Firefox

Powdery snow blew into Gant's face. For a moment, distracted by the voices, he glanced up at the cloudy sky half-hidden by the shreds of mist. Then he realised that it was the vanguard of Peck's blizzard. The hose-men were still on schedule. He smiled to himself, and pulled off the parka. Peck's men were forty yards away from the Firefox. The de-icing team trundled past him, and stopped to look enquiringly in his direction. He nodded at them, at which they seemed vastly relieved, and the giant garden-spray was wheeled speedily towards the Pequod, to be hauled aboard and stowed before the arrival of the Russians.

Gant waited, like a guest anxious to be gone, until Seerbacker had finished his conversation with his Exec.

Seerbacker seemed surprised that he was stripped to his anti-G suit once more. He smiled awkwardly. 'I — er, of course…' he said.

'So long, Seerbacker — and thanks.'

'Get out of here, you bum!' Seerbacker said with mock severity.

Gant nodded, and swung his foot to the lowest rung of the pilot's ladder set in the fuselage. He climbed up, and slid feet first into the cockpit There, he tugged on the integral helmet, plugged in the oxygen, the weapons- control jackplug, and the communications equipment. He needed first of all to taxi gently back to the southern extremity of the floe, where the snow had not, as yet, been cleared — it would be slowing, he knew, but he needed the maximum distance to the ridge. He went through the pre-start checks swiftly. He plugged in the anti-G suit automatically, even as he read off the dials and gauges that informed him of the condition of flaps, brakes and fuel. The fuel-tanks, he saw, smiling grimly, were satisfyingly full. It seemed aeons since there had been so much fuel in his universe. He pressed the hood control and it swung down, locked automatically, then he locked it manually. The handset issued him by Seerbacker was in the breastpocket of the pressure-suit. He heard Fleischer's voice, from a great distance, saying:

'ETA one minute and thirty seconds.'

'You hear that, Gant?' Seerbacker's voice chimed in. He continued, without waiting for a reply: 'Good luck, fella. Got to get Mr. Peck's suspicious hoses stowed now, so get out of here!'

Gant gang-loaded the ignition, switched on the after motors, turned on the high-pressure cock, and pressed the button. He heard, with relief, the sound of a double explosion as the cartridge start functioned. There was the same rapid, mounting whirring that he had heard in the hangar at Bilyarsk, as the huge turbines began to build. He switched in the fuel-booster, and eased open the throttles, until the rpm gauges were steady at twenty-seven per cent. He paused for only a second, then pushed the throttles open, until he reached the fifty-five per cent rpm, then he released the brakes. The Firefox did not move.

He hauled back the throttles, and applied the brakes again. Even though he knew instantly what it was, and knew that it could be cured, his own failure to anticipate it made him weak and chill with sweat.

He opened the hood, tugged open the face-mask, and yelled into the handset: 'Seerbacker — get those hoses over here — on the double!'

'What in the hell is it, Gant — can't you leave us…?'

'Get over here! The wheels, they've frozen in!'

'You're stuck — with those engines, man?'

Already, even as Seerbacker apparently argued with him, he saw Peck and the others tugging the hoses towards the aircraft.

'If I try and pull myself out, I'll end up on my belly!'

Looking over the side of the cockpit, he saw Seerbacker's face looking up at him. Seerbacker was openly grinning. Steam billowed around him, snow flew up around the cockpit of the Firefox as the superheated steam was played carefully over the embedded wheels. Gant had not needed to warn Peck that if he played too much steam onto the tyres, at too high a pressure, he would, literally, melt them.

Peck had understood. He emerged from beneath the fuselage, looked up at Gant, and said into his handset: 'O.K., Major Gant — now, for God's sake, get out of here!'

Gant signalled him with the thumbs-up, closed the hood once more, checked the gauges, and opened the throttles, until the rpm gauge once more showed fifty-five per cent. He released the brakes, the aircraft jolted out of the pits which the wheels and the applied steam had made, and rolled forward. Peck, Seerbacker an the others were moving away swiftly, tugging the thick, snaking hoses after them. Already, men were emerging from the Pequod, dressed in civilian parkas, the decoy scientists and technicians who should, by virtue of Seerbacker's ploy, occupy the floe when the Russians arrived. Gant turned the aircraft, and headed down the floe, directly in the line of the runway. He kept the Firefox completely straight on course. He would need his own tracks on his return.

The grey sea was ahead of him. He searched for any sign of the Russian submarine. There was nothing. Probably, the captain had decided not to surface until he arrived and stopped engines at the Pequod's position, something to do with psychological surprise. Whatever it was, Gant was grateful on behalf of Seerbacker and his crew. No one would visually sight the Firefox.

He turned the plane in a semi-circle, lined up on his own tyre tracks in the surface snow, and opened the throttles. Almost immediately, he felt the restraint of the surface snow, the inability of the aircraft with normal take-off power to accelerate sufficiently. He could not use too much power. It would have the effect of digging in the nose, changing the relative airflow over the surfaces of the plane. He would, in fact, slow the plane if he used more power. There was little impression of speed until he passed over the spot on the ice where he had parked, and joined the smoothed, polished surface of the ice-runway blasted out for him by Peck and his men. Only now could he see the ridge, a tiny hump ahead of him. He could not see, in the poor visibility, the gap of thirty feet that had been carved in its face. The undercarriage shook free of the restraining snow, and he felt the plane lurch forward as if freed from glue or treacle. Now he was able to open the throttles, push up the rpm, and gather speed. The only impression of speed was from the crinkled, roughened edge of the runway as it flowed past him at an increasing rate. He had to be right in the centre of the crude runway because he couldn't use the brakes to steer on the ice. They would have no effect. The rudder would not operate effectively until he reached a speed of eighty-five knots. At that moment he was at a little more than fifty.

As his eyes strained into the shredding mist, he heard, coming from a great distance, but with utter clarity, Seerbacker's voice.

'Good luck, man. Can't stop to talk, we've got visitors!' The voice had come from the handset.

His body was chilled, but he sweated. The second it took for him to pass into that region of speed which returned the power of steering to him seemed like an age. Then his speed topped ninety knots, and he centred the Firefox smoothly on the runway. He eased open the throttles, and the rpm needle seemed to leap with a jerk across the face of the dial. He saw the gap rushing at him; now that his eyes had a point of focus in the diffused whiteness of the floe, he was suddenly aware of his speed, transferred from his dials to the landscape. In cold air, he recited to himself, he needed less distance for take off. He did not believe it, not for a split-second.

The gap leapt at him, the distance it had been from him eaten by the huge engines. He was through the gap at 150 knots, and 170 was his take-off speed. He shoved the throttles into reheat, and pulled back on the stick. He dare not now plough back into the soft surface snow where Peck had had no time to clear the runway.

He could see the snow — he swore that he could see it, the point where the runway of ice ended. It was impossible. It passed under the plane's belly as he hauled back on the stick. He knew the undercarriage was clear of the floe, yet there was no impression of climbing.

* * *

In the rear-view mirror, Gant saw a cloud of snow belly out behind him, caused by the sudden downthrust of the jets. The Firefox squatted, it seemed for an instant, nose-high, then, like a limb tearing itself free of restraining, glutinous mud, the aircraft pulled away from the floe. Gant trimmed flaps up, and retracted the undercarriage. The airspeed indicator flicked over, and he pushed the throttles forward. The plane kicked him in the back, and he felt the anti-G suit compensate for the sudden surge of acceleration. He checked the fuel flow, saw that all the needles were in the green, and hauled the aircraft into a vertical climb.

The climb towards the cloud took no more than a few seconds. As he entered the cloud, the Mach-meter crossed the figure 1 — then 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 1.4…

The Firefox burst out of the cloud at 22,000 feet, into dazzling sunlight, cloudless, vast blue.

He had taken off heading due north. Now he set his course, punching out the coordinates for his crossing- point on the Finnish coast. He banked the plane round to a heading of 210 degrees, still climbing. The maximum