Night Without End

by Alistair MacLean

  I wondered how far away Hillcrest and the Sno-Cat were. I was as certain as I could be of anything that he would have headed due west as soon as he would have emerged from the Vindeby Nunataks, and he’d had time and to spare to make the coast by this time – not even the blizzard of last night could have stopped the Sno-Cat, the engine was a completely enclosed unit, its great caterpillars would take it over the loosest, the most newly fallen snow. But even had he backed his hunches and headed for the coast, as I hoped, he might still be anything up to twenty miles to the north or south of us, or he might be not only north or south but fifteen miles ahead of us – we had no maps left but I was fairly certain we were about that distance from the coast. Or was it possible that Hillcrest, a shrewd and thoughtful man, might have thought the gambit of a break for the coast too obvious a move? Could it not be that he might have indeed pressed on for Uplavnik, or even turned due north after he had come through the hills? Or, if he were coming west, would he not perhaps be driving in a search pattern, quartering the ground between the Vindeby Nunataks and the coast in a series of wide advancing zigzags? If that were so, he might still be anything up to thirty miles behind. It was infuriating beyond measure to know that he was almost certainly within two or three hours’ driving time from where we were, but without a wireless or any other means of contacting him he might as well have been a thousand miles away for any hope there was of two tiny moving objects encountering each other by chance in that vast and featureless land.

  Soon after eight o’clock in the morning I stopped to have a look at the two sick people on the sledge, professional instinct, I suppose, but an empty token gesture: there was nothing we could do for them, except give massage at frequent intervals. The sound of Mahler’s dyspnoea, his whooping gasping breathing, was the tolling of a death-bell to our ears, and this effort to breathe was extinguishing the last embers of life in his emaciated and frozen body. In three hours’ time, by noon at the latest, Mahler would be dead. Nothing could ever save him now, it was madness, an utterly wasted effort to continue to drag him along on a sledge: he was past caring or knowing or feeling now, he could die just as peacefully if we left him lying on the glacier. Or so I have thought since then. But Mahler was more than a man to us that day, he was a symbol: we would leave Mahler when he had drawn his last gasping breath, but never before.

  Marie LeGarde was dying too, but quietly, softly, peacefully, like a little candle flame flickering to extinction. Maybe she would go first, maybe Mahler. But both of them would die this day.

  The going was becoming increasingly difficult now, not so much because of the gradually steepening slope of the glacier which made the sledge overrun us more and more frequently, but because of the fact that Jackstraw’s torch had all but completely given out, and the fissures and crevasses that, earlier, had merely been nuisances to be negotiated, now became menaces to be avoided at the cost of our lives. It was now that Balto proved of his greatest value yet: as Jackstraw had said on our first day out from the IGY cabin, the big Siberian had an uncanny nose for crevasses, both open and hidden, in daytime or dark, and he made never a mistake that morning, constantly running ahead and then back towards us to guide us in the safest direction. Even so, progress was heartbreakingly slow.

  Shortly after half-past eight in the morning we came across the tractor sled lying at an angle against a moraine. Even in the near darkness it was plain to see what had happened. The steepness of the glacier, not to mention sudden unaccountable dips to left and right across its width, must have made the heavy sled a dangerous liability, for, from its tracks, we had several times seen where it had slewed wildly at an angle, pivoting round on its iron tow-bar as, brakeless, it had sought to overrun the tractor. Obviously, Smallwood and Corazzini must have feared – and with reason -that on one of these occasions it would pull round the tail of the tractor after it and topple the tractor on its side, or, worse, drag it into a crevasse: so they had unhooked the tow-bar and left the sled.

  It was surprising that they hadn’t done this earlier: apart from carrying their fuel and food, which reserves could easily have gone into the tractor cabin itself, it had been a useless encumbrance to them. As far as I could judge they had abandoned it with all its contents – apart, of course, from the portable radio – including the wraps we had given Zagero and Levin when they had ridden on it at the point of a gun. We took these, tucked them round Mahler and Marie LeGarde and passed on.

  Three hundred yards later I stopped so abruptly that the sledge, bumping into me, made me lose my footing on the slippery ice. I stood up, laughing softly, laughing for the first time for days, and Zagero came up close and peered into my face.

  ‘What gives, Doc?’

  I laughed again and was just on the point of speaking when his hand struck me sharply across the face.

  ‘Cut it out, Doc’ His voice was harsh. ‘That ain’t goin’ to help us any’

  ‘On the contrary, it’s going to help us a very great deal.’ I rubbed a hand across my cheek, I couldn’t blame him for what he had done. ‘My God, and I almost missed it!’

  ‘Missed what?’ He still wasn’t sure that I wasn’t hysterical.

  ‘Come on back to the tractor sled and see. Smallwood claims he thinks of everything, but he’s missed out at last. He’s made his first big mistake, but oh, brother, what a mistake! And the weather’s just perfect for it!’ I turned on my heel and actually ran up the glacier towards the sled.

  Many items were carried as standard equipment in IGY parties, both in the field and at base camps, and none more standard than the magnesium flares which first came into common use in the Antarctic over a quarter of a century ago – they are indispensable as location beacons in the long polar nights – and radio-sondes. We carried more radio-sondes than any other item of equipment, for our primary purpose on the ice-cap – the garnering of information about density pressure, temperature, humidity and wind direction of the upper atmosphere – was impossible without them. These sondes, still crated with the tents, ropes, axes and shovels which we had found no occasion to use on this trip, were radio-carrying balloons which wirelessed back information from heights of between 100,000 and 150,000 feet. We also carried rockoons, radio rockets fired from balloons which took them clear of the denser parts of the atmosphere before releasing them. But right then rockoons were useless to me. So, too, were balloons at their normal operating height: 5000 feet should serve our purpose admirably.

  The dim glow from the torch was more than sufficient, Jackstraw and I had worked with these things a hundred times. To couple the balloon to the hydrogen cylinder, disconnect the radio and substitute a group of three magnesium flares fused with RDX took only minutes. We lit the fuse, cut the holding cord and had a second balloon coupled on to the cylinder before the first was 500 feet up. Then, just as we had the third on the cylinder and were disconnecting its radio, the first flare, now at about a height of 4000 feet, burst into scintillating brilliant life.

  It was all I could have wished for, indeed it was more than I’d ever hoped for, and Zagero’s heavy thump on my back showed how joyfully he shared my feelings.

  ‘Dr Mason,’ he said solemnly, ‘I take it all back, all I ever said about you. This, Dr Mason, is genius.’

  ‘It’s not bad,’ I admitted, and indeed if anyone, in those perfect conditions of visibility, couldn’t see the coruscating dazzlement of those flares at any distance up to thirty miles, he would have to be blind. If they were looking in the right direction, that was, but I was sure that with Hillcrest carrying five men and everybody almost certainly on the lookout for us, the chances of missing it were remote.

  The second flare, considerably higher, burst into life just as the first went sputtering into extinction and the further thought struck me that if there were any ships patrolling out in the sea beyond, it would give them a bearing the significance of which none of them could surely overlook. And then I saw Jackstraw and Zagero looking at me and though I couldn’t read their expr
essions in the darkness I knew from their stillness what they were both thinking and suddenly I didn’t feel so happy any more. The odds were high that Corazzini and Smallwood – they could be no more than a few miles distant – had seen the flares also. They would know what it signified, they would know it was the first tug on the drawstring of the net that might even then be starting to close round them. In addition to being dangerous, ruthless killers, they would become frightened killers; and they had Margaret and Johnny Zagero’s father with them. But I knew I’d had no option, tried to thrust all thought of the hostages from my mind, turned to look at the third balloon that we had just released, then winced and closed my eyes involuntarily as the third flare, through some flaw or misjudgment in the length of the fuse, ignited not more than five hundred feet above us, the blue-white intensity mingling almost immediately with a bright orange flame as the balloon also caught fire and both started drifting slowly earthwards.

  And so intently was I watching this through narrowed eyes that I all but missed something vastly more important, but Jackstraw didn’t. He never missed anything. I felt his hand on my arm, turned to see the strong white teeth gleaming in the widest grin I had seen for weeks, then half-turned again to follow the direction of his pointing arm just in time to see low on the horizon in the south-east and not more than five miles away the earthward curving red and white flare of a signal rocket.

  Our feelings were impossible to describe – I know, at least, that mine were. I had never seen anything half so wonderful in all my life, not even the sight, twenty minutes later, of the powerful wavering headlight beams of the Sno-Cat as it appeared over a rise in the plateau and headed towards the spot – we had scrambled up from the glacier to the flat land above – where we had just ignited the last of our flares and were waving it round and round our heads on the end of a long metal pole, like men demented. It seemed an age, although I don’t suppose it was much more than ten minutes, before the great red and yellow Sno-Cat ground to a halt beside us and willing arms reached down to help us into the incredible warmth and comfort of that superbly equipped and insulated cabin.

  Hillcrest was a great bull of a man, red-faced, black-bearded, jovial, confident, with a tremendous zest for living, a deceptive external appearance that concealed a first-class brain and a competence of a very high order indeed. It did me good just to sit there, glass of brandy in hand, relaxed – if only for a moment – for the first time in five days and just to look at him. I could tell that it hadn’t done him the same good to look at us – in the bright overhead light I could clearly see our yellowed, blistered, emaciated faces, the bleeding, black-nailed, suppurating all but useless hands, and I was shocked myself – but he concealed it well, and busied himself with handing out restoratives, tucking away Mahler and Marie LeGarde in two deep, heat-pad-filled bunks, and supervising the efforts of the cook who had a steaming hot meal ready prepared. All this he had done before he had as much as asked us a question.

  ‘Right,’ he said briskly. ‘First things first. Where’s the Citroen? I presume the missile mechanism is still aboard it. Brother, you just don’t begin to have any idea how many heart attacks this thing is causing.’

  ‘That’s not the first thing,’ I said quietly. I nodded to Theodore Mahler, whose hoarse gasping breath filled the room. ‘This man is dying.’

  ‘All under control,’ he boomed. He jerked a thumb at Joss who, after the first delighted greeting, had returned to his radio set in the corner. ‘The boy here hasn’t left his set for over twenty-four hours – ever since we got your “Mayday” call.’ He looked at me speculatively. ‘You took a chance there. I wonder you didn’t stop a bullet for your pains.’

  ‘I just about did … We were talking about Mahler.’

  ‘Yes. We’ve been in constant contact, same wave-length, with two ships in that time – the destroyer Wykenham and the carrier Triton. I had a fair idea your friends must be heading in this direction, so the Wykenham has been moving up overnight and is lying off the coast. But the leads and patches in the ice aren’t big enough for the Triton to manoeuvre to fly off planes. She’s about eighty miles south, in clear water.’

  ‘Eighty miles!’ I didn’t bother to conceal my shock and my disappointment, I’d begun to have a faint irrational hope that we might yet save the dying man. ‘Eighty miles!’

  ‘I have news for you, Doctor,’ Hillcrest announced jovially. ‘We have moved into the air age.’ He turned towards Joss and raised an inquiring eyebrow.

  ‘A Scimitar jet fighter is just taking off.’ Joss tried to speak unemotionally, but failed. ‘It’s airborne – now. Time-check 0933. We’re to fire our first rocket at 0946 – thirteen minutes from now. Then two more at intervals of thirty seconds. At 0948 we’re to set off a slow-burning magnesium flare where we want the stuff dropped, at least two hundred yards from the tractor.’ Joss listened for another few moments and grinned. ‘He says we’re to get the hell out of it after we’ve lit the flare or we’re liable to collect a headache or worse.’

  I didn’t know what to say, where to look, moments like this came all too seldom. Not until that moment did I realise how much of a symbol Theodore Mahler had become, how much his survival had meant for me. Hillcrest must have had some intuitive understanding of how I felt, for he spoke at once, his voice normal, matter of fact.

  ‘Service, old boy. Sorry we couldn’t have laid it on earlier, but the Triton refused to risk an expensive plane and an even more expensive pilot flying low over virtually uncharted territory unless they definitely knew that Mahler was alive.’

  ‘They’ve done all anyone could ask.’ A sudden thought struck me. ‘These planes don’t usually carry ammunition in peace-time, do they?’

  ‘Don’t worry’ Hillcrest said grimly. He ladled some steaming stew on to our plates. ‘Nobody’s playing any more. There’s been a flight of Scimitars standing by since midnight, and every cannon’s loaded … Right, Doctor. Give with the story.’

  I gave, as briefly and concisely as possible. At the end, he clapped his hands together.

  ‘Maybe five miles ahead, eh? Then it’s tallyho down the old glacier and after ‘em.’ He rubbed his hands in anticipation. ‘We’re three times as fast and we’ve three times as many rifles. This is the way any decent IGY expedition should be run!’

  I smiled faintly, a token response to his bubbling enthusiasm. I never felt less like smiling: now that the worry of Mahler – and in that warmth and with hot food, almost certainly also the worry of Marie LeGarde – was off my hands, my anxiety about Margaret had returned with redoubled force.

  ‘We’re not tallyho-ing down any old glacier, Captain Hillcrest. Apart from the fact that it’s a rotten surface, which would bring your speed down to about the same as the Citroën’s, open pursuit is a pretty sure way of guaranteeing that Margaret Ross and Mr Levin get a bullet through their heads. Incidentally, Mr Levin is the father of Mr Zagero.’

  ‘What?’ Both Hillcrest and Joss had spoken at the same time.

  ‘Yes. But later. Have you a map of the area?’

  ‘Sure.’ Hillcrest handed it over. Like most Greenland maps it showed topographical detail for no more than the first twenty miles inland, but it was sufficient for my purpose. It showed the twisting Kangalak glacier debouching into the Kangalak Fjord, the wide deep bay beyond the southern headland of the fjord, the northern headland continuing in a wide shallow smooth curve for many miles to the north.

  “Where did you say the destroyer was?’ I asked.

  ‘The Wykenham? I’m not sure.’

  ‘Blocking the Kangalak Fjord here, perhaps?’ I indicated the spot on the map.

  ‘No, that I’m certain of.’ He shook his head regretfully. ‘Captain said the pack-ice was too heavy, he couldn’t risk his destroyer in any of the leads in case they closed.’ Hillcrest snorted in disgust. ‘I gather its hull is made of paper.’

  ‘It’s not much thicker – I’ve served in destroyers. I don’t blame him. But I’ll bet his t
rawler, probably a specially strengthened job, is well inside the fjord – and a submarine no great distance away. Look, this is all we can do.’ I traced my finger on the map. ‘We must parallel the glacier, maybe a mile away. With the slope of the valley sides Smallwood won’t see us, and with his own engine running he can’t hear us. Down here—’

  ‘What’s to stop him from cutting his engine now and again to listen?’ Hillcrest demanded.

  ‘Because what Smallwood and Corazzini don’t know about engines would fill an encyclopedia. They’d be dead scared to stop it in case they couldn’t start it again … Down here, at the base of the headland separating the fjord from the bay to the south – about a mile from the end of the glacier, I would say – the sides of the glacier valley fall away and level off into the plateau on either side. But there’s bound to be some kind of moraine or shelter there. That’s where we’ll ambush them.’

  ‘Ambush?’ He frowned at me. ‘What’s the difference between that and pursuing them? It’ll still come to a fight – and they can still hold pistols to the heads of Levin and the stewardess, and bargain from there.’

  ‘There’ll be no fight,’ I said quietly. ‘They’ve been following the left-hand side of the glacier all the way down, I see no reason why they should change. They should come into sight maybe fifty yards from where we’re hiding -farther out on the glacier the going is impossible for tractors.’ I nodded at the telescopic sighted .303 in the corner. ‘With that Jackstraw can hit a three-inch target at a hundred yards. A man’s head at fifty yards is six times that size. First he gets Corazzini, who’s probably driving, and when Smallwood sticks his head out the back as he certainly will – well that’s it.’