I thought the machine would hit the top of the next swell. She was breathing quickly. " I'll land anywhere, but… but…"
I could not fathom her. Her fear of putting the helicopter down on a stable platform like a small iceberg offered no problems for a flier of her proved competence. I dismissed the idea that somehow her reluctance might tie in with my suspicions about her father. How privy was she to whatever his schemes were? She had said nothing that would have revealed that she knew anything either of Pirow's background.
" If you're afraid…" I started.
The strange eyes were alive with inner pain. " I'm not afraid of landing." She pulled herself together, but I could see the perspiration along the line of the leather helmet. She swallowed hard. " Which growler?" I glanced at Sailhardy. He shrugged at her agitation. " Not yet, eh, Bruce?"
" Ten minutes more?" I asked him, and he nodded.
Helen pulled herself upright in her seat. She neither spoke nor looked at us. Her face was drawn and white. She was so tense that I wondered if I should not call the whole thing off. Could she make a landing in the state of nerves she obviously was in? The stakes were too big to turn back now.
The sea clutter thickened as we flew on. I admired Helen's skill as she dodged between the growlers, keeping the machine just above the waves. Some of the bigger pieces of ice towered twenty to thirty feet above us as we passed. I saw the one I wanted. It was tabular, but there was a small plateau sloping slightly towards us, while the top was as straight as a ruler. The helicopter could land on the shelf and Sailhardy and I would plot the destroyer's course from the summit.
I pointed. " There!"
Helen flew straight on, almost as if she had not heard.
We swept along towards the ice now looming close. The plateau was steeper than I had anticipated. The perspiration splashed from her forehead on to her leather flying jacket. She pulled the controls. We rose slightly and checked. Then, like a fly clinging to a wall, we hung on the little plateau.
" Magnificent!" I said. I stopped short at the sight of her face. It was alive with terror. Her eyes were riveted on the ice. Her hands were shaking almost out of control as she cut the throttles. The engine died.
" Ma'am!" exclaimed Sailhardy. " What it it, ma'am?" I sensed, rather than felt, a new danger. The helicopter started to slide backwards towards the sea about twenty feet below. Helen sat transfixed.
" Get the engine going!" I shouted. She just sat, staring. I swung round to Sailhardy. " Quick! You grab one wheel and I'll get the other. The two of us can hold her!"
We threw ourselves out of the cockpit and grabbed the undercarriage. The machine was lighter than I thought. Heels rammed against the ice, Sailhardy and I kept the machine on the plateau.
" Miss Upton!" I shouted. " For God's sake!"
" What the hell is she up to?" ask Sailhardy.
" She's scared stiff," I said. " What at, I wouldn't know. Can you hold this machine by yourself?"
I eased my grip tentatively, but the helicopter started to slew round. It would need both of us to keep her where she was.
" Miss Upton!" I yelled, propping the strut against my shoulder and half kneeling, half crouching to see past the cabin door swinging in the wind.
" Try using her Christian name," breathed Sailhardy heavily. " It may make her snap out of it."
" Helen!" I called. " Helen!"
I had forgotten for the moment that she could not get out of her seat quickly. In perhaps three minutes she appeared at the doorway. She looked round her like a sleepwalker. She scarcely seemed to notice Sailhardy and me. Her eyes, full of agony, had taken on the green-blue hue of the ice.
" Helen!" I said sharply. " Pull yourself together. There's no danger."
She looked at me without speaking. " Pull yourself together," I repeated. " Sailhardy and I can hold her here quite easily. Get my glasses and go up to the summit. Take a compass and give me four or five bearings. Thorshammer must be pretty close."
She went inside like an automaton and returned, my glasses dangling loosely from a strap at her wrist. She looked down at the ice. Her face was deathly.
" Come on!" I said. " It's a bit cold, but there's nothing to worry about."
She stumbled awkwardly, hesitated, and threw herself down on the ice. She landed on her knees. She sagged forward and lay face downwards, convulsive sobs shaking her. She slid slowly toward me. I caught her against the wheel.
" Helen!" I repeated. " What on earth…" She lay with her head resting on the ice. " It isn't on earth, that's the whole trouble," she said brokenly. " You made me land on ice-on ice, do you hear!"
" Ice-what has ice got to do with it?"
She still did not lift her head. " I've got a bullet-a German bullet-in my hip. I told you."
" You said bullet," I replied. " But what a German bullet has to do with your crack-up when you see ice, I wouldn't know."
" For three days I lay in a ditch with ice and snow, with a German bullet in my hip," she got out. " He died, but I lived. I wish to God I had died too!"
" Listen," I said. " You're completely broken up, and it's something to do with ice and a German bullet. It'll keep. Meanwhile, get up there to the summit of the iceberg and get a couple of bearings on Thorshammer." She sat up. Her face was ghastly. She looked in turn at Sailhardy and me. " Everything in your world is straightforward, uncomplicated. If neither of you understands, I still have got to say it. Even my father doesn't know about the bullet-and never will. To him I am the brilliant flier, to be depended on in any circumstances. He didn't hesitate to send me off in the storm to find you. He knew I would find you. I did. I…"
" What is it about the ice?" I asked gently. Despite its agony, the face was, in its own way, without any make-up, rather beautiful in its animation. There was a touch of colour under the right cheekbone where it had rested on the ice. I had to try and get her to go up and observe Thors- hammer.
" When the Germans invaded Norway, my brother and I were with my father in Stockholm, where he was busy on his experiments with metals-the time when his face was affected," she said, gradually getting a grip on her voice. " We set off in two parties. My brother and I were in one, and my father in the other, with some Norwegians who were taking us to Trondheim. The British ships were still there. Our party was intercepted by a Nazi ski patrol. It was getting dark. I remember racing down a long slope, the two of us.
There was a burst of fire from an automatic pistol. We were 82 both hit, I in the hip and he, in the chest. It took two days for him to die. We huddled together in a ditch in the ice and snow as the life ran out of him. I was conscious only now and then. Five days later I woke in a Norwegian house. There was gangrene in my hip. The doctor fought for weeks to save me. When I was well enough, they smuggled me out to England. The day before I arrived my mother was killed in an air raid."
A nerve twitched in her face. She sat up and looked at me. " I am terrified of the ice."
" Then what are you doing in the Antarctic-there is no need…"
She cut me short. " There is every need. Why do you think I fly a helicopter in these surroundings when I could lead a pleasant, easy life in London? My father's schemes give me the outlet-the outlet I need to challenge the ice. It is something innate-physical, as well as in my mind. I must master the ice. I am the only woman pilot in Antarctica. I've flown over ice, hovered over it, gradually got closer and closer, and each time it was a living hell, but a conquest. I was winning out-until now. I wasn't ready. I've never had the courage to land on it."
The incline of the ice shelf brought her against me.
With my free hand I picked up the binoculars and handed them to her. " Here's another chapter of that challenge." For a moment I thought she would draw back. Then she rose on her haunches. " It did not escape me, the way you looked at my hands." She smiled faintly. " Other things have been in abeyance, you see, while I fought it out with my jailer." She looked about here, as if seeing things for the first time. " No wonder my father finds it easy to include me in his schemes!"