"Jürgen?"
Finally there was a click of an unfastened belt and Hart was roughly pushed to one side. The political liaison put his head between Greta and Kauffman and squinted at the ocean. He was pale, his skin glistening. "I see them," he managed. "And yes, they're impressive."
Kauffman passed over at three hundred feet again so as not to spook the animals. As the whales rose and fell, breathing rhythmically, their backs darkened and lightened with the depth of the water, making it look like they glowed with variable light.
"So beautiful," Greta enthused.
"Look at the slow, slow beat of their swim," Hart added. "It's like music, but to a different, longer, deeper time."
"I wonder how long they live?" Kauffman asked, swinging the plane around. The whales came in view again. "How long does it take to grow to such immense size? Nearly forever?"
They roared over again, the whale spouts shimmering with solar rainbows.
"Just remember that what we're seeing is Germany's next resource."
Greta looked at Drexler with exasperation. "Jürgen! Look!" Their peeling skin was like a worn hill, testimony to epic survival. "They're just oil to you?"
Drexler took a deep breath. "My personal reaction is irrelevant," he said, exhaling to battle his physical unease. "It's not that they're without beauty. It's that such beauty has no practical use."
"That's an awfully prosaic view of nature," Hart objected.
"It's a realistic view of nature." Drexler regained some self-assurance as he talked. It took his mind off where he was, suspended in air above the ocean. "You pilots never ask where the machine that carries you comes from. It comes ultimately from nature, from resources like those whales. To think otherwise is pleasurable but naive."
Hart frowned. He liked the man better when he was quiet from fright. Next would come a lecture on Nazi destiny. "Reinhard, let me fly again," Owen suggested. "I need the practice."
The German pilot hesitated. He'd been enjoying showing off for the woman but it would look piggish to refuse. "All right."
There was a laborious shifting of bodies, both pilots brushing against Greta as Drexler leaned back unhappily. Then Hart was at the controls. He banked again, steeper this time, and headed back toward the whales. "I think we should get closer," he said over his shoulder to Drexler. "If we can find some mark that identifies individuals— like the colors of ponies— maybe you'll think of them as more than bags of oil." He put the ponderous seaplane in a dive.
"Oh my!" Greta slapped out her hands to brace herself. The Dornier rapidly closed with the water until it looked as if the mammal spouts would spatter their canopy. She managed a laugh, anxious and delighted. Then Hart pulled up. "My stomach!" she exclaimed.
The seaplane zoomed upward as if climbing a hill, slowed, hesitated, and rolled to the left, banking steeply. Then it dove again. "Hart, stop it!" Kauffman snapped. "This isn't a barnstormer!"
"Of course." He pulled back and leveled, then banked a bit to peer down. The whales had sounded again. "Damn. They're gone."
Greta laid a hand on the muscles of his forearm. "You frightened me!"
"Just trying to get a good look." He glanced over his shoulder. Drexler was gone.
Kauffman ducked down to look back along the interior of the fuselage. Jürgen was on his knees, his head inside the plane's cramped lavatory. "Our political liaison is sick."
"How was your maiden Dornier voyage, Hart?" Heiden inquired over tea in the galley.
The captain was in a pleasant mood. It was the day after the whale sighting. The weather was still fine, progress good, and the airplanes appeared in excellent working order. They'd crossed the equator that morning and were entering the southern latitudes. There'd been a ceremony on board with Heiden as King Neptune, christening those who hadn't yet made the crossing. Drexler had recovered his equilibrium and was determined to take his dousing with good humor. He even seized the bucket to spray Greta, who laughed and hurled water back, Neptune backing off hurriedly. The seamen craned to look at the clothes plastered on her body before she ran below to change.
"I felt free as a bird," the American now replied. "I think you've got an agile airplane there. Reinhard let me put her through some paces."
"Yes, I heard your flying was quite… exuberant."
"My stomach is still up there, I'm afraid," Drexler said, trying to make light of his experience. "Hart is quite the stunt pilot." He poured himself some tea. "In good weather."
No one missed the allusion.
"I've had a lot of experience," Hart said evenly. "In all kinds of weather."
"The Dornier's a good plane," Drexler went on mildly. "Range of a thousand kilometers, ceiling of four." He didn't forget what the pilots had told him. "It's part of Germany's leadership in the air." He took a sip of Earl Grey from England and looked at Greta. "I expect someday all of us will travel by air, everywhere. Aircraft will be as commonplace as the auto."
As if everyone would want one, Hart thought. Sick as a dog and now an aeronautical visionary. The man didn't back down an inch.
"Well," Feder put in, "it will be interesting to see how the planes perform in Antarctica."
"I suppose you'd stick to dogs, Alfred?"
"It worked for Amundsen," Feder replied, referring to the first man to reach the South Pole.
"Ach, the Norwegians again. A nation living in the past."
"I think you need to take the best of the past and the future," Hart said. "In Antarctica, wood sometimes works better than metal. Fur better than linen."
"And a gun better than an arrow," said Drexler. "That's why the airplane will let us explore more territory in a day than the Norwegians or British saw in a year."
"I don't disagree with that," said Hart. "I'm a flier. But airplanes have their limitations too. You can only see so much detail. Airplanes break down. Some days they aren't usable. I respect bad weather."
"Yes, a prudent flier," Drexler said. "So we've heard."
"A live flier," Hart countered.
"Jürgen, for goodness' sake," Greta said. "Owen is helping us and you pretend there is some contest of views."
"I'm just making a point. After he made his."
"He agrees with you and you insult him. You need to get to an iceberg to cool your head."
Drexler looked truculent at this scolding but said nothing.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The first icebergs were huge flat chunks from the ice shelf of the Weddell Sea, looking to Hart like mesas rising from a watery desert. They gleamed as if lit from within, shining with pearly translucence under a pale gray sky. In the emptiness of the Southern Ocean their exact size was impossible to gauge but as the Schwabenland steamed closer their immensity became apparent. The white cliffs of their sides were taller than a fortress wall and their bulk was enough to produce a harbor of calm water on their lee side. To windward, ocean swells ate caves into their bulk. The white was veined with blue like marble and just below the slate-gray water the bergs shelved into brilliant turquoise. Their top was snowy and unmarked: the perfect face of snowfalls stretching back ten thousand years.
The days were growing steadily longer as they steamed south. Hart spent the twilight after dinner watching the bergs slide by, wrapped in his flying jacket and wool hat.
"They look like cake, yes?"
Hart turned. It was cold at the railing and Greta was bundled in her Antarctic parka, the fur ruff of its hood framing her face. Her eyes were the same blue as the fissures in the icebergs, but he didn't say that.
"You'll make me hungry," he joked lamely. He was pleased she'd joined him but he didn't say that, either. They seemed to have repaired the awkward dinner and he'd been secretly pleased at her defense of him at tea. Still, he was cautious.