Southtrap

I knelt down to get more light on the picture, but it didn't help. The photograph itself was poor. It looked as if it had been shot through glass with an electric flash.

Could this enigmatic face possibly be that of Linn Prestrud, now our tour leader? 'What are you doing with my father's belongings?'

As I spun round to face her, my mental tumblers fell into place as surely as those of the safe's combination: it wasn't Linn Prestrud's portrait that I held. It was she who stood in the doorway. Hers was an animated face by contrast with the picture's — somewhat puzzled, a little angry, maybe. Jet-lag after her 6000-mile flight from Europe showed round her green-grey eyes; she held her head back in a way which I was always to associate with her. She looked about twenty-five. Blue slacks with a blue-and-white striped top enhanced her slim figure. Her top blouse button was undone.

I felt at a disadvantage down on the floor, like a kid caught stealing jam. I said nothing and got to my feet.

She pushed aside a drift of corn-gold hair which was falling across her right temple.

'Who are you?'

'John Shotton. You must be Linn Prestrud.'

Her glance went over my grubby uniform. 'What are you doing prying into my father's things?'

A line that ran from the right-hand comer of her mouth showed how tired and tense she was.

I said quietly. 'You've had a long flight. Sit down and I'll order some coffee. Then I'll explain what I'm doing here and we'll work out things together.' I dreaded the moment when I would have to break the news about her father.

'Together? I don't even know who you are.'

'Until this morning I was the first officer. Your father hired me.'

She gave me a long searching look which came to rest on the photograph in my hand.

'What is that photograph you're stashing away in the safe?'

I held it out without replying and she came close. She had the dry, closed-in smell of jet travellers — upholstery, deodorants, the sterile accoutrements of high altitudes.

'Lovely face,' she said. 'But something odd about it.'

'I've never seen her before,' I told her. 'I've just found it tucked away in your father's safe.'

'That makes two of us.' She held the photograph sideways to get more light, as I had done.

'It's out of focus, or something,' she said.

'Or something. It must be your father's. I'd say it was rather precious to him too, to keep it locked away in a safe.'

I went to the desk and rang the chief steward. 'I want two cups of coffee and some sandwiches. In the Captain's cabin. Right away.' I listened to his reply for a moment. 'I don't give a damn whether or not twenty passengers have just come aboard. I want that coffee here quick.'

Linn Prestrud said, 'Anyone would think you were captain of this ship.'

I took the photograph from her and put it back in the safe.

'They'd be right,' I said. That's just what I am. And it's just what I want to talk to you about.'

I sat her down in a well-worn leather easy-chair and took Captain Prestrud's revolving desk-chair myself.

'Cigarette?'

'Thanks. I don't smoke.'

I couldn't see anything of her father in her features but she had something of his controlled warmth. I found it very attractive.

I said slowly, 'Your father has been injured and he is in hospital…' I gave her a quick run-down on the situation. She listened in shocked silence: when I told her the extent of his head injuries her fingers went to the undone blouse button and subconsciously fastened it, as if trying to shut out the bad news. As I proceeded to tell her the whole story, her eyes misted. I was relieved when the steward arrived with the coffee and sandwiches. I poured her a cup of strong coffee. Her hand trembled as she took the cup. She refused a sandwich.

As soon as the man was gone she said, 'I must get to the hospital right away.'

'I'm afraid there's nothing you can do at the moment,' I said gently. 'I received a call from the hospital just before you arrived. He's in a deep coma now, and they don't expect him to come out of it — not at least until after the operation. He should be in the operating theatre at this moment.'

'I must go just the same. My God, he's my father!' she said, choking with emotion.

I put a hand on her shoulder and told her of my last conversation with him a couple of hours ago. I told her that her father had made me promise to sail on schedule whatever happened to him. I also told her of his last request and my promise to tell her she must sail on Quest as arranged.

Quietly, she picked up her bag, asked me to call a taxi, and said she would be back as soon as she could. She gulped the last of her coffee, and was gone.

When she returned, a couple of hours later, her eyes red with tears, she came straight to my cabin and sat down in the chair she'd occupied earlier. She gave a deep sigh, and apathetic smile.

'I don't know what to call you,' she said. 'I can't really call you Captain…'

'John will do,' I said. 'It's because of your stake in what is basically your father's dream that I want to talk to you.'

'Meaning?'

I was grateful to be deflected from the emotional aspect. She was taking the crisis well.

'What worries me is that I may have promised your injured father something that I had no right to promise.'

'Meaning?' she said again in a voice as faraway as Prince Edward Island.

'I gave your father an assurance that I would take Quest to sea tomorrow on schedule to launch the drifter buoy and balloon. You are as much part of this cruise as he was. I think the decision ought now to be yours.'

'He must have trusted you very much to have asked you that,' she said.

'For the record, I greatly admire and like your father.

But I feel like an actor stepping into someone else's part. I haven't the same motivations.'

She once again fiddled with the top button of her blouse. 'You may think so, John. But when you mentioned the Southern Ocean jut now you talked in quite i different voice. My father must have noticed it too. That's why he asked you to step into his shoes.'

There's no glamour down there in the ice, Linn, whatever the Orbit Travels' sales talk might have been. It's an icy hell which breaks men's bodies as well as their spirits. Prince Edward Island is nothing but one twin of a volcanic peak which had the nerve to stick its head out into the storms. If you want to see what a mere few thousand years of gales can do to solid rock you want to take a look at the western cliffline of the island where it faces the winds. It's the windpipe of the world, down there. Your ship can lie off for a month waiting for one day calm enough to land — if her engines can take it. I've known a destroyer's turbines at full revs unable to make headway of one knot against the wind. I know. I've been there.'

'And you've always gone back.'

I looked into her eyes. Tiredness and grief had receded. They were alive. She had Captain Prestrud's Southern Ocean genes in her.

I went on: 'You must face the fact that your father could die. Today. Tomorrow. Any time. And Quest will belong to you. It's your decision.'

'No,' she said, 'it's not mine alone. It's your decision too. You made up your own mind — and promised my father. But before I make my own decision, there are things I want to know which you haven't yet told me.'

I said, somewhat defensively, 'I've given you all the facts.'

'Facts — but not your impressions. Or your mental reservations.'

I lit another cigarette. So intent had I been on our conversation that I had stubbed out my first, half-smoked, in the ashtray.

I said, 'In the Southern Ocean you can be making your way through seas where you know there shouldn't be ice. Where there can't be ice. But you get a feel, a hunch that it's around. It's often too late even if you can smell it. Your ship's on it before you can put your helm hard over. That's how I feel about this cruise. There's ice about — but I don't know where.'