After the discoveries in the underground cavern, anything seemed possible.
The cavern was the first of their difficulties. It was obvious that they could not just close the hole in the ice and forget about it. There were at least three bodies in there, though the presence of a second woman was the cause of much speculation, not least that Bob Stark had imagined her. It was equally obvious that none of the divers who had gone down in fact had the experience to deal with the situation. The conditions could be expected to worsen in any case. The iceberg was picking up speed. The currents feeding the whirlpool would only be getting stronger, making it that much more dangerous.
When Yves Maille hove back into view, he was astonished that his lack of simple precautions should have had such repercussions. Truthfully, he told Richard later, he had gone off incommunicado on purpose. He found all the close proximity a little overpowering and longed to be away from the rest, with only the smallest group of men required for safety this far out on the ocean. He shrugged resignedly. He would be more careful in the future. And, in the meantime, if Bob would help, he would guarantee to bring the dead men out of the cave tomorrow. The dead men and Bob’s phantom woman.
It was a hard dive in difficult circumstances, but the Frenchman was as good as his word, a fact which went a long way towards rehabilitating him in the eyes of the crew and most especially in the eyes of the soldiers currently berthed aboard Kraken. By noon watch, just less than twenty-four hours after the arrival of the two ships, three sopping body bags were resting in Psyche’s cold store, awaiting offloading and official post-mortem examination in England as soon as possible.
Not all of Tom Snell’s men were on board Kraken. Dougie Dundas was still aboard Psyche, too ill to move and in imminent danger of joining the three in cold storage below. Asha Higgins, assisted by Kate Ross, toiled unceasingly over the comatose soldier. He was isolated, of course, in case whatever was killing him was contagious, but none of the medical books available to the two women described anything like his symptoms. One particular manifestation of his illness might correspond to one type of disease or other, but the whole pattern fitted nothing they could find out about. The bleeding round his gums might be the old-time sailor’s dreaded enemy scurvy; the sores around his mouth, on his tongue, throat and skin did seem like some sort of vitamin deficiency, but he showed no response at all to vitamin doses. And his increasing jaundice didn’t fit in, nor did his uncontrollable incontinence or his dramatic weight loss.
Exhaustive tests on various samples proved little more helpful. His blood was increasingly anaemic, but there was no organism there to cause it. His liver and bone marrow seemed to be failing but there was no sign of leukaemia. His vital bodily functions seemed to be closing down inevitably as his major organs failed one after the other. And all for no discernible reason. Pan Medic calls got them no useful advice; and although there were other ships in the area, some with doctors aboard, it proved impossible to get Dougie Dundas off or further help on. So Asha Higgins scratched her head with increasing sad perplexity and slowly tried to come to terms with the fact that she was going to lose this patient.
Time and again, as they surged eastwards with the storm winds battering along behind them, Tom Snell took the uncomfortable helicopter ride over from Psyche’s sister ship to be with his sergeant. Together, Tom and Asha went over and over the events in the ice cave, looking for clues, but there was none to be found. Tom went over it with Richard too as he wrote up the accident in Titan’s log, which doubled as Manhattan’s log. And Tom wrote his own reports for his superiors in London and beyond. But there was no clue to the dying sergeant’s ailment, for there was no way that any of them could even begin to imagine what he had done.
Asha had no X-ray machine, no scan of any kind, in fact, and short of an operation, nothing else was likely to reveal the fact that Dougie Dundas had a highly radioactive rough glass ball wedged in his digestive tract. Only a Geiger counter might have given a clue and, although Kate had brought one off Manhattan with the rest of her scientific equipment, neither of them thought to get it or to use it on their dying patient.
‘Any news of Sergeant Dundas?’ asked Richard at the opening of his first full captains’ meeting since turning the corner at Flemish Cap four days ago, the second day since the two new ships had joined. Tom shook his head. He looked tired, thought Richard grimly. So did they all — increasingly tired and depressed. They were making good progress. Both John and Yves had positive reports to contribute, he knew, but there was an air of gloom which seemed to be seeping rapidly out of Psyche in spite of anything they could do. It was too late to move the dead to another ship now. There was no question of moving poor Dundas at all. But Richard could think of no other answer to the situation. He would talk it over with Peter Walcott in private immediately after this meeting. The Guyanese captain was cheerful and open with a wide, welcoming smile which was always at the ready, but even this could not disguise the increasing wariness in his eyes and the deepening lines of strain around them. They all knew that Psyche had acquired a nickname. Everyone called her Psycho now, transforming her from a Greek maiden to a mad murderer. It was only half in jest. She was beginning to be viewed as a Brute, a Death Ship.
‘Right, then.’ Richard called the meeting to order. It was getting cramped in his day room these days, but there was just space for the eight of them round the desk which had been augmented with a table from the dining salon. But the new arrangement still could not accommodate the current chart, so, in preparation for his part of the meeting, John Higgins was securing the big square of blue, white and sand-coloured paper to the wall. As he waited for his friend to finish and join them, Richard looked into the eight other varyingly weary pairs of eyes. Colin Ross’s clouded blue gaze was distant, his thoughts, no doubt, still up on the ice. Bob and Katya clearly hadn’t got over their adventure deep beneath it yet. Obviously Tom hadn’t either. He had only been allowed out of bed this morning. Peter Walcott was clearly worried, but Gendo Odate seemed more relaxed, as did Yves. The Frenchman had been quick to forgive himself for his absence when needed so badly and now even gave Richard the ghost of a wink, eliciting a weary grin in reply.
They were only one-third of the way, Richard thought. They had better get sorted out better than they were or the whole project would turn into a fiasco. A cold dry wind thundered up to gale force from the west. Titan shook in the grip of it, the whole of her massive length surged and jerked in an action most unlike anything a supertanker normally performed. The tea cups in front of the assembled men and women chimed, sliding in their saucers, struck by their silver spoons. John sat down at Richard’s right. They were ready.
‘First let me welcome Captains Walcott and Odate to the team,’ Richard began. ‘I do regret that your arrival should have been attended by such tragedy, gentlemen, but I’m certain that now you are in place and running at speed, we can look forward to a very quick crossing indeed. And, on the subject of propulsion, I’ll hand over to you, Bob.’
‘Placing Kraken and Psyche, as you say, has made an enormous difference almost at once.’ The tall American leant forward, frowning with the intensity of his thoughts. ‘It is just under forty-eight hours since they were secured to the ice and already our mean speed has doubled. I know both Yves and John have more to say on the reasons and the situation, but according to my current log, we are proceeding at more than thirteen knots, with every chance of continuing to do so at least until we begin to turn south. Fuel shouldn’t be a problem, we’re exactly on projected consumption in all ships, even though the engines and motors are having to do more work than we estimated. But it will be conditions further south which will really be testing. This was supposed to be the easy bit.’