by Peter Tonkin
She took the opportunity of checking with another of her officers, one nearer at hand even than Hogg. The radio officer. ‘Sparks, come in.’
‘No luck, Captain.’
‘What do you think?’
‘This is the last of the lifeboat radios now and it’s no better than the rest. What do you know about PCA?’
‘Polar cap absorption. Interferes with radio transmission in high latitudes. Happens soon after solar flares. Can last days.’
‘Got it in one.’
‘That’s what you think it is?’
‘I guess so. Somewhere up above those never-ending storm clouds I think the sun just gave out the mother of all solar flares and I don’t think these mickey-mouse transceivers will communicate over the length of the weather deck before next weekend.’
*
Things on deck got off to a promising start as men came boiling out of the bridgehouse at weather deck level to stream darkly along the poop beneath her. She suspected that many of them would have been up since first light, watching the enormity of the ice growing inexorably clearer as they swept down towards it, but there were still yells of shock — and, she guessed, disquiet — as some of them realised just how colossal and how close was the glacial barrier between them and the rest of the world. They did not come empty-handed. They brought with them an assortment of lines, ladders, fenders and the sort of equipment Timmins reckoned they would need to secure their vessel to a piece of ice which looked to be about the same size as a small country.
Robin felt the urge to be down there with them. To find out the sort of things she would need to know about them, officers and crewmen alike, that could be learned most quickly and accurately by being in action with them. But her place had to be here, for the time being at least. The captain had to remain on the bridge until the ship had stopped moving. Really, she should stay until Atropos was secure, but she wasn’t sure she had the patience to wait that long. Right at the back of the excited crowd, she suddenly saw the slower, steady figure of Errol Jones and Joe Edwards. ‘Be careful down there, Joe,’ she yelled without thinking, and the pair of them turned to look up. Whether they heard her clearly or not, they welcomed the sound of her voice. Joe’s massively gloved hand rose to salute her, and beneath a large cold-weather hat Errol’s square face split into a broad grin which seemed to reach from one thick earflap to the other.
The fenders were over the side and clustering thickly around the point of impact a moment or two before the collision came. As there was no beach below the cliffs of ice, there was not much surf or backwash from the waves, though the ice itself was so massive that it reacted not at all to the arrival of the swell from the north-east. Atropos slid down off the back of one such wave and crashed into the top of an ice cliff as the next came up under her. Thus her arrival against the ice barrier was a sort of shoulder barge, as though the ship was playing American football. But this shoulder was well protected. The power of the impact shocked through the ship and even those who had been preparing for it were staggered. Robin was only kept erect by the fierceness of her grip on the railing in front of her, and the yell of shock which the impact jerked out of her was lost on the overwhelming sound of the collision.
As though the mass of men had been shattered by the convergence of ice and ship, they split up into their teams. One team moved watchfully down the port side, fenders at the ready as the hull swung round parallel to the ice cliffs and then tried to smash full length up against them, still at the mercy of the wind and the waves. At the stern, men were already swarming over the side and down quickly deployed Jacob’s ladders. The descent to the solid surface of the ice barrier was little more than ten feet. One man, more excited than the rest, seeing how close the surface seemed to the level of the deck, climbed over the safety rail and jumped. He landed on a slope of solid ice and his footing went at once. He crashed out full length on his back and his head hit the glass-hard surface with the sound of a rifle shot. Everything stopped for an instant, then Timmins bellowed an order. A group of men clustered round the fallen acrobat and passed his unconscious body back aboard. Some of the excitement died down after that and the teams went more quietly to work.
Robin thumbed her walkie-talkie. ‘Hogg. Go down to the bows and tell me when we’re secure there, please.’ Certain that the second officer would be puffing his way down the length of the ship at once, Robin walked out to the far end of the bridge wing. As Atropos swung in, so the wing came to overhang the ice and Robin had an increasingly excellent view as the ship came to rest. Down to her left she could see Timmins and his team making all secure aft. Away to her right she could see the dark bustle of work beginning at the bow. But it was the scene in front which claimed the greatest share of her attention.
The wind was still gusting from behind her. It bore on its back the last low storm clouds and it carried within it the last misty rain. But it was a brisk wind and, for all that it was cold, it was clear because it blew round and down directly from the Pole. The misty rain and the ice dust which it lifted from the surface of the ice served to obscure the distance. It was impossible for Robin, the better part of forty feet above it, to see the far edge of the barrier or even to guess how wide it might be at this point. Her horizon might have been ten miles’ distant or it might have been twenty, but there was no sign of water.
All she could see was ice. It was grey because it caught the colour of the sky. But it intensified the dead hues so that they seemed to be hesitating on the point of bursting into light. It was as though the whole barrier as far as she could see was made of steel trembling on the verge of melting, the snowy surface just an ashen crust which at any moment would crack and flow apart to reveal the white-hot heart within. The barrier seemed to be flat, a white plain so featureless as to fool her eyes, like nothingness, into focusing mere feet in front of her face. But when she made an effort — or, later, when she brought her binoculars into play — she soon saw that this was an effect of the wind and the drifting crystals it whirled along in its skirts. In fact, the barrier was made of folded ridges which went from east to west, as far as her eyes could see. They were all parallel to the coastal cliffs and there was no way for her to estimate the true depth of them, for although the tops of the ridges seemed to be below her line of vision, there was no way at all for her to calculate the depths of the valleys between. The frozen waves could have risen for ten or twenty feet from valley floor to ridge top if all the ice was as solid as the coastal section seemed. Or they could have plunged from ridge top fifty feet sheer to the water and then on down to untold abyssal depths if the valley floors lay open to the sea.
For maybe ten minutes she stood studying the barrier through the binoculars but at the end of that period of concentrated study she was really no wiser than she had been at the end of the first dazzled glance. There was only one way she was going to find out any more about it, she reckoned grimly. And that was to get off the ship and go and look properly.
Her walkie-talkie buzzed and she lowered the field glasses before raising the importunate instrument to her ear. ‘Timmins here. Stern secure.’
‘Thank you, Number One. You may recall your teams and report to me in the chart room, if you please.’
Idly, for she was waiting for the twin of this call from Hogg at the bow, Robin crossed to the starboard bridge wing. Just as the port wing stood out over the ice they were secured — and trapped — against, so this one stood out over the tall waves which held them there. The wind was bitter here, but the view was clearer than the view across the ice. The last of the rain was gone now and the distant horizon was clearer. The cloud cover was thinning up there too and the gathering light was cutting in great silver blades down onto the corrugated surface of the sea. She pressed the icy rounds of the eyepieces back beneath her frowning brows and tried to plumb the distance of the Davis Strait. At the furthest edge of the magnification the glasses revealed to her a band where the sea went palest pale and a reflecting band above it where
the air went velvet dark. For minute after minute she stood, willing her eyes to see more. Willing her body to ride the pitch of the deck beneath her feet so that the field glasses would stay solidly fixed on that horizon.
And just in the final instant before her concentration broke, even as Hogg buzzed up to tell her that the bow was now secure, her vigilance was rewarded. In the heart of that pale band which warned of more ice sweeping down with the wind towards them out of the Arctic Ocean itself came a gleam as though an invisible hand had ignited a giant flare. The distance and the ice haze reduced the gleam by a million per cent and it was there for less than a heartbeat but it still had the power to burn the back of her eyes. She lowered the glasses and raised the walkie-talkie.
There was something out there, something big. As long as the wind stayed in the north-west, it would continue to come down this way. The thought made her as cold inside as the weather was making her outside.
*
Timmins and Hogg weren’t much, but they were the only deck officers she had. And, in that they were bona fide deck officers, with the papers to prove it, they deserved her respect and support. Inclusion in her deliberations was the least part of that respect. So the three of them met next in the chart room and Robin spread the charts out in front of them and began to point to the huge white spaces in whose empty heart they lay. ‘We’ll keep this brief, gentlemen,’ she began. ‘We’ve all got work to do and I want to detail the next few tasks we’ve got to face as soon as we’ve discussed our position and situation.’
She glanced up at them. They were both standing, stunned with fatigue, staring down at her like dummies. She would very happily have shaken the pair of them, banging their heads together until they woke up a bit.
‘According to my copy of the British Admiralty’s Arctic Pilot for these waters, the Greenland Current usually pushes a big ridge of solid sea ice round the end of Greenland at this time of year. It usually blocks the coast from Kap Farvel north and sticks out into the Labrador Sea for a couple of hundred miles. I’m sure both of you are as fully aware of this fact as I am. But what you may not know is this: for the last couple of days, Frederiksdal has been reporting that its harbour is clear of ice. Frederiksdal should be right in behind that ice barrier. If it isn’t, then the barrier must have moved. Gentlemen, I think that the south-easterly storm in which your propeller was damaged broke that ice barrier free and drove it out into the Labrador Sea, and I believe we are currently moored to its northern coastline. This means we could have as much as a hundred miles of ice to each side of us. And anywhere between one and ten full miles of ice to the south of us. Any comments?’
‘Ice to the south is very bad for us,’ said Timmins slowly, ‘because of the ice to the north.’
‘That’s right,’ agreed Robin. ‘How bad it is depends upon how far west we are and we can’t really estimate that.’
‘We were pushed right back towards the middle,’ said Hogg. ‘I know the tow got us back towards the east and the wind will have drifted us further, but the fact is we’re a long way out.’ He drew out the word ‘long’.
‘And you know what that means.’ Timmins was almost animated. ‘It means we’re still on the edge of the Labrador Current. This time of the year it can come east right out over the Newfoundland Banks, especially with the wind behind it. If the Gulf Stream’s running a little further north than usual or is pushing a little harder, then the Labrador can move at two, two and a half knots. And it can shove all sorts of shit south out of the Arctic Ocean through the Davis Strait. Oh, sorry, Captain. I—’
‘What sort of shit, Number One?’ She already suspected. She had been warned by that one blinding gleam of green light.
‘Bergs like you’ve never seen. Ice islands. Half the size of British Columbia. Half as high as the Rockies.’
‘Maybe once a century,’ she said soothingly. She didn’t want Timmins frightening himself. Or anyone else for that matter. ‘But your point is well taken. We are, as the Americans say, between a rock and a hard place. We’re effectively stuck on a north-facing shore with ice being pulled south against it. The size of the bits that the ice comes in is immaterial for the moment. It’s the situation we need to worry about. We don’t want to stay here any longer than we have to.’
‘But how are we going to get out of it?’ asked Hogg.
‘Even if we fix the alternator or restore emergency power and radio for help, we’re going to need an icebreaker to get us out of here and every icebreaker north of New York must be iced in solid until June. I mean, how much time do we have?’
The three of them looked at each other. Nobody had an answer.
‘Your priorities are exactly right, Mr Hogg,’ said Robin after a moment. ‘We must get power back first, now that we seem to be so snugly berthed. Without power we are in very deep trouble indeed.’
‘We could starve,’ said Timmins, with a bitterly ironic glance at his fat second lieutenant.
Hogg threw him a fulminating look and opened his mouth.
‘We could,’ interrupted Robin brusquely. ‘But we’re far more likely to freeze first. And it is as sure as death and taxes that things will not look any brighter or get any better until we have warmth and hot food, quite apart from our instruments and our most powerful radios. Have either of you got any idea how the chief engineer is?’
*
He was in a deep sleep and neither Ann Cable nor Henri LeFever was keen that he should be disturbed. But Robin needed an engineer. So, inevitably, she turned her attention to Don Taylor, who had suffered less badly. Here, too, the makeshift nurses were hesitant, but Robin, for all her quiet concern and courteous attention, was as irresistible as a glacier. When she pulled the curtains of Taylor’s cabin window open, the light flooded in to illuminate a figure more suited to the British Museum’s exhibit of Egyptian mummies than to the bridgehouse of a modern ship. Her heart sank, for without his help and advice at the very least, she would be helpless. As befitted his seniority, his bed was almost double and she perched on the edge of it and called his name.
‘Taylor. Don!’
‘Robin, don’t touch him,’ hissed Ann from just inside the door.
The two women had been on friendly terms for nearly two years now. But when Robin glanced up, the American was taken aback. She had known Robin Mariner, wife and mother. Captain Mariner was quite another kettle of fish. The grey eyes, every bit as chilly as the ice barrier outside, froze any further words on the writer-cum-nurse’s lips.
Frowning, Ann turned and went back into the engineering officer’s little dayroom. Henri saw her expression at once.
‘What?’ he asked quietly.
‘Nothing. I’m just being stupid.’
Ann had never really resolved the speculation about whether Robin and Nico had been having an affair. Every now and then she would find herself speculating, like a child picking at the scab on a healing wound. The sudden change in her friend stirred these thoughts again. Ann had supposed she knew Robin intimately. She was a writer, after all, adept at summing people up at a glance; and she had known Robin for quite long enough to be confident that she knew every side of her friend. And here was a new side. What else had Robin managed to keep concealed?
Ann looked up, pulling herself out of her momentary brown study. Henri’s bright eyes were still looking quizzically at her. ‘It’s nothing,’ she said again. ‘I’m just too suspicious for my own good. Forget it.’
For a moment his gaze continued to rest on her, then he shrugged and turned away. But just for that instant, she wondered whether she had said the wrong thing to him.
For the shortest, fleeting micron of time she felt that her words had an impact on him far beyond their thoughtless intention.
As it happened, Robin was not driven to shaking the scalded man by his shoulder — which she’d had every intention of doing if she’d needed to. As she approached his bed Taylor’s long brown eyes blinked open and focused blearily on her. It took him a moment to reme
mber that this woman with her gleaming riot of salt-curled, wind-tousled hair was a senior officer, but once he got that clear in his mind, he began to fire on all cylinders. Or nearly all.
Her words crisp and to the point, she outlined their current predicament to him. The long eyes grew wider as she talked, but nowhere near as round as Ann’s who overheard every doomladen phrase. When she had finished, Taylor lay silently for a moment, then he began to struggle under the blankets. His movements were so unco-ordinated that Robin at first thought he was having some kind of seizure. But after a moment or two it became obvious that he was trying to sit up. She touched him then, sliding her hand gently round his warm, thick-bandaged shoulders, to help him into a sitting position.
Once there, he paused for breath.
‘Are you all right?’ she asked him, sounding very English and slightly fatuous in her own ears.
‘No, Captain, I am not all right. In fact the whole of my lily-white body hurts like a son of a bitch, and I surely pity the poor chief if he was harder boiled than me. But if you can get me on my feet, then I can get some clothes on. And if I can get some clothes on then I can get down in that engine room and fix that fucking alternator. And if I can fix the alternator, then maybe you can get us all the hell out of here.’
Put in those terms, Robin began to believe that maybe they could do just that after all. But she was damned if she could see how they were going to pull it off.
17 - Day Nine
Thursday, 27 May 12:00
Timmins was even more exhausted than Robin, so she was forced to invest some of the energy her resurrection of Don Taylor had given her in order to get him up and running. There was nothing they could do to further their plans for survival and ultimate rescue until Taylor and the third engineer from Clotho, Lloyd Swan, restored the power. There was a lot she had to do as the new captain of this ship, however, no matter what the situation. She had to perform a captain’s inspection at the earliest possible moment. A full inspection was out of the question right now, of course, but she did need to look over as much of the ship as possible. When the power came back on she didn’t want to be wandering around looking at things she could perfectly well check on now. And it occurred to her quite forcefully that with Timmins on the edge of exhaustion, he might very well be less guarded than normal in answering several pertinent questions she had in mind about the officers and crew now serving under her command.