Target 5 (33 page)

'I wish to protest formally about this order to proceed due north,' Tuchevsky continued with an edge in his voice. 'The
Revolution
is our latest and most modern research vessel. It
cost millions of roubles. And yet I am ordered to take this
vessel into a sea littered with icebergs ...'

'The
Elroy
made it - and part of the way without radar. I
saw she had lost her masthead equipment. You have that
damned big ear twitching at the top of your mast - use it!' Papanin stood up in his stockinged feet and began padding about the chart-room, looking at things. 'I want to speak to
the radio-jamming officer,' he went on. 'There will be a
short pause to send a signal to the
Gorki -
all helicopters are to search for the present position of the
Elroy.
The first one
to find it flies here
immediately to report.. .'

'Why?' flared Tuchevsky. 'Why are we doing this insane
thing? I shall radio an immediate protest to Moscow.'

'No you won't!' Papanin looked at him over his shoulder.
'The pause in the jamming will be very brief- only sufficient
to send off my signal to the
Gorki.
The
Elroy
is sailing south
into a sea crammed with icebergs. She will be sailing blind -
her radar is gone. She will be lost to the outside world - the radio-jamming has isolated her. Get me some tea, please,
Tuchevsky, and I will tell you what it is all about.' The
Siberian paused. 'You see, we are going to intercept the
Elroy.'

The murderous, shuddering impacts of steel smashing into solid ice woke Beaumont after three hours' sleep at four in
the morning. Had an earthquake been erupting outside
the effect would
have been mild compared with the quiver
ing, grinding sensation he woke to as the bows smashed and
drove into the polar pack. And of all men aboard Beaumont
was receiving the full treatment - his cabin, the only other
quarters available apart from the one amidships he had given to Grayson and Langer, was under the bows.

Befuddled with sleep, he blinked, wondering why the
cabin walls seemed to be oscillating, as though some tremendous force just beyond was about to burst through the
plates and crash down on him. He checked his watch. 4
am.
He'd had three hours' sleep since coming aboard. The oscil
lation of the cabin walls was quietening down but the rever
berating crash was still in his ears when the door opened and
Pat DaSilva, acting mate, peered in cautiously with a mug
of steaming coffee.

'I wondered if you were awake,' he said solemnly. 'And
you'd better swallow this fast before the next ram.'

'Thanks.' Beaumont took the mug and sipped cautiously
while he studied DaSilva. The acting mate was a short,
stocky man of about forty with curly black hair and a
squarish head. At first glance he looked tough and un
compromising, but there was a glint of humour in the steady grey eyes if you studied him carefully. Beaumont swallowed
a lot of the scalding liquid. American coffee. Very strong.

'Here it comes again,' DaSilva warned as he grabbed
hold of the door frame. The vessel was moving forward, its
engines throbbing with power. Just beyond the wall of the
cabin was the bow. Somewhere just beyond that was the ice
as the steel bow cut through black water. Beaumont put out a hand and waited, his coffee mug three-parts empty, his
hand pressed against the end of the bunk. The ship struck.

The cabin vibrated with the massive collision. DaSilva almost lost his grip and was hurled across the cabin, but he
saved himself. Beaumont had the feeling that the bows were
breaking, the plates buckling, that within seconds the cabin wall would crumble while an avalanche of smashed ice deluged in over them. But at the back of his mind he knew
this wouldn't happen: this was an icebreaker. The ship
stopped, the engines still throbbing. Beaumont looked at the coffee splashed over the opposite bulkhead. 'Are we getting
anywhere?' he asked.

'No place fast. It's been going on for over an hour - God
knows how you slept through it - and we're stuck solid. The
trouble is we've lost not only the radar - the observation cage went down as well. With the mate inside it,' DaSilva added soberly. 'Which promoted me to acting mate. I could have done without it - Carlson was a good guy. We need someone up top,' he explained, 'to see what angle to hit the
ice at. The trouble is there's no top to send anyone up to.'

Beaumont was getting dressed, putting on his boots and his parka as the vessel withdrew from the ice. The cabin shuddered again; the grinding, grating sound of steel withdrawing itself from the vice of the pack was appalling. 'I'm going up to the bridge to see what's happening,' Beaumont
said as he
fastened the parka. He looked directly at the mate.
'Could I have imagined it,' he inquired, 'or was there a cer
tain lack of enthusiasm as we came aboard?'

DaSilva looked uncomfortable. 'You don't want to take any notice of it.' He hesitated. 'The fact is Schmidt wasn't
too happy about bringing the ship as far north as this in
February. The rumour is he received some gut order from
Washington - get the hell north and damn the con
sequences. He kind of blames you for being alive, for bring
ing him up here.'

'Some of the crew too?'

'Maybe a guy here and there. We were going home to
Milwaukee when the order came through. They'll get over
it.

But they hadn't got over it yet. Beaumont sensed the
hostility around him as he made his way up to the bridge.
He'd have had to be blind not to have sensed it. Seamen he passed didn't seem to see him coming. One burly character
on his hands and knees in a companionway who was clean
ing the floor moved his bucket in front of Beaumont.

'Shift that bucket fast, Borzoli,' the acting mate snapped.

The burly man looked up. 'I didn't see you, Pat...' He
moved the bucket quickly. It wasn't just that they had been sent up Iceberg Alley, Beaumont reflected as he mounted a staircase; DaSilva hadn't told him the whole story. He was
being blamed for the death of the mate, Carlson. It looked
as though the voyage could be marred by the odd incident;
the men who crewed an icebreaker weren't the gentlest
characters who went to sea. Commander Schmidt's opening
remark wasn't exactly encouraging either.

'I'd keep to your quarters if I were you, Beaumont. You
need the rest.'

The high bridge gave a good view out over the ice ahead
and the vessel was driving along the channel for another
ram. At least the surviving channel had been wide enough
for Schmidt to turn his ship round before he attacked the
pack, searching for a way out south. At the end of the
channel the ice was battered but still intact, and when the bows struck no crack appeared. Beaumont released his
gloved hands from the rail he had gripped and looked at
Schmidt. 'We're in trouble. At this time of the year the
icing up will go on - if we don't get out soon we'll be stuck
here till spring . ..'

'You think you're telling me something?' The dark-
browed commander stared bleakly at Beaumont from under
his peaked cap. 'Against my better judgement I came up here on account of you people. What I can do without is
your comments.'

'You need a man high up,' Beaumont insisted, 'a man
eighty feet up so he can guide the angle of the ramming, so he can detect the slightest trace of a fissure which will tell
him where to ram next time . . .'

'Come with me!'

Schmidt's expression was even bleaker as he gave an
order for the ship to be stopped and then left the bridge
quickly. They went backwards down a slippery ladder
which had recently been cleared of ice, and on deck teams
of men were shovelling ice over the sides, great slabs of ice
which other men were levering off the deck with crowbars. The
Elroy's
Sikorsky was just coming in to land, hovering
over the pad aft of the bridge and then dropping. 'Checking
up on those Russians out on the ice,' Schmidt snapped.
'Like you suggested,' he added grudgingly. 'A Soviet
chopper airlifted them out half an hour ago.' They arrived at the base of the huge mast. 'Take a good look,' Schmidt
growled.

The huge structure speared up into the moonlight. Eighty
feet above them, the tip of the spear was jagged and torn, looked as though it had run into the wall of a building. The crosstree below was
intact, and even from their great distance below, it Beaumont could see that the crosstree was sheathed in ice. A seaman levering up an enormous slab of
ice tipped it over. It smashed down inches from Beaumont's
right foot - because Beaumont had moved the foot just in
tine. 'Do that again,' Schmidt roared, 'and I'll have you
in the brig. Get over to the port side!' He waited until the
seaman had gone before he spoke again. 'They all liked Carlson,' he said.

'And they hold me responsible for his death?'

'I didn't say that. Now, for God's sake, look at it! And
you say I ought to send a man up there!'

A metal ladder ran up the side of the ice-coated mast, its rungs encased in gleaming ice; the rigging was festooned
with ice; ten-foot long icicles hung from the tips of the cross-
trees. Seen from the deck as Beaumont stared up, the mast
was like some weird glass pylon. It looked totally un
assailable.

'I didn't say you ought to send a man up,' Beaumont re
plied. 'I can get up there myself. I'll need a leather strap to
hold me, canvas padding round the mast, and a telephone
set to communicate with the bridge ...'

'And a coffin to bury you in,' a voice behind him added.

'This is Quinn, the chopper pilot,' Schmidt said gruffly, so Beaumont shook hands with Quinn, the first man who
had extended him this courtesy since he had come aboard.
Lean and lanky, in his early thirties, Quinn reinforced his
warning.

'You should have died on the ice. You didn't - so stick to
your cabin till we hit Quebec. We'll get there one day.'

Schmidt was staring resignedly up at the mast. 'It's what
we need - someone high up. But what damned use would
you be up there?'

'I did the same job for your sister ship
Exodus
' Beaumont
replied quietly. 'Three years ago north of Baffin Bay. She
was trying to head up Smith Sound and she had the same
sort of problem - solid
ice ahead. I knew the area so I went
aloft and guided them through.'

'That's MacDonald's ship.' Schmidt stared at Beaumont
and then up at the mast again. 'We have a telephone box
up there already and the mast is padded - DaSilva went up
to locate a way into the icefield, but I brought him down
before we started hammering the pack.'

'Mac was the captain when I was on the
Exodus.'
Beau
mont smiled dryly. 'He wrote out a dummy certificate for
me afterwards - to show I could act as pilot in Smith Sound.
And I think we ought to get out of here - that radio-
jamming bothers me.'