Caleb peered down into the gorge. It was like looking into the open mouth of a shark, or maybe a whale—one of those really big ones that sucked krill in and then blew the water back out, trapping the creatures between its hairlike teeth. It was so deep that he couldn’t see the bottom, just an inky void. Which meant the helicopter could be down there, somewhere. Its cargo still in the hold, emitting slow pulses of gamma radiation, sterilising the ice all around it.
The wind picked up, threatening to cast him down into the gloom. He shivered, and zipped the puffer jacket all the way to his nose. In mid-winter Antarctica, the time of day didn’t matter much. The sun was never more than a faint stain on the horizon. Just the same, Caleb could feel the night closing in on him.
He hooked his carabiner onto his climbing rope and hefted the ice-pick. He told himself it was no different to scaling the back wall of old Mrs Maple’s house to steal her weather vane. Actually, it would be safer, since this rope was way tougher than a bed sheet. As he crouched, looking for somewhere to hammer in the piton, something whistled past his head, something hot and angry.
The gunshot reached his ears a split second later.
Caleb didn’t look around for the shooter. Knew there wouldn’t be time. Instead, he did the only thing he could—a backflip.
