Whiteout!

I turned to look out of the window. Beneath us the icecap was climbing sharply up from the coastal strip. Around us were low mountains, coloured and shaded, black, gold and red in the dying light. The endless snow beneath us was variegated like the left-hand bands of the spectrum. Smales said, 'It doesn't last.'

'He's a real romantic guy,' Kelleher said.

'I painted it once,' Smales protested, smiling.

'If he painted it,' Kelleher said, 'he painted it army green or ice-orange. If he paints in oil, it's diesel. To this guy canvas is for windbreaks and charcoal's for fires.'

Twenty minutes after take-off, the light had gone and the landscape had become silver and black, with a dull gleam to it.

Smales walked forward to the cockpit and came back nodding. 'Weather's more or less.'

'More or less?' Kelleher said.

'Snowflakes flying; the wind's up to ten.' Smales glanced at his watch. 'Eighteen minutes, that's all. Just make it hold.'

I said, 'Are you talking to me?'

Smales flicked his glance upwards. 'The man up there. If he made it, he can make it hold.'

'It'll change that suddenly?'

He said harshly, 'It's changing now.' There was tension in every line of him. 'Minute and a half in a Phantom, that's all, but not in a goddam Caribou.'

Kelleher said, 'Yeah,' and lit a cigarette. Two minutes later Smales was walking towards the cockpit again and Kelleher grinned at me. 'My wife's like that,' he said. 'All watches and questions.'

Smales didn't come back this time, and I wondered what must be happening up ahead. I noticed Kelleher, too, kept looking at his watch, and it started me off. Fifteen minutes had gone before Smales returned, scowling. He said, 'Snow's thickening and it's twenty knots across. Increasing.' He sat down and fastened his lap strap.

I said, 'What kind of landing strip is there at Camp Hundred?'

'Snow. Six hundred yards.'

We waited, as the Caribou's nose dipped and the pilot made a turn correction. Nobody spoke as the plane began to glide smoothly down. Glancing out of the window, I saw the flaps move. One wing lifted to the crosswind and was forced down by another rapid correction. Then the power wound down, prior to touchdown. I glanced at Smales. His eyes were closed; he was willing the plane down. There were only seconds to go when the airframe shook to sudden emergency application of maximum power and the Caribou's nose rose abruptly and kept rising. Smales's eyes flicked open angrily and the cabin door opened and the crewman came back, stopped in front of Smales and said simply, 'Runway lights failed, sir.' He was ashen.

'The hell they did!' Smales was already going up forward.

My stomach was knotting itself. We must have been under a hundred feet, throttled well back and dropping, when the lights failed. Luck, or skill, or a combination of both, had kept us from a fatal stall, but the margin must have been minute.

Kelleher, his skin greasy with cold sweat, was staring at the cabin floor. 'What happens now?' I asked. He raised his eyes and looked at me. ' Thule ,' he said. 'Just pray it's Thule .'

'It'll have to be, surely, without lights.'

'You'd think so,' Kelleher said. His voice was odd, rusting a little with straight fear.

'But?'

'But Barney's up there.'

The Caribou had levelled off and was circling, starboard wingtip lifting at intervals to maintain the pattern.

Six minutes had gone since we nearly crashed, and still the Caribou circled. I loosened my seat-strap and turned to look out of the window. There seemed to be nothing down there but the endless, icy waste. Then I saw a light. Correction: two lights -and close together like headlights. There were two more behind. I blinked. They were headlights!

Kelleher said, 'Like I said, that's Barney. What he's doing is he's moving everything with lights up on top. We go down by tractor lights.'

Below us, as I watched, the lights seemed to grow dimmer. Then Smales came back, grim-faced, and strapped himself in without a word. Kelleher didn't say anything either, and the silence was not the kind I felt like breaking. I stared forward, waiting for the nose to tip down. It was over in less than two minutes. The pilot should have come in slowly, an inch over stall speed, hanging in the sky until the skis touched, but he daren't do that; he had to have power to counter the gusting crosswind that kept bucking the Caribou sideways. I could imagine the gritted teeth and the

'Okay, let's go!' up there in the cockpit. We came fairly bucketing in, hit once and bounced hard, hit again one ski only and the starboard wingtip lifted, then another bounce and we were down and running. I suddenly found myself staring straight down a headlight beam that temporarily blinded me, and by the time I'd rubbed some sight back into my eyes, we were slowed right down. A hand slapped my arm. 'Move!' Barney Smales said. The rear ramp was already lowering and the freezing air had flooded in. I rose and followed him to the ramp, down the stairs and into the waiting Polecat. Kelleher followed, slamming the door. He slumped in his seat for a long moment, then summoned a grin. He said, 'Uncle Sam wants ten years of my life and the taxes.'

We waited perhaps two minutes before Smales joined us. He looked angry and Kelleher asked why.

'She's freezing down. Can't wait. Okay, let's go.' As the Polecat moved off I saw the Caribou through the windscreen, already taxiing.

I said,’ Not that fast?'

Smales said, 'She stood a minute and she was sticking. Three and the ski runners would be fast. There's never time. Never any damn time!'

'So she's empty?' Kelleher asked.

'Damn right.'

I understood then. The bodies. The Caribou had to go without taking the bodies and they'd stay at Camp Hundred, radiating depression, until the next weather slot opened. The little Polecat scampered over the snow, moved on to a sudden downslope, and a second or two later had entered a long, brightly-lit tunnel whose snow walls were festooned with pipes and cables. Smales tapped the driver's shoulder. 'My trench.'

When the Polecat stopped, Smales jumped out, and we followed him through an archway into another and smaller tunnel in which stood a big wooden hut decorated with the crest of the Corps of Engineers'

Polar Research and Development group with the word Commander stencilled in orange on the door. Smales opened it and went inside, pausing to kick snow off his boots. A black man with a master sergeant's multitudinous stripes looked up and said quietly, 'Okay, sir?'

Smales nodded. 'Sure. What's new?'

'No problems, sir.'

'You sure of that ?'

'I'm sure.'

'You put that can in the wall?'

'Soon as I heard you were coming, sir, I put the can in.'

'Good.' Smales jerked his head. 'Follow me, gentlemen.'

We trooped after him, back into the main tunnel and then into another side trench. The hut there bore the words 'Officers' Club'. Instead of going directly in, Smales walked towards the tunnel wall. From a hole in the wall, a length of thin orange line hung down. He pulled on the line until a stainless steel bottle came out. Holding it reverently in mittened hands, he walked towards the hut. Kelleher, smiling, opened the door with a flourish and Smales marched in first. We entered a pleasant, comfortable bar and Smales put the bottle carefully on the counter, then went behind it and took three glasses from a shelf and, opening the cap of the bottle, poured an almost watery fluid into the glasses. Then the mittens came off as he handed us the glasses.