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Inside the ice was the blurred shape of the gutter-joint. Water flowed where the torch-flames played.

'Watch out below,' said Gillian out loud. A large chunk detached and avalanched to the ground, smashing into jagged ice-cubes.

'The snowman's dangerous,' I said to Gillian, quietly so the others couldn't hear.

'We should melt him,' she said, holding her blowtorch steady. 'With these.'

'That'll get us more than a DT,' I reminded her. 'Mr Carker likes the idea of the snowman, remember.'

'Crusty Carker doesn't know what planet he's on.'

A cracking ripple ran along the iced gutter.

My ladder slid out under me. Gibson and two other boys struggled to hold it upright. My blowtorch fell, and the boys had to get out of the way. The ladder wavered in the air and crashed away from the wall.

I held the ice-coated gutter with unfeeling fingers. My insides turned around.

I didn't understand why I wasn't falling. Then I realised Gillian had a hold of my shoulder, fist tight around a fold of my slicker.

'Get your feet on the other ladder, Foreman,' shouted Ape. I saw Gillian's screwed-up face, remembering how she'd looked at me in the Head's study.

'Don't worry, Susan,' she said. 'I won't let go.'

I hadn't thought that she would.

But I still got my feet on the ladder and found hand-holds. It was awkward for both of us, but we clung together to get balance. Mr Okehurst and all the boys were holding the bottom of the ladder. Even Dirty Gertie was needed.

The gutter was rippling. Close up, I saw ice moving like sludge, wriggling in waves, not liquefying but flowing. It was crackling, like the snowman.

Gillian and I looked along the gutter.

All the ice was alive, hanging from the window-frames and eaves and tiles. It was moving. Even frost on the windows shifted, reflecting the sunset, making transparent star-shaped rainbows.

There was a scream from below.

Gillian and I looked down.

The snow carpet writhed, swarming up over the boys' shoes and socks, rising to knee-level. The ladder swayed as the boys let go and started dancing and stamping, trying to escape.

I saw blood blotting Dirty Gertie's turn-ups.

The snow was full of spiny ice chunks.

A fist of ice shot out of the mass wound round the gutter and whizzed just past my face, aiming at Gillian. It was at the end of a solid tendril. I saw through the ice-arm, with its near-molten centre and iron-hard outer skin. Deadly diamonds scratched for my face like fingers. Gillian shoved her blowtorch at the attacking arm, and its claws went to water.

The ladder wouldn't stay upright much longer.

We were just by a big window, panes frosted over. I nodded at the

glass and shouted 'Torch it'.

Gillian, forgetting any rules about damage to School property, played the flame over a stretch of the glass.

The frost, which seemed about to make a hideous face, melted instantly.

I kicked at the pane. A bad idea. My weight pushed the ladder away from the wall without breaking the window.

Gillian held onto the ladder with both hands, dropping her torch, and stiffened her body, pointing her feet at the window like a pole-vaulter. The ladder swayed out, away from the wall, then pendulumed back. I swung round to the other side to help with the momentum, bringing Gillian's stiff-legged weight against the window.

The glass broke inwards, and Gillian's bare legs hooked on the sill. She was scratched and bleeding.

She slipped through into the classroom, and pulled me with her. The ladder fell away. We huddled by the window for a moment, hugging, then poked our heads up over the sill.

Down in the playground, Mr Okehurst and the boys lay in scatters of blood, living frost swarming over them, icicles through their clothes and bodies. Spikes rose and fell from the ground, moving the corpses.

Gillian had never seen anyone dead before.

There was no point in wasting time on asking what was happening.

'We've got to get