The Bomb Ship
Page 36
Precisely what would happen then could only be guessed at, but as far as Robin could see, it would follow one of two courses. Either they would fix the propeller where it stood, or they would simply take it off and replace it.
Simply. It was only twenty feet high, almost the size of a house front. It only weighed God knew how many tons. It was only welded onto a main drive shaft the size of a giant redwood’s tree trunk which in turn contained a complex of variable pitch mechanisms which would need to be disconnected and then reconnected before the job was complete.
Hogg stuck his head round the door and caught her unusually grim gaze. ‘Niccolo again,’ he informed her. ‘Your husband’s just been in contact. He’s fine.’
‘Excellent. Get on to Heritage Mariner, would you? Tell them I want them to fax something out. In sections, if need be.’
‘Yes, Captain.’
She followed him out through the chart room, then walked over to the clearview and looked out at the fog for a moment. It danced and wavered hypnotically, hiding the ice barrier just as effectively as it had hidden the iceberg. She let her thoughts drift for a moment as she brought her relief under control. Oddly, knowing that Richard was safe brought her much closer to tears than the news that he might be in trouble.
In a surprisingly short time, Hogg called through, ‘Captain, I have Sir William on the line. He says what do you want?’
‘I’ll take it,’ she said at once, crossing to the radio. ‘Daddy, why are you still in the office?’
‘Why do you think, darling?’
‘Okay. Silly question. How are the twins?’
‘Fine. Safe and sound up at Cold Fell. They’ll stay there until you get back. Now, what is it you want?’
‘I want the engineering drawings and architect’s plans of the ship. Everything, in as much detail as possible. Especially the propeller.’
‘I have them here. They’ll be on their way in a moment. You think you’ll have to go ahead then?’
‘I’ll know for certain tomorrow, but it seems more sensible to plan for the worst that can happen.’
‘Replacing the propeller will be bad,’ he said sharply. ‘But I wouldn’t call it the worst that could happen.’
‘You’re right, Dad.’
‘Now, Richard has described your situation to me as he understands it, but I find it hard to visualise. Is there actually an iceberg in your vicinity?’
She began to explain that not only was the iceberg —which Richard must have seen only from a great distance — utterly real, but she was actually planning to use it.
After a while he broke in and said, ‘You realise that it must have been moving south all along?’
The question stopped the flow of information and speculation. ‘Well, yes,’ she said. ‘Of course it has. How else could it have come down upon us while we were waiting against the ice barrier?’
‘Have you any idea of its speed?’
‘No. I’ve been thinking, but even with the faxes you’ve sent out to us it’s impossible to be at all accurate. And in any case ...’
‘Yes?’
‘The barrier will slow it. Maybe even stop it.’
‘I’d say that would depend on the relative masses and the power of the currents involved.’
She tried not to let her sigh of irritation carry to the microphone and away across the airwaves. Of course it would. She knew that.
‘It’s impossible to see all of the iceberg because of the mist,’ she said, ‘but I think part of it has already come into contact with the barrier. I’m sure I felt it shake some time ago. The berg is the only thing I can think of that would make something as massive as the barrier shake. We’ll find out more soon, I’m sure.’
‘The point is, you see, that if you’re caught between them, and it sounds as though you certainly are —’
‘Of course. It’s an acceptable risk. We’ll just have to keep a weather eye out.’
‘My elementary physics suggests, you see,’ he insisted gently, ‘that if the berg keeps moving but the barrier stops its progress to the south, then it might very well start swinging round to the side. To the eastern side, for instance, where you are positioned; then Atropos could end up like a nut in a pair of nutcrackers. It would simply crush the life out of you.’
‘Even our manoeuvring propellers can still move us faster than an iceberg, Daddy. There really is nothing at all for you to worry about.’
‘Still ...’
‘Still what, Daddy? Stop beating about the bush. What do you have in mind?’
‘All right. I know you’ve a lot on your plate and all of it is more important than putting an old man’s mind at rest, but what I have been thinking ever since Richard told me about the iceberg was this. If we haven’t been able to pick it up on the satellites because of the fog surrounding it, then how can we track it accurately? I suspect that even Atropos’s visual trace will be invisible once you’re tied up alongside that much high ice. If it’s as massive as Richard said, it will be bound to have quite a cloaking effect, especially when added to the mist. And that amount of ice could even break up your radio transmissions again. We simply cannot see you here. Are you anywhere near an overhang? It’s so frustrating, darling, not to be able to track Atropos at all.
‘What we could track, however, is one of the rescue beacons from a lifeboat. I’ve been thinking, you see, that if you could send someone up onto the berg itself, preferably onto a high point on the ice, then we could pick up the signal and track the iceberg’s movement very precisely indeed. Inch by inch, near as dammit.’
‘Well, as you say, I have my work cut out for me ...’
‘But, don’t you see, it’ll let us give you a completely accurate description of the iceberg’s movements and that could be absolutely critical if it is turning towards you for any reason.’
‘Well, if the barrier stops it going southwards, then the odds must be fifty-fifty it might turn our way ...’
‘And if it does so, then we’ll be able to warn you long before there’s anything to worry about. Certainly long before you would actually be able to see anything clearly on the ground.’
‘Okay. You’ve convinced me. I’ll add it to the list.’ She might have said more, but Timmins stuck his head round the door to inform her that Sam Larkman had swung Atropos onto the required bearing and now wanted permission to go to reverse. ‘I’ll come through, Mr Timmins,’ she said decisively. ‘That’s it, Dad. Love to the twins. Over and out.’
*
The plans had arrived through the fax while Robin was talking to her father. She spread them on the chart table and then divided the next half-hour between them and the bridge wing where she guided Sam as he reversed Atropos painstakingly up towards the slipway. As soon as she was satisfied with the line of the great ship’s reverse approach, she sent Timmins and Hogg down to gather teams of men in readiness for getting the long lines ashore and secured onto the ice. No sooner had she done so than LeFever and Ann brought a much recovered Harry Stone back up. While the radio officer went through to check over his beloved equipment and make sure that Hogg had looked after it properly, Robin looked speculatively at the other two.
‘You know your way around on ice, don’t you, Henri?’ she asked. ‘You were sure-footed enough helping me on the ice barrier when we went after Mr Timmins and I heard you say you had been far north in Canada when we thought we heard a shot this morning.’
‘Yeah, I guess.’
‘Do you think you could find your way to the upper slopes of the iceberg and put a transmitting beacon there? We really need to keep track of how the iceberg is moving and a beacon would be the most reliable way of doing so.’
‘It’s pretty steep this side. I’m no mountaineer, Captain.’
‘I know. What I have in mind is this. You go ashore with the boats taking the lines and the anchor points, then you explore a bit back behind the slipway. If you can find a path up onto the upper slopes, all well and good; if you can’t, co
me back down. If it looks dangerous, I don’t want you to go. Remember what you said to me on the way down into that ice cave. This isn’t worth the hair on your head.’
‘What did you say, you smooth-talking devil?’ asked Ann archly. But before the big man could answer, Timmins bustled back into the wheelhouse, heavily wrapped in cold-weather clothing and full of new-found importance. Henri met Ann’s eye and gave a minuscule shake of his head.
‘We’re ready to go, Captain,’ Timmins said, noticing none of this. ‘My team and Walter Hogg’s. I’m taking Don Taylor and a team led by your man Errol Jones. Walt’s taking the chief and Joe Edwards is leading his team.’ He rubbed his gloved hands together, clearly eager to be off, and Robin felt an unaccustomed pulse of affection for the little man. He really seemed to be trying as hard as he could. He was beginning to grow into the role Robin had mapped out for him in her command structure. She couldn’t begin to imagine how he or Hogg — was his given name really Walter? — had earned their papers, but the pair of them might make adequate officers one day if they kept this improvement up.
Henri went off to change into his cold-weather gear and Ann went off with him. Timmins and Robin went down to the stern and, while the teams stood ready by the lifeboats, the senior deck officers were joined by the engineering officers to discuss the finer points of what was due to happen next. They stood between the capstans, each one a pair of independently operated steel mushroom shapes designed to wind cable in or out in a controlled manner. They were integral to the first part of Robin’s plan. The officers gathered at the after rail, the better to see what lay before and around them.
Inevitably, as they discussed the plans Robin had drawn up, she felt her eyes straying over the breathtaking view again and again. The bulk of the berg rose on their right, its crystal crest hanging above them like a great wave breaking over their heads, etched against the darkening afternoon sky. Beyond and above that deceptively absolute edge lay the upper slopes that LeFever would try and gain in order to place the signalling device, but the slopes and the peaks above them were hidden by the angle caused by Atropos’s nearness to the berg. This proximity and the waning afternoon brought a chill to the air beyond anything that even Robin had been expecting. The edge of high ice swung round in front of them and, as it did so, the slopes beyond it were at last revealed. The levels below it stepped down to the slipway itself before swinging further to form what looked like a mountainous isthmus on their left.
When the boats went ashore — and they would need to do so very soon indeed — they would take with them the spare anchor and a heavy anchorage spike. They would pull behind them the heaviest rope they were capable of carrying. When the anchor points were secure, the rope would be fed through a tackle secured to each and brought back aboard by the returning lifeboats. One small safety crew would remain ashore to stand by each anchorage point. Then Robin would use the capstans one at a time to pull heavy cable out from the ship’s stern, through the tackle and back aboard as though she were threading a needle. It would be enough for tonight to have the cable doubled through each, the ends secured to the pairs of capstans. In the morning, they would wind the cables tighter until Atropos was nudging up the slipway and then they would send the other lines ashore from the split windlass forward. When the forward lines could take the strain, the cables from the stern would be singled and resecured so that one of each pair of capstans could be released. They would need to use the freed capstans later for other, more important work.
No sooner had the plan been reviewed than LeFever pounded up, well wrapped and ready to go. Robin took him to one side. ‘You’ll go ashore in one of the lifeboats,’ she said. ‘Take the emergency beacon from the boat you go in. And, now I think of it, take another one as well, just in case. I know the light’s beginning to go, but the evenings are long in these latitudes and you should have plenty of time to decide if you can get it placed, place it if you can, and get back before I’ve finished. Then you can come back with the safety teams from the anchorage points. Okay?’
‘Sure.’
‘The beacons are simple. It’s perfectly obvious how to turn them on and off. Put one of them where it can broadcast effectively and try to shield it from the worst of the cold if you can — low temperatures play havoc with batteries. Keep your spare one switched on all the time so we can find you in an emergency.’
‘Sure thing,’ he said.
She paused, wondering if she should discuss his mission in any more detail, then she decided she had wasted enough time. The first order of business was to get the anchorage points ashore and secure.
‘Everybody happy?’ she asked, energy cresting in her vibrant body at the thought of positive action and the beginning of the solution to their problems.
The answers she received were dubious, but at least in the affirmative.
‘Right,’ she said. ‘Let’s get this show on the road.’
*
Robin hardly noticed the slowly fading light as the end of the afternoon passed into early evening and gathering twilight while her teams went ashore and the plan began to work. She did not even leave the deck, content to send for layer after layer of warmer clothing as the temperature dropped steadily. She moved from capstan to capstan, Lloyd Swan in constant attendance for those moments when one pair of hands was not enough. It was fortunate that he was there, too, for in the end they had to run the capstans both at once, Robin pulling the cable through the tackle atop the spike hammered home by Timmins’s team while the engineering officer copied her every action, pulling the cable through the tackle on the anchor Hogg’s men had taken ashore and hooked securely into the ice. They needed to work so quickly and in concert because of the cold — the one thing Robin had not taken sufficient account of. Had they taken any longer, then the sodden cable would have frozen stiff before it was correctly in place and all their work would have been for nothing.
As things turned out, however, the ends of the rope came back aboard, bearded with icicles but still supple enough to coil round the capstan posts oozing oily water, and the job was successfully completed just as the lingering twilight gave way almost imperceptibly to the brightening promise of moonrise. Robin and Lloyd snapped the machinery off and the doubled cables sagged into their perfect curves, down to the still, black water, then up onto the distant, glowing ice. Atropos settled back a little, pulled by the weight of the ice-encrusted hawsers. The lifeboat purred back towards the shore to pick up the safety teams.
Robin was waiting to welcome them back aboard. She stood between the davits looking northwards over the little bay to the crystalline, gleaming cliff and the moon-bleached deep blue sky beyond it. Spellbound by the beauty of the scene though she was, she still had the presence of mind to breathe shallowly as though the air was tainted, trying to keep the deadly cold out of her nostrils, mouth and lungs. She had not gone down to a well-earned dinner with the rest of the crew, nor up to the wheelhouse and the watchkeeper’s chair. Lloyd and Harry Stone were bridge watch enough for the moment. She wanted to congratulate her four most senior officers on a good job well done and take them down to the meal herself. What they had achieved that afternoon deserved a little pomp; a little show of congratulatory respect. She remembered that warmth towards Timmins this afternoon and she knew it was a mark of good leadership to act upon it. A gesture which, she suspected, the two deck officers at least would find something of a novelty.
But as she counted them back aboard, shaking gloved hands and clapping bulky coated shoulders, her good intentions froze and died within her. For there were too few. Two too few.
‘Where are the others?’ she asked, and the safety teams looked at each other as though they didn’t know what she was talking about.
‘What others?’ asked Yasser Timmins slowly. ‘Everyone else came back.’
‘No,’ she insisted. ‘I counted you all out and I’ve counted you back. Two are still out there somewhere. Dear God, they’re still out there somewhere!’
And against them, Ann Cable and Henri LeFever had nothing but what they were wearing, what they were carrying and what the chill gods of the high ice might supply.
CHAPTER THIRTY - Day Twelve
Sunday, 30 May 08:00
Robin flicked the broadcast switch up to the off position and sat back, her grey eyes overflowing with tears. The echo of her last prayer lingered on the still air within the accommodation areas; the prayer in which she had brought to divine attention their desperate concern for Ann Cable and Henri LeFever. She closed the service book and placed it carefully in the drawer of her work desk. The drawer slid shut silently and her hand rose and fell, brushing thoughtlessly down her face, sweeping the tears off her cheeks. Just for a moment, exhausted and preoccupied, she felt lost and desperately lonely, though she was glad enough to be alone. It wouldn’t do for anyone aboard to see their commanding officer in tears.