came in with a fresh plate of bacon and eggs. ‘Finish your breakfast.’
As they sat down he said, ‘I suppose you can find me a pair of skis.’
Ballard nodded, his mind busy with the implications of what McGill had said – or had not said. McGill dug into his second plateful of breakfast. ‘Then we go skiing,’ he said lightly.
Two hours later they were nearly three thousand feet above the mine and half way up the slope. They had not talked much and when Ballard had tried McGill advised him to save his breath for climbing. But now they stopped and McGill unslung the backpack, dropping one of the straps over a ski-stick rammed firmly into the snow.
He took off his skis and stuck them vertically into the snow up-slope of where he was standing. ‘Another safety measure,’ he said conversationally. ‘If there’s a slide then the skis will tell someone that we’ve been swept away. And that’s why you don’t take off your Oertel cord.’
Ballard leaned on his sticks. ‘The last time you talked about avalanches I was in one.’
McGill grinned. ‘Don’t fool yourself. You were in a little trickle – a mere hundred feet.’ He pointed down the mountainside. ‘If this lot goes it’ll be quite different.’
Ballard felt uneasy. ‘You’re not really expecting an avalanche?’
McGill shook his head. ‘Not right now.’ He bent down to the backpack. ‘I’m going to do a little gentle thumping and you can help me to do it. Take off your skis.’
He began to take aluminium tubing from the pack and to assemble it into some kind of a gadget. ‘This is a penetrometer – an updating of the Haefeli design. It’s a sort of pocket pile-driver – it measures the resistance of the snow. It also gives us a core, and temperature readings at ten-centimetre intervals. All the data for a snow profile.’
Ballard helped him set it up although he suspected that McGill could have done the job just as handily without him. There was a sliding weight which dropped down a narrow rod a known distance before hitting the top of the aluminium tube and thus driving it into the snow. Each time the weight dropped McGill noted the distance of penetration and recorded it in a notebook.
They thumped with the weight, adding lengths of tubing as necessary, and hit bottom at 158 centimetres – about five feet.
‘There’s a bit of a hard layer somewhere in the middle,’ said McGill, taking an electric plug from the pack. He made a connection in the top of the tubing and plugged the other end into a box with a dial on it. ‘Make a note of these temperatures; there’ll be fifteen readings.’
As Ballard took the last reading he said, ‘How do we get it out?’
‘We have a tripod and a miniature block and tackle.’ McGill grinned. ‘I think they pinched this bit from an oil rig.’
He erected the tripod and started to haul out the tube. As the first section came free he disconnected it carefully and then took a knife and sliced through the ice in the tube. The sections were two feet long and the three of them were soon out. McGill put the tubes back into the pack, complete with the snow cores they contained. ‘We’ll have a look at those back at the house.’
Ballard squatted on his heels and looked across the valley. ‘What now?’
‘Now we do another, and another, and another, and another in a line diagonally down the slope. I’d like to do more but that’s all the core tubing I have.’
They had just finished the fourth trial boring when McGill looked up the slope. ‘We have company.’
Ballard turned his head to see three skiers traversing down towards them. The leader was moving fast and came around in a flashy stem christiania which sent the snow spraying before he stopped. When he lifted blue-tinted goggles Ballard recognized Charlie Peterson.
Peterson looked at Ballard with some astonishment. ‘Oh, it’s you! Eric told me you were back but I haven’t seen you around.’
‘Hello, Charlie.’
The two other skiers came up and stopped more sedately – they were the two Americans, Miller and Newman. Charlie said, ‘How did you get here?’
Ballard and McGill looked at each other, and Ballard wordlessly pointed to the skis. Charlie snorted. ‘You used to be afraid of falling off anything steeper than a billiard table.’ He looked curiously at the dismantled penetrometer. ‘What are you doing?’
McGill answered. ‘Looking at snow.’
Charlie pointed a stick. ‘What’s that thing?’
‘A gadget for testing snow strength.’
Charlie grinned at Ballard. ‘Since when did you become interested in snow? Your Ma wouldn’t let you out in it for fear you’d catch cold.’
Ballard said evenly, ‘I’ve become interested in a lot of things since then, Charlie.’
He laughed loudly. ‘Yes? I’ll bet you’re a hot one with the girls.’
Newman said abruptly, ‘Let’s go.’
‘No, wait a minute,’ said Charlie. ‘I’m interested. What are you doing with that watchamacallit?’
McGill straightened. ‘I’m testing the stresses on this snow slope.’
‘This slope’s all right.’
‘When did you have this much snow before?’
‘There’s always snow in the winter.’
‘Not this much.’
Charlie looked at Miller and Newman and grinned at them. ‘All the better – it makes for good skiing.’ He rubbed the side of his jaw. ‘Why come here to look at snow?’
McGill bent down to buckle a strap. ‘The usual reason.’
The grin left Charlie’s face. ‘What reason?’ he asked blankly.
‘Because it’s here,’ said McGill patiently.
‘Funny!’ said Charlie. ‘Very funny! How long are you going to be here?’
‘For as long as it takes.’
‘That’s no kind of answer.’
Ballard stepped forward. ‘That’s all the answer you’re going to get, Charlie.’
Charlie grinned genially. ‘Staying away for so long has made you bloody prickly. I don’t remember you giving back-chat before.’
Ballard smiled. ‘Maybe I’ve changed, Charlie.’
‘I don’t think so,’ he said deliberately. ‘People like you never change.’
‘You’re welcome to find out any time you like.’
Newman said, ‘Cut it out, Charlie. I don’t know what you have against this guy and
