by Peter Tonkin
She had never imagined anything so big. Never imagined that anything could ever be so big. She staggered as though the mere sight of it had a physical impact, then dragged her dazzled gaze away to see that the others were staggering as well. The ice barrier had moved. The lifeboat stirred and began to slither down towards the sea. That was what broke the iceberg’s spell upon them: the need to catch the boat. It was their one hope of survival in the suddenly hostile environment, and they fought to control it and clamber aboard. Only a fight for survival like that was motive enough to look away from the mesmerising scale of the thing before them. It was as though Everest itself had been launched into the sea, and its fascination was greater than if the Gorgon had sprung to the aid of the Sirens.
Henri LeFever and Sam Larkman held the line and scrambled aboard last. Robin went on just before them and staggered down the length of the lifeboat to start the motor. As soon as the two men were aboard, she was under way, skirting round the edge of the bay and out into the sea proper, just as the little hollow of water suddenly filled with ripples. Automatically, she looked ahead for the incoming waves which had caused the ripples but there were none. Her head lifted, questing for a wind strong enough to move the fake fur of her hood, but there was none. A sound like distant thunder came, however, so quiet as to be almost imagination and she began to understand. The wavelets came not because of any stirring in the air or water. They were born of the ice. The movement of the immovable ice barrier, so solid that not even a full storm had lifted it. So solid that she could imagine only one thing in all the world which might cause it to shake like that. The iceberg.
‘Where are you going?’ asked Ann, her voice cutting with unexpected urgency through Robin’s thoughts.
‘To take a look.’
‘What? Surely we should be going back to the ship, not —’
‘Nonsense. The day is young. We can be over beside it inside an hour. Maybe do some exploring. I’ve never seen anything like it, have you?’
‘God! No!’
‘Any of the rest of you?’
They all shook their heads by way of reply and one by one their faces turned and their gazes followed the shining eyes of their captain, directed towards the massive iceberg which now seemed to be bearing down upon them with disturbing speed.
After about half an hour they entered the fog belt caused by the extra chill the iceberg’s meltwater gave even to these icy waters. It was a dank, disturbing mist. Thick enough, seemingly, to interfere with their breathing. Certainly solid enough to deaden sound and cloud sight with what looked like grey rags hanging in the air. The surface of the water around them seemed to glow dully as it exuded a never-ending miasma. They felt as though it should be boiling fiercely somewhere nearby but there were no bubbles and no intimation of heat at all. If the air in the sunshine had been cold, here there was a subterranean chill which seemed to go beyond anything which belonged in nature. There was more than a smell to it, there was a taste, as though the foetid breath from the throat of the polar bears had been rendered into oil and suspended in droplets among the grey fronds of the mist. This sargasso of the air lasted for twenty minutes but it seemed a much longer time. The gloom of it bore them down. They were like explorers trapped in the heart of a dank mountain, wandering aimlessly through uncharted tunnels, lost and without hope.
Coming out into the clear was indescribable in contrast. The fog ended in a wall where the air of the iceberg’s own microclimate was too cold to contain moisture. Here the day was dazzlingly clear and the sun struck down, its rays bright as falling stars but wholly devoid of heat. The iceberg rose in unutterable splendour, magnified by the total clarity of the air. The variety of hues which had coloured the plunging shelf of ice was echoed and extended here. Every shade of emerald and sapphire was contained in the crystal galleries behind the white surfaces of the ice. Here a shadow revealed a depth of Prussian blue which ought to have contained distant galaxies; there a cavern carved in bottle green might have contained a cathedral. Their necks ached from holding their heads far back as they tried to see the peaks of the thing. Their eyes watered from trying to focus on the depths and distances of it and their heads throbbed, fighting to comprehend its enormity.
They had been silent for nearly an hour when Robin swung the lifeboat off on the port tack and began to follow the line of the berg from a distance. This side of it was where the cliffs plunged hundreds upon hundreds of feet sheer into the sea and vanished equal numbers of fathoms straight down. There seemed nothing to say which would not be as trivial as they were themselves, like insects — like microbes — beside it. The puttering of the lifeboat’s diesel muttered against those crystal flanks, but there were no echoes in answer. Instead there was a silence as deep as space itself; it appeared to soak up sound like a black hole gulping in light. It seemed as if the iceberg could control time as completely as it controlled everything else around it. Certainly no one aboard the lifeboat had any idea how long Robin ran them along the cliff sides before the form of the glacial mountain range began to change. Abruptly, the sheer faces began to swing out and where there had been cliffs, now there were slopes. And where the ice had disappeared straight down into the black water, now it reached out milkily towards them.
Robin was taking no account of bearing or direction, she was simply following the coastline, like the first Viking exploring the vastness of Newfoundland from his tiny longship. Her narrowed eyes following the curves of the ice were guide enough for her, and for the other five as well. Automatically, she pulled back a little from the thrust of the submerged ice, but she knew she need not have worried, it was fathoms below her keel and presented no real danger. The action swung them out onto a wider reach and gave them a view round a headland which the sloping shoulder made. Here, the ice stepped down like a staircase before settling on a cliff of sixty feet which fell to a sloping tongue of ice before rising again on the other side. It was as though the tongue of ice were a frozen river reaching out from between icy river banks. The whole glacial valley was a couple of hundred feet wide.
The curve away to the left was reversed and Robin sailed round on a starboard reach, heading straight for that frozen river which stretched out into the liquid element between them. The valley banks stepped back symmetrically on either hand, and swung round in galleries dead ahead. The nearer they came, the more they could see and the more artificial did the whole thing seem to become until at one point it was as though they were looking at a balcony in a giant’s theatre. The frozen river flowed out, sliding into the water like a stiletto into green silk. The smooth surface sloped back up above the tide line to become the narrow floor between the stepped levels of ice which surrounded it completely on three sides.
Robin held her line and the lifeboat sailed up the tongue of ice exactly as it had sailed onto the slipway on the ice barrier. Except that here she could easily see the anchorage points and the work areas.
Terrified that there would be another destructive echo, she raised her voice and called, as though speaking to people far away, ‘You know what this is, don’t you?’
There was no echo. The others allowed her words to hang in the silence for a heartbeat as they, too, waited for the ice to answer. But when it did not, Sam called back to her, his voice as loud as hers had been and every bit as alive with excitement, ‘Yes, Captain, it’s the best-designed dry dock I’ve ever clapped eyes on.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX - Day Eleven
Saturday, 29 May 08:00
Richard leaned far out over the front of Clotho’s ruined bow and looked down to watch her strengthened cutwater ride up onto the ice. As the grinding shudder of the first contact began, he found he was holding his breath and praying that this section of his command was stronger than the ruin immediately above it. He was desperately worried about Robin and felt that the situation was rapidly spiralling out of control. He trusted her to do everything humanly possible, but could see no way for her to escape her current predicament, in spite o
f her confidence in her plans for self-help.
He was worried about his own position too. There was no doubt in his mind that the Green War woman had been aboard. She had murdered two of his men and then in all likelihood had been swept overboard herself. He could see no other explanation that fitted the facts he had to hand. Or rather, the lack of them. For there was no trace of her, nor of her hiding place or her bomb. During the last ten hours they had fruitlessly searched the ship again, from her stern to as near her stem as they could manage. And there lay the rub. One area was beyond their power to search. And he was standing on it now.
They had exchanged reports with Atropos and had been torn between sickened surprise and great relief to hear that Robin was in exactly the same situation: there had been a body found but no bomb. At last they had grabbed a few hours’ sleep.
This morning they had come west along the southern edge of the ice barrier. After five miles or so the ice had swung northwards into a wide bay on their starboard side. On the lookout for a way through, Richard had gone in to explore. In the middle of the bay, near the shore, he had reversed his almost idling propeller and come to a stop. It was the most promising location so far and at first glance seemed to offer the best chance of breaking at least some way through. The ice had sloped down seamlessly into the water, like a gently shelving beach. Above the tide line, a series of ice dunes reached back to a more precipitous central ridge. Richard was totally immune to the beauty of the scene. All he wanted to do was to find out whether the ice would yield him a way through. A hurried conference with Nico and Andrew had set the first part of his experiment up.
Clotho eased forward under the irresistible impulse of that one great screw and Richard felt the whole bow section begin to lift as his ship rode up over the ice. Then there was a grating crack, a sharp, loud percussion like a gunshot followed by an immediate roaring. The bow beneath him slammed down and he staggered, all but pitched overboard by Clotho’s motion. Surprised by the unexpected power of the ship’s continued movement, he slipped on the icy deck and sat down with a decided bump. Through the deck plates and his bruised hindquarters, he felt the forward impulse ease as Nico slammed her into reverse — or, more correctly as this was not a Range Rover they were driving, altered the pitch of the propeller blades and called for full astern. In a moment or two the ship was motionless again.
When he regained his former post, Richard found himself looking down at a semi-circle of ice floes all rocking in agitated motion and clashing together with a deafening combination of sharp cracks and dull thuds. Following the line of the shore, but reaching inland for perhaps twenty metres, the ice seemed to have shattered like glass. Excitement welled in him. This was better, he thought, allowing himself a wolfish grin. Now they were getting somewhere.
He counted as nothing the enormous amount he had achieved during the last few days. It all came down to the fact that Robin was on Atropos and the ice barrier was between them.
Richard put his walkie-talkie to his lips. ‘It’s working, Nico,’ he said. ‘We’ll try again, please, but you’ll have to hit it harder this time.’
‘You’d better hold on tighter, then,’ said Nico’s voice over the machine. ‘And pray she didn’t put the bomb up there.’
Mind-reader, thought Richard, but he said nothing out loud.
Clotho eased back under Nico’s guidance, as though the first officer had been working on icebreakers all his life. Richard paid careful attention to his advice; having eased back a couple of lengths, they moved forward at what felt like full revs and the impact as Clotho’s sharp bow slammed into the ridge of ice shook the vessel from stem to stern. The bow seemed to jump up over the ice and then come crashing down with added weight and momentum. The noise was deafening, and a cloud of freezing spray leaped upwards to be blown towards Greenland on the gusting wind. When it was clear, and the ship’s pitching has eased enough for Richard to look down, he saw that they had made a good deal more progress — but had paid the inevitable price. Beyond the new section of noisy floes, the edge of the solid ice rose from the water in quite a cliff. The southern shore of the bather was the better part of five feet high now. It shone with a baleful green fire which made it look very much like bottle-glass.
Richard looked at it thoughtfully, refusing to let his elation at getting to grips with his frozen adversary wane. Everything he achieved at the moment simply seemed to reveal a new problem. Very well. Every new problem would be overcome. He would get to Robin no matter what it cost. From this vantage point he could see quite clearly that the little cliff was in fact made by a low ice dune which had shattered at its crest. Behind the solid-looking vertical of the shore itself, the dune sloped down to thinner ice. If they could break through here, then there was every chance that they could do the same with the next dune-like ridge, and the next, until they had opened a channel right through to that central ridge which was so much higher than the rest. As he thought about it, he looked up at it. It resembled a rounded, snow-covered hill from this side, though it could be anything from a gentle slope to a precipitous escarpment on the far side, he supposed. It stood maybe twenty feet high. High enough to form a horizon against the pale, misty sky beyond. Would more be visible from the bridge? What lay beyond might turn out to be important if he could break a way up to the first slope of it. He put his walkie-talkie to his lips to ask Nico what he could see.
The flock of birds came straight over the ridge very low and with quite enough speed to make Richard jump. They seemed to pounce forward through the air towards him, a pandemonium of screaming beaks and battering wings. The size of the ship’s bridge seemed to upset them, for they wheeled away in one tight body immediately above his head and sped westwards, their panic echoing on the air behind them.
The walkie-talkie sprang to life at once. ‘Richard, are you all right?’
‘Fine,’ he answered. ‘It was only a flock of birds, Nico.’
‘I know but ...’
‘Yes. I know what you mean. We haven’t seen a living thing since I came aboard. They were a bit disconcerting.’
‘The last living thing I saw was a tiger shark trying to eat Jamie Curtis.’
‘It’s been a rough ride.’
‘You can say that again. And it’s not over yet.’
‘Okay, Nico, let’s go again. We have a five-foot cliff above the water so I guess it may extend the same amount under the water. But it falls away quite steeply beyond and I reckon if we can break through, we might be in business. Hit it with all you’ve got.’
‘Okay. Remember to hang on.’
This time the ice turned them without breaking. Although the ship’s bows were not only strengthened, but specially angled to ride up over obstructions, a five-foot wall went too far beyond the design specifications. Clotho slewed round to port and Richard was hurled against the safety ropes and almost lost his grip in spite of the fact that he was following Nico’s sensible advice. He hung on with all his strength, one hand on the line and the other round a stanchion. His angle, disconcertingly wide of the ship’s side, allowed him to see something that he had not included in his calculations so far. A great spray of water gushed out of number one hold through the hole in its forward wall. He was rolled back fully onto the deck by the counter-motion, and was able to hear the wild watery disturbance from within the ship just beneath him as he lay there, dazed and cursing himself for not being more careful. And as he lay there, looking at the impossibly beautiful blue sky immediately above his head, he suddenly had the strangest impression that he could hear voices echoing. It was too vague and far away for him to be sure of the words — or even of the reality of the impression. Voices rang in his ears, echoing on the wind, building to a kind of climax then fading into silence.
He lay for a moment more, listening to the wind and the hissing of the water below the deck. You’re cracking up, old son, he thought, then he picked himself up. The shock of the fall, and the unnerving experience of hearing voices, had deadened tha
t elusive elation slightly, but when he looked at the point of impact, he saw that the crystalline face of the ice had crumbled. Grimly he dusted himself off and slid his walkie-talkie down to his hand from the position at his shoulder it had somehow achieved while he was rolling about on the deck. He walked across to the nearest box of deck safety equipment and pulled out a harness. He slipped it on, buckled it tight and slid the catches over the safety lines nearest his favourite observation post. ‘Right, Nico. Let’s just try that again, please.’
*
And so the morning passed. Within three hours they had broken through four low ice dunes and gouged a straight channel the better part of half a mile in towards the lower slopes of the central ridge. Here their progress slowed dramatically. Once the ice wall at the water’s edge was too high for the bows to ride up over, they were reduced to battering it aside, foot by foot. Slowly, inexorably, as the target ice thickened, the upper edge of it rose towards the damaged section of the bow and Richard at last was forced to call a halt.