A Grue Of Ice (5 page)

" It could be . . ." I said dubiously.

" Come, come, Captain Wetherby,"
she
said. She might have said it the same way if one of the rotors had failed her. " Are you as sceptical about your oceanic discoveries?"

Captain Wetherby! Herr Kapitan! Oceanic discoveries!

She knew who I was, and she must have an idea of what I

was doing off Tristan. My sarcasm bounced off her impersonal air, but it left me vaguely uneasy about how much she knew.

" I'm an expert on water-fleas," I said.

" Is that oceanography or limnology?" she asked.

Bruce Wetherby, ex-Royal Navy, holder of the Royal

Society's Travelling Studentship in Oceanology and Limnology 1 What was
a
whale-spotter doing out in weather like 30

this searching for someone whose interest was as abstruse as mine?

" Limnology," I replied, taken aback. " Water-fleas mean water is getting old. You never find them in young water. Oceanwise, too, there are water-fleas. It means seas are old." She started to shrug it off. As her left shoulder lifted and she moved slightly in her seat, a flicker of pain passed across her face. Her voice was toneless. " You're wasting your time in the Southern Ocean, then. It's old already. The Americans say it's a hundred million years old."

Rain drummed on the perspex like a Spanish dancer's heels. Her hand on the controls seemed to have the same economy of motion as Sailhardy's on the tiller ropes. " Carl," she said quickly, " get aft and lash that whaleboat securely. You, too, Captain Wetherby. Winch it right up so it's as high
as
it will go." She turned incisively to Sailhardy. " How deep
is
that boat of yours? I don't
want
it hanging below the undercart as I come in to land."

" Four feet—and some, maybe five," he replied.

" Might make it," she said, as if it didn't_ really matter. " If it comes to the worst, I'll dump it."

" No, ma'am!" Sailhardy burst out. " Not my boat!" She put on the instrument lights and ran her eyes over them carefully. She flicked a sharp glance at him. She had heard the protest in his voice. " Right, then, I'll try and land with that damn great thing hampering me. There'll be a heaving deck, and you've heard that the factory ship is rolling heavily. It won't be child's play."

I hesitated before going to the winches. The whaleboat seemed scarcely worth it, even if was everything in the way of riches that Sailhardy had.

" It's a captain's decision," I said to her. " If
it's
going to mean four people's lives, then jettison it."

The eyes seemed as uninviting as the cold sea. "I am the captain," she said curtly. "My decision has been made. I land with Sailhardy's boat lashed to the machine."

I started to reply. She overrode it. " Carl—get aft and lash the boat. This isn't a warship's bridge, Captain Wetherby, and I can't force you to help. But it does lessen the risk if you do."

" Thank you, ma'am," said Sailhardy softly. She would be his friend for life.

" Miss Upton," I said, " I have every faith in your ability after the way you rescued us." 31

" Then get aft and do what I ask," she snapped. " Carl!" She turned away as if I had been so much supercargo. " When you have done, tell my father I have Wetherby. In

one piece. Uninjured. Ask him if I should try and find the

other catchers and bring them in to the rendezvous."

" I don't know who your father is, or what he wants with me," I said angrily. ' Tell him I have Wetherby ' .

!"

She banked sharply and cut my words short. " Ask him yourself," she said. " He sent me to find you, and find you I did. My job is done when I deliver you to him aboard the
Antarctica."

Pirow said, as if it were remarkable not to know: " Sir Frederick Upton is the biggest whaling man in the business. You must have heard of him."

"I haven't," I replied. " And I can't imagine why he should want to send his daughter out in one hell of a storm to bring in someone who was doing nothing more than look for plankton."

I almost missed her aside: " Water-fleas."

" Ma'am," said Sailhardy, " the storm will last for days. You must get back to your base, now. As hard as you can." She seemed disposed to listen to him. "Even if I located every catcher of the five, there's not much I could do to bring them to the anchorage," she pondered. " Tell my father, Carl, I'll be coming straight back. Ask him to have Captain Bjerko hold the factory ship as steady as he can in the anchorage."

I went aft with Pirow. The whaleboat was swinging from

the two ropes and bumping against the fuselage. We drew the boat up as far as we could. It did not lie under the belly of the machine as the winches were higher up than the level of the landing wheels. I thought of the heaving deck of the factory ship anchored in Tristan's open roadstead and shuddered. It would need all Helen Upton's skill to land. As I saw it, she would have to come in keeping the starboard side, the side opposite the boat, lower than the port side so as not to smash the keel against the deck. At the same time she would have to hold the tail high and keep it so. I looped a length of rope round one of the rough thwarts and pulled the boat hard against the side of the machine. Pirow did the same. The boat's destiny had now become one with the helicopter—and ours.

Pirow went to the radio. I preferred to stay with him

rather than go up forward into the unfriendly cockpit.

32

Whatever Sir Frederick Upton wanted, he had scarcely sent

her on a social mission. I stood in the maroon-quilted cabin at a loss. Something gnawed at my subconscious. Pirow was talking to the catchers. I listened with half an ear, an ear grown weary over the years at Cape Town of the endless radio chatter of the ships far South. What was it? " Repeat," said one of the catchers Pirow was calling. " Repeat." Again,

" Repeat." His transmitting was excellent. If my mind had not been on the girl and the risk she was running, maybe I

would have noticed. My subconscious told me that something was off-beat. Why did the catcher keep asking him to repeat? I parted the quilting into the cockpit. Helen Upton was talking to Sailhardy, while she held the bucking machine with a light snaffle. My undefined uneasiness about Pirow's signalling prickled my curiosity about the girl also. What

had made her become a whale-spotter in the first place? Even the Russian ships down South never use women pilots. It is

the hardest life, requiring a high degree of observation and skill, plus long hours of accurate searching. She had risked her life, apparently at her father's instruction, to find Sailhardy and myself. Why? I reckoned a factory ship must cost £5,000 a day to run, and to come to Tristan, far away

from the whaling grounds, meant that Sir Frederick must

really have burned money, apparently in order to find me.

Why? Hard-hearted whaling tycoons are not that interested

in plankton.

" Keep well out as you come round the point before the roadstead," Sailhardy was telling her. " A sudden gust might throw us against the cliffs."

She altered course slightly and edged into the teeth of the wind. The Island Cock was back on his perch, but no longer masking the compass from her view. The van of the storm swathed the volcanic peak of Tristan. The island's water supply is born in the old crater, which, strangely, never freezes even in the hardest weather. Under the machine's belly I could see the great fields of kelp in the sea, stretching out tentacles like a mightmare octopus in the dying light. To the east, sea and sky melted into a glory of turquoise ; in the west, the great battalions of cloud came racing up.

We pulled clear of the headland by Tristan's anchorage.

A waterfall made a steel scar down the cliff-side.

" Starboard forty?" Helen Upton asked Sailhardy.

" Sixty," he said. " Every bit of sixty. The cliff will
G.I.

33

completely blank out the sun in
a
minute. Turn sixty degrees."

She smiled wryly, the first time I had seen any animation

of her face. I didn't need to be told: flying was her whole life. " Landing on instruments?"

" Aye," replied Sailhardy. " Aye, ma'am." The sun went as we wheeled round Herald Point into Falmouth Bay, the anchorage. Helen Upton clicked on the machine's spotlight, and swung in a broad circle round the

Ridge. As if in reply, floodlights splashed the factory ship's deck. She was big—every bit of 25,000 tons. I could not

imagine how we could land among the steel wires which held

up the double funnel aft and the cumbersome masts. The

deck seemed a conglomeration of valves and bollards, with

almost no clear space. Pipes, as thick as a man's thigh,

criss-crossed the deck forward of the bridge. Among them

were huge steel boxes, surmounted by matching butterfly

nuts. I could not guess what they were for.

" Carl," she said rapidly into the intercom, " tell Captain Bjerko I can't see with all those lights—they're blinding me. Say I'm coming in from the stern. When I'm fifty yards away, put out the lights. I'll come in on the spot alone after that." Sailhardy's knuckles were tightly clenched round the cabin

stay. " Bring her into the lee of the ship, ma'am," he urged. She looked at him swiftly and nodded. She started a wide

circle past the bows.
Antarctica
had steam up. The two high stacks, port and starboard, belched smoke. Higher even than they were two ventilators. We lost height as we came into the vessel's lee. Then everything went black. The stacks were putting up a smokescreen equal to a destroyer's.

Luff, ma'am," urged Sailhardy.

Helen Upton laughed—and the laugh sounded as if it had

not been used for a long time. " Sailor!" she exclaimed. " I can't lull an aircraft." But her hands were already busy at the controls. We followed the smoke downwind, and then pulled clear. She made a new approach to the factory ship. The machine neared the stern. The slipway grating through which whales are hauled was picked up by the bright floodlights. It looked
as
ominous as Traitors' Gate at the Tower of London. I felt my breath draw in as we came in low.

The lights cut. The helicopter spotlight stabbed out. We

would never get through the rigging to the patch of clear

deck.

" Bring her head round
a
little, ma'am," breathed Sail34 hardy. He shot a glance the way we had reached the a n c h o r a g e . " T h e r e ' s a b i g g u s t c o m i n g . " H e r h a n d s answered him. The two were in complete accord. It was the

master in one element responding to the master in another,

the sea and the air.

She pulled the stick back hard and whipped the throttle wide: We scraped past one of the high ventilators, circling again.

" Jesus!" whispered Pirow.

" Carl!" called the girl in a level voice. "Tell Captain Bjerko to light the flensing platform only. I'll try there, this time."

Pirow's radio key chattered as we swept round again. Again, too, the nerve-tearing approach from the stern. The wind was stronger now. It must have been gusting fifty knots or more. Traitors' Gate came up to meet us. The machine canted as Helen Upton lifted the port side, the side with the boat lashed to it, high. The tail, too, was high. I heard Sailhardy's intake of breath. We slid crabwise round the middle gantry like a wounded dragonfly. A peckle of rain blurred the perspex. It was too late to pull away this time. We were committed. The starboard wheel touched the deck. The boat side and tail remained high. She gunned the rotor at the tail. It swung slowly, deliberately, into the wind. She placed it delicately, so delicately I scarcely felt the bump, on one of the big steel boxes. She let the boat side of the machine cant gently to the deck, flicking the throttle. We stood square on the rain-slicked deck.

She sighed softly, and rested her hands for a moment on the now-dead controls. Men were already lashing the machine to the big bollards.

I licked my lips. " You have to miss only once," I said. She sat there, immobile, not speaking.

" I reckon she was rolling twenty degrees each way," Sailhardy pondered. " You were magnificent, ma'am." The strange eyes seemed to be filled with the hard glare of the floodlights. " Carl," she said, " take Captain Wetherby to my father. He wants him urgently. And Sailhardy." We climbed on to the heaving deck. She made no attempt to rise as we left.

" Careful !" said Pirow. " A factory ship has more places to break your neck than any other ship I know."

The powerful lights threw everything into taut relief. Above my head a huge piece of curved, grooved iron looked bigger

35

than it really was. It had a hook with projections, and was secured to the gantry by hawsers as thick as my arm.

When we reached the bridge companionway I remembered my things in the boat. " There are some of my instruments and charts in the boat," I told Pirow. " I'll go back for them. Tell Sir Frederick I'll be right along."

I swung myself up into the cockpit. I stopped short. Helen Upton was clinging on to the central cabin stay, half in and half out of her seat. Her face was as white as the floodlights. She was trying to pull herself on to her feet. The Island Cock stared at her.

I went forward. " Take it easy !" I said, lowering her into the seat. " I'm not surprised, after that landing." Her eyes were full of pain. " Why did you have to come back and see me?" she half-choked. " Why did you have to
see
me?"