‘Shut it down!’ Zoe shouted.

‘Why?’

‘I dunno! Just shut it down! You don’t know what you’re doing!’

Jake shut the machinery down. ‘Come on, we’re going to have to walk all the way down the mountain.’

‘Are you up to it?’

‘I don’t want to sit around here any more.’

They zipped up their coats and pulled on their hats and their gauntlets, and prepared to trudge down the mountain. Then Zoe noticed a set of skis leaning outside the cabin.

‘Do you think we can take them? I mean, does that mean someone is still up here?’

‘I dunno. Do they look like they’ve been used this morning?’

She inspected the skis. The fresh snow had fallen on them. ‘No way of telling. Listen—I just had a bad thought. You don’t suppose the lift operator was caught in the avalanche, do you?’

‘What? In his cabin?’

‘No. I mean, say, he was out inspecting the slopes. I don’t know what they do exactly, but say he was on the slope, shovelling snow or inspecting the drag lift or something, and he got caught, like we did.’

‘But they’d know. They’d be here. Looking for him.’

‘You think?’

‘Yeah. They’re in radio contact all the time. In case of problems. They’ve shut the whole mountain down and he’s gone. And no one is coming back until they open up the mountain again. Which may be tomorrow.’

‘So why are the skis here?’

‘Maybe they leave a spare set here all the time.’ ‘You don’t suppose there’s someone, you know, lying under the snow, do you?’

Jake tugged at an earlobe. ‘Be realistic. If there is, he’s dead. We’ve been here nearly two hours now.’