‘Cease firing,’ MacKail said.
There were smiles all round as tension flowed out of the men. They cracked jokes now, silly jokes… anything that came into their heads just had to be said. They went up to MacKail and shook his hand, slapped him on the back.
Only MacKail himself seemed to be unmoved. He blew out his cheeks rapidly and said, ‘That’s enough celebrating for now. We stand by to pick up survivors. Commander, they’re badly damaged but they’re still running and at this speed we won’t close ’em before they burn themselves out. And they’re holding a course due south, straight as a die. So?’
Shaw was frowning, puzzled. He said, ‘Let’s hang on a moment while we get those survivors aboard. Fleck and Schillenhorst might be among them. I don’t believe she’s going to stop, short of us firing again and landing one in her engine-room… and I’d much rather you didn’t do that.’
MacKail put his hands on his hips and glared, but a smile lurked around the corners of his mouth. ‘Limey!’ he said witheringly. ‘Thought you wanted to take her back to the States on a plate?’
‘Yes, but she’s not worth it now. We must have got a direct hit in her control room — which I suppose washes out Schillenhorst, too, really. Anyway, it isn’t that.’
‘Then what in heck is it?’
Shaw said slowly, ‘Sheer sentiment in a way. Oh, I know men in my job aren’t supposed to bother about such things, but… there’s someone aboard the Moehne who’s told his crew to get to hell out and is working out a kind of salvation for himself. That’s my guess, anyway. Lindrath… and couldn’t we just leave him to it?’
‘Huh? Look, Commander, with all due respect, the old guy must be a nut. We’re not all that far off the ice.’
‘That,’ Shaw said, ‘is exactly what I mean.’
MacKail gave him a look, then turned away. He hunched his shoulders and glared out ahead but he didn’t say anything more. Shaw grinned to himself. And the North Dakota, after stopping to pick up the shivering survivors, which they did in double-quick time, acquiring Nosey Hanson in the process, raced on again. She didn’t close the flaming, smoking Moehne by more than perhaps a couple of cables’ lengths thereafter. During that time reports were coming through from Canaveral. Warmaster, it seemed, had been a complete success. There had been a few anxious moments when some radio interference with her control procedure had been noted, but she had passed successfully out of the earth’s atmosphere and had discharged her load into the Pacific, dead on target. There was still no mention of her name, her cargo, or her potential; no details would be released even now and the reports were in fact prosaic. But to the men of the North Dakota those radio messages were deliverance from a terrible fear, a fear no less terrible because they hadn’t been fully briefed.
At 1238 hours MacKail, who had been looking out ahead through binoculars, suddenly roared, ‘All engines stop!’
As the telegraphs went over Shaw jumped for the fore part of the bridge. Staring ahead he saw the Moehne give a convulsive lurch to starboard and then right herself. In the next second her bows rode high, as if the ship were climbing. She held the pose for a moment, then her bows dipped and dropped sharply, finally. The distant crunch and the scream of distorted, tearing steel swept back over the water to the listeners aboard the cruiser.
MacKail said laconically, ‘Ice. Hit at darn near thirty-three knots. Must have ripped the bottom out of her. I guess the flooding’ll take care of her reactor, now. She hasn’t long to go.’ He half turned. ‘What you expected, isn’t it?’
Shaw nodded. ‘Lindrath knew this part of the world, probably better than any man living. This was what he wanted.’
The North Dakota moved onward, under her own momentum now, her engines still. MacKail took her as near as he dared, then checked her way with his engines moving astern. He said, ‘Nothing we can do, Commander. There’s only Lindrath left alive. We know that from the survivors’ reports.’
‘Yes…’
They were watching through glasses now. Shaw saw a white-haired figure come slowly out on to the shattered, buckled bridge-wing of the Moehne, saw a hand lifted in salute against the backcloth of the fire and the smoke for’ard. Then, just two seconds later, there was a long, tearing noise, a sound of death and total destruction — the death of a ship. The Moehne seemed to fold inward upon herself, her remaining mast collapsing and the bridge super-structure appearing to curl itself like paper around the Master. The noise of her death-agonies still came echoing across the wastes as the surrounding ice appeared to lift along her sides, opening to receive her. There was a final red glare and a long hiss as the fires were doused by the water, steam rose into the air briefly, and then, slowly at first and then faster, the Moehne disappeared beneath the ice-field.
Shaw found that his palms were sweating and he was trembling. Old Lindrath, at all events, had followed the tradition of the sea in his own way…
MacKail said crisply, ‘All engines ahead two thirds, left fifteen degrees rudder. Let’s get the hell out of here.’
‘Moscow,’ Pullman said some days later, ‘will know all about the test by now, of course, so will the other outfit. And so what?’ He chuckled. ‘So ends a dream of conquest — two dreams of conquest, I reckon! The Russians are going to be God-almighty sick at being scooped after all.’ He looked up. ‘People will say that bunch were crazy — but they could have pulled it off. We know that now… because they damn near did! I’d say you did pretty well, you and MacKail between you.’
Shaw shrugged that off. ‘MacKail was the boy — not me. He had the whole weight. I wouldn’t have wanted his job.’ He added, ‘Sorry we couldn’t preserve the ship and those two so-and-so’s, sir.’
‘Oh, don’t worry, son. We’ll get over that! We’ve got Hanson and Cassidy and some others, and they’re singing like birds.’
‘What about the come-backs?’
‘Internationally? Won’t be any. They transmitted — and technically we didn’t sink the Moehne, did we?’
Shaw grinned. ‘Technically, no! Thanks to Lindrath…’
Pullman nodded and twitched his eyebrows. He gave an almost unconscious sigh. ‘Well, he was a brave old guy, whatever he’d been mixed up in till then.’
‘Yes, sir. He talked to me once about the traditions of the sea, the old traditions. I’d say he kept faith with them… they meant a lot to him, you know. He was, oddly perhaps in the circumstances, that rare thing — a genuinely honourable man. They were, of course, in his day. That’s why I didn’t want Captain MacKail to go in and take him in the end. Somehow I didn’t see old Lindrath in a prison cell.’
Pullman got to his feet and walked jerkily across to a cupboard. He brought out a bottle of Scotch. He said, ‘You know something? I guess you were dead right. Now, let’s have an off-the-record drop of the real stuff, Commander. I guess you’ve earned that!’ He added, ‘By the way, we’ve flushed a high-level bird or two already, never mind the Hanson-Cassidy bracket.… There’s going to be one very big shake-up in some very, very unexpected quarters, some of them not a hundred miles from here. A certain gentleman and his associates will be charged with treason. It’s not just this country, either. Certain South American governments are likely to open inquiries… and when they do, I judge dives like the Casa Pluma’ll just be peanuts.’ He poured some of the Scotch. ‘And away across the other side, I’m told, Gottlieb Hauser’s being given the works. The repercussions of all this continue!’