To offset this slight informality the old plane asserted her social position by equipping herself with the young and pretty stewardess Gerda Lindstrom, garnished with a manicure, a recent coiffure and a figure-following blue uniform; a pilot and a co-pilot; snacks served at practically all hours; somewhat cracked loud-speaker dissertations on the weather, the scenery, the history and the natural phenomena of the Territory of Alaska.

It was too early in the season for the tourist tide. The plane was less than half filled—unless one counted the aloof moose destined later to re-enter the stream of life through the digestive tract of meat-hungry residents of Oogruk and other Arctic Circle villages. There were a handful of construction workers, a half dozen young men in army uniform, and a middle-aged couple with graying hair and apprehensive faces. Palpably tourists, these last. Chris wondered what whim or chance had brought them here, she knew she need never ask because Bridie would have a dossier on every passenger in the plane within an hour after taking off, including the weight and destination of the moose. The woman tourist, fiftyish, wore long dangling earrings, a pale blue coat and a flower-bedecked hat, a sort of Miss Havisham on a honeymoon, Chris thought, having early devoured the set of Dickens in Czar’s parlor. The man was plump, eyeglassed, almost comical in a Basque beret, a city topcoat, and good gray gloves.

They’ll be miserable, Chris thought It turned out she was wrong.

In the forward seat facing the wall sat a young Eskimo huddled in a blanket. He appeared curiously aloof and almost fragile. He had no books, he had no magazines, he spoke to no one. He munched a chocolate bar, glanced once out of the window with the distrait eye of one to whom ice-capped peaks and illimitable space are merely the back yard. Gerda Lindstrom was making what Ross termed her pitch. The passengers (including moose) muffled against the plane’s icy interior, listened with a concentration due more to necessity than politeness, for the old carrier’s engines made declamation difficult … welcome you aboard … Arctic … DC-3 … pilot … Guildens … co-pilot … call attention … at left … plainly … magnificent view … lucky to see … Mount McKinley … coffee will be ser …

“That McKinley!” the plump male tourist shouted jovially, setting the tone of the trip. “It jumps around like a jack rabbit. It’s like the Empire State Building in New York, you’re coming in, going out, there it is sticking up in the sky.”

“I’m going to help Gerda with the coffee,” Bridie announced and bustled off like a friend at a neighbor’s bridge luncheon. “She never gets it hot enough, anyway.”

Two of the young army men were already asleep, they had been air-borne for many hours. While the plane soared over the wastes of this incredible landscape their faces in repose under the pitiless scrutiny of the brilliant Arctic light were as unmarked, as defenseless, as the faces of children. In their good clean army clothes they lay sprawled, their excellent watches on their strong brown wrists, their ties knotted correctly, their boots like mirrors; though their dreams may have been violent the expression on their faces was seraphic.