They continued to stare dully at him, saying nothing.
“Now,” he continued, a little desperately, “the question of rescue.”
That stirred them a little, but not enough to elicit any reply.
“Hiram broadcast the position of the crash on the radio. How much further did we travel before we actually touched down?”
The co-pilot shrugged. “Thousand yards. Two.”
“So they will be looking for us within a mile of our present site . . .”
“I thought you said the pack drifted.” Simon Quick, belligerent. “And anyway won’t the floe move faster than the rest of the pack now it’s loose?”
Ross was really too tired for these games. He answered almost spitefully. “Much faster. About ten miles a day. Maybe fifteen.”
That shook even Quick. He went white. “You mean that if they don’t get here almost immediately, we’ll have drifted miles away?”
“Yes.”
Their interest was almost tangible now. Their concern.
“But they’ll send something immediately, won’t they? A plane?” Kate asked it. Her gaze shifted from Ross to Preston.
He shrugged again. “Depends what they’ve got. There’re planes enough at Barrow I suppose, helicopters.” He looked around them, heavy with news. “But when I sent the Mayday, Barrow said the weather was closing in. A storm. I mean they mightn’t be able to get anything up immediately . . .”
“A ship,” said Kate. “They’ll warn shipping.”
“That’s true, but it will largely be a matter of luck whether or not a ship would see us. They think we’re on the pack, you see . . .”
They sat for some while without saying anything more, dipping cloths into the hot water, cleaning themselves, their movements made vague by fatigue, latent shock, stiffness and cold. There was little else to say, after all.
As they sat, the wind, pushing gently from the east, catching the hills like sails, and the current thrusting restlessly from the Beaufort Sea effortlessly moved the twenty acres of ice away from the location of Preston’s last message. And from Barrow, wrapped at the moment in the worst summer storm in living memory.
The sun was quite high when they collapsed at last into their tents. Ross and Job shared one, Preston and Quick another; Warren and Kate had one each, together, nearest to the sea. The split side of the storage tent billowed lazily in the breeze, the latrine tent flapped and cracked quietly like the sail on a ship.
Ross and Job quickly stripped to their quilted underwear, and, packing their clothes around their sleeping bags to keep them warm and supple, fell swiftly asleep. Ross’s dreams immediately carried him back through five years and over half the world. He began to stir and mutter.
Preston and Quick removed only their boots and fell asleep immediately. Warren, his boots still firmly in place, didn’t even undress or make it into his bag, but wrapped himself in blankets and dozed off hoping they would be rescued before he ran out of tobacco.
Only Kate, in her underwear, wisely surrounded, like Job and Ross, with her clothing, could not sleep. She blamed herself for their predicament. All along the way, when things had gone wrong, she had been there, at the cause. It had been her idea to look at the pack. Her wish to follow the whale. It was her fault they had crashed here. And later, it had been she who had climbed up a wire she knew was live, causing the short, nearly killing herself and blowing up the plane. They would never be found now, with the plane gone. And it was her fault. She was so tired that her normally practical mind accepted the pointless self-accusations, and began to sink deeply into a pit of self-pity.
Abruptly it was all too much for her. She was fourteen again, standing by her mother’s grave; and there was only one person to run to. She dressed quickly and went to his tent. He was sound asleep. She shook him, tears running down her face. “Daddy; Daddy.”
He stirred; turned over. His eyes opened; looked at her vaguely. Remained on her face as he frowned. “Who is it?”
It was too painful. With a sob she turned to run from his tent, but his voice came after her. “Katherine; Kate!”
She paused, turned back.
“I couldn’t see. I didn’t have my glasses on, darling. What was it you wanted, Kate?”
He was sitting there, all rumpled and untidy, peering through his misted spectacles at her. A great warmth welled up in her chest. She reached for him. And then the polar bear came in through the back of the tent.
The bear, a young male just entering his prime, had been hunting the edge of the pack for seal but had found none. Earlier that evening, however, his attention had been caught by the sound of the explosion, and he had gone to investigate. Over a mile downwind he had picked up the smell of the humans, and he would have gone on his way except that he picked up also the smell of the soup. His hungry stomach churning inside him, he had thrown himself into the water at the point where the floe had broken away, and had swum with floundering, rapid strokes to the source of the delicious smell. Silently he had skirted the island of ice, keeping effortlessly in the water, protected from its great cold by his ample layers of fat. He had found a quiet place to land, and had crept up silently on his great fur-covered paws. The smell of humans was very great now, and he moved like a ghost; but a ghost of muscle, teeth and claws. When he saw the tent, he didn’t know what to make of it, and so, with all the logic of the wild, he attacked it. He reared up behind it and brought both his great front paws down on it. The short, blunt claws ripped through it like paper. Something in it screamed: he charged.
Kate saw its huge shadow just before it attacked, and she stared, transfixed, through that eternal moment as the shadow fell, and the black talons destroyed the tent wall. Then, framed in the tatters was the flat, evil head, its eyes ablaze, black lips stretching back from scarlet gums and yellow teeth in a terrible growl.
She screamed, and then she was rolling for the way out, pulling her father with her. He followed her, yelling at the top of his voice. The bear floundered after them with a roar, but it became entangled in the tent and was forced to pause.
At Kate’s first scream, Ross sprang awake. He heard the thunderous roar as he was pulling on his boots, and understood immediately what was happening. “Bear,” said Job, also struggling with his boots. Ross nodded and threw himself through the tent flap. He slewed round in a flurry of ice and took in the scene at a glance.
The bear had risen to its full height and was tearing the tent away like so much wet tissue paper. Warren and Kate were running away towards the fire. Quick and Preston came out of their tent, also running.
“The guns,” yelled Ross; and the three of them made a dash for the supply tent. They threw boxes and crates hither and thither looking for the three crates, two of guns, one of ammunition.
“Here,” yelled Quick. “The carbines.” He was tearing at the top. Ross found the ammunition and smashed the top in with one blow of his left fist. “Neat trick,” said Preston, as he opened the second box of rifles. Quick slammed a magazine into one of the carbines just as the bear tore the tent from its face, and charged after Kate and Warren. He aimed and fired. Ice kicked up beside the charging animal, and then the gun jammed.
“Christ!” screamed Quick. Preston was wrestling to load the long, sleek shape of a Weatherby Varmintmaster.
Warren tripped over the discarded survival-gear box and fell full-length while something metallic slid from it across the ice towards Kate. He struggled helplessly to rise, slipping on the treacherous ice. The bear caught up with him, and rose above him, ready to strike.