And of course they had to come up with more than a mere estimate. The Mau Club at the United Nations would begin to demand accurate figures soon; they needed to know exactly what size the berg would be when it reached the harbour at Mawanga, for it was going to be no mean feat to arrange for Manhattan’s reception. He had hardly begun to think about that yet — not that he needed to: they would arrange things at that end, he had no doubt. All he would have to do would be to get Manhattan there and then fit in with the plans they had made for it.
The ice below chopped into a point and he realised with something of a shock that they had skimmed above Colin’s old camp site without him having noticed. So much for the closeness of his inspection. The ice vanished as the white forecastle head disappeared behind them. The two tankers reached out hugely, their long hulls parallel, cutting through the dazzling blue water like long green swords. Richard reached down and picked up the binoculars which fitted beside the walkie-talkie at his side. ‘Take us up,’ he ordered. ‘And look out for that wind at a thousand metres.’
The helicopter swooped upwards, its motion translating itself into a sinking feeling in the pit of Richard’s stomach and a battering clatter of increased engine noise in his ears. He pressed the binoculars beneath the frowning ridge of his brows and began to sweep them from side to side, focusing on the horizon as it jumped near in the magnification, and then began to fall away again as they climbed steadily through the still air. At first there was nothing to see other than the bright blue of the water marked by the silvery ridges of the swell. The set of the sea was westerly, apparently coming in from America. The shoulders of the waves were bright and their faces dark, as though picking up shade from the Dark Continent towards which they were heading in regular series. He concentrated on looking due south, sweeping the binoculars a little eastwards and westwards. If he looked a little north of west, he knew, he would see the distant specks of the Azores beyond Doug’s profile. He felt that he could see so far that he should have been able to see Gibraltar or Morocco a little south of east on the opposite side. In fact all he could see was the featureless surface of the ocean to the south.
Except that… There, on the furthest edge of his vision, away down in the south-east… ‘Doug. Take her up a bit more, would you?’
‘Yes, sir.’
The thunder of the motor intensified. ‘But watch out for the wind…’ Richard said the words automatically, his mind actually far distant as he concentrated with all his might on what he could see in the distance.
‘We’re nowhere near a thousand metres yet,’ Doug said calmly, but Richard was hardly listening.
Hope welled almost painfully within him. The regular series of waves was interrupted far to the south-east. The whole character of the water changed down there. The pattern of the waves was subsumed into a broad ribbon of brightness like a calm river flowing through the serried pattern of the swell. A river apparently kilometres wide, flowing southwards.
Richard reached down again and this time he lifted the walkie-talkie to his lips. He thumbed Niobe’s channel.
‘John?’
‘Here, Richard. What can I do for you?’
‘I think I can see the current. We’re only five hundred metres up, but I can see it quite clearly. It must be the better part of fifty kilometres south-east. If you come round a point or two we should pick it up by dark.’
‘We’ve just been too far west all along?’
‘Heaven knows. It probably wavers from side to side like the North Atlantic Drift did.’
‘But we can pick it up by dark?’
‘I’d guess so, but it’s impossible to be certain of the—’
The helicopter seemed to fly into a wall. Its nose lifted and it was swept backwards so rapidly that Richard lost the current, almost lost the horizon. He dropped the glasses and the walkie-talkie and grabbed the sides of his seat. The sky reared over him like a wave breaking and he bashed the back of his head on the seat.
‘Doug…’ He said the word in a tone of surprise, hardly more, as though what was happening was of mild interest.
But this was not the case. As Doug wrestled with the controls with all four limbs and extremities, swearing at first under his breath and then more loudly, the Bell tried to loop the loop backwards, and then settled for standing on its tail while moving northwards and seawards with incredible rapidity. Inside the cabin, the two men were hurled back in their seats as everything around them sprang bodily up and back though ninety degrees. Everything that had been vertical was now horizontal and everything that had been floor was now wall. It was as though they were trapped in an elevator which had fallen on its back and was dropping at an incredible rate.
Before Richard could even begin to assimilate what was happening, the helicopter toppled onto its right side like a felled tree, and Doug miraculously managed to swing it round so that the cabin returned towards level before putting the nose hard down and dropping the game little craft, barely under control, hard down towards Titan’s broad green deck. At once, they were in still air again, and it was as though the terrible power of the wind had been a kind of nightmare shared between the two men and the machine. As though, in fact, it had never actually happened.
Richard reached for the binoculars and the walkie-talkie, but could find neither of them, for the wild dance of the helicopter had been enough to send them irretrievably under his seat. The movement was enough to establish, however, that the muscles of his shoulders and neck had been torn as though by whiplash, and that the tight seat belt had bruised him painfully across the stomach. Automatically, not a little shocked, he loosened it.
‘Son of a bitch,’ said Doug. ‘I did not like that one little bit!’
Richard shook his head and winced. ‘That was one hell of a wind,’ he grated. He glanced across at Doug and was surprised to see a vivid line of blood running down from the corner of the pilot’s mouth.
‘Too fucking true,’ said the pilot. ‘That’s the closest I ever want to come to flying into a tidal wave. Christ knows what it’s done to the old girl…’
As though he was a gifted prophet — or at least in psychic contact with his machine — the engine died on his word. There was not an absolute silence, for the rotor continued to thud through the still air, but the sudden cessation of the pounding engine was utterly shocking. The continued whir of the rotor, though little louder than the thump of Richard’s heart, was enough to keep the helicopter steady and Doug continued to pilot the craft unerringly towards Titan, whose deck represented the nearest safe landing place.
Inconsequentially, Richard thought of surf, and was surprised to note that the sea was calm below them and the steady progress of the ships so measured that there were actually no waves breaking down there at all.
The helicopter was angled downwards and there was no doubt that even though it had stalled, and even though there was no sign of the engine restarting, Doug had it under control.
‘I’m going to put her down on the forecastle head,’ he said, psychic again, as though reading Richard’s mind.
Richard nodded, his mind still distant, wondering whether he was still in shock. He had hardly heard Doug’s words, reassuring and poignantly welcome though they were, because of the persistent roaring. Of course, he thought, there was no surf, it was simply the shock of the near-disaster making the blood pound in his ears.
No sooner did he realise this than the thought vanished as the blunt point of Titan’s forecastle head swung into view close below them. Richard’s eyes narrowed as he automatically began to estimate which would be the safest point to touch down. The supertanker’s forecastle head was a rough, slightly bow-sided triangle sixty metres wide at its base and forty metres deep from the point. The forecastle head was an idea more than a fact for there was no raised section, merely a narrowing of the flat deck. But in any event there was no way of putting the helicopter down on the forecastle head itself for the big green triangle was too full of equipment. There were two huge anchor winches, not to mention a range of vents and tank tops. Furthermore, a solid little mast stood right in the middle of it.