"Remember that I wrote you our Wrangell base is not too far from where the continents of Asia and North America once joined, where Bering Strait broke through. It's a weather factory, storms are put together there. Winds often swirl well beyond hurricane force, howling in all that icy desolation as if there were the slightest sense to it, for there's nothing at all to terrify." He was leaning forward now, recalling it. "On that day I wasn't terrified. I didn't like it but I'd beaten winds as bad as that. So I kept on the course laid out for my patrol that day, holding my speed around nine hundred miles an hour and sticking to an arc that gave me milliroentgen readings of .250 an hour. Not too close to the Curtain for an old hand at it." He paused to fill his glass. He glanced just once toward the room beyond, then back to me. "You know, I'd never taken chances with the Curtain. I'd seen it's effect, and I'd never really gotten over losing Anstruther. I want to make it clear that I was not taking chances--I was flying it safely, accurately, giving myself the full margin. The gale was bothersome but the flight was going perfectly. Nothing unusual. Around 12:30 I began plowing through an electrical field, sheet lightning, vast livid flashes, but it wasn't until two minutes later, 12:32 P.M., that I first saw the thunderhead. "One glance was all I had--time to report it on my radiocast--and instantly the thing was blowing up. It seemed to erupt, caught in an updraft, and belched blackly high above me in enormous toppling billows, the Arctic's unleashed fury roaring with a thousand forked, flaming tongues. "My scintillometer's buzzing caught my ear. It was up to .268. I was veering straight for the Curtain. I swung at once, heading toward the Pole, due north away from the Curtain, and shot my speed above one thousand miles an hour, but the thunderhead seemed now to be collapsing on me and I could not accelerate swiftly enough to get from underneath. I could not break loose. I knew that within an instant I was going to be in the vortex of that swirling mass of wind and shrieking fire. Then it exploded. "I remember that distinctly--it exploded into flame. And it blacked me out. "I came out of concussion slowly--seconds, probably, but I seemed to be dragging myself back into consciousness. My craft was 500 feet above the ice. And there was no thunderhead. The wind was strong, around 120 miles an hour, but my speed was stabilized at 1125 miles per hour, and my milliroentgen count was .320. Very dangerous. And worse, my craft was headed south again. I swung it back toward the Pole. "That should have cut my MR count. But within seconds the scintillometer was jumping up to .325, then .350. I was approaching the Curtain, and while headed due north!