The Bomb Ship

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The Bomb Ship Page 21

by Peter Tonkin


  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 remember 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.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN - 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.

  They left Hogg in the watchkeeper’s chair, though he was too comatose really to be on watch. Harry Stone the cheerful radio operator said he was willing to remain on the bridge as well, though there was nothing he could do in his professional capacity until the power came up or the solar flares died down. ‘There’s no heat, no light and no food below,’ he observed. ‘It’s worse than winter back home in Grand Falls, Newfoundland. Why should I want to go down there? No, I’ll stay here and watch Hogg keeping watch.’ Like Timmins, he seemed to use an ironic tone as a matter of course when talking of the second officer. But unlike Timmins he seemed competent and reliable.

  They started at the top of the bridgehouse — right at the top, on the open deck at the foot of the main radio mast. Robin would have climbed even higher, but that would have been stupid because the temperature was beginning to tumble further as the cloud cover thinned. The iron rungs up the front of the mast itself were already coated with ice. She kept her mind on the equipment up here and the way it had been maintained, refusing to let her attention wander to the spectacular views northwards over the floe-flecked Davis Strait or southwards over the ice barrier. Everything up here seemed to be neat, clean and properly stowed. She could order none of it to be run or tested until she had power back, so she had to be content with looking.

  ‘This all seems shipshape,’ she said conversationally, making her tone warm and approving.

  ‘Yeah, I guess.’

  She walked back to the aft section and leaned against the railing, looking down to the lower deck with the funnel rising from the middle of it. That too was neat and tidy, everything well stowed and unobtrusive. ‘Captain Black obviously likes to run a tight ship,’ she observed.

  ‘Now you look here, lady, that man was good to me. He’s a good captain, he’s just sick, is all, and I won’t hear nothing against him.’ His obvious anger brought out something like a southern drawl in his voice. She found the unexpected accent distracting. Like everything else about the man, it diminished him somehow.

  She swung round to face him. His watery blue eyes were gleaming with genuine anger. The frizzy monk’s haircut sticking out from under his warm hood above his ears seemed to be sparking with electric anger. ‘I meant it, Mr Timmins,’ she said. Her tone was quietly placating. Her eyes held his until they dropp
ed. ‘I wasn’t being disrespectful.’

  That took the wind out of his sails a bit. ‘Just sick, is all,’ he repeated. ‘He’ll be up and about in no time.’ The way he said it made it sound almost like a threat.

  And that gave Robin something else to think about. What would her position aboard be if Captain Black did get over his craving for whatever illegal substance the late Mr Reynolds had supplied him with? If he took over control of his command again, where would that leave her? Out on a limb with Ann, she suspected. Just another woman for the crew to fantasise over. It was not a pleasant thought. But then, this was not a pleasant ship.

  She turned back and looked down. The ship rose and settled beneath her. The lines holding her stern against the ice flexed and eased. The movement made either the vessel or its anchorage groan as though there was something out there in deep pain. Something big and dangerous. Abruptly she moved off to the starboard companionway and went down onto the deck beside the funnel. Crossing it at a brisk walk, with Timmins like a sulky spaniel at her heels, she paused to look down at the lifeboat from above. ‘When was the last lifeboat drill?’ she asked.

  ‘Well, I’d have to check in the log to be sure.’

  ‘Roughly. Last Tuesday? Monday?’

  He shrugged. She frowned.

  ‘When did you last check all the lifeboat stores and equipment?’

  ‘Can’t rightly say. The Wide Boy—’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Third Officer Reynolds. He did all this stuff.’

  The penny began to drop then. The late third officer had been the only really active deck officer aboard. And of course he would have been extremely happy to look after everyone else’s responsibilities. God alone knew what must be hidden among all this beautifully stowed gear. And now that the weather was moderating and the ship was temporarily safe, the crew had leisure to do a little thinking and she suspected she would not be the only one to wonder.

 

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