Killer

“But what if you’re wrong? What if it is just the nearest cliff that’s dangerous? Can we afford to throw away the potential safety of moving on to the berg? I mean, if we stay here, we could all go the way of poor old Preston.” He spoke of it as though it was some distant event whose importance had been sapped by the passing of a long period of time.

“I suppose we could try to bring the risky terracing down and see what happens,” said Ross. “But if we’re going to try it, we’d better do it before it gets too near, because if anything goes wrong, if the cliffs all go, and the upper terracing comes down, the berg will upend. The whole thing will turn over.”

They went over to the point at which Ross had examined the iceberg with the telescopic sight on the Weatherby, which he still carried in his right hand. As they watched him, he went down on one knee, and took up the position he had assumed to shoot at the dynamite. The rifle gave its whiplash crack once, twice, three times.

Ross watched the tiny plumes appear low on the cliff in the sight. His keen ears caught the strange echoes: as though the sound of the rifle were being reproduced, increasingly loud, in an electronic synthesiser. He scanned the face of the cliff anxiously. A powdering of crystals sprang out of the ice wall as though someone had dusted it with caster sugar. The sounds continued to grow. Something moved. He slammed the guard of the sight against his eyebrow. A concave face low on the cliff wall had suddenly become convex.

“There it . . .” His voice was lost in the roar. It was as though an express train was charging at full throttle out of the tunnels of the ice. The whole cliff began to slide, bulging at the bottom, descending with stately grace at the top, into the exploding cloud of crystals and spray.

“BACK!” yelled Ross. Already the first waves were boiling out towards them, walls of white foam throwing up great gouts of spume. They all scrambled to their feet, and ran as best they could to the camp.

“DOWN!”

Nobody needed to be told twice. They all threw themselves on to the net, and hung on for dear life. The floe, large as it was, rose steeply. And this was just as well, for had the waves swept on unchecked they might have washed the whole camp away. As it was, the storage tent collapsed, hot ash spilled from the fire tray; the ice beneath them cracked and groaned as though it was in pain; and long after the waves had all passed, they lay too stunned to move.

After a while, Ross spoke. “I really think,” he said, almost apologetically, “that it would be better if we all stayed here.”

He heaved himself up. The berg was looming dangerously close now. He could see the foam as the small waves broke against its huge underwater reaches. It would pass, he thought, a couple of hundred yards north of them: too close for comfort. “We’d better make as little noise as possible,” he continued, “and it would be better if we didn’t move around too much.”

Even Quick was more than content to stay where he was, clutching at the bright orange strands of the net. He licked his dry lips, and looked at the looming berg, his mind far too busy for comfort, seeing what would happen if it went now: the great waves, ten times higher than the ones they had just suffered, would sweep over them, tearing their hands from the net, sweeping them into the water to drown. To drown if they were lucky; a sudden vision of the killers reared in front of his eyes, tight-closed as they were. The huge black and white faces, the monstrous teeth.

BOOM! The ice leaped.

“Oh sweet Jesus,” he whispered. The berg loomed so large, its shadow ate at the whiteness of the floe. Another killer hurled itself at the floe.

BOOM!

Just beyond the perimeter of the camp, the ice heaved up into the familiar blister.

“What do we do?” asked Quick, his voice, grotesquely quiet, spiralling out of control.

“Pray,” said Ross, and under the brisk monosyllable, came the double click as he opened and closed the breech of the Weatherby.

“Colin! You’ll bring the berg down!” gasped Kate.

“I don’t think so. Not if I space the shots carefully.” BOOM!

The blister of cracked ice burst. A familiar black and white head rose, beautifully marked and deadly: a young male. Ross shot it under the chin: a fountain of blood blasted out of the top of its head. The mouth opened and closed. The tongue worked. It hesitated for several moments, while echoes of the shot grew and receded, before sinking slowly out of sight. But even before the water had closed over it, and while the last high sounds were hanging threateningly in the air, another one exploded through the thinner ice to the north of the camp, and another.

“Shoot!” screamed Quick.

“I can’t! Not until the echo dies!”

“I don’t think the bullets you have in there have enough stopping power,” said Job quietly. “You’ll be better with the Remington and the hollow-pointed stuff.”