Iceberg

Luck stayed with him and the mist disappeared after an hour and a half, offering him a chance to take advantage of the many hot springs he passed and orient his bearings with the compass pin. Now he could line up a landmark to the north and keep shifting from one landmark to the next until he was sure he was straying.

Then he would stop and take another compass reading and begin the process over again.

Two hours became three. Three hours became four. Each minute was an infinite unit of misery and suffering of aching cold, of intense burning pain, of fighting for control of his mind. Time. melted into an eternity which Pitt knew might not end until he fell against the soft, damp grass for the last time. In spite of his determination, he began to have doubts that he would live through the next few hours.

One step in front of the other, an endless cycle that slowly pushed Pitt further and further into total exhaustion. His thoughts had no room now for anything but the next landmark, and when he reached it, he concentrated every ounce of his sinking energy on the next one. Logic was nearly nonexistent. Only when he heard a muted alarm going off somewhere in the dim corners of his brain, warning him that he was straying off course, did he stop at a steaming sulfur pool to regain a heading with his compass.

Even twelve hours ago to Pitt seemed like twelve years, then his reflexes had been razor-edged, honed and pointed for any necessary mental command, but now as he set the pin in the water his trembling hands failed him and the ingenious little compass supped beneath the surface and shot to the bottom of the deep crystal-clear pool. Pitt had time to grab it before it sank out of reach, but he could only sit there and stare transfixed for wasted seconds before he reacted to the setback. Then it was too late, far too late, for his hope for finding his way out of Iceland's barren island plateau was lost.

His puffed eyes were almost totally closed, his legs cramped from exhaustion, and his breath coming in agonized gasps that broke the clear still air, but he struggled to his feet and stumbled forward, urged on by an i

Pitt knew he had crossed over the threshold from physical sensibility to the inertness of twilight sleep. But something didn't quite jell. His body was dead; all pain was gone, all feeling, even human emotion seemingly had died. Yet, he could still see, though his total panorama consisted only of grass-covered ground no more than a few inches in front of his eyes. And he could hear, his ears relayed a throbbing sound to a numbed brain that refused to relay any explanation as to the cause or the distance from which the strange coughing beat came.

Then suddenly there was silence. The sound had died away, leaving only the vision of green blades wavering slightly in a whispering breeze. Something in the desolation over which he had stumbled was out of context.

The superhuman, courageous effort had been wasted, the responsibility to the people back in the freezing ravine now evaporated into the empty atmosphere. Pitt was past caring or knowing or sensing now, he could relinquish his hold on life and peacefully die under the cold Norse sun. It would have been so easy to let go and fall into the black pit of no return except for something that didn't belong in the picture, an illusion that shattered the whole conception of death.

A pair of boots, two worn leather boots, standing in front of Pitts unseeing eyes where only a moment before was an empty plot of wild grass. And then phantom hands rolled him over on his back and he became aware of a face framed by the vacant sky-a stern face with sea-blue eyes. Gray hair flowed around a broad forehead like the helmet on a warrior in a Flemish painting. An old man, aged somewhere beyond seventy years, wearing a worn turtleneck sweater, bent and touched Pitts face.

Then without saying a word, with surprising strength for a man of his years, he lifted Pitt up and carried him over the rise. Through the cobwebs of his mind, Pitt began to wonder at the sheer coincidence, the miracle, which indeed it was, that led to his discovery.

No more than one easy stride over the small summit lay a road; he had fallen within spitting distance of a small dirt road that paralleled a tumbling glacial river of white froth, rushing swiftly through a narrow gorge of black lava rock. Yet the sound Pitts ears had detected came not from the roar of the falling water, but from the exhaust of an engine belonging to a battered, dustcovered British-made jeep.

Like a child placing a doll in a highchair, the old Icelander set Pitt in the front passenger seat of the jeep.

Then he climbed behind the wheel and steered the rugged little vehicle over the winding road, stopping every so often to open a closed cattle gate, an operation that became routine as they entered a section of rolling hills divided by lush green meadows bursting with plovers that clouded the sky at the approach of the jeep. They stopped in front of a small farmhouse with white sideboards and a red roof. Pitt shrugged off the supporting hands and staggered into the living room of the comfortable little house. "A telephone, quickly. I need a telephone.

The blue eyes narrowed. "You are English?" the Icelander asked slowly in a heavy Nordic accent.

"American," Pitt answered impatiently. "There are two dozen seriously injured people out there who will die if we don't get help to them soon."

"There are others on the plateau?" there was no concealing the astonishment.

"Yes, yes!" Pitt nodded his head violently. God, man, the phone. Where do you keep it?"

The Icelander shrugged helplessly. "The nearest telephone lines are forty kilometers away."

A great tidal wave of despair swept over Pitt only to ebb and vanish at the stranger's next words.

"However, I have a radio transmitter." He motioned to a side room. "Please, this way."

Pitt followed him into a small, well-lit, but Spartan room, the three primary pieces of furniture being a chair, a cabinet and an ancient hand-carved table holding a gleaming transmitter, not more than a few months from manufacture; Pitt could only marvel at the latest equipment being used in an isolated farmhouse. The Icelander crossed hurriedly to the transmitter, sat down and began twisting the array of dials and knobs. He switched the radio to SEND, selected the frequency and picked up the microphone.

He spoke a few words rapidly in Icelandic and waited. Nothing came back over the speaker. He shifted the transmitting frequency fractionally and spoke again.

This time a voice answered almost immediately. The pressure of the race against death made Pitt as tense as a guy wire in a hurricane gale, and in total indifference to his pain and fatigue he paced the floor while his benefactor conversed with the — Reykjavik authorities. After ten minutes of explanation and translation, Pitt requested and received a call from the American Embassy.

"Where in the goddamned hell have you been?"

Sandecker's voice exploded over the speaker so loudly that it might have come from the doorway.

"Waiting for a streetcar, walking in the park," Pitt snapped back.

"It makes no difference. How soon before a team of medics can be assembled and in the air?"

There was a tense silence before the admiral answered. There was, he knew, a tone of urgent insistence in Pitts voice, a tone Sandecker had seldom heard from Pitts lips. "I can have a team of Air Force paramedics ready to load in thirty minutes," he said slowly. "Would you mind telling me the reason behind your request for a medical unit?"