‘I’ll go across to Psyche now, Captain Odate,’ he said, ‘and let you get settled in here. There will be a full meeting of all captains on Titan at sixteen hundred and it will last until Pour Out at eighteen hundred, when I hope I shall be able to buy you a drink.’
Captain Odate looked around the bridge but his eyes clearly took in everything beyond his command as welclass="underline" the glacial bay, the overhang, the cliff and the runoff, and the eight-pointed anchorage of two unbreakable cables tethering himself and his command immovably to the side of the iceberg.
‘Yes, thank you, Captain Mariner,’ he said. ‘You can most certainly buy me a drink. A whisky. A double whisky. Suntory, twelve-year-old, if you have it.’
Things started going wrong for Major Tom Snell, Royal Engineers, and his men as soon as they started trying to get Psyche secured in the second little bay. For a start the wind was freshening and although he was by no means a nautical man, Tom knew nasty-looking squall clouds when they started building themselves up all too close behind him in the west. Probably because of the wind, the Huey helicopter’s pilot had the devil of a job getting them down on the southward facing reef. On their first pass, the helicopter — in no way a thistle-down aircraft — was whirled right to the forward end of the bay, and the dazzled eyes of the officer were treated to the sight of a honeycomb of little caves which marched up from the waterline, the biggest of which presented him with a bright white cave mouth a metre and a half high, backed with a cavern of cobalt shadows. He thought no more of it as the helicopter jerked up into the air to speed back along the length of the ship to the outthrust of dry reef astern of her.
Once they were down, they leaped out of the trembling craft and began to unload their equipment only to find that the freshening wind was bringing an icy, stinging spindrift over the low crest from the nasty-looking surf behind. In a moment, everything they wore and carried was drenched. A moment more and their hands were becoming clumsy with numbness.
The gloomy, threatening atmosphere in the little bay could hardly have been more different from the bright blue seaside feeling which, after the mist had lifted, had filled the first bay on the north coast of Manhattan. But Tom and his men were soldiers. Atmosphere — weather conditions — meant nothing to them. Following orders and getting the job done, that was all that counted. And if conditions were deteriorating for them, so were they for the supertanker and the two captains in charge of her, Peter Walcott and Richard Mariner.
Tom was very keen not to let Richard Mariner down, for the tall, almost visionary captain had filled the hard-bitten, widely travelled soldier with a respect that bordered upon awe. And Tom had spent enough time in the desert hellholes of Africa, watching in helpless fury as the United Nations just failed to stop situation after situation sliding into war, to come as near as he could to praying that Richard could pull off this wild, wonderful project. For Mau, for the UN, and for all those poor hopeless people who would die if they failed.
It was fortunate that they had done the really dangerous digging, filling and blasting in the bright warmth of yesterday. All they had to do now was repeat the smoothly efficient operation they had just achieved with Kraken all over again with Psyche. But that was far more easily said than done. The wind for which Richard had been praying arrived half an hour too early and its very presence made the replay of Kraken’s flawless docking a nightmare for Psyche. For a start, it blew the thickening waterfall of meltwater down into the faces of the soldiers on the sloping, slippery beach. Then, no sooner had the two captains got Psyche into some sort of position and Richard warned Tom over the walkie-talkie to get ready with the forward line than a blustering gust took the supertanker so hard on her high superstructure and tall, unladen side that she had to sheer off. The infinitesimal effect of the wind force on something of her size and weight was puny but nevertheless sufficient to disturb the exact calculations going on in her bridge. And when the long-suffering captains got her back in position again, riding steadily, able to make allowance for the increasing squally bluster from behind, the wind took the first rocket and blew it halfway to Biscay anyway, far beyond the forecastle head of the mighty vessel in spite of the fact that it was riding so unnervingly close to them.
‘How did you manage to miss that, Sergeant Dundas?’ snarled Tom in bitter frustration. ‘I mean, it’s only half a kilometre long!’
‘Dunno, Major,’ answered the Scot phlegmatically. ‘Wind must’a took it like.’
‘Pull the line back in and set up another one. Aim aft of the Sampson posts this time, just in case.’
‘Yessir!’ answered Dundas, busily pulling the icy, soaking line in hand over hand with his two private soldier colleagues. He hesitated, then, ‘Ah, whit d’you mean aft o’ the Sampson posts, exactly, sir?’
By the time they got it set up properly again, Psyche had drifted off station and they were back to square one.
‘Coming in again, Tom,’ said Richard distantly over the walkie-talkie. And just as he did so, it began to rain in earnest.
The walkie-talkie squawked again and Tom put it to his face, expecting more instructions from Richard, but it was the helicopter pilot. ‘I’ve got to go, Major. This lot will blow me over into the sea otherwise.’
‘Now just you wait a minute … Dundas! I’m going back to the chopper for a minute. You fire again on Captain Mariner’s order. Behind those bloody great mast things halfway down Psyche’s deck. Understand?’
‘Yessir! Halfway down Psycho’s deck. Yessir!’
Tom set off at a slipping, staggering run across the sloping ice, past the second little team crouching shivering at the second anchorage point. ‘OK, men?’ he bellowed in passing and received a shivering thumbs-up. Normally that lack of soldierly propriety would have earned a reprimand. Not now. He ran out onto the foam-washed reef and kept his footing in spite of the push and suck of the ankle-deep foam. He half fell into the side of the helicopter and took out his considerable, mounting ire upon the pilot. ‘Now just what the hell are you talking about? You can’t leave us here, you nasty little man!’
‘Either you get aboard now or I do just that, Major. I’m sorry, but I’m not joking. I’ll be off the ice inside five minutes, either flying or floating, and I know which I’d prefer!’
‘We can’t leave until they have the lines aboard Psyche. It’d put the whole show behind by a day at least.’
‘Look, Major, I’m sorry, but I’ve got no choice. Get the survival equipment and the rubber dinghy out of the back just in case. I’ll be back for you the minute I can land here again.’
Tom reached in and tore the two big bundles free, then he fell out into the surf, dragged himself to his feet by an exercise of pure rage, and staggered ashore. It was not until he was crouching there, gasping for breath, that he realised the mouthful of foam he had choked on while trying to get back up had been absolutely fresh water. While he crouched there, licking his lips in wonderment, he felt the numbing buffeting of the wind on his back intensify and he knew that the helicopter was gone.
He took the survival equipment up to the very back of the beach and wedged it against the curve of wall where, in about half a metre, the steepening curve of beach took wing to become the soaring overhang of the roof. Then he turned and began to fight his way through the buffeting maelstrom of rain, saltless sea spray, runoff and wind to crouch beside Sergeant Dundas again.