It was dangerous work, balancing one’s self in a high ice crack while below the killer horde squatted on its haunches and waited, as only the wolf-pack can wait, for its meat. A restless, fearsome, cruel-eyed horde it was. One unbalancing movement, and Lee Renaud’s body would go slithering down for the white-fanged horde to rend and tear into a thousand pieces, even as it had done to its own wounded members.
Shivers like an ague shot through his body, his hands were numbing from the bitter cold that inaction was letting creep through his double furs.
Hurry,—he must hurry! Soon he would have no more feeling, no more control. He and his companions would be dropping down like frozen lumps from this frozen wall—dropping to a terrible death.
Leaning forward precariously, Renaud slipped the head harness into place, adjusted receiver and mouthpiece, and threw his strength into cranking to generate power. His fingers, numb and clumsy within their great fur gloves, pressed the buzzer signal of the tiny radio and sent its staccato call hissing out through the air strata of the Arctic.
No answering buzz came back, no sign that his call had penetrated the ether.
“Bz-z-z-z!” went his frantic signaling. “Renaud calling!” he shouted into the tiny mouthpiece, as though to sweep his message on by the force of his voice alone. “Renaud calling! Party trapped by wolves at ice cave. Follow trail of route flags. Help! Bring guns, flares. Help!”
Louder and louder grew his voice. But no heartening answer was flung back from the ship’s radio. Not so much as a buzz or faintest whisper sounded in the receiver strapped to his straining ears.
No answer. Nothing.
The only sound was a long-drawn wail as the white horde circled in nearer, waiting, waiting beneath their prey.