Target 5 (16 page)

Because they had left Curtis Field so quickly they stopped after five hours for food and drink, thankful that the dogs ate
only every forty-eight hours. With the fog creeping around them they sat on the sleds to eat their pemmican, a nourishing form of dried meat which tastes rather like old leather. The nerve-racking beat of a nearby helicopter stayed with them all through the meal and it put their tempers on edge.

'Why doesn't the damn thing break down, run out of fuel, get lost?' Langer demanded.

'Because it tanked up at North Pole 17,' Beaumont
snapped.

"That thought had occurred to me.'

'Then why ask the question?'

The horror occurred while they were eating and they
didn't know it had happened because of the row the Soviet
machine was making. At the end of the meal Beaumont took
the compass off Grayson and tried to get the needle to
steady. The helicopter stopped circling suddenly, flew away towards the east. He was standing up, holding the compass,
when he looked up and stared into the distance. It was very
faint even in the sudden quiet after the helicopter's departure, and Beaumont was the only one who heard it, a
sound which shouldn't have been there. The lapping of
water, a gentle swishing sound.

'I'll be back in a minute,' he said casually. 'Stay exactly
where you are and don't move around.'

He was back again in five minutes and the other two men
obviously had no inkling that anything was wrong. Langer
had interpreted his instruction as a warning not to go
wandering around in the fog; he was actually standing
behind his sled ready to move off. Beaumont handed the
compass back to Grayson. 'You won't need that for a while,'
he said quietly. 'There's nowhere to go. We're now drifting
on a small floe away from the icefield ...'

'That's impossible,' Langer burst out. 'We'd have heard the ice cracking, making a hell of a row.'

'You've forgotten the din that helicopter was kicking up -
and this time when it cracked it didn't make too much row,
not enough for us to hear it above the hammering of that
Russian's motor.' Beaumont gestured into the fog. 'Walk in
any direction, and you'll fall off before you've gone thirty
yards. We're marooned on" a slab of ice drifting down a huge
lead. We'd better get used to the idea - we're no longer on
the polar pack - we're at sea.'

The worst had happened. The icefield had opened up one of
its vast leads, an expanding lane of sea which could be many
miles wide. Sometimes it is the wind, sometimes the current
always flowing under the ice which cracks the ice open, snapping it apart - in this case they may have been close to
the brink of the lead when they had stopped to eat and a
fragment, the floe they were marooned on, had broken free.
Sooner or later the lead comes together again - unless the
lane was close to open sea, in which case they would drift on
the ocean until they froze to death.

It was the coming together of the ice which worried
Beaumont, which made him issue the warning to stay con
stantly alert. It is not a gentle process, this coming together.
The ice closes like a vice, like the impact of two steel-plated
vessels steaming towards each other on collision course. When two ice edges meet the sound is like the thunder of a thousand artillery salvoes, a terrifying crash which can be
heard many miles away, and like the steel plates of a ship
the ice buckles in collision. It buckles and it heaves up huge
pressure ridges to displace the smashed ice, moving ridges which can climb as high as thirty feet above the ice while over their crests shiver massive chunks of ice which topple down, flattening everything in their path. And when the ice edges met the floating raft would be caught between them,
would be cracked open like a nut. This was why they had to
stay alert.

In an attempt to see the danger in time Beaumont posted
both Grayson and Langer at opposite ends of the little island. A rope was attached to one of the sleds and extended to both
lookout points - so that the moment they saw the icefield coming back at them they could find their way through the
fog quickly. While the two men took up position, posted like
lookouts aboard a ship, Beaumont fed the dogs. He cut up
walrus meat at a distance from the animals and then threw the meat to them; they devoured it with their usual lack of
table manners. They weren't due for a meal but he wanted to keep them quiet.

The floe continued its eerie drift into nothingness. There
was no sensation of movement - the floe was large, it was a
windless night - but the current was carrying it steadily
further south, away from Target-5. Perched at the edge of
the ice, squatting on his haunches, Langer strained to see
through the fog. It was a bloody hopeless task he was think
ing : he could barely see six feet before the grey pall blocked
his view. But it wasn't quite as hopeless as it seemed. The
advance of the ice edge, which would come through the fog
like a moving platform, a platform of hard, solid ice, might
well be preceded by a disturbance, a small wave being
pushed in front of it. The first warning should be when water
lapped over the ice beyond his boots.

In front of the fog the black water was like oil, oil covered
here and there with a dirty sheen as thin patches of ice
formed on its surface. The temperature was almost fifty
below and the water was trying to freeze all the time, to
form a fresh layer of ice. Only the movement of the current
prevented it succeeding. He was out of sight of the sleds and the dogs; when he glanced over his shoulder all he could see
was dirty vapour. A terrible sense of isolation descended on
him - he couldn't get rid of the feeling that he was on his
own, that he was floating on a fragment which had split off
from the main floe, a fragment hardly larger than a tabletop.

Fear tingled his nerve ends. He listened with all his ears.
If the ice he was crouched on split off from the floe he should
hear a warning crack. It might be very slight - they had no
way of knowing
the thickness of the raft they were floating
on - but there should be a sharp crack when the ice
splintered. With his hood pulled well down, crouching at
the brink of the ice, Langer looked like a furry animal in the
fog, and despite the layers of clothing, the two mittens under
his heavy gloves, his body felt like the block of ice he floated
on. His hands were numb, his feet ached with the pain, his
face was cruelly frozen - but fear kept him alert. Then he heard a cracking sound.

Trembling, he forced himself upright, his leg muscles taut
with tension. He was alone. His piece of ice had broken off
from the floe. If he took two steps in any direction he would go down into the freezing water which would kill him inside
three minutes. In a panic he swung round. The fog pall
came up to his face. He was absolutely alone, he had lost his
two companions, he would never see anyone again. Blind, horrible panic welled up. He shivered, clenched his teeth.
Get a grip on yourself for Christ's sake! He stood quite still,
shivering, forcing the panic down. Then he felt the rope he had forgotten, the rope end he was still holding hi his right
glove. He was still attached to the floe: he had imagined the
horror. Wearily he sank down on his haunches and his ice-coated boots creaked again, made the same cracking sound
he had heard before; He felt weak with relief and very
foolish. The strain was already telling and they had been
adrift for less than an hour. Twenty-four hours later the lead
closed.

* * *

Beaumont's watch registered 10.30
pm.
The floe was wobbling, turning slowly, caught up in a cross-current. And to
the east the fog was thinning. 'It's clearing over there,'
Langer said, standing up and pointing. 'Dear God, it's clear
ing. We may see something . ..'

'I can see something now,' Beaumont said grimly. 'It
looks like land.
3

He used the word land automatically, although the blurred line he was staring at could only be more ice - if he was seeing anything at all. When you stared into the fog for a long time your eyes played you tricks, showed you trees and mountains and other impossible things where you knew there was only fog. He closed his eyes, opened them again. The fog was thinning out rapidly as moonlight percolated through and globules of moisture caught its reflection. Yes, he could still see the blurred line, but was the damned thing stationary? Were they - he hoped to God they were - being carried by a change in the current gently towards static ice?

'I think it's coming this way,' Horst said tersely.

It was less than a quarter of a mile away across the water,
a white platform like the edge of a continent. In front of it
was a shadowed ripple as the sea was thrust back by the im
mense icefield moving westward, westward towards the
fragment of ice floating in its path. 'Horst, stay here and keep an eye on it. I'll warn Sam.'

Beaumont moved across the floe, looping up the rope
which was no longer needed - the fog had dispersed enough
for him to see Grayson who was staring in the opposite
direction. And it was continuing to thin out, so he could see
across several hundred yards of calm water beyond the western brink of the ice raft. Beyond that the fog was as
thick as ever. 'The icefield's coming up behind you, Sam,
coming up fast from the east.'

'That means trouble.'

'It means trouble. The dogs are ready and it looks as
though we'll have to jump for it. You'd better stay here -
just in case something else happens. When I call you, come like a bat out of hell.
5

Just in case ... There was no need to elaborate. Beau
mont's great fear now was that the whole lead
was closing up - with jaws of ice closing on them from both east and
west. It was the fresh movement of the floe he didn't like - it
was revolving slowly, which indicated more than one current was on the move. He spent a moment with the dogs and then
went back to where Langer was staring fixedly to the east.

'Look at the wave,
3
the German said.

The ripple of black water had become a wave, only a
small wave but it was a warning of the tremendous force pushing up behind it as the icefield cruised towards them with the power of millions of tons of polar pack behind it. The fog had thinned even more, although further back on
the icefield it was as dense as ever, and the platform was like
a whole coast advancing, a low coast of tumbled ice and
frozen pressure ridges.

'Keith...!'

Beaumont swung round at Grayson's shout, and for
seconds his mind froze with his body. A wave was almost on top of the floe, a wave from the other direction. Behind it the second jaw of the ice was sliding towards them, shooting the
wave ahead of its slide. He shouted to Grayson and the American was running towards him as Beaumont swung round again to check the position to the east. It was going to be disaster - he saw this instantly. The western jaw was
going to catch them just before the eastern jaw reached
them - and they had to go east. 'Get to the dogs, Horst!' He heard a noise behind him and looked back. The wave was
breaking against the floe, sending black water skidding over
the floe. The water caught up with Grayson and washed
over his boots. The dogs, water swirling round their legs,
were going mad as they reached the animals and grabbed
the harness.