A Grue Of Ice (24 page)

" I have a small case ready," said Helen. " I packed it ready to leave last night. It is on the bridge."

In a moment, Reidar Bull's face reverted to its grimness.

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" You'll stay right here, miss. Captain Bjerko will remain behind and see to the unloading of the ship. When we reach

the ice-edge, I will signal on the W/T and you will fly the helicopter to the catchers. It may be very useful to us yet. You'll land on the ice by the catchers, and we'll manhandle it aboard my ship."

Helen started to protest, but he cut her short. " Hanssen!

Go and get the things they have asked for. Be quick! I want to go before the weather gets worse." He spoke to Bjerko. " We'll come back with the catchers after we have met
Thorshammer
at Bouvet. She ordered all three of us to come, and
Aurora
makes four. There'll be enough room aboard to take off
Antarctica's
crew. We'll be away only a couple of days. The ice won't break up before then. You'll be safe enough."

Bjerko looked dubiously at the factory ship, whose outline we could see, despite the snow flurries. " I have never seen ice like this. Come back soon. I don't like it."

Nor did I. Behind the doomed ship, where the raft of ice

had broken off, it had carved the likeness of a gigantic sphinx head with defined lips and a brooding forehead. Even the neck was there, in the shape of a series of striated cliffs ; almost meeting, 150 feet from the surface, was a double cantileverlike wing which was held at its base by three fluted columns, each one fifty feet in diameter.

I started to go over to Helen, but Reidar Bull waved me

back. Upton infected us all with his tension. He appeared

to be expecting something. Brunvoll seemed grateful to have something to do when Reidar Bull sent him back to guard

Pirow. As Hanssen emerged from the path on his return from

the ship, Upton went forward quickly and took the map from him.

It was Norris' chart of Thompson Island.

Upton knelt down and spread it open on the ice. "Come

here, Reidar Bull," he said authoritatively. We all gathered round. Upton spoke quickly, and there was a tic at the corners of his mouth and eyes. His fingers were shaky as he pointed to the spidery track of the old
Sprightly,
and Norris'

position of Thompson Island. We were drawn inside the circle of his compelling personality.

" Have you ever heard of Thompson Island?" he demanded. Reidar Bull glanced at the old map. He shrugged. " Yes. I have also heard of the Aurora Islands, down in the Scotia Sea. Men have searched for a hundred—maybe two hundred

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—years for them. These islands exist—how do you say?—in the mind only."

The faint pink flush suffused Upton's mask. I could see he was taking a big grip on himself. The twitch at the corner of his mouth got worse.

Hanssen didn't even bother to look. "
I
have seen a hundred things in the Southern Ocean which could have been islands—rocks streaked with guano, icebergs covered with mud. It is not surprising that we all dream a little in these goddamned waters. Many men have dreamed, but only a few islands have been found. It is the same with Thompson Island."

" Get up!" ordered Reidar Bull. " March!" Upton squatted on his haunches still. He seemed to be losing control of his hands, they were shaking so. The manacles rattled faintly.

" Father," said Helen in an agonised voice. "Come. Thompson Island can wait."

His eyes were fever-bright. " It's waited a century and more for me," he said thickly. "Reidar Bull! Hanssen!

Thompson Island exists! Here is its position. Captain Wetherby has seen it! Seen it, do you hear? Thompson Island!" His voice rose. " Listen!" He turned the old chart over and quoted from Norris' own personal log, which with its image of blue ice was written so indelibly into my mind. " Thompson Island is nothing but perpendicular rocks and
it
looks like a complete cinder, with immense veins of lava which had the appearance of black glass, but much of it is streaked with white veins.' "

Reidar Bull's harsh laugh sounded like. floes grinding together. " Rubbish! Get up!"

Upton crouched on the ice like a wounded animal facing its hunters. His face was contorted. Helen had drawn back in horror at his break-up. He was keeping his last card—his real reason for wanting to find Thompson Island—in reserve still. Walter licked his lips. Thompson Island had bitten into Upton's mind and eroded it in a way which was dreadful
to
observe ; I waited in awe at what was to follow.

" I want Thompson Island," he said, so softly that
I had
to
crane to hear him. He looked at the three skippers. " I'll double my original offer to you if you will take me to Thompson Island." None of them replied. Upton swung round to me. " Bruce!" he said. " Bruce,
you know where
is is, and
so do I
now—take me there!"

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Looking down on the mouthing figure on the ice and remembering what had happened to men in the past who had also wanted Thompson Island, I resolved to myself that no one would ever wring from me the secret of Thompson Island's whereabouts.

Upton fumbled with his pathetic little squash leather bag. " Oh God!" burst out Helen. " Bruce . . ."

He got it open and emptied the contents into his hand. Still crouching, he rolled the five objects across the old chart, like throwing dice.

They looked like bull's-eyes.

Upton began almost to intone. " Heavenly blue, they call it. The same colour as this ice. It's really silvery white, but it takes its name from the two heavenly blue lines in its spectrum."

Reidar Bull said something in a
low
voice in Norwegian to the other two skippers.

" You'll come with me now, won't you, Reidar Bull," he said, looking up expectantly, " and you, Lars Brunvoll, and you, Hanssen? The other money was chickenfeed next to this."

" What are
you talking about?" demanded Reidar Bull
roughly.

" You'll come then, Reidar Bull?"
he went on. " You'll
be the richest man in Norway."

" From that?" sneered Bull, indicating the bull's-eyes. The tic tugged at the corner of Upton's mouth and eyes as if, even now, he were reluctant to reveal his secret.

" Yes," he said. " That is caesium. It is the rarest metal in the world. It is worth two hundred pounds a pound." Caesium! The spaceage metal I

I had considered all along that it was not geographical curiosity that had driven Upton to try and find Thompson Island. Caesium had been much in the forefront when I had returned to Cambridge after the war—it is the most vital part of the fuel for, space ships and space rockets. Looking down at the dicelike objects, my mind ran back to one of the young scientists at the Cavendish Laboratories there who
had
become a bore and a butt over our after-dinner glass of port because of his endless conversations on the wonders of caesium: Upton was right when he said Blue Whales were nothing by comparison with it. Caesium, I had been told over the university port, was known to occur in minute

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quantities in only three places—a small place in Northern

Sweden, in South-West Africa, and in Kazakhstan, in the Soviet Union. Its name comes from the bright blue lines in its spectrum—Upton was probably right when he said they were heavenly blue. I wished now I could remembered more of what the Cambridge bore had had to say about it. Vaguely I recalled that it had the lowest boiling point of any metal in the alkali group, and was priceless, not only because of its scarcity, but because of the ease with which it could be made to form electrically-charged gas for fuel for space ships. It was, it seemed from what I could remember, the answer to the scientist's prayer for a space fuel—except that there was practically none of it to be had. There was also something about its extremely high ionization potential which made it possible to transmute the atomic heat of caesium directly into electric power without having to use an intermediate stage of steam boilers or turbines in the space ships.

I looked at Upton and I knew the answer even before I

asked him. " Your face . . . caesium?"

Some of the wild light went from his eyes. " You know caesium? Bruce, you know it? Yes," he said, touching his face. " This is the price of my knowledge of it. I told you, the metal particles pass into the skin. I know more about caesium than any man living. I worked on it—more than twenty years ago now—at a little place called Ronnskar, in Sweden, on the Gulf of Bothnia—it's quite close to the port of Skelleftea

."

I cut him short. I still couldn't see how he linked Thompson with his wonder metal. " How do you know it exists on Thompson Island? Where did those samples come from?"

" Norris took a hammer," he said. " You'll see from the log how he sent a ship's boat ashore, and they had to make a sudden dash back to the ship because of the weather. Three of those pieces of rock are Norris'. The other two are Pirow's. You see, Kohler used it as a base for Meteor. Pirow has been there, but he doesn't know where it is. Only roughly—

somewhere near Bouvet. Kohler never let on." The words came tumbling out in a flood.

Helen said gently, " Father, why did you go about it this way? Underhand, murder—all the rest of it?"

It only needed a hair-trigger to touch Upton off. " Thompson Island is mine!" he shouted. " I won't have any bloody governmental committees telling me where and what I should explore. That shameful Antarctic Treaty .. ."

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Reidar Bull, Hanssen and Lars Brunvoll seemed to be at a

loss. All this about caesium was going over their heads.

I asked another question to try and keep Upton on an even keel.

"
Where
did you get Norris' samples from?" He laughed, a strange, brittle laugh. " From the Wetherbys You see, Bruce, I bought out Wetherbys—under an assumed name, of Stewart and Co. You weren't to know—don't forget I already suspected you were the only man to have seen Thompson Island. Pirow came later when I started scratching in the German Naval Archives. Those rocks there are veined with caesium—pollucite, they call the mineral salt. Do you see what Norris' log and description of whole cliffs seamed with •

caesium mean to me?"

" Enough to murder
a
couple of innocent men?" His laugh jarred. " Dear God, man, can't you see that nations will fight atomic wars over Thompson Island's caesium? Millions may die, not only two. They were unimportant beside this!"

•

I looked again at the old chart, at the five dicelike pieces of caesium rock, and at the wild eyes of the whaling tycoon. Men had suffered and died in the past to find Thompson, and now in the present the island had come back with a lure more deadly, and a threat more lethal, than anything that had gone before. As my eyes lifted they met Helen's. There was no need to formulate the, resolution in my mind never to reveal Thompson Island's whereabouts.

I turned to Reidar Bull. " The man is mad," I said harshly. " You should lock him up. Thompson Island isn't where the chart says, anyway. Remember that, Sir Frederick."

The awful pink flush suffused his face and he threw himself
at
me,
using the manacles as a weapon. Again and again he struck at me, shouting obscenities, while Lars Brunvoll clubbed him with the butt of the Luger. It took Brunvoll and Hanssen to drag him off me.

" Judas!" he half gasped, half screamed. " You—who know—you have betrayed me! Curse all the Wetherbys,

curse Bruce Wetherby . . ."

Helen stood back in anguish as he screamed ; Pirow's face

was grey. Reidar Bull's savage anger was stilled.

" Let us march," I said to Reidar Bull. " Sailhardy and will fetch the whaleboat. You can send Brunvoll along too, if you like, but there isn't anywhere for us to escape to."

Hanssen held Upton now, still mouthing threats, at me and

the skippers.

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When we returned, carrying the boat easily by up-ending her with the bow and stern-thwarts on our heads, the party

had already formed up. There was no goodbye allowed to Helen. She stood, camouflaged in her sea-leopard coat against the snow at thirty yards, next to one of the helicopter's landingwheels. Her lips moved soundlessly to me as we moved off, Reidar Bull bringing up the rear with Schmeisser at the ready, Upton leading, with Brunvoll's Luger at his back. The whaleboat was no real burden, Sailhardy could have carried its weight alone himself, but two of us made its bulk easier to handle, especially when the wind plucked at it. The ice was hard, and we started briskly.
Antarctica
lay against the sick sun. The last I saw of her was when she lurched yet again, like a beaten wrestler trying to keep his shoulder off the mat.

By lunch-time, by following the markers which Reidar Bull

had laid at intervals across the icefield, we came to the iceedge. The four catchers
Crozet, Kerguelen, Chimay
and
Aurora—were
moored together. Already the ice had started to trace a needlework pattern on their rigging. Unless it was cleared, they would be carrying a top-hamper which would