Athabasca

Thirteen

The police doctor, a young man named Saunders, straightened and looked down at the unconscious man on the pile of blankets. "He'll be all right, eventually, but that's all I can do for him now. He needs the services of an orthopedic surgeon."

"How long will it be before I can question him?" Brady asked.

"With the sedative I've given him, it'll be several hours before he comes around."

"Couldn't that damned sedative have waited a little?"

Dr. Saunders looked at Brady with a marked lack of enthusiasm. "I hope, for your sake, you never have your shoulder and upper arm shattered, the bone structure completely fragmented. Mr. Grigson was in agony. And even had he been conscious, I wouldn't have let you question him."

Brady muttered something about medical dictators, then looked at Shore and said testily, "What the hell was Grigson doing here anyway?"

"Dammit, Brady, he's more right to be here than you and I and the rest of us put together." Shore sounded shocked and angry. "Sanmobil is the dream-come-true of one man and one only, and he's lying there before you. Took him nine years to turn his dream into reality, and he had to fight all the way. He's the president. Do you understand that ― the president?"

Mackenzie said pacifically, "When did he arrive?"

"Yesterday afternoon. Flew in from Europe."

Mackenzie nodded and looked around Reynolds' office. It wasn't a small room, but it was fairly crowded. Apart from himself, Brady, Shore, Dr. Saunders and the unconscious Grigson, there were Willoughby and two young men who had clearly been in the wars during the recent past. One had a bandaged forehead, the other an arm strapped from wrist to elbow. It was to this last person, Steve Dawson, that Mackenzie addressed himself.

"You were in charge of the night shift?"

"Nominally. Tonight there was no night shift. The plant's closed down."

"I know. So how many of you were here tonight ― yourself apart?"

"Just six people." He glanced down at the wounded man. "Mr. Grigson was asleep in his private room along the corridor there. Then there was Hazlitt ― supervisor of the night security shift ― and four security guards deployed around the plant."

"Tell us what happened."

"Well ― I was patrolling, reinforcing the security team, as I had nothing else to do. I saw a light come on here in Mr. Reynolds' room. First I thought it must be Mr. Grigson ― he's a very active, restless person, and an erratic sleeper. Then I got to wondering what he could be doing, because he'd already spent a couple of hours with Mr. Reynolds yesterday.

So, quiet as I could, I came along the passage to Grigson's room.

"The door was closed, but not locked. I went in, and there he was asleep. I woke him, told him there were intruders in the plant, and asked to borrow a gun. I knew he had one, because he used to practice on a little private target range he'd set up here.

"He'd have none of it. He produced his automatic, but kept it himself. He said he'd had it for years and knew how to use it. I couldn't argue with him ― after all, I'm only twenty-eight, and he's crowding seventy.

"Anyway, in here we found a man with the door of that safe open. He'd smashed Corinne's desk open with a fire axe to get at the keys. He was wearing a stocking mask and examining a bunch of keys he had in his hand.

"Mr. Grigson told him to turn around, real slow, and not to try anything, or he'd kill him. Then suddenly came two pistol shots, right close together, from behind, and Mr. Grigson pitched headlong to the floor. He was wearing a white shirt, and blood from his right shoulder and arm was pumping through it. I could see he was hurt real bad.

"I dropped to my knees to help him. The man who'd fired the shots probably figured I was going for Mr. Grigson's gun. Anyway, he fired at me too."

Dawson was breathing quickly, his distress evident. Brady poured him a scotch and handed the glass over. "Take this."

Dawson's smile was wan. "I've never had a drink in my life, sir."

"Maybe you'll never have another," said Brady agreeably. "But you need this one, and we need your story."

Dawson drank, spluttered and coughed. He screwed up his eyes and drank some more. He clearly detested the stuff, but his system didn't, for almost immediately some color began to return to his cheeks. He touched his bandaged forearm.

"Looks worse than it is. The bullet just grazed me, wrist all the way to elbow, but very superficial. Stung, more than anything. One of the masked men forced me to help lug Mr. Grigson to the armory. On the way out I picked up two first-aid kits ― they didn't object. They pushed us into the armory, locked the door and left.

"Then I took off Mr. Grigson's shirt and stanched the wound as best I could. It took a lot of bandages ― there was so much blood coming. I thought he was going to bleed to death."

"He could have," Saunders said with certainty. "No question, your quick action saved his life."

"Glad I was of some use." Dawson shuddered, looked at the doctor and went on, "Then I bandaged my own arm and had a go at the door, but there was no way I could get it open. I looked around and found a box full of detonators, each with a fuse attached. I struck one and dropped it out through one of the ventilation grilles. It went off with quite a bang. I must have let seven or eight of them off before Hazlitt came hammering on the door and asked what the hell was going on. I told him, and he ran off to fetch a duplicate key."

Dawson drank some more, spluttered, but less than before, and put his glass down. "I guess that's about all."

"And more than enough," said Brady with unaccustomed warmth. "A splendid job, son." He looked around the assembled group, then asked sharply, "Where's George?"

Until then no one had noticed that Dermott was missing. Then Mackenzie said, "He slipped out with Carmody some time back. You want me to go find him?"

"Leave him be," said Brady loftily. "I have little doubt our faithful bloodhound is pursuing some spoor of his own."

In fact the bloodhound was pursuing a fancy, not a line. He had taken Carmody aside and whispered in his ear that he urgently wanted to question the girl, Corinne. Where was she?

"In the isolation ward, like I said," Carmody replied. "But I doubt you'll find it on your own. It's way out by itself, near Dragline One. Want me to come with you?"

"Sure. That'd be real kind." Dermott swallowed his disappointment. He wanted to go alone. The instincts at work inside him made him feel uncomfortable. Nothing like this had happened to him in years. But he had better be realistic and accept the offer of guidance.

By then the wind had increased, as it often did late in the night, and was whistling across the flat, open site with a deadly chill. The noise made it almost impossible to talk in the open ― not that anyone in his senses would remain in the open for more than the minimum time.

Carmody had been reunited with his damaged Cherokee. Shouting an excuse into the wind, he got in first at the passenger door and slid across behind the wheel. Dermott heaved his massive frame in close behind him and slammed the door.

Carmody drove steadily across an apparently unmarked plain. The film of drifting snow had obscured the road, and the flat ground all looked the same.

"How the hell do you know which way to go?" Dermott asked.

"Markers ― there." Carmody pointed as a small stumpy, black-and-white post went past, with the number 323 stencilled on it in bold figures. "We're on Highway Three. In a minute we'll turn onto Highway Nine."

Altogether they drove for nearly ten minutes before lights showed up out of the darkness ahead. Dermott was amazed once again at the sheer size of the site: by then they were four or five miles from the administration buildings.

The lights grew to a blaze of several windows, and they pulled up outside a single long hut. As they went through the door the heat hit them like a hammer, as did a smell of disinfectant. Dermott at once began to wrestle his way out of his outdoor clothes. He felt he would stifle if he kept them on for one more second.

They found Corinne propped up on a pile of pillows, looking white but (to Dermott's eye) very sweet in a pair of pea-green pyjamas. Contrary to Carmody's predictions, she was wide awake. She'd been asleep, she said, and had woken up thinking it was already morning.

"What time is it, anyway?" she asked.

"Four o'clock, near enough," Dermott answered. "How d'you feel?"

"Fantastic. Not even a bruise, as far as I can tell."

"That's wonderful. But my, were you lucky!" Dermott began asking routine questions, to which he didn't really want the answers. He wished to hell Carmody would go away someplace and leave him alone with the girl. What he would say to her if that happened, he didn't quite know. All the same it was what he wanted.

"You've given us a real good lead, you know," he said enthusiastically. "Can't say just what it was, but it may be the breakthrough we need. Mr. Brady's delighted…"

His voice tailed off as a heavy rumble suddenly shook the building. "Jesus!" He looked up sharply. "What was that?"

Carmody was gone already, out of the room and down the short passage. Dermott caught up with him at the outside door.

"Helicopter!" Carmody snapped. "Made a low pass right over the building. There he is, burning now." Way out in the blackness a red and a green light converged and then separated again as the aircraft swung around. As the two men stood watching, a pair of car headlamps snapped on from a point about a hundred yards in front of them. The vehicle moved forward, turned and stopped, with its headlights steady on a patch of snow.

"It's a marker!" Carmody cried. "He's gonna land. Quick, get the girl out of here. They must have come for her."

"How in hell do they know she's here?" said Dermott.

"Don't worry about that. Let's get her away." Moving like a sprinter, Carmody slipped back into the building, bundled Corinne up in a cocoon of blankets and carried her out to the Jeep, where he dumped her in the back seat. Dermott lumbered behind him, envying his speed, and hauled himself into the front.

Without putting on any lights Carmody started the engine and moved off into the inky night, heading out into the open behind the parked marker vehicle. A couple of hundred yards beyond it he swung around and faced in the same direction as the lights, so that he and Dermott could watch what happened through the windshield.

They sat there with the heater going full blast.

"Warm enough?" asked Carmody over his shoulder.

"Plenty, thanks." Corinne sounded as though she was enjoying herself. "I've got enough blankets to keep an elephant warm."

Dermott wondered uneasily whether that was any sort of a joke at his expense, but his speculation was cut short by the arrival of the helicopter. Suddenly it was there, large and gray-white, riding down on a storm of snow into the headlight pool. The rotor flashed brilliantly in the silvery beams, and the snow flew outward from the downdraft.

"That's the one!" said Carmody in a voice charged with excitement. "The getaway chopper. Description tallies perfectly with Johnson's: gray-white, no markings, small fins by the tail. That's our baby. Damn!"

As soon as the machine had landed, the car's headlights cut. The watchers sat blinded by the sudden darkness. They saw a flashlight bobbing about in the blackness, but nothing else.

"Boy, will they be mad when they find you've gone!" Carmody said happily.

"D'you think they're still in it?" Corinne asked. "The others, I mean?".

"Could be ― easily. Depends where the chopper's been these past few hours. Must have been waiting on the ground someplace."

"Come on!" snapped Dermott. "Let's get out of here."

"Wait a minute," Carmody said easily. "I wanna see what they do. Any moment now they'll be at the building. There ― I can see them now."

Two figures moved swiftly past the lighted windows. More light showed as the door opened and shut."

"Can't we ram the helicopter or something?" Corinne suggested. "Stop it taking off?"

"Too big," said Carmody immediately. "You notice the legs and skis? Higher than our roof. All we'd do would be to damage the landing gear, which wouldn't stop them getting off. Besides, if I know them, there's a couple of guys with guns guarding the thing, at least. Hey ― what was that?"

"What?" Dermott looked at him.

"I heard something. Machinery. Sure I did." Carmody looked out past Dermott into the darkness. "Open your window a minute."

Dermott obeyed, and instantly the noise was far louder: a huge squealing and clanking, as of some giant engine.

"Jesus Christ!" Carmody shouted. "The dragline. It's right here beside us."

Dermott opened his door and got out. His eyes, accustomed to the dark, could just make out the gigantic outline towering above them. Suddenly the noise seemed terrific. "Good God!" Dermott yelled into the wind. "It's alive. It's moving!"

Instinctively he began to run toward the machine, or rather, around it, for already he was alongside. Beside him he could hear the whine of electric motors, the squeal of metal and the crunch of frosted dirt as the mighty shoe ground forward. The coldness of the wind seared his lungs and made his eyes stream briefly before they froze. In spite of the discomfort, he felt fired by excitement and by rage, for here was a final and outrageous act of sabotage taking place right on top of him. In a flash of intuition he saw what they intended: to drive the monster machine over the edge of the pit which it had been excavating.

The facts and figures that had been flung at him came crowding into his head. Six and a half thousand tons. It could move at some 250 yards an hour. The pit was 150 feet deep. Although he was no engineer, he knew instinctively that if the monster went over the edge, it would never come out again.

He came around the front of it and got another shock. The edge of the pit, showing as a limitless black hole, was less than thirty yards away. Perhaps only twenty-five. That meant he had a tenth of an hour ― six minutes ― to get the damn thing stopped. He looked up desperately. The boom disappeared into the night, like an Eiffel Tower tilted over. Somehow he had to get into, the cab and throw the right switches.

He ran back right under the thing, between the shoes. Somewhere there must be a ladder. At last he found it. But as he looked up toward the cab, far above him, he saw someone moving there in a faint glow of light. He hesitated, one foot on the steel ladder, wishing he had a gun and wondering whether he should go back for' Carmody. That was the last thought that entered his head for a couple of minutes, for the blow caught him squarely on the back of the neck, and brilliant points of light seemed to shoot outward through his head as he slumped to the ground.

He came around shaking from the cold and stuck in an awkward position. His hands were jammed, somehow ― jammed behind him. He needed to straighten his arms and get them back into action. He strained to sort himself out and realized with a shock that his wrists were manacled together, and manacled to something.

He gave a grunt and heaved, whereupon a man spoke out of the dark behind him.

"Ah, Mr. Dermott," said a voice he half-recognized but could not place. "Struggling will not help. You are anchored to a steel ring let into concrete. The ring is directly in the patch of Dragline One, which, as you can see and hear, is now only a few feet from you. The controls have been preset and locked in position so that the middle of the right shoe will pass over you. Good-bye, Mr. Dermott. You have less than two minutes to live."

Fear cleared Dermott's head. "Bastards!" he roared. "Sadistic bastards! Come back!" But even as he shouted, he knew it was useless. In the whistle of the wind and the monstrous grinding of the dragline, his voice was nothing and carried nowhere. He twisted around and discovered that he was tethered almost on the lip of the pit: the edge of the black abyss was no more than a yard away. In the opposite direction, the front of the dragline's shoe had ground remorselessly to within fifteen feet of him. The front of it was coming on like a tank. Above him, the steel tracery of the boom seemed to fill the sky with an angry black pattern.

Dermott stopped shouting and began to fight the manacles. At least there was some movement. He could feel that a length of chain had been passed through the shackle on the ground. He jerked it furiously back and forth in the faint hope that the chain would break, but all he achieved was to chafe his wrists viciously and expose them to the cold. He could feel the icy steel biting into his bare skin. Frostbite, he thought dully. But what did frostbite matter if he was going to be crushed like a beetle?

"Carmody!" he yelled desperately. "Help!" Where the hell had Carmody gone? Why didn't he come looking?

Dermott fought the chain again and flopped flat, gasping. The shoe was only twelve feet off, scrunching on inch by inch. The whine of the electric motors seemed to fill the night, as if hell had claimed him.

He threw his body feverishly to left and right, experimenting to see if he could get clear of the shoe's line of advance. Nothing he tried was the slightest good. The shoe was ten feet wide, and he was tethered right in the middle of its track. The monster had been set marching with hideous precision.

He lay still again, panting, beaten. Suddenly images began flashing through his mind, conjured up uninvoked by the extremity of his desperation. Once again he witnessed the final terrifying seconds of the car crash that had killed his wife, the time when an explosion had blown him clear off a rig in the Gulf of Mexico, into the shark-owned sea…

All at once he became aware of a light flashing over him. Then someone was crouching, pulling at his arms. Then he heard a high, feminine cry.

"Corinne!"

"My God!" she cried. "What's happened? Oh, Jesus!" She leaped to her feet and began to run. "Wait!" she screamed over her shoulder.

Dermott saw her fall, get up again, and go like a greyhound, around the corner of the shoe, the flashlight swinging wildly in the blackness. He shouted something after her, but she was gone. Wait, she'd said. Wait! What a hell of a thing to say! How could he wait? The shoe was scarcely ten feet from him: one minute, give or take a few seconds.

He found his eyes were full of tears, though whether they were of fear or relief or gratitude or what, he couldn't tell. He was crying like a baby.

Seconds were passing. He began to count. He got to ten and couldn't go on. He had been overtaken by a horrific vision of the exact physical process of destruction that was about to annihilate him. He would feed his feet and legs to the monster first. Or could he? Could he listen and watch while his ankles, shins and knees were crunched and flattened on the tundra? No ― he would have to get the end over quickly and give it his head. But what would that be like, for God's sake? To hear his skull crack and feel that unthinkable weight! Impossible! Never!

He roared again, "CARMODY!" As if by a miracle, his shout was answered. Headlights came boring up out of the night and swept him as the vehicle turned. Dermott stared incredulously as the lights came on at speed, heading right for him and the front of the shoe. At the last moment the vehicle slowed, but not enough to stop. The driver deliberately slid it into the front of the shoe, using it as a last-ditch barrier to stop the monster's progress. There was a sharp crash and the tinkle of falling glass. Then the door of the Jeep opened and Corinne leaped out.

There was so little space left that Dermott had all but been run over. The Jeep's left-hand wheels were almost on him. The next thing he saw was the tires being forced bodily sideways toward him by the irresistible pressure of the dragline's advance.

Corinne had the tail gate of the Jeep open. She dragged out a steel box ― the emergency equipment ― and dumped it behind Dermott with a crash.

"Keep still!" she shouted above the noise. "No ― come back a bit. There. Keep there!"

Dermott leaned backward in the attitude she ordered, speechless with tension. He saw the wheels of the Jeep come sideways at him again. The back wheel was touching his feet already. The Jeep was being pushed like a toy. At that rate it was going to do more harm than good. It was merely acting as an extension of the shoe, and would crush him before the dragline itself reached him.

He felt Corinne struggling behind him. Suddenly she gave a desperate cry. "Oh my God! I can't do it. I'm not strong enough."

Dermott's voice returned. "What's happening?" he shouted.

"The cutters!" she sobbed. "The bolt shears are biting into the chain, but I can't get enough pressure on them. It's too bloody hard!"

"Put one end on the ground," he ordered calmly. "One handle on the ground. Then get your weight on the other."

He felt her try, but she slipped and went down with a crash. "Try again!" he yelled.

By then the noise of the dragline was overwhelming: its roaring and grinding filled the night. But suddenly a new sound: a sharp crack told him that the great steel treads of the shoe had hooked into some part of the Jeep's bodywork. Instead of being pushed back, the vehicle had been gripped and held down. Dermott stared incredulously as the Cherokee began collapsing like an eggshell. The remaining headlight was snuffed out. Cracking, snapping noises accompanied the collapse of the hood and front wheels.

Behind him Corinne gave a despairing scream.

"I just can't do it. I've got halfway through, but that's all."

"Look for a hacksaw!" Dermott shouted. "In the emergency pack."

"Got one!" She began working again frantically.

For Dermott time seemed to have stopped. He saw that the Cherokee's engine block had at last offered the dragline a spot of serious resistance: only a spot, it was true, but a definite token. Ponderous as a dinosaur, the machine lifted one foot slowly into the air as it ground the little vehicle beneath its steel sole. As if in a trance, Dermott saw the windshield shatter, the front of the roof crumple down, the passenger compartment flatten. Right in front of him a back wheel snapped off and was squashed flat onto the ground. If his arms had been free, he could have reached out and touched the front of the shoe ― it was that close.

But his arms were not free.

"I can't!" Corinne screamed in desperation. - Dennett's head cleared, and he shouted, "Is there an axe?"

"A what?"

"An axe."

"Yes ― here."

"Smash the chain with that. Aim for the link you've been working on."

"I might hit you."

"To hell with that. Belt it."

He felt the thump as she let drive. The chain snatched sharply at his wrists and nearly jerked his arms from their sockets. Suddenly he smelled the stink of gasoline: the tank had been crushed.

Clank! She brought the axe down, then again. When Dermott twisted to see how she was doing, the clawing thread of the shoe scraped down past his shoulder. The thing was touching him. He shrank away from the monstrous beast, and brought out his last, terrible idea.

"Chop my hands off!" he ordered, quite calmly.

"I can't!"

"Go on. It's them or me."

"NO!" She gave a piercing shriek and swung the axe down with every ounce of her behind it. Next second she was on her knees sobbing, "Oh my God, it's gone! It's gone!"

Dermott fought his instinct to leap up. He held himself down as he struggled with the severed link. The tread was bumping and bruising him now. In another few moments it would hook him under, as it had the car.

"For Christ's sake!" he shouted. "Quick!"

Miraculously, his hands came free. He got his arms back to their normal position and twisted sideways. "Look out for the pit!" he yelled. He himself was on the very lip. Hardly had he rolled clear of the dragline when there was a huge whumph and a roar of dark-red flame shot sideways at ground level. A chance spark had ignited the car's gasoline. By a fluke he had rolled into the wind, so that the fiery blast went the other way and left him unscathed. Corinne was there behind him, also intact.

The blaze made no difference to the monster's advance. The flames roared for a few seconds, then went out, and the dragline continued without faltering toward the brink.

Dermott felt weak with reaction ― but not as weak as the girl. One moment she was standing behind him; the next, as Dermott struggled to find the words to express his gratitude to her, she had collapsed in a heap on the ground. He picked her up as tenderly as he knew how, laid her gingerly over his shoulder in a fireman's lift, and began carrying her toward the still-lighted windows of the isolation quarters. His eyes seemed to have gone blurred with the strain. Or was it just ice? He scrubbed them with his free hand and saw better. Out in the patch of white light ahead of him, the helicopter was preparing to take off, lights flashing, rotor spinning. Even as he watched, it lifted off and slanted away into the sky.

At once the car whose lights had provided the marker moved off and accelerated. Once again, Dermott realized, the unspeakable murderers had melted into the night. He knew he ought to feel disappointed. As it was, he could concentrate on nothing except getting back into the warmth of the hut and lying down.

He was very close to the building, going slow, when he saw someone pass across the lighted windows in front of him. Fear seized him. Maybe it was one of them. Was he going to be shot after making such an effort? Before he had time to put down his burden or alter course, a flashlight came on, searched briefly and found his face.

"Good God! Dermott!"

"Carmody! Where in hell have you been?"

"Trying to ditch the chopper. What about you?"

"Had a… had a bit of bother." Suddenly Dermott found he could hardly talk. He was about to break down. "Take her, will you?" he croaked. "I've had it."

With an exclamation Carmody relieved him of his inert burden. "Quick," said the policeman. "Inside."

They laid Corinne on one bed and Dermott collapsed onto another with the manacles still dangling from his wrists. "Ring Shore!" he gasped. "Tell him for Christ's sake to switch off the power to Dragline One. Tell him and Brady to get up here like they never drove before."

They had turned on the floodlights to illuminate the 150-foot depths of the pit below. They had also hammered in spikes ten yards back from the lip, and to these they had attached ropes so that the vertiginously inclined or the less-than-sure-footed could cling to them as they peered over the edge.

Dragline One had ended up on its nose, tilted backward toward the near-vertical face at an angle of thirty degrees. The massive casing appeared undamaged, as did the triangular arm over which the control cables passed. Even the boom, its enormous length stretched out horizontally across the uneven valley floor, seemed undamaged, at least from above.

Brady had prudently wrapped his belaying rope three times around his mighty girth. "Surprisingly little damage," he said. "Or so it looks. I suppose some of the electric motors were wrenched free from their beds."

"That'll be the least of our troubles." Jay Shore looked stricken, ashen-faced in the floodlights. The sight of the crippled monster had far more effect on him than on any of the others. "It's getting the damn thing out of there."

"Wouldn't it be easier to get a replacement?" asked Brady.

"Jesus! Do you know what a replacement would cost at today's prices? Forty million dollars. Probably more. And you don't order one up, just like that. If we could have one on our doorstep tomorrow, I'm sure Sanmobil would order it. But it can't be done that way. You can't transport a thing that size overland. Electric motors apart, the whole caboodle comes crated in tens of thousands of pieces, and it takes a team of skilled engineers months to assemble it."

"Cranes?" Brady suggested. He seemed fascinated by the sheer size of the problem. Or he was trying to be diverted; trying not to think of his missing wife and daughter.

Shore made a dismissive gesture with his gloved hands. "The biggest cranes in the world ― a whole battery of them ― couldn't lift the dragline an inch off the floor. We'll either have to dismantle it piece by piece and raise the bits up here for reassembly, or build a road from down there back up to surface level and have it towed up on bogies ― or, perhaps, under its own steam. The road would have to be a very gentle gradient, which would mean a length of over a mile, heavily metalled on massive foundations. Whatever we do, it'll cost millions." He swore at some considerable length. "And all this in just seven minutes' work!"

"Why in hell couldn't you stop it, when we phoned you?" asked Carmody.

"The bastards knew what they were doing," said Shore savagely. "They'd gone into the generator», room, thrown the breaker that fed power to Dragline 1 One, locked the door from the outside, left the key in the lock and smashed it so thoroughly that it'll need an oxyacetylene torch to open it again. We just couldn't get in to shut down the power."

"They sure knew how to cause the maximum damage and disruption with the minimum of effort," said Brady. "I suggest, Mr. Shore, there's no point in our remaining here a moment longer. All you're doing is twisting the knife deeper into your wound. Let's all get back inside and ask George what happened."

"Okay. Let's go." Shore, who had supervised the construction of the dragline, working along with the contractors, Bucyrus-Erie, seemed strangely reluctant to leave the fallen giant. It was as if he were abandoning an old friend. Brady could appreciate how he felt. But he could also appreciate how he felt himself ― he had become acutely conscious of the cold.

Shore took one last look at the dragline and turned back toward the heated haven of the minibus. "Okay," he repeated automatically. "Let's go hear Dermott's story."

They drove the short distance back to the isolation block, where they found Dermott lying on a bed, already being questioned by Willoughby. Corinne was sitting on a chair in the corner of the small room, looking in better shape than the man she'd rescued.

"How is he?" Brady whispered to the nurse out in the corridor.

"His wrists look pretty bad ― they got chewed up by the manacles, and frostbitten as well. They're going to be real painful for the next few days. They'll mend, though."

"What about his general condition ― exposure?"

"What are you talking about? He's got the constitution of an ox."

By the time Brady, Mackenzie and Carmody had filed into the room, the place was crammed full. Brady seemed much moved by the sight of his senior operative brought low, with hands and forearms heavily bandaged.

"Well, George," he began, clearing his throat heavily, "I am informed that you plan to survive."

"Sure do." Dermott grinned up at them. "But boy ― I wouldn't want to go through that again."

"I got the story," Willoughby cut in, brisk and businesslike. He gave a quick precis of what had happened, including the arrival and departure of the helicopter. "I'm sorry to say it, Mr. Shore, but it seems the plant is riddled with corruption. Number one, somebody sabotaged the generator room, so that you couldn't turn the power off. Number two, somebody else set the controls of the dragline to take it over the edge. Number three, somebody else hit Dermott and manacled him to the steel ring. Number four, somebody else again informed the kidnappers that the girl had survived her fall out of the helicopter and was back here in the isolation unit. That makes quite a lot of saboteurs for one plant."

"Too right, it does,".Shore said bitterly. "You don't think the chopper came back to do the dragline job ― that somebody on board got out and set the controls?"

"Impossible. The dragline was moving before — the chopper landed. Isn't that right, Mr. Dermott?"

"Right. At least ― no ― not quite. But we.saw men from the chopper go straight to the building here ― and then we heard the dragline moving, right near us. The guys from the helicopter didn't have time to reach the dragline and set up the controls."

"What I'd like to know is whether your family, Mr. Brady, were still on board the helicopter," Willoughby said.

"Yes, they were." Carmody startled them all with his sudden pronouncement. "And Mr. Reynolds. He was with them."

"How d'you know?" Jim Brady asked. Dermott sat up abruptly.

"I saw them. That's what I was doing all the time you were involved with the dragline. I made a wide circle on foot and approached the helicopter from the back. There was a man armed with a machine gun guarding the ladder, but I climbed up onto the skid-struts from the opposite side and got a look in through the cabin windows. They were all there ― Mrs. Brady, Stella, Mr. Reynolds."

"How…" Brady faltered. "How did they look?"

"Fine ― just fine. Quite calm, all of them. But they weren't quite as passive as they looked."

"What d'you mean?" Dermott asked quickly.

"One of them managed to drop this out of the door, or out of a window." From his breast pocket Carmody drew a brown leather billfold, which he handed to Brady. "Looks like one of yours ― J.A.B., nicely embossed in gold."

"My God!" Brady took it. "That's Jean's. Her middle name's Anneliese. This was a birthday present. Anything in it?"

"Sure is. Take a look."

With his fingers trembling a little, Brady opened the billfold, unbuttoned a flap and drew out a small scrap of paper. "Crowfoot Lake Met. Station," he read out loud. "Well I'm damned."

Dermott was elated. "I knew it! I knew it!" he kept saying. "I knew the bastards would overreach themselves. Didn't I say they'd make a major mistake through over-confidence or desperation? Well, they've made it. Somebody couldn't resist the temptation to talk. Jean heard the name and wrote it down. Great, Jean!"

"Sheer luck I found it," said Carmody. "When the chopper took off it blew hell out of the snow and all but buried the billfold. I was just having a quick look around when I saw the corner sticking up out of a drift."

"We got it, anyway," said Dermott. "What are we waiting for?"

"Not so fast," Brady countered. "For one thing we don't know where Crowfoot Lake is."

"Oh yes we do," said Willoughby. "It's up beyond the Birch Mountains, seventy, eighty miles north. I know it well."

"How do we get there?" Dermott asked.

Willoughby looked at him reproachfully. "Helicopter. No other way."

"It's four o'clock in the morning, gentlemen," Brady said heavily. "An error to pursue further tonight. For one thing, we are all exhausted."

"And for another we don't have a helicopter," said Dermott.

"Precisely, George. I must say, your ordeal doesn't seem to have blunted your wits any."

"Thank you." Dermott lay back happily. "Maybe Mr. Willoughby can help us in the morning ― I mean, later this morning."

"Sure, sure." Willoughby stood up. "But everyone please be careful. We're up against professionals. Their performance has been pretty impressive to date. Nothing would please them better than to catch one of your gentlemen, Mr. Brady. Or you, for that matter." He turned to Corinne, only to find she had fallen asleep, sitting upright, in the corner. "Okay," he said gently to Mackenzie. "Look after her. But whatever you do, all keep together."

"Like now," said Brady. "We'll all get in that bus together and drive back to town. Mr. Carmody ― it doesn't sound as though your vehicle's too serviceable. May I offer you a ride?"

"Flat as a pancake," said Carmody wryly. "Never saw anything to match it. Thank you."

They all piled in, with Shore driving. But before they even reached the administration block a radio message caught them.

"Mr. Shore ― urgent." It was Steve Dawson, of the night shift. "We got another emergency."

"Oh no!" Shore groaned. "I'm coming. Be right there."

Dawson met them and led them straight into a room off the main corridor which held six beds and was obviously a dormitory. On one of the beds lay the body of a fair-haired young man whose sightless eyes gazed at the ceiling.

"Oh my God!" said Shore.

"Who is it?" Dermott snapped.

"David Crawford. The security man we were talking about."

"The one we suspected?"

"That's him. What happened?"

"Stabbed through the heart, from behind," said Dr. Saunders, who was standing by the bed. "He's been dead some hours. We only just found him."

"How come?" Dermott demanded. "Isn't this the security men's dormitory?"

"One of two," said Saunders. "The other's larger. Normally both are occupied by off-duty shifts. But since the shutdown, the men have been living at home. Nobody had any cause to come in here tonight."

"Ruthless bastards," said Brady, very low. "Pour dead and two critically injured so far. Well, Mr. Willoughby. You've got a murder investigation on your hands."