He was thinking in terms of their survival rather than his own, for he knew that he was the least likely member of the expedition to come through the forthcoming ordeal with his life. Although he had taken four weeks of training at the U.S. Army Arctic Institute, he was not as familiar with the icecap or as well conditioned to it as were the others. Furthermore, he stood six one and weighed a hundred seventy pounds. Emily, his oldest sister, had called him String Bean since he was sixteen. But he was broad at the shoulders, and his lea arms were muscular: a string bean, then, but not a weakling. A weakling could never have ridden the Colorado River rapids, run with the shark hunters off Bimini, climbed mountains in Washington State. And as long as he had a warm igloo or a heated room at Edgeway Station to which he could return after a long day of exposure to the debilitating cold, he could hold up pretty well. But this was different. The igloos might no longer exist, and eve if they did exist, there might not be sufficient fuel in the snowmobile tanks or life in the batteries to keep them warm for longer than another day. Survival, in this case, demanded a special strength and stamina that came only with experience. He was all but certain that he did not have the fortitude to pull through.
What he would most regret about dying was his mother’s grief. She was the best of the Doughertys, above the muck of politics, and she had experienced too much grief already. God knew, Brian had caused her more than a little of it with his—
A flashlight beam found him in the darkness.
“Are you ready to go?” Roger Breskin shouted.
“Whenever you are.”
Roger returned to the snowmobile.
No sooner had Brian braced himself than the rope was drawn up, putting a new and more terrible strain on his aching shoulders. Bettered by the wind, half dazed by pain, unable to stop thinking about the immense watery grave that lapped far below him, he slid along the face of the cliff as smoothly as George Lin had done five minutes ago. When he came to the brink, he was able to push and kick over the top without Roger’s help.
He got up and took a few uncertain steps toward the snowmobile’s headlamps. His ankles and thighs were sore, but the pain would diminish with exercise. He had come through virtually unscathed. “Incredible,” he said. He began to untie the knots that held the harness together. “Incredible.”
“What are you talking about?” Roger asked as he joined him.
“Didn’t expect to make it.”
“You didn’t trust me?”
“It wasn’t that. I thought the rope would snap or the cliff crack apart or something.”
“You’re going to die eventually,” Roger said, his deep voice almost theatrical in its effect. “But this wasn’t your place. It wasn’t the right time.”
Brian was as amazed to hear Roger Breskin waxing philosophical as he had been to learn that the man knew fear.
“If you’re not hurt, we’d better get moving.”
Working his throbbing shoulders, Brian said, “What now?”
Roger wiped his goggles. “Put the second snowmobile right side up and see if it still works.”
“And then?”
“Find the temporary camp. Join up with the others.”
“What if the camp isn’t on this iceberg with us?”
Roger didn’t hear the question. He had already turned away and started toward the toppled snowmobile.
The cabin of the remaining snowmobile would seat only two men; therefore, Harry elected to ride behind the open cargo trailer. Claude was willing to surrender his place, and Pete Johnson insisted on giving up his seat behind the handlebars, as though riding in the trailer were desirable, when in fact the exposure might prove deadly. Harry cut them short and pulled rank in order to obtain the worst of all positions for himself.
The trailer contained the eighteen-inch-square hot plate and the steel barrel in which they’d melted snow to obtain water to fill the blasting holes. They tipped the barrel off the trailer and rolled it out of their way; the wind caught it and swept it off into the night, and in seconds the hollow clatter of its bounding progress faded into the cacophonous symphony of the storm. The hot plate was small, and because it might come in handy later, Claude found a place for it inside the cabin.