Алистер Маклин - Ice Station Zebra

The wind, shrieking and wailing across the bridge and through raised antennae, showed at consistently over 60 m.p.h. on the bridge anemometer. The ice-storm was no longer the gusting, swirling fog of that morning but a driving wall of stiletto-tipped spears, near-lethal in its ferocity, high speed ice-spicule lances that would have skewered their way through the thickest cardboard or shattered in a second a glass held in your hand. Over and above the ululating threnody of the wind we could hear an almost constant grinding, crashing and deep-throated booming as millions of tons of racked and tortured ice, under the influence of the gale and some mighty pressure centre, heaven knew how many hundreds of miles away, reared and twisted and tore and cracked, one moment forming another rafted ridge as a layer of ice, perhaps ten feet thick, screeched and roared and clambered on to the shoulders of another and then another, the next rending apart in indescribably violent cacophony to open up a new lead, black wind-torn water that started to skim over with ice almost as soon as it was formed.

‘Are we both mad? Let’s get below.’ Swanson cupped his hands to my ear and had to shout, but even so I could hardly hear him above that hellish bedlam of sound.

We clambered down into the comparatively sudden stillness of the control room. Swanson untied his parka hood and pulled off scarf and goggles that had completely masked his face. He looked at me and shook his head wonderingly.

‘And some people talk about the white silence of the Arctic. My God, a boilermaker’s shop is like a library reading-room compared to that lot.’ He shook his head again. ‘We stuck our noses out a few times above the ice-pack last year, but we never saw anything like this. Or heard it. Wintertime, too. Cold, sure, damned cold, and windy, but never so bad that we couldn’t take a brief stroll on the ice, and I used to wonder about those stories of explorers being stuck in their tents for days on end, unable to move. But I know now why Captain Scott died.’

‘It is pretty nasty,’ I admitted. ‘How safe are we here, Commander?’

‘That’s anybody’s guess,’ Swanson shrugged. ‘The wind’s got us jammed hard against the west wall of this polynya and there’s maybe fifty yards of open water to starboard. For the moment we’re safe. But you can hear and see that pack is on the move, and not slowly either. The lead we’re in was torn open less than an hour ago. How long? Depends on the configuration of the ice, but those polynyas can close up damned quickly at times, and while the hull of the Dolphin can take a fair old pressure, it can’t take a million tons of ice leaning against it. Maybe we can stay here for hours, maybe only for minutes. Whichever it is, as soon as that east wall comes within ten feet of the starboard side we’re dropping down out of it. You know what happens when a ship gets caught in the ice.’

‘I know. They get squeezed flat, are carried round the top of the world for a few years then one day are released and drop to the bottom, two miles straight down. The United States Government wouldn’t like it, Commander.’

‘The prospects of further promotion for Commander Swanson would be poor,’ Swanson admitted. ‘I think–’

‘Hey!’ The shout came from the radio room. ‘Hey, c’m here.’

‘I rather think Zabrinski must be wanting me,’ Swanson murmured. He moved off with his usual deceptive speed and I followed him into the radio room. Zabrinski was sitting half-turned in his chair, an ear-to-ear beam on his face, the earphones extended in his left hand. Swanson took them, listened briefly, then nodded.

‘DSY,’ he said softly, ‘DSY, Dr Carpenter. We have them. Got the bearing? Good.’ He turned to the doorway, saw the quartermaster. ‘Ellis, ask the navigating officer to come along as soon as possible.’

‘We’ll pick ’em all up yet, Captain,’ Zabrinski said jovially. The smile on the big man’s face, I could see now, didn’t extend as far as his eyes. ‘They must be a pretty tough bunch of boys out there.’

‘Very tough, Zabrinski,’ Swanson said absently. His eyes were remote and I knew he was listening to the metallic cannonading of the ice-spicules, a billion tiny pneumatic chisels drumming away continuously against the outer hull of the submarine, a sound loud enough to make low speech impossible. ‘Very tough. Are you in two-way contact?’

Zabrinski shook his head and turned away. He’d stopped smiling. Raeburn came in, was handed a sheet of paper and left for his plotting table. We went with him. After a minute or two he looked up, and said: ‘If anyone fancies a Sunday afternoon’s walk, this is it.’

‘So close?’ Swanson asked.

‘So very close. Five miles due east, give or take half a mile. Pretty fair old bloodhounds, aren’t we?’

‘We’re just lucky,’ Swanson said shortly. He walked back to the radio room. ‘Talking to them yet?’

‘We’ve lost them altogether.’

‘Completely?’

‘We only had ’em a minute, Captain. Just that. Then they faded. Got weaker and weaker. I think Doc Carpenter here is right, they’re using a hand-cranked generator.’ He paused, then said idly: ‘I’ve a six-year-old daughter who could crank one of those machines for five minutes without turning a hair.’

Swanson looked at me, then turned away without a word. I followed him to the unoccupied diving stand. From the bridge access hatch we could hear the howl of the storm, the grinding ice with its boom and scream that spanned the entire register of hearing. Swanson said: ‘Zabrinski put it very well . . . I wonder how long this damnable storm is going to last?’

‘Too long. I have a medical kit in my cabin, a fifty-ounce flask of medicinal alcohol and cold-weather clothes. Could you supply me with a thirty-pound pack of emergency rations, high protein high-calorie concentrates, Benson will know what I mean.’

‘Do you mean what I think you mean?’ Swanson said slowly. ‘Or am I just going round the bend?’

‘What’s this about going round the bend?’ Hansen had just come through the doorway leading to the for’ard passageway, and the grin on his face was clear enough indication that though he’d caught Swanson’s last words he’d caught neither the intonation nor the expression on Swanson’s face. ‘Very serious state of affairs, going round the bend. I’ll have to assume command and put you in irons, Captain. Something about it in regulations, I dare say.’

‘Dr Carpenter is proposing to sling a bag of provisions on his back and proceed to Drift Station Zebra on foot.’

‘You’ve picked them up again?’ Just for the moment Hansen had forgotten me. ‘You really got them? And a cross-bearing?’

‘Just this minute. We’ve hit it almost on the nose. Five miles, young Raeburn says.’

‘My God! Five miles. Only five miles!’ Then the elation vanished from voice and face as if an internal switch had been touched. ‘In weather like this it might as well be five hundred. Even old Amundsen couldn’t have moved ten yards through this stuff.’

‘Dr Carpenter evidently thinks he can improve on Amundsen’s standards,’ Swanson said dryly. ‘He’s talking about walking there.’

Hansen looked at me for a long and considering moment, then turned back to Swanson. ‘I think maybe it’s Doc Carpenter we should be clapping in the old irons.’

‘I think maybe it is,’ Swanson said.

‘Look,’ I said. ‘There are men out there on Drift Station Zebra. Maybe not many, not now, but there are some. One, anyway. Men a long way past being sick. Dying men. To a dying man it takes only the very smallest thing to spell out the difference between life and death. I’m a doctor, I know. The smallest thing. An ounce of alcohol, a few ounces of food, a hot drink, some medicine. Then they’ll live. Without those little things they will surely die. They’re entitled to what smallest aid they can get, and I’m entitled to take whatever risks I care to see they get it. I’m not asking anyone else to go, all I’m asking is that you implement the terms of your orders from Washington to give me all possible assistance without endangering the Dolphin or its crew. Threatening to stop me is not my idea of giving assistance. And I’m not asking you to endanger your submarine or the lives of your men.’