***
Walt was bored. Sure, climbing on icy ledges on steep mountainsides in a remote wilderness was fun, for a little while, but the initial excitement had worn off.
“There’s nothing to do around here,” he complained to Connie.
It was a Sunday morning, a day when the P.I.’s tended to get caught up on paperwork and correspondence, and grad students and support workers did whatever it was they did whenever they were not doing their jobs. Most were fine with that.
“Want to take a walk?” she asked.
“That’s all that we do, do,” he replied. “No thanks.”
He went for a walk anyway, out to the cargo line, just seeing what was there, when a green wooden box caught his attention. It was marked with white stencils that read: “US Navy. JATO.” He didn’t know what it was, but there were all sorts of warnings about the danger contained inside and proper handling to assure that it would not explode. Now we’re getting somewhere.
He found something to pry the lid off and was surprised to find six carefully stacked rockets inside. Rockets, out here? If he had asked someone, the Lieutenant for example, he would have learned that JATO, or Jet-Assist-Take-Off, was used when a C-130 either had an excessively heavy load, was fighting too much friction, or was trying to take off in deep, soft, snow, and could not get enough airspeed to lift off. The rockets were attached, and when fired at the right moment, added, hopefully, enough additional power to get airborne.
What they were for was not his concern. The possibilities of what they could be for, was. He went back to the hut, rummaged around as inconspicuously as he could, and then nonchalantly told Connie to get her coat and follow. They piled the material that Walt had scavenged onto a sled and towed it out to the mysterious wood box.
“Oh, no,” Connie said when she put the pieces together. “Not again.”
The Captains’ reprimand after their disastrous fishing expedition had done the trick for her, and she had no interest receiving a second one.
“Relax,” Walt told her. “We’re in the middle of nowhere. Besides, this is harmless.”
The JATO rocket was strapped to the back of the sled, a crude, but probably effective, fuse had been devised, and a seat for the passenger was improvised in the front.
“When I say “ready,” you light it up,” Walt instructed.
"Okay," she said, though there was something in her voice that absolved her from any negative outcome.
As he was getting ready to board the vehicle, steps were heard on the other side of the cargo line, and they hunched down low and tried to remain invisible. Barely breathing, they waited for the footsteps to move past, but instead they stopped, and Jake’s head appeared over the top.
“What are you doing?” Jake asked.
Walt hesitated to answer. He still hadn’t made up his mind about Jake. On the one hand, being the guide, plus his close association with Dr. Engen, made him automatically suspect. On the other hand, he appeared to be completely crazy, an admirable trait. Since they were pretty much caught either way, he decided to make a simple explanation and see where it went.
Jake shook his head with a frown. He took his responsibility seriously, and would not allow anyone to expose themselves to danger unnecessarily.
“Too dangerous,” he said.
Walt silently cursed himself and his bad luck in having been discovered too soon.
“First of all,” Jake went on, “you have to move away from the line before you light it, since you don’t know how straight it will run. Second, you need to do a trial run without sitting on it to make sure it will work. Pile some snow on there to simulate the weight.”
“All right!” Walt said, grabbing a shovel.
Connie closed her eyes and shook her head at Jake’s faulty display of adult supervision.
When it was ready, Walt lit the fuse, and at Jake’s cautious insistence, watched from the other side of the line. They looked over the boxes as the fuse smoldered and appeared to go out.
“Should I go check it?” Walt asked.
“Wait a minute,” Jake said.
“I’m going to go check it.”
Walt went from behind the pallet they were watching from, and was halfway to the sled when it went off. The blast knocked him off his feet. The mound of snow that represented a potential passenger exploded into a mist as the sled itself was torn to splinters. The rocket, now free of what presumed to control it, spun in circles on the ice before taking off in the direction of the ski-way. In less than a second it hit the deck again, spun around and took off toward the hut. Its trajectory shifted as it began to climb, and it pierced the wall of the outhouse, just below the roof, where Dr. Atkinson had just seated himself.
From there it climbed high in the sky, and in another abrupt directional shift, came about and became oriented in a downward vertical line heading straight for the food cave. One of the first tasks to be accomplished in establishing a field camp was the excavation of the food cave. A trench was dug, shelving built, a roof was laid over it, and then it was buried under several feet of snow. Depending on the latitude and elevation of the camp, it might, or might not be deep enough to maintain the annual ambient temperature. Either way, it was certainly cold enough to keep things frozen.
The cook had just gone down to do his "shopping" for the next day, when the room exploded into smoke and noise. Turkeys flew off shelves, Brussels sprouts went ballistic, daylight and snow caved in upon his head. When the fire and smoke abated, he stood still, covered in frost and vegetable matter. Not known for being in any way temperate in his demeanor, he showed remarkable reserve, considering the circumstance. He merely nodded his head and whispered the words, “Someone is going to die.”