/ had only read two stories by Gary Wright prior to this one, and each of them has spoken to me in the words of Antoine de Saint-Exupery, when he was on the Toulouse-Dakar line: Old bureaucrat, my comrade, it is not you who are to blame. No one ever helped you to escape. You, like a termite, built your peace by blocking up with cement every chink and cranny through which the light might pierce. You rolled yourself up into a ball in your genteel security, in routine, in the stifling conventions of provincial life, raising a modest rampart against the winds and the tides and the stars. You have chosen not to be perturbed by great problems, having trouble enough to forget your own fate as man. You are not the dweller upon an errant planet and do not ask yourself questions to which there are no answers. You are a petty bourgeois of Toulouse. Nobody grasped you by the shoulder while there was still time. Now the clay of which you were shaped has dried and hardened, and naught in you will ever awaken the sleeping musician, the poet, the astronomer that possibly inhabited you in the beginning.*

Here is a story of freedom, violence, Angst. I will not insult the author by comparing him to someone elselike, say,.

Hemingway. No. He is himself. And he has written a man against the elements story, which I feel belongs right here.

After Bollard’s magical shadow-play in the sky and Harlan’s jazz-discord finale, here is something as cold and clean as a bottle of akvavit frozen into a block of ice, or the winds that lash the highest mountains.

MIRROR OF ICE

Gary Wright

They called it The Stuka. It was a tortuous, twenty-kilometer path of bright ice, and in that distance12.42 milesit dropped 7,366 feet, carving a course down the alpine mountainside like the track of a great snake. It was thirty feet wide on the straights with corners curling as high as forty feet. It was made for sleds….

He waited in the narrow cockpit and listened to the wind.

It moaned along the frozen shoulder of the towering white peak and across the steep starting ramp, pushing along streamers of snow out against the hard blue sky, and he could hear it cry inside him with the same cold and lonely sound.

He was scared. And what was worsehe knew it.

Forward, under the sleek nose of his sled, the mountaia fell away abruptlystraight down, it seemedand the valley was far below. So very far.

… too far this time, buddyboy, too far forever …

The countdown light on the dash flickered a sudden blood red, then deliberately winked twice. At the same time two red rockets arced out over the valley and exploded into twin crimson fireballs.

Two minutes.

On both sides of the starting ramp, cantilevered gracefully from the mountainside, brightly bannered platforms were crowded with people. He glanced at the hundreds of blankly staring sunglasses, always the same, always turned to the ramp as if trying to see inside the helmets of these men, as if trying to pry into the reasons of their being there waiting to die. He looked back to the deep valley; today he wondered too.

… just one last time, wasn’t that what you told yourself?

One last race and that’s the end of it and good-by to the sleds and thank God! Wasn’t that your personal promise?

Then what in hell are you doing here? That “last race” was last month’s race. Why are you in this one?

No answer.

All he could find inside were cold questions and a hollow echo of the wind. He gripped the steering wheel, hard, until cramps began in his hands; he would think about his sled… .

It was his eleventh sled, and like the others it was a brilliant red, not red for its particular flash, but because of a possible crash far from the course in deep snow. He wanted to be found and found fast. Some of the Kin had never been found in time.

… they didn’t find Bob Lander until that summer He forced himself back.

Empty, the sled weighed 185 pounds and looked very much like the body-shell of a particularly sleek racer but with a full bubble canopy and with runners instead of wheels. It was a mean-looking missile, low and lean, hardly wider than his shoulders, clearing the ice by barely two inches. He sat nearly reclining, the half wheel in his lap, feet braced on the two edging pedalsand this was the feature that made these sleds the awesome things they were. They could tilt their runnersfour hollowground, chrome-steel “skis”edging them against the ice like wide skate blades. This was what bad changed bobsiedding into … this: this special thing with its special brotherhood, this clan apart, this peculiar breed of men set aside for the wonder of other men. The Kin, they called themselves.

… someone once, laughing, had said, “Without peer, we are the world’s fastest suicides.”

He snapped himself back again and checked his brakes.

By pulling back on the wheel, two electrically operated flapsactually halves of the sled’s tail sectionswung out on either side. Silly to see, perhaps. But quite effective when this twelve and a half square feet hit the airstream at eighty mph.

A button under his right thumb operated another braking system: with each push it fired forward a solid rocket charge in the nose of the sled. There were seven charges, quite often not enough. But when everything failed, including the man, there was the lever by his left hip. The Final Folly, it was called; a firm pull and, depending on a hundred unknown “if’s” and “maybe’s,” he might be lucky enough to find himself hanging from a parachute some 300 feet up. Or it might be the last voluntary act of his life.

He had used it twice. Once steaking into the tall wall of the Wingover, he had lost a runner … and was almost fired into the opposite grandstand, missing the top tier of seats by less than four feet. Another time six sleds suddenly tangled directly in front of him, and he had blasted himself through the overhanging limbs of a large fir tree.

But others had not been so lucky.

Hans Kroger: they finally dug his body out of eighteen feet of snow; he’d gone -all the way to the dirt. His sled had been airborne -when he blewand upsidedown!

Jarl Yorgensen: his sled tumbling and he ejected directly under the following sleds. No one was certain that all of him was ever found)

Max Conrad: a perfect blowout! At least 350 feet up and slightly downhill … His chute never opened.

Wayne Barley:

He jarred himself hard in the cockpit and felt the sudden seizure of his G-suit. He wanted to hit something. But he could feel the watching eyes and the TV cameras, and there wasn’t room in the cockpit to get a decent swing anyway.

His countdown light flickered for attention and biinked once, and a single red rocket flashed into the sky.

One minuteGod, had time stopped?

But that was part of it all: the waiting, the God-awful waiting, staring down at the valley over a mile below. And how many men had irrevocably slammed back their canopy in this lifetime of two minutes and stayed behind? A few, yes.

And he could too. Simply open his canopy, that was the signal, and when the start came the other sleds would dive down and away and he would be sitting here alone. But, God, so alone! And he would be alone for the rest of his life. He might see some of the Kin again, sometime, somewhere. But they would not see him. It was a kind of death to stay behind.

… and a real death to go. Death, the silent rider with every man in every race …

He frowned at the other sleds, sixteen in staggered rows of eight. Sixteen bright and beautiful, trim fast projectiles hanging from their starting clamps. He knew them, every one; they were his brothers. They were the Kinbut not here. Not now.

Years ago when he was a novice he had asked old Franz Cashner, “Did you see the way I took Basher Bend right beside you?”

And Franz told him, “Up there I see nobody! Only sleds!

Down here you are you, up there you are nothing but another sled. That’s all! And don’t forget that! That’s all! And don’t forget that!”

… and it had to be that way. On the course sleds crashed and were no more… . Only later, in the valley, were there men missing.

Of these sixteen, chances were that nine would finish. With luck, maybe ten. And chances also said that only fourteen of these men would be alive tonight. Those were the odds, as hard and cold as the ice, the fascinating frosting for this sport.

Violent death! Assured, spectacular, magnetic death in a sport such as the world Jiad never known. Incredible men with incredible skills doing an incredible thing.

Back in the Sixties they claimed an empty sled with its steering locked would make a course all by itself. An empty sled here would not last two corners. The Stuka was a cold killer, not a thrill ride. And it was not particular. It killed veterans and novices alike. But there was $20,000 for the man who got to the end of it first, and a whole month before he had to do it again. Money and fame and all the girls in the world. Everything and anything for the men who rode the Stuka.

Was that why they did it?

… yes, always that question: “Why do you do it?” And before he had died on the Plummet, Sir Robert Brooke had told them, “Well, why not?”

And it was an answer as good as any.

But was it good enough this time?

No answer.

He only knew there was but one way off this mountain for him now and that was straight ahead, and for the first time since his novice runs, his legs were trembling. Twelve and a half miles, call it, and the record was 9 minutes, 1.14 seconds!

An average speed of 82.67 mph, and that was his record.

They would at least remember him by that!

His countdown light flashed, a green rocket rose and burst, and there was a frozen moment … the quiet click of the release hook, the lazy, slow-motion start, the sleds sliding forward in formation over the edge … then he was looking once again into the terrible top of the Stukathat 45-degree, quarter-mile straight drop. In six seconds he was doing over 60 mph, and the mouth of the first corner was reaching up.

… Carl’s Corner, for Carl Rasch, who -went over the top of it nine years ago; and they found him a half-mile down the glacier … what was left of him …

He glanced to his right. It was clear. He eased his flap brakes, dropped back slightly and pulled right. The leading sleds were jockeying in front now, lining for this long left.

Brakes flapped like quick wings, and they started around, sleds riding up the vertical ice wall and holding there, ice chips spraying back like contrails from those on the lower part of the wall as they edged their runners against the turn.

He came in far right and fast, riding high on the wall and diving off with good acceleration.

The ice was a brilliant blur underneath now, and he could feel the trembling rumble of his sled. They rattled into the Chute, a steep traverse, still gaining speed, still bunched and jostling for position. He was in the rear but this was good; he didn’t like this early crowding for the comers.

The sheer wall of Basher Bend loomed, a 120-degree right that dropped hard coming out. He was following close in the slipstream of the sled in front of him, overtaking because of the lessened wind resistance. The corner came, and they were on the wall again. With his slightly greater speed he was able to go higher on the wall, nearly to the top and above the other sled. His G-suit tightened. They swarmed out of the corner and into the Stra-fing Run, a long, steep dive with a hard pullout.

A roar rose from the mountain now as the sleds reached speed, a dull rumble like that of avalanche … and that is actually what they were nowan avalanche of sleds, and just as deadly.

He pulled ahead of the other sled in the dive and hit the savage pullout right on the tail of another, and the next turn curved up before them: Hell’s Left, a double corner, an abrupt left falling into a short straight with another sharp left at the bottom. He was still overtaking, and they went up the wall side by side, he on the inside, under the other. He eased his left pedal, using edges for the first time, holding himself away from the other by a safe six inches. The course dropped away, straight down the mountain to the second half of the corner, and he felt the sickening sudden smoothness of leaving the ice-he had tried it too fast, and the course was falling away under him….

. .. old Rolf De Kepler, “The Flying Dutchman,” laughing over his beer and saying, “Always I am spending more time off the ice than on, hah? So this is more easy to my stomach.

Already I have four G-suits to give up on me.”

… and he had made his last flight three years ago off the top at the bottom of Hell’s Left … 400 yards, they claimed.

He held firm and straight on the wheel and pulled carefully, barely opening his brakes. The sled touched at a slight angle, lurched, but he caught it by edging quickly. The other sled had pulled ahead. He tucked in behind it. The second left was rushing up at them, narrow and filled with sleds. They dove into it less than a foot apart, loe chips streamed back from edging runners, rattling against his sled like a storm of bullets. There was an abrupt lurching, the quick left-right slam of air turbulence. A sled was braking hard somewhere ahead. Perhaps two or three. Where? He couldn’t see. He reacted automatically … full air brakes, hard onto his left edges and steer for the inside; the safest area if a wreck was trying to happen. His sled shivered with the strain of coming off the wall, holding against the force of the corner now only with the knifelike edges of its runners. But the force was too great. He began to skid, edges chattering. He eased them off a little, letting the sled drift slightly sideways. Two others had sliced down to the inside too, edges spraying ice. For a moment he was blinded again, but the corner twisted out flat, and he was through and still on the course, and he knew he was too tight, too hard with ‘his control; he was fighting his sled instead of working with it… .

… a tourist once asked Erik Sigismund how he controlled his sled, and he answered, “Barely.” And even that had failed when he flipped it a year ago and four others ran over him.

An old, lurking thought pounced into him again … he couldn’t stop this sled now if he wanted to. There was no such thing as stopping, outside of a crash. He had to ride until it ended, and he was suddenly certain that was not going to be at the bottom. Not this time. He had crashed before, too many times, but he had never had this feeling of fear before. Not this fear. It was different, and he couldn’t say why, and he was letting it affect him. And that was the greatest wrong.

They were thundering into the Jackhanuner now, 300 yards of violent dips. Every sled had its brakes out, and there were fast flashes as some fired braking rockets. But where the walls of .the course sloped upward the ice was comparatively smooth. He eased left, to the uphill side, and leaned on his left pedal, holding the sled on the slope with its edges. Then he folded his air brakes and started gaining again. It was necessary; one did not hold back from fear. If that was one’s style of life, he would never be a sledder in the first place.

Suddenly from the middle of the leading blurs a sled became airborne from the crest of one of the bumps. It hit once and twisted into the air like something alive. Sleds behind it fired rockets and tried to edge away. One skidded broadside, then rolled. A shattered body panel spun away; the two sleds were demolishing themselves. Someone blew-out, streaking into the sky, canopy sparkling high in the sunand that meant another sled out of control. He pulled full air brakes and fired a rocket, the force slamming Wm hard against his chest straps. His left arm was ready to fire the charge under the seat. But if he waited too long… .

… Kurt Schnabel was proud to be the only man who had never ejected … but the one time he had tried he had -waited the barest fraction of a moment too long, and his chute came down with his shattered corpse.

The three wild sleds whirled away, spinning out of sight over the low retaining walls. He folded his brakes. There was a trembling in his arms and legs like the slight but solid shuddering of a flywheel out of balance, involuntary and with a threat of getting worse. He cursed himself. He could have ‘blown-out too. No one would have blamed him with that tangle developing in front. But he hadn’t … and it was too late now.

… only one man had ever blown-out without an apparent reason and gotten away with it: Shorty Case in his first race.

And when he was asked about it afterwards, asked in that over casual, quiet tone, he had answered, “You bet your sweet, I blew! ‘Cause if I hadn’t, man, I was gonna pee my pantsl”

But he didn’t blowout that day on the Fallaways, the day his sled somersaulted and sowed its wreckage down the course for a half mile … and him too …

No, there were no quitters here; only the doers or the dead.

And which was he going to be tonight?

… drive, don’t think …

The Jackhammer smoothed out and plunged downward, and they were hurtling now into the Wingover at over 90

mph. Here were the second biggest grandstands on the course, the second greatest concentration-of cameras.

Here two ambulance helicopters stood by, and a priest too.

The Wingover… .

Imagine an airplane peeling off into a dive … imagine a sled doing the same on a towering wall of ice, a wall rising like a great, breaking wave, frozen at the moment of its overhanging curl… . The Wingover was a monstrous, curving scoop to the right, nearly fifty feet high, rolling the sleds up, over, and hurling them down into a 65-degree pitch when twisted into a 6-G pullout to the left.

… “Impossible!” When Wilfrid von Gerlach laid out the Stuka that is what they told him about the Wingover. “It cannot be done!”

But von Gerlach had been a Gran Prix racer and a stunt pilot, and when the Stuka was finished he took the first sled through. At the finish he sat quietly for a moment, staring back at the mountain. “At the Wingover I was how fast?” he asked throughtfully. They replied that he’d been radared there at 110 mph. He nodded, then made the statement the sledders had carried with them ever since.

“It’s possible.”

He watched the leading sleds line up for that shining, sheer curve and felt the fear freeze through him again. A man was little more than a captive in his sled here. If he was on the right line going in, then it was beautiful; if not, well… .

… the brotherly beers and the late talk …

“Remember when Otto Domagk left Cripple’s Corner in that snow storm?”

“Ya, und ven him was digged outVas? Two hours?he vas so sleeping.”

“And not a mark on him, remember?”

. . Remember, remember …

He followed in line barely four feet from the sled in front of him and felt the savage, sickening blow as the wall raised and rolled him. A flicker of shadow, a glimpse of the valley nearly upsidedown, then the fall and the increasing shriek of wind and runners, and he was pointing perfectly into the pullout, still lined exactly with the sled aheadbut there was one sled badly out of line…

And someone pulled their air brakes full open.

Sleds began weaving in the violent turbulence of those brakes. Rockets flashed. A sled went sideways, rolling lazily above the others, and exploded against the wall of the pullout. He pulled the ejection lever … nothing happened!

He was dead, he knew that. He saw two sleds tumbling into the sky, another shattered to pieces and sliding along the course. All that was necessary was to hit one of those pieces … but the corner was suddenly gone behind. The course unwound into a long left traverse. He remembered to breathe.

There were tooth chips in his mouth and ‘the taste of blood.

He swerved past a piece of wreckage, then .another.

… how many were dead now? Himself and how many others? But it wasn’t fear of deathwhat was it? What was it that he’d walled off insidethat something secret always skirted as carefully as a ship veers from a hidden reef, knowing it is therewhat? And now the wall was down, and he was facing… .

His sled shuddered. He was driving badly, too harsh with his edge control. He narrowly made it through the Boot and Cripple’s Corner, spraying ice behind him, but it was not the sled that was out of control. It was him. And he was diving now straight for the gates of hell at over 110 mph.

It was called the Plummet. It began with an innocent, wide left, steeply banked, then the world fell away. It dove over a half mile headlong down a 50-degree slope straight into a ravine and up the other side, .then into a full ISO-degree uphill hairpin to the right, a steep straight to the bottom of the ravine again, and finally into a sharp left and a long, rolling straight. It had killed more men than any other part of the course.

Here were the biggest .grandstands and the most hungry eyes of the cameras. Here there were three clergy, and emergency operating rooms. Here …

, . . here he would complete the formality of dying.

He came into the left too low, too fast for the edges to hold. The sled skidded. He reacted automatically, holding slight left edges and steering into the skid. The sled drifted up the wall, arcing toward the top where nothing showed but the cold blue of the sky. He waited, a part of him almost calm now, waiting to see if the corner would straighten before he went over the top. It did, but he was still skidding, close to the retaining wall, plunging into the half-mile drop nearly sideways. He increased his edges. The tail of the sled brushed the wall and it was suddenly swinging the opposite way. He reversed his wheel and edges, anticipating another skid, but he was not quick enough. The sled bucked, careening up on its left runners. It grazed the wall again, completely out of control nowbut he kept trying …

… and that was it; you kept trying. Over and over. No matter how many times you faced yourself it had to be done again. And again. The Self was never satisfied with single victoriesyou had to keep trying . .

And he was empty no more.

The hospital. How many times had he awakened here?

And it was always wonderfully the same: gentle warmth and his body finally relaxed and he would test it piece by piece to see what was bent and broken this time; and always the newsmen and the writers and the other assorted ghouls, and always the question and answer period. Punchlining, they called it… .

“How did it happen?”

“I dozed off.”

“Why didn’t you eject?”

“Parachuting is dangerous.”

“When did you realize you were out of control?”

“At the starting line.”

“What will you do now?”

“Heal.”

“Will you race again?”

… “It’s possible.”

Outside, the wind was blowing.