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Three stubby limbs rose from the top of the body, each terminating in what looked for all the world like a skate, made of some bony substance. A pouch of skin drooped below the creature. I wondered for a moment what its function was, but I was enlightened when the creature grew bored with me and unfurled the pouch to form a sail with which it caught the breeze and skated away across the surface of the ice.

'Your face,' Ace said, and laughed again.

'They taste of chocolate, you say?'

'Yeah. They have these big macho dominance fights, sometimes, and they use those skate-things as weapons. The loser gets his balloon punctured and falls all the way down to the surface. I got hungry one night, and one just dropped out of the sky, virtually into my lap. "That's 'andy, 'Arty," I said, and bunged it on the fire. After that I made myself a bow and arrow. No time to eat now, though. We've got a job to do.'

'Where do we go now?'

She looked around.

'Where else is there? Onward and upward.'

'Upward where?'

She indicated the gap where the ice did not quite meet the rock.

'Up there. To the real surface. To the outside.'

'Are you mad? There's no reason to think that they've been taken up there!

The chances are that we missed the signs of a camp or a cave further down the mountain, and we've been climbing blindly ever since!'

Ace nodded to a larger fissure some thirty or so feet away.

'Look at that. The edges aren't natural. They've been clawed away. That's where they were taken.'

'But..' I was searching round for excuses now. I did not want to climb any further. Every muscle in my body ached with the accumulated toxins of fatigue. '. . . But the air is too thin. How will we manage to breathe? How did they manage? You must be mistaken.'

'That's a bit of a poser,' Ace admitted, frowning. 'You're right of course. If the atmosphere's this thin here, it'll be non-existent if we climb much further. They probably had suits of some kind. We'll have to improvize.'

I didn't like the sound of that.

'Improvize?'

'What's the matter, never seen Blue Peter?'

'No.'

'Lucky man. Now think: how do we ensure a supply of air for ourselves?'

'We've managed with the handkerchiefs so far,' I offered.

'True, but the path might move away from the mountain side, like in a tunnel through the ice or something. We can't rely on still being able to use the stream to refresh them.'

'So we need a larger supply,' I mused.

'Good thinking, Sherlock.'

I frowned at her and she blushed, embarrassed.

'What about the animals?' I asked, as an idea suddenly struck me.

'The animals? You mean, cut a couple of them open, get rid of the gas inside and replace it with air?' She grinned. 'Ace!'

Luring the creatures over was, paradoxically, the easiest part. They were not wary of humans in the way that animals on Earth might have been. We had a few teething troubles in the butchery department: Ace used her lightgun on the first one, and it exploded with a surprised expression upon its face, singeing my eyebrows. The gas inside appeared to be inflammable, as well as lighter than air. The next one was almost as bad. I held it whilst Ace made a slight incision in its tough but flexible skin with my pocket knife. It burst in my arms, splattering me with a gelid blue substance. If I hadn't been so cold and so tired, the farcical elements of our actions would have set me laughing. As it was, both of us were getting increasingly angry. By the time we had captured a third creature, we had evolved a strategy. I pinched a section of its skin, and Ace cut off the protruding section. I could then gradually let the gas out using my fingers as a crude valve. It died struggling, and in confusion. The gas made me slightly light-headed, but I welcomed the feeling as it cushioned my tiredness somewhat. It also made me feel slightly better about what we were doing. I did not enjoy killing them, especially in such an undignified