Alex Nork - Deadly Whiteness

– Did he bring the ship here while we were asleep?

– According to this, this was just that.

– Then why did not we see these military fellows? Everything around is empty up to horizon.

Suddenly radio started working. Tuccert responded and at once heard a polite voice. The officer on duty of the cruiser was speaking.

– Good morning, Sir. Have you met our ship for refueling? They are not answering our call sign, and you seem to be somewhere near?

Professor was silent for a while, thinking over the best answer.

– You see, we appeared at the same place, but we have not found your ship. Besides, something happened here, and I would like to talk to Pete.

– Excuse me, Sir?

– Yes, with General Tuccert, of course.

It looked his interlocutor hesitated.

– Night duty is finishing only in twenty minutes. Excuse me, Sir, but I cannot wake up the commander of the squadron without sufficient reason.

– Well, O.K. But report to him about me as soon as he wakes up.

– In twenty minutes exactly, Sir.

– Their ship, Christian, is not answering the call sign.

– The things are lousy, Marc. How much can a six hundred feet squid weigh?

Professor thought for a while and frowned his eyebrows somberly.

– Yes, at least more than a light ship.

In twenty two minutes he heard his brother’s voice.

– What’s happened, Marc? And haven’t you really found our ship yet according to the coordinates?

– I would not like to upset you, but it’s quite possible that it had the same fate as one of my crew members.

– That is?

– An attack of a six hundred feet squid, Pete.

– Isn’t it a slip of the tongue?

– Unfortunately, no. My assistant managed to see only one of his tentacles. The rest is the matter of simple calculations.

His brother was silent for a while…

– Where are you now, Marc?

– I’ll be in shallow waters soon. Don’t worry, it is safe there.

– A reconnaisance fighter will fly to your region soon. It will be there in fifteen minutes. It means, I will soon get the information of the inspection from air and will communicate with you again.

– Please, let it better not fly low.

– Will two miles height be all right?

– Quite.

The general ordered to transfer the connection with the pilot to the main command post and took his place there himself in fifteen minutes, having had enough time to shave.

– Came out to the sector. – It could be heard by communication. – Beginning to fly around.

Later the pilot reported the situation every thirty or forty seconds, as it was supposed to be.

The situation was sad. There ship was no to be found. Alongside with it, the borders of the sector were selected in such a way that the ship could not cross them in the time passed after the latest communication, even if it had put forward such a foolish task.

– Flying round is finished, – it was heard ultimately in the end, and it was something which one did not want to hear at all.

– Let him return, – ordered the general somberly.

He sat for another minute in the armchair and when he wanted to get up he heard the excited voice of the pilot:

– I’ve been attacked! Attacked, but I do not see the enemy. Two holes in the wing!

Pete Tuccert reacted at once:

– Get back to the coastal line!! – he shouted in such a voice that the officer on duty did not have to repeat it in the air.

– Yes, Sir, to the coastal line.

The general himself got connected to the pilot.

– Fire on board?

– No fire. But the wing is becoming bare.

This term, maybe funny for the civilians, means a very fast approaching disaster. The damaged metal on the frame is becoming to get torn by the air streams. The rest, according to the type of the aircraft, is a matter of a minute or ten seconds.

– Is it tearing strongly?

– Middling…now, already strongly.

– Catapult!

– Can hold on for a while.

– At once!

He knew what every second could bring with it. Pilots get nervous and miss the moment when the aircraft, losing at once its aerodynamics, starts flying down, circling and whirling. And the catapult saves rarely in these cases: the pilot dies having hit his own wing, or he is covered by the machine falling from up.

But thank God! The signal of the working catapult has already sounded.

The rest of the orders took no more than a minute. He had only, having declared the general alarm, to call the number of commands known to each subdivision.

Two fighters on battle duty flew into the air in ten seconds, and in one and a half minutes four other battle machines followed them. These six were to block the sector from the air and, having discovered the enemy, hit the target. Straight after them a rescue hydroplane followed to pick up the catapulted pilot. These were standard measures. And now their innovation – launching a rocket from the side of a ship. It will reach the given coordinates already in two minutes and in the middle of the sector at the height of five miles a parachute with a minilocator station will hang down. The parachute will not lower down, because the station has a vertical motor unit. It will start to transmit everything here, looking not only through air, but water, at the depth of a mile, that is the depth lower than which modern submarines cannot go. The one who attacked the aircraft, thus, is sure to be found. He will have no time to leave the sector.

The cruiser and three other ships already turned in the opposite direction and were sailing at full speed.

But who could, who could dare to to attack a fighter of the US navy? What kind of weapon was it? Hit at the height of two miles… The pilot did not record an explosion of an antiaircraft missile the splinters of which could do it. Then what? And where from? The pilot would have seen any ship when flying around. It means, from a submarine. And the volley has been made from under water. Whose submarine? The Chinese, the Russians’?

North Atlantic allies were warned about the tests in this region, his own people – more so. What follows is that it was not a chance mistaken volley.

The general gave one more command, having ordered the fastest of the three ships to follow the coordinates of the downfall of the aircraft. They were lucky, it fell down near the coastal line. It will not be difficult to lift it.

They managed to find the boat with the lads quite soon. Because they have taken the only correct decision: at the place of the unique find, where the day before yesterday the skeleton of a cachalot was discovered, a buoy was set up, and they guesses that it was the best to loiter around that place.

The news about the terrible death of their comrade shocked all the three.

– In the present conditions I am obliged to stop our research work and get you at once to the nearest port, – Marc Tuccert announced to them. – You must not stay in such a dangerous neighbourhood.

– And you, Professor, can you?

– I do not know still what I shall do myself, but judging by the unusual size of the squid it will not be difficult for it to overturn and drown a ship like ours.

– But why has it not done it but just attacked a man?

– Maybe because he was busy with other catch under water.

– With a military ship, – explained Christian, – which was to be in that very place.

– And before this the squid finished up the cachalot?

Professor thought for a long time. Everyone became silent watching his fingers tuck at his wiry beard too nervously.

– Everything is too unclear, – he said at last. – Too much! Even for me it is too difficult to believe in such gigantic size of the squid.