I looked into her eyes. Tiredness and grief had receded. They were alive. She had Captain Prestrud's Southern Ocean genes in her.
I went on: 'You must face the fact that your father could die. Today. Tomorrow. Any time. And Quest will belong to you. It's your decision.'
'No,' she said, 'it's not mine alone. It's your decision too. You made up your own mind — and promised my father. But before I make my own decision, there are things I want to know which you haven't yet told me.'
I said, somewhat defensively, 'I've given you all the facts.'
'Facts — but not your impressions. Or your mental reservations.'
I lit another cigarette. So intent had I been on our conversation that I had stubbed out my first, half-smoked, in the ashtray.
I said, 'In the Southern Ocean you can be making your way through seas where you know there shouldn't be ice. Where there can't be ice. But you get a feel, a hunch that it's around. It's often too late even if you can smell it. Your ship's on it before you can put your helm hard over. That's how I feel about this cruise. There's ice about — but I don't know where.'
She looked at me wonderingly. 'You're a strange sort of man for a ship's captain,' she said.
I tried to laugh it off. 'Fanciful, you mean? Let's forget it. For a cruise like this you need a strong ship and strong men and we've got both.'
'No,' she said. 'We can't forget it. You're so worried about the Quest's cruise, and I want to know why.'
'You're going to laugh at this,' I said slowly. 'I'm superstitious. Doesn't fit in the space age, does it? But there it is. I don't like starting a voyage on a Friday.'
She leaned forward impulsively as if to touch my arm, and then withdrew.
That's not the whole of it,' she said. 'A skipper like you wouldn't be put off by superstition alone.' Still I tried to fence. I didn't want to voice my fears.
'Quest's a fine ship but she's old, and above all she isn't ice-strengthened. The later Thai ships that went up the St Lawrence seaway were ice-strengthened. It's very important. Without it a bergy bit on a dark night could tear open the plating as if it were brown paper. Don't forget we've got the lives of thirty passengers and scientists at risk.'
'I don't forget. Go on.'
Rather to my own surprise I did go on. 'There's another thing that's worrying me. It's the man I hired today as first officer. His name's Rolf Wegger. He's the right type, he's got all the right qualifications and he's already proved what he can do. With your father out of action it's essential I should have the right kind of support. There's no doubt that he can give it, but there's something about him I don't understand and don't like.'
'What's the matter with him?'
'I wish I knew. Little inconsistencies — things that don't ring true. He's as tough as they come and yet the sight of some old tanker's name written on a chart threw him into a flat spin. He said it made him feel nostalgic. Then there's Prince Edward Island. He says he's not been there for years but he seems to have some sort of obsession about it.'
It sounded lame and I could see she wasn't impressed. She said, 'Aren't these pretty nebulous grounds for anxiety? Especially at this late stage of things?'
'All I know is, I smell ice. Dangerous ice.'
She stood up. 'Thanks for taking me into your confidence, John. As far as I'm concerned the decision's already been made. As you promised my father, the Quest sails tomorrow.'
I felt as if I had lost her. 'I also promised your father that the dinner he'd planned to mark the anniversary of some wartime escapade he was involved in would go ahead without him.'
Linn said, 'Oh yes, I'd forgotten Captain Jacobsen. He was with Dad at the time. The dinner's for him, too. He'll have to be told about this business. He was on the plane with me.'
'Do you know anything about your father's war-time adventures?' I asked.
'Not very much. He didn't talk about them. I only know he escaped with two other catchers when the Antarctic whaling fleet was captured by a German surface raider.'
'So you don't know any details? Nothing about something he did and later felt guilty about? Nothing about a torpedo?'
'Did he tell you this himself?' she asked quietly.
'Yes, but he may have been delirious. He was in and out of a coma,' I replied. 'That's why I hesitated about my promise to him.'
She came so close that I could see the tiny golden flecks in her eyes. 'He said something else that's eating you, didn't he? Something you haven't told me?'
'Not your father,' I answered, 'but the doctor. He said your father's injuries had been caused by being pistol-whipped.'
Before she could reply, there was a knock at the door and Wegger came in.
CHAPTER SIX
'Sorry to interrupt, sir, but the weather team has just arrived on the dockside with the drifter buoy. They want to see you. Got to have the captain. You'd think the thing was made of gold.'
'It's the star of our show,' I replied. 'In a way it's the most valuable thing we'll be carrying in the Quest.'
He looked curiously at Linn. This is Miss Prestrud,' I said. 'Our tour leader. Captain Prestrud's daughter.'
A moment before, Wegger's bearing had been no more than that of a busy, competent officer. His oil-stained overalls, open to reveal his hairy chest, added to the picture. But as I introduced Linn there came over him that strange intensity I had sensed at our first meeting.
'You don't look like your father.'
No polite formalities, no sign of sympathy or concern, just that jerky, out-of-context remark.
It produced a silence between the three of us. In that vacuum, the thought struck me — to be able to make the comparison, Wegger must have met Captain Prestrud. That meant he had been lobbying for the job before I appeared on the scene.
Wegger jounced his oil-stained cap between his hands. He asked curtly, 'The cruise — it's still on?'
'Captain Shotton and I have discussed it,' Linn replied coldly.
Her tone pulled Wegger up short. He said hastily, 'All I meant was that if it's not, there's no point in rushing things the way we're doing — there are hundreds of things still to be done…'
'Go ahead, Mr Wegger, the cruise is on,' I told him. 'We sail first thing tomorrow.'
'Good. The drifter buoy…?'
'All right. I'm coming. Join me, Linn?'
She nodded. I found my cap — its badge depicted a penguin, which I thought ridiculous, but Captain Prestrud had insisted it was part of the tour motif — and we went out on deck.
Wegger went quickly aft ahead of us towards a group on the quayside opposite one of the ship's main lifeboats. McKinley was at the foot of the ladder to the main deck chatting to a dark girl whose sultriness exploded into a constellation of acne on her left cheek.
When we had passed them, Linn said, 'That's Barbara. She's the head of the Knowledge Hounds.'
'She'll get knowledge from McKinley all right.' I grinned at her. 'What sort of hounds did you say you'd brought aboard my ship?'
She slowed, as if not wanting to reach the quayside group too soon.
Her smile was all the more attractive because of its slight irregularity. 'They're very important passengers, Captain Shotton. The Knowledge Hounds. Five of them. Four women and one man. Never heard of them?'
'Never.'
'It's a society in Britain which specializes in in-depth studies of faraway places. Very intense. Very knowledgeable. They first got in touch with me because they thought the Quest was making for the Diomede Islands.'
'Don't trouble to ask whether I've heard of them. I haven't.'
They're frozen islands in the Bering Sea. Twins like Marion and Prince Edward, but the other side of the world.'
'What made them pick on Prince Edward, for Pete's sake?'
She halted. 'What do you think made me?'
The south-easter was blowing her fine hair into her eyes. I could not read what was in them. She was still smiling as she pushed the hair aside. I wished the deck were a mile long to walk.
>
'Your father, I suppose. The Southern Ocean meant a lot to him.'
She unzipped the bag on her arm and pulled out a piece of faded blue satin, which was overprinted with what looked like a newspaper article.
She held it out. This is a souvenir of a grand ball which HMS Erebus and Terror gave about a hundred and forty years ago in Tasmania. They'd been to Prince Edward Island and had broken through the ice near the South Pole. The printed part is from the Hobart Town Courier. It's an account of one of the greatest social occasions Tasmania has ever known. Strange, how something can act as a trigger. I got hold of this in London, and it made me feel I simply had to see Prince Edward for myself. It was like a catalyst. It started off a whole process in me. It had nothing to do with my father. His reasons for the cruise were entirely different.'
I didn't want to dampen her enthusiasm, seeing her standing there with her hair blowing, as if the world had been made for her, but I felt I had to speak.
I pointed at the flapping banner at the gangway. 'Listen,' I said, 'I can see how Erebus and Tenor sparked off the idea for you but frankly I don't care for the way the names have been exploited for publicity. Presumably Orbit Travels are responsible. But I can't help remembering that only a few years after that ball in Tasmania, Erebus and Terror — and every man jack who sailed in them — perished looking for the North-West Passage. That's the sort of shadow the two names cast for me.'
She folded up the satin and put it back in her bag. I think she was a little disappointed by my reaction. 'Is that another of those non-facts that worries you about this cruise?' she asked.
'I can't forget how those two fine ships died. That's what. There aren't any decorations or champagne or beautiful women at a ball at Prince Edward. There's a wind which gets hold of your lungs so that you could scream with cold, and a sea which shakes your guts out so that you wish you'd been bom without any. And sometimes you wish you'd not been born at all. That's the way I view the Erebus and Terror gimmick. We aren't going to have any blue satin mementoes after we've been there. We'll be lucky if we get away with a ship with only a few lengths of railing gone. And maybe a man or two overboard into the bargain.'
Her head came up the way it had done when she first entered the cabin. 'I still want to go.'
On the quayside a group of men had gathered round an object with an orange head and long body which was lashed to a trailer.
That's the drifter buoy, Linn,' I said, 'and the reason why we're taking it is because ships give Prince Edward a miss. Once in a blue moon a vessel does go there but it's as rare as a meteor flashing across an empty sky. The Southern Ocean covers four-fifths of the Southern Hemisphere. It's got less than a dozen weather stations, widely scattered on god-forsaken, remote islands. The only way to get the facts about the Southern Ocean and its weather is to use some kind of unmanned craft where human endurance isn't a factor. That buoy over there is a marvel of automatic instrumentation, but it's got to be conveyed there. So the Quest is a vital factor in the biggest attempt yet made by man to observe wind, weather and sea on a global basis. The findings could lead to radical new facts. They could affect the weather forecasting of all the nations of the world in the next decade. Data-void is the official jargon for the seas where we are bound.'
'You make it sound very formidable.'
'That's exactly what it is. Now let's go and look at our unmanned probe.'
Wegger, three other men, and some bystanders were grouped round the drifter buoy. We faced them from the deck. The buoy was shaped like a long thin top — about three times the height of a man in all. It looked rather like a skeleton fish the cat has stripped, except that the ribs were missing and the backbone was a thin, smooth, black tube. Covering the trailer was an envelope of plastic which looked like a shroud for an outsize corpse. There was also a big unidentifiable flat package and several gas cylinders.
I read aloud the white-painted wording. '"Satellite buoy. Do not disturb. Weather Bureau. South Africa."' Under an American eagle badge were the words 'National Oceanographic and Atmosphere Administration, USA.'
One of the men in the group — a short, stocky, sunburned man in shorts and a safari suit top — came to the ship's side when he saw me. He held out his hand.
'Smit,' he introduced himself. 'Weather Bureau.'
He put his left hand over his right knuckles and cracked them loudly. 'She's beautiful, isn't she, Captain?'
'Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, they say.'
He didn't get it. He laughed uncertainly and cracked his knuckles again.
'She's fragile, too,' he went on. 'She mustn't be hoisted aboard. That instrument package mustn't get buggered up anyways at all. She must be carried. That's what I wanted to see you about.'
'She?' I looked sideways at Linn.
'We've got a name for her — Bokkie,' he rushed on. 'She must be carried…'
'What's in the orange part that looks like the nose-cone of a missile?' I asked.
Smit looked rather less enthusiastic. 'That's not the works, Captain. That's only the buoyancy element. Mostly plastic foam to keep her head above water. The works are there.' He pointed to a section of what looked like strong segmented plastic tubing jutting out above the top-like nose-cone.
Those holes are the barometer ventilators,' he explained eagerly, 'and that's the transmitting antenna at the top. Bokkie emits signals with a specific frequency at short intervals — that's how they identify her after the satellite has picked 'em up…'
His enthusiasm seemed set fair to keep us there all day.
I interrupted him. 'What's inside the shaft below the head?'
'It houses the pressure sensor, the electronics package for converting the sensor readings into signals to the satellite, thermistor, battery unity…'
Linn was smiling at his eagerness, too.
Smit cracked his knuckles again and said, 'Bokkie must be carried, Captain!'
'How heavy is she?' I found myself also sexing the object on the trailer.
'She's not very heavy. Three men could do it. Two if they're very strong. When we launch her, we can't risk using a derrick. It'll have to be a burial-at-sea-type launch.'
Burial at sea! My mind took a backward leap at the sound of these words. The eager weatherman and the dockside with its cranes faded away. The long object on the trailer became a canvas coffin over which I had pronounced those sombre but wonderful words: 'We therefore commit his body to the deep…' It had been off Prince Edward. The Captain Cook had been smashed by a freak wave the previous night, like a lioness taking a clip at a wayward cub. There was one victim to be buried. The canvas containing the body had made a momentary white patch in the black sea, and at the same moment a rare shaft of sunlight had broken through the storm clouds, touching the central snow-clad peak of Prince Edward, so that it showed up pure white against the blackness around, and the brick-red volcanic cones had been grouped about it like cardinals in their vestments. The words of the committal service said, 'When the sea shall give up her dead' — but that sea never would.
Linn exclaimed, 'John…?'
I pulled myself back to the present. I remarked to Smit, 'That thing underneath looks like a shroud.'
'It's a drogue for the buoy and the other plastic is the high-altitude balloon,' he explained, oblivious of my lapse. 'You don't get proper drift if you let the buoy run free without a drogue. The current won't carry a thin hull like hers. We've tested the drogue — the optimum size is five square metres…'
I called out to Wegger, 'Number One! D'you think you can manage to carry that thing with some help?'
Wegger had already cast loose the lashings. You didn't need a derrick when you had Wegger around. He gripped the buoy round the head and heaved it clear of the trailer himself. But it was too long for him to manage alone.
'Jannie, give him a hand,' said Smit to one of his two fellow-technicians.
'Capt'n,' said Smit as they started to move off, 'It sounds odd-ball, I know, but can I have B
okkie in my cabin with me until she's launched?'
'Sorry. I haven't a cabin aboard that size. I've arranged a special place for Bokkie and you scientists in number four 'tween decks. The volcanologist, Hold-gate, is there too.'
'Whereabouts is number four 'tween decks?' I gestured sternward. 'My first officer will show you.'
'Is it safe? I mean, if a wave came and damaged Bokkie 'Safest place in the ship,' I assured him. 'It's an empty space like an outsize cabin with two doors that lock. You're sleeping in a new set of cabins in number three 'tween decks, just next door. You can pop in any time if Bokkie feels lonely.'
He nodded and gave his knuckles a final crack and then followed Wegger and the second weatherman called Jannie who were carrying the buoy. Jannie was wearing sandals, jeans and a T-shirt emblazoned with the words: 'I ride the same waves as Bokkie'. I felt about a hundred.
Linn and I were watching the third member of the meteorological team unlash the balloon container and its inflating cylinders when a gruff voice behind me said, 'Captain!'
A short middle-aged woman in a crumpled brown tweed suit was pointing at my cap badge with a long holder containing a cigarillo. There were globules of sweat on hairs on her upper lip. Her eyes were a little bloodshot. Her voice burred like a wood sander striking a knot.
'Have you WAPP's permission to wear that?' I looked her up and down. I hoped it made her sweat more.
'Have you?' she demanded. 'Who are you?' I asked. 'And who in hell is WAPP?'
'I must protest,' she said. The way she said it, I felt she'd protested before. She addressed Linn. 'It's just this sort of abuse of creatures that can't defend themselves that led to the founding of the World Association of Polar Penguins. I am happy to say I'm a founder member.'
I wondered how long ago that was.
She went on, 'I am Judy Auchinleck, regional chairman for South Georgia and the Lesser Antarctics.'
It sounded like a caliph's title. Caliphs have harems. Judy Auchinleck's proclaimed empire was frigid.
Linn came to my rescue. I admired her placatory tone. 'Miss Auchinleck booked on our cruise because her organization feels that the penguin populations of the Antarctic are being over-exploited for publicity, especially by television teams. She wants to make sure this doesn't happen during the Quest's cruise.'
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