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temperature, Tracy turned once more to her coffee, only to discover that though the electricity still freely flowed, nevertheless the water
had frozen solid in the kettle. Only then, briefly, did she think of giving in, bursting into tears and crying unashamedly as she tried once more, futilely, to shake me awake.
    The depth of frost thickened in the interior of the plane, blanketing it in white crystals that glittered in the glow from colored panel lights. Finally, completely exhausted of physical strength and drained of emotion, Tracy lay down beside me and crept under the parka that covered me, hugging my cold form to her. And one by one the glass instruments of the pilot’s oontrol panel cracked and splintered as the temperature fell still lower.
    II
    World of the Winds
    (Recorded through the Medium of Juanita Alvarez)
    Â 
    When Tracy next awakened it was to find her body a mass of bruises and aching bones. The interior of the plane was in complete disorder but—miracle of miracles!—her three “corpses” were all stirring, and we were groaning almost with one voice. I can vouch for that last. I most certainly was groaning! My entire body felt swollen and inflamed.
    We had obviously been tossed down hard. The door was hanging open on snapped safety bolts; one of the windows had been shattered outward, I guessed by a box of ammunition flying against it: the broken box and a number of ammunition belts were strewn across the narrow deck. Snow was hissing softly in through the open door and broken window, settling in small drifts on the tilted floor. The nose of the plane was down, tail up, at an angle of between fifteen and twenty degrees. I remember thinking as I climbed stiffly, painfully to my feet that I ought to feel terribly cold, so high up in the mountains of the far North … .
    Then it was a matter of fighting Tracy off. She was hysterical with relief, going from me to Whitey, then to Jimmy, finally back to me, crying and kissing us and babbling out her story, which I gradually began to take in. It took me a few moments to get oriented. I seemed to be more or less whole—nothing broken at any rate, despite the multiple
aches and pains—and Whitey seemed fine, too, just a little shaken up. But Jimmy had a nasty bump on his head and he hadn’t quite managed to get to his feet yet.
    Since it was plain we weren’t about to die or stiffen up on her again, Tracy soon calmed down enough to make coffee. She was shivering like a leaf in a gale, which I believed was probably just as much the result of shaken nerves as physical coldness. I managed to get the door shut and fixed up a blanket over the broken window. That would keep some of the cold out, at least. Even though I didn’t feel any real discomfort myself, there was no telling what shock might do to the others. One glance out of the door as I closed it had been sufficient to confirm at least part of Tracy’s story; we certainly weren’t down in any mountains. Outside, under lowering clouds, a vast white plain stretched away, with strangely shaped hummocks of snow dotting it at intervals. In the distance I could just make out what looked like—but then the snow blew up like an opaque white curtain. It was a relief, though, to note that if Tracy’s story should prove to be one hundred percent fact and not fifty percent fancy, fever or nightmare, then at least there was no sign of the Wind-Walker for the moment. Wherever he had gone, I hoped he would stay there.
    But why wasn’t I cold? Already the blanket at the open window had frozen stiff as a board, and Tracy was still shivering as if she would shake herself to pieces. I noticed that like myself, Whitey and Jimmy didn’t seem uncomfortable, and immediately something began tugging at the back of my memory, something I had read of Ithaqua. The Wind-Walker was able to bring about alterations in the body temperatures of those he contaminated. Were we