Duncan Kyle - Whiteout!

He must have seen me clearly, because a second later the blade began to rise in the air as he brought in the hydraulics. 1 clung on grimly as it lifted, guessing what would happen next, but shaken by the suddenness as the hydraulics were cut and the bladecrashed down, seeking to dislodge me. An appalling drag on my arms and shoulders signalled that it was lifting again and I knew I'd never survive another drop. Already my hands were beginning to lose their hold and the blade had only swung half up. I'll never know what made me let go then deliberately, rather than be shaken off a second or two later. I slid down the blade's curve, on to the snow, and rolled frantically beneath its leading edge, praying I'd make it before the blade crashed down again.

Swivelling round, I lay flat, and along the whole length of my body felt the whump as the blade was released. I was trapped now in the ten-foot gap between the two huge tracks, still almost sight-less, but crawling fast towards the rear. If he pivoted now, it was all over. Free now of these murderous lights, blinking rapidly, I discerned dimly the rectangle of snow behind the moving bull-dozer and drove myself, almost swimming in the loose snow, towards it. The huge steel body of the machine was only inches above my head, the tracks hideously close to my moving hands. And then above me, the roar of sound changed subtly as the power was adjusted on the tracks and he began to turn the machine. I crawled with it in an overwhelming panic, swinging my body round with the machine, and somehow making forward ground in that moving, lethal tunnel of machinery. One of the tracks actually buffeted my boot as I crawled clear. But I was clear, and now I could take up a position behind the tractor, where he couldn't see me. And I stayed behind it, holding on to the rear of it and stepping carefully sideways as it swung, pivoting through a full circle, the headlights sweeping the ice while he searched for me. If only I'd had that home-made petrol bomb! But I hadn't; it was in the cab of the hovercraft and I didn't even know where the hovercraft was ! I tried to put myself in his place, at the controls of the bulldozer. He'd be wondering, surely, whether he'd got me. With luck he'd be half-convinced, more than half-convinced, that he had. He'd be hoping that nobody could vanish beneath blade and tractor and survive. But he'd need to be sure, to go on looking, to prove to himself that nobody but himself was now moving on that bleak snow surface.

Now, at last, my sight was recovering from that dreadful glare and suddenly, past the slowly turning bulldozer, I saw the hovercraft caught clearly by its knifing lights through the heavy curtain of snow. And I thought I saw something else. Not with certainty; it could have been an optical illusion; but watching carefully, I became increasingly sure. A wind was starting to blow. I turned my face into it briefly and felt its cold breath, and suddenly the snow was no longer falling vertically: caught by the air movement its downward path tilted. And now I was sure: the hovercraft itself, with only the touch of its skirts to provide friction on the loose surface, was beginning to drift on the wind. It was like a boat in so many ways, and this was one!

Still keeping to the rear of the tractor, I backed rapidly away. Now the tracks had stopped swivelling as the driver wrestled with the levers to reverse them and to bring round the lights to bear on the TK4. The drift was carrying it at an angle across the front of the tractor and he'd have to turn back a good deal further to bring it into focus. Knowing he'd be concentrating on the controls, I turned and ran towards the TK4, which was now sliding slowly away from the swinging lights and almost, yet not quite, towards me. Our paths converged, but with an awkward obliqueness, and I'd be caught in the beams before I reached it.

With every ounce of energy I could summon, I plunged on, the icy air driving into my lungs, and the dry snow crystalline beneath my feet. A swift glance to my right showed the beams turning as the big bulldozer swung round on its tracks, and the sideways glow of the light gave me a clear sight now of the slowly gliding hovercraft. Seconds later the first of the beams had caught me, but I was less than five yards from the TK4 now, cutting across in front to let its bulk shield me. It seemed to be picking up speed, too, with every passing second. Then abruptly I was there, grasping the handrail, my foot scrabbling for the mounting step, and missing, and my heart high in my throat as I was dragged along. I tried to jump, to thrust myself up, away from the clogging snow, and got my toe just on to the step. Arching my back, straining, I forced myself up, got a better grip .., in seconds now I was inside the cab, giving her throttle and wrenching at the controls to let air flow down and give me lift. Then came a curious little flick-smack sound and one panel of the glass screen crazed. So now I knew : he had the rifle !

But I had the speed, if there was time to use it. As the propellers chewed the air, I slipped off into the darkness and concealment of the snowblow. It was impossible to be sure, but I thought then that I half-heard, half-felt the impact of another bullet, somewhere behind me. I was trying to decide how many rounds he had left. He'd used two in the well trench, perhaps two more now. And Smales had talked, hadn't he, of an old rifle, with the mag locked in his desk. One left, then, two at the outside. Perhaps they'd all gone? But I squashed that optimistic thought. He'd keep one. Behind me the already dimming lights from the big tractor vanished suddenly. Yes, I thought grimly, he's kept one. And now the hide-and-seek game was reversed. I had to go and get him\ I slowed, tripping the heater switch and adjusting the airflow to direct warmth at my feet. They were bitterly cold, but I drew what comfort I could from the fact that I could still feel them, though my toes, as I tried to move them, seemed strangely lethargic.

Now I had to find him! Somewhere there in the cold dark of the icecap, he was waiting for me, waiting with a rifle, himself protected by tons of heavy steel. Keeping an eye on the compass, treacherous though a compass was in these latitudes, I swung the TK.4 through a hundred and eighty degrees and began to creep forward. There was no means of measuring distance; no means, that is, beyond my own judgment of eye and speed; and there was the wind to allow for, too.

A touch of the rudder moved my heading a little to the left. I'd calculated three hundred yards to the hut and I wanted to approach it from wider out, to use, if 1 could, its scant shelter to hide my approach. Outside the open side window the snowfield flowed by, its smoothness almost impossible to measure, and I tried to calculate distance additionally on the basis of my own forward speed. The doubt began to grow until it was a certainty that I'd missed the hut ; it had passed, unseen, somewhere to my right. But where? Not far, surely.

Then, looking down, I thought I saw a depression in the snow surface; yes - filling rapidly, already beginning to lose definition beneath the new layer, but it was a tractor track, with the faint oblongs and ridges still vaguely to be seen.

Again I turned the TK4, taking care not to lose sight of those precious marks. I thought grimly that he had two tasks now: to fend me off, and to do the job he'd come out here to do - to destroy the evidence that must convict him. And time was pressing. Dare he wait for me, perhaps in the lee of the hut, with the rifle, or would he be moving the tractor along that hand line? I let the TK4 creep forward. A single flick of the headlights might tell me whether my direction was right, but their glow would also pinpoint my location and I daren't try it. I sank low in my seat, to give myself the maximum protection of the hull plating, knowing that a rifle bullet fired at close range would go through both it, and me, without being even briefly delayed.