A Grue Of Ice

by Geoffrey Jenkins

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  —years for them. These islands exist—how do you say?—in the mind only."

  The faint pink flush suffused Upton's mask. I could see he was taking a big grip on himself. The twitch at the corner of his mouth got worse.

  Hanssen didn't even bother to look. " I have seen a hundred things in the Southern Ocean which could have been islands—rocks streaked with guano, icebergs covered with mud. It is not surprising that we all dream a little in these goddamned waters. Many men have dreamed, but only a few islands have been found. It is the same with Thompson Island."

  " Get up!" ordered Reidar Bull. " March!"

  Upton squatted on his haunches still. He seemed to be losing control of his hands, they were shaking so. The manacles rattled faintly.

  " Father," said Helen in an agonised voice. "Come.

  Thompson Island can wait."

  His eyes were fever-bright. " It's waited a century and more for me," he said thickly. "Reidar Bull! Hanssen!

  Thompson Island exists! Here is its position. Captain Wetherby has seen it! Seen it, do you hear? Thompson Island!" His voice rose. " Listen!" He turned the old chart over and quoted from Norris' own personal log, which with its image of blue ice was written so indelibly into my mind. "

  Thompson Island is nothing but perpendicular rocks and it looks like a complete cinder, with immense veins of lava which had the appearance of black glass, but much of it is streaked with white veins.' "

  Reidar Bull's harsh laugh sounded like. floes grinding together. " Rubbish! Get up!"

  Upton crouched on the ice like a wounded animal facing its hunters. His face was contorted. Helen had drawn back in horror at his break-up. He was keeping his last card—his real reason for wanting to find Thompson Island—in reserve still.

  Walter licked his lips. Thompson Island had bitten into Upton's mind and eroded it in a way which was dreadful to observe ; I waited in awe at what was to follow.

  " I want Thompson Island," he said, so softly that I had to crane to hear him. He looked at the three skippers. " I'll double my original offer to you if you will take me to Thompson Island." None of them replied. Upton swung round to me. " Bruce!" he said. " Bruce, you know where is is, and so do I now—take me there!"

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  Looking down on the mouthing figure on the ice and remembering what had happened to men in the past who had also wanted Thompson Island, I resolved to myself that no one would ever wring from me the secret of Thompson Island's whereabouts.

  Upton fumbled with his pathetic little squash leather bag. "

  Oh God!" burst out Helen. " Bruce . . ."

  He got it open and emptied the contents into his hand.

  Still crouching, he rolled the five objects across the old chart, like throwing dice.

  They looked like bull's-eyes.

  Upton began almost to intone. " Heavenly blue, they call it. The same colour as this ice. It's really silvery white, but it takes its name from the two heavenly blue lines in its spectrum."

  Reidar Bull said something in a low voice in Norwegian to the other two skippers.

  " You'll come with me now, won't you, Reidar Bull," he said, looking up expectantly, " and you, Lars Brunvoll, and you, Hanssen? The other money was chickenfeed next to this."

  " What are you talking about?" demanded Reidar Bull roughly.

  " You'll come then, Reidar Bull?" he went on. " You'll be the richest man in Norway."

  " From that?" sneered Bull, indicating the bull's-eyes.

  The tic tugged at the corner of Upton's mouth and eyes as if, even now, he were reluctant to reveal his secret.

  " Yes," he said. " That is caesium. It is the rarest metal in the world. It is worth two hundred pounds a pound."

  Caesium! The spaceage metal I

  I had considered all along that it was not geographical curiosity that had driven Upton to try and find Thompson Island. Caesium had been much in the forefront when I had returned to Cambridge after the war—it is the most vital part of the fuel for, space ships and space rockets. Looking down at the dicelike objects, my mind ran back to one of the young scientists at the Cavendish Laboratories there who had become a bore and a butt over our after-dinner glass of port because of his endless conversations on the wonders of caesium: Upton was right when he said Blue Whales were nothing by comparison with it. Caesium, I had been told over the university port, was known to occur in minute

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  quantities in only three places—a small place in Northern Sweden, in South-West Africa, and in Kazakhstan, in the Soviet Union. Its name comes from the bright blue lines in its spectrum—Upton was probably right when he said they were heavenly blue. I wished now I could remembered more of what the Cambridge bore had had to say about it. Vaguely I recalled that it had the lowest boiling point of any metal in the alkali group, and was priceless, not only because of its scarcity, but because of the ease with which it could be made to form electrically-charged gas for fuel for space ships. It was, it seemed from what I could remember, the answer to the scientist's prayer for a space fuel—except that there was practically none of it to be had. There was also something about its extremely high ionization potential which made it possible to transmute the atomic heat of caesium directly into electric power without having to use an intermediate stage of steam boilers or turbines in the space ships.

  I looked at Upton and I knew the answer even before I

  asked him. " Your face . . . caesium?"

  Some of the wild light went from his eyes. " You know caesium? Bruce, you know it? Yes," he said, touching his face. " This is the price of my knowledge of it. I told you, the metal particles pass into the skin. I know more about caesium than any man living. I worked on it—more than twenty years ago now—at a little place called Ronnskar, in Sweden, on the Gulf of Bothnia—it's quite close to the port of Skelleftea

  ."

  I cut him short. I still couldn't see how he linked Thompson with his wonder metal. " How do you know it exists on Thompson Island? Where did those samples come from?"

  " Norris took a hammer," he said. " You'll see from the log how he sent a ship's boat ashore, and they had to make a sudden dash back to the ship because of the weather. Three of those pieces of rock are Norris'. The other two are Pirow's. You see, Kohler used it as a base for Meteor. Pirow has been there, but he doesn't know where it is. Only roughly—

  somewhere near Bouvet. Kohler never let on." The words came tumbling out in a flood.

  Helen said gently, " Father, why did you go about it this way? Underhand, murder—all the rest of it?"

  It only needed a hair-trigger to touch Upton off. " Thompson Island is mine!" he shouted. " I won't have any bloody governmental committees telling me where and what I should explore. That shameful Antarctic Treaty .. ."

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  Reidar Bull, Hanssen and Lars Brunvoll seemed to be at a loss. All this about caesium was going over their heads.

  I asked another question to try and keep Upton on an even keel.

  " Where did you get Norris' samples from?"

  He laughed, a strange, brittle laugh. " From the Wetherbys You see, Bruce, I bought out Wetherbys—under an assumed name, of Stewart and Co. You weren't to know—don't forget I already suspected you were the only man to have seen Thompson Island. Pirow came later when I started scratching in the German Naval Archives. Those rocks there are veined with caesium—pollucite, they call the mineral salt. Do you see what Norris' log and description of whole cliffs seamed with •

  caesium mean to me?"

  " Enough to murder a couple of innocent men?"

  His laugh jarred. " Dear God, man, can't you see that nations will fight atomic wars over Thompson Island's caesium? Millions may die, not only two. They were unimportant beside this!"

  •

  I looked again at the old chart, at the five dicelike pieces of caesium rock, and at the wild eyes of the whaling tycoon. Men had suffered and died in the past to find Thompson, and now in the pres
ent the island had come back with a lure more deadly, and a threat more lethal, than anything that had gone before. As my eyes lifted they met Helen's. There was no need to formulate the, resolution in my mind never to reveal Thompson Island's whereabouts.

  I turned to Reidar Bull. " The man is mad," I said harshly. "

  You should lock him up. Thompson Island isn't where the chart says, anyway. Remember that, Sir Frederick."

  The awful pink flush suffused his face and he threw himself at me, using the manacles as a weapon. Again and again he struck at me, shouting obscenities, while Lars Brunvoll clubbed him with the butt of the Luger. It took Brunvoll and Hanssen to drag him off me.

  " Judas!" he half gasped, half screamed. " You—who know—you have betrayed me! Curse all the Wetherbys, curse Bruce Wetherby . . ."

  Helen stood back in anguish as he screamed ; Pirow's face was grey. Reidar Bull's savage anger was stilled.

  " Let us march," I said to Reidar Bull. " Sailhardy and will fetch the whaleboat. You can send Brunvoll along too, if you like, but there isn't anywhere for us to escape to."

  Hanssen held Upton now, still mouthing threats, at me and the skippers.

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  When we returned, carrying the boat easily by up-ending her with the bow and stern-thwarts on our heads, the party had already formed up. There was no goodbye allowed to Helen. She stood, camouflaged in her sea-leopard coat against the snow at thirty yards, next to one of the helicopter's landing-wheels. Her lips moved soundlessly to me as we moved off, Reidar Bull bringing up the rear with Schmeisser at the ready, Upton leading, with Brunvoll's Luger at his back.

  The whaleboat was no real burden, Sailhardy could have carried its weight alone himself, but two of us made its bulk easier to handle, especially when the wind plucked at it. The ice was hard, and we started briskly. Antarctica lay against the sick sun. The last I saw of her was when she lurched yet again, like a beaten wrestler trying to keep his shoulder off the mat.

  By lunch-time, by following the markers which Reidar Bull had laid at intervals across the icefield, we came to the ice-edge. The four catchers Crozet, Kerguelen, Chimay and Aurora—were moored together. Already the ice had started to trace a needlework pattern on their rigging. Unless it was cleared, they would be carrying a top-hamper which would roll them to their doom once they got outside the protection of the icefield, which damped down the great rollers of the Westerlies. Each ship had a white square on its black funnel on which was painted its name, and to the inexperienced eye all four might have been cut from the same matrix—the flared bows, the canvas-enclosed bridge, the big steam pipe running up and round the funnel, the heavy foremast with a 'crow's-nest, the long, low platform aft like a frigate's depth-charge platform. To a whalerman's eye, however, they were as individual as those of us who made up the marching party. On the march, Upton had given no more trouble. He had pulled his blue hood over his head and all we could see from behind was the hunch of his shoulders.

  As we paused for a breather before making the last leg to the catchers, Pirow fell back alongside me. The greyness had not passed out of his face, and he spoke low and agitatedly, so that Reidar Bull behind could not hear.

  " Herr Kapitan! " he said. " Where is the rendezvous with the destroyer—with Thorshammer?"

  I was puzzled at his tone. " Why, at Bouvet," I said. " You know that already."

  " Yes," he said quickly. " But where? Off the island, or where?"

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  " There's only one anchorage—in the south-west, at

  Bollevika. That is the rendezvous."

  He took my arm, as if to steady himself.

  " What is it, man?" I asked, he appeared so agitated.

  " The Meteor mined the approaches to the anchorage and Bollevika itself," he said.

  10. Bouvet

  Pirow's words released in me a wave of depression which had been mounting ever since my unspoken farewell to Helen.

  Along the march, the image of that lonely figure in her sea-leopard coat had returned again and again. Always, however, to my mind's eye rose those strange eyes which, I was able to tell myself now, had come alive and vital—she had said it herself—through me. In seeking The Albatross' Foot, I, like Saul, had gone in search of asses and found instead a kingdom. Now the full reaction of that empty farewell set in. I knew, as I considered the prospect before me, that there would be little chance of meeting her again. Reidar Bull had made it quite clear that, although not a prisoner like ourselves, she would not be free to come and go. If she disobeyed Reidar Bull and stayed at the Antarctica, she was courting disaster ; if she could locate Thorshammer, she could fly to the destroyer and tell her story—but would they believe her any more than Reidar Bull and the others did? The fact that she was Upton's own daughter made her suspect. The thought of my own future brought me despair: as far as the Royal Society was concerned, I was probably done for.

  Mere suspicion of what I was supposed to have done would be enough for that august body to finish with me—and The Albatross' Foot. In the light of what had happened, it would appear as if the whole story of The Albatross' Foot had been simply a cover for dubious activities in the Southern Ocean along with Upton and his gang. What action would Thorshammer take. when Reidar Bull handed us over, as he had every intention of doing? I could not see Pirow's deception about the seaplane crew being more than a temporary red

  herring. Short of Walter confessing, I could see no way out.

  Upton, Walter and Pirow's crime was an infringement of Norwegian waters—mine was murder, if things went the way they were going. The thought of Helen waiting for me to

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  become conscious after I had fallen off the Spandau-Hotchkiss into the sea, and the strange, deep look in her eyes when I told her what had really happened, made my prospects more agonising. She believed me ; Sailhardy believed me ; but the events which had enmeshed me in shooting down the seaplane were as complex as those which had brought me to Bouvet, doorway to Thompson Island.

  Automatically I felt for my sextant case, which I had hung from my belt. Inside that sextant case lay the secret of the whereabouts of Thompson Island. It was no more than a notch on the vernier, the scale for reading the altitude of the sun and stars. It would mean nothing, in someone else's hands. I intended Thompson Island to stay unknown.

  The frost crackled on my gloves as I crunched them together. The four catchers lay off the ice-edge, steam rising from their funnels like frost-smoke. Had I only known that Kohler had mined the approaches to Bouvet, I might have caught him months earlier. I had sent a damaged ship to anchor temporarily at Bouvet—and all I had heard from her again was a stifled, desperate message: " Underwater explosion ..." and then no more. A day later another merchantman had been sunk a thousand miles away and I had rushed off on a wild goose chase. I had assumed from the two widely separated sinkings that Kohler was working with a U-boat in my waters. Now I knew it was a mine. One might, I suppose, call Bollevika an anchorage, but really there's scarcely any holding ground for an anchor: Lars Christen'

  sen's ship, under the most favourable conditions, had had to steam backwards and forwards slowly for a whole month waiting for the shore party to return, since she was unable to obtain anchorage at Bollevika, which lies open to the gales and seas which sweep in endlessly from the south-west quarter.

  Pirow must have wondered from my long silence if I d i s b e l i e v e d h i m , f o r h e w e n t o n q u i c k l y : " T h e H e r r Kapitan Kohler mined the South African coast as far as the hundred-fathom line. Meteor carried ninety-five mines. We used eighty off South Africa. Then we came to Bouvet. We used the other fifteen at Bouvet."

  " We must tell the skippers right away," I said. " God!

  Fifteen sea-mines in the Bollevika anchorage!"

  "Yes, Herr Kapitan," he said sombrely. " And you know what the approaches will be like."

  " I haven't been closer than twenty miles, but I can guess,"

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  I said. Wh
en I had seen Bollevika, the icebergs made a belt round the island, broken here and there by zigzag open leads of water. Heaven help the crew of any ship mined under those conditions, I thought. What would be the consequences if it happened to be Thorshammer?

  " Reidar Bull!" I called. " Come here!" The big Norwegian, suspicious and with the Schmeisser at the ready, came across to us. I outlined what Pirow had told me.

  Reidar Bull's reaction took me unawares. " Christ!" he exclaimed angrily. " Must I now be frightened by some bloody fairy-story about mines which you two naval types c o n c o c t ? H a n s s e n ! B r u n v o l l ! " T h e o t h e r s j o i n e d u s . "

  Listen to this. We mustn't keep the rendezvous at Bouvet because—so our German friend now tells us—his ship mined t h e a p p r o a c h e s t o B o l l e v i k a d u r i n g t h e w a r ! I s a y —

  nonsense!"

  " It is true," retorted Pirow angrily. " There are fifteen deep-sea contact mines."

  Lars Brunvoll's temper had not improved with the long hike across the ice. " So the first person you run to tell is the English captain, heh? Is he in command of this party?

  Why must he know first, heh?"

  " Because it is a scare-story they have thought up between themselves," said Reidar Bull. " I don't believe a word of it."

  Hanssen grinned. " We don't need to believe or dis-

  believe, Reidar Bull. We can prove it quite easily."

  " What do you mean?" asked Bull.

  " Let us send Aurora on ahead of our own ships," he said. "

  If Pirow's story is a lie, which I think it is, then no harm will come of it. If it is not . . ." he shrugged—" it is just too bad. Good riddance, I say."

  Pirow was as white as the moment he had come on the factory ship's bridge and saw the blue icefield. " I was there —

  I know the place is mined!" he exclaimed. " Don't be such damned fools!"

  " These men are as slippery as the Great Ice Barrier,"

  interrupted Brunvoll. " We may be damned fools, but we are not criminal maniacs," he went on. " Yes, send Aurora in with the lot of them aboard, and we'll see what happens. If she blows up, our own ships will still be safe."