The safety cutout had switched off the engine when the machine overturned, so there had been no fire. The other snowmobile was canted against a low hummock of ice. The four headlamps parted the curtains of snow, illuminating nothing, pointing away from the precipice over which George Lin had disappeared. Although Brian Dougherty was convinced that any search for the Chinese was a waste of time, he scrambled to the edge of the new crevasse and sprawled facedown on the ice at the jagged brink. Roger Breskin joined him, and they lay side by side, peering into a terrible darkness. Queasiness coiled and slithered in Brian’s gut. He tried to dig the metal toes of his boots into the iron-hard ice, and he clutched at the flat surface. If another tsunami set the world adance, he might be tipped or flung into the abyss. Roger directed his flashlight outward, toward the distant wall of the crevasse. Except for falling snow, nothing was revealed within the reach of the yellow beam. The light dwindled away into perfect blackness.
