by Peter Tonkin
‘You’d better do what the first officer says, men,’ he said quietly. ‘This will turn out badly for you in the end if you don’t.’ His eyes met O’Brien’s and locked. ‘Any stupidity now will just get added to the reckoning later on.’ His words carried weight. Some of the crewmen at the back began to waver.
‘You aren’t going anywhere. You’ll have to reckon with the captain when she gets back. She isn’t going to let anything slip or pass and you know it,’ added Hogg, hoping to press the point. But the words did not have the effect he had hoped for.
O’Brien threw back his head and laughed. ‘You can’t hide behind old Yasser’s gold braid so you’ll hide behind the captain’s skirts, is that it, Mr Hogg?’
Timmins raised his right arm and hit the laughing man over the head with his metal wrench. He made a bad job of his attack, however, and the metal jumped out of his hand to vanish over his shoulder so that the powerful crack which rang down the corridor from the impact was immediately followed by the thud of the weapon falling to the floor. Timmins stepped back, shaking his hand in agony. O’Brien stood, frozen with wrath as blood spurted out of his split scalp and poured down his cheek. Stone stepped in front of the first officer.
As though Stone’s movement had broken a spell, everyone was in motion at once. O’Brien hurled forward towards Timmins. He went straight for the senior officer as though he had no idea that Stone was between them. His shoulder took the radio officer in the chest and spun him against the wall. Stone was a fit man and an active one in spite of the fact that his calling required him to sit around so much. He was not prepared for the impact of O’Brien’s charge, however, and this was compounded when he smacked his forehead against a joist between two wall panels. Badly dazed, he sat down just in the path of O’Brien’s confederates who were all eager to join the fray. A knee took him in the right ear and, as he fell back a foot took him in the temple.
Hogg was thinking with feverish speed. It was far too late to run away and the only alternative he could see was to join in as best he could. As O’Brien went past him, he hit him over the back of the head with the hammer. As he had not set out to murder anyone, the fat officer had reversed his weapon and was holding the heavy metal head in his sweaty fist. The hard wood handle was eighteen inches long and as effective as a British bobby’s truncheon. It connected with all the accuracy and force which had been missing from Timmin’s blow and O’Brien went down before he ever reached his target. Hogg swung back and, more by luck than judgment, he spread the next man’s nose across his face. The man spun away, spraying blood everywhere. Hogg shrugged himself off the wall and stood astride the corridor. The next man in line was the one who had called O’Brien. He was a few feet back. Just far enough for him to have to think before he attacked Hogg. He hesitated.
The nine who were left behind him hesitated too. Unexpectedly, Timmins did the right thing. He stooped, then rose to the occasion with Stone’s nasty-looking screwdriver reversed in his right hand. Above his clenched fist, the six-inch shaft of steel widened into a foot-long, ridged wood handle and it looked like an extremely effective cosh. In his left hand he held the wrench which had sprung back over his shoulder after that first, weak blow. It was covered with blood and it looked very businesslike now. ‘Who’s next?’ Timmins grated. ‘Those of you looking to get wounded too, remember this: I’m the only medic aboard now LeFever’s gone cruising with the captain.’
‘And anyone hoping to get away unscathed,’ added Hogg, breathlessly, ‘might like to think where they’ll be locked up when the captain gets back. Down by the cargo.’ His eyes raked over their faces, daring them to move. ‘And I’ve got the name of every man here. Think about it.’ The man with the broken nose sat whimpering, his groans the only sound in the corridor for an instant.
‘Break it up and go to lunch, the lot of you,’ ordered Timmins. And for once he sounded so much like a real first officer that they obeyed.
It was only when the men were gone that the victors noticed the state of Harry Stone.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT - Day Eleven
Saturday, 29 May 13:00
‘Look, Captain, this isn’t really my line of country, you know,’ called down Bill Christian nervously.
Richard swung round and looked back up the Jacob’s ladder to where the Cumbrian radio officer stood on Clotho’s deck. ‘I thought you were with the polar team in eighty-nine,’ he said. ‘That was one of your qualifications for this post.’
‘I was, but ...’ The radio operator suddenly looked almost boyish, torn between his desire to please Richard and his fear that his captain was doing something unwise. Desperate.
‘If this is a stupid thing to do, I’m relying on you to tell me, Bill. If it’s not, I’m relying on you to help me. I really do have to get across there. I need to know what’s going on.’
‘We could wait. They’re bound to get back in contact soon ...’ Bill tailed off, knowing how weak this sounded. He could imagine how it would strike this man who stood to lose not only a ship but a beloved wife.
‘Less than five miles, if that satellite photograph is accurate,’ persisted Richard. ‘I know we’re not well equipped, but you’re experienced and we’ll be careful. The weather’s clear and the ice seems sound.’ He stamped down on it hard. ‘There are ridges in the way, building up to that central chain of hills, but it’s not as if we’re aiming to climb the Matterhorn or anything. And we’ll turn back at once on your say-so, no questions asked. You have my word. But I must give it a shot. Don’t you see that?’
‘Okay, Captain. As long as you realise I’m not an ice man. I’m a radio operator.’
While Clotho had reversed along her channel back to the open sea and then turned east once more, Richard had searched everywhere aboard for the items of equipment he might need to help him walk across the ice. This had seemed his best course of action if Atropos did not get back in touch. She had not done so, and now he was off across the ice barrier to find out what was wrong.
He had no intention of being on the ice for more than a few hours, no matter which way things went, so there was no need for anything other than warm clothing, basic survival equipment in case of accidents and a walkie-talkie to summon help in the face of a serious emergency. But the equipment which would have made the journey safer, easier and quicker was not to be found. There were no skis, nor anything that could readily be adapted into skis. He added ropes and harness to tennis racquets from the ship’s sports equipment, but then left them because they seemed too weak and stupid. Stout walking boots would do if the ice was firm, and if it wasn’t then he would just have to come back. Even though he had no skis, Richard found two lengths of metal which would double as ski poles and help him to remain upright on the slippery surface. It was when he had got enough equipment together for one person that Bill Christian had advised him just how unwise it would be for him to risk it alone. Richard was not as fit as he might be; he was certainly not experienced. Even one of the legendary polar explorers might hesitate before setting out alone on such an apparently simple journey as this.
In no time, Richard had produced a second set of equipment and now, with Clotho resting against the southern section of the ice nearest to Atropos’s last recorded position, he was eager to go.
All too well aware that Richard’s confidence might for once be badly misplaced, Bill Christian climbed over the side and joined him on the ice. Despite his misgivings, he simply could not let Richard go alone.
Over their cold-weather gear each of them wore a safety harness and to the harnesses was tied a rope linking the two of them together. Each wore a backpack with extra gloves, boots, hats and dark glasses in it. They each carried two thermos flasks, one filled with soup and the other with sweet tea. They had grabbed a light lunch of scalding soup and freshly made sandwiches immediately before kitting up, so they carried no solid food except for some emergency rations of chocolate. Richard had wanted to bring Mars Bars as they contained the highest concentration of energy, but B
ill had pointed out how impossible they were to bite into when they were all but frozen. Chocolate would have to do; at least it could be shattered like toffee and the shards sucked carefully. They had eaten enough soup to warm them but not enough to fill them. Neither man relished trying to relieve himself if they were caught short on the ice.
They each carried a compass and a walkie-talkie in case they got separated, a knife in case they needed to cut themselves free of their harness quickly, and a heavier implement in case they needed to cut steps or handholds in steep ice. Richard had an axe; Bill had the chefs biggest meat cleaver. Each one carried two emergency flares purloined from the lifeboats, in pockets convenient to their hands, though even careful Bill could hardly imagine any situation in which they would be required. The walkie-talkies would communicate with Clotho for the first mile or so, and with Atropos if they got close enough to her. Richard also had a pair of binoculars slung over his shoulder. Apart from their poles, that was all they carried. They were only going for a short walk on a sunny day, after all.
Bill set off at a brisk pace with Richard slightly behind him. There was no doubt as to which of them was the leader, but the simple fact was that Bill knew more about this sort of thing than Richard did, so he wisely put himself in a position to get the best view of what the more experienced man was doing. Immediately, Bill fell into a sort of shuffling gait, back slightly hunched, leaning on his makeshift poles. This way, apart from the occasional glance upwards to confirm direction, he could watch the ice at his feet — he was more interested in that than in views or far distances. A moment’s consideration convinced Richard that this was eminently sensible. The ice seemed solid, but there was no telling when a crack might appear unexpectedly. A dry crevasse would be as dangerous as a water-filled lead. A broken ankle might prove as fatal as a plunge into below-freezing water. Indeed, a simple clumsy fall might do as much damage as anything else. Pushing the feet along the slippery surface rather than lifting and planting them kept the walker stable and cut down the chances of slipping over.
The unnatural method of locomotion seemed to be quite easy to begin with, but Richard soon found that it was taxing the muscles at the front of his thighs and, although his ankles preferred this strange movement, his knees did not. His shoulders began to ache next, as his arms were out in front of his chest for most of the time, and his ski poles were surprisingly heavy. He soon found that he was beginning to pant a little. The instant he did so, he found he had a choice: he could either breathe heavily through his nose, whereupon a lancing shock went from his adenoids up behind his eyes; or he could breathe through his mouth and transfer the discomfort to his teeth and chest. As soon as he began to perspire, his dark glasses threatened to fall off his nose and within a few yards his head was aching with the unaccustomed strain of keeping them in place. Surprisingly quickly, his world shrunk to the ice in front of his shuffling feet, and the discomfort, which soon attained the level of genuine pain.
The ice against Clotho’s port flank was five feet thick to the waterline. It began to slope upwards immediately, onto the back of the first corrugation running from east to west, right to left in front of them. From the ship, looking at the overall pattern rather than the detail, Richard had registered only the corrugations, building up and up onto that central ridge, as though a piece of corrugated iron had been folded into a rough ‘A’ shape in preparation for a simple roof. But this folded piece of corrugation was not level from one end to the other. It dipped and twisted along its length. Nor was it plain. There were outcrops in all sorts of unexpected places, telling of cracks which met and forces great enough to push ice up in individual blocks or jumbled, rubbishy piles.
The slope was not too steep at first and the crest of the first little ridge, hardly higher than a sand dune, was soon attained. Here they paused, for several good reasons. It was an excellent place to regain their breath a little and refocus their attention on terrain that would soon start sloping away from them. Also, in spite of the apparent ease of the gradient and shortness of the distance travelled so far, this downward slope would take them out of sight of Clotho. For the first time on the ice, they looked down into shadow and here, oddly, the depth of the ice chose to show itself. It did so only in places, for it was covered here and there by drifts of ice grains like sand, obscured elsewhere by solid blocks and piles of rubbish like gigantic snowmen which had rotted and been weathered almost away.
While Bill checked in with Johnny Sullivan who was manning the radio in their absence, Richard had leisure to look down at the bottom of the valley. Here the ground looked as though it contained the sky within its depths, but behind a surface which had been coated with thick white swirls and piles of sugar frosting. The blue shone through the white as though there was another sun somewhere down there, burning beneath the sea. As soon as full light hit the slope of the next ridge ahead, the solid, snowy whiteness returned and there was intimation of sapphire only in the shadows of increasing numbers of excrescences around and through which they were clearly going to have to wander. The next ridge was like a maze and, Richard suddenly realised, the one beyond that was worse. And how many more to the central ridge? Then how many more beyond that?
He understood with poignant clarity Bill Christian’s reluctance to come.
‘Still no contact with Atropos,’ said Bill, even as Richard thought of him. ‘Anything you want me to pass on to Clotho?’
‘No. Let’s get on.’
‘Okay. That’s it, Johnny. Over and out.’
They had to slither down the slope, and when they reached the bottom, they paused again, looking up and calculating how easy, or otherwise, it would be to climb it on the way back. ‘I don’t fancy carving a stairway all the way up there,’ said Richard feelingly.
‘You shouldn’t have to. It looks just about do-able,’ said Bill confidently. ‘Still, no sense worrying. Let’s go.’
As Richard had suspected, their way up the next slope was more complicated. They were forced to follow an almost drunken path weaving in and out of the surprisingly massive obstructions in their way. From Clotho these had appeared too insignificant to be worth considering. On the ground, the smallest of them was more than six feet high and ten wide. It would clearly be a waste of effort and time to try and climb them, even had it been possible to do so. Round and about they went, therefore, like children lost in a petrified forest, often with nothing to guide them but the upward slope at their feet.
At the second crest they paused again, looking back. In the clear, icy air, Clotho nestled at the edge of the ice, beam on, etched against the dark blue sky, massive and seemingly only yards away. This time Richard spoke into his walkie-talkie while Bill considered the next stage of their journey. Again, Johnny had nothing to report and Richard was now becoming really worried. He could think of no routine reason for Atropos to be out of contact for this length of time. After a few moments, they turned their back on Clotho and went on.
This time the escarpment was less steep and they were able, with care, to walk down it. The shadow at the bottom of the valley seemed to be deeper, however, the crystal-blue sections more numerous, and the atmosphere of the place more sinister. Richard found that his legs were aching, not just because of the peculiar method of walking, but because he did not trust the valley bottom to hold him up. Each of his legs, from hip to ankle, was rock solid with the expectation that when he put his weight on his foot, it would simply break through the glacial surface and plunge down into a crevasse or into the ocean itself. It was like walking on a great sheet of glass, never knowing when it was going to crack.
Wryly, he considered his current situation and compared it to his experiences over the recent past. It had all been like this, he thought. Since the bomb in Belfast he had been walking on glass, knowing it was going to break beneath him, that it was only a question of time. Knowing of no way to avoid disaster other than to keep doing what he was doing. Ready for the first warning crack, certain it was coming soon, t
o rob him of reputation, standing, friends; ship, company, fortune; wife. Only the twins seemed safe, with their grandfather to rely on immediately, and the insurance after that. The rest of them were trapped and Richard felt himself to be most at risk, unable to see any way out at all. He had never been a man to look on the dark side. He had always been lucky and taken his luck for granted. No longer, it seemed. Here he was walking on thin ice and knowing how thin the ice had always been beneath his feet. It almost frightened him, in retrospect, to think of the risks he had taken, of the chances he had permitted those close to him to take. It certainly frightened him to think of the future; of the next second, the next hour, the next day, and the unlimited disaster it would surely bring.
So engrossed was he in his combination of pain, fatigue and depression that he didn’t see the polar bear until it was almost upon him. When he did see the creature, it was so unexpected and so close that he shouted aloud with surprise. Bill slewed round at the sound. The bear, which had been running silently towards them along the valley floor, stopped in a flurry of ice crystals and sat back on its haunches. The three of them looked at each other, then the men, being quicker thinking and most at risk, began to look around for a safe haven. The nearest feature of any kind was a tall jumble of small ice blocks. With their eyes on the bear, they began to fall back towards this. It was the best thing to do under the circumstances, for at the very least they would be able to face the bear from above there and rob it of its obvious advantages of height and the reach of its long black claws. But their slow retreat served to tempt the animal into renewed movement.
The massive creature rolled forward off its rump and flopped onto all fours. Then it began to follow them step for step. This was not an attack; even its initial approach had been more of an enquiry than a threat. But it was an inquisitive creature, and the master of its realm on the ice. The man smell no doubt made it wary, but something more compelling drove it on. ‘This could get bloody dangerous,’ warned Bill hoarsely. ‘If he gets interested, we’ll have to scare him off good and proper. Or kill him.’
