James Axler – Way of the Wolf

“Yeah. Like a skeleton.”

“Only it’s moving now. And we’re moving with it.”

Ryan nodded. He touched his upper lip with a finger, finding it completely numb.

“Mebbe we’ll drift in someplace,” Dean said hopefully.

The words were barely out of his mouth when one of the glaciers in the distance cracked with the sound of a cannon shot. Ryan watched as a huge chunk of the original glacier fell away and dropped into the ocean with a splash that sent a wave of water up dozens of feet.

“Don’t know if we’re going to last that long,” Ryan said quietly. “Appears as if we have a time problem.”

“IT IS CALLED calving,” Doc said. Ryan looked at the old man in disbelief, knowing all the other companions were doing the same thing. Even Albert was regarding Doc as if he were something that had turned up unexpected under a rock.

“The process of an iceberg splitting off a smaller iceberg,” Doc explained. “It’s called calving.”

“Doesn’t matter what it’s called,” Ryan said. “We can’t afford to be here when this one goes.”

They were all gathered back in the mat-trans unit.

“Mebbe the redoubt will be strong enough to hold it together,” Albert said. He sat shivering. Of them all, the dwarf had the least amount of body heat to waste, and was ill dressed for the weather.

“If those quakes are any indication,” J.B. said, “that isn’t going to be true.”

“So what’s the plan, lover?” Krysty asked.

“We continue mapping out this redoubt,” Ryan replied. “Mebbe we get some heat in here, and we’ll have a base of operations.”

“That’s going to happen,” the Armorer said. He stood at the open face of an environmental-control comp. Jagged ice stood out around it where he had chopped his way through. “With all the damage done to the redoubt, the systems automatically went into conservative mode. Getting the doors closed again allowed me to access the relays. Got a new problem, though.”

“What?” Mildred asked. “I’m ready to be warm again, John.”

The Armorer glanced around the room. “Once this ice starts melting, we’re going to have water everywhere.”

“Then we’ll clear as much of it as we can,” Ryan said.

“Found a fire ax over here,” J.B. said. “But if you use it, you’re going to have to be careful with the comps. Don’t know if I can fix the mat-trans unit again, but we don’t need to be making things any worse.”

Ryan took up the fire ax and walked to the corner farthest away from the comps and the gateway. “Start here,” he said. “I’ll bust ice loose for a while and the rest of you carry it into the next room. We get it clear, I’ll expect to feel some of that heat.” He swung the ax, and sheets of ice crashed to the floor.

IT TOOK slightly better than two hours to clear the room. Everybody took turns with the fire ax and the hand ax J.B. had in his kit. And everybody carried the ice away.

After a little while, Albert joined in, and proved to have a fine and deep singing voice that no one expected.

Once the room was clear of ice debris and the floor was scraped, J.B. switched on the environmental-controls override. “Only problem’s going to be if the vents and fans are clogged up somewhere down the line,” he said.

Ryan stood with the others, listening to the machinery gasp and wheeze to life. Somewhere down at the deep end of the duct work, metal beat against a hard, unyielding surface for a while. Then there was an explosion of noise, and the beating sound disappeared.

Only a thin trickle of heat came out of the floor vents. It was a lot weaker than Ryan figured the designers had intended, and not nearly as effective as the systems installers planned. Still, it was warm air and it was welcome.

They huddled around the main blowing unit against one wall opposite the comp stations. Gradually the room warmed, coming up to a degree of comfortability. The lights also brightened.

The main door leading to the access tunnel wasn’t quite flush, but J.B. had made it work. However, gusts of cold wind were allowed in.