A Grue Of Ice

by Geoffrey Jenkins

  The voices became so faint I had to strain to hear.

  " What about the other skippers?" asked Pirow. " They won't like it. They may turn against you."

  "Turn—to whom?" asked Upton confidently. "Thorshammer? Don't be crazy. Can you see them simply handing themselves over to Thorshammer? Never! They're in this thing too deep already, and they'll be deeper in still after the seaplane has been shot down." I heard a mirthless chuckle. "

  If you miss the seaplane, Peter, I'll come after you with a Luger myself."

  I looked at the unconscious man on the floor. Sailhardy and I had been in some tight spots during the war, but this looked tougher than any of them: I could see only one way to save our .lives, and that was to tell Upton the real secret of Thompson Island. The bargain would be purely one-sided, for Upton would certainly never tell me now what he was really after on Thompson Island. It would be a plain barter for our lives, with Upton raking in all the winnings.

  The Tannoy repeated the slam of the radio office door, after the crunch of footsteps. It remained alive, but silent, except for an occasional splutter of Morse. Pirow must have been left alone on watch. An hour dragged by, and then another half. Sailhardy moaned and stirred from time to time, but did not come round. A kick like Walter's would have killed anyone less tough than the islander. My only ally outside the cabin seemed to be Helen. Would she, though, having been so long under her father's sway, assist me, even if she wanted to? I strained every sense to hear her footsteps outside, but everything remained silent.

  Another five minutes dragged by. The Tannoy broke into life. I heard a door open, and almost at the same moment Upton's voice. " Yes, Carl, yes?"

  I could not help admiring the brilliant, dispassionate professionalism of The Man with the Immaculate Hand. "

  Seaplane reporting ship contacts to Thorshammer. Five ship contacts on her radar."

  " She's picked up the fleet," breathed Upton. " She's picked us up!"

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  Pirow's voice was impersonal. " No sighting reports. Only radar contacts." He spoke slowly, telling me he was reading back the seaplane's signals to the destroyer as she came in t o w a r d s o u r f l e e t . " R a d a r c o n t a c t f i v e s h i p s t w o z e r o zero degrees. Surface wind forty-four knots." There was a pause. Then he resumed. "Preparing to orbit fleet as soon as 1 make visual sighting. Will run in and turn on target. Roger?"

  A tinge of irony crept into Pirow's voice. "Thorshammer replies, Roger. Signal fleet's position and course."

  I tensed as I heard Upton's words. " Peter," he said. "

  Fetch Wetherby and get over to Aurora. You know what to do. You're sure you will be O.K. in the boat by yourself?"

  " I'm O.K.," I heard Walter grunt. " Have someone start the engine while I collect Wetherby. I have one hand on the tiller and other on the Luger, heh?"

  " Good man," replied Upton.

  I heard the heavy clump of Walter's sea-boots as he left the radio office to come down to my cabin. The weakest link in Upton's disposal plan for me seemed to be the time I would be alone in the boat with Walter crossing to Aurora. He would be fully on the alert, but he would not know I had overheard them. I told myself I must also get out of the cabin as quickly as I could before Walter realised the Tannoy was switched on. I prayed that neither Upton nor 'Pirow would speak while Walter was in the cabin.

  The door swung open. The Luger looked like a plaything in his massive fist. " Come!" he said. " I want no tricks from you, you Royal Navy bastard!"

  He started to move towards Sailhardy, but he backed as I walked quickly to the entrance. " You swine," I replied. " I think you've killed him."

  "Good," he replied. " Then there is no need to look closer." He shut the door. The Tannoy had kept silent.

  I walked away from the cabin door, and then stopped in

  the long corridor. I faced Walter.

  " Up on deck," he snarled. " No tricks! I am an excitable man with a gun. We go to my ship now."

  " Not until I have spoken to Sir Frederick Upton," I said.

  " No!" he retorted.

  I learned against the steel wall. I knew their plan. They could not dispose of me down here. " If you're so keen to get me to your ship, hammer me unconscious like Sailhardy," I sneered. " Go ahead."

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  Walter looked nonplussed. " If it was me, I would shoot you here," he blustered. " Why must you see Sir Frederick?"

  " Go and jump over the side," I said. " Either I see Sir Frederick, or I stay here."

  " O.K.," he conceded after a pause. " We go to the companionway there, where there's a telephone. No speaking on deck. You can tell Sir Frederick what you want to say."

  There was an emergency telephone by the companionway leading up to the main deck. I rang the bridge and asked for Sir Frederick Upton. His voice came back, vibrant, full of good humour. I cut short his bonbomie. " Listen, Upton," I said. " I've been thinking over this Thompson Island business."

  Upton's voice went cold. " No whining, Wetherby. You played—damn badly, I might say—and lost. The chart is mine. It stays so."

  " That chart is not nearly as valuable as you seem to think," I started to say. " I assure you you won't find Thompson Island in the position on the chart. The key is missing. I alone know where Thompson Island is. I'll take you there in exchange for an unconditional safe-conduct back to Cape Town for Sailhardy and myself, unharmed, and with the run of the ship."

  Upton laughed so loud I had to keep the phone away from my ear. " It is really incredible," he said. " First, my daughter become starry-eyed because the great Captain Wetherby makes her land on an ice-floe. God alone knows

  why, but it is so. What sort of line you shot, I wouldn't know.

  Then you yourself come along with a cock-and-bull story about the chart being wrong and you being the only person who knows where Thompson is situated. Balderdash!"

  " I'll go further," I said. " Let us take the fleet to where the chart says Thompson is. If it is there, you can turn me over to Thorshammer and I'll take the rap for all this business. If not, then . . ."

  Upton gave his answer, characteristically. The receiver at the other end was slammed down.

  Walter gestured with the Luger. " Up, on deck! Quick!

  There's not much time. We go to Aurora."

  I had no option. I walked ahead of him. Once we had reached the deck, he kept close behind me, the Luger hidden out of sight in his jacket pocket. Once I caught a sideways glimpse of the half-shaven face: I could see that Walter was all set for his killing orgy, for he was grinning slightly and 99

  the face was alive with a kind of sadistic joy. He would not need any excuse to kill me.

  Aurora's boat hung in the davits, engine running. Walter m o t i o n e d m e a h e a d m o c k i n g l y . " A f t e r y o u , C a p t a i n Wetherby." Two stolid Norwegian sailors were at the boat-falls. There was nothing to do but obey. I climbed aboard, and the two sailors dropped the boat skilfully into the sea.

  Walter threw in the gear with one hand, keeping the other on the concealed Luger. As we gathered way, he held the tiller and the Luger as I had overheard him tell Upton he would.

  The tiny craft bucked in the swell. To throw myself at Walter would have meant upsetting the boat and drowning both of us.

  Aurora had lost way and I saw the measure of Walter's seamanship as he brought the tiny boat alongside the low bulwarks of the catcher.

  " Jump, Captain!" grinned Walter. " Jump for your Mel I'

  ll be right behind you!"

  I jumped as we swung level with the bulwarks, coming down heavily on the deck. Walter had judged it to a nicety.

  He did not even wait for the next wave. He too jumped, rope in hand, while two of his crew secured the boat. Despite his bulk, he was on his feet as agilely as a cat.

  He grinned again and stripped off his jacket, thrusting

  the Luger into his trousers pocket. Under the thick black woollen sweater his chest seemed more massive than before.<
br />
  He shouted something in Norwegian to the two men on deck, who disappeared below.

  " You are a fighting man, Captain," he leered. " Now you see my own special ack-ack gun in action, heh? You even sit in one of its harness." He laughed again. I said nothing. His face went heavy with anger. " All right, you Royal Navy bastard! Get up there ahead of me!"

  As I started to go up the bridge ladder, Walter snarled something at the first mate, who also went below. Above decks, the only person visible was the helmsman, and the lookout in the crow's nest. Walter bellowed at him, too. I glanced upwards at the lookout. I saw a tiny flash of silver in the sky, far out to port. Walter saw it too.

  Walter half thrust me up the last few rungs on the steel ladder leading from the bridge to the gun platform. At the top, out of the helmsman's sight, he pulled out the Luger.

  The brutal face was tense. " Into the Hotchkiss harness—

  quick! We haven't much time!" He grabbed me by the neck of my jacket with his left hand and savagely rammed 100

  the harness down over my head and shoulders. Once I was in its strait-jacket grip, he came round and deftly threw a loop of rope round the trigger guard, but not about the swivel bar, leaving my arms at half stretch to the trigger, with my face hard up against the sight.

  Walter pushed the Luger loosely into his waistband and slipped quickly into the harness of the Spandau. He swung the double weapon round, taking me with it. I could see the seaplane passing over the outermost ship of the fleet, the Crozet, still fully five miles away from the factory ship. The Hotchkiss' long metal sight was at full extension above the cooling ribs in the middle of the weapon. Walter's right eye was screwed up against the rubber-mounted sight at the rear of the Spandau, and I could see the line of his teeth as he kept his left eye firmly closed. Our faces were only nine inches apart.

  His breath was foul with stale Schnapps. His right hand was on the trigger beneath the long curve of the Narwhal tusks.

  The seaplane started to make a long dive towards- the

  factory ship. It came into my sights. Although I was expecting it, the heavy 400-round-a-minute burst of the Spandau took my breath away. Cordite fumes blew back. The two weapons were beautifully synchronised, and as Walter swung the Spandau to keep his sights on the seaplane, so mine held steady on it.

  I saw my chance.

  If I too joined in the firing, using my left hand to pull the Hotchkiss' trigger, I could not help having my right wrist hard up against the spent cartridge ejectment outlet. The Hotchkiss fires fourteen hundred rounds a minute. Thought and action came simultaneously. I pulled the trigger, pushing my right wrist against the outlet. The searing blast of white-hot gas snapped the rope. I yelled with pain as it scorched my wrist. At the same moment I threw full weight against the harness to drag the double weapon down. A double stream of tracer-lighted lead arced through the sky, wide of the seaplane. I cut my fire, jamming my left knee against the centre metal support of the gun to win control from Walter. The tracers flew wide of the plane in a golden orbit.

  Using all his strength, Walter swung the double weapon back round against my hold, sighting on the aircraft. The heavy bullets from the Spandau tore into its flimsy fuselage. The machine fluttered down towards Aurora, yawed wildly, passed almost between the big gantries of the factory ship, and fell into the sea beyond. The splash looked like the combined spout of a family of Blue Whales.

  My hands were already at Walter's throat as he fought to get clear of his harness. I kicked his feet from under him as he fumbled. I was still held in the strait-jacket grip of the Hotchkiss harness. Walter fell, rolled, dragged himself on one elbow, pulling the Luger from his waistband. He raised the automatic to fire.

  I swivelled the twin interlocked muzzles to their maximum depression, fixed on Walter. Stark terror leapt into his face. I fired. The spray of bullets ripped into the deck plating, turning everything into a blinding hell of red-hot ricochets and noise.

  Walter was too close. Even at maximum depression, the guns, although firing straight at him, could not reach down far enough. The stream of bullets was passing over him, the deck was shredded, but Walter was unharmed. He launched himself forward under the swath of death, grabbed the silent Spandau by the chain which runs from its water-cooler backwards, and swung the double weapon backwards so that the barrels pointed wildly skywards. I hung, off my feet, above the gut platform, looking at the Antarctica.

  The helicopter was rising from the flensing platform. I shouted insanely, impotently, at Helen. Walter raised the Luger and fired. Terror struck through me at what I saw below me.

  It was the sea. It had turned to honey. I knew what it meant.

  7. No Sailor's Sea

  I gasped for breath. I was drowning in the bland, jelly-like stuff which I had seen below me from Aurora's gun platform.

  Wavering between consciousness and unconsciousness, I snatched a lungful of air. The honey jelly had tried to drown my ship once, my soggy mind said, and now it was trying to drown me. I gulped down some more air. Its life-giving oxygen cleared my brain momentarily.

  I saw that the pale, mercuric oxide yellow light was not honey jelly. Nor was I in the sea, as in my semi-conscious state I had imagined. The colour of the light was reflected from the ceiling. And it was the ceiling of my cabin aboard 102

  Antarctica. I fought again for air. I remembered hanging from the Hotchkiss harness, and beneath me in the sea there seemed to be a substance floating everywhere, like silky jelly.

  Below Aurora's rail the sea had been covered with it, some of the individual slabs being up to two feet square. At the moment came the recollection of Walter firing the Luger into my face.

  The agony of the recollection and of what the honey jelly meant broke my semi-consciousness. I jerked myself upright in my bunk. The cabin swam round me and as I put my hand to my head I felt the bandages.

  " Take it easy, Bruce," said Helen.

  I had not seen her in the pale, diffused light. I wondered how long I had lain unconscious. Hearing her speak, too, brought a new surge of recollection: Walter had fired the Luger and almost at the same moment I had felt the gouge of pain in my head from the bullet. I remembered falling out of the harness into the sea, the honey-jelly sea. And then the roar of the helicopter's rotors overhead, and the unutterable relief of feeling the machine's " horse-collar " rescue gear snatch me from the icy sea. I had been in the water less than a minute.

  For the second time, Helen had shown her superb skill by saving my life. All the rest was blank.

  " Helen!" I got out. " How long have I been here? What time is it?"

  " It's hours since I picked you out of the sea," she said. "

  It's early afternoon."

  " Early afternoon!" I echoed. The strange light showed it must be turning dark up top. In the early afternoon! I knew there could be almost no hope of saving Antarctica now.

  My eyes slewed to the gyro-repeater. I tried to get out of my bunk, but Helen held me back. My head seemed to split with pain. I scarcely recognised my 'own voice. " Helen!

  Get on to the voice-pipe! For God's sake tell Bjerko to alter course. We're steering right into it! It's death, I tell you!"

  She looked at me with her strange eyes, which were full of shadows in the pale light. " There are a lot of things I want to hear—from you and you alone, Bruce—before I start worrying about our course."

  " I can wait, but the course can't," I said. "I told you about the danger of being nipped in the ice. The honey jelly in the sea was the outrider of the pack-ice, and that yellow 103

  light outside means we're running into the second advance guard—fog."

  She shook her head. "If that is so, it is too late anyway.

  You're wounded, and I want to know why. I saw you being

  held up at pistol-point, and I want to know why. I saw you fall from Walter's ack-ack weapon into the sea. Minutes before, I watched that same weapon shoot down a defenceless seaplane. After I had picked you up, I tr
ied to find the seaplane or its crew, but it had already sunk. Why are you wounded?"

  I realised that the heavy Luger bullet must have shattered off the casing of the Spandau and that the fragments had knocked me senseless. Walter had missed me—but only just.

  The bandage had stopped the blood, so the wound could not be deep. I hauled myself over the side of the bunk and called the bridge on the voice-pipe. Helen made to attempt to stop me this time, but sat immobile, watching me.

  " Bjerko!" I said. " Wetherby here. This course is suicide.

  We might still get clear on another. Steer—" I glanced at the gyro-repeater—" six-oh. Full speed ahead!"

  There was a pause, and I heard Bjerko say something.

  When the Norwegian captain replied, there was a note of sarcasm in his voice. " I thank you for your advice, Captain Wetherby, and so does Sir Frederick Upton. Sir Frederick says, you have had a nasty experience, and you need rest.

  The ship is in good hands."

  " Good hands . . ." I started to exclaim, but the instrument clicked off. " We're steering eight-five degrees," I said to Helen. " Bjerko says .. ." I trailed off at her shrug.

  " I asked how you came to be wounded," she said levelly.

  I stumbled to the bunk and half sat, half lay on it. I told her in detail about Norris' chart, the ransacking of my cabin, the fragments of the plot I had overheard on the Tannoy, and how my fears had been realised when Walter had lashed me to the Spandau-Hotchkiss and tried to kill me. She listened without saying a word. Her only outward sign of agitation showed when I mentioned her father's mysterious interest in Thompson Island and his instructions to Walter to get rid of me.

  " When I landed in the helicopter with you unconscious, my father told me that Walter had been through to him on the W/T. Walter, my father said, told him that you had gone berserk aboard Aurora at the sight of the ack-ack gun.

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  It happens, my father says: a man like yourself has some dormant killer-instinct left over from the war. He sees a weapon like the Spandau-Hotchkiss: all his wartime agonies come alive again. He isn't really responsible,, yet he is a killer all the same. Walter says it happened on the Russian convoys too."