to the north of wherever he had been born. ‘We’ve landed. Why? What are we doing here? What’s the noise outside? And -and who in the name of heaven are you?’
A big business tycoon, I thought wryly, with money enough and power enough to indulge an obviously over-generous capacity for righteous indignation: if I was going to meet any trouble, it wasn’t hard to guess the direction it was going to come from. But, right then, there was some excuse for his attitude: I wondered how I would have felt if I had gone to sleep in a trans-Atlantic airliner and woken up to find myself landed in the freezing middle of nowhere with three fur-clad people, complete with snow-goggles and snow-masks, waddling about the aisle of the plane.
‘You’ve crash-landed,’ I said briefly. ‘I don’t know why – how the hell should I? The noise outside is an ice-blizzard rattling against the fuselage. As for us, we are scientists managing an International Geophysical Year station half a mile from here. We saw and heard you just before you crashed.’
I made to push past him, but he barred my way.
‘Just a minute, if you don’t mind.’ The voice was more authoritative than ever and there was a surprising amount of muscle in that arm across my chest. ‘I think we have a right to know—’
‘Later.’ I knocked his arm away and Jackstraw completed the job by pushing him down into his seat. ‘Don’t make a damned nuisance of yourself. There’s a critically injured man who has to have attention, and at once. We’ll take him to safety and then come back for you. Keep the door shut.’ I was addressing all of them now, but the white-haired man’s wrathful spluttering attracted my attention again. ‘And if you don’t shut up and cooperate, you can stay here. If it weren’t for us you’d be dead, stiff as a board, in a couple of hours. Maybe you will be yet.’
I moved up the aisle, followed by Jackstraw. The young man who had been lying on the floor pulled himself on to a seat, and he grinned at me as I passed.
‘How to win friends and influence people.’ He had a slow cultured drawl. ‘I fear you have offended our worthy friend.’
‘I fear I have.’ I smiled, passed by, then turned. These wide shoulders and large capable hands could be more than useful to us. ‘How are you feeling?’
‘Recoverin’ rapidly.’
‘You are indeed. You didn’t look so good a minute ago.’
‘Just takin’ a long count,’ he said easily. ‘Can I help?’
‘That’s why I asked,’ I nodded.
‘Glad to oblige.’ He heaved himself to his feet, towering inches above me. The little man in the loud tie and the Glenurquhart jacket gave an anguished sound, like the yelp of an injured puppy.
‘Careful, Johnny, careful!’ The voice, the rich, nasal and rather grating twang, was pure Bowery. ‘We got our responsibilities, boy, big commitments. We might strain a ligament—’
‘Relax, Solly’ The big man patted him soothingly on his bald head. ‘Just takin’ a little walk to clear my head.’
‘Not till you put this parka and pants on first.’ I’d no time to bother about the eccentricities of little men in loud jackets and louder ties. ‘You’ll need them.’
‘Cold doesn’t bother me, friend.’
‘This cold will. Outside that door it’s 110 degrees below the temperature of this cabin.’
I heard a murmur of astonishment from some of the passengers, and the large young man, suddenly thoughtful, took the clothes from Jackstraw. I didn’t wait until he had put them on, but went out with Joss.
The stewardess was bent low over the injured wireless operator. I pulled her gently to her feet. She offered no resistance, just looked wordlessly at me, the deep brown eyes huge in a face dead-white and strained with shock. She was shivering violently. Her hands were like ice.
‘You want to die of cold, Miss?’ This was no time for soft and sympathetic words, and I knew these girls were trained how to behave in emergencies. ‘Haven’t you got a hat, coat, boots, anything like that?’
‘Yes.’ Her voice was dull, almost devoid of life. She was standing alone by the door now, and I could hear the violent rat-a-tat of her elbow as it shook uncontrollably and knocked against the door. ‘I’ll go and get them.’
Joss scrambled out through the windscreen to get the collapsible stretcher. While we were waiting I went to the exit door behind the flight deck and tried to open it, swinging at it with the back of my fire axe. But it was locked solid.
We had the stretcher up and were lashing the wireless operator inside as carefully as we could in these cramped conditions, when the stewardess reappeared. She was wearing her uniform heavy coat now, and high boots. I tossed her a pair of caribou trousers.
‘Better, but not enough. Put these on.’ She hesitated, and I added roughly, ‘We won’t look.’
‘I – I must go and see the passengers.’
‘They’re all right. Bit late in thinking about it, aren’t you?’
‘I know. I’m sorry. I couldn’t leave him.’ She looked down at the young man at her feet. ‘Do you – I mean—’ She broke off, then it came out with a rush. ‘Is he going to die?’
‘Probably,’ I said, and she flinched away as if I had struck her across the face. I hadn’t meant to be brutal, just clinical.
‘We’ll do what we can for him. It’s not much, I’m afraid.’
Finally we had him securely lashed to the stretcher, his head cushioned against the shock as best we could. When I got to my feet, the stewardess was just pulling her coat down over the caribou pants.
‘We’re taking him back to our cabin,’ I said. ‘We have a sledge below. There’s room for another. You could protect his head. Want to come?’
‘The passengers—’ she began uncertainly.
‘They’ll be all right.’
I went back inside the main cabin, closing the door behind me, and handed my torch to the man with the cut brow. The two feeble night or emergency lights that burned inside were poor enough for illumination, worse still for morale.
‘We’re taking the wireless operator and stewardess with us,’ I explained. ‘Back in twenty minutes. And if you want to live, just keep this door tight shut.’
‘What an extraordinarily brusque young man,’ the elderly lady murmured. Her voice was low-pitched, resonant, with an extraordinary carrying power.
Only from necessity, madam,’ I said dryly. ‘Would you really prefer long-winded and flowery speeches the while you were freezing to death?’
‘Well, do you know, I really don’t think I would,’ she answered mock-seriously, and I could hear her chuckling – there was no other word for it – as I closed the door behind me.
Working in the cramped confines of that wrecked control cabin, in almost pitch darkness and with that ice-laden bitter gale whistling through the shattered
