Джон Болл: Phase Three Alert

When he had sufficient altitude, he turned back at reduced speed and inspected the tracks he had just made for any evidence of a possible dangerous area. Satisfied at last, he climbed again to turning altitude, swung around once more, and established his final approach. He flared with extreme care, but as the rear skis made contact the airframe shook gently and the noise was abrasive throughout the fuselage. This time Ferguson eased the nose ski down and the heavy airlifter was fairly on the ice. It was as good and smooth a ski landing as he had ever made. As soon as the speed began to drop and it was evident that everything had been successful, a certain constrained excitement began to be felt by every man on board.

Ferguson let the Hercules slide across the snow cover at partial power until the old B-17 was only a short distance ahead. Then he chopped the power back and his airlifter slid to rest less than seventy yards from the end of the wing of the old bomber.

Sergeant Stovers opened the crew door and swung it down to form the four steps that led to the surface of the snow. As he did so, he had an odd, undefinable sensation. He had made many ice cap landings at DEW Line sites, but always in marked-off and established areas. Now he was hundreds of miles from any place he had ever been on the ice cap before and the ghost of the abandoned B-17 hulk added a sense of unreality.

Although he was far from a romantic, the thought did come to him that if he had had a space suit on, it might have been something like stepping onto the surface of a different planet. Against his own well-seated conservative judgment, he was for a few stimulating moments glad that Ferguson had decided to set down.

In the hold, the rest of the crew and the three riders from Sondrestrom were busy getting into their parkas and other arctic equipment. When everyone was ready, Stovers included, by common unexpressed consent they all waited for Ferguson to be the first to step out onto the virgin snow. Sensing this, the youthful aircraft commander ducked his head, thrust his shoulders through the doorway, and climbed down. Despite the invitation of the silent, frozen bomber, he first made a careful inspection of his ski gear and assured himself that the C-130 was standing firmly on the ice and was in no possible danger of sinking in. Satisfied, he went back to the crew door where the others were still waiting.

Together the nine men who made up the party walked abreast the short distance to the old bomber. As they drew closer it seemed to grow a little in size — a patient piece of relatively complex machinery which, in utter solitude, had stood there for more than three decades. Once it had been able to fly, now it was a hopeless derelict totally without any power whatever to help itself.

Perhaps out of respect for the flying machine it had once been, the little party walked completely around it to inspect its condition. Jenkins, the navigator, had his Rolleiflex that had been modified for Arctic use. With it he took a number of pictures, squatting down for better camera angles and then backing away to get in some of the sweep of the ice cap which now formed almost all of the visible world.

“Shall we go on board?” Holcomb asked.

Ferguson paused by the nose before he answered. “I’ve got to respect the man who flew her,” he said aloud, but largely to himself. “He put the gear down before he landed. The easy and safe way would have been to slide her in on her belly, but he wanted to give her a chance.”

Corbin, a redheaded Californian who had once had thoughts of trying to organize an Arctic skin diving club, felt the miasma that filled the sharply cold air close to the old warplane and asked a reasonable question. “Do you think he had ideas about taking her off again? Otherwise, I don’t see why he put the wheels down. It was a lot riskier way to land.”

“I think he couldn’t bring himself to do the thing that he knew would permanently wreck his fine new bird,” Ferguson responded. “He must have been almost certain before he set her down that she would never fly again, but there’s always that one outside chance. Suppose he iced up in bad weather and couldn’t climb above it. Probably he knew almost nothing about the ice cap, but he could well have believed that with improved weather, if it came soon enough, he would be able to clear up the trouble and get her airborne again. It must have been a pretty desperate hope, but he took a calculated chance without too much added risk.” He stopped and looked again at the ghost ship half-buried in the compacted snow. “I’d have done the same thing,” he added.

Sergeant Stovers was interested in the fact that the design which had been painted on the nose was still partially visible despite the cruel weathering it had endured. It was far from intact, but it could be made out. Some of the letters of the name were totally gone, others were readable. By making four or five patient trips to first one side and then the other of the nose, he was at last able to decipher what the words had been. As is characteristic of many senior NCO’s, he did not volunteer the information, but waited to be asked.

Ferguson finished his inspection of the nose area and walked around the wing toward the rear of the old fuselage. He felt very strongly the magnetism of the derelict aircraft, at last receiving visitors after such a long and hopeless wait. Over the years the snow had gradually built up into a semi-solid mass against the fuselage until it was almost level with the top of the main structure.

One of the riders from Sondrestrom, a captain named Finch, came up to stand beside him. “Want to go on board?” he asked.

“I think so,” Ferguson answered.

“I’ll get an axe from the C-130,” Finch said. “We can chop a hole through the top. It’s the easiest way.”

“We’ll do nothing of the kind,” Ferguson came back. “This may be an old wreck, but it’s still an airplane and entitled to some respect. If we go on board, it’ll be properly through the crew door.”

For some reason that proclamation warmed Sergeant Stovers. He gladly went back to the C-130 and broke out the two shovels he kept on board against the time that a ski might plow in somewhere and have to be dug out. It was up to him to think of things like that.

When he came back with the tools, he handed one of them to Andy Holcomb. Then he allowed himself the honor of chopping out the first shovelful of snow and throwing it aside. For five minutes he and Holcomb labored to make headway through the hard-frozen snow that had gathered against the gear and had piled up underneath the bomb bay. When the captain tapped him on the shoulder and offered to take over, Stovers handed him the shovel and let him work out his penance.

It took some time to chip away enough of the stubborn stuff, but the wind was light and there were plenty of fresh hands to keep the work going. Ferguson did his share as did everyone else until, after a good thirty minutes, enough snow had been removed to give access to the underneath crew door.

As everyone had expected, it was frozen rigidly shut.

“Maybe it’s locked,” Corbin suggested.

Ferguson shook his head, “The pilot wouldn’t do that, he’d leave it open. There aren’t any sneak thieves around here.”

The Californian pressed his lips together, wishing that he had had the sense to see that before he had made a fool of himself. His embarrassment was relieved when Andy Holcomb returned from another trip back to the C-130; this time he was carrying a thin red signal flare in his left mitten and an empty canvas bucket in his right.

“Bill,” he said to Stovers, “fill this with loose snow and stand by. I’m going to try and free up the door without setting fire to the whole wreck. If anything starts to sizzle, get the snow onto it fast.”