And shows the thing much better than it is,

did? You know you did. Killashandra hung on to her patience. You never forget anything. And the impression I got from your cryptic comment was that someone, and the inference was me she pressed her thumb into her chest would have to go there. Am I correct? He regarded her steadily, his expression unreadable. Not long ago you gave me to understand that you would not undertake another off-world assignment That was before Id been stuck on this fardling planet She noticed the wicked gleam in his eyes. So, Im right. A crystal singer does have to make the installation! It was a shocking incident, Lanzecki said diffidently as he served himself more Malva beans. The performer who damaged the organ was killed by the flying shards. He was also the only person on the planet who could handle such a major repair. As is so often the case with such sensitive and expensive equipment, it is a matter of planetary urgency to repair the instrument. Its the largest on the planet and is essential to the observances of Optherias prestigious Summer Festival. We are contracted to supply technicians as well as crystal. He paused for a mouthful of the crisp white beans. He was definitely baiting her, Killashandra knew. She held her tongue. While the list of those qualified does include your name The catch cant be the crystal this time, she said as he purposefully let his sentence dangle unfinished. She watched his face for any reaction. White crystals active, reflecting sound Among other things, Lanzecki added when she paused. If it isnt the crystal, whats the matter with the Optherians, then? My dear Killashandra, the assignment has not yet been awarded. Awarded? I like the sound of that. Or do I? I wouldnt put it past you, Lanzecki, to sucker me into another job like that Trundomoux installation. He caught the finger she was indignantly shaking at him, pulling her hand across the laden table to his lips. The familiar caress evoked familiar responses deep in her groin and she tried to use her irritation with his methods to neutralize its effect on her. Just then a communit bleep startled her. With a fleeting expression of annoyance, Lanzecki lifted his wrist unit to acknowledge the summons. A tinny version of Trags bass voice issued from the device. I was to inform you when the preliminary testing stations reported, the Administration Officer said. Any camera digital still usb interesting applicants? Although Lanzecki sounded diffident, even slightly bored, the curious tension about his lips and eyes alerted Killashandra. She pretended to continue eating in a courteous disregard of the exchange, but she didnt lose a syllable of Trags reply. Four agronomists, an endocrinologist from Theta, two xenobiologists, an atmospheric physicist, three former spacers Killashandra noted the slight widening of Lanzeckis eyes which she interpreted as satisfaction and the usual flotsam who have no recommendations from Testing. Thank you, Trag. Lanzecki nodded his head at Killashandra to indicate the interruption was concluded and finished off the dish of fried Malva beans. So what is the glitch in the Optherian assignment? A lousy fee? On the contrary, such an installation is set at twenty thousand credits. And Id be off-world as well. Killashandra was quite impressed with the latitude such a credit balance would give her to forget crystal. You have not been awarded the contract, Killa. I appreciate your willingness to entertain the assignment but there are certain aspects which must be considered by the Guild as well as the individual. Dont commit yourself rashly. Lanzecki was being sincere. His eyes held hers steadily and a worried crease to his brows emphasized his warning. Its a long haul to the Optherian system. Youd be gone from Ballybran nearly a full year All the better You say that now when youre full of crystal resonance. You cant have forgotten Carrik yet. His reminder conjured flashing scenes of the first crystal singer she had met: Carrik laughing as they swam in Fuertes seas, then Carrik wracked by withdrawal fever and finally the passive hulk of the man, shattered by sonic resonance. You will in time, Ive no doubt, experience that phenomenon, Lanzecki said. Ive never known a singer who didnt try to push himself and his symbiont to their limits. A major disadvantage to the Optherian contract is that you would lose any resonance to your existing claims. As if I had a decent claim among the lot. Killashandra snorted in disgust. Rose is no good to anyone and the blue petered out after two days cutting. Even the white vein skips and jumps. I cut the best of the

Your haukis bluid was nevir sae reid,

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 My deir son I tell thee O. 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

Then Robin he turns him round about,

heavy snowfalls, strangely enough, are all but unknown on the Greenland ice-capbut the air was full of millions of driving, needle-pointed ice spicules that swept towards us out of the impenetrable darkness to the east, clogging up our goggles in a matter of seconds and stinging the narrow exposed area of my face between mask and goggles like a thousand infuriated hornets. A sharp, exquisite pain, a pain that vanished almost in the moment of arrival as the countless sub-zero spicules dug deep with their anaesthetising needles and drove out all sensation from the skin. But I knew this ominous absence of feeling all too well. Once again I turned my back to the wind, kneaded the deadened flesh with mittened hands till the blood came throbbing back, then pulled my snow-mask higher still. The plane was flying in an anti-clockwise direction, following, it seemed, the path of an irregular oval, for the sound of its motors faded slightly as it curved round to north and west. But within thirty seconds it was approaching again, in a swelling thunder of sound, to the south-westto the leeward of us, that wasand I could tell from Jackstraw's explosive ejaculation of sound, muffled behind his mask, that he had seen it at the same moment as myself. It was less than half a mile distant, no more than five hundred feet above the ice-cap, and during the five seconds it remained inside my line of vision I felt my mouth go dry and my heart begin to thud heavily in my chest. No SAC bomber this, nor a Thule met. plane, both with crews highly trained in the grim craft of Arctic survival. That long row of brightly illuminated cabin windows could belong to only one thinga trans-Atlantic or trans-polar airliner. "You saw it, Dr Mason?" Jackstraw's snow-mask was close to my ear. "I saw it." It was all I could think to say. But what I was seeing then was not the plane, now again vanished into the flying ice and drift, but the inside of the plane, with the passengersGod, how many passengers, fifty, seventy?sitting in the cosy security of their pressurised cabin with an air-conditioned temperature of 70 F, then the crash, the tearing, jagged screeching that set the teeth on edge as the thin metal shell ripped along its length and the tidal wave of that dreadful cold, 110 degrees below cabin temperature, swept in and engulfed the survivors, the dazed, the injured, the unconscious and the dying as they sat or lay crumpled in the wreckage of the seats, clad only in thin suits and dresses. . . . The plane had fuji 10mp digital camera completed a full circuit and was coming round again. If anything, it was even closer this time, at least a hundred feet lower, and it seemed to have lost some speed. It might have been doing 120, perhaps 130 miles an hour, I was no expert in these things, but for that size of plane, so close to the ground, it seemed a dangerously low speed. I wondered just how effective the pilot's windscreen wipers would be against these flying ice spicules. And then I forgot all about that, forgot all about everything except the desperate, urgent need for speed. Just before the plane had turned round to the east again and so out of the line of our blinded vision, it had seemed to dip and at the same instant two powerful lights stabbed out into the darkness, the one lancing straight ahead, a narrow powerful beam glittering and gleaming with millions of sparkling diamond points of flame as the ice-crystals in the air flashed across its path, the other, a broader fan of light, pointing downwards and only slightly ahead, its oval outline flitting across the frozen snow like some flickering will o' the wisp. I grabbed Jackstraw's arm and put my head close to his. "He's going to land! He's looking for a place to put down. Get the dogs, harness them up." We had a tractor, but heaven only knew how long it would have taken to start it on a night like this. "I'll give you a hand as soon as I can." He nodded, turned and was lost to sight in a moment. I turned too, cursed as my face collided with the slatted sides of the instrument shelter, then jumped for the hatch, sliding down to the floor of the cabin on back and arms without bothering to use the steps. Joss, already completely clad in his furs but with the hood of his parka hanging over his shoulders, was just emerging from the food and fuel tunnel which led off from the other end of the cabin, his arms loaded with equipment. "Grab all the warm clothing you can find, Joss," I told him quickly. I was trying to think as quickly and coherently as I was talking, to figure out everything that we might require, but it wasn't easy, that intense cold numbed the mind almost as much as it did the body. "Sleeping-bags, blankets, spare coats, shirts, it doesn't matter whose they are. Shove them into a couple of gunny sacks." "You think they're going to land, sir?" Curiosity, anticipation, horroreach struggled for supremacy in the thin, dark intelligent face. "You really think so?" "I think

"O here is my hand," the stranger reply'd,

have heard him had he shouted at the top of his voice. "Well, that was what you wanted, wasn't it?" I asked bitterly. "What I wanted! My God, man, that missile mechanism" "I don't give a single solitary damn about the missile mechanism." I ground the words out between clenched teeth. "Six months from now other scientists will have invented something twice as good and ten times as secret. They're welcome to it, and with pleasure." Hillcrest was shocked, but said nothing. But someone was in agreement with me. "Hear, hear!" Zagero had just come up, his hands swathed to the size of boxing gloves in white bandages. The words were light enough, but his face was grim and his eyes bleak as he stared out across the glacier. "My sentiments exactly, Doc. To hell with their murderous little toys. My old man's in that buggy out there. And your girl." "His girl?" Hillcrest turned, looked sharply at me under creased brows for a long moment, then murmured: "Sorry, boy, I didn't understand." I made no response, but twisted my head as I heard footsteps behind me. It was Joss, hatless and gloveless in his excitement. "Wykenham's anchored, sir," he panted out. "Her" "Get down, man! They'll see you." "Sorry." He dropped to his hands and knees. "Her powerboat's already moving inshore. And there was a flight of four Scimitars already airborne: they should be half-way here already. In two minutes'-time four or five bombers are taking off, with HE and incendiaries. They're slower, but" "Bombers?" I snapped irritably. "Bombers? What do they think this isthe Second Front?" "No sir. They're going to clobber the trawler if Smallwood gets away with that missile mechanism. They won't get a hundred yards." "The hell with their missile mechanism. Do human lives mean nothing to them? What is it, Jackstraw?" "Lights, Dr Mason." He pointed to the spot on the fjord wall where the men from the trawler had already covered two-thirds of the horizontal and vertical distance to the end of the glacier. "Signalling, I think." I saw it right away, a small light, but powerful, winking irregularly. I watched it for a few moments then heard Joss's voice. "It's morse, but it's not our morse, sir." "They're hardly likely to signal in English just for our benefit," I said dryly. I tried to speak fps and digital video camera calmly, to hide the fear, the near despair in my mind, and when I spoke again my voice, I knew, was abnormally matter-of-fact. "It's the tip-off to our friends Small-wood and Corazzini. If we can see the men from the trawler, it's a cinch the men from the trawler can see us. The point is, do Smallwood and Corazzini understand them?" Five seconds later I had my answer in the form of a suddenly deepening roar coming to us across the glacier from the engine of the Citroen. CorazziniHillcrest's binoculars had shown him to be the driverhad understood the danger all right, he was casting caution to the winds and gunning the engine to its maximum. He must have been desperate, desperate to the point of madness, for no sane man would have taken the fearful risks of driving that tractor through sloping crevasse ice with the friction coefficient between treads and surface reduced almost to zero. Or could it be that he just didn't know the suicidal dangers involved? After a few seconds I was convinced he didn't. In the first place, I couldn't see either Corazzini or Smallwood as men who would panic under pressure, no matter how severe that pressure, and in the second place suicidal risks weren't absolutely necessary, they would have stood a more than even chance of getting away with their lives and the -missile mechanism if they had stopped the tractor, got out and picked their cautious way down the glacier on foot, with their pistol barrels stuck in the backs of their hostages. Or would theyrather, did they think they would? I tried fleetingly, frantically, to get inside their cold and criminal minds, to try to understand their conception of us. Did they think that we thought, like them, that the mechanism was all important, that human lives were cheap and readily expendable? If they did, and guessing the quality of Jackstraw's marksmanship with a rifle, would they not be convinced that they would be shot down as soon as they had stepped out on to the ice, regardless of the fate of their hostages? Or did they have a better understanding than that of minds more normal than their own? Even as these thoughts flashed through my mind I knew I must act now. The time for thought, had there ever been such a time, was past. If they were left to continue in the tractor, they would either kill themselves on the glacier or if, by a miracle, they reached the bottom safely, they would then kill their

Supposing to have taken bold Robin Hood,

tractor would arrive if it survived Jackstraw's attempts to halt it: Jackstraw was firing in a line well above us now, but we could still hear the thin high whine of every bullet, the metallic crash as it struck the Citroen. Every bullet went home. But that engine was incredibly tough. We were about half-way across when we heard the engine change gear, the high unmistakable whine of the tractor beginning to overrun its engine. CorazziniI could clearly see him now, even without the aid of binocularsmust have found himself losing control on the steepening slope and was using the engine to brake the Citroen. And then, when we were less than a hundred yards away and after a longer than usual lull in the firing -Jackstraw must have stopped to change magazinesthe sixth shell smashed through the riddled hood and the engine stopped as abruptly as if the ignition had been switched off. The tractor stopped too. On that steep slope this was surprising, the last thing I would have expected, but there was no doubt that not only had it stopped but that it had been stopped deliberately: there was no mistaking the high-pitched screech of those worn brakes. And then I could see the reason why. There was some violent activity taking place in the driving cabin of the tractor, and as we neareda maddeningly slow process, there were dozens of crevasses to be jumped, as many more to be skirtedwe could see what it was. Corazzini and Solly Levin were struggling furiously, and, from thirty or forty yards, it seemed, incredibly enough, that Solly Levin was getting the better of it. He had flung himself completely on top of Corazzini where the latter sat behind the wheel, and was butting him savagely in the face with the top of his bald head, and Corazzini, trapped in the narrow space, could find no room to make use of his much greater strength. Then, abruptly, the door on the driver's side burst openwe could see it clearly, having been lower down than the tractor when it had stopped we were approaching it now almost head onand the two men fell out fighting and struggling furiously. We could see now why Levin had been using his headboth hands were bound behind his back. It had been an act of desperate courage to attack Corazzini in the first place, but the old man wasn't to get the reward he deserved for his selflessness: even as we came up to them Corazzini got his automatic clear and fired down point-blank at Solly Levin who was lying helplessly on his back but still gamely trying to get a leg lock on the bigger man. I was a digital cameras with in camera editing split second too late in getting there, even as I crashed into Corazzini and sent his automatic flying away to slide down the glacier, I knew I was too late, Solly Levin was a crumpled little blood-stained figure lying on the ice even before Corazzini's gun went slithering over the edge of a crevasse. And then I felt myself being pushed to one side, and Johnny Zagero was staring down at the outspread stillness of the man huddled at his feet. For what seemed an eternity, but was probably no more than three seconds, he stood there without moving, then when he turned to Corazzini his face was empty of all expression. It might have been a flash of fear, of realisation that he had come to the end of his road that I saw in Corazzini's eyes, but I could never swear to it, the turn of his head, the sudden headlong dash for the shelter of the ice-covered moraine rocks by the side of the glacier, ten yards away, were so swift that I could be certain of nothing. But swift as he was, Zagero was even swifter: he caught Corazzini before he had covered four yards and they crashed to the glacier together, clawing, punching and kicking in the grim desperate silence of men who know that the winner's prize is his life. "Drop that gun!" I whirled round at the sound of the voice behind me, but all I could see at first was the white strained face of Margaret Ross, the brown eyes dulled with sickness and fear. Involuntarily I brought up the rifle in my hands. "Drop it!" Smallwood's voice was curt, deadly, his face barely visible behind Margaret's shoulder as he peered out through the canvas screen at the rear of the tractor cabin. He was completely shielded by her bodyit was typical of the man's cunning, his ice-cold calculation that he should have waited until our attention was completely distracted before making his move. "And your friend. Quickly now!" I hesitated, glanced at Hillcrestthe only other-man with a weaponto see how he was placed, then jerked my head back again as there came a sudden plop from the silenced automatic and a sharp cry of pain from Margaret. She was clutching her left arm just below the elbow. "Quickly, I said! The next one goes through her shoulder." His voice was soft with menace, his face implacable. Not for a moment did I doubt that he would do exactly as he said: the clatter of Hillcrest's rifle and mine falling on the ice came in the same instant. "Now kick them over the edge

And shows the thing much better than it is,

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 Beguiled with foils of sundry subtle sights 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

To wear the bags of bread.

sail the boat" "Why should they want an interpreter?" Turzig demanded suspiciously. "There are many British officers who speak Greek." "I am coming to that," Andrea said impatiently. "How in God's name do you expect me to finish my story if you keep interrupting all the time? Where was I? ah, yes. They forced me to come along, and their engine broke down. I don't know what happenedI was kept below. I think we were in a creek somewhere, repairing the engine, and then there was a wild bout of drinkingyou will not believe this, Lieutenant Turzig, that men on so desperate a mission should get drunk and then we sailed again." "On the contrary, I do believe you." Turzig was nodding his head slowly, as if in secret understanding. "I believe you indeed." "You do?" Andrea contrived to look disappointed. "Well, we ran into a fearful storm, wrecked the boat on the south cliff of this island and climbed" "Stop!" Turzig had drawn back sharply, suspicion flaring in his eyes. "Almost I believed you! I believed you because we know more than you think, and so far you have told the truth: But not now. You are clever, fat one, but not so clever as you think. One thing you have forgottenor maybe you do not know. We are of the Wurttembergische . Gebirgsbataillonwe know mountains, my friend, better than any troops in the world. I myself am a Prussian, but I have climbed everything worth climbing in the Alps and Transylvaniaand I tell you that the south cliff cannot be climbed. It is impossible!" "Impossible perhaps for you." Andrea shook his head sadly. "These cursed Allies will beat you yet. They are clever, Lieutenant Turzig, damnably clever!" "Explain yourself," Turzig ordered curtly. "Just this. They knew men thought the south cliff could not be climbed. So they determined to climb it. You would never dream that this could be done, that an expedition could land on Navarone that way. But the Allies took a gamble, found a man to lead the expedition. He could not speak Greek, but that did not matter, for what they wanted was a man who could climband so they picked the greatest rock-climber in the world to-day." Andrea paused for effect, flung out his arm dramatically. "And this is the man they picked, Lieutenant Turzig! You are a mountaineer yourself and you are bound to know him. His name is MalloryKeith Mallory of New Zealand!" There was a sharp exclamation, the click of a switch, and Turzig had taken a couple of steps forward, thrust the torch almost into Mallory's sx100 digital camera review eyes. For almost ten seconds he stared into the New Zealander's averted, screwed-up face, then slowly lowered his arm, the harsh spotlight limning a dazzling white circle in the snow at his feet. Once, twice, half a dozen times Turzig nodded his head in slow understanding. "Of course!" he murmured. "MalloryKeith Mallory! Of course I know him. There's not a man in my Abteilung but has heard of Keith Mallory." He shook his head. "I should have known him, I should have known him at once." He stood for some time with his head bent, aimlessly screwing the toe of his right boot into the soft snow, then looked up abruptly. "Before the war, even during it, I would have been proud to have known you, glad to have met you. But not here, not now. Not any more. I wish to God they had sent someone else." He hesitated, made to carry on, then changed his mind, turned wearily to Andrea. "My apologies, fat one. Indeed you speak the truth. Go on." "Certainly!" Andrea's round moon face was one vast smirk of satisfaction. "We climbed the cliff, as I said although the boy in the cave there was badly hurtand silenced the guard. Mallory killed him," Andrea added unblushingly. "It was fair fight. We spent most of the night crossing the divide and found this cave before dawn. We were almost dead with hunger and cold. We have been here since." "And nothing has happened since?" "On the contrary." Andrea seemed to be enjoying himself hugely, revelling in being the focus of attention. "Two people came up to see us. Who they were I do not knowthey kept their faces hidden all the timenor do I know where they came from." "It is as well that you admitted that," Turzig said grimly. "I knew someone had been here. I recognised the stoveit belongs to Hauptmann Skoda!" "Indeed?" Andrea raised his eyebrows in polite surprise. "I did not know. Well, they talked for some time and" "Did you manage to overhear anything they were talking about?" Turzig interrupted. The question came so naturally, so spontaneously, that Mallory held his breath. It was beautifully done. Andrea would walk into ithe couldn't help it. But Andrea was a man inspired that night. "Overhear them!" Andrea clamped his lips shut in sorely-tried forbearance, gazed heavenwards in exasperated appeal. "Lieutenant Turzig, how often must I tell you that I am the interpreter? They could only talk through me. Of course I know what they were talking