“Serves you right, Bridie,” Chris said, severely, as though she were the older, Bridie the girl.

Benevolently Thor said, “Let Bridie do things her own way. The answers don’t always come out right, but she asks questions. That’s one way to learn. Anyway, those boys make their decisions fast enough when they’re strapped in those jets that go screaming across our sky.”

“Eat too much,” Bridie observed crossly as she teetered through the road’s black dust toward the waiting bus. “I’ve watched them, all through the War and now up here. Riding around in jeeps and planes, they never walk a step, and they stuff too much. All that steak and pork chops and roast beef and sweet potatoes and pie and gravy and cake and ice cream and milk and butter. They’ve got the biggest behinds of any fighting force in the world.”

Christine was shocked. “Bridie Ballantyne, how can you talk like that about the most wonderful young men in the world!”

“Sure they’re wonderful. I’m crazy about them, as you well know. But pampered. Everybody in the United States is pampered soft. All except Alaskans.”

“What’s wrong with you two girls!” Thor demanded. “Something’s going on that a male can’t see.”

The bus driver sounded his horn. The three trudged toward the unwieldy vehicle. “Ross can’t stay over,” Chris said. “He’s going to Kotzebue. Now.” She glanced up as a silver shape drummed in the sky, banked, circled, was off across the interminable tundra.

“I see,” Thor said, quietly. “We’ll miss him. He knows this part of our world. Well, you’ll have to make do with me, girls.”

The bus was an old army truck, canvas-topped, its seating arrangement two backless boards running one on either side the length of the interior. It could negotiate the hub-high fine black Arctic dust only because it was equipped with the massive-tired rubber wheels of old airplane stock.

Like squirrels in a nest the hooded faces peered at them as the three tardy passengers climbed laboriously into the bus.

“Sit here, Christine.” Thor indicated a place at the outer end of the bench. “It’s windier, but you can see out.” He sat opposite. The vehicle started with a lurch, it bumped and swayed and swam through the deep dust like a boat maneuvering its way in a choppy sea.

From time to time Thor pointed out an object as they plowed along. “Skin boats there on the beach, made of walrus hide and hair seal, can you imagine putting out into the Arctic Sea in one of those?”

“But you have. You’ve told me.”

“Yes. Yes, I’ve done all these things these past years.… See the flag whipping away up there, Christine? It stays up for eighty days and eighty nights through these months because there’s no sunset up here—well, of course you know all that, I told you when you were a child. I forget, sometimes.… Thousands and thousands of empty oil drums, just look at them, it’s cheaper to let them rust out here than to try to send them back by air, pretty soon the Arctic will be so filled with empty oil drums there’ll be no space left for humans. That would be a good joke on the scientific age, wouldn’t it …! We’re just passing the Company lunchroom there, it’s run by Eskimos, we’ll have our meals there.”