Geoffrey Jenkins - A grue of Ice

" Cast off! Cast off!" In my anxiety I raised my voice. Sailhardy freed the painter, but he too knew that they must have heard me up above. He thrust the tiller into Helen's hands while I grabbed one oar and he another. " Steer towards Thorshammer, ma'am! Zigzag, Bruce! You first, me second!"

I threw all my strength against the long oar. I straightened from the first punishing stroke and froze. Walter stood on the emplacement, the Schmeisser raised chest-high. Sailhardy had seen too, and tugged at his oar to make the whaleboat yaw. It was a powerful stroke, but it was not enough. Helen rose in agonised slow-motion. The front of her right shoulder was polka-dotted as the heavy bullets tore through flesh and the sea-leopard coat. She slumped back. Then she reached to grip the tiller with her left hand underneath the useless right arm. Another burst tore the water round the boat. I tugged desperately at my oar to get out of range, and at the end of the stroke, whipped up the mainsail. Its faded ochre inched us out of range of the Schmeisser.

As I straightened, I heard a noise which I thought was the blood racing past my eardrums because of my effort at the oar. I paused, uncertain. It Sounded like distant gunfire. Then Meteor's gun sounded as if it had been fired right under our stern. The shell screamed across the fjord.

" Pull!" yelled Sailhardy. " Pull! Help the sail!" " Helen…" I began.

" Leave her for a moment-pull! Oh, my God!"

The director-tower behind Thorshammer's bridge mushroomed with a direct hit. It was a curious nodule-shaped projection, and it seemed to hold still for a moment before becoming one in a wild tangle of steel masts and tracery of the search radar.

I jumped on to the thwart and screamed helplessly at the gun emplacement. " Walter! Upton! You bloody, bloody fools! Stop it, you crazy bastards! Stop…!"

I looked square into the muzzle of the gun. I drew back, waiting for the ear-splitting crash-then the blast threw me fulllength on the bottom gratings. I lifted myself to see the heavy armour-piercing shell shear through Thorshammer's modem, enclosed bridge. In the silence following the burst I heard the clang as Thorshammer's gongs sounded " action 214 stations ". It was too late. The destroyer yawed, sagged, and yawed again as she swung out of control. With a grinding crash she cannoned into the side of the Kyle of Locha! sh. At the same moment, her twin 4.5-inch guns opened up. The shells bounced off the armour plate of the glacier a thousand feet above Upton's head. The destroyer canted further, biting into some unknown obstacle against the old liner's side. Her next pair of four-five shells screamed high over the glacier. They were so wide that it was clear to me what was going on – the director-tower and bridge was a holocaust of stinking cordite fumes and roasting flesh; the guns in the forward turret were firing aimlessly by local control.

We were almost half-way across the fjord and the wind gripped the whaleboat's mainsail: she was sailing fast.

" Lay the boat alongside Thorshammer," I ordered. " Get further down the fjord, and then swing into the strong current. She'll sweep down on Thorshammer by herself." We shipped the oars. I was first at Helen's side, but the islander's hands as he prised hers from the tiller were gentle. Blood dripped down her sleeve on to the steering-arm.

" Stop my father!" she whispered. " Go back-do anything, but stop this senseless killing!"

I eased her on to the gratings, but I seemed to be choking with the heat. The wind filling the sail seemed hot, too.

" Listen!" said Sailhardy incredulously. " Gunfire!" From the southern side of the island came the sound of heavy guns. The concussion swelled, boomed, reverberated down the fjord.

" Oh God!" whimpered Helen as another savage scream from the emplacement ended in a burst of flaring metal and tinctured smoke from Thorshammer.

Then I saw. The sea by the entrance started to boil. Helen lay unconscious against me, her blood staining my hands and jacket. I pointed to the water. " Sailhardy Tunny!"

Before he could reply, there was another rumble of heavy gunfire from the southern side of the island.

" The Albatross' Foot!" he burst out. " The other prong of The Albatross' Foot!"

I saw how The Albatross' Foot joined forces with the Thompson Island millrace and swept in to the head of the glacier where it must plunge into some gigantic subterranean fissure. I dipped my hand override. It was warm.

Sailhardy shook his head, as if to clear it. " That isn't gunfire we're hearing from beyond there-the ice is breaking up!"

To produce sound like that, I told myself hurriedly, vast fields of ice must be shattering under the impact of the warm Albatross' Foot. Any moment the glacier would start to disintegrate. But would that solid caul break up quickly enough to put a stop to Upton's madness?

I made a lightning decision. " Lay the whaleboat alongside, Sailhardy! Come with me!" Another shell screamed across the fjord from Upton's gun and burst on the old liner's superstructure. Thorshammer's twin Bofors, situated aft the steel latticed emergency conning position, chattered ineffectually. They couldn't bear on Upton's gun, and it showed what a sorry state her fire-control was in. Sailhardy laid the boat alongside the landward side of the destroyer. I scrambled over the low bulwarks. She had taken a frightful beating. There seemed to be bodies everywhere. The bridge was a shambles. Sailhardy passed me Helen's limp body. I guessed right that the wardroom had been turned into an emergency casualty station. I pushed past the orderlies and wounded men and put Helen down on the wardroom table, which was serving as an operating table. I did not wait for the doctor's astonished outburst. I pointed silently to the row of bullet-holes in her shoulder. He began to swear angrily, but I turned and raced back to Sailhardy on deck.

An officer was standing behind the forward turret, shouting. Half his uniform jacket seemed to have been burned off his shoulders and his cap was gone. Dazed men dragged themselves towards what seemed to be the only orderly musteringpoint on the ship, while others helped and half supported the wounded towards the wardroom companionway from which I had emerged. Thorshammer was afire aft, but the worst damage was above our heads on the bridge and fire-control.

No one took any notice of Sailhardy and me, except a young sub-lieutenant who stood on the steel wing of the emergency conning position towards the stern and shouted at us as we squeezed through a narrow opening between it and a deck boiler-room ventilator.

" Torpedoes…" I started to say to Sailhardy, but he pulled me forcibly to the deck as another shell came towards the stricken destroyer. It was a trifle high, however, and plunged through the twisted wreckage of the radar scanner,

bursting prematurely above the old liner. Her steel sides rang like a bell.

We sprinted for the quadruple torpedo-tubes on the port side facing across the fjord. Together we swung round the sawnoff snouts. The islander sighted them on the gun emplacement.

" Belay there!" I ordered.

He looked at me, astonished.

" Bring them to bear ten degrees astern-on the glacier," I added.

" Bruce.."

The thunder of the great barrage of ice drowned the noise of the next 5.9-inch shell. The glacier-caul had started to split. The translucent bottle-green suddenly became pocked with white, like a car's windscreen shattering. Thousands of tons of ice started to move-but would they move quickly or far enough to stop Upton's murderous fire, I asked myself.

The answer lay under Sailhardy's hand.

" Bearing ten degrees astern," he said. " Target bears. Glacier head bears-steady 1 "

" Fire one!" I ordered.

Sailhardy threw over the tipping lever. The sharp slap of the firing charge was lost in the thunder of the icebarrage. The sibilant cylinder of death slipped into the water.