The Ice Limit

by Douglas Preston; Lincoln Child

  The motion of the ship …

  “We’ll worry about that later,” he said. He reached for his radio, snapped it on, heard the hiss of static.

  “God damn it!” he said, shoving the radio back in his belt.

  “Sam—” Rachel began.

  “We’ve got to get out of here,” he interrupted. “Otherwise, when the next big roll comes, we’re toast.”

  He stood up just as she gripped his arm.

  “We can’t leave,” she said. “Another explosion like that might break the web. If the meteorite gets loose, we’ll all die.”

  “Then we have to keep the water from the rock.”

  For a moment, the two stared at each other. And then, as with a single thought, they sprinted down the catwalk toward the access tunnel.

  Almirante Ramirez,

  2:45 P.M.

  VALLENAR STOOD at the bridge, looking southward over the heaving seas, an old pair of binoculars cradled in his hands. The officers around him were struggling to remain on their feet in the wildly rolling ship, their faces frozen masks of neutrality. They were terrified. But now his regime of absolute discipline was paying off: the test had come, and those who remained were with him. They would follow him to hell, if necessary—and that, he thought as he glanced at the chart, was exactly where they were heading.

  The snow and sleet had stopped, and the sky was clearing. Visibility was excellent. But the wind had, if anything, picked up, and the seas were mounting ever higher. When the ship sank into the bottom of the troughs, it became enshrouded in a midnight darkness, and the walls of black water rising on either side made him feel as if the ship were at the bottom of a vast canyon. At the bottom of these troughs, the wave crests were an astonishing twenty meters above the level of the bridge. He had never seen a sea like this in his life, and the increase in visibility, while useful to his plan, made it appear all the more dreadful. The normal procedure would be to head into the wind and ride it out. That was not an option. He had to keep a heading that put the wind and sea almost on his beam; otherwise, the heavier American ship would escape.

  He watched as the bow of his destroyer plowed into the sea at the bottom of the long trough and came up slowly, the castillo thunderously shedding water; the ship leaned to starboard until the bridge was hanging over the open ocean, wracked with foam. Everyone grabbed a handhold. The bridge hung for frightening seconds, then slowly righted itself, the momentum dipping it to port. It was an especially ugly roll.

  Vallenar knew the ship, knew what it could and could not do. He could feel when the wind and water took charge. They had not—at least, not yet. It would take vigilance, and adroit seamanship, to keep the ship from foundering. He would do it himself, not leave it to the conning officer.

  He saw a foaming swell looming in the distance, towering over the rest, thrusting itself through the storm like a whale. He spoke calmly, almost nonchalantly. “Ease your rudder to left standard, starboard engine back one-third, port engine ahead two-thirds. Keep calling your head.”

  “Coming around easy, sir,” said Aller. “Heading one seven five, heading one seven zero—”

  “Steady on one six five.”

  The wave began to take the ship in its embrace; the Ramirez rose, strained, canted. Vallenar held on to the engine-room telegraph as they heeled sickeningly, the inclinometer reading close to forty degrees, before the wave finally crested. For a moment, he had a long view across the southern ocean, all the way to the horizon. He quickly fitted the binoculars to his eyes and scanned the tumultuous sea until they subsided into the next trough. It was a terrifying sight: the monumental peaks and valleys of water, the absolute promiscuity of chaos. It temporarily unnerved him.

  As the ship fell, he calmed himself. They rose again, and so did Vallenar’s binoculars. He felt a sudden lurch in his chest: there it was; a dark silhouette against the sea, bordered in white. It was larger, and closer, than he thought it would be. He kept the binoculars trained, almost afraid to blink, as the ship subsided, then slowly began to rise on the next foam-webbed mountain of water. As they topped it, and the combing crest creamed over the port railing and slanted the ship over, Vallenar saw the tanker again.

  “Port engine back one-third. Right standard rudder. Steady on one eight zero.”

  Once more the deck heaved up and fell to starboard.

  “What is our fuel?”

  “Thirty percent.”

  He turned to the ingeniero de guardia, the engineer of the watch. “Ballast the tanks.” Filling the empty tanks with seawater would slow them down half a knot, but it would add a stability they would need for what was about to come.

  “Ballasting the tanks,” said the engineer, with evident relief.

  Vallenar turned to the quartermaster. “Barometer?”

  “Twenty-nine point two eight, falling.”

  He called his tactical action officer to the bridge. “We have visual contact with the American ship,” he said, handing the man the binoculars.

  The man raised them to his eyes. “I see it, sir,” he said after a moment.

  Vallenar turned toward the officer of the deck. “It bears one nine zero, or thereabouts. Have CIC give me a course to intercept.”

  The orders were relayed, the new course given. Everything now was crisp, correct.

  Vallenar swiveled back to the tactical action officer. “Report when we are within gun range. Do not engage without my order.”

  “Yes, sir,” said the tactical action officer, in a carefully neutral tone.

  The destroyer began to yaw as it cleared another ugly wave, its prow dropping into the next trough with a rumble of water. The deck heaved, careening to starboard. The head began swinging to port, a heavy, uncontrolled motion.

  “I can’t hold her at one nine zero.”

  “Use full rudder to maintain your heading.”

  The ship steadied. Vallenar could see a tigre approaching from due west.

  “Ease your rudder to standard. Ease it!”

  The ship began a slow, dangling roll as it mounted the side of the enormous wave. When the wave broke, a sheet of water came racing across the deck: they were actually shipping water on the bridge.

  “Right hard rudder! Right hard!”

  The ship skidded sideways.

  “Rudder’s out of the water, sir!” the helmsman cried, the wheel loose in his hands.

  “Port engine back two-thirds! Starboard ahead flank!”

  The operator worked the engine telegraph. The ship continued sideways.

  “She’s not answering—”

  Vallenar felt a twinge of fear—not for himself, but for his uncompleted mission—and then he felt the stern settle in the sea and the screws bite into the water.

  He slowly released his breath, then leaned into the squawk box as if nothing had happened. “Report any air contacts.” No ship would be coming to the aid of the Americans in this weather, he was sure of that; but he felt less sure about aircraft.

  “No air contact out to two hundred miles,” returned the CIC. “Ice to the south.”

  “What kind of ice?”

  “Two large ice islands and assorted growlers and drift ice.”

  They’re running to the ice, Vallenar thought with satisfaction. It was a desperate measure, taking a tanker below the Ice Limit, deliberately heading for the ice, in a storm like this. But it was their only move, and he had expected it. Perhaps they thought they could play hide-and-seek among the bergs, or escape under cover of darkness. Perhaps they were hoping for fog. It would not succeed. On the contrary, the ice would work to his advantage by dampening the heavy seas. And in ice, a destroyer was far more maneuverable than a tanker. He would kill them in the ice—if the ice didn’t get them first.

  “Drawing into gun range, sir,” said the tactical action officer.

  Vallenar looked out over the storm-tossed ocean. Now, even without the binoculars, he could occasionally glimpse the dark speck of the American ship. It was perhaps eight miles a
way, but even at that distance it made a big, fat target.

  “Do you have visual contact acceptable for targeting?” he asked.

  “Not yet, sir. Visual targeting will be difficult in this sea, at this range.”

  “Then we wait until we are closer.”

  The minutes dragged on as they gained, very slowly, on the American ship. The sky darkened as the wind held steady at eighty knots. The fear that had gripped the bridge remained, a healthy tonic. The sun was setting. Vallenar continued to issue a stream of carefully nuanced rudder and engine instructions, responding to the changing sea. The repairs to the propellers and rudder were holding well. The men had done a good job. Pity so many had died in the process.

  Night would be falling soon, and the Rolvaag was running dark. He could wait no longer. “Mr. Casseo, bracket the target. Tracers only.”

  “Yes, sir,” said the tactical action officer. “Loading tracers.”

  Vallenar looked down at the forward guns. After a minute he saw them turn, elevate to about forty-five degrees, and then fire in sequence: two bright shells. The barrels jerked backward in a gout of flame, and the bridge shook with the recoil. Vallenar clapped his binoculars to his eyes and watched the ranging shots arc into the storm. Both fell wild, well short of the tanker.

  The ship subsided into another trough, then climbed again. Once more, the forward guns fired tracers in the pause at the top of their roll. These flew farther, but still fell short.

  The tactical action officer timed additional shots for the wave crests, making slight adjustments. After a few minutes, he spoke again. “Comandante, I believe we have sufficient range data to lay a line of shells across the target.”

  “Very well. Fire for effect. I want to disable the ship enough to slow it down but not sink it. Then we will draw close for a clean kill.”

  There was the briefest of silences at this.

  “Yes, sir,” said the tactical action officer.

  As the destroyer rose, the guns went into action once again, live rounds leaving the barrels now, screaming southward in deadly arcs of orange.

  Rolvaag,

  3:30 P.M.

  MCFARLANE SANK back against the bulkhead of the observation unit, ignoring the nearby chair and letting himself slide down to the metal deck. He felt utterly drained. Countless small muscles twitched spasmodically in his arms and legs. He could feel Rachel plop herself down beside him, but he felt too exhausted even to look over.

  With the meteorite disrupting their radios, and no time to get help, they had been forced to find a solution themselves. Standing in the access corridor, behind the safely closed hatch, they had finally come up with a workable scheme. There were dozens of waterproof tarps in the storage compartments behind them, slung over the stacks of stores. They rigged a series of those tarps over the top of the web to shield the meteorite from seawater. It took a half hour of frantic activity, conducted under constant fear of another explosion.

  McFarlane unclipped his radio, found it was still dead, and snapped it off again with a shrug. Glinn would learn all about it eventually. It seemed strange to McFarlane that Britton, and Glinn, and the rest could have been on that bridge all this time, preoccupied with their own work, completely unaware of the crisis that had played out half a dozen decks beneath them. He wondered what the hell was going on up there; the storm seemed to be getting worse.

  He felt himself roll back with the ship. It was only a matter of time until the stream of seawater swerved toward the web once again.

  They lapsed into silence. McFarlane looked over as Rachel reached into a breast pocket of her shirt, pulled out a jewel case containing a CD-ROM, and gave it an appraising glance. Then, exhaling in relief, she replaced the case.

  “I’d forgotten all about that in the scramble,” she said. “Thank God it wasn’t damaged.”

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “Before boarding, I dumped all the data from our meteorite tests onto this disk,” she said. “I want to go over it again. If we get out of here alive, that is.”

  McFarlane said nothing.

  “It must have an internal energy source,” Rachel went on. “How else could it generate so much electricity? If it were just a capacitor, it would have discharged whatever electricity it had millions of years ago. It’s generating the charge inside itself.” She tapped the disk in her pocket. “The answer has to lie somewhere in the data.”

  “What I want to know is just what kind of environment it comes from. I mean, the thing reacts so violently to salt water, of all things.” McFarlane sighed. “Ah, hell. Let’s give the damn rock a rest.”

  “That’s just the problem,” Rachel said. “Maybe it isn’t just a rock.”

  “Not your spaceship theory again.”

  “No. Maybe it’s something a lot simpler than a spaceship.”

  McFarlane began to answer, then stopped. The rolls of the ship were growing ever steeper.

  Rachel too had gone silent. It was clear she knew what he was thinking.

  “Must be a hell of a sea up there,” he said.

  She nodded. “Anytime now.”

  They waited in silence as the rolls grew ever stronger. At last, at the very crest of a great roll, the stream of water once again parted from the bulkhead and angled through the air toward the tarps. McFarlane pulled himself to his feet and stared out the window of the observation unit, waiting. Over the rush of the ocean and the distant shriek of the wind, he heard the patter of water on plastic coming up from below. He watched it run harmlessly down the tarps to drip into the spaces between the bottom girders.

  They paused, expectantly, for the space of a heartbeat. Then Rachel let out a long breath.

  “Looks like it worked,” she said. “Congratulations.”

  “Congratulations?” McFarlane replied. “It was your idea.”

  “Yeah, I know. But you figured out the salinity angle.”

  “Only through your prompting.” McFarlane hesitated. “Listen to us,” he went on. “We’re a goddamn mutual appreciation society.”

  Despite his weariness, he found himself grinning. He could almost feel a huge weight lifting from his shoulders. They knew now what caused the explosions. They had taken the necessary steps to make sure it would not happen again. They were on their way home.

  He looked down at Rachel, her dark hair shining in the dim light. Just a few weeks ago, the thought of sharing this easy, comfortable silence would have been unthinkable. And yet now it seemed hard to imagine a time when she had not been with him, working at his side—finishing his sentences for him, teasing him, providing speculation, wisecracks, and insight whether they were desired or not.

  She was leaning back against the tank, gazing out at nothing as the ship went into an even steeper roll, unaware that he was looking at her. “Do you hear something?” she asked. “I could swear I heard a distant explosion.”

  But McFarlane was barely listening. To his surprise, he felt himself kneeling beside her and drawing her near with a very different feeling than the passion that had briefly filled him in her cabin.

  She laid her head on his shoulder.

  “You know something?” he said. “You’re the nicest smart-assed, backstabbing assistant I’ve met in a long time.”

  “Mmm. I’ll bet you say that to all the girls.”

  He stroked her cheek gently, then raised her lips to his as another large wave passed by. Water splattered loudly across the tarps.

  “Does this mean I get to wear your MIT ring?” she murmured.

  “No. But you can borrow my rock hammer.”

  They kissed again as the ship slowly righted, then went immediately into another heavy roll in the other direction.

  Suddenly, McFarlane drew back. Over the general muttering and creaking of the hold, over the distant boom of the sea, he heard a new sound, a strange, high-pitched creaking, ending in a metallic crack, loud as a gunshot; and then another, and another.

  He glanced quickly at Rachel. She lo
oked back, her eyes wide and luminous. The loud reports ceased, but the echoes still sounded in his ears. They waited in shocked silence. With each fresh roll of the ship, there now arose a chorus of other sounds: the groaning of steel, the creak and crackle of splintering wood, the tearing of rivets and welds.

  Rolvaag,

  3:30 P.M.

  BRITTON WATCHED the first tracer shell rise lazily above the wracked surface of the sea and then fall away in a twinkle of light. Another one followed, still dropping well short of their position.

  Lloyd was instantly at the window. “Christ, do you believe this? The son of a bitch is firing at us.”

  “Tracers,” said Glinn. “They’re getting our range.”

  She saw Lloyd’s jaw set in a tight line.

  “Mr. Howell, hard left rudder,” she ordered as another pair of tracer shells arched over the sea, a little closer this time.

  They watched in silence as more shells came on, creeping ever closer. And then one flashed directly overhead, a streak of light against the dark sky.

  “We’re bracketed,” murmured Glinn. “Now they’ll open up with live rounds, walking them through our position.”

  Lloyd turned on him. “What are you, a sports announcer? We need a plan, not running commentary. I can’t believe this. Three hundred million and this is where you’ve brought us?”

  Britton spoke, quickly but distinctly. “Silence on the bridge! Mr. Howell, right full rudder! Engines emergency astern!” In the crisis, she felt her thoughts begin to stream past with a crystalline clarity. It was almost as if someone else was doing her thinking for her. She glanced at Lloyd, standing there at the center of the bridge windows, his beefy fingers twined like a knot as he looked southward over the ruthless seas. How difficult it must be to realize that money couldn’t buy everything—even one’s own life. How different he was, in the last analysis, from the man who stood beside him.

  Her eyes moved to Glinn. She found herself becoming dependent on his judgment now, in a way she would never have allowed before he had been proven wrong—proven human, she thought.