Sloan Wilson - Ice Brothers

As the first streaks of dawn turned the edges of a ridge of dark clouds low on the eastern horizon to gold, excitement ran high. Paul stood on the starboard wing of the bridge after making sure that the antiaircraft guns were manned to guard against the possibility of the ski plane making a last desperate dive into the ship. Deep down he felt that nothing would happen, as it usually did. Fat Herman had disappointed him by failing to sail his hunter-killer into a well-prepared trap, and now Hans would probably prove to be just as shrewd. Paul was surprised when he heard the faint drone of the light plane’s engine, and saw it appear, no bigger than a fly, just above the ridge of the mountains. He was even more astonished when a few seconds later he heard the roar of an approaching Lightning. For once everything seemed to be working right.

The Lightning came in low over the ice cap, swerved sharply up to clear the mountains, saw the ski plane almost at once and hurtled toward it. Hans swerved as though in panic and headed back to his base, but even before he had a chance to finish his turn, the Lightning swooped down on him like a hawk on a sparrow. The men on the Arluk could hear the rattle of her guns and see tracers stab out from her wings. The men who had bet on a quick decision cheered, but Hans dived, swerved to the left and leveled out over the water in the fjord instead of crashing. Carried by its 400-mile-per-hour momentum, the Lightning disappeared into the clouds before completing a wide circle, and returning to search for its tiny antagonist. Catching sight of him headed out to sea only a few feet above the highest icebergs, the Lightning dived to attack again.

The planes were so unevenly matched that it took discipline for Paul not to start cheering for David and jeering Goliath. As the Lightning flashed by the tiny plane, Paul realized that its speed, which could not be reduced enough, was its greatest handicap. No sooner had the pilot of the Lightning got Hans into his sights than he had to swerve to avoid crashing into him as he rushed by. The far tighter turning circle of the ski plane enabled Hans to reverse direction with startling suddenness, while the big Lightning kept zooming out of sight before hurtling back with the necessity of locating its prey before trying another attack. Of course Hans had no guns or fired none, and the final outcome of the battle seemed beyond doubt, but for twenty minutes the two planes swooped and circled over the mountains, through the fjord and above the ice cap.

At first Paul thought that the jerky movements of Hans meant that he was panicking, but his completely unpredictable course made him almost an impossible target. The pilot of the Lightning clearly was becoming more and more angry as his frustrations continued. In an effort to follow the intricate maneuvers of the ski plane he forced the big fighter into aerial acrobatics which almost made him lose control. When he should have been slowing almost to landing speed, he poured on the power and banked so sharply that his plane flipped onto its back and did a complete barrel roll, narrowly missing a mountain peak before it straightened out. Hans used the seconds the Lightning lost to head north along the coast, just skimming the ice pack, and dodging into every cove and mountain notch. The Lightning circled high over him before catching a glimpse of the little plane as it hopped over a long granite point that extended into the sea. With its wings and engine screaming it dived, missed again, and began circling Hans, a procedure that enabled him to keep his prey in sight but made shooting him almost impossible. As the men of the Arluk watched, the two planes disappeared between two snow-covered mountain peaks. There was an instant of silence, followed by the sound of a sharp explosion in the distance. A bubble of yellow flame rose from the notch between the mountains.

“Well, he finally got the bastard!” Flags said, and a ragged cheer came from the men of the Arluk . Before it died, they were astonished to see the ski plane reappear. It waggled its wings before scooting over the ridge of mountains to its base. There was no sign of the Lightning except a plume of black smoke in the distance.

“Now how the hell did that happen?” Flags asked.

It seemed obvious to Paul that the rage of the Lightning pilot had caused him to dive too fast to pull out, or had blinded him to the sides of the canyons around which the ski plane was ducking.

“The guy flying that Lightning must have been one of the pilots my brother trained,” he said in disgust. “Damn it, we’re getting to be a whole nation of fuck-ups.” Perhaps that was no joke. Paul was beginning to fear that the Germans really could not be beaten, even when they were hopelessly outclassed. And the escape of the ski plane meant that it would still be there to observe Nathan’s ground troops when they finally started toward its base.

When Nathan returned to the ship, they sent a message to GreenPat, explaining the debacle. GreenPat merely acknowledged the information, but at dawn the next day a PBY showed up. The big sea plane was slow enough to float astern of a light plane while she gunned it down, but not fast enough to catch it. At the first sight of the PBY, the ski plane disappeared over the ice floe.

After that the ski plane gave up its regular dawn patrol, and GreenPat soon tired of sending planes to try to catch it. On bright moonlight nights, though, Paul could still hear the drone of the little engine, and on one cloudy dawn he caught a glimpse of it just before the last rays of sunlight died on the horizon.

Nathan and Paul felt that no supplies could be moved toward Supportup until Peomeenie returned, presumably with some information about the location of the ski plane’s hidden base. The whole operation would have to start with the Lightnings’ putting an end to Hans on the ground. Nathan guessed that after that at least a week would be needed to move his men and supplies up and make all the necessary preparations for the final attack.

Paul had hoped that Peomeenie would return within two weeks, but by mid-December there was still no sign of him. Brit kept saying that Eskimos never hurry and that even an additional two weeks of delay would be nothing to worry about, but Paul and Nathan began to wonder what they could do if Peomeenie and his companion just never came back. Maybe the Germans had taken them prisoner or had shot them. It was all very well for an Eskimo hunter to boast that he could walk like a ghost through a wolf pack without being detected, but the Germans were beginning to seem to Paul as though they had magical powers of their own. Nothing was going right. Why should he expect one lone Eskimo and a woman to handle people who had captured all of Europe?

Nathan looked for more Eskimo men who could start another scouting expedition, but none was interested. They all apparently assumed that Peomeenie would return sooner or later in all probability, and if he did not, there was small enthusiasm for following in his footsteps. Nathan began trying to learn enough about Eskimo methods of travel to undertake the journey himself.

One night when Nathan came aboard to report the progress of his efforts ashore and to help Flags with any radio traffic, his tall, stooped body was identifiable amongst six Eskimos he brought with him only by its shape and size. He had on the whole native Greenlander outfit: sealskin parka with hood, sealskin blouse with the fur turned in, polar bear pants with a dark slice of fox fur or otter in the crotch, and kamiks , the soft sealskin boots with geometric designs around the top. He even had Eskimo mittens with slits to permit him to poke out two fingers to bait hooks and Eskimo sun glasses — a strip of polished driftwood with two slits instead of lenses.