Thor glanced toward the lad, thoughtfully. “A Dew Line Installation. A hilltop—a mountain, really. Mountain and tundra, no human foot or man-made thing ever touched there until the Distant Early Warning crew moved in. No place is more nowhere than Imiak. Yet how important it is. When I look down and see tracks down there I think, maybe there’s a Hereafter that the righteous are always pining for, but it can’t be more exciting and unpredictable than Alaska today.”

“Oh, you!” Bridie scoffed. “You’ve been in love with Alaska for fifty years, it’s getting to be a scandal.”

The ruddy face looking so thoughtfully down at them creased in a rueful smile. “But the question is, does she love me?”

The forward door opened, Ross Guildenstern came through. He paused to chat a moment with Frankie Ipoluk. He came toward the three now. “Hi, Mr. Storm. Hi, Mrs. Ballantyne.” He looked at Christine. “You want to come up front, take over for a while?”

“No, she don’t!” Bridie trumpeted. “I’ll get off if she does.” They laughed agreeably at this timeworn joke. “And I wish you’d go steer this thing and not let it run wild in the sky,” Bridie went on. “You want to chat with us, wait till we all get to Oogruk.”

“That’s what I wanted to know.” He was still looking at Chris. “Where you going to be?”

“The Trading Post,” Chris said. It was the first time she had spoken. “Is that right, Grampa?”

“Yes,” Thor said. “Raffsky’s Trading Post.”

“It sounds rough,” Chris said, happily, “and like old sourdough days.”

Thor and Ross broke into shouts of laughter.

“What’s so funny?” Chris demanded.

“You’ll see,” Ross said. “Look. After I drop you people at Oogruk I have to take these boys on up. I’ll be back tomorrow morning, or maybe even late tonight. I’ve wangled it so I can stay a day and another night and fly you up to Barrow on the Wednesday run. I’d love to show you Oogruk and Barrow, too, I’ve got cousins all over the place, my grandmother lives in Oogruk, of course if you’ve got other plans—–”

I am talking too much, he thought again, I always seem to when I’m talking to her, I wonder why, you know damned well why.

“I just want Christine to see something of this part of Alaska,” Thor was saying. “Bridie, too, of course. September will be the end of it for two years, for Christine.”

“No it won’t,” she said, quickly. “Thanksgiving vacation I’m going to come back up here with you, Grampa, and Ross said he’d take us on a polar-bear hunt, I’m like that boy who’s going up with the Dew Line, I want to shoot me a thousand-pound polar bear, one of those big white jobs, he said, that you can th’ow on the floor.”

“What floor?” Thor asked.

“Our cabin in Baranof. I think it’s beginning to look awful.”

“Do you?” Thor said, thoughtfully. “I’ll have to fix it up. I don’t know about Thanksgiving, though. Maybe Czar has other plans.”