Джон Болл - Phase Three Alert

To him the ice cap was a permanent adversary; to Lieutenant Ferguson it was a plaything.

Ferguson was a good pilot — no one had officially doubted that. Personally Stovers liked him; he only resented the fact that he sometimes seemed to forget the seriousness of the business in which he was engaged. One really bad mistake and the ice cap could assimilate plane and crew somewhere out on a wilderness of such vastness, with total lack of any possible food or fuel, so as to make it a terrible enemy.

Lieutenant Ferguson, having discovered the ice cap and having read as much as he could find about it, was apparently determined to explore it every time he got the opportunity. Whenever the weather permitted and he was present to do so, he would find a suitable excuse to go off flying over the never-visited areas just to look at a part of the vast frozen emptiness that possibly no one else had ever before seen. He had never been known to go out on the same heading twice.

On this particular morning the flying weather was close to Arctic perfect and the C-130 was ready to go. It was programmed to take out three of the locally attached personnel to get in their required flying hours before returning to base. That meant at least a half-day trip and, since Ferguson would be in command, it meant that as much time as possible would be spent over seldom-if-ever-visited areas atop the great hostile desert. That was why Sergeant Stovers bemoaned the fact that the day was so brilliantly clear and suitable for long-range observation. It would have been far more sensible to have stayed on the Thule airway and perhaps practice an instrument approach or two on the way back.

There was no load to be carried other than the required arctic survival kits and equipment, the mandatory sleeping bags, and the other emergency supplies that a careful crew chief, and the equally cautious loadmaster, always made sure were on board.

After a final check of all equipment and gear, and a verifying inspection of the weight and balance figures, Sergeant Stovers glanced at his watch. Takeoff was scheduled in twenty-two minutes, so the rest of the crew should be coming on board shortly. He looked out of the entrance doorway and almost collided with Lieutenant Jenkins, the navigator, who had chosen that moment to come in from the other side.

“Where to?” Stovers asked, just to be sure.

The lieutenant came on board and sat down heavily in his arctic gear on a stack of parachute pack survival kits. Because he was, at twenty-eight, not only already balding, but also notably overweight and unable to do much about it until he left the Arctic, he was short of breath. He gathered himself together and began a mock lecture. “Our route this morning has been scientifically chosen. Careful study of existing documents has revealed the fact that there is a considerable area of the ice cap, located approximately halfway from here to Thule, which is virtually unexplored. At least it has not been visited under conditions of good visibility within the memory of man. We are going there.”

The lieutenant looked around and noted with approval that both coffee jugs and the flight lunches were on board and secured.

Sergeant Stovers did not comment, there was no need. Instead he climbed down the four steps to the ground in order to feel the solid, safe, firmament of Greenland once more under his feet. He was wearing three pairs of massively thick wool socks, over them mukluks, and then arctic thermal boots with added double-felt innersoles. Even on the ramp area there was a good bit of snow, under that a substantial layer of ice, and beneath that, concrete. Nonetheless Bill Stovers felt that the soil itself was as good as pushing its way between his toes, and the thought gave him an improved outlook. After more than 6,000 hours of professional flying he knew the high reliability of properly maintained and flown aircraft that stayed out of lethally bad weather. In another five or six hours he would be back at the same spot and free to go his own way. At Sondrestrom for all practical purposes there was nowhere to go, but at the moment that thought did not disturb him.

Down the ramp a vehicle was approaching; that would be the Fearless Leader and the rest of the crew. He stood by the door and watched them unload. Ferguson, he noted at once, was in a particularly pleasant and optimistic mood, which made matters slightly worse. Stovers recalled his happier days with the considerably more cautious and conservative Major Sams, who had had twenty years in the cockpit behind him and who had insisted that everyone on board wear parachutes during all takeoffs and landings.

Ferguson was tall and lean, the very picture of the popular man about campus who had won his letter in basketball. His long arms were made for waving carefree greetings and his somewhat skinny rear for fitting into the bucket seats of sports cars. His hair was thick and bunched on the top of his head so that he appeared at least eight years younger than his true age. He did not look the part of an aircraft commander and he often refused to act it according to the long-accepted script.

Fortunately, he made up for his lack of appearance and decorum by a youthful skill at the controls that at times approached the phenomenal. He made dead-on-the-button instrument approaches and he had once set his C-130 down during a snowstorm whiteout with both ILS and RAL unavailable. They still talked about that one, how he had apparently smelled the ground and the comforting safety of the runway with no radio aids at all to guide him on final approach. When he had been asked about it by his superiors, he had simply answered, “I knew where it was.”

In ten years, Stovers thought, he would be one hell of a pilot. Maybe even sooner if he settled down.

As Ferguson ducked his head to climb on board, Stovers said a proper, “Good morning, sir.” It pleased him that he put into the words exactly the intonation he had wanted: official correctness, but with subdued undertones of professional restraint.

In fifteen minutes they were airborne. In the cold air the props took hold with abrupt suddenness and the heavy airlifter fairly jumped off the ground. Once they were clear of the fjord and the surrounding hills, Jenkins passed up a climbing heading toward the northeast, one that would take them over the long upper reaches of the timeless frozen desert that deserved recognition as one of the true wonders of the world.

When they had been out slightly under an hour, Ferguson evicted his regular copilot and put one of the Sondrestrom men in his place. “When you fly one of these things,” he explained, “don’t let the fact that there are skis hanging on underneath bother you too much. They only cost about four miles an hour of cruising speed. Actually, if anything, the aircraft is overpowered and you don’t have to worry about hot, thin air up here. Let me show you.”

After that he began a series of maneuvers close to the ice cap that caused Sergeant Stovers to withdraw well back into the all-but-windowless fuselage so that he would not have to witness what was going on. He felt the pull of the G’s in the steep turns and knew that Ferguson was flying the big empty transport like a fighter. Fortunately the sergeant had a strong stomach, otherwise the abrupt changes of attitude and almost continous turns would have had him reaching for one of the urp buckets in a hurry. As it was, one of the Sondrestrom crewmen who was along for the flying time did not look too happy.

Stovers shut his eyes and thought of the navigator, who was supposed to be keeping track of the position of the aircraft over an area totally without any possible points of ground reference. At the moment, he reflected, he did not care where they were.

Another steep turn revealed itself in the pull on his stomach; the Sondrestrom man reached for the wax-lined bag. Stovers watched him as the thought touched a corner of his own brain that he, too, was beginning to feel certain symptoms of distress.