Time of the Great Freeze (19 page)

Then he snapped out of his brooding reverie. He grinned at Jim, and sprinted off toward his own line.

Jim crouched again, began once again to circle behind the sleds. As he came around parallel to them, he caught sight of Carl and Dave, dug in solidly, power torches at the ready. Carl saw him and whirled, lifting his torch.

Jim threw up his hands. "Don't! It's me! Jim!"

Carl looked baffled for a moment. He gestured to Jim, who threw himself to the ground and crawled twenty yards over open ice to the safety of the sleds. Bullets whined past him, but did no harm.

Carl said, "You picked a sweet time to wander off!"

"How was I to know? What happened?"

"Your father and Ted were parleying in the tent. The talk went on and on. Suddenly Ted and Dr. Barnes came rushing out, but Londoner soldiers surrounded them. We realized they were being captured, so we scuttled back behind the sleds. Next thing we knew, the Londoners were opening fire on us. And here we are. Three of us against a whole mob."

"We don't stand a chance," Jim said.

"At least we'll go down fighting," Dave said, aiming his torch and firing.

"Don't be a fool," Jim snapped. "We aren't any good to anybody dead, are we?"

"What do you suggest?" Carl asked.

"Throw down your torches. Surrender."

Dave gasped. "Are you out of your mind? They'll kill us!"

"I don't think so," Jim said. "They've got the wrong ideas about us. They think we're the vanguard of an invading army. I talked to one of their men. He's going to get Moncrieff to call off the shooting. He'll tell them how few we really are."

"Can you trust any of them?" Dave asked. "After the trick they pulled just now?"

"We've
got
to trust them," Jim said passionately. "It's either that or be killed out here."

"Or kill them," Carl said.

"What good is that?" Jim asked.

"At least we'll still be alive."

It took some hard convincing, but Jim got Carl and Dave to see that there was nothing to gain and everything to lose by continuing to fight. They were outnumbered, and they could only trust to Colin's luck in persuading Moncrieff to call off the attack.

"Truce!" Jim yelled. "I call for truce!"

"Throw down your weapons!" came the Londoner reply.

"Go on," Jim whispered.

Carl and Dave hesitated. Then, with obvious reluctance, they tossed their power torches out in front of the sleds. Jim threw the gun he had taken from Colin down next to them. All three New Yorkers stepped forward, moving slowly into the open. Jim had never felt more exposed in his life. Suppose Colin hadn't persuaded Moncrieff? Suppose the Londoners were still intent on wiping them out?

The haze cleared. The smoke of battle rose and was gone. It was terribly quiet now. Londoners rose from their hiding places in the snow, shading their eyes to stare at the advancing New Yorkers. The battle was over.

It had all been so unnecessary, Jim thought. They had come in peace. They had meant no harm. They had only wanted to join hands across the frozen sea. And to be met this way, with guns, with deceit…

Moncrieff was coming forward. Two soldiers were leading Dr. Barnes and Ted. The Londoners were still armed.

"We called for truce," Jim said quietly. "We threw down our weapons. You should do the same."

Moncrieff shrugged. His eyes were sad, he looked troubled, but the Londoner leader still seemed steely and arrogant. He gave a signal, and the five New Yorkers were herded together. This was no truce, Jim realized. They were prisoners.

Moncrieff said, "I had orders to kill all of you. We think you are spies. I could still kill you."

"Will you feel safer if you do?" Jim asked. "There are only five of us. We don't have weapons. We aren't an army. We're exiles from our own city."

"Perhaps so," Moncrieff said. "But am I to trust you? How can I know? It's safer to remove you."

Jim kicked at the snow angrily. "Where does trust begin? Are we all enemies, every man in the world? Isn't there any way to break out of the trap of suspicion?"

Moncrieff's icy expression seemed to soften. "Perhaps," he said in a low voice. "But there are so many dangers. We have to move slowly, cautiously. We-"

He stopped and looked upward in surprise.

There was a sudden strange sound in the sky.

It was like no sound Jim had ever heard before. It was a dull rumbling that grew louder and more terrifying with each second, until it seemed that the heavens would split asunder. It swelled into a fierce roaring whine, a high-pitched screech that made eardrums protest and sweat run cold. No animal could make such a sound, Jim thought. No animal ever spawned could emit such an ear-jarring racket!

But what was it?

Londoners and New Yorkers looked toward the sky. What hovered there was even more frightening than that terrible sound.

It was golden, and it was huge. A great winged thing soared overhead, moving in slow, serene loops over the battlefield, glistening so brightly that the eye was forced to look away after a moment. Bright as the sun the thing gleamed, and its swept-back wings remained rigid as it soared. Round and round and round again, high overhead, and then descending, coming within a few hundred feet of the ice, swooping past like some monstrous bird of prey.

But this was no bird, Jim knew. This was no cousin of the shrieking gulls he had seen at sea. What soared overhead now was the work of man.

An airplane! It had to be!

It was like something from a myth, come to life. Once, Jim knew, the sky had been full of planes, planes that could fly round the whole world in a quarter of a day. So the books said. But one who finds the open sky itself a hard-to-imagine concept does not easily accept the idea of vehicles that can fly in the sky, superbly confident that the thin air will support them. This trip had been full of wonders for Jim, but none of the others, not the sight of the open sea itself, had moved him the way the soaring plane did.

A hush had fallen over the ice field. Jim saw that Colin was on his knees, silently mouthing prayers with fierce energy. Everyone gaped in awe at the thing in the sky.

The plane circled once more.

Then it was gone. A whine, a rumble in the distance-and silence.

Colin still stared at the sky. "What was it?" he whispered. "What could it have been?"

"How would I know?" a Londoner next to him said.

Jim glanced at his father, at Ted, at the others. "It was an airplane, wasn't it?"

Dr. Barnes nodded. "But where could it have come from?"

"Not from any of the underground cities," Ted said. "Underground cities don't have planes. So it must have come from the warm countries. A scout, probably. Looking for signs of life up here."

"A spy?" Jim asked.

"Yes," Colin said. "A spy!" He came up to Moncrieff, reached out to catch his leaders arm. "Don't you see, sir? It's a spy from the cities of the South. They're surveying us. They must be getting ready to invade us. We've got to tell London! It isn't these New Yorkers we should have worried about at all. It's the ones from the South, the ones with the planes!"

Moncrieff was silent a moment. His jaw muscles worked, knotting in his cheeks. Then he said, "You're right, Colin. You must be. This fighting is foolishness. That's the real danger, up there!" He looked at the five New Yorkers. "We've got to warn London. Will you come with us? We'll go to London together."

The battle was over. Those who had been bitter enemies only minutes before now joined, and prepared to leave together. The Londoners seemed mute with a common shame. They felt the guilt of their treachery now-not theirs, really, but their leaders'. Yet they had fought, had nearly taken the lives of five innocent men, for no reason other than blind fear of strangers.

They boarded the sleds and glided eastward in silence, past the moose Jim had slain, and onward without stopping. The Londoner sleds led the way; Colin had joined the New Yorker party to serve as guide in case they became separated from the others. He rode with Jim and Ted in one of the New York sleds; Dr. Barnes, Carl, and Dave occupied the other one.

An hour of travel had passed, and the shadows of night were beginning to close in, when a second plane flew over them. This one did not stay to circle. It became audible in the distance, the by-now familiar rumble turning into a whine as the plane came nearer, and then the plane was there, a slim gleaming shape in the sky, and it seemed to hesitate for a moment, studying them, and then it was gone.

Soon after, the party halted for the night. Jim followed Colin into the group of Londoners and found them crouched around their radio. "Moncrieff's telling London about the planes," one of the Londoners explained.

Jim listened. Through the sputter of static came voices. Moncrieff cut in, telling the story in short, clipped sentences. Jim listened, sadly amused by it all. The Londoners at the far end kept interrupting with tense, worried questions. They seemed to see invaders on every side! If not the New Yorkers, then the senders of these mysterious planes. Why were they so suspicious, Jim wondered? Why not hope to make contact with the flying people, why not greet them in warmth?

No. There was something about living under the ground that changed a man's soul, Jim thought. You hid, cowering, from the air, from the sun and the sky and the clouds and the rain and the snow, and fright crept into your bones, so that you saw enemies on all fronts. Fear obsessed you. These Londoners were sick with fear. New York had been no better. Hide! Bar the doors, block up the tunnels! Beware the unknown!

Well, at least the Londoners had some reason, he admitted. They
had
been invaded by barbarians, by the fur-clad folk of the ice-world, who somehow must have found the entrance to the London tunnel. Perhaps the London entrance was closer to the surface than New York's. But that had been thirty years ago. It was not astonishing that the hungry ones of the glacier would want to enter the warm fastness below the ice. But why assume that men of another city-just as comfortable as London, certainly-were invaders? Above all, Jim wondered, why think that these city folk of the South, powerful and wealthy, would want to invade London? No doubt the airplane people meant well, since London had nothing to offer them. But here were Colin's people, safe in their warm city, crazed with fear that the planes were the vanguard of an invasion.

"Stay away!" crackled the voice out of the radio. "Don't come back to London!"

Colin and Jim exchanged glances. "They can't mean that," Colin said.

Moncrieff went on speaking, his voice remaining level and measured. He pointed out the absurdity of sending a picked group of soldiers to the outer world and then refusing them admittance when they came back with word of danger. But the Londoner at the other end sounded almost hysterical.

"Stay away!" he chattered. "Bring us no spies! If you come, you'll lead the airplanes to us! We're sealing the tunnel. We want no invaders! Stay away! That's an order.
Stay away
!"

Moncrieff let out his breath in a long irritated sigh. "May I speak to the Lord Mayor?" he asked. "This is a wholly unreasonable attitude, and I must appeal to higher authority."

Much as he had loathed Moncrieff before, Jim had to admire the man now. His earlier treachery had been only a soldier's performance of duty. His orders had been to wipe out the invaders. And now, in the calm, stern way that he was reasoning with the panicky people in the underground city, he was showing great strength and determination.

But he seemed to be getting nowhere.

"They don't want us," Colin whispered in disbelief. "They're telling us to keep away! We can die out here in the snow, and they won't care!"

Jim heard the voice from the speaker: "You can't come here. Don't even try to call us. Radio contact might lead them to us. I order you to keep away and make no attempt at contact!"

"I insist on speaking with the Lord Mayor!" Moncrieff snapped. "This is a maximum security matter. Do you dare to take the responsibility of forbidding me to speak with him?"

Jim shook his head. "They're insane! Condemning their own men to death-out of fear!"

"It isn't right," Colin muttered. "They sent us out here to protect them, didn't they? And now they won't let us back. We didn't deserve that of them."

"Wait," a Londoner near the speaker said. "He's getting through! It's the Lord Mayor himself!"

A new voice could be heard now, clear and strong above the static. Once again, Moncrieff went through the story-how the "invasion party" from New York had proved harmless, how mysterious scout-planes from who knew where had come by to investigate. There was no comment from the Lord Mayor. Jim wondered if the radio had gone dead. But then came a reply, at last.

Moncrieff looked up. A grin crossed his flinty face. "The Lord Mayor says we can come back. There's an end to this nonsense. They'll have the tunnel open for us. And for you New Yorkers, too."

Onward to London!

It was heartening to see that not all Londoners were hopelessly trapped in fear. That had been an awkward impasse, for a while. Where would they have gone, if London had refused to let them in? Not back to New York, surely. They would have been men without a city, condemned endlessly to roam the ice-world.

In the morning, they set out. Cold weather closed in on them. London was still several days' journey away, and the sudden change in weather slowed them. The temperature began to fall, from the thirty-degree level where it had remained for some days, down into the twenties, then still lower. The nights were cold and crystal-clear, with the temperature frequently dipping well below zero. The numbing cold was like a great hand, holding them back from London's warmth. Through the long days they huddled in the sleds, bowed down to hide from the knife-edge sharpness of the wind, and at night they crowded together in the tattered tents to keep from freezing. When a lone moose wandered by, they slew it for its meat-the provisions were running low, and with the weather turning bad they might not reach London very soon.