"Come let me soon see, and bring unto me,

of the harbor, which was now clear of all craft. Nor did there seem to have been anyone to notice their delay. The beach was empty of people. The shuttered shops and houses had an abandoned look to them. The tide was already slopping into the barbecue pits and Killashandra wondered just how much would be left on the waterfront when they sailed back into Wing Harbor. Killashandra found the speed of the Pearl Fisher incredibly exhilarating. To judge by the rapt expression on his face, so did Lars. The fresh wind drove them across the harbor almost to its mouth, before Lars did a short tack to get beyond the land. Then the Pearl was gunwale deep on a fine slant as she sped on a port tack toward the bulk of the Wing. It was an endless time, divorced from reality, unlike cutting crystal where time, too, was sometimes suspended for Killashandra. This was a different sort of time, that spent with someone, someone whose proximity was a matter of keen physical delight for her. Their bodies touched, shoulder, hip, thigh, knee, and leg, as the canting of the ship in her forward plunge kept Killashandra tight against Lars. Not a voyage, she realized sadly, that could last forever but a long interval she hoped to remember. There are some moments, Killashandra informed herself, that one does wish to savor. The sun had been about at the zenith when they had finally tacked out of the Wing Harbor. It was westering as they sailed round the top of the Wing with its lowlands giving way to the great basalt cliffs, straight up from the crashing sea, a bastion against the rapidly approaching hurricane. And the southern skies were ominous with dark cloud and rain. In the shelter of those cliffs, their headlong speed abated to a more leisurely pace. Lars announced hunger and Killashandra went below to assuage it. Taking into account the rough water, she found some heat packs which she opened, and which they ate in the cockpit, companionably close. Killashandra found it necessary to curb a swell of incipient lust as Lars shifted his long body against hers to get a better grip on the tiller. Then they rounded the cliffs and into the crowded anchorage which sheltered Angels craft. Lars fired a flare to summon the jitney to them, then he ordered Killashandra forward with the boat hook to catch up the bright-orange eighty-two buoy to starboard. He furled the sail by remote and went on low-power assist to slow the Pearl and avoid oversailing the buoy. Buoy eighty-two was in the second rank, between two small ketch-rigged gopro hero digital camera fisherboats, and Killashandra was rather pleased that she snagged the buoy first try. By the time Lars had secured the ship to ride out the blow, the little harbor taxi was alongside, its pilot looking none too pleased to be out in the rough waters. What took you so long, Lars? A bit of cross-tide and some rough tacks, Lars said with a cheerful mendacity that caused Killashandra to elbow his ribs hard. He threw his arm about to forestall further assaults. Indeed they both had to hang on to the railings as the little boat slapped and bounced. For a moment, Killashandra thought the pilot was driving them straight into the cliff. Then she saw the light framing the sea cave. As if the overhang marked the edge of the seas domination, the jitney was abruptly on calmer waters, making for the interior and the sandy shore. Killashandra was told to fling the line to the waiting shoremen. The little boat was sailed into a cradle and this was drawn up, safely beyond the depredations of storm and sea. Last one in again, eh Lars? he was teased as the entire party made its way out of the dock and started up the long flight of stairs cut in the basalt. It was a long upward haul for Killashandra, unused to stairs in any case and, though pride prevented her from asking for a brief halt, she was completely winded by the time they reached the top and exited onto a windswept terrace. She was relieved to find a floater waiting, for the Backbone towered meters above them and she doubted her ability to climb another step. Polly and other trees lined the ridge, making a windbreak for the floater as it was buffeted along, ending its journey at a proper stationhouse. Killashandra had profited by the brief rest and followed Larss energetic stride into the main hall of the Backbone shelter. Lars, called the man at the entrance, Olavs in the command post. Can you join him? Lars waved assent and guided Killashandra to an ascending ramp, past a huge common room packed with people. They passed an immense garage, where hundreds of packets resembling some strange form of alien avian life dangled weightless from their antigravs. There was a storm chill in the air and Killashandra was aware of symbiont-generated inner tension as her body sensed the impending arrival of the hurricane. The command post is shielded, lover, Lars said, catching her hand in his and stroking it reassuringly.

Some pastime for to spy,

bulk of Andrea beside him, of Miller, Brown and Louki behind. Born in the heart of the country, brought up on the foothills of the Southern Alps, Mallory knew himself as a landsman first and last, an alien to the sea and ships: but he had never felt so much at home in his life, never really known till now what it was to belong. He was more than happy, Mallory thought vaguely to himself, he was content. Andrea and his new friends and the impossible well donehow could a man but be content? They weren't all going home, Andy Stevens wasn't coming with them, but strangely he could feel no sorrow, only a gentle melancholy. . . . Almost as if he had divined what Mallory was thinking, Andrea leaned towards him, towering over him in the darkness. "He should be here," he murmured. "Andy Stevens should be here. That is what you are thinking, is it not?" Mallory nodded and smiled, and said nothing. "It doesn't really matter, does it, my Keith?" No anxiety, no questioning, just a statement of fact. "It doesn't really matter." "It doesn't matter at all." Even as he spoke, he looked up quickly. A light, a bright orange flame had lanced out from the sheering wall of the fortress; they had rounded the headland and be hadn't even noticed it. There was a whistling roar Mallory thought incongruously of an express train emerging from a tunneldirectly overhead, and the great shell had crashed into the sea just beyond them. Mallory compressed his lips, unconsciously tightened his clenched fists. It was easy now to see how the Sybaris had died. He could hear the gunnery officer saying something to the captain, but the words failed to register. They were looking at him and he at them and he did not see them. His mind was strangely detached. Another shell, would that be next? Or would the roar of the gun-fire of that first shell come echoing across the sea? Or perhaps Once again, he was back in that dark magazine entombed in the rocks, only now he could see men down there, doomed, unknowing men, could see the overhead pulleys swinging the great shells and cartridges towards the well of the lift, could see the shell hoist descending slowly, the bared, waiting wires less than half an inch apart, the shining, spring-loaded wheel running smoothly down the gleaming rail, the gentle bump as the hoist... A white pillar of flame streaked up hundreds of feet into the night sky as the tremendous detonation tore the heart out of the great fortress of panasonic 5.0 mega pixel digital camera Navarone. No after-fire of any kind, no dark, billowing clouds of smoke, only that one blinding white column that lit up the entire town for a single instant of time, reached up incredibly till it touched the clouds, vanished as if it had never been. And then, by and by, came the shock waves, the solitary thunderclap of the explosion, staggering even at that distance, and finally the deep-throated rumbling as thousands of tons of rock toppled majestically into the harbourthousands of tons of rock and then the two great guns of Navarone. The rumbling was still in their ears, the echoes fading away far out across the Aegean, when the clouds parted and the moon broke through, a full moon silvering the darkly-rippling waters to starboard, shining iridescently through the spun phosphorescence of the Sirdar's boiling wake. And dead ahead, bathed in the white moonlight, mysterious, remote, the island of Kheros lay sleeping on the surface of the sea. 2 Chapter 1 Winters on Ballybran were generally mild, so the fury of the first spring storms as they howled across the land was ever unexpected. This first one of the new season swept ferociously across the Milekey Ranges, bearing before its westward course the fleeing sleds of crystal singers like so much jetsam. Those laggard singers who had tarried too long at their claims were barely able to hold their bucking sleds on course as they bolted for the safety of the Heptite Guild Complex. Inside the gigantic Hangar, its baffles raised against the mach winds, ordered confusion reigned. Crystal singers lurched from their sleds, half deafened by windscream, exhausted by their turbulent flights. The Hangar crew, apparently possessed of eyes in the backs of their heads, miraculously avoided injury as they concentrated on the primary task of moving incoming sleds off the Hangar floor and into storage racks, clearing the way for the erratic landings of the stream of incoming vehicles. The crash claxon pierced even storm howl as two sleds collided, one to dip over the baffle and land nose down on the plascrete while the other veered out of control like a flat rock skipping across water, coming to a crumpling halt against the far wall. A tractor zipped in to fasten grapples on the upside-down sled, removing it only seconds before another sled skimmed over the baffle. That sled almost repeated the nose dive, pulling up at the last second and skidding across the Hangar

The freshness of the heart can fall like dew,

weeks. We take the remainder, and we leave tomorrow." "Why not today?" "Because the tractor is at present unfit for winter travel, especially travel with ten passengers. It's still got the canvas hood on it that it had when we hauled stuff up from the coast. We have the prefabricated wooden sides and top that we need to arcticise it, plus the bunks and portable stove, but it will take several hours." "We start on that now?" "Soon. But first your luggage. We'll go out to the plane now, and bring that back." "Thank goodness for that," Mrs Dansby-Gregg said stiffly. "I was beginning to think I'd never see my stuff again." "Oh, you will," I said. "Briefly." "Just what do you mean by that?" she asked suspiciously. "I mean that you'll all put on as many clothes as you're able to stagger about in," I said. "Then you have a small attache-case for your valuables, if you have any. The rest of the stuff we'll have to abandon. This is no Cook's tour. We'll have no room on the tractor." "Butbut I have, clothes worth hundreds of pounds," she protested angrily. "Hundreds?Thousands would be nearer it. I have a Balenciaga alone that cost over five hundred pounds, not to mention" "How much do you reckon your own life is worth?" Zagero said shortly. He grinned. "Or maybe we should abandon you and save the Balenciaga. Better still, wear it on top of everythingyou know, how the well-dressed woman leaves the ice-cap." "Excruciatingly funny." She stared at him icily. "Frequently fracture myself," Zagero agreed. "Can I give you a hand with the stuff, Doc?" "You stay here, Johnny Zagero!" Solly Levin jumped up in agitation. "One little slip on that ice" "Calm yourself, calm yourself." Zagero patted his shoulder. "Merely goin' in a supervisory capacity, Solly. How about it, Doc?" "Thanks. You want to come, Mr Corazzini?" I could see he was already struggling into a parka. "I'd be glad to. Can't sit here all day." "These cuts on your head and hands aren't sealed yet. They'll sting like the devil when you get out into this cold." "Got to get used to it, haven't I? Lead the way." The airliner, crouching in the snow like some great polaroid digital camera filter wounded bird, was faintly visible in the twilight now, seven or eight hundred yards away to the north-east, port wing-tip facing us, lying at exactly right angles to our line of sight. There was no saying how often we might have to go out there, the quasi daylight would be gone in another hour or so, and it seemed pointless to follow in darkness the zigzag route we had been compelled to make the previous night, so with help from Zagero and Corazzini I staked out a route, with bamboo markers about five yards apart, straight out to the plane. Some of the bamboos I fetched from the tunnel, but most of them were transplanted from the positions where they had been stuck the previous night. Inside the plane itself it was as cold as the tomb and as dark as the tomb. One side of the plane was already thickly sheeted in drift ice, and all the windows were completely blanked off, made opaque, by rime frost. In the light of a couple of torches we ourselves moved around like spectres, our heads enveloped in the clouds of our frozen breath, clouds that remained hanging almost stationary above our heads. In the silence we could faintly hear the crackling of our breath in the super-chilled air, followed by the curious wheezing noise that men make in very low temperatures when they were trying not to breathe too deeply. "God, this is a ghastly place," Zagero said. He shivered, whether or not from cold it was impossible to say, and flashed his torch at the dead man sitting in the back seat. "Are weare we going to leave them there, Doc?" "Leave them?" I dumped a couple of attache-cases on to the pile we were making in the front seat. "What on earth do you mean?" I don't know, I thoughtwell, we buried the second officer this morning, and"Bury them? The ice-cap will bury them soon enough. In six months' time this plane will have drifted over and be vanished for ever. But I agreelet's get out of here. Give anyone the creeps." As I made my way to the front I saw Corazzini, a doleful look on his face, shaking an ebonite and metal portable radio and listening to the rattling that came from inside. "Another casualty?" I inquired. "Afraid so." He twiddled some dials, without result. "Battery and mains model. A goner, Doc. Valves, I expect. Still, I'll tote it alongcost me two hundred dollars two days ago." Two hundred?" I whistled. "You should have bought two. Maybe Joss can give you some