A Grue Of Ice (19 page)

107

" Thompson Island?" I suggested.

" I never heard him mention it," she said. " I've often heard him speak about Bouvet. I I. . ."

" What was the something?" I persisted.

" It wasn't here in the Antarctic at all," she said. " It was back in London. Perhaps about eighteen months ago. I remember he came home one evening and I could see he was very excited. He said he had bought out an old sealing firm and he had found some interesting things amongst some old

A thrill of disbelief passed through my mind. Two years previously the firm of Wetherbys had finally passed out of existence. I knew, however, that it had been bought by a

small company called Stewart's Whaling Company. Upton had not figured, as far as I knew.

" What was the name of the sealing firm?" I asked. She shook her head. " I don't know. I wasn't really interested. All I remember is that he spent most of the evening examining some things that looked like bull's-eyes."

" Bull's-eyes?"

" You know, those black sweets with the white streaks

in them."

" And then?"

" After that everything seemed to go with a rush. He

was here, there and everywhere, negotiating for ships, stores, maps and so on. He practically organised this whole expedition himself.

" I presumed it was just another trip south,"
she
went on, and smiled. " You see, Bruce, I wasn't the same person then as I am—have become—now. My own reaction was

that my challenge was to met, and I geared myself both physically and mentally to meet it. Most of my time was spent flying, doing tricky landings, being in the air when the weather was at its worst. Until now, I never thought of this expedition except as being strictly subjective, in relation to myself and my problems. My father gave me everything I

wanted, encouraged me in every way."

" You never saw the bull's-eyes again?"

" No."

" He never said what they were?"

" No. He spent a good deal of time at the Admiralty, and later he flew to Germany. He was there a couple of weeks."

" And Pirow?"

108

"He joined the ship the day before
we
sailed. I have had no reason to suspect him, until you told me who he

was. To me he was simply a first-class radio operator."

" Where is Sailhardy?" I asked. " Is he still alive?"

" He's in irons, locked in one of the cabins opposite. I patched him up as best I could."

" How does your father allow you to have keys to these cabins?" I asked. " Surely he might fear you would release us? Or at least get possession of the keys?"

She shook her head. " I appointed myself nurse to both of you. My father shouted and swore, but obviously thought

you were both so far gone that you would not be a threat to anyone. It would have been different had he known I sent

off the message about our position deliberately. He couldn't stop me nursing you without giving away his real intentions about you. I'm only the nurse, in their eyes. You see . . ." she smiled faintly, ". . . he still sees me as I was. How was Sailhardy hurt?"

I told her and she shuddered. " Dear God! There has been enough violence already! What are we to do?"

" Your father has got to be restrained," I said. " That means I must get control of this ship. I shall—if you will

help."

" What are you going to do?" she asked, wide-eyed.

" You're not ... not ... planning to harm my father?"

" No," I replied. " But I won't promise about Walter." I got down from the bunk. My legs felt a lot steadier. " I want a fiensing knife and a hacksaw. You'll find plenty of

both in the racks in there." I nodded to the bulkhead, beyond which lay the whale-processing compartments. " Are you sure there are no guards on the doors?"

" No, Bruce! We're stopping! The ship is stopping!"
Antarctica's
heart-beat slowed.

" Yes," I said. " This ship has made her number for the last time at Lloyd's. She won't last long now."

" What are you saying, Bruce?"

" The yellow stuff in the sea," I replied.' " Honey jelly of the Southern Ocean. It means that the ice is right on

top of us."

" I don't understand. . . . It looked like floating pumice to me."

" It wasn't pumice, Helen. It was millions upon millions of tiny little creatures called ostrocods. They come from a thousand, maybe two thousand, fathoms deep."

109

" You mean to say they are living creatures?" she asked incredulously. Those clusters of honey-coloured jelly?"

" They're dead," I said. " That's why they are on the surface. It is also why I say the ice is here. Listen, last year when the liner
Corinthic
sailed nine hundred miles through a sea of honey-coloured stuff near Pitcairn Island, in the Pacific, the papers dressed it up as the number one sea mystery of the year."

" I still don't get the significance of it," she said.

" It doesn't matter a damn whether or not millions of ostrocods live or die," I explained. " What is significant—

and especially to this ship at this moment—is that they died suddenly. And they died because the cold killed them. They had been born in the first place when the Antarctic winter came to an end. The spring brought warmth. Now the cold has returned."

" And the return of the cold—means?"

" Ice," I said. " Ice. Bouvet's own pack-ice."

" But the ice is five hundred miles away," she protested. " The dangerous ice
is
safe and sound now on the Antarctic mainland for the summer, which is just starting."

" I told you what we were heading into," I replied. " This is it. When I first saw the honey-sea from
Aurora's
gun, I reckoned
Antarctica
was on the outer wing of a gigantic crescent of ice. That is the way the Bouvet pack forms. There are two huge wings, anything up to a hundred miles apart. The rapid freeze spreads from wing to wing like a running fuse once it starts. When I saw the way we were steering, I yelled at Bjerko to turn sixty degrees—in other words, due east—at full speed, to avoid the freeze-up between the wings. We're finished."

" Are you sure . . . ?"

" I'm surer of this, Helen," I replied, " than of anything, except some inner feelings at the moment."

She turned away.

" Take a look at the barometer," I added.

She got up and faced the glass in open disbelief. " It can't fall twenty millibars in the three hours you've been

here! A pressure drop like that would mean a storm to end

the world!"

I smiled grimly. " I've seen it do better. Just south of where we are, it went down twenty-seven millibars in six hours during the war. I saw it happen. The bottom is dropping out of the weather." 110

She paced up and down. " I'm frightened, Bruce. Frightened of what's happening to us, to the weather, frightened of what's happening about my father. What now?"

" The weather atom bomb is being primed," I said. "There's nothing to do but await the explosion. The simplest way to visualise it is that two extreme air masses are about to join battle. We are now awaiting the onslaught."

" Bruce!" she exclaimed. " You—you of all people—

just can't sit back fatalistically and await death. We're at a standstill, but there's no swell, no wind even. . . ."

" We have thrown ourselves into the heart of the machine that makes the worst weather in the world," I said. " I once got clear of a similar situation in H.M.S.
Scott,
in these very waters. It took a destroyer and every bit of her thirty knots to get clear. This is literally the calm before the storm. And that storm will rage for a week or more across four thousand miles of empty ocean, and smash anything that lies in its

path."

" You can't just write off five ships like this!" she said. Beyond the porthole it was growing darker. Five ships! I

had been thinking in terms of one. " By heavens, Helen!

Five ships. I know—I'll bring the catchers in in line astern and keep an ice lead open, even if it starts to freeze round
Antarctica.
The catchers are smaller, more mobile, with a shallower draught—it will be tricky, but it can be done!" I saw in my mind's eye how I could take
Antarctica
out stern-first along a lead through the ice which the catchers would patrol at their best speed possible to keep the thick sea from coagulating before I could get the factory ship clear.

" I'll want your help with the helicopter, too," I told her. " Think you can manage, in this sort of half-fog?"

She smiled. " It's just this sort of situation I've been grooming myself for for years."

I looked for my sea-boots. I grinned at her. " Who changed me? This is a new pair of polar socks."

A faint flush spread beneath the fine cheekbones. " Your seaboots are under the bunk. They weren't very wet. . . . I dried your sweater. It's in that drawer, with your shirts...." I looked at her as I pulled the polo-necked, cold-cheating sweater over my head. " We have got to be quick. I'll carry these boots, so the others won't hear me coming. We must free Sailhardy first."

" Wait a moment, while I get the hacksaw and the knife," she said.

ill

I stood back from the entrance as she opened the door carefully and looked up and down the corridor. She disappeared, and was back within three minutes with the things I had asked for. It wasn't a hacksaw but a baleen saw for whale tusks, but it would do. Together we crossed the still corridor. The fog seemed everywhere. Even the lights seemed dimmer. Helen unlocked Sailhardy's door. The cabin was dark, and the switch gave a click as I turned it on. The electric light bulb had been removed. I groped and found the islander.

" It's Bruce," I whispered.

There was a faint clink from his manacles.

" How are you, man?" I asked.

His reply was stilted, as if he had difficulty in articulating. " Okay, Bruce, boy. Are you free?"

" Yes," I said, and I outlined my plan. First, I said, we would overpower Pirow in the radio shack and then break suddenly on to the bridge and seize Upton and Bjerko. I hadn't worked out how to get hold of Walter, and with her wicked weapon,
Aurora
would be a handful.

Helen interrupted. " What about Walter, though? He'll

be on the bridge, too."

" How did he get aboard?" I asked.

" While you were unconscious. My father ordered me to

fetch him from
Aurora."

"
That is very good," said Sailhardy. The menace in his voice sent a shiver through me. " He's mine, Bruce, mine!"

" Are you strong enough to tackle him?" I asked anxiously. " I don't want anything more to happen."

" Leave him to me, boy," came the voice in the darkness. " Now get these damned things off my wrists."

I felt for his wrists and started to saw.

" Why are we stopped, Bruce?" he asked.

" Honey-sea," I said.

" My God!" he exclaimed. I heard the sharp intake of his breath. " Has the ice closed on her yet?"

" No," I said, sketching my plan to save the factory ship. " Is there still any water sky?" asked Sailhardy.

" I think so," I said. "I couldn't see too well from my porthole."

" Water sky?" asked Helen. " What is that?"

" Big leaden patches in the fog where the sky should be," I said. " It means that below it there are open leads of water —

unfrozen sea. It shows its reflection against the sky." 112

The saw cut through the centre section of the manacles. " We're wasting time," he said. " We still have a sporting chance of saving our skins."

" Leave Pirow to me," I said.

In the dim corridor outside, Sailhardy looked like an avenging fiend. There was a mask of dried blood over his face, and his teeth glinted raggedly. The steel was still round his wrists and a piece of cut chain hung down from each.

" Come!" I said to Helen. " Keep well behind us, out of harm's way."

" Look after yourself, for God's sake!" she whispered. In single file, myself leading, Sailhardy behind, and Helen in the rear, we went silently up the steel ladder to Pirow's radio office. We dodged through Upton's empty big cabin. Pirow's door was closed. Putting down my sea-boots, I held the long knife in my right hand and opened the door quickly with my left. Pirow wore his headphones, his back to us. I put the point of the knife against his neck.

I said softly in German: " The Man with the Immaculate Hand."

Sailhardy moved like a panther to Pirow's right. Perhaps

it was his initial terror at the sight of the bloodied islander that made him say so much. " Herr Kapitan! " he mouthed. " Herr Kapitan! I do not know, I swear it! Heavenly blue, that is all I know. It is Sir Frederick's secret, not mine! I don't know . . ."

" Heavenly blue—what, Pirow?"

I noted the quick flash of comprehension in his eyes. When

he saw the knife-thrust wasn't coming then and there, he

started to fumble for words. The immaculate hand edged over to the Morse key. I reversed the knife and struck his

knuckles with the handle. He rose to his feet, white with pain.

" Come," I said. " You'll go up first on the bridge. I'll be right behind you, and you'll catch the first bullet if
your
friend Walter starts shooting."