Whiteout!

He nodded. 'Two loose bulldozers for crevasse filling. And they take over in a tractor breakdown, too.'

'Couldn't one of them bring the wanigan with the TK.4 on it? Detach that one wanigan from the train? What speed could it make?'

He said, 'Five, maybe six miles an hour.'

'Here in two hours,' I said. 'Two more after that and we'd be at Belvoir. Turn and come back and we'd probably have made the whole trip before the Swing even reaches this point.'

'You're good and confident,' he said.

'I've reason to be. I know the machine.'

'But not the icecap.'

I said, 'You know it. Scott knows it. Foster, too. You can each hold my hand in turn.'

He gave a sudden nod, rose, went to the radio and switched frequencies. 'Safety Wanigan Fifteen to Swing.' He repeated it and waited.

'Swing to Wanigan Fifteen. Who's holed up?'

'Holed up is right,' he said. 'Major Herschel here. Get me Warrant Officer Garrison on the double.'

There was a pause, then a new voice came over the transceiver. 'Garrison, Major. Sorry you're all holed up there. Be right with you by morning.'

Herschel said, 'I want better than that, Milt. Your traction fully operational? Or have any units gone down?'

'We're okay.'

'Then you can spare a 'dozer ?'

'Spare - hey, what for?' Garrison's voice had hardened.

Quite distinctly we all heard another voice, presumably the radio operator's, say, 'Is that guy nuts !'

Herschel chuckled. 'Tell him no, just a major.'

Garrison laughed, too. 'Got a real white-faced boy here, Major. Will you explain, please?'

Herschel said, 'The hovercraft wanigan. I want the 'dozer to haul it up here fast. Then we can head right on to Belvoir.'

Garrison said, 'She's only on trials, Major. And not ours. You know how to pilot that thing?'

*No, but I got the driver right here.'

'Well, okay. I'll fix it.'

'How long d'you reckon, Milt?'

'We're near on Mile Forty, but we been hitting a crevasse or two. I'll have the guys move it, that's a promise.'

Herschel thanked him and switched off.

'What about Major Smales ?' I said.

Herschel's eyes crinkled. 'He ain't here.'

'Meaning?'

'Meaning he'd say no. Barney's a belt-and-suspenders man. Wouldn't go for this kind of a half-ass game. Barney doesn't trust that machine of yours anyway. He told me. What he likes is lots of steel and lots of diesel power and lots of back-up, and lots of precautions. He's right, too. So was Chance, Luke Chance, commander before him. That's why Hundred's got the safety record it has.'

'Had,' I said.

He looked at me. 'Stay off it, huh?'

'Apart from one thing.' I nodded. 'But there's something I'd like to know.'

'Go on.'

I said, 'If Barney Smales is as logistics-conscious as you say, if he's that cautious, if he insists on triple-banking even lavatory seats, then why the hell isn't there a spare pipe?'

Herschel's brows came down. 'That's classified.'

'Neoprene? Don't be - '

'Not neoprene. The information.' But 1 could see now that those frowning brows were having trouble staying down. They kept twitching and revealing a glint in Herschel's blue eyes. I said, 'Come on. Let's have it.'

He was really laughing now, shoulders shaking. He said, 'Barney forgot. He forgot the requisition.'

I grinned back at him; at least there was one mystery that was no mystery. He said, 'Can you cat-nap?'

'Sometimes.'

'Try it now. You got two hours.'

I doubted whether I could sleep, in that warm, almost un-ventilated, over-insulated wanigan, redolent with the twin smells of heat and feet. But I did, until the sudden blast of cold air from outside broke through with the news of the arrival of the tractor. I rose blearily and began to dress. The bulldozer driver had a problem. He'd been thinking about it for two hours and he thought we all had a problem. He said, 'Sir, we got no crane. How we gonna lift that thing off the flatbed?'

Herschel looked at me. 'Has he got something?'

'No,' I said. 'She'll be all right. But I want to check it. Wait here till I come back.'

I'm coming,' Herschel said. 'You don't go out alone.'

So we went to have a look. There were no great problems, certainly none that couldn't be solved with a few scrapes of the bulldozer blade. We went back inside and I told the driver exactly what I wanted.

'You can push snow towards the side and front of the wanigan?'

He nodded. 'Sure.'

'Okay. I want a ramp made. Not too steep, in fact as flat as you can get it. She can ride over a three-foot vertical obstruction when she's riding the cushion, but I don't want to chance anything when we're moving off from stationary. Got it?'

He nodded. 'Got it, sir. Only take a minute.'

While he was manoeuvring the bulldozer and pushing snow towards the wanigan, I was busy with the chain-strapping that held the TK4 down, fumbling at the metal awkwardly in my heavy felt mitts. It was no use. I couldn't shift the fastenings. The ramp was completed in a few minutes, but the hovercraft remained firmly tied to the flatbed's deck-boarding. The 'dozer driver left his cab, came over and shouted into my hood, 'She frozen down?'

I bellowed back: 'Just the strappings.'

'I got bolt cutters.'

'Thanks.'

He brought them over and I simply sheared through the chains, then kicked them away and climbed up into TK4's cabin. The turbines had been specially adapted, with heaters built in for cold weather starting. I let them warm for a minute, then tried the engines. Vroom, vroom, and a nice, healthy blast of power first time. Pity, I thought, that Barney Smales hadn't been there to see it! By the light of the bulldozer's powerful headlights, I could see the other four standing on the trail, watching. I wound up the feet cautiously. Okay so far. She was riding on the cushion. Suddenly she began to slide back under wind pressure. I corrected, eased her forward on to the ramp and floated downhill to the trail, then turned her round, opened the door, waved an arm, and Herschel, Foster and Scott climbed up too. The bulldozer driver waved and walked off towards the safety wanigan.

Herschel said, 'He'll wait there till the Swing comes up.'

'He's left the engine running,' I pointed out.

'Yep. Safer that way.' I asked him about the crevasses. 'They filled three on the way up here. Two were on the trail up to the cap out of Belvoir, but the other was around Mile Twenty-Eight. Big one. Twenty feet wide and maybe a hundred deep. What's this thing do if we hit one like that?'

'Will there be a snow-bridge T

Herschel said, 'Sometimes. You reckon you can get over a snow-bridge?'

'Moving fast, the pressure per square inch is very low,' I said. 'Remember there's no contact. If the crevasse is big and open, we'll probably have to go round. Narrow ones we could float over.' I grinned at him. 'Don't get worried.'

I gave her a touch more power and let her slide forward, the lights knifing into the empty darkness ahead. The wind was astern at nearly thirty knots, which wouldn't make for easy steering, but I was confident in the TK4.

Scott, sitting beside me, said, 'What can she do?'

'Anything but crossword puzzles,' I said. 'If you mean speed, she can go up to about fifty miles an hour, depending on the skirt clearance from the ground. Use the power to lift and you don't have as much left to push.'

He said, 'Fifty?'

'Fifty.' But I kept her to just over forty, enough so I didn't have to worry too much about wind speed. At the start, snow began building up on the windscreen, and I employed one of the little refinements Thomson-Keegan had built into her - a two-foot wide jet of air, blasting up the outside surface of the glass, that diverted the snow before it even landed. In case of trouble with that, there was also a 12-inch Kent Clearvue rotating panel in the glass, and it could be heated, too. After the Canadian tests, we'd incorporated those two skis forward, to give additional steering control in narrow manoeuvring spaces, but I had no need of them now and kept them retracted. The Trail to Belvoir was a good hundred yards wide, and ran almost dead straight across the immense snowfield. After about twelve minutes a battery of lights became visible and I got my first glimpse of the Swing coming close. I slowed and stopped. It was immense. Imagine three goods trains running side by side; that's what it was like, the only difference being that instead of engines, each train was pulled by a tractor, and the goods wagons had sled runners instead of wheels.