The plane was to touch down on Gow Island. Because there was a low-pressure area off the Chilean coast which it was wise to wait out, the plane and its passengers would stay overnight at the little supply depot which was Gow Island. Seven passengers and three crewmen would be guests of the establishment for sixteen hours. It was unprecedented. It was incredible. It was exciting, because Gow Island normally saw only one plane a week, and not every week at that. The planes that did come winging through, merely touched ground to refuel and to take on such items of supply as had been requisitioned from the island’s warehouses. It was rare that a plane stayed on the island’s airstrip for as long as half an hour. Flying crewmen had no time for socializing in so remote a spot.
So this plane would be a highly welcome novelty. It would be so delightful a change from the routine monotony that Drake, the island’s administrative officer, wondered rather grimly what new tensions and antagonisms would remain as souvenirs of the visitors. He could tick off some of them right away.
There were the four girls on the island. Nora Hall wouldn’t make trouble. She was the last-arrived girl at the depot, and Drake was grateful for her sanity. But there was Spaulding, who had been trying urgently to arrive at a romantic understanding with her. To him, the coming of other men would mean competition and unease. The other three girls fairly jittered in anticipation of seeing and even dancing with new men who’d seen no girls at all for many months, and consequently would be infinitely susceptible. The cook planned to make the newcomers scornful of the cooks at the antarctic bases. If they didn’t fairly wallow in his food, he’d feel bitter. The power officer already raged, because the girl he was almost engaged to would talk to the newcomers. The warehouse maintenance crew and the island’s mechanics planned a poker party—if they could get the men away from the girls for a proper manly evening of losing their money. They’d be peevish if there was no poker party, or if the newcomers took their money instead.
There was Tommy Belden. He was a mechanic’s helper at the airstrip. To him, the coming of the plane would be a reminder of the world of movies and dates and baseball—all that was normal and homelike to a nineteen-year-old. The strangers would be going back to that. He’d envy them desperately.
And there was Beecham, the biologist attached to the island to study the possible development of food crops to be grown in high latitudes. He gloated now, because he’d have a chance to look at the vegetation from the Hot Lakes district on the antarctic continent. It had been photographed from the air a year before—a stretch of some hundreds of square miles of bare ground in the midst of eternal snow, from which steam arose and which contained deep blue and rose-colored hot-water lakes. This district had been reached by helicopter only very recently, and the first biological specimens from it were in the plane which would touch at Gow Island presently. To Beecham, the matter was of passionate importance. The Hot Lakes area had been isolated from the rest of the world since the south polar ice-cap formed, millions of years ago. Its vegetation should be like something from another planet. Beecham would be rapt while the plane was aground. But he’d be bitterly grieved when it went away and left him to pure routine.
In a way, the whole problem was absurd. Drake saw its absurdity. There was nothing in prospect but the stopover of a plane on its way home from the antarctic ice, with the presence of ten strangers overnight. But life on Gow was not exciting. The island was isolated. It was remote. Its population was infinitesimal. Dreary gray skies and jumpy nerves and an unending thunder of surf against its precipices made for sensitiveness and unreasoning quarrels and—even worse—romances. Even the squawking, flapping sea-birds who made the island their headquarters frayed the nerves of those who lived there.
The irrational tension increased, and Drake was aware of it. The radio shack relayed reports of the plane’s position. It had taken off from Gissell Bay two hours ago. It had then had twelve hundred miles to go. It was two hours from Gow. Everything was going well. Presently the plane was three hours in flight, which meant one hour from Gow. Everything was going well. Then it was three hours and a half in flight. It should touch down on the island’s airstrip in just thirty-four minutes more.
Three of the four girls labored feverishly at their mirrors. The fourth, Nora Hall, smiled politely and fended off the efforts of Spaulding to get her off to one side so he could insist on their becoming engaged before anybody new turned up. The power officer took his girl aside and quarrelled horribly with her, because a quarrel was inevitable in any case after the strangers went away. The girl grew tear-streaked and defiant and went back to her mirror.
Drake wondered sardonically why he had ever accepted the duties of administrative officer in an isolated installation. Beecham, the biologist, grew so expansive at the prospect of a look at Hot Lakes vegetation that he presented the island’s cook with half his crop of radishes. That was the only happy gesture. The rest was almost neurotic tension—for nothing. The island’s population should not be in such an unstable state. The supply depot there was necessary. It was never ice-bound, so ships could land supplies at any time for air-lift to Antarctica. And the air-lift was short, therefore safer than the one from New Zealand, where a plane in flight might run into weather that couldn’t be predicted when it took off. The Gow installation was justified from every possible standpoint. But it was rough on the people who had to be there. There’d never been permanent inhabitants before. The island had been on charts for a hundred and fifty years, but the only persons known to have landed there before the depot was built, had not survived. When the construction crews explored the island they found a smashed whaleboat and the skeletons of its crew nearby. They appeared to have been men lost from a whaler, who’d made the island with strength enough to land but not to keep on living …
The plane was three and three-quarter hours in flight. It should touch down on Gow in nineteen minutes. In the radio shack the operator sat at his shortwave set, leaning back grandly with headphones on his ears. He smoked, from time to time saying something cryptic into the microphone on his chest. There were four other men in the shack. One watched the operator. The other three watched the radar screen which should report the plane before a human eye could see it.
The operator generously flipped on a speaker, so the others could hear what he did. The speaker relayed the transmission from the open microphone on the plane. On near approach to an island which was sometimes obscured by haze, two-way open-circuit talk was standard operational procedure.
The speaker gave out mutterings.
“Those guys back there …” said a voice, and the rest was inaudible.
“Wonder what we’ll have for dinner,” said another voice. The second voice said: “But I can’t make it out! The guys back there say there’s something happen—”
The voice cut off abruptly. There was a thin, faint uproar that sounded like shouts and screamings. The first voice snapped: “What the devil’s that? Take a look—” The tumult grew louder, as if the door between the pilot’s compartment and the rest of the plane had been opened. A man shouted incoherently. Another man shrieked. The second voice sounded very loud, panting: “Pistol! Quick! Pistol!” A man cried fiercely, far from the microphone: “Cargo doors! Get ’em open! Where the hell—” There was an explosion. A second. A third. Incoherencies and screamings. Pantings.
“This way now! All together and out the cargo door.” More explosions. “Hold fast! Now push! Push! Push!”
A last explosion, which was a shot. There was a zinging sound, and then a crash in the loudspeaker. Then there was silence.
The radio operator stared blankly. Then be snapped: “Calling Icecap! What’s the matter? Calling Icecap! Come in, Icecap!”
The speaker remained silent. All eyes turned to it. The operator sat up tensely. He barked into his transmitter, demanding that the plane in flight—Icecap—answer him.
Somebody said: “Maybe their radio’s smashed.”
Someone else pointed numbly to the r
adar screen.
There was a blip moving slowly but visibly at its edge. It could not be anything but the plane with Gow Island as its intended landing.
“The plane’s still up, anyhow.”
The tiny speck of light moved slowly. There was a singular dead silence in the radio shack. Drake looked in the door.
“How are things going?” he asked matter-of-factly.
Babblings answered him. Men talked feverishly all at once, with their eyes upon a slowly moving speck of brightness at the very edge of the radar screen. The radio operator panted.
“The—plane’s off course,” he chattered. “It made a turn! It’s off course!”
“Tell them about it,” commanded Drake. “Ask them—”
“Their radio’s out!” panted the operator. “The sound cut off! They’re not transmitting!”
“Maybe they’re still receiving,” said Drake harshly. “Don’t ask questions. Tell them! Tell ’em their present course and how to correct it!”
The operator panted into his chest-mike: “Calling Icecap! Calling Icecap! You are off course for Gow Island! You are heading three-forty degrees and your true course is fifteen. You are thirty-five degrees off course! Correct, Icecap! Swing your nose right and come in!”
He repeated the command over and over. With a hideous slowness, the tiny speck of brightness moved. The operator’s voice grew agitatedly jerky. Presently the distant plane’s course was almost corrected. It was headed very nearly for the island.
“That’ll be—thirty miles off,” said Drake sharply. “Keep after it. Keep it headed straight in! Now somebody tell me what’s happened.”
More babblings. Four men tried, all together, to tell him of screamings, of shouts to open the plane’s cargo doors, and of somebody going to see what was the matter and returning to pant for a pistol. Of the shots that followed, ending in a breaking-off of sound transmission in the plane.
Drake made a guess, inevitable for one in his position. He had a very vivid picture of the difficulties of an administrative officer on the ice-cap, who was responsible for the sanity as well as the health and efficiency of the men under him. There had been crackups before now in the bases on the continental ice. There had been various kinds of neuroses developed. Men in enforced close contact through long antarctic nights do not always adjust. Taped music, and even short-wave phone talks with their families, does not necessarily make an antarctic environment tolerable after men have ceased to consider hardship the same as adventure. It would not be at all peculiar for somebody to crack up on the plane taking him away from a tension he could endure no longer.
“Shooting, eh?” said Drake. “I’ll break out the first-aid stuff. Better have a litter ready, too.”
He went away from the radio shack. The sky over the island was gray. The sea beyond the cliffs was gray. The quonset warehouses were painted an official drab color, and the machine-shop shelters and the personnel buildings were no more decorative. The only patch of real color in all the world, it seemed to Drake, was the gaudy red wind sock standing out stiffly from the tower at the upwind end of the runway.
He came upon Spaulding, holding Nora Hall by the arm and speaking with agitated urgency. She looked relieved when Drake drew near.
“What’s the news from the plane?” she asked. “Can I do anything like forming part of a welcoming committee?”
She smiled, while she drew away from Spaulding. He bit his lip and visibly fretted. Drake took due note.
“There’s trouble on the plane,” he said curtly. “Apparently somebody cracked up and started to fight. The plane went off course, and there were shots, and Sparks is trying to talk it in sight of the island. There’s some haze.” Then he added: “You might help, at that. If Sparks has trouble keeping contact, take over the microphone. A woman’s voice might startle even somebody in hysterics into obedience.” To Spaulding he added: “I’ve got to break out a stretcher or two and some first-aid stuff, just in case. I don’t know what’s happened. We have to get ready for anything, including lunacy.”
Nora moved quickly toward the radio shack. Spaulding, scowling, ungraciously received his orders and went toward one of the quonset warehouses. He hailed a mechanic on the way to help.
Drake went to the emergency stores. He put bottles under his arm. A man who has been deprived of all that is normal for him, can take either of two courses when his privation is removed. He may plunge furiously into the gratification of all his pent-up longings, or he may frantically retreat from any satisfaction whatever. Most healthy men, if tension is genuinely long-continued and extreme, will compromise. Drake made ready for that, with visual inducements to nonhysterical relaxation. But the situation could be serious, if someone had cracked up and was afraid to let down at all. Such a man couldn’t be handled except by force.
He headed back for the radio shack. When he entered, the operator was in the act of barking at the silent plane: “What’s the matter? Gone crazy? Swing left! To port! You’re headed for Africa, you crazy fool!”
He turned a sweat-beaded face to Drake.
“The pilot’s gone off his rocker! A little while ago he was circling! Then he started due west and held it!” Drake nodded to Nora.
“Try,” he commanded crisply.
Nora took the microphone:
“Calling Icecap,” she said soothingly. “This is Nora Hall, on Gow Island. According to our radar, you aren’t headed this way at all. Maybe your compass has gone out. If you’ll just follow directions, I’ll be able to check you and talk you in.” She covered the transmitter and said quickly: “What’s the pilot’s name? The co-pilot?” Into the transmitter she said cheerfully: “I don’t know whether this is Captain Brown or Captain Warren. Your transmitter isn’t reaching us. I’ll feel better if I know I’m reaching you. Will you make a little circle now? When you’re headed just right I’ll tell you and you can freeze your rudder amidships.”
Her voice went on. Her eyes clung to the radar-screen. It seemed hours before the speck of light began to swing in a circle. Nora said swiftly: “That’s it! Keep that heading!” She swallowed and added pleasantly: “It seems to me that I met you once. Did I? You’re coming along nicely, now. I’m going to keep talking so your homing receiver will have something to work on, if it’s working. We’ll be very glad to have somebody come down out of the sky to visit us. This is a pretty lonely place, Gow Island.”
Drake went out again, closing the door upon her voice. He stared southward, but the plane was still invisible. There were sea-birds at the end of the island, and twice he thought he saw the nearly motionless speck which would be the approaching plane. But each speck veered sharply and was plainly only a seabird.
He automatically went through those motions which under proper conditions are quite unnecessary. An administrative officer is a man whose work is properly done only if nobody knows that it was done at all. Drake had to verify that the runway was clear, that the wind sock was not fouled, right now, that a stretcher and bandages were handy, as well as a group of able-bodied men to take care of a possible psychotic among the plane’s passengers. At the moment, that seemed as likely as anything else. There had to be somebody at the fire-fighting equipment. CO2 ought to calm down the most violent of even armed men if necessary. Drake went to the fire-fighting equipment and mentioned the fact to young Belden. If the emergency called for that action, Belden would get credit for initiative and quick thinking. Drake considered other possibilities and looked at his watch. The plane was now seven minutes overdue.
He went back to the radio shack. Two more men had crowded inside. The operator mopped his face. Nora Hall still talked calmly, into the transmitter.
“If you could tell me why you swing away every time you come in sight of the island,” she said pleasantly, “we could get ready for whatever is the matter. It looks like you think you shouldn’t land. You head in, and then when you see the island you swing away again. Why not make a run overhead and drop us a message so we can
get ready for whatever you foresee? We’ve already got the fire-fighting equipment ready.”
The operator pointed a shaking hand at the radar screen. A tiny blip moved perceptibly away from its center. There was nothing else except the filmy central outline of the island’s own irregular shape.
“Three times,” panted the operator, “he’s started for here. Each time he sighted the island he veered away. He’s headed for open sea. No land’s nearer than Hawaii on that course!”
Someone said in a thin voice: “We heard shooting. What’d he shoot at? We heard ’em yelling to open the cargo doors. What’d they want to push out?”
Drake said authoritatively: “Never mind that! When the ship lands we’ll hear all about it.”
Nora spoke as she watched the radar screen: “Splendid! You’re going to make a run across the island and drop us a message! We’ll watch for it and get all set for whatever is the matter. Just keep your present course. You’ll sight the island any second now. You can probably see it! Just keep on. Don’t swerve. Freeze your rudder, now, and sweep overhead and drop your message.”
The radar blip had swung about. It moved steadily toward the island. It kept on, swiftly and without hesitation toward the island. It bore straight for the airstrip. Drake barked: “Everybody out! Watch when it goes over! If a message is dropped, we’ve got to get to it fast, and then we can persuade the pilot we’re set for whatever he’s afraid of.”
He was first out of the door. The radio shack emptied of everyone but Nora. Her voice went on, assuring the pilot that everybody on the island was waiting for the message he could drop, and that it would instantly be recovered and read and appropriate measures taken.
The plane came in from the west. It was a mote. It was a speck. It was a tiny spot with thin short lines on either side—its wings. There were dots on those lines. There was something protruding underneath. Not wheels.
The Murray Leinster Megapack Page 128