by Peter Tonkin
It had never occurred to Black that his ill-tempered order to check the cargo would cost him his supplier and his supply. How in hell’s name could a man sent into the holds contrive to get himself washed overboard, even in a storm like that? He had had no conception that the loss of his supply would have this kind of effect on him. He had remained a man of fierce dignity even in the grip of his addictions, but then he had never had to face a morning in the cold knowledge of cold turkey. His pride, his character, any thought of any self-worth were all gone beneath the rabid craving. He was hardly capable of any thought at all, in fact, except Where is it? Where is it? Where is it?
He had eluded Hogg’s desultory search with ease and had gone through the bridgehouse. His destruction of Reynolds’ room and its aftermath had taught his craving to be cunning. He wasn’t wrecking as he went this time, he was hiding even the evidence that he had looked. The only parts of the ship’s accommodation which had been barred to him since midnight had been those places where people congregated. And those he had searched when the multitudes of the two crews currently aboard were fast asleep — when everyone was asleep, in fact, and only his need kept him awake.
Now he turned away from the noise and brightness in the radio shack and tiptoed past the sleeping figure in the watchkeeper’s chair out of the wheelhouse, his bare feet making no sound on the linoleum, and nothing to mark his ghostly passing except the whisper of silk dressing gown against the mahogany doorframe leading out into the corridor.
If it wasn’t on the bridge — and a glimmering of intelligence confirmed that it could never have been hidden there — then it must be outside. Unknowingly, he began to trace the course of Robin’s inspection with Timmins, out onto the rear decks below the navigation bridge, by the funnel and down. Such was the all-consuming power of the need which was driving him, he noticed nothing at all of the splendour of the night through which he was stealing. He did not notice the setting moon magnified to spectacular size and brightness by the supernatural clarity of the quiet polar air. He did not notice the stars hanging like fairy lights just above his head. Reality had retreated so far from his view that he took it as a matter of no remark that he could see as well as if it were day, except that colour was all frosted into bluey monochrome. He did not notice the size of the night, spread out all around him from horizon to horizon, or the way incredible distance was seemingly brought near, his vision magically extended by the clarity of the air. The ice burned in shades of sapphire from electric neon to Stygian syenite. The barrier swept away like a range of lapis mountains to the south, their peaks seeming to contain cold fire like the volcanoes of the planet Pluto. The ice crept down from the north, a field of restless ultramarine and indigo riven with webs of water as black as interstellar space. He saw none of it, but he heard the distant ice floes boom in the silence and the throb of the alternators grumble like a thunderstorm all around him. The stillness of the air was like the first intimation of a scream, and the minute he breathed it in, he began to die.
Everything he touched blistered his naked skin but the nerve endings were numb with frostbite so he never noticed. Like a terminal leper he moved over the decks and down the companionways, destroying himself but never knowing. By the time he took the ladder down behind the funnel, he was leaving tracks of frozen blood upon the metal, for all the skin on palms and insteps had been stripped off layer by layer. He fell and tumbled down the wide stairway beside the wide gymnasium windows because he was shaking too much to stand. But he had been shaking ever since withdrawal set in, so he didn’t really notice this either. Lying there, face down upon the patterned wood of the boarded deck, unaware that his cheeks were white with frost, he looked along the ridges thrown into such spectacular relief by the moonlight, and he noticed that a catch was standing up. A little circular catch like a ring set into the deck. It should have been lying flat but it was standing up and gleaming.
It was the catch that removed part of the cover from the empty pool. Hope surged through the prone body, such a fierce, hot surge of hope that it pulled the captain onto his knees no matter how much of his face was left behind. And he crawled over to the catch and lifted it, hissing with the power of his desire. He had trouble jerking his finger from the little metal ring but his desire would not be denied. He could not feel the fingers which prised the trap door up. He could not feel the steps into the shallow end beneath his buttocks and back as he slid down them, taking extra care to replace the deck section immediately above his head.
It is here, it is here, he exulted and he didn’t want to share it with anyone. The darkness would have stopped him as not even the cold had done, but at the bottom of the steps there was a flashlight so big that he felt it underneath his spine as he lay in the dark almost beyond rational thought. He grasped this thing and knew it by its shape. His thumb found the switch on its own and light flooded out. Whimpering with excitement, he scrambled down the slope of the pool towards the pile of packages lying before him at the deep end. Gibbering with joy he threw himself upon them, too far gone in his delirium to think it strange that Reynolds should keep heroin which he always sold in tiny plastic bags or twists of foil in great square oiled paper parcels like kilograms of sugar.
His fingers would not open the first parcel he caught up and so he bit into it as hard as he could. The cold had made the contents almost completely solid and he broke his teeth. He tore the package away from his face, leaving the outline of his mouth frozen to it round the stumps of his teeth buried in it. He had made little enough of an impression, but enough to see that the contents were not heroin at all, but a white, doughy substance, like putty.
His scream of wild frustration was infinitely loud within his head, but from his lips came no more than the mewling of a drowning kitten. He hurled the package from him but it was frozen to his fingers and the action simply jerked him over so that he was lying on the stuff. He cried with uncontrollable frustration and his tears froze his eyelids shut. His rage still would not be contained and he raved there helplessly, wildly berserk, though in fact his epic paroxysms amounted to little more than a spastic twitch and an act of incontinence. But the wetness in his lap allowed the cold to enter his vital organs more rapidly than anything else would have done — except, perhaps, the knife of the girl who had hidden on Clotho. The partner of the terrorist whose Semtex this was. And once the cold was in, then life was utterly over. The man died long before the batteries in the flashlight.
22 - Day Ten
Friday, 28 May 08:00
It was the sun that woke Robin and it was she who woke the rest of the ship. It felt strange that she should have to do so. She was used to ships which ran like Swiss watches independently of the captain — and, indeed, of the officers keeping their watches on the bridge. This was necessarily so. It was all too often the case in her experience that the officers, bound up in the requirements of their command, relied upon the ship to run without their interference.
The ship’s day should have begun with the rising of the chef and his acolytes to prepare breakfast. At the same time, the chief steward and his men should be up and about, getting the common areas ready for the arrival of the crew to eat, drink and get ready for work. The work generally started between eight and nine, so breakfast needed to be over by seven forty-five. Normally around forty people needed feeding and that could take half an hour at least. Traditionally, the breakfasts served at sea would be as large as the individual crew members desired. Anything from coffee and croissants newly made to porridge, kippers, kedgeree; a full English fried breakfast of eggs, bacon, kidneys, pork chops, sausages, tomatoes, fried bread, or an American variation with hash-browns, grits, waffles and biscuits; toast, marmalade and tea. And this took no account of Chinese or Indian crewmen, or of the dietary requirements of vegetarians, Jews, Hindus and Muslims — all of which were of the first importance. Bearing this in mind, it was not unusual for the chef and his men to be up well before six.
Up on the bridge, in the wat
chkeeper’s chair in the wheelhouse, it should have been impossible for Robin to know that the ship was still asleep. The alternators were grumbling steadily and their insistent throbbing should have been enough to cover quite a lot of bustle down, below. But as Robin blinked awake, dazzled by the bludgeoning glare of the sun on an ice-bound world, she knew at once that she was the only one awake. It was as though, by assuming the captaincy of Atropos, she had grown nerves through the very fabric of her command.
She pulled herself erect and stretched. What to do? she thought. What to do? Her actions now would best be dictated by the requirements of her overall plan. It was worth rousing the crew — the crews — if she had something for them to do. Sitting here helplessly in what was clearly a dangerous and deteriorating situation with nothing to do except watch the ice thicken would be terribly bad for morale. But on the other hand, pointless action, especially if dictated by an unknown commander, could lead to trouble equally quickly. She had to bear in mind, too, that there were limits to the work needed inside the hull — and dangers to working outside the hull in these conditions. Even the decks could become no-go areas in extremely low temperatures.
‘Damned if you do and damned if you don’t,’ she said to herself as she crossed to the helm and looked out. There was nothing to see; the clearview had frosted over. All that confronted her eyes was an intricate, beautiful pattern of ice crystals making the glass utterly opaque. The sight lifted her spirits a little, subconsciously reminding her of Christmases at Cold Fell when she was a child, before the central heating had gone in. Now, as then, she suddenly felt an overwhelming urge to run outside and look at the magic whiteness of the snow-covered world. She only just had the good sense to pull her cold-weather gear on first.
The door out onto the bridge wing opened stiffly and she half expected to find a pile of snow drifted outside. She breathed out gently through the scarf she had wound round her nose. A cloud of frosted breath rose to blind her and she felt the wool dampen and stiffen at once. Breathing in was like drowning in liquid nitrogen. Settling her sunglasses on her nose, she stepped outside and only the dark lenses stopped her from being blinded. It was not just that the world was white, so was her ship.
During the night, Atropos had snuggled up even more tightly against the ice barrier which now stretched away south, seemingly as solid as the Himalayas. This action had been caused by the first pressure of thin ice being pushed southwards by the ice floes and the icefield behind them grinding down out of the Davis Strait. Atropos was not icebound yet — there was no noise from her hull and therefore no real pressure on it yet — but she certainly looked to be so. The lethally low temperatures of the night had frozen white crusts over every lead, polynya and break between the floes to the north and had even put a rind over the quiet water between the floes and the ship. It looked as though Atropos had somehow become beached on the ice shelf, for there was no water visible at all, anywhere around. The ship itself, too, was ice-covered. As though the frozen water was some virulent contagion, it had grown over every surface before her. The steps, the banisters of the companionways and safety railings were white and covered with thick spicules of ice. The equipment on the bridge wing, even the brass, was thick and amorphous, as though coated with frozen foam. She took several entranced steps forward and looked down. The deck was a gleaming expanse of hoar frost, raised hatches casting sharp-edged shadows on the white. The gantry halfway down the deck, white-painted anyway, was effulgent now. The forecastle head and all the deck auxiliaries upon it seemed to be drifted with glacial sand. Not snow, it was too fine and granular for snow; the effect of it was more like powdered glass. A hundred million tiny facets seemed to catch the light at once, forcing her to look up and away.
Beyond the confines of the ship, the whole morning seemed to be braced and ready for action, tensed not only against the massive cold but in preparation for something more. The very horizons seemed to be trembling with clarity, like black lines strung taut beneath the blue bowl of the sky then sounded like the strings of harps. Except right in the north-west, she realised. There the horizon seemed to be obscured by thick black smoke, which took the shine off the morning, somehow. She stood and looked at it, staring intently. But she could think of no reason why anything should be on fire there. Nor could she determine, squint as she might, how far or how near it was.
Back in the stifling wheelhouse, she referred at once to Hogg’s machines. The collision alarm radar showed nothing major except the ice barrier on its five-mile setting, but there was something on the ten-mile register and when she set it to twenty, the alarm sounded, but the picture showed nothing she could understand. The satnav confirmed last recorded position so, no matter what the ice to the north was doing, the barrier and the ship secured to it were not going anywhere at the moment.
It was coming up for half past eight now. Enough of this shilly-shallying, she thought. Time to get them up. She crossed to the console and pushed the broadcast button beside the microphone there. The ship’s tannoy chimes sounded.
‘Your attention. Your attention, please. This is Captain Mariner speaking. I would like First Officer Timmins, Lieutenant Hogg and Radio Officer Stone to report to the bridge at their earliest convenience, please. I would like the rest of the officers and crew to report to the ship’s gymnasium at oh nine hundred hours sharp. Galley staff, serve coffee and tea there at that time, please. Breakfast will be prepared after I have addressed the ship’s complement. I say again ...’
Ann came out of the captain’s day room before Robin had finished the repetition of her order. ‘What are you going to say when you get us all in the gym?’ asked the journalist.
‘What I told you last night. Dressed up a little, maybe. You can have the full text later to make sure you quote me right.’ The two of them laughed companionably. ‘Sleep all right?’
‘Like the dead. No sign of Captain Black?’
‘No.’ Robin’s answer was shorter than she meant it to be because she was feeling a little guilty about dozing off like that. She wouldn’t have known whether Black had been there or not, she thought. Like the black smoke on the horizon, it took the gleam off her bright plan of action.
LeFever arrived, obviously looking for Ann. ‘You weren’t in your cabin,’ he said, his tone somewhere between mild accusation and insouciant explanation. Robin noticed that he didn’t say exactly when he had checked in her cabin. But to be fair, even were he as much of a star in that department as he looked, he wouldn’t have been up to many sexual antics when they had finally got to bed this morning. And, although Ann wasn’t saying much, Robin suspected she was happy to keep the Canadian at a distance for the time being because she was really worried about Nico Niccolo. The Italian’s main chance of beating his unknown rival at the moment was the possibility that he was dead. He might find himself ousted from Ann’s affections if he turned out to be safe and well.
It was more difficult to fathom LeFever, however. He was so attractive and seemed to be so attracted to Ann. They made a good couple and they seemed to share so many interests — their vegetarianism, their ecological conscience, their burning desire to make the world a better place to live in for all species, not just for man. For all his worth and undoubted charm, Nico Niccolo really shouldn’t have held a candle to Henri LeFever. And yet ...
She pushed her thoughts about these two to one side as her senior deck officers entered with the radio officer in tow. ‘I’m going down to address the others at nine o’clock,’ she began at once. ‘I’m really just going to lay our position on the line as I see it, and I’m sure it’s as obvious to you as it is to me. Mr Timmins, I want you to hold the watch until I return. We won’t be holding regular watches from here on in. We’ll be making do the best way we can until we get out of here or until I say different. You’re on watch from now until I relieve you later.
‘Mr Hogg, I want you to find out what is scaring the collision alarm radar. It goes off whenever I set it over a ten-mile radius but I ca
n’t make anything out. I want you to contact any passing satellite that will talk to us and get some idea of what we can expect in terms of wind, weather, ocean currents and ice during the next few days. Most of all I want to know what is producing all that black smoke up to the north-west of us.
‘Mr Stone, I want you to go back through the airwaves with a fine-tooth comb. Ideally, I want to talk to a nearby vessel, a not too distant port or weather station or, at a pinch, Heritage Mariner in London; but I’ll settle for anything you can get me.’
‘I got a New York cabbie on his way out to Kennedy the night this lot started,’ said Stone cheerfully. ‘But he couldn’t hear me too well.’
‘Anyone. It’s time we knew what’s going on around here. And not just around here. I’m going down to talk to the crew. LeFever, make yourself useful. I’ll be wanting to refer to those two charts there. Take them down and stick them up on the wall so that everyone can see them. You’re in charge of getting them back up here when I’ve finished talking. Then we’ll have to discuss the best way for you to check the disposition of the cargo. I know this ship is strengthened, and that it would be incredibly bad luck if there was anything wrong with her hull like there was with Clotho’s, but I’m just not comfortable with the idea of all that ice squeezing our nuclear cargo too tightly. Right. I’m off now. Jump to it, Mr LeFever. And I want to hear from you three gentlemen the instant anything that looks or sounds important happens, please. Is that all clear? Good. Come along then, Ann; just grab that walkie-talkie there and let’s go.’
Ann had never seen Robin in action with all stops out before. She followed the determined dynamo off the bridge with the slightly dazed LeFever in tow. The three of them crossed to the lift and crushed in the car together, the big Canadian being particularly careful of the armful of rolled charts he was carrying.