Beck held a plastic box the size of a large phone. It could easily have been mistaken for a computer game. He switched it on and the flat screen glowed into life. The box held a silent conversation with satellites hundreds of miles overhead, fixing its position on the surface of the earth.
Beck tugged the pilot’s map out of its compartment by her seat and went back to the others.
‘Hey, cool,’ Tikaani said when he saw the little box. He jostled Beck for a look at the screen.
Give him a bit of technology, Beck thought with a smile, and the boy is happy!
He handed Tikaani the map and the other boy spread it out on the ground. Beck read the co-ordinates off the GPS and Tikaani traced the lines of latitude and longitude on the map. They came together at a particular point.
‘We’re here,’ Tikaani said, pleased. The other two leaned in to look as he pressed a finger into the paper. ‘We know where we are! That’s a good start, isn’t it?’
‘It always helps . . .’ Beck agreed. Unfortunately he – and, he knew, Al – could see a whole lot that was wrong with the situation. Tikaani would be missing it.
On the map their position was just a few centimetres away from Anakat. Anakat was a square dot, the only square thing on the entire sheet of paper. The rest was curves and jagged lines. Anakat was manmade; the rest was natural. That square dot represented warmth and food and safety.
‘And look,’ Tikaani insisted. ‘We’re nearer to Anakat than to anywhere else. We could probably walk that in a day.’
‘We could,’ Beck agreed, ‘if Uncle Al could walk anywhere.’ But his finger traced the thick streak of contour lines on the map that lay between Anakat and where they were now. ‘And if it was all flat. Unfortunately there are mountains in the way.’
They all glanced up and looked westward. The mountains were clearly visible, lying between them and Anakat like a mighty wall. The peaks shone brightly in the sun. They ran from north to south, and Anakat was almost due west. The direction was very easy to fix in the mind. The only fly in the ointment was a million tons of rock between them.
‘If you include them,’ Beck mused, ‘and unfortunately we have to . . . two or three days’ walk. Minimum.’
Tikaani only looked daunted for a moment. He gave the mountains another look, which told Beck he had grasped the scale of the problem. Even two or three days’ walk wasn’t the end of the world. But throw in the ice and snow and steep slopes of the mountains and it became a whole new ball game.
‘OK . . .’ Tikaani’s voice trembled just a little and he said it again, more firmly. ‘OK. But like I said before, they’ll still come looking for us. They must be expecting us.’
‘Um,’ said Al. He suddenly sounded a little uncertain. ‘Not necessarily.’
Now both boys were staring at him. It was his turn to shrug. ‘Ours was an unscheduled flight. Lumos Petroleum’s lawyers and publicists have been on our backs ever since the whole thing began. If they knew we were coming to Anakat, they’d be there first. I wanted to slip in under their radar, film the documentary before they knew anything. It’s not a secret, of course . . . but I did sort of drop a few hints we’d be there next week, not this one.’
‘Hey!’ Tikaani exclaimed. ‘This is the twenty-first century! Planes don’t just disappear! OK, we were unscheduled but we must be on someone’s log, somewhere. And my father knows we’re coming.’
‘Anchorage will have recorded our departure, and our flight plan,’ Al agreed, ‘but they have no reason to check whether we’ve arrived. Oh, they will notice. Eventually. But it could take days. And even your father doesn’t know exactly when we were due. I didn’t tell him when we took off in case Lumos got wind of it.’
Days . . . Beck thought. He glanced down at Al’s leg, and up again at his uncle. The leg was only the obvious external wound. How smashed up was Al inside? His uncle was still pale and his voice was weak. There could be much worse damage that he couldn’t see.
Beck wasn’t certain that Al would be able to wait.
‘Days . . .’ Tikaani voiced Beck’s thought. Forty miles off course and a three-day walk to safety. Rescue might take even longer than that to get to them. His shoulders slumped as the optimism drained away; he looked down. But then he lifted his head again and his face was set and grim.
‘So what do we do?’ he asked.