They sat for a long time in silence, listening to the engines’ drone. And for the first time in some hours, Cain tried to listen to himself. But despite his best efforts, his mind dragged him back to EXIT.
Vanqua couldn’t let them float free.
They’d be attacked.
But how?
And when?
53
DEAD WEIGHT
The chopper never came. They cleared the storm, descended. Cain removed the oxygen gear, found a bunk and tried to sleep.
Lulled by the rolling, he attempted to comfort himself by recalling women he’d known. The gorgeous Rehana. The bony Jojo. The seductive Eve. The remote but explosive Jane. And the warm and loving Pat. Comfort it was not. Three dead. One gone. Only Hunt remained, bent and seasick, two bunks along — his sister who, beside him in the wilderness, had placed his hand between her breasts.
Two crewmen passed the door and soon augmented the drone of the engines with their snores.
He thought no more, slept for hours.
Hunt woke him. ‘We’re over the shelf.’
There was a do-it-yourself breakfast on the central table in the saloon — fruit bowl, tureen of steaming porridge, packets of cereal and hot toast.
They now sailed like a stabilised cruise ship in thicker, less turbulent air. Through the sloping windows he saw, no more than a 1000 feet below, fast ice to the horizon. Its brightness filled the cabin with glare. This was the frontier of the continent, a vast sheet that, further out to sea, would calve into tabular bergs. Reflected on the underside of distant clouds a whitish light called iceblink signified that pack ice extended far beyond this petrified terrain.
There were four people around the table. The recovered Hunt, Flynn, the engineer and the pope, resting back in his chair.
Flynn smiled at him tiredly. ‘Sleep well?’
He nodded.
‘We’ve seen no other aircraft.’
‘So everything okay?’
The chief shrugged. ‘Boyle’s law could get us yet. We’re at the end of our weight/buoyancy trade-off. And you three are extra payload. May have to drop you out to stay afloat.’
‘But the weather’s still within limits,’ Flynn said, ‘and we’ll dock with the ship in 40 minutes. Then we’ll be regassed and over water.’
‘And at the mercy of the cyclones that sweep around these latitudes,’ the chief dourly added.
Flynn leaned close to Cain, murmured, ‘Would the Holy Father care for an apple?’
He wondered why old people were treated as objects — hardly ever addressed directly. It seemed even popes weren’t immune. ‘Why not ask him?’
‘Your Holiness?’
The pope didn’t move.
Flynn plucked at his sleeve but the old man just stared through the windows.
Cain leaned forward. ‘John?’
The eyes behind the glare glasses hadn’t moved.
Flynn respectfully touched his arm again.
The pope slid sideways.
‘Oh no.’ Hunt got up, felt his neck, waited a moment. ‘Nothing. He was just speaking to us.’
Flynn was appalled. ‘Terrible. That this should happen here. On my ship. Dear God, my mother will never forgive me.’
Hunt removed the old man’s glasses, closed his eyes.
Cain and the engineer carried the body upstairs and laid him on a bunk. When the other had gone, he squatted beside his teacher and sobbed. Then he took the priest’s manuscript from his pack, went to the small galley, and hid it behind saucepans in the locker under the stove.
54
SNARE
The Russian icebreaker looked big — at least 10,000 tonnes — and badly maintained, its red hull mottled by rust. The dark water at its stern was being closed by moving ice. The eastern drift could move 80 kilometres a day. There were twin hangars behind the ship’s flight deck and enclosed wings projected from the bridge. The raised hydraulic tower abaft the swept-back side-by-side funnels had a glassed-in pod at the top that could have been used for spotting ice leads, although the ship’s choppers would be its main scouts. Above the pod, a windsock bellied out. Then a wisp of low cloud obscured the view.
The airship did two more circuits. Cain and Hunt watched from the saloon.
Their next glimpse was closer. They could see the ship’s raked bow smashing through pack ice that reared each side of the hull, could see the jagged white clumps fall back and roll to expose fretted, algae-stained bases.
‘Thick ice,’ Hunt said. ‘They must have huge shaft horsepower. I thought they’d be hove-to.’
‘Could have to sail into the wind to stop the airship fouling the ship. Why don’t we get up front? Be a once-in-a-lifetime sight.’
It was controlled-panic mode in the gondola. Flynn and Duckworth’s leisurely flying style had gone. The ship’s comms leaked from their cans. ‘Baby, bridge. Flight quarters. Green deck. Wind 15 knots, speed three for approach and standing by.’
Flynn acknowledged. ‘Ready and inbound on final.’
Duckworth called altitude readings as they closed the stern, drifting toward the tower so slowly they seemed to be hovering against the wind. As they nosed down, the ducted props swivelled on their outriggers. Sailors scrambled for a steel cable dropped to the deck and secured it to a cable hanging from the mast. A man in the tower-top pod directed operations as Flynn eased the nose of his craft back just above the stern.
The cable was winched in and they were drawn toward the top of the mast. The nose dipped unpleasantly once, then mated with the cup. The tethered craft shuddered like an animal trying to get free as they hovered above the chopper pad, fretfully swinging.
Flynn removed his headset, shook hands with Duckworth, elated. ‘Made it. Everyone not on station’s invited on board for sausage rolls and a hot toddy. Sorry, Ducky. You and keels stay on duty.’
Cain had never been winched to the deck of a moving ship. The damn thing wouldn’t stay still. For long moments he dangled above ice rocks that rasped along the hull. As the envelope above him veered and swung him back over the flight deck, the cable dropped him lower with a bounce and a sailor signed him to let go.
He fell to his knees in the centre of the landing circle on a pile of canvas bags that gave as if filled with sand. Red-clad, red-helmeted crewmen beckoned him from a hatch but he waited for Hunt to come down. As she dropped he went to help her up. The insides of his nostrils were freezing but the air was breathable again.
They stood on throbbing deck plates and stared past ice-encrusted railings at endless pack ice.
She slapped frost off her parka. ‘That hot toddy sounds good.’
‘Let’s do it.’
They entered a corridor smelling of fuel oil that ran beside one hangar. Bright-painted spares and tools were clipped to its cream metal walls. As they padded on black rubber beneath a maze of wiring and pipes they heard the hull drum as ice scraped and clanged along the sides. The crew waved them on. He suspected they only spoke Russian.
Through a clipped-back door on the left he got a glimpse inside the hangar. Wheeled cabinets with long red drawers, high shelves with lashed cases, hoses on reels…
… All mere background to the shock of the chopper.
Black and orange stripes!
The man behind must have seen his reaction.
Cain’s head exploded with pain as he was coshed.
55
HIGH DIVE
It looked like the captain’s stateroom, was probably high on the deckhouse below the bridge. The curtains of the two small windows were drawn back but it was still a gloomy space — dirty cream paint, dark built-in cabinets, scratched brown-leather chairs, a dartboard on one wall. Cain found it hard to see and the pain between his eyes was splitting his head.