I went down to the lobby and bought a few magazines to read myself to sleep with, but at two in the morning I was still awake. I put on the radio to get some slumber music. Instead there was a deluge of breathless newscasts and special bulletins. Nevil had started things popping all right, despite being cut off the air. Curious, angry newsmen had dug up the story and spread it in the headlines of Extras from coast to coast. At this moment it was being shortwaved to every part of the world. Already public opinion was beginning to simmer. A special dawn meeting of the cabinet was called. I fell off to sleep smiling; there was hope.
4
In the morning when I read the newspapers on the way to Lulu Island airport, my mood darkened. While public opinion shrieked for action, successive conferences on what was to be done ended in decisions to hold other conferences on what was to be done. Horn-rimmed intellectuals argued hotly whether the Chetzisky question was not one for United Nations discussion. And we make fun of Nero who fiddled while Rome burned!
The day was clear, ideal for flying. It was the fifth day before the end of Time. I bit my lips and looked out at the earth falling away under us.
Four o'clock that afternoon our pontoon-equipped plane swept low over the spruce and jack pine and meadows of wild hay for a smooth landing on Burns Lake, our approach scattering a brood of mallard ducks. We refuelled and were off again. I intended to fly on, watching for the Twin peaks and when darkness fell, to land on one of the mountain tarns and make camp.
Below us the somber stands of evergreen were being swallowed up in the vast shadow spreading out from the western ridges. Turning up a valley corridor I saw the peaks towering above us, summits capped with white and the forested flanks gashed with couloirs in which the snow gleamed.
I blinked often. The air was rough now, tossing our cabin plane, and the constant flickering of the view made my eyes uncertain and my head ache. Suddenly I became aware of the clouds, a few bedraggled tatters at first, close to the timberline, like wisps of angel hair on a Christmas tree. Then as the plane swerved through a narrow pass and up another valley, I saw the sky devil himself—a billowing, black-bottomed cumulus rolled up on itself three miles high.
I went forward to the pilot. He was peering anxiously ahead of him. "Don't you think we better land soon?" I asked.
"The sooner the better, sir. I was figuring on landing up at Schwartz's, a trapper who has his diggings on a lake up aways but we won't make it with that storm." He paused as a sudden current sent the plane off keel and he struggled to bring it level again.