The bear in front flickered in the shadows, white and blue. He rippled like flowing water, and the pad pad of his feet was the only sound. Nick and Susan, Dawn and Limpy, followed silently. They had set out in the dawn, leaving the wounded Varg by the river. The bear who led them was an old creature with a shaggy head and bad-tempered eyes. They felt he would just as soon kill them as help them. But two others, younger, came behind and sent reassuring images to Dawn and Susan. They made pictures of the glacier, a cave and a creek, and the sun at its high point in the sky. Jimmy was in the cave, Susan thought, and the sun meant they would get there at midday. The bear led them out of the bush and climbed among the weathered ice towers of the glacier. They crossed it at an angle, heading for a valley gouged in the side of Mount Nicholas. The glacier made a groaning, as though huge forces pulled in it. The ice towers leaned with a gravitational weight.
