Still keeping to the rear of the tractor, I backed rapidly away. Now the tracks had stopped swivelling as the driver wrestled with the levers to reverse them and to bring round the lights to bear on the TK4. The drift was carrying it at an angle across the front of the tractor and he'd have to turn back a good deal further to bring it into focus. Knowing he'd be concentrating on the controls, I turned and ran towards the TK4, which was now sliding slowly away from the swinging lights and almost, yet not quite, towards me. Our paths converged, but with an awkward obliqueness, and I'd be caught in the beams before I reached it.
With every ounce of energy I could summon, I plunged on, the icy air driving into my lungs, and the dry snow crystalline beneath my feet. A swift glance to my right showed the beams turning as the big bulldozer swung round on its tracks, and the sideways glow of the light gave me a clear sight now of the slowly gliding hovercraft. Seconds later the first of the beams had caught me, but I was less than five yards from the TK4 now, cutting across in front to let its bulk shield me. It seemed to be picking up speed, too, with every passing second. Then abruptly I was there, grasping the handrail, my foot scrabbling for the mounting step, and missing, and my heart high in my throat as I was dragged along. I tried to jump, to thrust myself up, away from the clogging snow, and got my toe just on to the step. Arching my back, straining, I forced myself up, got a better grip .., in seconds now I was inside the cab, giving her throttle and wrenching at the controls to let air flow down and give me lift. Then came a curious little flick-smack sound and one panel of the glass screen crazed. So now I knew : he had the rifle !
But I had the speed, if there was time to use it. As the propellers chewed the air, I slipped off into the darkness and concealment of the snowblow. It was impossible to be sure, but I thought then that I half-heard, half-felt the impact of another bullet, somewhere behind me. I was trying to decide how many rounds he had left. He'd used two in the well trench, perhaps two more now. And Smales had talked, hadn't he, of an old rifle, with the mag locked in his desk. One left, then, two at the outside. Perhaps they'd all gone? But I squashed that optimistic thought. He'd keep one. Behind me the already dimming lights from the big tractor vanished suddenly. Yes, I thought grimly, he's kept one. And now the hide-and-seek game was reversed. I had to go and get him\ I slowed, tripping the heater switch and adjusting the airflow to direct warmth at my feet. They were bitterly cold, but I drew what comfort I could from the fact that I could still feel them, though my toes, as I tried to move them, seemed strangely lethargic.
Now I had to find him! Somewhere there in the cold dark of the icecap, he was waiting for me, waiting with a rifle, himself protected by tons of heavy steel. Keeping an eye on the compass, treacherous though a compass was in these latitudes, I swung the TK.4 through a hundred and eighty degrees and began to creep forward. There was no means of measuring distance; no means, that is, beyond my own judgment of eye and speed; and there was the wind to allow for, too.
A touch of the rudder moved my heading a little to the left. I'd calculated three hundred yards to the hut and I wanted to approach it from wider out, to use, if 1 could, its scant shelter to hide my approach. Outside the open side window the snowfield flowed by, its smoothness almost impossible to measure, and I tried to calculate distance additionally on the basis of my own forward speed. The doubt began to grow until it was a certainty that I'd missed the hut ; it had passed, unseen, somewhere to my right. But where? Not far, surely.
Then, looking down, I thought I saw a depression in the snow surface; yes - filling rapidly, already beginning to lose definition beneath the new layer, but it was a tractor track, with the faint oblongs and ridges still vaguely to be seen.
Again I turned the TK4, taking care not to lose sight of those precious marks. I thought grimly that he had two tasks now: to fend me off, and to do the job he'd come out here to do - to destroy the evidence that must convict him. And time was pressing. Dare he wait for me, perhaps in the lee of the hut, with the rifle, or would he be moving the tractor along that hand line? I let the TK4 creep forward. A single flick of the headlights might tell me whether my direction was right, but their glow would also pinpoint my location and I daren't try it. I sank low in my seat, to give myself the maximum protection of the hull plating, knowing that a rifle bullet fired at close range would go through both it, and me, without being even briefly delayed.
Suddenly, carelessly, I'd let my eyes stray from the tracks. Damn! Halting, I reversed a little, and failed to find them! I stopped, then, and slid across the seat to the other side window -and there it was, five or six yards away, mantled in snow: the hut!
But which way to go round it? Did it matter? On no basis of judgment at all, I went to the right, because it was the easier way and required no steering, and beyond it I picked up tracks again, fresher tracks that bit clean and revealing into the snow. Now I could be only a few yards from him, a hundred at the most. I tried to listen, but the sound of my own engine killed the roar of his and, in any case, the wind was behind me now: behind and rising, and snow blew almost horizontally past me. As the TK4 crept forward, I searched my pockets clumsily for matches and sagged in disappointment when there were none. Without them even my single crude weapon was useless. Matches, matches! Damn it, I hadn't been caught without matches in years ! Then some trick of memory sent my hand to the fascia. When I'd cleaned out the TK4, there'd been a book of matches; where had I put them? If they'd slipped ... I couldn't feel them, but I knew they were there somewhere. I stopped the hovercraft and stared ahead. No sign of the tractor. I'd have to risk the TK4's cabin light. I felt for the solenoid switch and turned it low so that my own lights wouldn't blind me this time, then I pushed and turned. Got them! A small rectangle of cardboard, compliments of British Airways, with four matches remaining. I clicked the light off quickly and edged forward.
Ten yards, twenty, thirty . . , and suddenly there he was: a dark, slow, shape looming out of the snow, moving slowly forward beside the hand line and the flag-topped anchor posts, and as the distance lessened slowly I could see that the back window of his cab wore a coating of snow. With luck, then, he wouldn't see me until too late. I inched the hovercraft outwards, parallel to him and a little behind, gripped the steering with my knees and bent low to open the match-book. Four matches. The first two broke. I lifted my head to glance forward. The tractor's door was swinging open. 1 bent and scratched the third across the worn striking pad - and snapped the head of the flimsy cardboard matchstick. Oh, Christ! One left. That one bent, too, as I struck it, and fell out of my awkward fingers on to the floor, its tiny flame beginning to die even as it fell. I grabbed the petrol bottle and stabbed the cotton wick towards the flame. Had it been anything but petrol vapour, my clumsiness would have killed it, but the tip of the wick was instantly aglow and smoke broke thickly from it. I knew I'd only seconds now; if the petrol bomb didn't get him, it would get me. Five or six feet more and the TK4's cabin would be level with the tractor's. Damn it, had I left it too late for the lights? I switched on the big main beams; they'd shine past him now, but perhaps the sideways glare would give me a ghost of a chance. I no longer dared risk raising my head. With one bullet left, he'd shoot only when he could see me. But the whole wick was aflame now, lighting the inside of the cabin. I squeezed myself flat, cowering down beside the open window and watching as the tractor cab slid slowly into view: first the rear pillar, then the first glass pane. Another pillar and then it would be the doorway - and the rifle. So the time was now!