" Maybe half a degree further north," replied the islander. " Thorshammer is ice-wise, Bruce. She'll get more benefit from the warmer water by keeping a shade further north. She'll also get clearer visibility. She wants to find us, remember." I ringed a new circle. " Fine," Sailhardy said.
" Three hundred degrees," I told Helen.
As she brought the machine round and steadied on course, I looked back.
"South," she said, without looking at me. " You always look south, don't you?"
The question took me aback. After her resort to abstruse weather jargon, I had been quite willing to treat her as a pair of competent hands only. Now she was slipping a curious psychological punch under my guard.
" This particular day the South has more meaning for me than usual," I said. I told her about Bouvet's weather, the glacier in the sea, and the danger. She listened in silence. I told her how the sea would freeze.
She asked one question only. " Does that mean that we all could be stranded on the ice?" " yes."
She turned swiftly to me. A quick burst of terror unalloyed terror-illuminated the strange eyes for a moment. Then she leant forward and touched the Island Cock. " Then 76
I'll go for your lucky bird, Captain Wetherby." He voice was husky with tension.
I pulled a package from my pocket. " Cigarette?" " I don't smoke." She swallowed hard.
Sailhardy pointed forward. " Whale."
She could not hide the relief in her voice at being among her professional pursuits. A tiny obelisk graced the sea to mark perhaps another whale-grave in the trackless waters.
" Blue Whale," she corrected him.
" All whale spouts look alike to me," I replied.
" They are not alike," she said, getting a grip on her voice. " The Blue Whale is the easiest to spot-the plume of condensation grows as its spout rises. A Fin Back's is tall and narrow. The Sperm Whale gives himself away every time-he shoots it out at an oblique angle.
" Would you like a picture of it?" she asked. She didn't wait for me to reply, but hurried on. Her eyes became animated, and for the first time since meeting her I felt aware of a personality behind the accomplished flier. " I've got a camera-two in fact. I begged them from the Japanese who were down at Ongul Island last season. There's a Fairchild K17C for the vertical and a Williamson F24 for the oblique." She started to dip towards the whale's spout. My words came automatically, and I regretted them as I spoke. " Keep course. Steady as she goes."
The eyes snuffed out like a lamp. " Steering three hundred degrees," she repeated tonelessly.
W e f l e w o n s t e a d i l y f o r t h e n e x t t w o h o u r s. H e l e n remained silent, completely withdrawn. Sailhardy and I exchanged technicalities, and when he went through to check the extra fuel we had loaded in drums aft, I fiddled with the radio. It was, however, as Pirow had said. All I could get was some jumble from the American base at McMurdo Sound.
After another twenty minutes' flying, we were on the fringe of the area where I thought I would find Thorshammer. We had overtaken part of the storm clouds, and I became anxious as I peered through the perspex, now clear, now obscured.
Sailhardy turned his head this way and that, searching. If
Thorshammer was to be seen, he would spot her.
" This is going to be very tricky," I said. " If we stay at this height, the odds are we'll miss Thorshammer. If we duck under the cloud cover, we lose our height advantage, and our ability to see her before she sees us."
" The orange and black will make this machine stand out like a sore thumb," said Sailhardy.
" What both of you have overlooked is Thorshammer's radar," remarked Helen.
" No," I said. " I've thought of nothing else since she left Tristan. But I'm not particularly worried: Thorshammer hasn't set about trailing us as I would have done. She's been quite open about it-by that, I mean she hasn't kept radio silence like our fleet. She is not to know we have an expert like Pirow aboard. If it weren't for the radio ' dead spot ', there'd have been no need to make this flight. We may find pretty soon that we're close enough to get a D/F bearing on her. Moreover, she doesn't know we have a helicopter. Mikklesen never saw one, and Thorshammer left Tristan in too much of a hurry to discuss things with Mikklesen-in fact, we don't know that she even anchored at the island."
" She'll still be using her radar-she'd be crazy if she didn't," replied Helen.
" Very soon I'm going to ask you to take us right down to sea-level, and I'm going to try and get a D/F bearing on Thorshammer," I replied. " Radar will pick up nothing at zero feet, as you well know, so we won't be detected. We're almost at the area where I think we'll find her. Thorshammer certainly won't be expecting us to come looking for her."
" Bruce!" exclaimed Sailhardy. " A ship! Bearing green three-oh!"
" Get her down!" I rapped out. " Get her down to sealevel, quick !" I saw nothing, and by the time I had tried to focus on the spot Sailhardy indicated, the machine was dropping like a lift."I saw nothing," said Helen.
I knew Sailhardy's eyesight. " How far was she, do you reckon?"
" I could see forty miles on a day like this," he replied. " I caught the flash."
" Steer thirty degrees," I told Helen. " I'm going to try and get a bearing on her."
The sea came up to meet the helicopter. We skimmed the wave-tops. At that minimum height, the huge swells were no longer ironed out, as a few minutes before. Helen's eyes took on their colour, a pale turquoise, flecked with deep ginger. It was hopeless trying to locate the destroyer by radio. Perhaps Pirow could have made some sense out of the jumble that jarred my ears, but I could not even identify Thors- hammer. After five minutes I gave it up and went up forward to the pilot's seat. Sailhardy was craning to see. I reckoned, however, that our height now was no more than that of an average crow's-nest, and although the day was clear below the broken cloud, the horizon was hazy with the aftermath of the storm, which would cut even Sailhardy's keen eyesight to about ten miles.
" I think there must be some sort of solar disturbance interfering with the radar as well as the Bouvet ' dead spot '," I said. " That means Thorshammer's radar is pretty useless, anyway."
" We'll be up on her in less than half an hour, if we keep this course," said Helen. " Providing it was Thorshammer Sailhardy saw."
" It was a ship," asserted the islander.
" I simply must know her course," I said. " There's only one way, under these conditions, and that is to observe Thorshammer."
"Ice right ahead," said Sailhardy.
Helen nodded agreement. " Sea clutter. Nothing very big. But some quite sizeable growlers."
Even from our low altitude, I could see the long line of broken pack-ice strung out in the wake of the storm, marching in orderly columns as the gale thrust them along.
" Look," I said. " That's how we'll observe Thorshammer."
" What do you mean?" Sailhardy asked.
The simplicity of the idea made me laugh. " We'll creep along in the helicopter until we're reasonably close to Thors- hammer," I replied. " Then we'll land on one of those big growlers-on the side away from Thorshammer. We can sit and watch her pass."
Helen bit her lip. " It won't work, Captain Wetherby. As close as that, Thorshammer can't fail to pick us up by radar." I shook my head. " It doesn't need Pirow to tell me that even under favourable conditions it is very difficult to get a radar echo from an iceberg, particularly if they're weathered smooth like these. The iceberg itself won't even show on the screen, let alone us."
She looked at me, and I was astonished to see the anguish in her eyes. " No. I'm sure Thorshammer…" Sailhardy looked surprised at her reaction. " It's nothing to land on ice, ma'am, and after the way you rescued us…" She turned so abruptly to the controls that for a moment