Ice Station Zebra. Alistair MacLean

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ will retain their charge indefinitely, years if necessary, irrespective of the weather conditions under which they are stored. They must have been using that battery a few days ago when they sent out their first S O S. It wouldn’t be finished already.’

      His point was so obvious that I didn’t answer. The battery wasn’t finished: the men were.

      ‘I agree with you,’ he went on quietly. ‘We’re wasting our time. Maybe we should just pack up and go home. If we can’t raise them, we’ll never find them.’

      ‘Maybe not. But you’re forgetting your directive from Washington, Commander.’

      ‘How do you mean?’

      ‘Remember? I’m to be extended every facility and all aid short of actually endangering the safety of the submarine and the lives of the crew. At the present moment we’re doing neither. If we fail to raise them I’m prepared for a twenty-mile sweep on foot round this spot in the hope of locating them. If that fails we could move to another polynya and repeat the search. The search area isn’t all that big, there’s a fair chance, but a chance, that we might locate the station eventually. I’m prepared to stay up here all winter till we do find them.’

      ‘You don’t call that endangering the lives of my men? Making extended searches of the ice-cap, on foot, in midwinter?’

      ‘Nobody said anything about endangering the lives of your men.’

      ‘You mean – you mean you’d go it alone.’ Swanson stared down at the deck and shook his head. ‘I don’t know what to think. I don’t know whether to say you’re crazy or whether to say I’m beginning to understand why they – whoever “they” may be – picked you for the job, Dr Carpenter.’ He sighed, then regarded me thoughtfully. ‘One moment you say there’s no hope, the next that you’re prepared to spend the winter here, searching. If you don’t mind my saying so, Doctor, it just doesn’t make sense.’

      ‘Stiff-necked pride,’ I said. ‘I don’t like throwing my hand in on a job before I’ve even started it. I don’t know what the attitude of the United States Navy is on that sort of thing.’

      He gave me another speculative glance, I could see he believed me the way a fly believes the spider on the web who has just offered him safe accommodation for the night. He smiled. He said: ‘The United States Navy doesn’t take offence all that easily, Dr Carpenter. I suggest you catch a couple of hours’ sleep while you can. You’ll need it all if you’re going to start walking towards the North Pole.’

      ‘How about yourself? You haven’t been to bed at all to-night.’

      ‘I think I’ll wait a bit.’ He nodded towards the door of the radio room. ‘Just in case anything comes through.’

      ‘What are they sending? Just the call sign?’

      ‘Plus request for position and a rocket, if they have either. I’ll let you know immediately anything comes through. Good night, Dr Carpenter. Or rather, good morning.’

      I rose heavily and made my way to Hansen’s cabin.

      The atmosphere round the 8 a.m. breakfast table in the wardroom was less than festive. Apart from the officer on deck and the engineer lieutenant on watch, all the Dolphin’s officers were there, some just risen from their bunks, some just heading for them, none of them talking in anything more than monosyllables. Even the ebullient Dr Benson was remote and withdrawn. It seemed pointless to ask whether any contact had been established with Drift Station Zebra, it was painfully obvious that it hadn’t. And that after almost five hours’ continuous sending. The sense of despondency and defeat, the unspoken knowledge that time had run out for the survivors of Drift Station Zebra hung heavy over the wardroom.

      No one hurried over his meal – there was nothing to hurry for – but by and by they rose one by one and drifted off, Dr Benson to his sick-bay call, the young torpedo officer, Lieutenant Mills, to supervise the efforts of his men who had been working twelve hours a day for the past two days to iron out the faults in the suspect torpedoes, a third to relieve Hansen, who had the watch, and three others to their bunks. That left only Swanson, Raeburn and myself. Swanson, I knew, hadn’t been to bed at all the previous night, but for all that he had the rested clear-eyed look of a man with eight solid hours behind him.

      The steward, Henry, had just brought in a fresh pot of coffee when we heard the sound of running footsteps in the passageway outside and the quartermaster burst into the wardroom. He didn’t quite manage to take the door off its hinges, but that was only because the Electric Boat Company put good solid hinges on the doors of their submarines.

      ‘We got it made!’ he shouted, and then perhaps recollecting that enlisted men were expected to conduct themselves with rather more decorum in the wardroom, went on: ‘We’ve raised them, Captain, we’ve raised them!’

      ‘What!’ Swanson could move twice as fast as his comfortable figure suggested and he was already half-out of his chair.

      ‘We are in radio contact with Drift Ice Station Zebra, sir,’ Ellis said formally.

      Commander Swanson got to the radio room first, but only because he had a head start on Raeburn and myself. Two operators were on watch, both leaning forward towards their transmitters, one with his head bent low, the other with his cocked to one side, as if those attitudes of concentrated listening helped them to isolate and amplify the slightest sounds coming through the earphones clamped to their heads. One of them was scribbling away mechanically on a signal pad. DSY, he was writing down, DSY repeated over and over again. DSY. The answering call-sign of Drift Station Zebra. He stopped writing as he caught sight of Swanson out of the corner of one eye.

      ‘We’ve got ’em, Captain, no question. Signal very weak and intermittent but –’

      ‘Never mind the signal!’ It was Raeburn who made this interruption without any by-your-leave from Swanson. He tried, and failed, to keep the rising note of excitement out of his voice and he looked more than ever like a youngster playing hookey from high school. ‘The bearing? Have you got their bearing? That’s all that matters.’

      The other operator swivelled in his seat and I recognised my erstwhile guard, Zabrinski. He fixed Raeburn with a sad and reproachful eye.

      ‘Course we got their bearing, Lieutenant. First thing we did. O-forty-five, give or take a whisker. North-east, that is.’

      ‘Thank you, Zabrinski,’ Swanson said dryly. ‘O-forty-five is north-east. The navigating officer and I wouldn’t have known. Position?’

      Zabrinski shrugged and turned to his watchmate, a man with a red face, leather neck and a shining polished dome where his hair ought to have been. ‘What’s the word, Curly?’

      ‘Nothing. Just nothing.’ Curly looked at Swanson. ‘Twenty times I’ve asked for his position. No good. All he does is send out his call-sign. I don’t think he’s hearing us at all, he doesn’t even know we’re listening, he just keeps sending his call-sign over and over again. Maybe he hasn’t switched his aerial in to “receive”.’

      ‘It isn’t possible,’ Swanson said.

      ‘It is with this guy,’ Zabrinski said. ‘At first Curly and I thought that it was the signal that was weak, then we thought it was the operator who was weak or sick, but we were wrong, he’s just a ham-handed amateur.’

      ‘You СКАЧАТЬ