Again noise crashed below me, reverberating upwards, and again the singing, tuning-fork sound began. I wrapped my arms around my unprotected head in an instinctive but futile gesture, and waited for death. For the next icicle wouldn't miss, and if the fall of the hat had been enough to unseat one of them, the monstrous impact of the ice-spear crashing down must surely loosen the others. The ringing tone seemed to last so long as to be a permanent part of the atmosphere, then slowly, it began to fade. And nothing had happened ! The forest of ice above had rung to the music of death, and yet had stilled! Slowly, disbelievingly, scarcely daring to move, I lowered my arms. The light of the lamp shone back at me from the great, shining walls; the silence was total. I let out a great, shuddering breath and cringed at the sound of it.
'Harry, Harry!' Kelleher's voice crackled urgently from the walkie-talkie on my chest. I said, 'I'm okay.'
'What happened?'
'Icicle,' I whispered.
'We'll bring you up.'
I heard the words with a vast sense of relief. More than anything in the world I wanted to be lifted out of that ghastly place, to stand once more on something firm, to be free of the interminable menace of that battery of deadly, pointed, hanging spears above me. I knew that, even though they had not fallen, they must have been loosened by the long vibration; that the chance of a fall had immeasurably increased. I sat trembling in the chair, my mind whirling with both fear and a resurgence of fury. Fury.
Fury that directed itself suddenly at the man who had done all this to me. The man who wanted Camp Hundred closed, and was on the edge of succeeding.
Damn him!
I gritted my teeth. 'Continue lowering.'
Chapter 17
'Harry?'
'Continue, damn it!'
A tiny jerk and I was off again, a little bundle of rage and revenge dangling at the end of a long, long cable, helpless in the space and cold, yet feeling suddenly like a hunter. I would reach the bottom, and if the answer lay there, I'd damn well find it.
I was going to get that bastard!
Into the neck, through it, and the light picked out another thick clump of icicles, slung like so many giant stilettos from beside the opening.
'Kelleher?'
'Yeah?' His voice was faint. 'Still okay?'
'I'm into the bottom chamber. Keep lowering.'
The chair slid slowly past the hanging ice fingers. Here, where the rising steam from the hose had been densest, there were more of them; they were larger, and thicker too, reaching more than half-way down the entire height of the chamber. They were almost more than I could bear, and I closed my eyes and counted slowly to two hundred before I opened them again. Then I sighed with relief. I was past, dropping steadily towards the base of the great cavern.
The speaker crackled. 'Repeat?' I turned up the volume to maximum.
'How far?' The words were almost indistinguishable.
'Thirty feet,' I said, and turned the lamp beam downwards to study the base of the ice chamber. As the beam played across the surface of the frozen pool, it glittered back at me from ten thousand facets of shattered ice. The huge icicle, as it fell, had done several things: its initial impact had penetrated the ice layer and starred the smoothness of the whole sheet. New cracks radiated from its crash-point out towards the edges. It had also exploded into thousands of tiny, diamond-bright fragments that littered the entire surface, in an opaque, reflecting layer.
'Hold it!' I said urgently, and the downward movement stopped. An indecipherable mutter came from the speaker.
I ignored it, and began to examine the surface yard by yard. I could see precious little even from where I sat; lower down it would be impossible to see anything through the ice. Looking for shapes, I saw only shadows as the ice played tricks with the light. The hard hat, though, was visible, a bright orange blob, apparently undamaged, lying to one side of the almost perfectly circular ice sheet.
Minutes ticked by as my eyes swept slowly across every inch of the ice, searching for a dark shape that could be the body of a man. Nothing. I began again, aware that the cracks, white streaks down into the ice sheet, prevented my seeing large portions of the pool, and that the angle of sight reduced my chances. What was needed was what I dared not do : to set the bosun's chair swinging, to take me directly above other areas and to change the line of sight.
Nothing. I stared down, angry and frustrated. Directly below me lay the ten-foot white star where the icicle had crashed down, where the thick ice had crazed like a car's windscreen when a stone hits it. I reasoned that anything falling through the neck must crash on to the ice where the icicle had crashed. However it fell through the chamber neck, gravity would see to that.
'Lower me again,' I said into the handset. 'Stop when I tell you. Can you hear me?'
The sounds that came back were not distinguishable as words any more, but the sequence and pattern told me my instructions were being repeated.
I swung lower, down towards the centre of the star, trying not to think of it as it was : as the central spot of a target, where any crashing ice would fall directly on to me.
'Stop.' I said it with careful clarity, but had to repeat it before movement ceased. I thought for a moment, and said slowly, 'One tap like this' - I rapped the microphone sharply, 'means lower. Two means stop. Three, start hauling me up. Understood?'
A vague crackle.
'Tap if you understand.'
One tap.
I tapped twice, waited, repeated it, and after a moment began to move downward. With my boots three feet from the ice, I tapped sharply twice, and stopped. Nice to know it worked!
The chain saw touched the ice first. I'd forgotten about it for the moment and it would in any case be useless. There was too great a risk of the sound of a petrol engine bringing down hanging ice. As my toes were about to touch, I rapped sharply twice, and the chair stopped. Cautiously, I pressed down. The ice seemed to hold, but it was damaged more than my earlier survey had indicated. Chunks of it had in fact been broken and turned like floating boulders. Little bright lines of water shone in the interstices, making it impossible for me to rest my weight on the ice chunks, big though they were. Unless I swung. Was it possible? I looked upward, shining the lamp along the taut length of cable to where the massed icicles pointed wickedly down at me, and nowhere was the cable more than four feet from them. One tap. Two taps. I moved down another foot, and slid the ice-axe from my belt. My legs were bent now, feet resting flat on a large piece of ice. Leaning forward a little, careful to keep the balance as it was, I shone the light downwards.