Fire Star by Chris D'Lacey Page B

destroying the world as we know it.”
    An unsettled
hrrr
rumbled off the mantelpiece. Even Bonnington stirred and raised his head.
    “You found out where it’s hidden?”
    David nodded. “I’m concerned that Gwilanna has learned that I know and plans to use Lucy as a ransom demand.”
    “Like Gwendolen,” Liz muttered, letting her green eyes slowly defocus as if she was looking back through time. “Like the redhaired daughter she promised Guinevere in exchange for Gawain’s fire. She’s running it again.”
    “Maybe,” said David. “Only this time, it’s Lucy, not Gwendolen, for the fire. That’s the choice I’m worried she’ll present us with: your daughter’s life — or the rest of mankind….”

22 A T THE T UNDRA’S E DGE
     
    T here!” Russ shouted, raising his voice over the drubbing revolutions of the helicopter blades. He pointed left and down, toward a wide expanse of flat, white ground just to the west of the body of sea ice.
    Zanna nodded and put up her thumb. “Isn’t that tundra?” she shouted back.
    Russ pushed his headphones back a little, freeing his ears so he might hear more clearly. “Yeah,” he replied, starting the chopper on a decline toward it.
    “Thought you were letting him go on the ice?”
    “Too dangerous,” he said, mouthing the words carefully. At this volume, repetition was hard on the throat. “The ice is newly formed. Can’t trust the surfaces. Too broken up to risk putting us down there.
    The bear will have enough to walk or swim across, but there are too many pockets of water for the chopper.”
    Zanna peered down at the blue-white jigsaw, glistening in the sweep of the pale yellow sun. It was hard to tell precisely where the join between ocean and continent lay, but where the flow of the water had been stopped by cold, the ice had stacked into long, uneven ridges, as if a giant hand had forced it against the barrier of land, making it pile up and heave off dozens of blocks, all caught in a chilled and motionless froth. Between these compressed, marshmallowlike regions were flatter areas, pebbled with smaller lumps of wreckage or long blue gashes of thinly iced water. They reminded Zanna of a transparency Bergstrom had shown the students when they had first arrived at the Polar Research Base, of ice floes and the water around them looking, according to the enigmatic lecturer, like wounds in the chest of a slumbering white giant.
    “Tega, we’re ready, get the hatch,” Russ shouted. Zanna watched the Inuk move, sullen-faced, toward the doors in the belly of the helicopter. He threw aclamp and slid them open, making hardly any sound against the throb of the engines. Cold air rushed in, pulling his normally flat black hair out into an inch-high rippled fringe.
    “Can I watch?” Zanna shouted.
    “Wait,” Russ said, looking at his instruments. He skillfully adjusted altitude, turning them sweetly into the wind as the helicopter yawed crablike to its left. When it was hovering still, he said, “All right, scoot. But be careful, OK?”
    Zanna smiled and unclipped her belts. She joined Tootega at the open hatch. The Inuk gave her a sour-faced glance, then tipped his body forward to gauge the distance to the specked white tundra. The helicopter’s slightly elongated shadow could just be seen beneath the drugged and netted body of the bear. Zanna guessed they were some twenty feet off the ground.
    Tootega stretched an arm back and tipped his fingers, to indicate that Russ should take them down farther. The helicopter dropped like a well-oiled elevator. The vortex of its blades stirred the ground below,blowing loose snow aside and flattening the dark green tufts of sedge that were brave enough to poke through the ever-present permafrost.
    “Good,” Tootega yelled.
    The ‘copter paused, pitching its nose no more than a degree. Zanna saw the netting crumple and noted the curve in the slackening cable. Tootega released the hook and threw the loose cable onto the