As the cliffs of the channel, a grey curtain of unsubstantial rock, vanished and the sea opened out again, he felt a huge, shaking relief, and punched in the coordinates the Firefox was to fly. Automatically, the aircraft swung onto its new course and, slowly, he eased off the throttles, claiming manual control of the aircraft again, desperate to halt the madness of his fuel consumption.
As the aircraft slowed to a sub-sonic speed, like the return of sanity after a fever, Gant realised why no missiles had been launched in his wake. Any missile launched at a target at his height might well have simply driven itself into the opposite cliff, without ever aligning itself on a course to pursue him.
Now he was flying on a north-westerly course, a course which would eventually, long after his fuel ran out, take him into the polar ice-pack at a point between Spitzbergen and Franz Josef Land. Long before he reached it, he would be dead. The bitter grey sea flowed beneath him like a carpet, looking almost solid. The sky above him was pale blue, deceptively empty.
The loneliness ate at him, ravenous. He shivered. The 'Deaf Aid' gave him no comfort. It remained silent. He began to wonder whether it worked. He began to wonder whether there was something, somebody, up ahead of him, waiting to refuel the Firefox. The screen was empty, the sky above empty, the sea devoid of vessels. The Firefox moved on, over a flowing, grey desert, eating the last reserves of its fuel.
The report from the Elint ship, followed by the confirmatory information from Matochkin Shar had angered the First Secrtary. It was suddenly as if he had accepted Vladimirov's doubts and precautions purely in the nature of a academic exercise; now he knew that they had been necessary, that Gant had not been destroyed in the explosion of the Badger.
It was perhaps the fact that he had been taken in that caused him to be so furiously angry that he turned on Vladimirov, and berated him, in a voice high, gasping with anger, for not having destroyed the Mig-31.
When his anger had subsided, and he had returned shaking and silent to his chair before the Arctic map on the circular table, Vladimirov at last spoke. His voice was subdued, chastened. He had been badly frightened by the outburst of the First Secretary. Vladimirov now knew he was playing with his own future, professional and personal. Gant had to die. It was as simple, and as difficult, as that.
He moved swiftly now, without fuss, without consultation with the First Secretary or with Marshal Kutuzov; the former appeared to have relapsed into silence, and the latter, the old airman, appeared embarrassed and shaken by the politician's outburst against a military man trying to attain the near-impossible.
Vladimirov briefly studied the map on the table's glowing surface. If Grant's course had been accurately charted after he left Novaya Zemlya, then he was heading, though he could not yet know it, directly towards the missile-cruiser, the Riga, and her two attendant hunter-killer submarines. Out of that fact, if it was a fact, he could manufacture another trap.
Swiftly, he ordered search planes into the area of permanent pack towards which Gant was heading to make a possible landfall. It was possible to stop Gant. His finger unconsciously tapped the map at the point which registered as the present location of the Riga. At that moment, her two attendant protectors, the missile-carrying, diesel-powered 'F' class anti-submarine submarines, were still submerged. Because of the importance of their role in protecting the missile-cruiser, they had been adapted to carry sub-surface-to-air missiles, to supplement the hideous fire-power of the Riga against aerial attack.
'Instruct the Riga to hold her present position,' he called out, 'and inform her two escorts to surface immediately.'
'Sir,' the code-operator replied, confirming the order.
'Send a general alert to all ships of the Red Banner Fleet,' he said. 'Prepare them for an alteration of Gant's suspected course. Give them that course.'
'Sir.'
'What is the prediction on Gant's fuel supply?' he said.
Another voice answered him promptly. 'The computer predicts less than two hundred miles left, sir.'
'How accurate is that forecast?'
'An error factor of thirty per cent, sir — no more.'
This meant that Gant might have fuel for another hundred and forty miles, or for nearly three hundred. Vladimirov rubbed his chin. Even the most generous estimate would leave him well short of the polar-pack. He ignored the inference, behaving as Buckholz's advisers had predicted. Vladimirov, since the days of his flying, had become a cautious man, unimaginative: daring by the standards of the Soviet high command, in reality safe, unimaginative. He could not make the mental jump required. If Gant's fuel would not last him to the pack, then the inference was that he would crash into the sea. There could not be another answer. He checked.
'Any unidentified aerial activity in the area?'
'None, sir. Still clear.'
'Very well.' He returned to his contemplation of the map. Gant would not take the aircraft up, not now, without fuel to make use of its speed. Therefore, as he had been doing when sighted, he would be travelling as close to the surface of the sea as he could. That meant, with luck, visual fire-control from the cruiser, at close range. Otherwise, there would be need to depend on infra-red weapons-aiming, which was not the most efficient of the fire-control systems aboard the Riga. However, it would do. It would have to do…
A voice interrupted his train of thought. 'Report from the Tower, Sir — Major Tsernik. PP2 is ready for take-off, sir.'
Vladimirov's head turned in the direction of the voice, then, as his gaze returned to the map, he saw the First Secretary staring at him. He realised that something was expected of him, but he could not immediately understand what it was. There was no need to despatch the second Mig, not now, with Gant more than three thousand miles away, and running out of fuel. He was not going to be able to refuel now, therefore the intercept role designed for the second plane was irrelevant.
'Who is the pilot?' the First Secretary asked bluntly.
'I–I don't believe I know his…' Vladimirov said, surprised at the question.
'Tretsov,' Kutuzov whispered. 'Major Alexander Tretsov.'
'Good. I realise there is little time, but I will speak with him before he takes off.' The First Secretary appeared to be on the point of rising.
Vladimirov realised, with a flash, that the First Secretary expected him to order the second prototype to take off and to pursue, at maximum speed, the wake of the first.
Vladimirov knew it would take Tretsov less than an hour to reach Novaya Zemlya on Gant's trail. As far he was concerned, it was a waste of time. He looked at the First Secretary.
'Of course, First Secretary,' he said politically, judging the man's mood correctly. The First Secretary nodded in satisfaction. With an inward relief, Vladimirov called over his shoulder: 'Summon Major Tretsov at once. And tell the Tower and inform all forces to stand by for take-off of the second Mig within the next few minutes.'
The refuelling planes would need to be alerted. At a point somewhere on the coast west of Gant's crossing point, the Mig-31 would be refuelled in the air from a tanker. He ordered the alert. He realised that he had to play the farce to its conclusion. It would be impolitic, more than that, to voice his feeling that Gant was not going to reach his fuel supply, or that he was confident that the Riga would bring him down.