‘Swinging south-west, Captain,’ came his helmsman’s quiet voice. The answer was followed by the degrees through which they were now swinging, but John paid no more attention. Hope flooded his system, and a bubble of elation grew in him. He recognised the Ulster tones coming from the distant set and lifted it to his ear. ‘We’ve picked up the Canaries current!’ he and Sally Bell told each other at once, as excited as a couple of kids at the news.
As darkness fell, they pulled the great dull ruby mountain into the grip of the south-flowing current and began to make some serious headway against the northward pressure of the wind. John felt too tense to eat, so he stayed on the bridge through Pour Out and dinner, and was on hand to answer all the messages streaming in from the other ships and beyond. It was very late indeed when Bob Stark called in to say that it felt as though Ajax and Achilles were beginning to feel the benefit of the current and to advise a reciprocal diminution in revolutions which would, with the current’s help, maintain their mean speed at ten knots in spite of the contrary wind. John phoned the orders round to the watch officers. And the watch officers woke the captains. And the captains woke their chief engineers. And the reduction in revolutions was coordinated.
It was after midnight before Asha got through from Titan’s sickroom. ‘No change, darling,’ she reported. ‘Richard’s still out cold. All the vital signs I can check on here seem fine.’ She hesitated. ‘Is there any way I can get him ashore if things don’t improve?’ Her voice was weary, guarded, full of worry.
‘Not with this wind, I’m afraid. No way we can get a chopper up until it moderates.’
‘That’s what I thought.’
‘We could put him in a boat, I suppose, if anyone could get one out to us.’
‘No. I’m better placed to help him than anyone except a hospital with brain-scanning equipment. But it’s not good to be out for so long.’
‘We’ll see how he is in the morning. Anything else?’
‘Nothing. I love you, Captain.’
‘I love you too, Doctor.’
This was die last of the calls on the walkie-talkie from the various ships, but it was not the last call of the night. Hardly had John switched the little machine off and returned it to its accustomed resting place on the console than the automatic incoming light lit up to warn him there was someone trying to raise the ship on the big radio. He walked through into the radio shack and switched the equipment to manual.
‘Titan here, Captain speaking. Over.’
‘It’s Sally Bell here, John.’
‘Sally! What on earth …’
‘… sorry, John, I didn’t catch all of that. I’m relaying an incoming call to you. It’s supposed to be for Richard, but…’
‘Hello, Sally? Yes? Sally?’ He flicked from TRANSMIT to RECEIVE and back again, then settled on RECEIVE.
The set crackled fiercely, and John wished bitterly that he had woken up his radio operator. But then the big speaker sprang into life again and a new voice came across the air waves.
‘Hello? Is that Captain John Higgins aboard Niobe? Are you receiving me? Over?’
‘Yes. This is Captain Higgins. I am receiving you loud and clear, over.’
‘Thank goodness. Now I want you to listen very carefully, Captain. My name is James Jones and I’m speaking to you from the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment at Aldermaston…’
Chapter Twenty-Two
Lamia Lykiardropolous shivered uncontrollably as he crawled across the ice. He was a hot-blooded man from a warm Mediterranean country and of all the things he hated most, cold ranked the highest. Of all the deaths which were most terrible, freezing to death was the worst. And yet he knew that he was dying here. The knowledge seemed to exist outside him, as though his mind was trapped in some other body. The body of a man marooned on eternal ice freezing slowly and horribly to death.
He looked up and narrowed his eyes against the awful glare. All he could see was an infinity of whiteness stretching in an unvarying plain to the horizon, formless, featureless, freezing. The agony in his hands made him look down with a cry. Where in God’s name were his gloves? Not on his hands, that was for sure. The white fingers were distinguishable from the white ice only because their flesh was blue and the nails were black with frostbite. And because they were edged in a bright red outline of frozen blood. He must have been resting here on all fours on the ice for a little while, gathering his strength. But he could not remember stopping. He could barely remember leaving the ship, for that matter. It was as though time had just begun. Here. Now.
He tried to move and the tearing sensation as another layer of skin ripped away from his palm to remain frozen in place shuddered up his arm until his heart fluttered as though it would fail at once. He looked back. Sure enough, there were ghostly handprints in the ice behind him where his skin had torn off layer by layer to remain frozen in place on the glacial surface of the ice. And there was more: a long red trail as though he was dragging a brightly-slimed slug along behind him. He knew what that meant, and it was important. But he just could not remember. Sobbing quietly, he looked up.
The wind came in from the white knife edge of the horizon. It was full of tiny, razor-sharp spicules of pure ice. They acted in concert, seeming to form one huge knife which was slowly flensing the flesh off his cheekbones. In his mind’s eye he could see the white flakes of flesh whirling back in the grip of the wind to go whispering like snow across the unforgiving ice behind him. Whimpering, he crawled on into the terrifying blast. Tears flooded out of his tortured eyes to freeze at once, setting his eyelids open to the blast, solidifying like super-glue.
How long he had been out here, crawling across the ice, he no longer knew. All that registered with him were the twin facts that his hands were being consumed by frostbite and his face was being flayed by the gale. What drove him on he had no idea. Where it was driving him to and why it was keeping him moving likewise had long since failed to register. All he knew was that he was freezing to death here and now because the cold from the terrible ice was burning through the skinless, frozen flesh of his hands and the fleshless, skeletal horror of his face.
But then in the far distance, his tortured gaze made out a black shape. Something with colour and form, something utterly out of place in this inhuman, alien environment. It was what he had been looking for, he suddenly knew. This was hope. This was life — or the chance of it. He altered the angle of his snail-slow progress and began to crawl towards the black beacon standing steady in the face of the blast. Determinedly, doggedly, he crawled, tearing himself forward. The hope within him engendered by this sign of life in the frozen wilderness was almost as agonising as the pain of the frostbite. He looked up: it was still there. Tears of relief flooded — and froze as swiftly as the tears of hopeless self-pity had done. His eyes stretched agonisingly wide and he felt the eyeballs beginning to freeze as well. The cold stabbed up his optical nerves and it seemed that his brain began to set solid too.
He began to crawl even more quickly, reduced to near insanity by the power of hope.
He could see it now, a low construction of wood and hide. The weight of the ice was beginning to make his eyelids tear away from the horror of his face. The handprints on the naked ice were no longer made of pale skin but of bright flesh. The bones were beginning to show through on his palms and fingers. The agony was indescribable.