A Grue of Ice

5. The Island that Never Was

For three days Antarctica and the four catchers fought their way to the south through the storm. Now, on the fourth morning, the wind had dropped, but there was a tremendous swell running from the south-west. The heart of the gale had passed to the north and east, and was on its way to spread snow on the distant high plateaux of the South African mainland. I was on the bridge, and Sailhardy at the wheel. A growler stood out on the starboard bow. The four catchers formed a ragged rearguard to the factory ship. Nearest was Walter's Aurora. She seemed to ride better than the others. She stuck her bow, blunt and aggressive like a boxer's nose, into the swell. A tarpaulin masked the deadly purpose of the harpoon-gun forward. She sank down on our port beam as if kneeling to the plunging factory ship, and took it green up to the cluster of winches below the bridge. All I could see was her mast-head above the rollers. I watched the whip of the long flexible mast, which looked like an outsize fishing rod because of its cables to the harpoon. Water poured off her deck in triangular streams as she rose, channelled by the three-cornered bollards anchoring the whaling cables.

The sea had changed from the clear blue of Tristan's waters to a dirty-threatening grey. The fleet was now well to the south of shipping routes and striking across the path of the Roaring Forties. The heavy top-hamper of the factory ship, the four massive gantries, the big bollards by the rails, and the heavy steel cables supporting the masts, were drenched in spray. A Wandering Albatross whose wing-span I guessed to be twelve feet, tipped the wind effortlessly from under his wings, and hung above the stern like a white boomerang. His presence copyrighted the South. Of the other three catchers, Chimay lay out to starboard, and Crozet and Kerguelen, 66 further away, gave me on the bridge no more than an occasional glimpse of the thick winch wires and lashing blocks which reached almost to the height of their crow's-nests while they steamed beam-on to the seas.

" Someone built that ship good," remarked Sailhardy.

" Smith's Dock Co., Middlesbrough," I said absently. " They build the best."

My mind was not on Aurora's seaworthiness, although professionally I admired the way the rounded bows of the catcher came up and their flare fought the sea. One moment her cruiser stern plunged so deep I wondered if it would ever come up again; the next, she shook her whole fifteenfoot depth free in an explosion of spray. The wicked handles of the harpoon-gun stuck out of the weathered tarpaulin, like death in hand cuffs.

I was worried: after the departure from Tristan and the fleet's successful evasion of Thorshammer, Upton had taken over command from me, despite his assurances before we had left the anchorage, with Bjerko playing stooge to him. He had immediately altered the course to one which was causing me the gravest concern. Upton had also been asking questions about the charts I had mentioned at our first meeting. At first his probings had been guarded, but now they were more open and persistent.

The exhilaration of dodging Thorshammer had given way in my mind to gnawing fears about my complicity in Upton's schemes. Nor had those doubts been lessened by Pirow's smooth radio deception of the Norwegian warship and Upton's refusal to tell the other skippers except Walter that Thors- hammer was hot on our trail. We were now striking the fringe of the wild seas where I would have to seek the other prong of The Albatross' Foot, and the sight of the great seas rolling up from the ice continent dampened my first flush of enthusiasm, despite the success of the Tristan escape. It seemed an almost impossible task to seek to find anything in an ocean as savage as this.

My apprehension had not been helped by Sailhardy. Two days out from Tristan he had told me that the flensing crews spent their time playing cards 'tween decks, and that no attempt was being made to get the factory ship shipshape for the impending record catch. He maintained that Upton's interest in me centred on the old chart in my oilskin case, so that I had brought the chart up from my cabin to study through the long hours of watch at night. My own suspicions 67 revolved round some part-knowledge Pirow and I might share from our wartime operations, and I thought Upton was aiming to dovetail the two interrelated pieces of knowledge held separately by Pirow and myself, once we got to Bouvet. Helen, too, remained a mystery to me. On the few occasions she had appeared on the bridge she had been even more distant and withdrawn than before. Her questions to me were, I felt, consciously professional regarding weather, but I had noticed a decided uneasiness in her as the fleet neared colder waters.

Now, this morning, as I stood on the bridge shortly after sunrise, my doubts crystallised. I had gone below to my cabin during the night, and although I could not pin down anything specific, I felt it had been searched. I had the old chart on the bridge. The oilskin bag, which served as a chart-case, was almost as I had left it-but not quite. It was one of those indefinable things-an awareness, more than a fact, that it was not as I had left it.

I pulled the folded square of parchment from the inner pocket of my thick reefer jacket. It crackled as I unfolded i t, t o s t u d y i t o n c e a g a i n t o t r y a n d f a t h o m U p t o n ' s objective.

" For God's sake, Bruce!" Sailhardy exclaimed. " Put that damn thing away! What if Upton or Pirow come here?"

" You're seeing shadows, Sailhardy," I said. " This old thing simply can't mean what you think it might. Neither Upton nor Pirow will come to the bridge as early as this."

" Take the wheel a moment," he said. While I did, he locked the bridge doors leading to Upton's cabin and the radio office.

" We've been over this a score of times in the past three days," I said. " I'm damned if I can see what an old-and inaccurate-map of Bouvet Island in 1825 has to do with a socalled whaling expedition in 1961." The old parchment was intersected by wavy lines, with a shape like a Chinese maple leaf in the centre. Both margins were marked with tiny crosses. From the right-hand top corner, meandering irregularly towards the maple-leaf shape in the middle, was a line. Below the line and opposite one of the quaint marginal crosses which said 54 degrees South, were three dots, and a little further down another dot which was labelled " rock ". Is novelty had long since been lost upon me. The chart had come to me shortly after the war when the firm of Wetherbys had eventually folded up.

It was the log and track chart of the Wetherby sealer Sprightly, which had rediscovered Bouvet Island in 1825. Her master, Captain George Norris, had not only charted the island, but had also sketched it.

" That's not all, and you know it," retorted Sailhardy. " And I think Upton guesses that too."

" You mean Thompson Island?" I said derisively.

" Yes," replied Sailhardy. " I mean just that-Thompson Island."

My thoughts went back to the day upon empty day I had trailed up and down the great staircase at the headquarters of the Royal Geographical Society near the Albert Hall in London. The days upon days spent sitting outside someone's office at the Admiralty, waiting to be fobbed off and sent to yet another office. The stale smell of the Greenland kayak on the Geographical Society staircase was synonymous in my mind with the endless questioning, my endless frustration, among the disbelieving experts. They did not want to believe, any more than the Admiralty wanted to believe, what I had seen.

I wondered if my innermost reason for accepting Upton's offer to go to Bouvet had been less of a desire on my part to nail down The Albatross' Foot and more an attempt to vindicate myself. The Royal Geographical Society and the Admiralty had both said, leave it alone, leave it alone.

When Captain Norris had rediscovered Bouvet Island, after it had been lost for nearly a century, he had also found something Bouvet had not: an island fifteen leagues, or forty-five miles, north-north-east of Bouvet. Captain Norris positioned it. His own original log lay open in front of me. Thompson Island had never been found again-officially.

Captain Norris' discovery provoked the liveliest controversy for over a century and a quarter. Nations have lavished millions on ships specially equipped to find Thompson Island. Ahead of the field were the Norwegians, who specifically explored the seas round Bouvet in the late 1920s under the great Lars Christensen. The British R.R.S. Discovery searched-Thompson was not found. Before that German, American and French expeditions had likewise failed.

Sailhardy took his eyes from the compass in front of him.

It was fully a minute before he spoke. " You are the only living man to have seen Thompson Island."

" Yes," I said. " But there's no need to dramatise it like 69 that. I know I saw an island as we went into action against the Meteor. It was near Bouvet. No one will believe I sighted land. I was told the same thing as Captain Norris when Thompson could not be found again-either I had seen a big iceberg and mistaken it for land, or else it was simply water sky."

" Yellowish reflected light over a big shelf of ice," murmured Sailhardy. " An Antarctic man like yourself doesn't make that sort of mistake."

" No," I said. " If I were one of the catcher skippers, I would like to have used a very rude phrase to the armchair critics who rejected what I had to say. Curious.. they said almost the same to Captain Norris. The Admiralty said he'd seen a large iceberg, and the streaks which he described on the cliffs were simply barnacles."

Sailhardy looked at me reproachfully. " You know the history of Thompson Island minutely, you know how great sailors from Sir James Clark Ross to Lars Christensen have searched for Thompson Island and failed, and yet you deliberately play it down in relation to Upton. It ranks with the island where Sir Francis Drake sheltered the Golden Hind off Cape Horn and which has never been seen again, as one of the greatest of sea mysteries."

" The vital phrase is, in relation to Upton," I said. " He is neither a sailor nor an explorer."

" No," replied Sailhardy. " He's got a flashy act as a modern-day buccaneer."

" That's not all," I said. " Underneath he is ruthless!"

" He's after Thompson Island," said Sailhardy doggedly. I shook my head. " If he'd wanted to discover Thompson Island, he would not have gone about it in this hole-andcorner way," I said. " A man in his position could telephone a London newspaper and say he was endowing a special expedition to search for the great ocean mystery, Thompson Island, etcetera, etcetera. There would be no lack of takers. You don't have to string a fleet of catchers along with you, anyway, to look for an island. One ship would do."

" Keep that chart out of the way, that's all I ask," said the islander.

" What possible value could Thompson Island have to Upton?" I went on. " I have seen it. It's simply the tip of an undersea mountain range jutting out into the worst seas in the world. There's nowhere like it anywhere. Gales, snow, ice, gigantic seas, day in, day out, year in, year out."

" He wants that log," said Sailhardy.

" Take a look, I assure you there's nothing."

He looked at me strangely. " You are the only living man to have seen Thompson Island. There are only three others in history. One of them was Captain Norris."

I smiled at his earnestness. " One of the three was Francis Allen, an American sealer who started a line of islanders on Tristan-and you are of that line."

Thompson Island was the Wetherbys', I told myself. It was the old John Wetherby's because his favourite captain had discovered it for him-and lost it to the world; it was mine, the last of the Wetherbys, because, I had found it again after four generations, or very nearly, since it had slipped away into the ice and fog with the same spectre-like elusiveness as it had done with Norris. Sailhardy was in it, too, and I could almost recall by heart the deposition made to the Franklin Institute by the man with whom Sailhardy's greatgrandfather had sailed: " Captain Joseph Fuller, of New London, now (1904) lighthouse-keeper at Stonington, served in the United States Navy during the Civil War and afterwards repeatedly went sealing and sea elephant hunting in the Antarctic-in 1893, in the Francis Allen, he saw Bouvet Island, and he saw Thompson Island bearing about north-east from Bouvet but he could not land on either on account of the ice, wind and fog." Joseph Fuller named his ship Francis Allen after his friend and mate Francis Allen. Only I had seen Thompson since.

Sailhardy went tense. His keen ears had heard someone coming. He jerked his head at the wheel. " Take it!" he hissed. " Give me that damn thing!" Before I could object, he folded the log of the Sprightly and thrust it inside his windbreaker. With equal swiftness, he unlocked the doors.

He was just in time. Upton came through. He looked curiously at me. " Are you the quartermaster as well as the captain, Bruce?"

I shrugged. " We may need two men at the wheel, the way we're going."

Something was eating into him. He was morose, preoccupied. " What the hell do you mean?"

" This fleet is putting its nose into trouble-big trouble," I replied. Sailhardy took the wheel again.

" If you mean you're afraid of one little fisheries protection destroyer…"

" I'm afraid of the biggest destroyer there is-ice," I said. 71

" I must know where Thorshammer is, and what course she is steering. Our course is dead wrong. I want to get to the north."

Upton's face went pink. " You'll stay on this course, and keep out of the way of the Thorshammer. Pirow's last D/F bearing on her showed we were steering diverging courses. We should be out of range of her seaplane."

" Pirow's bearing was two days ago," I said. " Anything could have happened since."

Upton picked up the bridge phone. " Carl! Bridge! At once. Bring Bjerko with you." He came back to me. " So you're frightened of a little weather-the great Captain Wetherby?"

" Yes, I am," I replied, "-when I am steering directly into the heart of the atmospheric machine which provides the energy for the storms of the Roaring Forties."

" Nonsense!" snapped Upton. " Walter agrees with me

– it will be stormy, but you are well used to that."

" Listen," I said. " I originally set course, after we had given Thorshammer the slip at Tristan, to approach Bouvet from the north. Pirow got his D/F bearings on Thorshammer. I wanted to stay just beyond radar range, but you put her on this course in order to approach Bouvet from the south and west. I say it is suicide."

" Thorshammer has a seaplane," retorted Upton. " Don't forget that."

" I'd like to see anyone take off in the kind of storm we've had," I replied. " Thorshammer's only got an old HE 114 for searching-Pirow heard that over the air. Its radius is not much more than a hundred and fifty miles anyway."

Pirow and the gauche Captain Bjerko came to the bridge.

" Carl," said Upton, " have you got a bearing on Thors- hammer?"

Pirow shook his head. " This part of the world is hell for radio. Thirty years ago Lars Christensen found that Bouvet was a radio ' dead-spot ', as we call it. I can't get any good signals from Thorshammer."

Upton was edgy. " You mean, you can't get enough of her sending for a D/F bearing?"

Pirow's lip curled. " I can get a bearing if a ship sends eleven letters. I proved it to the German Decryption Service."

" So you don't know what course Thorshammer is steering?" " No."

I tried to cash in on Upton's nervous uncertainty. " Even this big factory ship isn't good enough to stand up to what we're heading for."

" I have been in the Southern Ocean many times," said Bjerko. " This ship is good."

" You've never steered this course, or ' tried to make Bouvet from the south and west," I replied. " Bouvet is the heart of a fantastic, dynamic weather machine which tosses off more energy into the sea and wind than an atomic e x p l o s i o n. I c o u l d e x p l a i n i t a l l i n t e r m s o f w h a t i s euphemistically called the millibar anomalies of the Westerlies, but what it boils down to is that Bouvet acts as a kind of highvoltage booster station to weather which already has two thousand miles of punch behind it. It is a wild hell of driving water, fog, ice and icebergs, all racing at a hundred knots to God knows where. I repeat, it is suicide to approach Bouvet the way we are doing, particularly in early November."

" Early November?" echoed Bjerko. " That is the best time in Antarctica. It is the start of the summer. The ice meltspoof, it is gone."

" Walter says the same," added Upton.

" And I say simply this," I went on. " This ship will be nipped in the ice and sunk, if we approach Bouvet the way we are doing now."

" My dear fellow, when the sea is starting to warm up…?" Upton began.

I cut him short. " On the edge of the continental pack-ice the sea temperature is always just above freezing point at this time. It stays so-until Bouvet. Just south of Bouvet, it rockets."

Upton shrugged. " I'm not interested in a lecture on sea temperatures. I want to know about Thorshammer." I ignored him. " Into that freezing or near-freezing sea, I believe, cuts the other prong of The Albatross' Foot. I have only seen the results, not the cause. It is, with the Southern Lights, the most spectacular of many wonderful sights in the Southern Ocean. In late October and early November you get an explosive warming in the stratosphere shortly after the sun appears over the South Pole. This, coupled with the inrush of The Albatross' Foot, produces a fantastic fall-out of energy and weather. That is what I am warning you about."

" These are a sick man's fears," said Bjerko.

" There's a giant glacier in the sea where we are going,"

I said. "The pack-ice disintegrates northwards towards Bouvet from the Antarctic mainland. Yet the tip of this vast tongue of ice-it is four hundred miles from the mainland remains untouched. It has a life of its own. It draws its life from the atmospheric machine I'm talking about round Bouvet. The Albatross' Foot and the glacier conspire. There is a grand battle between warm and cold. Bouvet lies in no-man' s-land. No-sailor's-sea, I would call it. In a sea of slush and bergy bits, suddenly it freezes like a vice. Bouvet makes its own particular brand of pack-ice. Within hours, before you can escape, the sea is frozen solid. I warn you, if you take this ship the way we are going now, the ice will close and tear her guts out. She'll be nipped along the water-line and be crushed to death."

" Wait," said Upton. He was back in a minute. The document he handed me sent a tremor of apprehension through me. Harmless in itself-my weather knowledge and Kohler's would probably add up to the same thing-it proved beyond doubt that my fears and Sailhardy's about the true purpose of Upton's expedition were well founded.

I read it aloud so that Sailhardy too would see its significance. " Kapitan zur See Kohler-Oberkommando der Marine." I took my eyes from the heading and watched Pirow as I translated for the islander. " Captain Kohler to High Command, German Navy. Top Secret. Raider Meteor's climatological report on Bouvet Island area."

In other words, Upton had delved deep-as deep as a top-secret document-in order to get information about Bouvet, or was it about Thompson Island? Had Kohler the sea-wolf not gone down under my fire, Upton might have had no use for Bruce Wetherby

My face must have given me away, but Upton misread it. " All men have their price," he said jauntily. " Even for top secrets." Was Pirow's price the knowledge of Upton's objective, I asked myself.

I glanced at the opening sentences in order to compose my thoughts. " Situation with a westerly movement. Visibility poor in early summer. Fog and cloud frequency increases.

I did not need Kohler to tell me about Bouvet's weather, secret and vital though it was to U-boats and raiders. The way we were headed meant certain disaster, but to reveal the fleet's position to Thorshammer, if that were possible, would mean ignominy for me. That is why I did not analyse the underlying motive of Pirow's suggestion. It seemed at the time as if might provide a way out of my dilemma, or information on which to base my future course of action.

" Why does not the Herr Kapitan take the helicopter and see for himself where Thorshammer is steering? It's hopeless for me to try and get a bearing on her."

" Yes," I said. If I knew that, I might still avoid Bouvet's deathdealing ice. " You'll come?" I asked Pirow. He shook his head. " go on trying for a bearing: one might be lucky. I can be of more use aboard this ship." My ready acceptance of the suggestion seemed to restore Upton's geniality. He tried to be conciliatory, but what he said only added to my suspicions.

" It will put you at your ease about Bouvet," he said. " Once you know Thorshammer's course, you will feel happier. I'll tell you what, Bruce-if we take a bit of a pasting, we'll lie up for a day or two at Bouvet. There's the one landing-place in the south-west. Norris sounded out the Bollevika anchorage, and it's still the best."

Norris sounded out the Bollevika anchorage! If he knew • about Norris and Bouvet, then he must know about Thompson. I could not help feeling it was an oblique bid-in other words, show me Norris' chart. There seemed to be a shade of disappointment about both Upton and Pirow when I replied, " Will you ask Helen to fly off as soon as possible, then? I want Sailhardy to come with me."

Within a quarter of an hour the helicopter had risen from the flensing platform of the factory ship into the rearguard fragments of cloud that rushed to the north and east to join the main body of the storm. The bucking of the ships far below was evidence of the wild weather which had left the swell behind. I was in the co-pilot's seat. Sailhardy stood. Helen swung the machine in a broad circle round the fleet. It was a superb horizon. Its iridescence was mirrored in her eyes, like Thai silk.

The strange bird from Nightingale clung to the compass platform.

" That lucky bird of yours won't budge from my cockpit," she said. " I've named her Suzie Wong."

" She's like an African state," I said. " She's grown up to modern ways too quickly." My quip sent Helen right back into herself. I could not make her out.

" The pressure is ten-twenty millibars," she said, stabbing at the wet-and-dry-bulb thermometer whose rubber tube dis75 appeared into the slipstream outside. " Is that normal in the wake of a migrating anti-cyclone cell, Captain Wetherby?" I glanced into the withdrawn face, whose high, fine cheekbones were emphasised by the leather helmet. Engine oil had insinuated itself in tiny cracks between her knuckles. They were fine hands, I told myself almost in justification of her neglect of them, and they lay easily, confidently, on the controls. She was wearing a fleece-lined leather flying jacket and a pair of crumpled woollen slacks, thrust into salt-stained moccasin half-boots.

" It is normal," I replied absently. "… Why call her Suzie Wong?"

I thought she wasn't going to reply, she took so long. " She's a bit out of the ordinary-something like the circumstances-something like… What course, please?" I spread the big chart awkwardly. I pointed. " Is that where you think Thorshammer will be, Sailhardy?" I had circled an area to the north-north-west.

" Maybe half a degree further north," replied the islander. " Thorshammer is ice-wise, Bruce. She'll get more benefit from the warmer water by keeping a shade further north. She'll also get clearer visibility. She wants to find us, remember." I ringed a new circle. " Fine," Sailhardy said.

" Three hundred degrees," I told Helen.

As she brought the machine round and steadied on course, I looked back.

"South," she said, without looking at me. " You always look south, don't you?"

The question took me aback. After her resort to abstruse weather jargon, I had been quite willing to treat her as a pair of competent hands only. Now she was slipping a curious psychological punch under my guard.

" This particular day the South has more meaning for me than usual," I said. I told her about Bouvet's weather, the glacier in the sea, and the danger. She listened in silence. I told her how the sea would freeze.

She asked one question only. " Does that mean that we all could be stranded on the ice?" " yes."

She turned swiftly to me. A quick burst of terror unalloyed terror-illuminated the strange eyes for a moment. Then she leant forward and touched the Island Cock. " Then 76

I'll go for your lucky bird, Captain Wetherby." He voice was husky with tension.

I pulled a package from my pocket. " Cigarette?" " I don't smoke." She swallowed hard.

Sailhardy pointed forward. " Whale."

She could not hide the relief in her voice at being among her professional pursuits. A tiny obelisk graced the sea to mark perhaps another whale-grave in the trackless waters.

" Blue Whale," she corrected him.

" All whale spouts look alike to me," I replied.

" They are not alike," she said, getting a grip on her voice. " The Blue Whale is the easiest to spot-the plume of condensation grows as its spout rises. A Fin Back's is tall and narrow. The Sperm Whale gives himself away every time-he shoots it out at an oblique angle.

" Would you like a picture of it?" she asked. She didn't wait for me to reply, but hurried on. Her eyes became animated, and for the first time since meeting her I felt aware of a personality behind the accomplished flier. " I've got a camera-two in fact. I begged them from the Japanese who were down at Ongul Island last season. There's a Fairchild K17C for the vertical and a Williamson F24 for the oblique." She started to dip towards the whale's spout. My words came automatically, and I regretted them as I spoke. " Keep course. Steady as she goes."

The eyes snuffed out like a lamp. " Steering three hundred degrees," she repeated tonelessly.

W e f l e w o n s t e a d i l y f o r t h e n e x t t w o h o u r s. H e l e n remained silent, completely withdrawn. Sailhardy and I exchanged technicalities, and when he went through to check the extra fuel we had loaded in drums aft, I fiddled with the radio. It was, however, as Pirow had said. All I could get was some jumble from the American base at McMurdo Sound.

After another twenty minutes' flying, we were on the fringe of the area where I thought I would find Thorshammer. We had overtaken part of the storm clouds, and I became anxious as I peered through the perspex, now clear, now obscured.

Sailhardy turned his head this way and that, searching. If

Thorshammer was to be seen, he would spot her.

" This is going to be very tricky," I said. " If we stay at this height, the odds are we'll miss Thorshammer. If we duck under the cloud cover, we lose our height advantage, and our ability to see her before she sees us."

" The orange and black will make this machine stand out like a sore thumb," said Sailhardy.

" What both of you have overlooked is Thorshammer's radar," remarked Helen.

" No," I said. " I've thought of nothing else since she left Tristan. But I'm not particularly worried: Thorshammer hasn't set about trailing us as I would have done. She's been quite open about it-by that, I mean she hasn't kept radio silence like our fleet. She is not to know we have an expert like Pirow aboard. If it weren't for the radio ' dead spot ', there'd have been no need to make this flight. We may find pretty soon that we're close enough to get a D/F bearing on her. Moreover, she doesn't know we have a helicopter. Mikklesen never saw one, and Thorshammer left Tristan in too much of a hurry to discuss things with Mikklesen-in fact, we don't know that she even anchored at the island."

" She'll still be using her radar-she'd be crazy if she didn't," replied Helen.

" Very soon I'm going to ask you to take us right down to sea-level, and I'm going to try and get a D/F bearing on Thorshammer," I replied. " Radar will pick up nothing at zero feet, as you well know, so we won't be detected. We're almost at the area where I think we'll find her. Thorshammer certainly won't be expecting us to come looking for her."

" Bruce!" exclaimed Sailhardy. " A ship! Bearing green three-oh!"

" Get her down!" I rapped out. " Get her down to sealevel, quick !" I saw nothing, and by the time I had tried to focus on the spot Sailhardy indicated, the machine was dropping like a lift."I saw nothing," said Helen.

I knew Sailhardy's eyesight. " How far was she, do you reckon?"

" I could see forty miles on a day like this," he replied. " I caught the flash."

" Steer thirty degrees," I told Helen. " I'm going to try and get a bearing on her."

The sea came up to meet the helicopter. We skimmed the wave-tops. At that minimum height, the huge swells were no longer ironed out, as a few minutes before. Helen's eyes took on their colour, a pale turquoise, flecked with deep ginger. It was hopeless trying to locate the destroyer by radio. Perhaps Pirow could have made some sense out of the jumble that jarred my ears, but I could not even identify Thors- hammer. After five minutes I gave it up and went up forward to the pilot's seat. Sailhardy was craning to see. I reckoned, however, that our height now was no more than that of an average crow's-nest, and although the day was clear below the broken cloud, the horizon was hazy with the aftermath of the storm, which would cut even Sailhardy's keen eyesight to about ten miles.

" I think there must be some sort of solar disturbance interfering with the radar as well as the Bouvet ' dead spot '," I said. " That means Thorshammer's radar is pretty useless, anyway."

" We'll be up on her in less than half an hour, if we keep this course," said Helen. " Providing it was Thorshammer Sailhardy saw."

" It was a ship," asserted the islander.

" I simply must know her course," I said. " There's only one way, under these conditions, and that is to observe Thorshammer."

"Ice right ahead," said Sailhardy.

Helen nodded agreement. " Sea clutter. Nothing very big. But some quite sizeable growlers."

Even from our low altitude, I could see the long line of broken pack-ice strung out in the wake of the storm, marching in orderly columns as the gale thrust them along.

" Look," I said. " That's how we'll observe Thorshammer."

" What do you mean?" Sailhardy asked.

The simplicity of the idea made me laugh. " We'll creep along in the helicopter until we're reasonably close to Thors- hammer," I replied. " Then we'll land on one of those big growlers-on the side away from Thorshammer. We can sit and watch her pass."

Helen bit her lip. " It won't work, Captain Wetherby. As close as that, Thorshammer can't fail to pick us up by radar." I shook my head. " It doesn't need Pirow to tell me that even under favourable conditions it is very difficult to get a radar echo from an iceberg, particularly if they're weathered smooth like these. The iceberg itself won't even show on the screen, let alone us."

She looked at me, and I was astonished to see the anguish in her eyes. " No. I'm sure Thorshammer…" Sailhardy looked surprised at her reaction. " It's nothing to land on ice, ma'am, and after the way you rescued us…" She turned so abruptly to the controls that for a moment

I thought the machine would hit the top of the next swell. She was breathing quickly. " I'll land anywhere, but… but…"

I could not fathom her. Her fear of putting the helicopter down on a stable platform like a small iceberg offered no problems for a flier of her proved competence. I dismissed the idea that somehow her reluctance might tie in with my suspicions about her father. How privy was she to whatever his schemes were? She had said nothing that would have revealed that she knew anything either of Pirow's background.

" If you're afraid…" I started.

The strange eyes were alive with inner pain. " I'm not afraid of landing." She pulled herself together, but I could see the perspiration along the line of the leather helmet. She swallowed hard. " Which growler?" I glanced at Sailhardy. He shrugged at her agitation. " Not yet, eh, Bruce?"

" Ten minutes more?" I asked him, and he nodded.

Helen pulled herself upright in her seat. She neither spoke nor looked at us. Her face was drawn and white. She was so tense that I wondered if I should not call the whole thing off. Could she make a landing in the state of nerves she obviously was in? The stakes were too big to turn back now.

The sea clutter thickened as we flew on. I admired Helen's skill as she dodged between the growlers, keeping the machine just above the waves. Some of the bigger pieces of ice towered twenty to thirty feet above us as we passed. I saw the one I wanted. It was tabular, but there was a small plateau sloping slightly towards us, while the top was as straight as a ruler. The helicopter could land on the shelf and Sailhardy and I would plot the destroyer's course from the summit.

I pointed. " There!"

Helen flew straight on, almost as if she had not heard.

We swept along towards the ice now looming close. The plateau was steeper than I had anticipated. The perspiration splashed from her forehead on to her leather flying jacket. She pulled the controls. We rose slightly and checked. Then, like a fly clinging to a wall, we hung on the little plateau.

" Magnificent!" I said. I stopped short at the sight of her face. It was alive with terror. Her eyes were riveted on the ice. Her hands were shaking almost out of control as she cut the throttles. The engine died.

" Ma'am!" exclaimed Sailhardy. " What it it, ma'am?" I sensed, rather than felt, a new danger. The helicopter started to slide backwards towards the sea about twenty feet below. Helen sat transfixed.

" Get the engine going!" I shouted. She just sat, staring. I swung round to Sailhardy. " Quick! You grab one wheel and I'll get the other. The two of us can hold her!"

We threw ourselves out of the cockpit and grabbed the undercarriage. The machine was lighter than I thought. Heels rammed against the ice, Sailhardy and I kept the machine on the plateau.

" Miss Upton!" I shouted. " For God's sake!"

" What the hell is she up to?" ask Sailhardy.

" She's scared stiff," I said. " What at, I wouldn't know. Can you hold this machine by yourself?"

I eased my grip tentatively, but the helicopter started to slew round. It would need both of us to keep her where she was.

" Miss Upton!" I yelled, propping the strut against my shoulder and half kneeling, half crouching to see past the cabin door swinging in the wind.

" Try using her Christian name," breathed Sailhardy heavily. " It may make her snap out of it."

" Helen!" I called. " Helen!"

I had forgotten for the moment that she could not get out of her seat quickly. In perhaps three minutes she appeared at the doorway. She looked round her like a sleepwalker. She scarcely seemed to notice Sailhardy and me. Her eyes, full of agony, had taken on the green-blue hue of the ice.

" Helen!" I said sharply. " Pull yourself together. There's no danger."

She looked at me without speaking. " Pull yourself together," I repeated. " Sailhardy and I can hold her here quite easily. Get my glasses and go up to the summit. Take a compass and give me four or five bearings. Thorshammer must be pretty close."

She went inside like an automaton and returned, my glasses dangling loosely from a strap at her wrist. She looked down at the ice. Her face was deathly.

" Come on!" I said. " It's a bit cold, but there's nothing to worry about."

She stumbled awkwardly, hesitated, and threw herself down on the ice. She landed on her knees. She sagged forward and lay face downwards, convulsive sobs shaking her. She slid slowly toward me. I caught her against the wheel.

" Helen!" I repeated. " What on earth…" She lay with her head resting on the ice. " It isn't on earth, that's the whole trouble," she said brokenly. " You made me land on ice-on ice, do you hear!"

" Ice-what has ice got to do with it?"

She still did not lift her head. " I've got a bullet-a German bullet-in my hip. I told you."

" You said bullet," I replied. " But what a German bullet has to do with your crack-up when you see ice, I wouldn't know."

" For three days I lay in a ditch with ice and snow, with a German bullet in my hip," she got out. " He died, but I lived. I wish to God I had died too!"

" Listen," I said. " You're completely broken up, and it's something to do with ice and a German bullet. It'll keep. Meanwhile, get up there to the summit of the iceberg and get a couple of bearings on Thorshammer." She sat up. Her face was ghastly. She looked in turn at Sailhardy and me. " Everything in your world is straightforward, uncomplicated. If neither of you understands, I still have got to say it. Even my father doesn't know about the bullet-and never will. To him I am the brilliant flier, to be depended on in any circumstances. He didn't hesitate to send me off in the storm to find you. He knew I would find you. I did. I…"

" What is it about the ice?" I asked gently. Despite its agony, the face was, in its own way, without any make-up, rather beautiful in its animation. There was a touch of colour under the right cheekbone where it had rested on the ice. I had to try and get her to go up and observe Thors- hammer.

" When the Germans invaded Norway, my brother and I were with my father in Stockholm, where he was busy on his experiments with metals-the time when his face was affected," she said, gradually getting a grip on her voice. " We set off in two parties. My brother and I were in one, and my father in the other, with some Norwegians who were taking us to Trondheim. The British ships were still there. Our party was intercepted by a Nazi ski patrol. It was getting dark. I remember racing down a long slope, the two of us.

There was a burst of fire from an automatic pistol. We were 82 both hit, I in the hip and he, in the chest. It took two days for him to die. We huddled together in a ditch in the ice and snow as the life ran out of him. I was conscious only now and then. Five days later I woke in a Norwegian house. There was gangrene in my hip. The doctor fought for weeks to save me. When I was well enough, they smuggled me out to England. The day before I arrived my mother was killed in an air raid."

A nerve twitched in her face. She sat up and looked at me. " I am terrified of the ice."

" Then what are you doing in the Antarctic-there is no need…"

She cut me short. " There is every need. Why do you think I fly a helicopter in these surroundings when I could lead a pleasant, easy life in London? My father's schemes give me the outlet-the outlet I need to challenge the ice. It is something innate-physical, as well as in my mind. I must master the ice. I am the only woman pilot in Antarctica. I've flown over ice, hovered over it, gradually got closer and closer, and each time it was a living hell, but a conquest. I was winning out-until now. I wasn't ready. I've never had the courage to land on it."

The incline of the ice shelf brought her against me.

With my free hand I picked up the binoculars and handed them to her. " Here's another chapter of that challenge." For a moment I thought she would draw back. Then she rose on her haunches. " It did not escape me, the way you looked at my hands." She smiled faintly. " Other things have been in abeyance, you see, while I fought it out with my jailer." She looked about here, as if seeing things for the first time. " No wonder my father finds it easy to include me in his schemes!"

I nodded at the glasses. "Those could be the key to the door."

She tried to rise, but could not. Then she leaned hard on my shoulder and got to her feet.

" Special glasses, aren't they, Bruce-for seeing in darkness?" She started away from us, but Sailhardy called her back.

" The compass, ma'am. You don't want to have to come back and fetch it. It'll be tough going once to the top." She stood looking down at the islander and me, braced against the ice to hold the machine.

" Thank you, Bruce, and thank you, Sailhardy," she said 83 slowly. " There are more things than ice in the Southern Ocean."

Slowly, painfully, with a physical and mental torment we could only guess, she clawed her way to the summit of the growler. When her voice came back to give us the first bearing, it was as colourless as plainsong. " Thorshammer bearing eight-oh degrees, eight miles."

At five-minute intervals she repeated a fresh bearing. In half an hour she came back to the machine. Her face was white, but for the first time since I had known her, the eyes were vital.

" I'll start the engine, and you can come aboard," she said. She laughed softly. " What a pilot! I'm glad you are the only witnesses."

She revved the engine, the rotors swung, and we climbed aboard while she held the machine gently against the little plateau. We gave Thorshammer another clear quarter of an hour before threading our way back through the growlers at zero feet towards the fleet. Once we were certain that we were beyond range of Thorshammer's radio, we picked up our altitude. Although Helen flew in silence, the tension was gone, and several times she leaned forward and stroked Suzie Wong clinging to the compass platform and said something which I could not distinguish above the roar of the rotors.

It was Sailhardy who spotted the catcher fleet first. As we pulled round in a wide approach circle to the factory ship, he tensed and pointed. " Bruce! Auroral Look-just aft the bridge!"

The twin muzzles pointed skywards.

" Walter was on the Russian convoys," he said.

I nodded grimly. " No wonder he survived. I'm going to have a closer look at what Mr. Bloody Walter has rigged up there. Can do?" I asked Helen.

She nodded. She brought the helicopter to hover twenty feet above the barrels of the anti-aircraft gun. It was the most sinister piece of improvised ack-ack armament I have ever seen. A heavy, slow-firing water-cooled Spandau was mounted side-by-side with an air cooled rapid-firing Hotchkiss. From the base plate to the height of a man's chest was a heavy swivel mounting: screwed into it on a hexagonal plate fore and aft were two Narwhal tusks, forming a bow of about three feet in height at head level. The two weapons swung on a cross-bar about an inch and a half thick. Drums and belts of ammunition were already in place. There was also

a double harness, like a car safety belt, for each gun. It was a killer-weapon for use by two men. The helmsman waved cheerfully, but there was no sign of Walter.

Sailhardy and I looked at each other. There was no need to say it. The Spandau-Hotchkiss confirmed everything about Upton. And the chart was the key.

As if reading my own thoughts, Sailhardy drew back out of Helen's line of vision. He put his hand into his windbreaker where he had concealed the chart and looked inquiringly at me. I nodded. Upton must not find it on either of us, if he got tough. Sailhardy looked round tentatively. Behind Helen's seat the interior quilting was loose from the skin of the machine. It was the best we could do. There were only a few minutes before we would be down. Sailhardy edged behind me and tucked the folded square of parchment behind the quilting.

We landed. Sailhardy and I went to my cabin. I was scarcely surprised when I opened the door to find Upton, Pirow and Walter. The place had been ransacked. Walter held a Luger in his hand.