Target 5 (43 page)

The throttle was wide open, the launch was tearing down,
the dangerous, ice-strewn channel as Beaumont swung the
wheel, avoided a large floe by inches, straightened up.
More and more ice was appearing, small floes bobbing in the moonlight, large growlers drifting with the column of
icebergs to port. Speed in such waters was excessively dangerous - and speed was vital. The ghost berg still loomed to
their right, stretched away beyond them to the south, went on for ever it seemed as Beaumont kept the throttle wide
open and wrestled with the wheel.

A single light glowed at the
Elroy's
distant stern, the only
light showing aboard the icebreaker since Schmidt had ordered all lights turned out, the light kept on to guide the
launch back to the ship. The greyish spume of her vanishing
wake showed to their left, the bitter air whipped at their
faces, the launch zig-zagged wildly to avoid more floes. And
behind them the
Revolution
came on, was now moving along
side the ghost berg - because everyone had underestimated
its speed.

That gate's closing,' Langer said in Beaumont's ear. In
the distance beyond the
Elroy's
silhouette the view was changing. It looked as though Schmidt was going to be too
late. The two great bergs which flanked the exit from the
channel were moving closer together, caught in a crosscurrent. By the time Schmidt reached them there would be
no way out. As Langer had said, the gate was closing.

Beaumont swerved to avoid a large growler, an ice floe large enough to smash in the gunwale if they struck it, then
he was swerving in the opposite direction to avoid a second one, using the
launch like a powerboat. It was only a matter of time before they hit one of them, but the stern light of the
Elroy
was a little larger, was coming closer. When he glanced
to starboard again he was surprised: they had moved past the end of the ghost berg, were speeding well beyond it.

'More power!' Papanin fumed. 'Overtake her!'

Tuchevsky said nothing. He was no longer in command of
his own ship. Beyond the starboard window the huge iceberg reared up, towered over them, and for the first time
Tuchevsky noticed the arched openings at her waterline.

Behind the ice cliff the Carley float had left the tunnel, had emerged into the dark lake beyond, was drifting round the edge, bumping up against the ice, covered with frost which
had descended on it inside the tunnel. It caught a spur of
ice and hovered. Above it the eroded ice tower sheered up,
the tower which held up the overhang.

Close to exhaustion, Beaumont missed the floe, but the floe didn't miss the launch. The prow struck the ice spar floating
underwater, leapt into the air, and the launch soared over
it. As they went up Beaumont's heart stopped - the screw
was going to catch the ice, would be buckled, maybe even torn out of the craft. The launch continued its arc, the spar
cracked under the pressure, went down as the screw flew
over it intact and thrashed back into the sea. Behind the ice cliff the floating mine detonated.

The ice tower holding up the overhang began to collapse.
The honeycombed pillar collapsed slowly, disintegrating chunk by chunk, dropping great masses of ice into the lake
below, then it sagged, settled, broke. And when it broke the
enormous weight of ice above it came down, falling three
hundred feet, shattering into thousands of pieces at the edge
of the lake, sending an avalanche of ice over the brink. The
tower was gone, the vast overhang above was gone, all sup
port which had helped to hold up the ice cliff was gone. The ice cliff itself started to come down and one of nature's most
terrifying spectacles unfolded.

The cliff fell inwards - away from the
Revolution -
and the
sight from the bridge of the Russian ship stunned the men
aboard. The entire cliff, which a moment earlier had
climbed sheer above them, fell backwards. For a moment Papanin could hardly believe his eyes, then he saw the captain's petrified expression. 'It's a ghost berg . ..' The continuing roar of its crash was still resounding when Tuchevsky took a grip on himself, turning on the tannoy
system which would relay his message throughout the ship,
'There is no cause for alarm ... no cause for alarm . . .'

He was wrong, and Beaumont who knew Iceberg Alley as
well as any man alive could have told him how terribly
wrong he was. The tremendous spectacle the Russian had witnessed was a mere prelude to what was coming.

'The damned thing fell the wrong way!' Grayson
shouted. 'It fell backwards . . .'

'Hang on!' Beaumont yelled.

The water was turbulent now, swelling with waves the
iceberg had caused as it vibrated at the waterline. This
didn't worry Beaumont: it was the tidal wave which haunted him as he desperately tried to coax more speed
out of the roaring engine, the tidal wave which would come
sweeping up behind them when the major catastrophe
broke. If they didn't reach the ship in time they'd be over
whelmed.

The
Revolution
was still on course, moving past the
wrecked berg, when the giant lost its equilibrium. The cliff which had reared up at one end of the berg was now gone, spread out over a vast area, so the immense platform which
was left - half a mile long - began to turn turtle. The cliff
which had stood above its surface had seemed vast, but this
was nothing compared with the bulk
which lurked beneath
its surface, and this submerged cliff now came up out of the
sea like some primeval upheaval when the very surface of the earth is transformed, dripping huge cascades of water
which poured off it like a Niagara.

The sea itself began to boil, to churn as it felt what was
coming up from the depths. Great dripping cliffs of ice began
to tower, mounting high above the bridge of the
Revolution
where Papanin and Tuchevsky stared in horror. The
Niagara of sea flooded down on the vessel. Chunks of ice
larger than houses crashed down on the hull, tore away
rails, left them like jagged rows of teeth. And still the berg continued to revolve, tens of millions of tons of ice on the move, mounting up as the berg continued turning its mass
through a hundred and eighty degrees.

'God! It's like the earth coming up from the sea bottom!'

Grayson was staggered by the sight as the launch sped
closer to the
Elroy
and Beaumont glanced back, glanced back only once and then concentrated his whole mind on
reaching the
Elroy.
The tidal wave would be coming any
second now. They had to reach the ship in time. Behind
them the ghost berg overturned.

It swivelled, loomed above the
Revolution,
then millions of
tons of ice descended, came down like the fall of an Alp. On
the bridge of the Russian ship they saw it as an enormous
shadow, a revolving shadow. Papanin was still on the bridge
when the shadow struck, dropping a solid ice wall on top of
the radar dome. The dome deflated, disappeared, the bridge
was levelled to the deck, the deck was submerged. The bows
went down, straight down, and the stern tilted up as though
turning over an invisible fulcrum.

The stern went on climbing at an acute angle until it was
vertical with the screws still spinning like a helicopter's rotors. Two-thirds of the ship had vanished, buried under
the falling cliff, but the stern paused with the screws turning
more slowly as the power died. Grayson saw it hovering, like a ship about to plunge to the bottom, although the rest of the ship had already gone. Then another arm of the berg
came down on it, hammered it down with one gigantic blow
which drove it nine thousand feet to the bed of the Arctic. Then the wave came.

'Jump!' Beaumont shouted.

The launch had passed the
Elroy's
stern, throttled back,
had drawn amidships and bumped the hull as Beaumont
tried to keep pace with the slow-moving vessel. Schmidt had
seen them coming a long way off, had reduced speed even
before the destruction of the
Revolution.
Men peered over the
rails above them, pointing to rope ladders slung over the
ship's side. 'Jump!' Beaumont shouted again.

Langer grasped a dangling ladder, started climbing it
while Grayson grabbed another swaying rope. Beaumont
waited by the wheel, keeping the launch alongside the mov
ing hull, and beyond the
Elroy's
stern the ocean was wild,
turned in seconds from a milk-calm sea into a raging tumult.
A fresh ladder thrown with skill by DaSilva slapped against
Beaumont's chest. He let go of the wheel, grasped the
ladder, felt the launch moving away under him, rammed his
boots into swaying rungs. Above him by the rail DaSilva
was screaming at him to hurry.

The tidal wave which was coming, about to pass the
stern, was already twenty feet high and climbing every
second. And it was composed not only of water - on its
passage down the channel it had gathered up a collection of
huge ice floes, floes which toppled at its crest, great rams of
ice which could crush a man with one glancing blow. Langer
was over the rail, followed by Grayson, when DaSilva
shouted his last warning, knowing it was too late to do any
thing for the doomed man hanging from the side.

Halfway up the ladder Beaumont looked towards the
stern, saw a foaming wall of green climbing above his head,
saw the nose of a huge growler projecting through the froth.
He was going to be mashed to a pulp, swept off the hull. The
tidal wave hoisted the stern, lifted it high with an awful
violence, and the bows went down. Beaumont clenched his
gloved fingers round the rope, buried his elbows hard into
his sides, squeezed his head between his forearms as he felt
the stern going up like a lift.

An inundation of freezing water fell on him, a great weight
pressing down on his shoulders, trying to rip him loose from
the ladder. There was a roaring in his ears and then some
thing slammed with immense force against the hull beside
him. He shuddered with the impact, felt ice splinters shower
against his face like a thousand tiny knives. The force of the
water swept the ladder sideways, whipped him towards the
bows where the launch had just been hurled and broken
open.

Beaumont was frozen, the breath he held in his lungs
bursting, petrified by the floe which had smashed so close to
him, sodden with sea, scraped and swung up almost to the rail by the sway of the rope ladder. The roaring in his ears increased, he felt his strength going, his grip on the ladder
weakening as the sea tugged and tore at him. Then the
bows climbed and the ladder was swinging back in the
other direction, banging his body brutally against the hull.
Only extreme fear, a spark of self-survival, kept him con
scious, aware that his numbed hands were still locked round
the ladder. Then the sea dropped away and he felt himself
falling, turning over and over.
It's your mind, you're still on the
bloody ladder . . .

A long way off an American voice was shouting, shouting
again and again. 'Hold on! We're hauling you up! Hold
on!' Then he hit something very hard and hands were paw
ing him, fiddling with his hands, trying to unlock the fingers
still clamped round the rope. He opened his eyes and saw a
broken mast silhouetted against a moonlit sky, a mast whipping backwards and forwards. Something fell from it, came
whirling down towards Beaumont's face and hit the deck with a horrible thud only two yards away. The lookout had
fallen. Beaumont thought he was imagining things but
there was a dead American seaman on the deck two yards away, his skull crushed in.