The Bomb Ship

by Peter Tonkin

  ‘So, what do you plan to do?’

  He had read or heard somewhere — from the Samaritans, perhaps, or on one of the management courses he had attended years ago — that you should always talk positively; always leave the person on the far end with something positive to do or to look forward to.

  ‘If raising the propeller doesn’t work, I’ll have to leave it for tonight. I haven’t got enough lights to illuminate the whole site. I’ve got the deck lights, of course, but I would really need a good supply of arc lights to light up the whole slipway. In the morning, I’ll pile everything that will burn along her sides and set fire to it. I can’t heat the holds, the bunkerage or the ballast, and turning up the central heating in the bridgehouse won’t be any good. Can you think of anything else to do?’

  ‘No. That’s a good plan. The bulk of the heat will go up but the metal should conduct enough warmth downwards to break things free. Are you going to re-tighten the shore lines before you go into action?’

  ‘Good idea. I hadn’t thought of that. We’ll still need to have a controlled slide down.’

  He thought: Is there any chance that heated metal will crack like glass when it hits below-freezing water? He said nothing, his mind a racing turmoil of what he dared say to her and what he had to avoid telling her. Her voice had remained level — no doubt her bridge was as busy as his and elementary leadership dictated that she sound confident and give nothing away.

  ‘In the meantime,’ he said, filling his voice with positive vibrations, ‘we’ve had a bit of luck here. Nico and I saw the ice blink tonight and it showed us pretty clearly all the details of the ice between Clotho and Atropos. We’re just sketching things out now. We’re going to balance things up with the faxes Bill sent in yesterday and get it all to scale.’

  ‘Has Daddy sent any new faxes in?’

  ‘No. Nothing. It’s a Bank Holiday —’ He knew that this fact would make no difference at Crewfinders or at Heritage Mariner. Local considerations, even national ones, never did. There were too many vessels in too many seas and oceans all over the world.

  She knew it too. ‘He must be up at Cold Fell with the twins —’

  For the first time he did hear hesitancy in her voice and it wrenched his heart with unexpected force. She knew that her father would not dream of taking a holiday while his ships and his family were in such dire straits. For the first time in their relationship he felt that he was lying to her.

  It hurt.

  ‘Well,’ he prevaricated, ‘when we get the chart of the ice barrier drawn we’ll be able to help you more effectively from this end. We’re expecting an icebreaker here some time within the next twenty-four hours. They’ll have explosives aboard so we can blast our way through even if we can’t break our way through. Once we’ve broken this barrier, you’ll be out of trouble.’ He tried to make it sound positive, bracing. The facts were indisputable. It was the timing that was crucial.

  She knew that. ‘Any weather reports we should know about?’

  He couldn’t lie any more. ‘There may be a storm coming down from the north-west within the next twenty-four hours.’

  ‘I’d better get busy early in the morning, then. That’s our most exposed quarter. If we’re still here when it hits then we’re dead.’

  ‘Right then. We’ll get this new chart drawn up here, and you get sorted out with what you want to chuck over the side and set fire to tomorrow morning over there. We’ll be back in contact later. Okay?’

  ‘Right.’

  It was hardly a satisfactory conversation but it was the best he could do. He felt that she had been preoccupied. Understandably, after all. They never made unnecessary demands on one another. They were both so busy that demands seemed unfair. In fact, in their relationship up to the Gulf War and the birth of the twins there had been little need for great demands on either side. But things were different now. Richard was wise enough to know that giving could become mechanical and relationships could well be defined by what people were willing to demand from each other rather than what they were willing to give to each other. Was it Joseph Conrad the novelist who had said, ‘A man is defined not by what he can overcome but by what can overcome him’? If not, it should have been; and the same was true of relationships, he supposed. How much you loved your partner was sometimes measured by what you were willing to demand from them. Except that, right now he felt that he wasn’t giving Robin as much as she had a right to expect from him: he wasn’t giving her the whole truth.

  ‘Right,’ he said to Nico as he came back into the wheelhouse. ‘How are you doing there?’

  ‘Not bad, I think.’ The Italian held up the sketch and Richard crossed towards him, frowning as he began to concentrate.

  Two hours later they had the scale drawing finished. The ice blink enabled them to match up the southern shore of the ice barrier with the absolute outline on the faxes Sir William had sent to them. It also allowed them to draw in the pressure ridges in the ice itself and to detail the northern shoreline which had up until now been concealed by the fog surrounding the iceberg itself.

  The detail was at once frustrating and illuminating. It showed how narrow the ice barrier was at this point. The high ridge in front of Clotho was the only major feature separating the two ships. The full width of less than a mile at this point seemed to be largely composed of slush. Only that frozen wave of ice fifty feet high, unknown metres deep and a quarter of a mile wide really stood between them. On this side loomed the cliff against which Clotho’s bows were knocking. On the far side, beyond the long, smooth slope, the slushy ridges which had defeated Richard’s exploration northwards simply petered out into a wide bay and the open ocean, with Atropos sitting on the iceberg just to the north of it, swinging round and south as the mass of ice moved inexorably. Even faced with soft slush at first, it was only a question of time before the marooned ship became caught between the jaws of solid ice. And as the storm in the north-west began to draw nearer, so the time Atropos had left to live grew ever shorter.

  Suddenly Bill Christian shoved his head out into the wheelhouse. ‘I’ve an incoming for you,’ he said.

  ‘Atropos? Heritage House?’ Richard began to pull himself erect.

  ‘No. Another vessel. Northern Lights out of Boston. Johnny should have her on visual if he goes out to full range —’

  ‘Got her,’ chimed in Sullivan. ‘Just in range. Coming up fast.’

  Excitement boiled up within him. Out of Boston! he thought. It had to be the icebreaker.

  ‘I’ll come through and talk to her at once,’ he said. Then he turned to Nico and patted him on the shoulder. The gesture was one of excitement, almost of victory. He only just managed to stop the pat from becoming a boisterous thump. ‘This is more like it, eh, Nico?’

  He pressed the microphone to his mouth and tried to control the excitement in his voice. ‘Hello, Northern Lights? This is Clotho, over.’

  The contact was unexpectedly loud and clear. ‘Hello, Clotho. This is Northern Lights.’

  ‘Good evening, Northern Lights. You are very welcome. You have made very good time from Boston. Can you give me an ETA at our present position?’

  ‘We’ll be with you before first light, Clotho but —’

  ‘Excellent. We will reverse out of the lead we have opened and let you in first. You will need more than simple icebreaking equipment, though. I hope you are well supplied with high explosives. We have quite a cliff here —’

  ‘Explosives? We have no explosives aboard, Clotho. Why should we have explosives aboard?’

  ‘Excuse me, but aren’t you an icebreaker? We were expecting an icebreaker.’

  ‘Sorry to disappoint you, Clotho. No, we are not an icebreaker. We are a cruise ship. We are under charter to several major news networks and agencies. We are bringing a wide range of leading media personnel to witness your dilemma and to report it worldwide. In fact I have several people here who would like to interview Captain Richard Mariner over the radio link. I
s that acceptable, Clotho? ...

  ‘I say again, is that acceptable, Clotho?...

  ‘Hello, Clotho? Are you receiving me? Over? ...

  ‘Clotho? Come in, Clotho —’

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE - The Last Day

  Tuesday, 1 June 00:00

  The storm broke out of Hudson Bay at midnight. It was a hybrid, caught between two seasons and given two identities. It was the last storm of winter and the first of summer. It carried into the Labrador Sea all the worst aspects of each season in the near-Arctic. In broad human terms it might have been called almost schizophrenic. It was generated by the failing weight of the frigid air over the Pole and it sucked into its wicked gyre warm winds from the Canadian midwest where day temperatures were reaching a humid 20 degrees Celsius in Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Ontario. The towering clouds along its front lines carried thunder, hail and rain. The winds which whipped it into its frenzied drive to the east were edged with ice but warm at their hearts, and all the more dangerous for that.

  The tracks of the previous storms had been dictated by the ridge of high pressure lying down the centre of Greenland, but during the calm, clear, final days of May this had dissipated and so the track of this new storm lay straight across the north of the Labrador Sea. In the still airs it found when it got there, however, it spread its tentacles southward like an octopus laid out on the shore. Most of the warm, wet, storm-force winds which preceded it swung in from the north-west and because it had so much room to spread out, they reached far down into the North Atlantic.

  The first thing that the storm front encountered after it had swept across the low-lying, lake strewn, north-pointing peninsula of Quebec and Labrador, and spread a little devastation down as far as the Avalon Peninsula in Newfoundland, was the open sea. Most of the pack ice had been pushed down into a large icefield lying further to the south. The warmth of the clear, calm weather had made the icefield thin. Only the berg and the barrier retained any solidity, and they were currently engaged in a mutual destruction which the storm was shortly to abet.

  In the open waters to the north of the icefield, the winds found room enough to release a high storm swell which they pushed before themselves with relentless force down to the thin icefield. Under the teeming downpour of warm Canadian rain it began to melt rapidly. Only the pressure of the light winds and strong currents had held the floes together and now the waves tore them apart. For the first time in nine chill months the wide surface of the Davis Strait heaved into crests and troughs. The shock ran south and east at an incredible speed, sucked into the stillness and calm. And everything it found before it was sundered and scattered by the power of the waves and the force of those warm, wet winds.

  *

  ‘That’s it,’ said Robin, closing down the meeting at last. ‘I can’t think of anything else we need to prepare, check or doublecheck. We’re ready for the morning. Let’s turn in. We’ve all earned a good night’s sleep.’ She looked round at her officers, then added dryly, ‘But three hours will have to suffice.’ Automatically she went to throw down her notes onto her day-room table, but she stopped herself just in time. Like every other non-essential combustible fitment, it had gone to fuel the fires they would be placing along the sides of the ship and igniting at first light in the hope that the heat would melt Atropos free of the murderous clutches of the ice.

  ‘Anything else?’ She looked round the circle of exhausted faces, then glanced across at the clock which now stood beside the phone on the floor in the corner. Just coming up for 02:00. Three hours was about right. They all had more work to do in the first light of dawn to get the wreckage of the furniture along the ship’s sides and soaked with paraffin and petrol ready to be ignited as early as practically possible. It was only the darkness which held them helpless at the moment. They would have to be up at five, dressed, fed, organised and ready to start at first light just after seven.

  Three hours for the rest of them. Not for her. She still had work to do. Thank God she could trust Richard to give her a short digest of anything it was imperative for her to know; dealing with all the radio messages she might expect to be incoming in these circumstances would have taken her the rest of the night. As everybody stood up and stumbled out, she crossed to the phone and called up to the radio room. ‘Harry? Get Clotho for me, would you? There are some things I need to check.’

  ‘Yes, Captain. And I’ll want a word with you too. I’ve had time to check with some weather stations.’

  Just the way he said it made her answer tartly, ‘More bad news. Oh, good!’ Then she hung up.

  Henri LeFever was last to leave and it looked as though he had something he wanted to say to her, but she really didn’t have the time. She pushed past him almost rudely and ran across to the lift. It was waiting at her deck level and she was in and powering upwards before he even crossed the corridor.

  ‘Tell me about the weather.’

  ‘There’s a storm coming. It’s not a bad one, but it could be tricky. It’s warm and wet. Looks as though it’s breaking up the ice in front of it and pushing our way anything that won’t break or melt.’

  ‘Great!’

  ‘In the meantime —’ He handed her the handset and left. She put on the headphones and collapsed into the chair. She could imagine Richard with his headphones on too, hunching forward over the microphone. He was probably as exhausted as she was but he would have waited up. She was suddenly flooded with warmth for him so poignant that tears filled her eyes and there was a sob in her voice as she pressed the transmit button.

  ‘Richard?’

  ‘Hello, darling. Nothing but bad news, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Start with the weather. When’s the storm due?’

  ‘Harry getting bored with waiting for us to tell him everything? He’s a good man, but I wish he’d obey orders. He —’

  ‘He what?’

  ‘Nothing. About that storm. It will probably be here by noon. It broke out of Hudson Bay at midnight and it looks as though its centre is travelling south at about thirty miles an hour, but the fronts are moving much faster than that. We should see conditions deteriorating from dawn.’

  ‘What will conditions be like at the height?’

  ‘Storm-force winds, thunder, rain. High seas, they reckon, but I don’t think we’ll see those. The winds and rain are melting the ice up towards the Davis Strait.’

  ‘Is this going to help us? Is our ice going to melt?’

  ‘No such luck. Apparently you know someone called Colin Ross? Amazing man. I’ve had him on all afternoon. He wanted to tell you he got back to camp safely and he’ll be looking at the auk tomorrow first thing.’

  ‘Okay, thanks. I never had any doubt he would get back safely. What did he tell you about the ice?’

  ‘The storm will break up and melt sea ice and floes. It will damage and begin the disintegration of the icefield to the north of you but it won’t do anything at all to the berg or the barrier except make them more dangerous. They are both too big to be melted by the warm winds or the rain but the berg especially will be moved quite powerfully by winds coming in from that quarter. You should notice some more lively movement quite soon. Did he tell you there’s an outside chance the whole iceberg will tilt over? He says it’s big but it isn’t all that stable. It’s definitely swinging round much more rapidly now. Looks as if the whole trap will swing closed really quickly after lunch tomorrow.’

  ‘We’ll be floating by then.’

  ‘If you’re not, you’ll have to abandon ship. If the iceberg is unstable, then you’ll have find some way across the barrier to us.’

  ‘We’ll talk about that at the time.’

  ‘Robin! You can’t be stubborn over this. If you can’t free her, you must abandon her. Promise.’

  ‘Don’t be silly, Richard. I’ll make that decision nearer the time. I don’t propose to try and then give up if it doesn’t all go smoothly at once. I’ll be trying to get her free until there is absolutely no way of helping her a
ny more. Anyone who is useless to me will be sent to safety at the best moment. But I myself and anyone I need will be here trying to get her off the ice right until the bitter end.’

  ‘Of course.’ He took several deep breaths. She could hear him and it irritated her almost as much as his over-concern was beginning to. ‘I know you will. All I’m saying is that you must be careful. And leave a way out for yourself.’

  ‘Of course I will. I’m not suicidal. Now, what other news is there?’

  ‘We’ve a new arrival. The Northern Lights. At first I thought she was that icebreaker Bill started out of Boston, but no. She’s a cruise liner, if you please, hired by the press who want some good photographs. And some good interviews. I’ve been talking to them all afternoon and evening.’

  ‘I thought Daddy was supposed to be doing all that.’

  ‘These aren’t London journalists,’ he explained quickly. ‘Most of them are from New York. And they want live interviews, and pictures too. They want to see us all go down on live TV.’ He gave a dry, ambiguous laugh. ‘If you had a TV set over there you could watch the broadcasts. I’ve been on the six o’clock news and the seven o’clock. Voice only, over an old photograph from some magazine or newspaper. And the nine, ten and midnight news. They keep on at me all the time, but I only give them the same story. I sound confident but concerned, if you see what I mean. I hope I can keep it up if things get much worse.’

  ‘And they’re right there with you?’

  ‘I won’t let any on board, though there hasn’t been much pressure yet. They arrived at the end of the lead I opened in the southern ice at about twenty-two hundred and they aren’t too happy in small boats in the dark. They’ll get really restless at first light, I expect. But I’ll deal with that then.’

  ‘Right. Good. Anything else?’

  ‘You’re going to put the plan into action as agreed at first light?’

  ‘Yes. I have everything that will burn ready to go.’

  ‘Okay. That’s about it, then. I’ve talked to Nurse Janet directly for once. The three of them were in Heritage House for a visit. The twins are fine. She said they were sending their love but it sounded to me as though they were having a battle royal.’