submerged, and they were out of sight of anyone in a ship or aircraft.
“Take her down to one hundred feet,” Gorov ordered.
The descent was measured by signifying beeps from the computer.
“At one hundred feet,” the diving officer announced.
“Hold her steady.”
“Steady, sir.”
As the submarine leveled off, Gorov said, “Take over for me, Lieutenant Zhukov.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You can return the control room to a skeleton watch.”
“Yes, sir.”
Gorov left the chamber and walked aft to the communications center.
Timoshenko turned toward the door just as the captain entered the room. “Request permission to run up the antenna, sir.”
“Denied.”
Blinking in surprise, Timoshenko tilted his head to one side and said, “Sir?”
“Denied,” Gorov repeated. He surveyed the telecommunications equipment that lined the bulkheads. He had been given rudimentary training in its use. For security reasons, the telecommunications computer was separate from the ship's main computer, although the keyboards were operated in the same manner as those in the control room with which he was so familiar. “I want to use your coder and the communications computer.”
Timoshenko didn't move. He was an excellent technician and a bright young man in some ways. But his world was composed of data banks, programming keys, input, output, and gadgets — and he was not able to deal well with people unless they behaved in a predictable, machinelike manner.
“Did you hear me?” Gorov asked impatiently.
Blushing, embarrassed, and confused, Timoshenko said, “Uh… yes. Yes, sir.” He directed Gorov to a chair before the primary terminal of the communications computer. “What did you have in mind, sir?”
“Privacy,” Gorov said bluntly as he sat down.
Timoshenko just stood there.
“You're dismissed, Lieutenant.”
His confusion deepened, Timoshenko nodded, tried to smile, but instead looked as if he had just been jabbed with a long needle. He retired to the other end of the room, where his curious subordinates were unsuccessfully pretending that they had heard nothing.
The coder — or encrypting machine — stood beside Gorov's chair. It was the size and shape of a two-drawer filing cabinet, housed in burnished steel. A keyboard — with all the usual keys plus fourteen with special functions — was built into the top. Gorov touched the ON switch. Crisp yellow paper automatically rolled out of the top of the coder cabinet and onto the platen.
Gorov quickly typed a message. When he was finished, he read it without touching the flimsy paper, then pressed a rectangular red key labeled PROCESS. A laser printer hummed, and the coder produced the encrypted version under the original message. It appeared to be nonsense: clumps of random numbers separated by occasional symbols.
Tearing the paper from the encrypting machine, Gorov swung around in his chair to face the video display terminal. Referring to the encoded version of the message, he carefully typed the same series of numbers and symbols into the communications computer. When that was done, he pressed a special-function key that bore the word DECODE and another labeled PRINTOUT. He did not touch the READOUT tab, because he didn't want his work displayed on the large overhead screen for the benefit of Timoshenko and the other technicians. After dropping the flimsy yellow sheet from the encrypting machine into a paper shredder, he leaned back in his chair.
No more than a minute passed before the communique—now decoded and in its original state — was in his hands. He had come full circle in less than five minutes: The printout contained the same fourteen lines that he had composed on the coder, but it was now in the usual type style of the computer. It looked like any other decoded message received from the Ministry in Moscow, which was precisely what he wanted.
He instructed the computer to erase from its memory banks every detail of what he had just done. With that, the printout was the only evidence that remained of the exercise. Timoshenko would not be able to quiz the computer about any of this after Gorov left the cabin.
He got up and went to the open door. From there he said, “Oh, Lieutenant?”
Timoshenko was pretending to study a logbook. He glanced up. “Yes, sir?”
“In those dispatches you intercepted, the ones having to do with the Edgeway group, there was mention of a transmitter on that drift ice with them.”
Timoshenko nodded. “They've got a standard shortwave set, of course. But that isn't what you're talking about. There's also a radio transmitter, a tracking beacon, that puts out a two-second signal ten times every minute.”
“Have you picked it up?”
“Twenty minutes ago.”
“Is it a strong signal?”
“Oh, yes.”
“Have you got a bearing?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, run another check on it. I'll be back to you on the intercom in a few minutes,” George said. He returned to the control room for another conversation with Emil Zhukov.
Harry had not yet finished telling Rita how the auxiliary drill had broken down, when she interrupted him. “Hey, where's Brian?”
He turned to the men who had entered the ice cave behind him. Brian Dougherty was not among them.
Harry frowned. “Where's Brian? Why isn't he here?”
“He must be around somewhere. I'll take a look outside,” Roger Breskin said.
Pete Johnson left with him.
“He probably just went behind one of the hummocks out there,” Fischer said, although he surely knew better than that. “Nothing especially dramatic, I'll wager. Probably just had to go to the john.
“No,” Harry disagreed.
Rita said, “He would have told someone.”
Out on the icecap, far from the security of Edgeway Station or the inflatable igloos of a temporary camp, no one could afford to be modest even about bladder and bowel habits. When going to the john, they all realized that it was necessary to inform at least one other person as to exactly which hill or pressure ridge would serve as a screen for their toilet. Acutely aware of the vagaries of the icefield and the weather, Brian would have let others know where to start looking if he didn't make a timely return.
Roger and Pete reappeared in less than two minutes, pulling up their goggles, tugging down their ice-veined snow masks.
“He's not at the sleds,” Roger said. “Or anywhere else we can see.” His gray eyes, usually expressionless, were troubled.
“Who rode back here with him?” Harry asked.
They looked at one another.
“Claude?”
The Frenchman shook his head. “Not me. I thought he rode with Franz.”
“I rode with Franz,” George Lin said.
Rita was exasperated. Tucking an errant strand or reddish hair back under her hood, she said, “For God's sake, you mean he was left behind in the confusion?”
“No way. He couldn't have been,” Harry said.
“Unless that was what he wanted,” George Lin suggested.
Harry was perplexed. “Why should he want to be left behind?”
Clearly untouched by their anxiety about Brian, Lin took time to blow his nose, fastidiously fold the
