Ice Station Zebra. Alistair MacLean

down here. Helicopter.’

      ‘A whirlybird, eh? I heard one arriving a few minutes ago. But that was one of ours.’

      ‘It had U.S. Navy written all over it in four-foot letters,’ I conceded, ‘and the pilot spent all his time chewing gum and praying out loud for a quick return to California.’

      ‘Did you tell the skipper this?’ Hansen demanded.

      ‘He didn’t give me the chance to tell him anything.’

      ‘He’s got a lot on his mind and far too much to see to,’ Hansen said. He unfolded the paper and looked at the front page. He didn’t have far to look to find what he wanted: the two-inch banner headlines were spread over seven columns.

      ‘Well, would you look at this.’ Lieutenant Hansen made no attempt to conceal his irritation and chagrin. ‘Here we are, pussy-footing around in this God-forsaken dump, sticking-plaster all over our mouths, sworn to eternal secrecy about mission and destination and then what? I pick up this blasted Limey newspaper and here are all the top-secret details plastered right across the front page.’

      ‘You are kidding, Lieutenant,’ said the man with the red face and the general aspect of a polar bear. His voice seemed to come from his boots.

      ‘I am not kidding, Zabrinski,’ Hansen said coldly, ‘as you would appreciate if you had ever learned to read. “Nuclear submarine to the rescue,” it says. “Dramatic dash to the North Pole.” God help us, the North Pole. And a picture of the Dolphin. And of the skipper. Good lord, there’s even a picture of me.’

      Rawlings reached out a hairy paw and twisted the paper to have a better look at the blurred and smudged representation of the man before him. ‘So there is. Not very flattering, is it, Lieutenant? But a speaking likeness, mind you, a speaking likeness. The photographer has caught the essentials perfectly.’

      ‘You are utterly ignorant of the first principles of photography,’ Hansen said witheringly. ‘Listen to this lot. “The following joint statement was issued simultaneously a few minutes before noon (G.M.T.) to-day in both London and Washington: ‘In view of the critical condition of the survivors of Drift Ice Station Zebra and the failure either to rescue or contact them by conventional means, the United States Navy has willingly agreed that the United States nuclear submarine Dolphin be dispatched with all speed to try to effect contact with the survivors.

      ‘“The Dolphin returned to its base in the Holy Loch, Scotland, at dawn this morning after carrying out extensive exercises with the Nato naval forces in the Eastern Atlantic. It is hoped that the Dolphin (Commander James D. Swanson, U.S.N., commanding) will sail at approximately 7 p.m. (G.M.T.) this evening.

      ‘“The laconic understatement of this communique heralds the beginning of a desperate and dangerous rescue attempt which must be without parallel in the history of the sea or the Arctic. It is now sixty hours –”’

      ‘“Desperate,” you said, Lieutenant?’ Rawlings frowned heavily. ‘“Dangerous,” you said? The captain will be asking for volunteers?’

      ‘No need. I told the captain that I’d already checked with all eighty-eight enlisted men and that they’d volunteered to a man.’

      ‘You never checked with me.’

      ‘I must have missed you out. Now kindly clam up, your executive officer is talking. “It is now sixty hours since the world was electrified to learn of the disaster which had struck Drift Ice Station Zebra, the only British meteorological station in the Arctic, when an English-speaking ham radio operator in Bodo, Norway picked up the faint S O S from the top of the world.

      ‘“A further message, picked up less than twenty-four hours ago by the British trawler Morning Star in the Barents Sea makes it clear that the position of the survivors of the fuel oil fire that destroyed most of Drift Ice Station Zebra in the early hours of Tuesday morning is desperate in the extreme. With their fuel oil reserves completely destroyed and their food stores all but wiped out, it is feared that those still living cannot long be expected to survive in the twenty-below temperatures – fifty degrees of frost – at present being experienced in that area.

      ‘“It is not known whether all the prefabricated huts, in which the expedition members lived, have been destroyed.

      ‘“Drift Ice Station Zebra, which was established only in the late summer of this year, is at present in an estimated position of 85° 40′ N. 21° 30′ E., which is only about three hundred miles from the North Pole. Its position cannot be known with certainty because of the clockwise drift of the polar ice-pack.

      ‘“For the past thirty hours long-range supersonic bombers of the American, British and Russian air forces have been scouring the polar ice-pack searching for Station Zebra. Because of the uncertainty about the Drift Station’s actual position, the complete absence of daylight in the Arctic at this time of year and the extremely bad weather conditions they were unable to locate the station and forced to return.”’

      ‘They didn’t have to locate it,’ Rawlings objected. ‘Not visually. With the instruments those bombers have nowadays they could home in on a humming-bird a hundred miles away. The radio operator at the Drift Station had only to keep on sending and they could have used that as a beacon.’

      ‘Maybe the radio operator is dead,’ Hansen said heavily. ‘Maybe his radio has packed up on him. Maybe the fuel that was destroyed was essential for running the radio. All depends what source of power he used.’

      ‘Diesel-electric generator,’ I said. ‘He had a standby battery of Nife cells. Maybe he’s conserving the batteries using them only for emergencies. There’s also a hand-cranked generator, but its range is pretty limited.’

      ‘How do you know that?’ Hansen asked quietly. ‘About the type of power used?’

      ‘I must have read it somewhere.’

      ‘You must have read it somewhere.’ He looked at me without expression, then turned back to his paper. ‘“A report from Moscow,”’ he read on, ‘“states that the atomic-engined Dvina, the world’s most powerful ice-breaker, sailed from Murmansk some twenty hours ago and is proceeding at high speed towards the Arctic pack. Experts are not hopeful about the outcome for at this late period of the year the ice-pack has already thickened and compacted into a solid mass which will almost certainly defy the efforts of any vessel, even those of the Dvina, to smash its way through.

      ‘“The use of the submarine Dolphin appears to offer the only slender hope of life for the apparently doomed survivors of Station Zebra. The odds against success must be regarded as heavy in the extreme. Not only will the Dolphin have to travel several hundred miles continuously submerged under the polar ice-cap, but the possibilities of its being able to break through the ice-cap at any given place or to locate the survivors are very remote. But undoubtedly if any ship in the world can do it it is the Dolphin, the pride of the United States Navy’s nuclear submarine fleet.”’

      Hansen broke off and read on silently for a minute. Then he said: ‘That’s about all. A story giving all the known details of the Dolphin. That, and a lot of ridiculous rubbish about the enlisted men in the Dolphin’s crew being the élite of the cream of the U.S. Navy.’

      Rawlings looked wounded. Zabrinski, the polar bear with the red face, grinned, fished out a pack of cigarettes and passed them around. Then he became serious again and said: ‘What are those crazy guys doing up there at the top of the world anyway?’

      ‘Meteorological, lunkhead,’ Rawlings informed him. ‘Didn’t you hear the lieutenant say so? A big word, mind you,’ he conceded generously, ‘but he made a pretty fair stab at it. Weather station to you, Zabrinski.’

      ‘I still say they’re crazy guys,’ Zabrinski rumbled. ‘Why do they do it, Lieutenant?’

      ‘I suggest you ask Dr Carpenter about it,’ Hansen said dryly. He stared through the plate-glass windows at the snow whirling greyly