A Grue Of Ice (14 page)

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.

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" 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

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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

84

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.

6.
The Log of the " Sprightly"

I felt sure the Luger was Pirow's, though it was Walter who pointed it at my chest. Pirow was on his knees at my chartcase. Upton's eyes were bright and hard, as if he had been on the guarana.

I talked quickly to distract Walter, so that Sailhardy could jump him. " So Norris sounded the Bollevika anchorage?" I sneered. " Breeding-ground of the Blue Whale--bah A Blue Whale's dorsal fin!"

I sensed Sailhardy start to move. I threw myself sideways

at Walter. The crash of the shot deafened me. I struck him a wicked blow in the kidneys. He gasped, but he was strong and cunning. He dodged to prevent my crowding him,

and fired again as Sailhardy grabbed at his hand. The bullet screamed off the steel wall. Walter ducked, picked up a heavy lead sinker I had used for my plankton net, and swung it with a sickening thump against the islander's heart. Sailhardy collapsed. While the big Norwegian turned to come at me with a running crouch, Luger in one hand and sinker in the other,

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I struck him with all my force under the right ear with my

forearm. I heard the gun clatter, but at the same time my feet were whipped from under me. Pirow—the bastard, I

thought. As I fell, Walter caught me a glancing blow across the left side of my face with the sinker. I lay on the floor, sick with the pain. Pirow grabbed the gun. I saw Walter's sea-boot come up to kick me unconscious, but I had no strength to roll clear. Upton stopped him.

" Steady, Peter," he ordered. " We need him."

" I do not care for this British captain who fights foul like a South Georgia whalerman," he said thickly, rubbing his neck. " Nor his bloody islander. Let me finish both of them—

we'll find the chart on one of them, for sure."

" He seems to know anyway," said Pirow. He kept the Luger on me.