Southtrap

I made up my mind suddenly. 'I'm going up aloft for a moment,' I told Jensen at the wheel.

I secured my weatherproof and made my way up to the exposed flying bridge above.

As I reached it, I gasped and ducked at the icy punch of a fresh rain-squall. I abandoned the windward side for the lee. Then, almost at once, the rain stopped and the Quest broke out of the patch of fog. I saw that the smother overhead was not a deep overcast but a ragged conglomeration of cloud, whipping and plunging eastwards. I saw a star briefly; without the cloud the night would have been aglow with the magic light of the Antarctic summer. That magic had been strong enough to have been in Captain Prestrud's mind when he had been dying.

The first I knew that Linn was with me was when she took my arm. I hadn't heard her come. The frame of her dark woollen cap emphasized the fine bones of her face.

She said, 'It's your world up here, isn't it, John?'

'We've just crossed into the Westerlies. They're trying to prove they're Westerlies but they're not succeeding yet. This capful of wind is nothing to what is to come.'

The Quest lifted her bows high and then plunged deep. A burst of spray drenched the figurehead and searchlight platform.

The Roaring Forties,' she said.

'Aye, Linn. But you're wrong if you think they blow steady all the time. They don't. They work themselves into a frenzy, blow their heads off, then slacken. Then the process begins all over again.'

She laughed. 'How much is slacken, sailor?'

I grinned at her. I wished I could see more of her face.

'See those seas? Something holding them down. They're being damped. They're not doing their best — or worst.'

'Why not, John?'

'Ice. There's ice ahead. Big ice. A lot of ice.'

Then why isn't the searchlight on?' she said.

'The ice is still quite a way off, I'd say. I don't smell it. This wind hasn't got ice on its breath — yet. It's a raw, primitive, exciting, frightening smell, Linn. The weather people showed me a satellite photo before we left. They reckoned the ice was farther north in the Southern Ocean than it usually is in January.'

'How close are we, according to the photo?'

'I don't believe everything I see on a satellite photo. The experts often get mixed up and interpret a white cloud-cover as ice. I prefer to trust my own senses.'

'You love this Southern Ocean, don't you, John?'

I ran my fingers inside her cap and tucked in a strand of hair which had blown loose.

'I'm my own man down here, Linn,' I replied. The place throws you back on what you really are — look at the Quest now, at this moment. The radio's out. The gyro's also affected by the ionospheric storm, and so is the compass. We're practically down to man himself — man against the elements. Your own resources, your own ingenuity, against an enemy which never lets up. Both sides play rough. It's the way I like it.'

I was looking at her. Her face suddenly became clearer, lighter. Her eyes, too, defined themselves in the darkness of their sockets.

'John!' she exclaimed. The sun's rising!'

She pointed. There was a glow, like dawn, low on the horizon ahead.

'The sun doesn't rise in the South, Linn. Nor in the middle of the night.'

'Then what…'

It was not the rose of the sun's dawn. It was palest mother-of-pearl, faintly green.

'It's making amends for bugging our radio and instruments,' I told her. 'It's the aurora.'

A great arc, stretching from horizon to horizon, began to emerge in place of the glow. It was greenish-yellow, a rainbow of single, not multiple colour. We could see the cloud-wrack spinning against it like ragged patches of batik-work.

'John-look!'

The single band of the rainbow began to dissolve into a series of rays whose points reached upwards into the firmament itself. Meanwhile the entire arc moved above the southern horizon — ever upwards. Next, like a scene-shift whose stage was the world, another arc materialized from under the horizon and followed the first up into the sky. It was like a procession of lightning-kings.

The top most peaks of the pale greenish-yellow rays became tipped with purple, blue and red. As the first arc reached a point overhead, a third arc heaved over the horizon, while the middle rainbow dissolved into steepled rays.

Then the uppermost arc burst into a corona like a gigantic napalm explosion. Whirling, spinning, interweaving, blending, its colours were red, blue, purple and orange. It was a tapestry which occupied the whole sky, from the zenith to the southern horizon.

'John!.. John!.. John!'

The strange light from the firmamental draperies played across her upturned face, making it indescribably lovely.

Then the aurora died suddenly, like a brief burst of breathless love-making that would be remembered always.

Linn said very quietly, 'I see now what the Southern Ocean holds for you, John. It's not only its challenge. It's also the most beautiful place in the world.'

The soaring glories of the aurora meant less than nothing to Persson. Linn and I left the flying bridge and went together to the radio shack.

'Any luck?' I asked him.

'Dead. Stone dead,' he replied gloomily. 'Not a murmur. Not even a distorted voice, let alone a distorted signal. There must be a million amps circulating in the upper atmosphere to do things like this to reception.'

This is the Year of the Unquiet Sun,' I told him. 'Isn't there supposed to be an eleven-year cycle of sunspot activity?'

Then I guess we're right in the middle of it,' he said.

He picked up the voice microphone with its heavy stand and stared at it. Then he stared at the typewriter on the low side desk; then at the main table bearing the transmitter and a metal box containing signals filed in loose plastic envelopes. He might have been willing, the whole set-up to react.

'Keep at it,' I told him. There was a similar big black-out some years ago during a Presidential election. The Yanks at McMurdo nearly went crazy. No one knew for days who'd been elected-'

He began his muezzin-like chant with Quest's call sign. 'F-L-O-E… calling all ships and shore stations… F-L-O-E… F-L-O-E…'

Linn and I left him to it, and went down to the day cabin. I turned off the main overhead light, leaving only the desk lamp. The place was warm and inviting.

Linn's face looked very tired.

'Wouldn't you be better off in your cabin?' I asked.

'It's no good,' she said. 'I can't possibly sleep. There's too much going on inside me.'

I kissed her. 'Me, too. But I have the advantage that I can work mine off in running the ship.'

'You've been away from the bridge a long time.'

'I know. I'll get back. I'll come down here now and then and if you want me in the meantime just pick up the phone.'

When she hadn't rung an hour later, I went back to the cabin. She was curled up fast asleep on a worn leather couch with her cap for a pillow. Her knees were drawn up and her hands tucked between them for warmth.

I went quickly to my own cabin and brought back a rug made out of penguin skins which had been given me by a seaman whose life I had saved one night in a Southern Ocean storm. I put it over her and she did not wake.

I was making my way back to the bridge when I met Wegger. He was fully dressed and was carrying a. tin plate and a mug.

'Raiding the galley,' he said jocularly. 'I said I wouldn't sleep. Everything in order?'

There was an odd air of levity about the man. At 1.30 in the morning humour is hard to take. I wondered whether he had been drinking, but couldn't smell any sign of it.

'Why shouldn't it be?' I retorted.