Free Time of the Great Freeze by Robert Silverberg

frightful eyes. Unable to fire the torch, he swung it around, bashed it butt end first into the wolf's snout.
    The impact of the blow sent the wolf reeling back, blood dripping, broken fangs dropping to the ice. It circled Jim, ready for a second spring, but this time drew itself far enough away from the sled so that he could take a shot at it. The torch turned it to ash even as it readied itself to rip Jim's throat out.
    The other wolf had gone for Chet. His only defense was a hatchet, which he swung with telling effect as the monster leaped. He caught the wolfs left shoulder, and bright blood fountained. But the hatchet went skittering away, and a moment later Chet was sprawling on the ice behind the sled, the wolf covering him and going for his throat.
    Jim shouted and plunged forward, handing his power torch to Dave Ellis. Chet was struggling against the savage creature, holding the snapping jaws away from him with all the strength in his long, muscle-corded arms. Drawing his hunting knife, Jim threw himself down, the blade digging deep. The wolf shivered convulsively as Jim dragged the knife through its hairy belly, and rolled to one side. Chet scrambled free, and they both leaped back.
    "I've got him!" Dr. Barnes roared, and fired. The wolf died in a blaze of nuclear fury.
    "You all right?" Jim asked.
    Chet nodded. "Just some claw scratches."
    Turning, Jim saw Dave Ellis blazing away with the torch Jim had given him. The meteorologist's timidity seemed forgotten in the excitement of battle. Two wolves at once were coming at Dave, and he bellowed at them, a primordial, spine-shivering cry of fury and hatred, and cut them down in quick order. Seeing that Dave was taking good care of himself, Jim gripped his knife and looked to see where he could be useful.
    But everything was under control. A single wolf remained, growling viciously on the far side of the sleds, but coming no closer. Ted Callison dispatched the creature with a quick bleep of light, and the attack was over.
    Steam rose from the ice. The repeated blasts of the power torch had melted small lakes on both sides of the barricade, but they were already beginning to re-freeze at the edges. Fragments of wolf lay everywhere. The stink of destruction clawed at Jim's nostrils. There was fresh blood on his gloves, not moose blood this time but wolf blood, and he trembled a little as he remembered how it had felt to thrust the gleaming blade deep within the belly of a living creature.
    Dr. Barnes, still holding his power torch, inspected them.
    "Everyone okay? Jim? Chet?"
    "I'm a little scratched," Chet reported.
    "Take care of him, will you, Carl?" Dr. Barnes said. He mounted one of the sleds and looked around. "No more in sight. But we'd better keep watch through the night. Three-hour shifts, I guess. Let's clean up the mess first."
    Chet laughed. "It's too bad we wasted those wolves," he said. "The meat might have been useful later on."
    "I'd rather eat moose," Jim said. "These fellows were all tooth and claw and muscle."
    They cleaned up, fastidiously heaping the remains of the dead wolf pack together and covering the refuse with snow. Then they settled in for the night. Dr. Barnes and Ted Callison drew the first watch shift together.
    Jim huddled down in the tent. He heard howls from without, and told himself that it was just the howling of the wind. He was fiercely tired. It had been a long, hard day-a day that seemed to have lasted years.
    But they had met challenges out here in this forbidding world of ice, and they had responded to them, had triumphed. What more could they ask? He had eaten raw meat today, and he had killed wild beasts.
    In a single day, he thought, the Jim Barnes whose skin he had worn for seventeen years had changed almost beyond recognition. It was well, he told himself. He was adapting to this rugged new life. He was adapting.
    * * *
    Waking was a struggle. Jim would rather have fought a dozen wolves barehanded than to have come up out of