guessing and hoping. At their terribly slow pace, it would be hours before he could be certain of how they would try to execute their retreat. He preferred to wait in his room where no one could observe his vicarious fear. They might attempt the long traverse over the classic route. Or they might retrace their line of ascent, forgetting that Karl's chute was iced over now. There was a third possibility, one Ben prayed Jonathan would have vision enough to elect. They might try for the cliffs above the Eigerwand Station Window. It was remotely possible that a man might rope down to the safety of that lateral gallery. No one had ever attempted it, but it seemed the best of a bad lot of alternatives.
'Morning! Are you going to be using your telescope?'
Ben turned to see the confident, boyish smile of the actor beaming at him. The stiffly made-up actress wife stood beside her husband, her sagging throat bound up in a bright silk neckerchief, shivering in the stylish ski clothes that had been specifically designed to make her appear taller and less dumpy.
The actor modulated richly, 'The lady would hate to go home without having seen anything, but we really can't have her standing around in line with those other people. I know you understand that.'
'You want to use
'Tell him we'll pay for it, love,' the wife inserted, then she blessed the young climbers with her handsome eyes.
The actor smiled and used his most chocolate voice. 'Of course we'll pay for it.' He reached out for the instrument, smiling all the while his effective, disarming grin.
Contrary to subsequent news reports, Ben never really hit him.
The actor reacted to the flash of Ben's hand and winced away with surprising celerity. The movement cost him his balance, and he fell on his back on the frozen ground. Instantly, the wife screamed and threw herself over her fallen mate to protect him from further brutality. Ben snatched her up by the hair and bent over them, speaking in rapid, hushed tones. 'I'm going up to my room, and I'm leaving this telescope right where it is. If either of you fucking ghouls touches it, your doctor's going to have one hell of a time getting it out.'
He walked away to the sound of laughter from the young climbers and a spate of scatological vitriol from the actress that revealed her familiarity with most of the sexual variants.
Ben bore across the terrace with his energetic, hopping stride, not swerving an inch from his course through the milling crowd, and taking a retributive pleasure in each jolting impact that left one of the Eiger Birds dazed and startled in his wake. In the deserted bar he ordered three bottles of beer and a sandwich. While he waited, Anna approached, pressing through the terrace throng to join him. He did not want to talk to her, but the barman was slow.
'Is Jean-Paul all right?' She asked as she neared him.
'No!' He took up the clinking bottles between the fingers of one hand and the sandwich in the other, and he left the bar for his room.
He ate and drank sitting morosely on the edge of his bed. Then he lay down, his fingers locked behind his head, staring at the ceiling. Then he got up and walked around the room, pausing at the window at each circuit. Then he lay down again. And got up again. Two hours dragged on in this way before he gave up the attempt to rest.
At the telescope in the meadow again, Ben was nearly certain that the climbers were making for the cliffs above the station window. They were near the edge of a rock pitch that separates the ice field from the small shelf of snow above the window. The distance between them and safety could be covered by a thumb at arm's length, but Ben knew there were hours of labor and risk in that stretch. And the sun was slipping down. He had made arrangements for a special tram to carry the rescue team up the cogwheel railroad that bore through the heart of the mountain. They would depart when the time was right and be at the window to receive the climbers.
He hunched over his telescope, pouring sympathetic energy up the line of visual contact.
His whole body jolted convulsively when he saw Anderl slip.
There was a grating sound, and Anderl realized the surface was moving beneath him. A vast scab of crusted snow had loosened from the face and was slipping down, slowly at first, and he was in the middle of the doomed island. It was no use digging in; that would be like clinging to a falling boulder. Reacting automatically, he scrambled upward, seeking firm snow. Then he was tumbling sideward. He spread his limbs to stop the deadly roll and plunged his axe into the surface, covering it with his body. And still he slipped down and sideward, a deep furrow above him from the dig of his axe.
Jonathan had been huddled with Karl and Jean-Paul in the deep step he had just cut out. His eyes were fixed on the snow before him, his mind empty, and he shivered convulsively as he had at each
Karl pushed Jonathan down upon the encased corpse and covered both with his body, locking his fingers around the ice axe that was their belay point. The avalanche roared over them, deafening and suffocating, clutching at them, piling up under them and trying to tug them away from their step.
And with a sudden ringing silence, it was over.
Jonathan clawed his way up past Karl's limp body and scooped the fresh snow out of the step. Then Karl scrambled up, panting, his hands bleeding, skin still stuck to the cold axe. Jean-Paul was half covered with snow, but he was still there.
'I can't move!' The voice was not far from them.
Anderl was spread-eagled on the surface of the snow, his feet not three meters from the edge of the rock cliff. The snowslide had carried him down, then had capriciously veered aside, over the others, and left him face down, his body still covering the axe that had broken his slide. He was unhurt, but each attempt to move caused him to slip downward a few inches. He tried twice, then had the good judgment to remain still.
He was just out of reach, and the freshly uncovered snow was too unstable to be crossed. The rope from Karl to Anderl lay in a hairpin loop up toward his earlier stance and back sharply, but only the two ends of it emerged from the snow that had buried it.
Anderl slipped down several inches, this time without attempting to move.
Jonathan and Karl tugged and whipped the rope, trying desperately to unbury it. They dared not pull with all their strength lest it suddenly come free and precipitate them off the face.
'I feel foolish,' Anderl called. And he slipped farther down.
'Shut up!' Jonathan croaked. There was nothing for an ice piton to hold onto, so he hurriedly slapped his axe and Karl's deep into the soft snow, then he laced the slack they had tugged in from Anderl's line back and forth between the two axe handles. 'Lie down on that,' he ordered, and Karl mutely obeyed.
Jonathan unroped himself and started up Anderl's buried line, alternately clinging to it and ripping it out of the snow. Each time he gained a little slack he lay still on the steeply inclined surface as Karl whipped the loose rope around the axes. It was all-important that there be as little slack as possible when the line came free. Once he reached the point at which the rope began to curve down toward Anderl, he had to move quickly, knowing that he must be very close to Anderl when the line came free. Movement now was most awkward, and the adrenalin that had fed Jonathan's body was burning off, leaving heavy-limbed nausea in its stead. He wrapped his legs around the rope and tugged it loose with one hand, expecting at any moment to come sliding down on top of Anderl as they both snapped to the end of their slack.
It happened when they were only ten feet apart, and fate was in a humorous mood. The line slipped slowly out of the snow and they skidded gently sideward, Jonathan atop Anderl, until they were directly below Karl and the protection of the big step, their feet overhanging the lip of the rock cliff. They scrambled up with little difficulty.
The instant he fell into the almost vertical snow cave, Jonathan collapsed from within. He crouched near Jean-Paul's body, shivering uncontrollably, limp with fatigue.
Anderl was cheerful and talkative, and Karl was obedient. Between them they widened the step, and Anderl set about making tea. The first cup he gave to Jonathan with two small red pills, heart stimulants.
'I certainly felt ridiculous out there. I wanted to laugh, but I knew that the motion would make me slip, so I bit my lip. It was wonderful the way you came out to get me, Jonathan. But in the future I wish you would not use me to ride around on like a sled. I know what you were doing. Showing off for the people down on the terrace. Right?' He babbled on, brewing tea and passing it around like a solicitous Austrian aunt.
