's junk, we'll all be heading for home."

Nellon felt a weary sort of satisfaction. No, Big Tim didn't suspect.
Big Tim didn't know that he was never going home again. Nellon had
accompanied him on this final little trip to make sure of that.

They were nearing the lower end of a long ravine. Here, the invisible
trail which they followed rose steeply and entered a narrow cleft
between two huge slabs of ice. Then it dipped around the base of a great
pinnacle, which thrust like an undaunted finger into the rage of the
storm. This was the unique landmark which the expedition members had
christened Tower Point.

Tower Point served as a great, white warning signal. For the trail
skirting it gave way abruptly from powdery snow to ice of mirror
slickness and slanted down sharply to a frozen lake which, unsheltered
from the terrible wind, was polished constantly. One end of the lake had
once been a falls, for here it ended, dropping down as sheerly as a
precipice for hundreds of feet.

The way around Tower Point was one of the chief dangers, for there was
no telling where the snow ended and the ice began. A sudden slip meant a
swift slide down and onto the frozen surface of the lake. There, where
the wind swept in all its unbroken force, one would be blown helplessly
over the icy edge of the falls and dashed to death on the jagged ice
teeth far below. Dick Fulsom, metallurgist, had already lost his life
that way.

And that was the way Nellon had planned Big Tim Austin would die. Tower
Point would mark the scene of another tragedy. Just the merest of shoves
on that deadly borderline between ice and snow, and Big Tim would go
flashing down to the lake and over the falls.

* * * * *

It was as simple as that. Nellon knew that nothing could ever be proved
against him. Nor would the faintest thought of suspicion ever enter the
minds of the others. For to them he and Big Tim had always been pals in
the truest, deepest sense of the word.

No, he had nothing to fear. The only reckoning would be with his
conscience, but he did not allow that to trouble him now, for all he
wanted to think of was Laura. Laura would be his. He knew that with a
grim, satisfying certainty.

Now they were starting up the difficult rise which led to Tower Point.
Nellon slipped gradually behind, until he walked in Austin's rear. His
eyes settled and fixed to the metal back of the other's suit.

Very soon, now, it would