Night Without End

CHAPTER TWELVE—Saturday 12.15 P.M.—12.30 P.M.

The Citroen was travelling in a most erratic fashion—one moment slowing down almost to a stop, the next jerking forward and covering perhaps twenty to thirty yards at a rush. Although we couldn't see the glacier surface at that distance, it was obvious that the driver was picking his way round ice-mounds and threading along between fissures at the best speed he could manage. But his average speed was very low: it would probably take him almost five minutes to reach that point opposite us where the glacier fell away sharply to the left towards the outer angle of the dog-leg half-way down towards the fjord.

All these things I noted mechanically, without in any way consciously thinking of them. All I could think of was that Smallwood and Corazzmi had outwitted us right up to the last -almost certainly, I could understand now, they had seen and been warned by the rockets Hillcrest had fired to give the Scimitar our position, and decided to give that side of the glacier the widest possible berth.

But the reasons no longer mattered a damn. All that mattered was the accomplished fact, and the fact was that Corazzini and Smallwood could no longer be stopped, not in the way we had intended. Even yet, of course, they could be stopped—but I had no illusions but that that would be at the cost of the lives of the two hostages in the tractor.

Frantically I tried to work out what to do for the best. There was no chance in the world that we might approach them openly over the glacier—we would be spotted before we had covered ten yards, and a pistol at the heads of Margaret and Levin would halt us before we got half-way. If we did nothing, let them get away, I knew the hostages' chances of survival were still pretty slim—that trawler would almost certainly have a name or number or both and I couldn't see Smallwood letting them make an identification of the trawler and then come back to report to us—and to all the waiting ships and planes in the Davis Strait—Baffin Sea area. Why should he take the slightest risk when it would be so easy to shoot them, so much easier still to throw them down a crevasse or shove them over the edge of the glacier into the freezing waters of the fjord a hundred and fifty feet below.. . . Already the Citroen was no more than three minutes away from the nearest point of approach they would make to us.

"Looks like they're going to get away with it," Hillcrest whispered. It seemed as if he feared he might be overheard, though Smallwood and Corazzini couldn't have heard him had he shouted at the top of his voice.

"Well, that was what you wanted, wasn't it?" I asked bitterly.

"What I wanted! My God, man, that missile mechanism—"

"I don't give a single solitary damn about the missile mechanism." I ground the words out between clenched teeth. "Six months from now other scientists will have invented something twice as good and ten times as secret. They're welcome to it, and with pleasure."

Hillcrest was shocked, but said nothing. But someone was in agreement with me.

"Hear, hear!" Zagero had just come up, his hands swathed to the size of boxing gloves in white bandages. The words were light enough, but his face was grim and his eyes bleak as he stared out across the glacier. "My sentiments exactly, Doc. To hell with their murderous little toys. My old man's in that buggy out there. And your girl."

"His girl?" Hillcrest turned, looked sharply at me under creased brows for a long moment, then murmured: "Sorry, boy, I didn't understand."

I made no response, but twisted my head as I heard footsteps behind me. It was Joss, hatless and gloveless in his excitement.

"Wykenham's anchored, sir," he panted out. "Her—"

"Get down, man! They'll see you."

"Sorry." He dropped to his hands and knees. "Her powerboat's already moving inshore. And there was a flight of four Scimitars already airborne: they should be half-way here already. In two minutes'-time four or five bombers are taking off, with HE and incendiaries. They're slower, but—"

"Bombers?" I snapped irritably. "Bombers? What do they think this is—the Second Front?"

"No sir. They're going to clobber the trawler if Smallwood gets away with that missile mechanism. They won't get a hundred yards."

"The hell with their missile mechanism. Do human lives mean nothing to them? What is it, Jackstraw?"

"Lights, Dr Mason." He pointed to the spot on the fjord wall where the men from the trawler had already covered two-thirds of the horizontal and vertical distance to the end of the glacier. "Signalling, I think."

I saw it right away, a small light, but powerful, winking irregularly. I watched it for a few moments then heard Joss's voice.

"It's morse, but it's not our morse, sir."

"They're hardly likely to signal in English just for our benefit," I said dryly. I tried to speak calmly, to hide the fear, the near despair in my mind, and when I spoke again my voice, I knew, was abnormally matter-of-fact. "It's the tip-off to our friends Small-wood and Corazzini. If we can see the men from the trawler, it's a cinch the men from the trawler can see us. The point is, do Smallwood and Corazzini understand them?"

Five seconds later I had my answer in the form of a suddenly deepening roar coming to us across the glacier from the engine of the Citroen. Corazzini—Hillcrest's binoculars had shown him to be the driver—had understood the danger all right, he was casting caution to the winds and gunning the engine to its maximum. He must have been desperate, desperate to the point of madness, for no sane man would have taken the fearful risks of driving that tractor through sloping crevasse ice with the friction coefficient between treads and surface reduced almost to zero. Or could it be that he just didn't know the suicidal dangers involved?

After a few seconds I was convinced he didn't. In the first place, I couldn't see either Corazzini or Smallwood as men who would panic under pressure, no matter how severe that pressure, and in the second place suicidal risks weren't absolutely necessary, they would have stood a more than even chance of getting away with their lives and the -missile mechanism if they had stopped the tractor, got out and picked their cautious way down the glacier on foot, with their pistol barrels stuck in the backs of their hostages. Or would they—rather, did they think they would?

I tried fleetingly, frantically, to get inside their cold and criminal minds, to try to understand their conception of us. Did they think that we thought, like them, that the mechanism was all important, that human lives were cheap and readily expendable? If they did, and guessing the quality of Jackstraw's marksmanship with a rifle, would they not be convinced that they would be shot down as soon as they had stepped out on to the ice, regardless of the fate of their hostages? Or did they have a better understanding than that of minds more normal than their own?

Even as these thoughts flashed through my mind I knew I must act now. The time for thought, had there ever been such a time, was past. If they were left to continue in the tractor, they would either kill themselves on the glacier or if, by a miracle, they reached the bottom safely, they would then kill their hostages. If they were stopped now, there was a faint chance that Margaret and Levin might survive, at least for the moment: they were Smallwood's and Corazzini's only two trump cards, and would be kept intact as long as lay within their power, for they were their only guarantee of escape. I just had to gamble on the hope that they would be desperately reluctant to kill them where they were now, still a mile from the end of the glacier. And the last time I had gambled I had lost.

"Can you stop the tractor?" I asked Jackstraw, my voice a flat lifeless monotone in my own ear.

He nodded, his eyes on me: I nodded silently in return.

"You can't do that!" Zagero shouted in urgent protest. The drawl had gone for the first time ever. "They'll kill them, they'll kill them! My God, Mason, if you're really stuck on that kid you'd never—"

"Shut up!" I said savagely. I grabbed acoil of rope, picked up my rifle and went on brutally: "If you think they'd ever let your father come out of this alive you must be crazy."

A second later I was on my way, plunging out into the open across the narrow thirty-yard stretch of ice that led into the first of the fissures, wincing and ducking involuntarily as the first .303 shell from Jackstraw's rifle screamed past me, only feet to my right, and smashed through the hood of the Citroen and into the engine with all the metallic clamour, the vicious power of a sledge-hammer wielded by some giant hand. But still the Citroen came on.

I leapt across a narrow crevasse, steadied myself, glanced back for a moment, saw that Hillcrest, Joss, Zagero and a couple of Hillcrest's men were following, then rushed on again, weaving and twisting my way through the cracks and mounds in the ice. What was Zagero doing there, I asked myself angrily? Unarmed, with two useless hands that could hold no firearm, he was nothing but a liability, what could any man do with ruined hands like those? I was to find out just what a man with ruined hands could do. ...

We were running straight across the narrowest neck of the glacier making straight for the spot where the tractor would arrive if it survived Jackstraw's attempts to halt it: Jackstraw was firing in a line well above us now, but we could still hear the thin high whine of every bullet, the metallic crash as it struck the Citroen. Every bullet went home. But that engine was incredibly tough.

We were about half-way across when we heard the engine change gear, the high unmistakable whine of the tractor beginning to overrun its engine. Corazzini—I could clearly see him now, even without the aid of binoculars—must have found himself losing control on the steepening slope and was using the engine to brake the Citroen. And then, when we were less than a hundred yards away and after a longer than usual lull in the firing -Jackstraw must have stopped to change magazines—the sixth shell smashed through the riddled hood and the engine stopped as abruptly as if the ignition had been switched off.

The tractor stopped too. On that steep slope this was surprising, the last thing I would have expected, but there was no doubt that not only had it stopped but that it had been stopped deliberately: there was no mistaking the high-pitched screech of those worn brakes.

And then I could see the reason why. There was some violent activity taking place in the driving cabin of the tractor, and as we neared—a maddeningly slow process, there were dozens of crevasses to be jumped, as many more to be skirted—we could see what it was. Corazzini and Solly Levin were struggling furiously, and, from thirty or forty yards, it seemed, incredibly enough, that Solly Levin was getting the better of it. He had flung himself completely on top of Corazzini where the latter sat behind the wheel, and was butting him savagely in the face with the top of his bald head, and Corazzini, trapped in the narrow space, could find no room to make use of his much greater strength.

Then, abruptly, the door on the driver's side burst open—we could see it clearly, having been lower down than the tractor when it had stopped we were approaching it now almost head on—and the two men fell out fighting and struggling furiously. We could see now why Levin had been using his head—both hands were bound behind his back. It had been an act of desperate courage to attack Corazzini in the first place, but the old man wasn't to get the reward he deserved for his selflessness: even as we came up to them Corazzini got his automatic clear and fired down point-blank at Solly Levin who was lying helplessly on his back but still gamely trying to get a leg lock on the bigger man. I was a split second too late in getting there, even as I crashed into Corazzini and sent his automatic flying away to slide down the glacier, I knew I was too late, Solly Levin was a crumpled little blood-stained figure lying on the ice even before Corazzini's gun went slithering over the edge of a crevasse. And then I felt myself being pushed to one side, and Johnny Zagero was staring down at the outspread stillness of the man huddled at his feet. For what seemed an eternity, but was probably no more than three seconds, he stood there without moving, then when he turned to Corazzini his face was empty of all expression.

It might have been a flash of fear, of realisation that he had come to the end of his road that I saw in Corazzini's eyes, but I could never swear to it, the turn of his head, the sudden headlong dash for the shelter of the ice-covered moraine rocks by the side of the glacier, ten yards away, were so swift that I could be certain of nothing. But swift as he was, Zagero was even swifter: he caught Corazzini before he had covered four yards and they crashed to the glacier together, clawing, punching and kicking in the grim desperate silence of men who know that the winner's prize is his life.

"Drop that gun!" I whirled round at the sound of the voice behind me, but all I could see at first was the white strained face of Margaret Ross, the brown eyes dulled with sickness and fear. Involuntarily I brought up the rifle in my hands.

"Drop it!" Smallwood's voice was curt, deadly, his face barely visible behind Margaret's shoulder as he peered out through the canvas screen at the rear of the tractor cabin. He was completely shielded by her body—it was typical of the man's cunning, his ice-cold calculation that he should have waited until our attention was completely distracted before making his move. "And your friend. Quickly now!"

I hesitated, glanced at Hillcrest—the only other-man with a weapon—to see how he was placed, then jerked my head back again as there came a sudden plop from the silenced automatic and a sharp cry of pain from Margaret. She was clutching her left arm just below the elbow.

"Quickly, I said! The next one goes through her shoulder." His voice was soft with menace, his face implacable. Not for a moment did I doubt that he would do exactly as he said: the clatter of Hillcrest's rifle and mine falling on the ice came in the same instant.

"Now kick them over the edge of that crevasse."

We did as he said and stood there powerless to do anything except watch the savage, mauling fight on the glacier. Neither man had regained his feet since the struggle had begun, the ice was too slippery for that, and still they rolled over and over first one on top, now the other. Both were powerful men, but Zagero was severely handicapped by the exhaustion of the terrible night's march that lay behind him, by his crippled useless hands, by thickly-swathed bandages over his hands that not only prevented him from catching or holding Corazzini but softened the impact of every blow he struck. For all that, there was no question how the battle was going: those broken hands I'd said would never fight again were clubbing and hammering the life out of Corazzini. I thought of the tremendous force with which I'd seen Zagero strike a blow only the previous morning and felt a momentary flash of pity for Corazzini: then I remembered he was just as Smallwood was, that Smallwood was prepared to kill Margaret with as little compunction as he would snuff out the life of a fly, I looked at the crumpled figure at my feet and every shadow of pity vanished as if it had never been.

Smallwood, his eyes unblinking, his face expressionless as ever, had his gun on them all the time, waiting for that second when the two men would break far enough apart to give him a clear sight of Zagero. But, now, Zagero was underneath nearly all the time, one arm crooked round Corazzini's neck while the other delivered a murderous series of short-arm jabs, each one drawing a grunting gasp of agony from a white-faced Corazzini: finally, goaded into supreme effort by panic and fear, Corazzini managed to break loose and hurled himself not towards Smallwood, where safety lay, but for the shelter of the moraine rocks, where he would never know safety again. Zagero, cat-like as ever, was only feet behind him, moving so fast, so unexpectedly that Smallwood's swift snapshot missed him altogether.

"Call your friend Nielsen." Smallwood must have realised how things were going behind the concealing shelter of the rocks for his voice was suddenly savage, urgent. He spared a swift glance in Jackstraw's direction—Jackstraw, followed at some distance by two more of Hillcrest's crew, was crossing the glacier at a dead run and now less than fifty yards away. "His rifle. In a crevasse. Quickly!"

"Jackstraw!" My voice was hoarse, cracked. "Throw your rifle away! He's got a gun on Miss Ross, and he's going to kill her." Jackstraw braked, slipped on the ice, halted and stood there for a moment irresolute, and then at my repeated desperate cry carefully, deliberately dropped his rifle into a nearby fissure and came slowly on to join us. It was at that moment that Hillcrest grabbed me by the arm.

"He's moving, Mason! He's alive!" He was pointing down to Levin, who was indeed stirring slightly. I had never thought to examine Levin, it had seemed a ludicrous idea that a professional like Corazzini could have missed at such point-blank range, but now, regardless of Smallwood's reaction, I dropped to my knees on the glacier and put my face close to Levin's. Hillcrest was right. The breathing was shallow, but breathing there undoubtedly was, and now I could see the thin red line that extended from the temple almost to the back of the head. I rose to my feet.

"Creased, concussed probably, that's all." Involuntarily I glanced over my shoulder towards the rocks. "But too late now for Corazzini."

And I needed no eyes to know that this was so. The unseen battle behind the rocks had been fought out with a dumb feral ferocity, with a silent savagery that had been far more frightening than all the most maddened oaths and shouting could ever have been, but even now, as Smallwood jumped down from the tailboard of the tractor cabin, Margaret Ross still held in front of him, and started hustling her towards the rocks, a hoarse high-pitched scream that raised the hackles on the back of my neck froze us all, even Smallwood, to immobility: and then came a long quavering moan of agony, cut off as abruptly as it had begun. And now there was no more screaming or moaning, no more slipping of feet on ice, no more gasping or frenzied flurries bespeaking the interchange of desperate blows: there was only silence, a silence chillingly broken by regular rhythmic pounding blows like the stamping feet of a pile-driver.

Smallwood had recovered, had just reached the rocks when Zagero came out to meet him face to face. Smallwood moved to one side, his gun covering him, as Zagero came slowly towards us, his face cut and bruised, his blood-saturated bandaged hands hanging by his sides, with two long ribbons of red-stained bandage trailing on the ice behind him.

"Finished?" I asked.

"Finished."

"Good," I said, and meant it. "Your father's still alive, Johnny. Scalp wound, that's all."

His battered face transformed, first by disbelief then by sheer joy, Zagero dropped on his knees beside Solly Levin. I saw Smallwood line his pistol on Zagero's back.

"Don't do it, Smallwood!" I shouted. "You'll only have four shells left."

His eyes swivelled to my face, the cold flat eyes of a killer, then the meaning of my words struck home, his expression subtly altered and he nodded as if I had made some reasonable suggestion. He turned to Jackstraw, the nearest man to him, and said, "Bring out my radio."

Jackstraw moved to obey, and while he was inside the cabin Zagero rose slowly to his feet.

"Does look like I was a mite premature," he murmured. He glanced towards the rocks, and there was no regret in his face, only indifference. "Half a dozen witnesses, and 'you all saw him beatin' himself to death. . . . You're next, Smallwood."

"Corazzini was a fool," Smallwood said contemptuously. The man's cold-blooded callousness was staggering. "I can easily replace him. Just leave that radio here, Nielsen, and join your friends—while I join mine." He nodded down the glacier. "Or perhaps you hadn't noticed?"

And we hadn't. But we noticed it now all right, the first of the party from the trawler climbing on to the ice at the precipitous tip of the glacier. Within seconds half a dozen of them were on the ice, running, stumbling, falling, picking themselves up again as they clawed their way up the slippery ice with all the speed they could muster.

"My—ah—reception committee." Smallwood permitted himself the shadow of a smile. "You will remain here while Miss Ross and I make our way down to meet them. You will not move. I have the girl." Victory, complete and absolute victory was in his grasp, but his voice, his face were again devoid as ever of all shadow of expression or feeling. He stooped to pick up the portable radio, then swung round and stared up into the sky.

I had heard it too, and I knew what it was before Smallwood did because it was a factor that had never entered into his calculations. But there was no need for me to explain, within seconds of hearing the first high screaming whine from the south a flight of four lean sleek deadly Scimitar jet fighters whistled by less than four hundred feet overhead, banked almost immediately, broke formation and came back again, speed reduced, flying a tight circle over the tongue of the fjord. I don't like planes, and I hate the sound of jets: but I had never seen so welcome a sight, heard so wonderful a sound in all my life.

"Jet fighters, Smallwood," I cried exultantly. "Jet fighters from a naval carrier. We called them up by radio." He was staring at the circling planes with his thin lips drawn back wolfishly over his teeth, and I went on more softly: "They've had orders to shoot and destroy any person seen going down that glacier—any person, especially, with a case or radio in his hand." It was a lie, but Smallwood wasn't to know that, the very presence of the jets above must have seemed confirmation of the truth of my words.

"They wouldn't dare," he said slowly. "They'd kill the girl too."

"You fool!" I said contemptuously. "Not only doesn't human life matter a damn to either side compared to the recovery of the mechanism—you should know that better than anyone, Small-wood—but these planes have been told to watch out for and kill two people going down the glacier. Wrapped in these clothes, Miss Ross is indistinguishable from a man—especially from the air. They'll think it's you and Corazzini and they'll blast you both off the face of the glacier."

I knew Smallwood believed me, believed me absolutely, this was so exactly the way his own killer's mind would have worked in its utterly callous indifference to human life that conviction could not be stayed. But he had courage, I'll grant him that, and that first-class brain of his never stopped working.

"There's no hurry," he said comfortably. He was back on balance again. "They can circle there as long as they like, they can send out relief planes to take over, it doesn't matter. As long as I'm with you here, they won't touch me. And in just over an hour or so it will be dark again, after which I can leave. Meantime, stay close to me, gentlemen: I don't think you would so willingly sacrifice Miss Ross's life."

"Don't listen to him," Margaret said desperately. Her voice was almost a sob, her face twisted in pain. "Go away, please, all of you, go away. I know he's going to kill me in the end anyway. It may as well be now." She buried her face in her hands. "I don't care any more, I don't, I don't!"

"But I care," I said angrily. Soft words, sympathetic words were useless here. "We all care. Don't be such a little fool. Everything will be all right, you'll see."

"Spoken like a man," said Smallwood approvingly. "Only, my dear, I wouldn't pay much attention to the last pan of his speech."

"Why don't you give up, Smallwood?" I asked him quietly. I had neither hope nor intention of persuading this fanatic, I was only talking for time, for I had seen something that had made my heart leap: moving quietly out over the right-hand side of the glacier, from the self-same spot where we had lain in ambush, was a file of about a dozen men. "Bombers have already taken off from the carrier, and, believe me, they're carrying bombs. Bombs and incendiaries. And do you know why, Smallwood?"

They were dressed in khaki, this landing party from the Wykenham, not navy blue. Marines, almost certainly, unless they had been carrying soldiers on some combined manoeuvres. They were heavily armed, and had that indefinable but unmistakable look of men who knew exactly what they were about. Their leader, I noticed, wasn't fooling around with the usual pistol a naval officer in charge of a landing party traditionally carried: he had a sub-machine-gun under his arm, the barrel gripped in his left hand. Three others had similar weapons, the rest rifles.

"Because they're going to make good and sure you're never going to get off this glacier alive, Smallwood," I went on. "At least, not out of the fjord alive. Neither you nor any of your friends coming to meet you—nor any of the men waiting aboard that trawler down there."

God, how slowly they were coming! Why didn't one of their marksmen with a rifle shoot Smallwood there and then—at that moment, the thought that a rifle bullet would have gone clear though Smallwood and killed the girl held so tightly in front of him never occurred to me. But if I could hold his attention another thirty seconds, if none of the others standing by my side betrayed by the slightest flicker of expression—

"They're going to destroy that trawler, Smallwood," I rushed on quickly. The men advancing up from the foot of the glacier were waving their arms furiously now, shouting wildly in warning, and even at over three-quarters of a mile their voices were carrying clearly. I had to try to drown their voices, to make sure that Smallwood kept his eyes fixed only on me. "They're going to blow it out of the water, it and you and that damned missile mechanism. What's the use of—"

But it was too late. Smallwood had heard the shouts even as I had begun to speak, twisted his head to look down the valley, saw the direction of the pointing arms, glanced briefly over his shoulder, then turned to face me again, his face twisted in a bestial snarl, that monolithic calm shattered at last:

"Who are they?" he demanded viciously. "What are they doing? Quick—or the girl gets it!"

"It's a landing party from the destroyer in the next bay," I said steadily. "This is the end, Smallwood. Maybe you'll stand trial yet."

"I'll kill the girl!" he whispered savagely.

"They'll kill you. They've been ordered to recover that mechanism at all costs. Nobody's playing any more, Smallwood. Give up your gun."

He swore, vilely, blasphemously, the first time I had ever heard such words from him, and leapt for the driving cabin of the tractor, pushing the girl in front of him while his pistol swung in a wide arc covering all of us. I understood what he was going to do, what this last desperate suicidal gamble was going to be, and hurled myself at the door of the driving cabin.

"You madman!" My voice was a scream. "You'll kill yourself, you'll kill the girl—"

The gun coughed softly, I felt the white-hot burning pain in my upper arm and crashed backward on to the ice just as Smallwood released the brakes of the Citroen. At once the big tractor started to move, those murderous treads passing inches from me as Jackstraw leapt forward and dragged me to safety a second before they would have run over my face. The next moment I was on my feet, running after the tractor, Jackstraw at my heels: I suppose that wound just below my shoulder must have been hurting like hell, but the truth is that I felt nothing at all.

The tractor, with next to no adhesion left on the steepening slope of ice, accelerated with dismaying speed, soon outdistancing us. At first it seemed as if Smallwood was making some attempt to steer it, but it was obvious almost immediately that any such attempts were utterly useless: five tons of steel ran amok, it was completely out of control, skidding violently first to one side then the other, finally making a complete half-circle and sliding backward down the glacier at terrifying speed, following the slope of the ice which led from the right-hand side where we had been standing to the big nunataks thrusting up through the ice on the far left-hand corner of the dog-leg half-way down.

How it missed all the crevasses—it went straight across some narrow ones, thanks to its treads—and all the ice-mounds on the way down and across the glacier I shall never know, but miss them it did, increasing speed with every second that passed, its treads screeching out a shrilly metallic cacophony of sound as they scored their serrated way across and through the uneven ice of the glacier. But then, I shall never know either how Jackstraw and I survived all the crazy chances we took on our mad headlong run down that glacier, unable to stop, leaping across crevasses we would never have dared attempt in our normal minds, pounding our sliding way alongside others where the slip of either foot would have been our death.

We were still two hundred yards behind the tractor when, less than fifty yards from the corner, it struck an ice-mound, spun round crazily several times and then smashed, tail first, with horrifying force into the biggest of the nunataks—a fifty-foot pinnacle of rock at the very corner. We were still over a hundred yards away when we saw Small wood, obviously dazed, half-fall out of the still upright driving cabin, hat-box in hand, followed by the girl. Whether she flung herself at him or just stumbled against him it was impossible to say, but both of them slipped and fell together and next moment had disappeared from sight against the face of the nunatak.

Still fifty yards away, already trying all we could to brake ourselves, we heard the staccato roar of cannon shells seemingly directly above us and as I flung myself flat on the ice, not to avoid the fire but to stop myself before I, too, plunged into the crevasse by the nunatak where I knew Margaret and Smallwood must have disappeared, I caught a glimpse of two Scimitars hurtling low across the glacier, red fire streaking from their guns. For a moment, rolling over and over, I saw no more, then I had another glimpse of the lower part of the glacier, of exploding cannon shells raking a lethal barrier of fragmenting steel across the glacier's entire width, and, about sixty or seventy yards lower down, the men from the trawler lying flat on their faces to escape the whistling flying shrapnel. Even in that brief moment I had time to see a third Scimitar screaming down out of the north, exactly following the path of the other two. They were making no attempt to kill the trawler men, obviously they were under the strictest instructions to avoid any but the most necessary bloodshed. And it wasn't necessary, if ever anything was crystal clear it was the fact that we weren't going to have any trouble at all from those trawler men. Both men and trawler could depart now, unmolested: with the missile mechanism beyond their reach, they no longer mattered.

Ten yards ahead of Jackstraw, sick to the heart and almost mad with fear, I reached the crevasse by the nunatak—no more than a three-foot wide gap between ice and rock—peered down over the side, and as I peered I felt faint from the wave of relief that swept over me: the crevasse, narrowing as it went down to not much more than two feet, ended about fifteen feet down in a solid shelf of rock, a ledge sculpted by thousands of years of moving, grinding ice.

Margaret and Smallwood were still on their feet, shaky, I could see, but seemingly unharmed—it had been a short drop and they could have slowed their descent by pressing against both sides of the crevasse as they fell. Smallwood, flattened lips drawn back over his teeth, was staring up at me, his pistol barrel pressed savagely against Margaret's temple.

"A rope, Mason!" he said softly. "Get me a rope. This crevasse is closing—the ice is moving!"

And it was, I knew it was. All glaciers moved, some of them, on this West Greenland coast, with astonishing speed—the great Upernivik glacier, farther north, covered over four feet every hour. As if in confirmation of his words, the ice beneath my feet groaned and shuddered and slid forward a couple of inches.

"Hurry up!" Smallwood's incomparable nerve held to the last, his voice was urgent but completely under control, his face tight-lipped but calm. "Hurry up or I'll kill her!"

I knew he meant it absolutely.

"Very well," I said calmly. My mind felt preternaturally clear, I knew Margaret's life hung on a fraying thread but I had never felt so cool, so self-possessed in my life. I unwound the rope round my shoulders. "Here it comes."

He reached up both hands to catch the falling rope, I took a short step forward and then, stiff-legged and with my hands pressed close to my sides, fell on top of him like a plummeting stone. He saw me coming, but with the tangle of the rope and the narrowness of the crevasse he had no chance to get clear. My feet caught him on the shoulder and outstretched arm, and we crashed on to the ledge together.

He was, as I have said, phenomenally strong for his size, but he had no chance then. True, he was partially numbed by the shock of my fall, but that was more than cancelled out by my weakness, by the loss of blood from my wounded shoulder. But he still had no chance, I locked my hands round that scrawny throat, ignored his kickings, his eye-gougings, the fusillade of blows rained on my unprotected head, and squeezed and knocked his head against the blue-banded striations of the side of the crevasse until I felt him go limp in my hands. And then it was time to go, the ice-wall was now no more than eighteen inches distant from the polished rock of the nunatak.

Smallwood apart, I found myself alone on that narrowing ledge. Jackstraw had already been lowered by Hillcrest and his men, fastened a rope round Margaret and been pulled up himself after her: I could have sworn that I had fought with Smallwood for no more than ten seconds, but was told later that we had struggled like madmen for three or four minutes. It may well have been so, I have no memory of that time, my coolness, my detachment was something altogether outside me.

My first clear recollection was hearing Jackstraw's voice, quick and urgent, as a rope snaked down over my shoulders.

"Quickly, Dr Mason! It'll close any second now."

"I'm coming. But another rope first, please." I pointed to the radio lying at my feet. "We've come too long a way with this, we've suffered too much for this to leave it now."

Twenty seconds later, just as I scrambled over the edge of the crevasse, the grinding ice-wall lurched another inch or two towards the rock of the nunatak, and, at the same moment, Smallwood's voice came to us again. He had propped himself up on his hands and knees and was staring up numbly, almost disbelievingly, at the narrowing walls above him.

"Throw me a rope." He could see death's hand reaching out to touch him, but the urgency in his voice was still under that iron control, his face an expressionless mask. "For God's sake, throw me a rope."

I thought of the trail of death Smallwood had left behind him, of the plane's dead captain, the three dead crew members, Colonel Harrison, Brewster and Mrs Dansby-Gregg, of how close to the brink of death he had brought Marie LeGarde and Mahler, of how often he had threatened death to the girl now trembling violently in the crook of my arm. I thought of these things, then I looked at Jackstraw, who carried a rope over his arm, and I saw reflected in his face the same implacability, the same bleak mercilessness that informed my own mind. And then Jackstraw moved towards the brink of the crevasse, lifted the tightly coiled rope high above his head, hurled it down on top of the man below and stepped back without a word.

We turned, Jackstraw and I, with Margaret Ross supported between us, and walked slowly up the glacier to meet the officer in charge of the landing party, and as we walked we could feel the glacier shiver beneath our feet as a million tons of ice lurched down towards the head of the Kangalak Fjord.

THE END