Ice Station

the outside of the canopy.

Schofield stared at the console in front of him: four computer screens, standard control stick, buttons and dials and indicators everywhere. It looked like an amazing high-tech jigsaw puzzle. Schofield felt a sudden panic sweep over him.

He would never be able to figure out how to fly this plane. Not in eighteen minutes.

But then, as he looked at the console more closely, he began to see that it wasn't actually that much different from the consoles on the Harriers he had flown in Bosnia. This was a man-made aircraft, after all?why should it be different?

He found the ignition switch, keyed it.

Nothing happened. Fuel feed, he thought. Got to pump the fuel feed.

He searched for the fuel feed button. Found it, pumped it. Then he hit the ignition switch again.

Nothing hap?

VRRRROOOOM!

 The twin turbines of the Silhouette's jet engines roared to life and Schofield felt his blood rush. The sound of the engines blasting to life was like nothing he had ever heard.

He revved the engines. He had to warm her up fast.

Time, he thought.

10:45 p.m.

Fifteen minutes to go.

He kept revving the engines. Usually such a warm-up routine would take upward of twenty minutes. Schofield gave himself ten.

God, this was going to be close.

 As he revved the engines whole sections of the cavern's ice walls began to collapse around the big black plane. After five minutes of revving, he looked for the vertical takeoff switch.

'Gant! Where's the vectored thrust?' On modern vertical-takeoff-and-landing-capable fighters like the Harrier, vertical lift-off is achieved through directable, or 'vectored,' thrusters.

'There aren't any,' Gant called from the missile bay. 'It has retrofiring jets instead! Look for the button that starts the retros!'

Schofield searched for it. As he did so, however, he came across another button. It was marked: cloak mode. Schofield frowned.

What the hell?

 And then suddenly he saw the button he was looking for:

RETROS.

He hit it.

The Silhouette responded immediately and began to rise into the air. But then abruptly it jolted to a sudden halt. There came a loud grinding noise from behind it.

'Huh?' Schofield said.

He looked out through the back of the cockpit canopy, and he saw that the two tail fins of the Silhouette were still firmly embedded within the ice wall behind it.

Schofield found the button marked afterburner. Punched it.

Immediately a white-hot spray of pure heat burst out from the twin thrusters at the back of the Silhouette and began to melt the ice holding the rear of the plane captive.

The ice melted quickly; the tail fins soon came free.

Schofield checked his watch.

10:53 p.m.

The entire cavern lurched downward again.

Come on, now; don't go yet. 1 just need a couple more minutes. Just a couple more minutes....

 Schofield kept warming the engine. He looked down at his watch as it ticked over to 10:54. Then 10:55.

All right, time's up. Time to go.

 He hit the button marked retros again and the eight retro jets on the underside of the big black ship fired as one, shot out long white puffs of gas.

This time, the Silhouette rose off the icy ground, and began to hover inside the enormous underground cavern. The cavern around it rumbled and shuddered. Chunks of ice rained down from the ceiling, banged down on the back of the big black plane.

Chaos. Absolute chaos.

10:56 P.M.

Schofield looked out through the tinted-glass canopy of the Silhouette. The whole cavern was tilting crazily. It was almost as if the whole ice shelf was lurching forward, moving into the ocean....

It's falling off the mainland, he thought.

'What are you doing!' Renshaw called from the missile bay.

'I'm waiting for it to flip over!' Schofield called back.

Suddenly Schofield heard Gant groan with pain. 'Renshaw! Help her! Fix that wound! Kirsty! Get up here! I need you!'

Kirsty came forward into the cockpit and climbed up into the high rear chair. 'What do you want me to do?'

'See that stick there?' Schofield said. 'The one with the trigger on it?'

Kirsty saw a control stick in front of her. 'Yeah.'

'Pull that trigger for me, will you?'

Kirsty pulled the trigger.

As soon as she did so, two dazzling-white pulses of light shot out from both wings of the big black fighter plane.

The two tracer bullets slammed into the ice wall in front of the Silhouette and exploded in twin clouds of white. When the two clouds dissipated, Schofield saw a large hole in the ice wall.

'Nice shootin,' Tex,' he said.

He pulled back on his stick, and the Silhouette rose higher in the middle of the collapsing ice cavern.

'All right, everybody, hold on, this thing is gonna go any second now,' Schofield said. 'Kirsty, when I say so, I want you to press down on that trigger and hold it down, OK?'

'OK.'

Schofield peered out through the canopy, looked out at the crumbling ceiling of the ice cavern, looked out at the pool of water through which they had all entered the cavern?the water in the pool was sloshing madly against the ice walls.

And then at that moment, it happened. The whole cavern just dropped?straight down?and then tilted dramatically. In that instant, Schofield knew that the whole of the ice shelf containing Wilkes Ice Station had come completely free of the mainland.

It had become an iceberg.

Wait for it, Schofield told himself. Wait for it....

And then, abruptly, the whole cavern tilted again.

Only this time, the tilting was much more dramatic. This time the whole cavern rotated a full 180 degrees, right around the hovering Silhouette!

The iceberg had flipped over!

 The whole cavern was now upside-down.'

Suddenly a torrent of water came rushing out of a wide hole in the 'ceiling' of the cavern?the hole that only moments before had been the mouth of the underwater ice tunnel that had led up into