And then I forgot all about that, forgot all about everything except the desperate, urgent need for speed. Just before the plane had turned round to the east again and so out of the line of our blinded vision, it had seemed to dip and at the same instant two powerful lights stabbed out into the darkness, the one lancing straight ahead, a narrow powerful beam glittering and gleaming with millions of sparkling diamond points of flame as the ice-crystals in the air flashed across its path, the other, a broader fan of light, pointing downwards and only slightly ahead, its oval outline flitting across the frozen snow like some flickering will o' the wisp. I grabbed Jackstraw's arm and put my head close to his.

"He's going to land! He's looking for a place to put down. Get the dogs, harness them up." We had a tractor, but heaven only knew how long it would have taken to start it on a night like this. "I'll give you a hand as soon as I can."

He nodded, turned and was lost to sight in a moment. I turned too, cursed as my face collided with the slatted sides of the instrument shelter, then jumped for the hatch, sliding down to the floor of the cabin on back and arms without bothering to use the steps. Joss, already completely clad in his furs but with the hood of his parka hanging over his shoulders, was just emerging from the food and fuel tunnel which led off from the other end of the cabin, his arms loaded with equipment.

"Grab all the warm clothing you can find, Joss," I told him quickly. I was trying to think as quickly and coherently as I was talking, to figure out everything that we might require, but it wasn't easy, that intense cold numbed the mind almost as much as it did the body. "Sleeping-bags, blankets, spare coats, shirts, it doesn't matter whose they are. Shove them into a couple of gunny sacks."