I didn't want to dampen her enthusiasm, seeing her standing there with her hair blowing, as if the world had been made for her, but I felt I had to speak.
I pointed at the flapping banner at the gangway. 'Listen,' I said, 'I can see how Erebus and Tenor sparked off the idea for you but frankly I don't care for the way the names have been exploited for publicity. Presumably Orbit Travels are responsible. But I can't help remembering that only a few years after that ball in Tasmania, Erebus and Terror — and every man jack who sailed in them — perished looking for the North-West Passage. That's the sort of shadow the two names cast for me.'
She folded up the satin and put it back in her bag. I think she was a little disappointed by my reaction. 'Is that another of those non-facts that worries you about this cruise?' she asked.
'I can't forget how those two fine ships died. That's what. There aren't any decorations or champagne or beautiful women at a ball at Prince Edward. There's a wind which gets hold of your lungs so that you could scream with cold, and a sea which shakes your guts out so that you wish you'd been bom without any. And sometimes you wish you'd not been born at all. That's the way I view the Erebus and Terror gimmick. We aren't going to have any blue satin mementoes after we've been there. We'll be lucky if we get away with a ship with only a few lengths of railing gone. And maybe a man or two overboard into the bargain.'
Her head came up the way it had done when she first entered the cabin. 'I still want to go.'
On the quayside a group of men had gathered round an object with an orange head and long body which was lashed to a trailer.
That's the drifter buoy, Linn,' I said, 'and the reason why we're taking it is because ships give Prince Edward a miss. Once in a blue moon a vessel does go there but it's as rare as a meteor flashing across an empty sky. The Southern Ocean covers four-fifths of the Southern Hemisphere. It's got less than a dozen weather stations, widely scattered on god-forsaken, remote islands. The only way to get the facts about the Southern Ocean and its weather is to use some kind of unmanned craft where human endurance isn't a factor. That buoy over there is a marvel of automatic instrumentation, but it's got to be conveyed there. So the Quest is a vital factor in the biggest attempt yet made by man to observe wind, weather and sea on a global basis. The findings could lead to radical new facts. They could affect the weather forecasting of all the nations of the world in the next decade. Data-void is the official jargon for the seas where we are bound.'
'You make it sound very formidable.'
'That's exactly what it is. Now let's go and look at our unmanned probe.'
Wegger, three other men, and some bystanders were grouped round the drifter buoy. We faced them from the deck. The buoy was shaped like a long thin top — about three times the height of a man in all. It looked rather like a skeleton fish the cat has stripped, except that the ribs were missing and the backbone was a thin, smooth, black tube. Covering the trailer was an envelope of plastic which looked like a shroud for an outsize corpse. There was also a big unidentifiable flat package and several gas cylinders.
I read aloud the white-painted wording. '"Satellite buoy. Do not disturb. Weather Bureau. South Africa."' Under an American eagle badge were the words 'National Oceanographic and Atmosphere Administration, USA.'
One of the men in the group — a short, stocky, sunburned man in shorts and a safari suit top — came to the ship's side when he saw me. He held out his hand.
'Smit,' he introduced himself. 'Weather Bureau.'
He put his left hand over his right knuckles and cracked them loudly. 'She's beautiful, isn't she, Captain?'
'Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, they say.'
He didn't get it. He laughed uncertainly and cracked his knuckles again.
'She's fragile, too,' he went on. 'She mustn't be hoisted aboard. That instrument package mustn't get buggered up anyways at all. She must be carried. That's what I wanted to see you about.'
'She?' I looked sideways at Linn.
'We've got a name for her — Bokkie,' he rushed on. 'She must be carried…'
'What's in the orange part that looks like the nose-cone of a missile?' I asked.
Smit looked rather less enthusiastic. 'That's not the works, Captain. That's only the buoyancy element. Mostly plastic foam to keep her head above water. The works are there.' He pointed to a section of what looked like strong segmented plastic tubing jutting out above the top-like nose-cone.
Those holes are the barometer ventilators,' he explained eagerly, 'and that's the transmitting antenna at the top. Bokkie emits signals with a specific frequency at short intervals — that's how they identify her after the satellite has picked 'em up…'
His enthusiasm seemed set fair to keep us there all day.
I interrupted him. 'What's inside the shaft below the head?'
'It houses the pressure sensor, the electronics package for converting the sensor readings into signals to the satellite, thermistor, battery unity…'
Linn was smiling at his eagerness, too.
Smit cracked his knuckles again and said, 'Bokkie must be carried, Captain!'
'How heavy is she?' I found myself also sexing the object on the trailer.
'She's not very heavy. Three men could do it. Two if they're very strong. When we launch her, we can't risk using a derrick. It'll have to be a burial-at-sea-type launch.'
Burial at sea! My mind took a backward leap at the sound of these words. The eager weatherman and the dockside with its cranes faded away. The long object on the trailer became a canvas coffin over which I had pronounced those sombre but wonderful words: 'We therefore commit his body to the deep…' It had been off Prince Edward. The Captain Cook had been smashed by a freak wave the previous night, like a lioness taking a clip at a wayward cub. There was one victim to be buried. The canvas containing the body had made a momentary white patch in the black sea, and at the same moment a rare shaft of sunlight had broken through the storm clouds, touching the central snow-clad peak of Prince Edward, so that it showed up pure white against the blackness around, and the brick-red volcanic cones had been grouped about it like cardinals in their vestments. The words of the committal service said, 'When the sea shall give up her dead' — but that sea never would.
Linn exclaimed, 'John…?'
I pulled myself back to the present. I remarked to Smit, 'That thing underneath looks like a shroud.'
'It's a drogue for the buoy and the other plastic is the high-altitude balloon,' he explained, oblivious of my lapse. 'You don't get proper drift if you let the buoy run free without a drogue. The current won't carry a thin hull like hers. We've tested the drogue — the optimum size is five square metres…'
I called out to Wegger, 'Number One! D'you think you can manage to carry that thing with some help?'
Wegger had already cast loose the lashings. You didn't need a derrick when you had Wegger around. He gripped the buoy round the head and heaved it clear of the trailer himself. But it was too long for him to manage alone.
'Jannie, give him a hand,' said Smit to one of his two fellow-technicians.
'Capt'n,' said Smit as they started to move off, 'It sounds odd-ball, I know, but can I have Bokkie in my cabin with me until she's launched?'
'Sorry. I haven't a cabin aboard that size. I've arranged a special place for Bokkie and you scientists in number four 'tween decks. The volcanologist, Hold-gate, is there too.'
'Whereabouts is number four 'tween decks?' I gestured sternward. 'My first officer will show you.'
'Is it safe? I mean, if a wave came and damaged Bokkie 'Safest place in the ship,' I assured him. 'It's an empty space like an outsize cabin with two doors that lock. You're sleeping in a new set of cabins in number three 'tween decks, just next door. You can pop in any time if Bokkie feels lonely.'