"I'll be judge, I'll be jury",

It was Jackstraw who heard it firstit was always Jackstraw, whose hearing was an even match for his phenomenal eyesight, who heard things first. Tired of having my exposed hands alternately frozen, I had dropped my book, zipped my sleeping-bag up to the chin and was drowsily watching him carving figurines from a length of inferior narwhal tusk when his hands suddenly fell still and he sat quite motionless. Then, unhurriedly as always, he dropped the piece of bone into the coffee-pan that simmered gently by the side of our oil-burner stovecurio collectors paid fancy prices for what they Said the cunning old Fury, imagined to be the dark ivory of fossilised elephant tusksrose and put his ear to the ventilation shaft, his eyes remote in the unseeing gaze of a man lost in listening. A couple of seconds were enough. "Aeroplane," he announced casually. "Aeroplane!" I propped myself up on an elbow and stared at him. "Jackstraw, you've been hitting the methylated spirits again." "Indeed, no, Dr Mason." The blue eyes, so incongruously at

The squirrels in their silver fur will fall

in waves. JubiJantly he straightened his leg, hoisted himself half-way over the edge, arms straight, palms down on the top of the cliff. And then he froze into immobility, petrified as the solid rock beneath his hands, his heart thudding painfully in his throat. One of the boulders had moved. Seven, maybe eight yards away, a shadow had gradually straightened, detached itself stealthily from the surrounding rock, was advancing slowly towards the edge of the cliff. And then the shadow was no longer "it." There could be no mistake nowthe long jack-boots, the long greatcoat beneath the waterproof cape, the close-fitting helmet were all too familiar. Damn Viachos! Damn Jensen! Damn all the know-ails who sat at home, the pundits of Intelligence who gave a man wrong information and sent him out to die. And in the same instant Mallory damned himself for his own carelessness, for he had been expecting this all along For the first two or three seconds Mallory had lain rigid and unmoving, temporarily paralysed in mind and body: already the guard had advanced four or five steps, carbine held in readiness before him, head turned sideways as he listened into the high, thin whine of the wind and the deep and distant booming of the surf below, trying to isolate the sound that had aroused his suspicions. But now the first Shock was over and Mallory's mind was working again. To go up on to the top of the cliff would be suicidal: ten to one the guard would hear him scrambling over the edge and shoot him out of hand: and if he did get up he had neither the weapons nor, after that exhausting climb, the strength to tackle an armed, fresh man. He would have to go back down. But he would have to slide down slowly, an inch at a time. At night, Mallory knew, side vision is even more acute than direct, and the guard might catch a sudden movement out of the corner of his eye. And then he would only have to turn his head and that would be the end: even in that darkness, Mallory realised, there could be no mistaking the bulk of his silhouette against the sharp line of the edge of the cliff. Gradually, every movement as smooth and controlled as possible, every soft and soundless breath a silent prayer, Mallory slipped gradually back over the edge of the cliff. Stifi the guard advanced, making for a point about five yards to Mallory's left, but still he looked away, his ear turned into the wind. And then Mallory was down, only his finger-tips over the top, and Andrea's great bulk was beside him, his mouth to his ear. "What is fry's electronics digital cameras it?" Somebody there?" "A sentry," Mallory whispered back. His arms were beginning to ache from the strain. "He's heard something and he's looking for us." Suddenly he shrank away from Andrea, pressed himself as closely as possible to the face of the cliff, was vaguely aware of Andrea doing the same thing. A beam of light, hurtful and dazzling to eyes so long accustomed to the dark, had suddenly stabbed out at the angle over the edge of the cliff, was moving slowly along towards them. The German had his torch out, was methodically examining the rim of the cliff. From the angle of the beam, Mallory judged that he was walking alone about a couple of feet from the edge. On that wild and gusty night he was taking no chances on the crumbly, treacherous top-soil of the cliff: even more likely, he was taking no chances on a pair of sudden hands reaching out for his ankles and jerking him to a mangled death on the rocks and reefs four hundred feet below. Slowly, inexorably, the beam approached. Even at that slant, it was bound to catch them. With a sudden sick certainty Mallory realised that the German wasn't just suspicious: he knew there was someone there, and he wouldn't stop looking until he found them. And there was nothing they could do, just nothing at all. . . . Then Andrea's head was close to his again. "A stone," Andrea whispered. "Over there, behind him." Cautiously at first, then frantically, Mallory pawed the cliff-top with his right hand. Earth, only earth, grass roots and tiny pebblesthere was nothing even half the size of a marble. And then Andrea was thrusting something against him and his hand closed over the metallic smoothness of a spike: even in that moment of desperate urgency, with the slender, searching beam only feet away, Mallory was conscious of a sudden, brief anger with himselfbe had still a couple of spikes stuck in his belt and had forgotten all about them. His arm swung back, jerked convulsively forward, sent the spike spinning away into the darkness. One second passed, then another, he knew he had missed, the beam was only inches from Andrea's shoulders, and then the metallic clatter of the spike striking a boulder fell upon his ear like a benison. The beam wavered for a second, stabbed out aimlessly into the darkness and then whipped round, probing into the boulders to the left. And then the sentry was running

"The first great sin that eer I did,

about it all the time. I'm deeply sorry for any trouble we may have caused, Or Mason. I honestly never looked at it from your point of view, never realised the dangers involved in maintaining the impersonationif you could call it that. Please forgive me." "Nothing to forgive," I said bitterly. "A hundred to one I'd have found some other way of messing things up." Shortly after five o'clock in the evening Corazzini stopped the tractorbut he didn't stop the engine. He came down from the driver's seat and walked round to the cabin, pushing the searchlight slightly to one side. He had to shout to make himself heard above the roar of the tractor and the high ululating whine of the still-strengthening blizzard. "Half-way, boss. Thirty-two miles on the clock." "Thank you." We couldn't see Smallwood, but we could see the tip of his gun barrel protruding menacingly into the searchlight's beam. "The end of the line, Dr Mason. You and your friends will please get down." There was nothing else for it. Stiffly, numbly, I climbed down, took a couple of steps towards Smallwood, stopped as the pistol steadied unwaveringly on my chest. "You'll be with your friends in a few hours," I told Smallwood. "You could leave us a little food, a portable stove and tent. Is that too much to ask?" "It is." "Nothing? Nothing at all?" "You're wasting your time, Dr Mason. And it grieves me to see you reduced to begging." "The dog sledge, then. We don't even want the dogs. But neither Mahler nor Miss LeGarde can walk." "You're wasting your time." He turned his attention to the sledge. "Everybody off, I said. Did you hear me, Levin? Get down!" "It's my legs." In the harsh glare of the searchlight we could see the lines of pain deep-etched round Levin's eyes and mouth, and I wondered how long he had been sitting there suffering, saying nothing. "I think they're frozen or sleeping or something." "Get down!" Smallwood repeated sharply. "In a moment." Levin swung one of his legs over the edge of the sledge, his teeth bared with the effort. "I don't seem to be able" "Maybe a bullet in one of your legs will help," Smallwood said unemotionally. "To get the feeling back." I didn't know whether he meant it or not. I didn't think so -gratuitous violence wasn't in character for this man, I couldn't see him killing or wounding buing digital camera class set without sound reason. But Zagero thought differently. He advanced within six feet of Smallwood. "Don't touch him, Smallwood," he said warningly. "No?" The rising inflection was a challenge accepted, and Smallwood went on flatly: "I'd snuff you and him like a candle." "No!" Zagero said, softly and savagely, the words carrying clearly in a sudden lull in the wind. "Lay a finger on my old man, Smallwood, and I'll get you and break your neck like a rotten carrot if you empty the entire magazine into me." I looked at him as he crouched there like a great cat, toes digging into the frozen snow, fists clenched and slightly in advance of him, ready for the explosive leap that would take him across that tiny space in a split second of time and I believed he could do exactly what he said. So, too, I suspected, did Smallwood. "Your old. man?" he inquired. "Your father?" Zagero nodded. "Good." Smallwood showed no surprise. "Into the tractor cabin with him, Zagero. We'll exchange him for the German girl. Nobody cares about her." His point was clear. I couldn't see how we could offer any danger to Smallwood and Corazzini now, but Smallwood was a nan who guarded even against impossibilities: Levin would be a far better surety for Zagero's conduct than Helene. Levin half-walked, was half-carried into the tractor cabin. With Corazzini and Smallwood both armed, resistance was hopeless: Smallwood had us summed up to a nicety. He knew we were desperate men, that we would fling ourselves on him and his gun a moment of desperate emergency: but he also knew that we weren't so desperate as to commit suicide when no lives were in mediate danger. When Levin was inside, Smallwood turned to the young [German girl seated opposite him in the cabin. "Out!" It was then that it happened, with the stunning speed and inevitability that violent tragedy, viewed in retrospect, always seems to possess. I thought perhaps that it was some calculated plan, a last-minute desperate effort to save us that made Helene Fleming act as she did, but I found out later that she had merely been driven and goaded into a pain-filled unreasoning anger and resentment and despair by the agony she had suffered in her shoulder from having had her arms bound for so many long hours in the cruel jolting discomfort of the tractor cabin. As she passed by Smallwood she