his release, his greatest relief. The panic rose in waves through him, and his hands gripped the side of the cockpit, numb with the pressure he exerted; a mad, dazed ship's captain waiting for the end.
Floor of the lake steep — draining water leaving a pocket of air under the ice, making it thin — engine weight will roll her back into the lake, further out — she'll drown, drown…
The jagged plates of ice touched, rubbed, moved apart. He could easily make it to the shore, even though the overhead branches were already out of reach. It was the airplane, the Firefox -
There was nothing he could do. His frame shuddered with tension and futility. He was weary, and his limbs seemed very heavy. He had nothing left. Water lapped up the fuselage, very slowly moving higher — the branches over the cockpit were now over the up-jutting nose. The huge weight of the engines and the airframe was slowly dragging the Firefox deeper and further out into the lake. The long nose section thrust from the water like the snout of a creature that had breached the flimsy ice.
The cracks had stopped. They branched perhaps fifty or sixty yards out into the lake behind the aircraft. The loose plates of ice had floated away from the fuselage to gather like a motiveless crowd where the ice remained deceptively firm. To his left, the snow-covered shore of the lake was still within jumping distance.
Gant climbed onto the lip of the cockpit, poising himself, his hands gripping the edge of the cockpit tightly. He looked back down at the still-lit instruments, the fallen helmet, the pilot's couch…
The Firefox lurched backwards, out from beneath the shelter of the trees, the water lapping the fuselage. Now, it was little more than a foot from the edge of the cockpit; another movement, and the first icy ripples would spill into it — fusing, shorting, damaging everything. The panic in his stomach and chest would not subside. There was no nightmare of Vietnam, not in this cold, not with the smoky grey shoreline and the omnipresence of show. But he was as bereft of purpose as if he were suffering one of his bouts of paralysis.
The aircraft was steady now, tilting backwards on the sloping bed of the lake. Perhaps only for seconds… The water was ten inches from the lip of the cockpit… the tail was half-submerged, the huge engines already under water…
He dropped, in his apelike crouch, back into the cockpit, his hands nerveless and numb as he tried to make them operate small, delicate switches and buttons. Thought-guidance — shut down… come on… weapons-systems — shut down… radio, radar, auto-pilot, ECM systems — shut down… His hands seemed warmer now, no longer lumps at the ends of his arms but active, moving with a trained, automatic precision and speed. In seconds, he shut down the aircraft, killing it, rendering it lifeless. Then he climbed over the lip of the cockpit. He was still wearing his parachute. Clipped to his life-jacket were his inflatable dinghy and his survival pack. Icy water touched his heel, and he withdrew his foot. Awkwardly, he moved over the cockpit sill, his toes feeling clumsily for the spring-loaded steps. When he found them, and balanced himself, he pulled out the cockpit canopy hand crank from its compartment below the cockpit sill. He cranked down the cockpit canopy until it closed tightly. Then he closed the manual, exterior locks.
A moment of pain, of acute failure, and then he poised and leapt. He landed in soft snow, paining his hand on a buried tree root, rolling over and scrabbling for a hold on frozen grass and icy rocks beneath the snow. His survival pack and the dinghy lay beneath him. Snow filled his mouth and eyes, even his ears, though they were still alive to the terrible scraping lurch that meant the Firefox was moving further out, further under the surface.
Yes. He turned to look. The water had reached the cockpit — thank God he'd remembered to close and lock it — and the nose pointed to the grey sky at a more acute angle than before. He drew his knees up to his chest — the cold of the snow seeping through the pressure suit and the thin underclothing beneath — and dropped his head. He could not move. He felt it was like waiting by a deathbed — but not his father's, for that had been an impatient wait with release and the throwing off of hatred at the end of the tunnel.
It would be no more than a minute now -
He laughed; high and crazy. The noise was like the call of a rook in the thick cold air. He could not prevent it; a cackle of survival and defeat.
He could not stop the laughter. Tears rolled down his blanched, cold cheeks, down the creases of his pained face. He cackled like a madman.
Another grating lurch — some part of him remained surprised that the undercarriage had withstood the pressure upon it — and he looked up to see the cockpit now half-submerged, the water lapping towards the nose of the Firefox.
And the laughter stopped.
The locked and shut down aircraft was twenty yards from him, the black nose jutting, the cockpit half- submerged. Everything —
Gant swallowed, savagely wiped his mouth. The aircraft was steady again, one of the wheels, perhaps, halted against the chock of a boulder or sunk in softer mud. Tantalisingly steady -
There was nothing -
'Nothing, dammit!' he exploded, banging his clenched fists on his thighs. A bird replied in a hoarse voice from one of the trees. 'Nothing — !' He could do nothing. He couldn't sit in the Firefox until help came, he couldn't dismantle the radio and rescue it, he couldn't, couldn't couldn't -
Strangely, he heard the voice of Aubrey then. The soft, self-deprecating, insinuating tones. His final briefing, the fake transistor radio that was a homing receiver which had saved his life, listening as it had done for signals from 'Mother One', the submarine that had refuelled the Firefox. It was attached by a single adhesive strip to one corner of the instrument panel.
Receiver — ?
Transmitter, too… Aubrey had been reluctant to mention it, hovered over the words like a choosily-feeding pet until he had uttered them.
Gant was on his feet, still nodding at the remembered words as he had nodded when he first heard them. Aubrey didn't want to mention crashing, injury, death, but Gant had understood.
He slipped and scrambled down the steep bank. He undipped his survival pack, his parachute harness, the dinghy. The dinghy — ! A fringe of ice cracked beneath his weight, and he slid into the icy water. He cried out with shock. He stepped back — pebbles and larger boulders on the bed of the lake, so he moved carefully — and the water retreated. He dragged the dinghy towards him, and inflated it. It boiled and enlarged and groaned, then bobbed on the water. His teeth chattered, his whole body shuddered. A bird croaked, as if in mockery. The nose of the Firefox tilted upwards like a snub, a dismissal of his frantic efforts. He climbed into the dinghy, and paddled furiously towards the aircraft. His head bobbed up at every frantic stroke to study the unmoving nose of the plane. His body temperature continued to drop. His heartbeat raced with tension, with the sense of time lost and almost run out, with the fight to keep the blood warm and circulating.
His hand touched the fuselage, and he withdrew it as if shocked, in case the pressure of fingertips might be enough to thrust it beneath the water. He juggled and bumped the dinghy slowly along the fuselage until it was beneath the cockpit tilted crazily high above him. His hands felt for the spring-loaded steps up the side of the fuselage.
Felt, fumbled, found… He tested his chilly weight against the strength of his arms, and then heaved his body out of the dinghy, feet scrabbling — careful, don't kick, don't struggle — until they, too, discovered toe-holds. He hung there for a moment, sensing the steadiness of the airframe. It was holding. He began climbing, hand over hand, feet following with exaggerated caution, slipping more than once.
Lip of the cockpit, smoothness of the canopy…
He rested, aware of the airframe now as a see-saw. He waited for it to move. It remained still. The water covered the rear section of the canopy. Water would spill into the cockpit when he opened it. It wouldn't have to matter.
Left-hand side of the instrument panel. He unlocked the canopy, then cranked it slowly open. Water gurgled into the cockpit, splashing down instruments, becoming a pool in the well of the pilot's couch. He eased the canopy open sufficiently to insert his gloved hands, and scrabbled blindly, leaning forward, touching along the instrument panel, across dials and read-outs and displays and buttons and switches, until he felt the edge of the homing device. Like a black cigarette-case, slightly larger than that, same shape…
