The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!

night, or until the searchlight battery died. I dived head first through the windscreen, caught a pillar at the very last moment and was lying flat on the ground below in less time than I would have believed possible. I waited five seconds, just listening, but all I could hear was the moan of the wind, the hiss of the ice spicules rustling along over the frozen snowI'd never before heard that hissing so plainly, but then I'd never before lain with my uncovered ear on the ice-cap itselfand the thudding of my heart. And then I was on my feet, the probing torch cutting a bright swathe in the darkness before me as I ran round the plane, slipping and stumbling in my haste. Twice I made the circuit, the second time in the opposite direction, but there was no one there at all. I stopped before the control cabin and called softly to Margaret Ross. She appeared at the window, and I said: "It's all right, there's no one here. We've both been imagining things. Come on down." I reached up my hands, caught her and lowered her to the ground. "Why did you leave me up there, why did you leave me up there?" The words came rushing out, tumbling frantically one over the other, the anger drowned in the terror. "It wasit was horrible! The dead man. . . . Why did you leave me?" "I'm sorry." There was a time and a place for comment on feminine injustice, unreasonableness and downright illogicality, but this wasn't it. In the way of grief and heartbreak, shock and ill-treatment, she had already had far more than she could stand. "I'm sorry," I repeated. "I shouldn't have done it. I just didn't stop to think." She was trembling violently, so I put my arms round her and held her tightly until she had calmed down, took the searchlight and battery in one hand and her hand in my other and we walked back to the cabin together. CHAPTER SIXMonday 7 P.M.Tuesday 7 A.M. Jackstraw and the others had just completed the assembly of the tractor body when we arrived back at the cabin, and some of the men were already going below. I didn't bother to check the tractor: when Jackstraw made anything, he made a perfect job of it. I knew he must have missed me in the past hour, but I knew, too, that he wasn't the man to question me while the others were around. I waited till the last of these had gone below, then took him by the arm and walked out into the darkness, far enough to talk in complete privacy, but not so far as to lose sight of the yellow glow from our skylightstwice lost elementary digital camera lesson plans in the one night was twice too many. He heard me out in silence, and at the end he said: "What are we going to do, Dr Mason?" "Depends. Spoken to Joss recently?" "Fifteen minutes ago. In the tunnel." "How about the radio?" "I'm afraid not, Dr Mason. He's missing some condensers and spare valves. He's looked for them, everywheresays they've been stolen." "Maybe they'll turn up?" I didn't believe it myself. "Two of the valves already have. Crushed little bits of glass lying in the bottom of the snow tunnel." "Our little friends think of everything.1'! swore softly. "That settles it, Jackstraw. We can't wait any longer, we'll leave as soon as possible. But first a night's sleepthat we must have." "Uplavnik?" That was our expedition base, near the mouth of the Stromsund glacier. "Do you think we will ever get there?" He wasn't thinking, just as I wasn't, about the rigours and dangers of arctic winter travel, daunting enough though these were when they had to be faced with a superannuated tractor like the Citroen, but of the company we would be keeping en route. If any fact was ever so glaringly obvious that it didn't need mention, it was that the killers, whoever they were, could only escape justice, or, at least, the mass arrest and interrogation of all the passengers, by ensuring that they were the only ones to emerge alive from the ice-cap. "I wouldn't like to bet on it," I said dryly. "But I'd bet even less on our chances if we stay here. Death by starvation is kind of final." "Yes, indeed." He paused for a moment, then switched to a fresh line of thought. "You say they tried to kill you tonight. Is that not surprising? I would have thought that you and I would have been very safe, for a few days at least." I knew what he meant. Apart from Jackstraw and myself, there probably wasn't a handful of people in all Greenland who could start that damned Citroen, far less drive it, only Jackstraw could handle the dogs, and it was long odds indeed against any of the passengers knowing anything at all about astral or magnetic compass navigationthe latter very tricky indeed in these high latitudes. These special skills should have been guarantee enough of our immediate survival. "True enough," I agreed.