Beastchild

them. He turned, looked forward the dozen feet to the header station. There it was. Two feet before the car wheels, there was a lump of dark-cored ice a little more than four inches thick, perhaps half a foot long. The wheels had come up against that, repeatedly, and had been forced back.
        It was a minor miracle that they had not been bumped off the cable to crash on the rocky slopes below.
        Below…
        He looked down, over the edge of the cab, then quickly looked back up. The distance down had seemed frightening from inside the cabin. Unenclosed as he now was, it was perfectly terrifying. He realized, with little surprise, that he was never meant to be a rebel. He was never designed, emotionally, to be on the run, to take risks, to be an outlaw. How had he gotten into this? Guilt, yes. He hadn't wanted to turn the boy in to be slaughtered. But that all seemed so petty now. He was willing to turn a hundred boys in if necessary. Just so he would not have to do what he was beginning to understand he must do if they were to survive.
        "What is it?" Leo called.
        Hulann turned. The boy had climbed the rungs and had poked his head out of the hole in the roof. His yellow hair seemed almost white now, fluttering above him, sweeping down now and then to blot out his features.
        "Ice on the cable. A huge chunk of it. I don't know what caused it. Very unnatural."
        "We'll have to go back," Leo said.
        "No."
        "What?"
        The car began swaying slightly more than usual as a stronger gust of wind caught it broadside.
        "We can't go back," Hulann said. "I might have tried climbing half the mountain before. Not now. We both got battered around in the cab. We've lost more strength. I'm afraid I'm getting too cold. I have no feeling in my feet at all. We have to get there by cableway or not at all."
        "But we'll be thrown loose trying to cross the ice."
        "I'm going to break it loose."
        The boy, even with his face distorted in the cold, looked incredulous. "How close to the car is it?"
        "A couple of feet."
        "Can you stand on the roof?"
        "I don't think so," he said.
        "You mean you plan on-" -"hanging on the cable," Hulann finished.
        "You'll fall. You're scared of heights even inside the cab."
        "You have any better ideas?"
        "Let me," the boy said.
        For answer, Hulann stood, gripping the cable, and held it as he walked gingerly along the roof toward the edge.
        "Hulann!"
        He did not answer.
        It was not that he was heroic or that he indulged in acts of foolish courage. At this moment, it was abject fear which drove him, not courage of any stripe. If he did not break that ice, they would die. They would have to go back to the boarding station at the middle of the mountain and make their way up the slopes to the top. Though the storm had not increased in strength, it seemed to have gained thirty miles an hour in velocity, for he could not withstand its battering as well as before. And the wearier they became, the more fierce the storm would seem-until they would collapse in it, go to sleep, and die. There was no sense in sending the boy out on the cable to do the job, for he would surely be blown loose, fall, and shatter upon the rocks. And then there would be no point in going on. It would be as good to die.
        He left the roof, holding to the cable with both hands, the muscles of his brawny arms corded and thumping under the strain.
        He did not hang on a plumb line, but was blown slightly to the left. He had to fight the wind, his own weight, and the growing ache in his arms.,.
        He found that his hands had a tendency to freeze to the cable.
        His lungs burned as the bitter air scorched them. He would have been better off on one set of nostrils, but he could not close the primarys down and still operate on full capacity. And he needed everything he had…
        Some of the outer layers of scales were pulling loose. He did not feel any pain-chiefly because the wounds were artificial, but also because his flesh was numbed.
        A moment later, he reached the ice lump. He looked up at it, saw a dark, irregular shape within. He could not guess what it might be, but he had no time for guessing games anyway. He let go with one hand, holding the other ready an inch from the cable in case one arm proved too weak to hold him. But,