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.