The Bomb Ship

by Peter Tonkin

  She was in the day room which formed part of the captain’s accommodation on C deck, using it for the first time since she had interviewed the crew in her fruitless search for the disturbing person she knew was somewhere aboard: the saboteur who had cut off the dead captain’s fingers. She was glad that she had made the decision to do so. Normally, she would have held the simple act of worship in the gym at 11 a.m. with the entire ship’s complement assembled in front of her. Had she broken into tears in front of the whole crew, she would never have been able to repair the damage and they all would have lost their leader just when they needed one most. She had moved the service forward to before breakfast because she knew very well she wouldn’t be able to stop work at eleven. They would have their work cut out if they were going to get the ship out of the water and the propeller seen to — particularly if they were going to have to take it off.

  She didn’t really like working through Sunday but there was no alternative. Her plans for last night had been interrupted by the need to look for the missing pair. She had hoped to find time after dinner to go through all the alternatives for today’s work with everybody likely to be involved. Instead she had been ashore most of the short night, organising search parties in the moonlight and setting up a permanent presence ashore in case the missing couple turned up in the starlit dusk after the moon had set. The searchers had come back with nothing more than reports of lost trails and walls of sheer ice which no one could hope to climb. And yet it soon became obvious that Henri and Ann had found a way up, because from somewhere on top of the unclimbable wall the emergency beacons began to broadcast. But it was a way that no one else could find or follow, which meant the two of them really were beyond help.

  On the ice, waiting for the carefully selected, fully-briefed search parties to report back, she had felt again that bone-deep feeling of foreboding. The iceberg seemed to be so still, so solid and sure. Yet it was in motion. Her father had been wise to want to know what forms that motion might take, for all that his simple plan had turned out so tragically. Evidences of the motion were suddenly all around her in a way they had never been aboard Atropos. The ice beneath her feet never seemed quite still. It seemed to tremble, almost to throb, as though the foundations of the iceberg went deep enough to be grinding gently along the bottom of the ocean far below. In stillnesses given preternatural force by the frigid weight of the air there always seemed to be the echo of thunder, as though the conversation just completed had covered a deafening peal. The gleaming, moonlit beach of crystal seemed so small, so cosy, that it further emphasised the unimaginable size of the phenomenon they were marooned upon, its mystery and its implacable danger. The Alps afloat. It was an image which had struck her when she had first seen the iceberg. It struck her now with renewed force. Especially as the Alps were also a place of ice and snow and storms and death. Of blizzards and of avalanches. The avalanches preyed on her mind particularly, for she knew how common they were at this time of the year, on slopes which were safely anchored in the heart of the earth, not tossing around on the bosom of the deep.

  Once back aboard, she had held a brief but detailed enquiry, more to see if there was anything she might have overlooked in the rescue attempt than to make this a matter of record. No one could remember LeFever saying ‘Goodbye’. No one could remember him actually leaving at all. Not one man there was certain whether Ann had left with him or had gone after him later. This fact alone gave Robin pause for thought. What had there been about that strange frozen beach which made the men stop paying attention to the person who had been their fantasy for weeks? Robin had not ventured far in the search herself, but another strange thing emerged from those who had. There had been no wind to speak of; certainly none worth remarking. Yet all those who had followed the tracks left by the missing couple over the first ridge agreed that they had faded almost immediately, as though a blizzard had blown across them. And all too soon, soft snow gave way to hard ice and any hope of following footsteps had gone.

  She had slept little, haunted by unremembered dreams, and was still tired. Hence the tears, she thought grimly. There was really no point in getting emotional until she found if there was any reason for it. She stood up. No sense in brooding here. It was time for a bit of leadership. LeFever had been a popular crew member and Ann seemed to have fallen somewhere between a pet and a pin-up for most of the men. Their disappearance had cast gloom over everyone, especially the searchers who, involved in the failed rescue attempt, now felt a sense of responsibility. Robin knew she was by no means alone in having slept so little.

  The atmosphere of gloom could only be damaging. The first order of business now was to try and dispel it, or at least moderate it somehow. Thank goodness some deep-seated foresight had led her to request that the chefs outdo themselves with breakfast today. At the time she had seen the order as a positive way of ensuring a good start to a hard day’s work, but now it seemed the best way of lightening things up a little. No man she knew could stay depressed for long in the face of a full, hot breakfast, lovingly prepared and served. She didn’t feel like eating, but she felt she had better get down and join the rest of them. Work was due to start in half an hour or so and she knew she would certainly be better for some of the food. Soup and sandwiches on the job at twelve would hardly keep her going until dinner time unless she got off to a good start now and lined her stomach well.

  *

  The rest of the morning passed in a haze of activity. Robin was everywhere, overseeing everything. The crew of Atropos, leavened by men from Clotho, soon began to see her presence in any spot where important work was being done for the gesture of faith and support it really was. They were so used to having officers present in their work places only in order to insult and denigrate their efforts that the captain’s enthusiastic presence and concerned advice was something completely new to them. Something increasingly welcome as the day wore on and the work got harder and more dangerous.

  At first, the capstans at the rear of the ship pulled her back inch by inch, her careful progress dictated not only by the need to ensure that no further damage was done when her keel met the ice of the slipway, but by the fact that the cables were frozen solid and there was a real risk of snapping them. While this careful work was going on, two teams went ashore with enough equipment to set up makeshift cranes on the upper terraces on either side of the ship. Once the cranes were in position, the ship’s anchors were carried in the lifeboats across to the icy beaches at the cliff feet. Then the anchors were winched up and bedded firmly, level with the decks on either side of the empty davits where the boats had hung. The anchor cables were still attached to the split windlasses on the fore deck, and, as soon as the anchors were firm, Robin oversaw the slow winding-in of the slack. Atropos continued to reverse towards the slipway, four ropes now holding her firm while guiding her in. So gentle was her movement that not even her super-sensitive captain felt the first impact of rudder foot and slipway surface nearly twenty metres below.

  By the time steaming cups of thick vegetable soup came round, Atropos was at a decided angle and Robin — who found she had not quite foreseen the confusion even an eight-degree slope would bring to the icy decks — called a brief halt after all so that the stewards could have a fighting chance of getting the life-saving liquid to the men at the windlasses. All the bustle seemed to die for a moment, ashore as well as aboard, and a deep quiet overhung the little bay. The sky was high and postcard blue. The slopes were glittering white and the cliffs a frosted duck-egg. The air was utterly still and the inky water equally so. It was so still that there seemed to be a whisper in the air, as of a huge barrage of artillery firing at the furthest reach of hearing. The walkie-talkie in her oilskin pocket buzzed. Reluctantly — for she knew it would be cold before she could pick it up again — she put her soup down.

  ‘Captain here.’

  ‘Sparks, Captain. Incoming from Heritage House.’

  She went back towards the bridgehouse at once, slightly sur
prised. She had agreed with Richard this morning before the service that he would be the communications centre. He was on the far side of the ice barrier now, back at the head of the lead he had opened, trying to bash his way on through to her, but his work was much easier than hers and he felt — and she agreed — that it would be far better for him to keep in contact with London and Sept Isles rather than have her interrupted and slowed down. What could her father want now? She was almost irritated. It had broken her concentration and had cost her a nice hot cup of soup.

  Her irritation died as she walked onto the bridge and saw what her father had sent her. Hogg was laying them out on the chart table as she entered: a series of faxed blow-ups of the satellite pictures of their immediate area. They were dated and timed, one every two hours from eight o’clock local time yesterday evening. There were nine of them, all seemingly identical, an apparent waste of a great deal of money, for they did not come cheap. The picture of this end of the ice barrier was increasingly clear. It was possible to see the breadth of it — only a couple of miles now — and the black track of Richard’s lead stabbing in from the south, with Clotho at its end apparently wedged against a high central ridge of ice. The northern edge was not so clear. In picture after picture, the telltale vagueness which was the fog shroud of the iceberg spread along it. In the earliest photograph it was possible to see part of the wide bay she had found, but that too was eaten up by that strange, amorphous paleness. Of Atropos herself there was no sign at all. So her father had been right. The cliff above them, with its slight overhang, hid them completely from the satellites.

  There was a clear sign of the iceberg however. It was the reason he had purchased, enhanced and faxed the pictures. On the first picture there were two points of light but, most disturbingly, on each one after that there was only one. It was the lifeboat’s emergency transmitter. Robin looked at that point of light. There was no light there in actual fact, of course; this was just the visual representation of the radio signal. Robin picked the pictures up and studied them silently, one after the other, then handed them back to Hogg who was busily plotting the sequence of light points on the master chart. When he had finished, they put the pile of pictures to one side and looked down, still in silence. There was no doubt about it. The sequence of carefully plotted points made a line across the chart. A line which clearly represented a steady movement eastwards along a course just beginning to arc southwards.

  The radio transmitter was doing a job which just might prove to have been worth the sacrifice of two lives. It was warning that the iceberg on whose south-eastern flank they were beached was moving along the north coast of the ice barrier, turning slowly, like the front of a steamroller, and in the fullness of time it would crush the life out of Atropos and anyone aboard her if she was still unable to move out of the way.

  Hogg turned back to the first picture of the sequence. ‘You know, they might just have turned the spare beacon off to preserve power,’ he said quietly, but with surprising tenderness. ‘It’s what I’d do.’

  ‘What I want you to do next, please, Mr Hogg,’ she answered briskly, a telltale pricking in her eyes warning against sentimentality, ‘is to contact both London and Clotho. They will be able to give bearings on our radio transmissions precise enough for you to sketch in our location in relation to the beacon there. Then I want you to use all the pictures Heritage House has sent us to draw as accurate a coastline as you can for the northern edge of the ice barrier. I want an estimation of when the movement of the iceberg will push us up against it. Ballpark figures will do to begin with. We’ll refine them as we go.’

  ‘Yes, Captain,’ said the second officer. ‘But I don’t think we’ll have all that much time to refine them. It looks to me as though the berg’s beginning to turn quite quickly.’

  ‘I agree. But let’s keep it to ourselves for the moment. Certainly until we have some idea of whether we are likely to have enough time to repair the ship or not.’

  ‘Do we know how long that will take?’

  ‘No. I’m about to start up the winches again. We’ll have the screw out of the water and the whole situation clearer by teatime.’

  On her way back out of the wheelhouse, she bumped into one of the stewards who was carrying a tray full of sandwiches. ‘Have these gone out to the men on the deck and ashore?’

  ‘Yes, Captain. This is the last lot.’

  ‘Good.’

  She grabbed a handful and pushed one into her mouth. Then, still chewing, she pressed the walkie-talkie to her ear and thumbed the transmit button. ‘This is the captain,’ she said, not very clearly, through a mouthful of bread and tinned salmon. ‘Lunch break is over. Start your winches, please.’

  *

  Atropos was in position just before three. Robin was all too well aware of the dangers the water would pose and so she had as much of the ship’s length pulled ashore as possible. When the winches stopped turning, three hundred feet of her length were sitting on the ice. First, Robin wanted no risk at all of her workmen sliding down the slipway into the lethal tide. Secondly, she needed to be sure that the working areas on the ice and on the hull itself were dry. She needed a work surface which it was possible to walk on and, if necessary, to erect scaffolding upon. She needed heat down by the propeller to keep the metal dry. She needed power and welding gear and none of it could get wet. Atropos’s stores had been ransacked against this moment and as soon as the great ship came to rest, teams of men were at work. The opaque white surface of the ice slope was covered with some of the clean safety sand designed to fight fires and other emergencies aboard. Canvas, any heavy-duty cloth, even some curtain material was spread over the roughened surface. Safety netting was placed over that and it was all pegged down tightly. The hull was running with water which was rapidly freezing in the cold air. The moment the netting was safe to walk on, the first swabbing team began to sponge the metal dry, while around them scaffolding went up, allowing the second swabbing team to work above their heads and the third team above theirs.

  Robin came down at once with Timmins and her engineering officers by her side. All through the afternoon they had been following the progress of the propeller as it came up out of the water and slid back along the ice. Even from the distance of the beaches at the feet of the cliffs, it had been possible to get some idea of the damage and how difficult it would be to fix it. But with the nets down and the scaffold up, now was the time for a closer look.

  The huge propeller was sitting with two blades pointing down and the third pointing up. The lower port blade was the most severely damaged, though all three bore graphic evidence of hard contact with tough ice. Silently, the little group of people looked at the screw and then at the shaft behind it. Robin was the first to speak. ‘You pulled off a miracle here, Chief. How on earth did you manage to disconnect the power in time to save the shaft? It should be corkscrewed by rights but it looks straight as a die to me.’

  ‘I was lucky,’ said Lethbridge. ‘The light damage was done under power and I managed to get the gearing off as soon as I felt what was happening. That bad bit happened soon after, but the power was off by then. She slid back down the wave and smashed straight into the floe. I felt it happen and I heard it hit. Nothing I could do by then.’

  ‘There’s no way we can fix it, though, is there?’ observed Don Taylor quietly. ‘The whole lot’s got to come off, hasn’t it?’

  They all nodded at once, silenced again by the way his simple questions had brought the reality of their huge task home to them.

  They were standing fifteen feet high and their eyes were level with the point of the massive boss. Like the point of a giant military shell, it projected out towards them more than eight feet in diameter and over six feet deep. It was screwed onto the end of the main shaft and welded home. They had to cut the welding and unscrew it without damaging it. When they had unscrewed it, they had to lower it safely to the ground and stow it carefully, ready to be screwed back into place later and welded firm
ly home before they could sail. When they had done all that, then the first really difficult bit could begin.

  ‘Time for a cup of tea, I think,’ said Robin.

  With her steaming mug in her hand and her mind purposely clear of any thought about the problem, she prowled round the winches, checking that all the lines were tight. As she had planned, she had secured the stern cables to the outer posts of the pairs of capstans only. They stretched back tautly now, angled outwards only slightly as though Atropos were an inquisitive insect with a long pair of feelers exploring the shore. The forward cables were almost at ninety degrees to the angle of the hull and seemed to be reaching upwards onto the terraces. She looked up, thinking about the careful instruction she had given for the securing of the anchors in the ice — she didn’t want any repetition of the fiasco when the pressure against the spikes hammered into the ice barrier had caused them to melt the ice. She was standing alone on the deck behind the propeller they would have to cut free and move soon, below the gantry they would use to transport its massive weight, between the windlasses which would have to hold all this restless movement safely in check. And because, for the first time today, she was standing absolutely still, looking up, she felt a wind upon her cheek she would not otherwise have noticed.

  It was a gentle wind. A kiss rather than a puff, hardly enough to stir the fur at the edge of her hood. It was cold as the kiss of death; it had come from the iceberg. It was damp, if anything so cold could be said to be damp. It was enough to make her look higher, frowning, wondering how many such warning movements of the air had passed unnoticed so far today. And what she saw when she looked at the crest of the cliff made her catch her breath in a mixture of shock and delight. What she saw was unutterably beautiful. What it meant was probably deeply sinister. The sky was no longer innocently blue. Scudding across it at a seemingly incredible rate were tendrils of vapour. They were too thin and insubstantial to be called cloud, and too busy to be mere mist. The vapour formed lively mares’ tails like the warnings of an approaching storm, but the mares’ tails were moving too fast to be products of the ionosphere miles above. It was as though a storm was coming in through the lower few hundred feet of the sky; and yet it was impossible to be sure the strange phenomenon was that low. Only the speed of its movement made it seem so close.