Alistair MacLean Arctic Chillers 4-Book Collection: Night Without End, Ice Station Zebra, Bear Island, Athabasca

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 windscreens, we had the devil’s own time of it trying to get the injured wireless operator down to that waiting sledge below. Without the help of the big young stranger I don’t think we would ever have managed it, but manage it we eventually did: he and I lowered and slid the stretcher down to Jackstraw and Joss, who took and strapped it on the sledge. Then we eased the stewardess down: I thought I heard her cry out as she hung supported only by a hand round either wrist, and remembered that Jack-straw had said something about her back being injured. But there was no time for such things now.

I jumped down and a couple of seconds later the big young man joined me. I hadn’t intended that he should come, but there was no harm in it: he had to go sometime, and there was no question of his having to ride on the sledge.

The wind had eased a little, perhaps, but the cold was crueller than ever. Even the dogs cowered miserably in the lee of the plane: now and again one of them stretched out a neck in protest and gave its long, mournful wolf call, a sound eerie beyond description. But their misery was all to the good: as Jackstraw said, they were mad to run.

And, with the wind and ice-drift behind them, run they did. At first I led the way with the torch, but Balto, the big lead dog, brushed me aside and raced on into the darkness: I had sense enough to let him have his head. He followed the twisting route of the plane’s snow-furrow, the bamboos, homing spool and antenna line as swiftly and unerringly as if it had been broad daylight, and the polished steel runners of the sledge fairly hissed across the snow. The frozen ground was smooth and flat as river ice; no ambulance could have carried the wireless operator as comfortably as our sledge did that night.

It took us no more than five minutes to reach the cabin, and in three more minutes we were on our way again. They were a busy three minutes. Jackstraw lit the oil stove, oil lamp and Colman pressure lamp, while Joss and I put the injured man on a collapsible cot before the stove, worked him into my sleeping-bag, slid in half a dozen heat pads – waterproof pads containing a chemical which gave off heat when water was added – placed a rolled up blanket under his neck to keep the back of his head off the cot, and zipped the sleeping-bag shut. I had surgical instruments enough to do what had to be done, but it had to wait: not so much because we had others still to rescue, urgent enough though that was, but the man lying at our feet, so still, so ashen-faced, was suffering so severely from shock and exposure that to touch him would have been to kill him: I was astonished that he had managed to survive even this long.

I told the stewardess to make some coffee, gave her the necessary instructions, and then we left her and the big young man together: the girl heating a pan over a pile of meta tablets, the young man staring incredulously into a mirror as he kneaded a frost-bitten cheek and chin with one hand, and with another held a cold compress to a frozen ear. We took with us the warm clothes we had lent them, some rolls of bandages, and left.

Ten minutes later we were back inside the plane. Despite its insulation, the temperature inside the main cabin had already dropped at least thirty degrees and almost everyone was shivering with the cold, one or two beating their arms to keep themselves warm. Even the Dixie colonel was looking very subdued. The elderly lady, fur coat tightly wrapped around her, looked at her watch and smiled.

‘Twenty minutes, exactly. You are very prompt, young man.’

‘We try to be of service.’ I dumped the pile of clothes I was carrying on a seat, nodded at them and the contents of a gunny sack Joss and Jackstraw were emptying. ‘Share these out between you and be as quick as you can. I want you to get out at once – my two friends here will take you back. Perhaps one of you will be kind enough to remain behind.’ I looked to where the young girl still sat alone in her back seat, still holding her left forearm in her hand. ‘I’ll need some help to fix this young lady up.’

‘Fix her up?’ It was the expensive young woman in the expensive furs speaking for the first time. Her voice was expensive as the rest of her and made me want to reach for a hairbrush. ‘Why? What on earth is the matter with her?’

‘Her collar-bone is broken,’ I said shortly.

‘Collar-bone broken?’ The elderly lady was on her feet, her face a nice mixture of concern and indignation. ‘And she’s been sitting there alone all this time – why didn’t you tell us, you silly man?’

‘I forgot,’ I replied mildly. ‘Besides, what good would it have done?’ I looked down at the girl in the mink coat. Goodness only knew that I didn’t particularly want her, but the injured girl had struck me as being almost painfully shy, and I was sure she’d prefer to have one of her own sex around. ‘Would you like to give me a hand?’

She stared at me, a cold surprised stare that would have been normal enough had I made some outrageous or improper request, but before she could answer the elderly lady broke in again.

‘I’ll stay behind. I’d love to help.’

‘Well—’ I began doubtfully, but she interrupted immediately.