him even as he was in mid-leap. He fell on the far side and rolled away from that treacherous patch of ice.
Behind him, the wall of the crevasse calved off thick slabs that crashed into the depths, and thunder rose from below. The plain shivered.
Harry pushed up onto his knees, not sure if he was safe yet. Hell, no. The edge of the chasm continued to disintegrate into the pit, the crevasse widened toward him, and he scrambled frantically away from it.
Gasping, he glanced back in time to see his snowmobile, its rotary engine humming, as it slid into the chasm. It slammed against the far wall of the crevasse and was pinned there for an instant by a truck-size slab of ice. The fule in the main and auxiliary tanks exploded. Flames gushed high into the wind but quickly subsided as the burning wreckage sought the depths. Around and under him, red-orange phantoms shimmered briefly in the milky ice; then the fire puffed out, and darkness took command.
1:07
Cryophobia. The fear of ice.
Their circumstances made it far harder than usual for Rita Carpenter to repress that persistent, debilitating terror.
Portions of the pressure ridge had partially collapsed while other sections had been radically recontoured by the tsunami. Now a shallow cave — approximately forty feet deep and thirty feet wide — pocked those white ramparts. The ceiling was as high as twenty feet in some places and as low as ten in others: one half smooth and slanted, the other half composed of countless boulders and partitions of ice jammed together in a tight, mutually supportive, white-on-white mosaic that had a malevolent beauty and reminded Rita of the surreal stage sets in
She hesitated in the entrance to that cold haven, reluctant to follow Franz Fischer across the threshold, plagued by the irrational feeling that she would be moving not merely forward a few feet but simultaneously backward in time to that winter day when she was six, to the rumble and the roar and the living death of the white tomb…
Clenching her teeth, struggling to repress a sense of almost paralyzing dread, she went inside. The storm raged behind her, but she found comparative quiet within those white walls, as well as relief from the biting wind and snow.
With her flashlight, Rita studied the ceiling and the walls, searching for indications that the structure was in imminent danger of collapsing. The cave appeared to be stable enough at the moment, although another powerful tsunami, passing under the ice, might bring down the ceiling.
“Risky,” she said, unable to prevent her voice from breaking nervously.
Franz agreed. “But we don't have any choice.”
All three inflatable shelters had been destroyed beyond repair. To remain outside in the increasingly fierce wind for an extended period of time would be courting hypothermia, in spite of their insulated storm suits. Their desperate need for shelter outweighed the danger of the cave.
They went outside again and carried the shortwave radio — which appeared to have survived the destruction of the camp — into the ice cave and set it on the floor against the rear wall. Franz ran wires in from the backup batter of the undamaged snowmobile, and they hooked up the transceiver. Rita switched it on, and the selection band glowed sea green. The crackle of static and an eerie whistling shivered along the walls of ice.
“It works,” she said, relieved.
Adjusting his hood to make it tighter at the throat, Franz said, “I'll see what else I can salvage.” Leaving the flashlight with her, he went out into the storm, shoulders hunched and head tucked down in anticipation of the wind.
Franz had no sooner stepped outside than an urgent transmission came through from Gunvald at Edgeway Station.
Rita crouched at the radio and quickly acknowledge the call.
“What a relief to hear your voice,” Gunvald said. “Is everything all right?”
“The camp was destroyed, but Franz and I are okay. We've taken shelter in an ice cave.”
“Harry and the others?”
“We don't know what's happened to them,” she said, and her chest tightened with anxiety as she spoke. “They're out on work details. We'll give them fifteen minutes to show up before we go looking.” She hesitated and cleared her throat. “The thing is… we're adrift.”
For a moment, Gunvald was too stunned to speak. Then: “Are you certain?”
“A change in wind direction alerted us. Then the compasses.”
“Give me a moment,” Larsson said with audible distress. “Let me think.”
In spite of the storm and the strong magnetic disturbances that accompanied bad weather in those latitudes, Larsson's voice was clear and easy to follow. But then he was only four air miles away. As the storm accelerated, and as the iceberg drifted farther south, they were certain to have severe communications problems. Both understood that they would soon lose contact, but neither mentioned it.
Larsson said, “What's the size of this iceberg of yours? Do you have any idea?”
“None at all. We haven't had an opportunity to reconnoiter. Right now, we're just searching for whatever's salvageable in the wreckage of the camp.”
“If the iceberg isn't very large…” Gunvald's voice faded into static.
“I can't read you.”
Shatters of static.
“Gunvald, are you still there?”
His voice returned: “… if the berg isn't large… Harry and the others might not be adrift with you.”
Rita closed her eyes. “I hope that's true.”
“Whether they are or aren't, the situation is far from hopeless. The weather's still good enough for me to get a message by satellite relay to the United States Air Force base at Thule. Once I've alerted them, they can contact those UNGY trawlers standing south of you.”
“But what then? No sensible captain would bring a trawler north into a bad winter storm. He'd lose his ship and his crew trying to save us.”
“They've got the most modern rescue aircraft at Thule, some damn rugged helicopters capable of maneuvering in almost any conditions.”
“There isn't a plane yet invented that can fly safely in this kind of storm — let alone set down on an iceberg in gale-force winds.”
The radio produced only crackling static and warbling electronic squeals, but she sensed that Gunvald was still there.
Yes, she thought. It leaves me speechless too.
She glanced up at the angled slabs that had jammed together to form the ceiling. Snow and shavings of ice sifted down through a few of the cracks.
Finally the Swede said, “Okay, you're right about the aircraft. But we can't give up hope of rescue.”
“Agreed.”
“Because… well… listen, Rita, this storm could last three or four days.”
“Or longer,” she acknowledged.
“You haven't got enough food for that.”
“Hardly any. But food isn't so terribly important,” Rita said. “We can last longer than four days without food.”
They both knew that starvation was not the danger. Nothing mattered as much as the bone-freezing, unrelenting cold.
Gunvald said, “Take turns getting warm in the snowmobiles. Do you have a good supply of fuel?”
“Enough to get back to Edgeway — if that were possible. Not a hell of a lot more than that. Enough to run the engines for a few hours, not a few days.”
“Well, then…”
