Killer Whale Read online

  KILLER

  WHALE

  ‘What’s happening?’ Harry gasped.

  Before I could answer, another killer whale burst out of the sea on the low side of the floe. The giant predator flung itself onto the ice and came sliding up the slope on its belly. Straight towards Harry and me. With its jaws wide open.

  ‘Shishkebab!’ I cried, as we slid helplessly towards the enormous, tooth-lined cave of the killer whale’s mouth …

  Puffin Books

  Also by Justin D’Ath

  Extreme Adventures:

  (can be read in any order)

  Crocodile Attack

  Bushfire Rescue

  Shark Bait

  Scorpion Sting

  Spider Bite

  Man Eater

  Coming soon: Anaconda Ambush

  The Skyflower

  Infamous

  Whitethorn

  Astrid Spark, Fixologist

  Echidna Mania

  Koala Fever

  Why did the Chykkan cross the Galaxy?

  www.justindath.com

  For Stella

  PUFFIN BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (Australia)

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  Penguin Group (Canada)

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  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London, WC2R 0RL, England

  First published by penguin Group (Australia), 2008

  Text copyright © Justin D’Ath 2008

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  ISBN: 978-1-74-228207-7

  puffin.com.au

  1

  MAYDAY!

  ‘There’s one,’ squawked Harry.

  ‘Where?’ Dad’s voice crackled in our headsets. He was sitting up front with the pilot and couldn’t see which way Harry was looking.

  ‘Over there!’ Harry tapped the side window with his Game Boy.

  ‘On the left,’ I said into my headset-mike, leaning across my little brother for a better view. ‘Between those two big icebergs in the middle of the bay.’

  Ross Willis, our pilot, banked the Cessna 180 ski plane steeply to the left.

  ‘Thar she blows!’ he said. ‘Nice work, Harry.’

  We had been searching for whales along the Antarctic coast for over an hour and were nearly at the point where we’d have to turn back.

  ‘Looks like a fin whale,’ Ross said as we drew nearer.

  ‘It’s massive!’ I gasped.

  ‘They can weigh up to seventy tonnes. Only blue whales grow bigger.’

  Dad was busily changing camera lenses. ’Are they endangered?’

  ‘They were nearly wiped out before the International Whaling Commission banned fin whale hunting in 1976. now only the Japanese go after them,’ Ross said.

  He dipped one wing to give us a better view of the huge mammal. It looked as big as a container ship in the middle of the wide, ice-flanked bay. ‘Would anyone like to go down for a closer look?’

  ‘You betcha,’ said Harry, without raising his eyes from his Game Boy.

  We flew round in a big semicircle over a feet of monstrous icebergs and went buzzing back towards the whale in a long, slow descent.

  Then the buzzing stopped.

  We were all wearing headsets, which blocked out most of the noise. But not all of it – I could no longer hear the Cessna’s engine. There was only the rush of air across its windshield, wings and fuselage. Dad and Harry were too busy gawking at the whale and the Game Boy to notice. But I was watching Ross through the gap between the seats. He’d suddenly become very busy checking dials, pushing buttons and flicking switches.

  ‘Listen up, guys,’ he said in a loud, serious voice. ‘We might have a problem. Make sure your seatbelts are tight, and put your cameras and any other loose objects away where they can’t fly about.’

  Then he switched to an outside channel.

  ‘Mayday Mayday Mayday! This is Zulu kilo Victor Niner Mike, transmitting blind. Our engine has failed, we’re going to be landing on or near the coast at approximately one hundred and thirty degrees east …’

  Harry looked up from his Game Boy. ‘Who’s May Day, Mr Willis?’

  ‘keep quiet, Harry!’ snapped Dad, sounding tense. ‘Don’t bother Mr Willis now.’

  While Ross repeated his Mayday call, I helped Harry tighten his seatbelt. My hands were shaking so badly he probably could have done it better without me.

  We’re going to crash! screamed a little voice in my head.

  I tried to ignore it. ‘Put your Game Boy in the seat pocket, Harry.’

  ‘But I’m nearly at a new record.’

  ‘Put it away! Didn’t you hear what Mr Willis – ’

  ‘Pay attention, guys,’ Ross interrupted. ‘The engine has lost power so I’m going to put us down on the ice. It shouldn’t be a problem, but if anything happens you’ll find a first-aid kit, life jackets and other survival gear behind the back seat. There’s a fire extinguisher under my seat, and an axe on the floor in the front.’

  ‘Wicked!’ said Harry.

  Sometimes it’s embarrassing having five-year-old brothers. I should know. I’ve got two. The other one, Harry’s twin, Jordan, had to stay home with Mum in Australia because of his asthma. I wished I was there, too. I wished Dad had never bought tickets in the World Conservation Society raffle, with a family trip to Antarctica as first prize.

  An engine failure and forced landing were not part of the deal.

  Nor was drowning or dying of hypothermia, which would almost certainly be our fate if we landed in the ice-flecked sea.

  We were still a long way from shore. Ross had set a course directly into the bay, coaxing the ailing Cessna towards a wide, snow-covered plateau nestled between two craggy mountains. It looked like an ideal place to land. But without power we were barely moving. And we’d lost a lot of altitude. We still had roughly a kilometre to go when suddenly the Cessna began to pitch and shudder and jolt.

  ‘What’s happening?’ I gasped.

  ‘It’s called a katabatic wind,’ said Ross, struggling with the controls. ‘You often run into them below five hundred metres. A bit of a problem for us because they blow offshore.’

  ‘WE’RE GOING BACKWARDS!’ Harry shouted above the increasing howl of the wind.

  I looked out the side window. He was right. We were being blown out of the bay. Out into the frozen wastes of the Southern ocean. The next stretch of land was Tasmania, nearly three thousa
nd kilometres north.

  Even with a tailwind, a Cessna 180 can’t fly more than twelve hundred kilometres before it runs out of fuel. And that’s with a full tank to begin with. Ours was half empty.

  We were all going to die.

  ‘I’ll try something else,’ said Ross, craning his neck for a view of the peninsula at the western end of the bay. ’Hold onto your seats, guys – things might get bumpy.’

  He wasn’t kidding. As soon as Ross kicked the rudder pedal, the Cessna flipped sideways, did a kind of cartwheel, then dropped like a stone. It felt like a roller-coaster ride, only ten times more scary. The sea rushed towards us. I closed my eyes and waited for the splintering impact that would smash the flimsy ski plane – and all of us in it – to smithereens.

  It didn’t happen. The falling sensation stopped. My seatbelt no longer cut into me. We seemed to be level. I opened my eyes. The Cessna was skimming across the water, barely three metres above the whitecaps. Heading directly towards the peninsula, a vertical wall of rock and ice that grew steadily larger, larger, LARGER …

  Shishkebab! We were going to smash straight into it!

  At the very last moment, Ross tipped the Cessna to the right. Its starboard wing nearly scraped on the ice. Yes, ice! We were no longer flying over water. Below us, a narrow shelf of sea ice stretched along the bottom of the cliff face. With a flick of the controls, Ross set the skis down. The Cessna went skidding along the shelf in a long hissing slide. A line of penguins saw us coming and dived into the sea. We finally came to rest less than a plane’s length from the end of the peninsula, where the iceshelf met the sea in a turbulent boil of foam, broken chunks of icebergs and grey, crashing waves.

  Slowly I unclenched my sweaty hands, leaned back in my seat and let out my breath. We’d made it.

  BANG!

  The Cessna jolted.

  ‘What was that?’ asked Dad.

  Ross’s voice was loud in my headset. And for the first time that day, he sounded scared. ‘The iceshelf is breaking up,’ he cried. ‘Quickly, everybody out!’

  2

  CAPTAIN AMAZING

  Cessna seatbelts are more complicated than the ones in cars. There are lots of straps and buckles. But it’s surprising how quickly you can get them undone in an emergency.

  This was an emergency.

  BANG! BANG! BANG!

  It sounded like someone was shooting at us.

  It felt like it, too. With every ear-splitting bang, the ski plane shuddered as if bullets were smacking into its fuselage.

  Ross was first out. He dragged Harry’s door open and helped him down onto the ice. Dad and I tumbled out on our side. The freezing katabatic wind bit at the exposed skin on my cheeks and nose. I was glad the rest of me was protected by multiple layers of wool, thermal cotton and Gore-Tex.

  BANG!

  A long jagged crack appeared directly under my feet. I grabbed the wing strut to take my weight off the ice. The crack split open and I found myself dangling over a zigzag of inky-blue seawater. My heart hammered, my legs scissored in the gusting wind. One wrong move, one slip of my hands, and I’d fall in. I remembered Ross’s warning from earlier that day: ‘It only takes two minutes in the Antarctic sea and you’ll die of hypothermia.’

  Slowly, glove over glove, I worked my way up the strut and along the wing until I was no longer over the deadly water. Then I gingerly set my feet down on the ice.

  Harry and Ross came slipping and sliding around the nose of the ski plane.

  ‘Where’s Dad?’

  Uh oh. I hadn’t given him a thought since the ice gave way under us. ‘He’s right …’

  The words died in my mouth. Where I’d last seen our father, the fingers of two orange gloves clung to the edge of the zigzag gap.

  ‘DAD!’ Harry and I both yelled together.

  Ross got there first. He lay flat on his stomach and dragged our father up onto the ice. Dad’s face was as white as our surroundings and his weatherproof exposure suit was dripping wet from the chest down.

  ‘Did the water get into your clothes?’ asked Ross.

  Dad shook his head. His breath made white clouds that whirled away on the wind. ‘n-n-not t-t-totally. My s-s-suit k-kept m-m-most of it out.’

  I didn’t know whether it was the cold or the shock that was making Dad stutter. He seemed unsteady on his feet. Ross put an arm around our father’s waist and turned to me and Harry.

  ‘Get over to the cliff face, guys. I’ll bring your dad.’

  BANG!

  A crack opened under the Cessna and one of its skis fell through. The plane tipped sideways. Its right wing smacked onto the ice, missing Harry and me by millimetres.

  ‘GO, GO, GO!’ Ross yelled at us across the sloping wing.

  Grabbing Harry’s hand, I ducked around the Cessna’s tail and led him sliding and stumbling across the ice towards the tumble of snow and rocks at the base of the cliff. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Ross and Dad appear around the other end of the ski plane, taking a parallel course to ours.

  BANG! BANG! BANG!

  A spider web of huge cracks shot out from under the Cessna. One raced straight towards Harry and me like a blue bolt of lightning. A gaping fissure yawned open at our feet. My boots slid crazily as I pulled Harry backwards. There was a loud creaking noise and a shadow fell over us. I flung a panicked look over my shoulder. The Cessna had fallen nose-first through the ice. Its tail stuck straight up, towering like a massive tombstone against the cloud-streaked sky. For a moment it balanced there, rocking gently from side to side, then the doomed ski plane slid slowly down through the ice and disappeared.

  ‘I left my Game Boy inside!’ wailed Harry.

  As if that mattered. Survival was the only thing on my mind. All around us, what remained of our icy platform was disintegrating in a volley of explosive detonations that sent clouds of ice crystals swirling away on the wind. The shelf creaked and rumbled and rocked up and down like the deck of a ship. I dragged Harry from one swaying icefloe to the next in a mad race to escape the maze of zigzagging cracks that seemed to follow our every footfall. They were gaining on us, getting closer by the second. I tried to run faster but it was impossible – our bulky thermal suits made us as slow as astronauts.

  ‘SAM! HARRY!’

  Dad and Ross had made it to the base of the cliff. Safe on the rocks, they were frantically beckoning at us to come in their direction.

  ‘GET ONTO SOLID GROUND!’ yelled Ross.

  If only it was that easy. The gaps between the sections of ice were getting bigger every moment. Combined with the wind and the seesawing motion of the sea, it was becoming increasingly hard to balance. Halfway to shore, we came to a gap over a metre wide.

  I slithered to a halt. ‘It’s too far to jump.’

  ‘I’ll use my super powers,’ said Harry.

  Harry plays a game where he’s a superhero called Captain Amazing. Sometimes I wonder if it’s just a game. He seems to believe he really is Captain Amazing. Before I could stop him, Harry took a short run up and jumped.

  Heart in my mouth, I watched my little brother fly across the gap between the two icefloes. It was a long jump for a five year old, but when Harry plays Captain Amazing he seems to get away with stunts that would defeat someone twice his age.

  Captain Amazing made it across the gap. But only just. His left boot landed solidly on the ice, but the toe of his right boot caught on the edge of the floe and slid backwards – off the ice and down towards the glassy blue water twenty centimetres below.

  Where something was waiting.

  3

  THE CREATURE FROM THE DEEP

  The ‘sea leopard’ (or leopard seal) is the most dangerous seal in the world. It’s the only seal that preys on its own kind. And the only one that preys on humans.

  But mostly it eats penguins. The sea leopard lies in wait under the ice until a penguin dives into the water. Then it strikes.

  This one must have been hunting the penguins that were scare
d into the sea as the Cessna landed. When Dad fell through the ice, it probably saw his thrashing legs and came to investigate. Luckily Ross pulled him out in time.

  But when Harry slipped, the sea leopard was ready.

  The water between the slabs of ice was crystal clear. I saw the sea leopard when it was still four or five metres below the surface. At first sight I didn’t know what it was. It looked like something from a horror movie, like Godzilla or The Creature from the Deep. And it was coming for Harry.

  ‘LOOK OUT!’ I screamed.

  And jumped.

  Sea leopards are huge. They can grow to more than three metres in length and weigh half a tonne. They don’t have any natural predators except killer whales.

  So they don’t expect to be attacked by some puny little creature on the ice.

  It wasn’t my plan to attack the sea leopard. My intention was to jump across the gap and drag Harry away from the edge before it latched onto his foot. But the sea leopard got in the way. It burst out of the water just as I took off. I found myself flying towards it on a collision course. There was only one thing to do. Leaning my body back, I straightened my leading leg and delivered an improvised flying side-kick to the back of its ugly, bullet-shaped head.

  WHAP!

  The giant seal was taken by surprise. I wasn’t big enough or heavy enough to hurt it, but the blow drove its wide-open jaws into the side of the icefloe, exactly where Harry’s foot would have been if I hadn’t yelled a warning. Instead of getting a mouthful of Harry, the sea leopard got a mouthful of ice. My knee buckled and I came down on the animal’s wide, slippery neck, pushing it back down into the sea as I face-planted onto the ice next to Harry.

  ‘Check out the humungous seal!’ he said, peering into the water where the creature had disappeared.

  I sat up on the small, wobbly floe, spitting out ice, and grabbed the back of Harry’s full-body suit. ‘keep away from the edge. It might come – ’

  ‘LOOK OUT BEHIND!’ Ross’s voice cut through the whistling wind.