hadn’t woken them, they would all have slept forever. He went over towards Warren and Kate, hearing Ross rise unsteadily on the slippery ice behind him.
“How is she?” he asked the doctor.
“I’m all right,” Kate said.
“Good.” He switched on his most dazzling smile. “It was very brave of you to go into the plane like that: you’ve probably saved us all.”
She smiled back. “Thank you, Mr. Quick.”
“Please call me Simon. Well, Doctor, I think we’d all better get changed, or Ross and Job will be the only ones who make it through the night.” He made it sound light, like a joke; but he hoped it would draw their attention to the fact that rather than seeing to their safety, Ross had seen first to his own.
“Job, are you sorting out the clothes there?”
Job nodded.
“Good. I’d better give you a hand then. We’ll use the tent that’s unpacked. It’s a bit battered, but it should preserve the proprieties. I’ll get it up again.” His hands weren’t working too well, but he managed without much trouble. The double layer of material, carefully designed to give maximum protection against cold and wet, had been torn down one side by the force of the explosion and hung a little open. It would do, however, as a changing room; and after that as a store tent.
“I’ll just pop in first, if that’s all right with everybody, then I can help Job with the crates here,” he called.
Job paid no attention to him; Warren, Kate and Preston nodded; Ross had wandered off somewhere.
Quick climbed swiftly into the tent. The hole in the wall let in light as well as cold, and he had no trouble reading the tickets on the bundles of clothes on the floor. One read Large; two Medium; one Small. They had that well enough sorted out, he thought. Large for Preston, Medium for Warren and himself, Small for Kate. He undid the string on the bundle he had chosen for himself, and laid the clothing out: long underwear, carefully quilted; heavy trousers and shirts; thick woollen socks; insulated waterproof overtrousers; an anorak lined with wolf’s fur; woollen gloves, sealskin mittens and boots. The clothes were a little loose, but not too bad: the boots at least fitted satisfactorily. He stepped out of the tent, pulled up the fur-lined hood, and gestured to Miss Warren that she should enter the tent next.
He went to one of the crates on the far side of the tent, and began to open it. It contained sleeping bags. His hands – warm at last! – mechanically began to unpack the crate. A careful look round revealed that he was alone here. His eyes fastened to the slit down the side of the tent. The wind moved the material, and he caught a glimpse of movement. He bent to pick up another sleeping bag, eyes riveted. A bare arm moved over the blackness. Abruptly the side of the tent billowed out, and he could see her balancing on one leg, the other raised ready to insert into the quilted long johns, her body in a delicate curve of hip, back and arms down to the stark white material . . .