Ten minutes later we were home,
'God, this is wonderful,' Hansen sighed. He stared in happy bemusement from the captain to me to the glass in his hand to the water dripping from the melting ice on his furs onto the corticene decking of the captain's tiny cabin. 'The warmth, the light, the comfort and home sweet home. I never thought I'd see any of it again. When that rocket went up, skipper, I was just looking around to pick a place to lay me down and die. And don't think I'm joking, because I'm not.'
'And Dr. Carpenter?' Swanson smiled.
'Defective mental equipment somewhere,' Hansen said. 'He doesn't seem to know how to go about giving up. I think he's just mule-headed. You get them like that.'
Hansen's slightly off-beat, slightly irrational talk had nothing to do with the overwhelming relief and relaxation that come after moments of great stress and tension. Hansen was too tough for that. I knew that and I knew that Swanson knew it, too. We'd been back for almost twenty minutes now, we'd told our story, the pressure was off, a happy ending for all seemed in sight, and normalcy was again almost the order of the day. But when the strain is oft and conditions are back to normal, a man has time to start thinking about things again. I knew only too well what was in Hansen's mind's eye: that charred and huddled shapelessness that had once been my brother. He didn't want me to talk about him, and for that I didn't blame him; he didn't want me even to think about him, although he must have known that that was impossible. The kindest men nearly always are like that, hard and tough and cynical on the outside, men who have been too kind and showed it.
'However it was,' Swanson smiled, 'you can consider yourselves two of the luckiest men alive. That rocket you saw was the third last we had, it's been a regular fourth of July for the past hour or so. And you think Rawlings, Zabrinski, and the survivors on Zebra are safe for the present?'
'Nothing to worry about for the next couple of days,' Hansen nodded. 'They'll be okay. Cold, mind you, and a good half of them desperately in need of hospital treatment, but they'll survive.'
'Fine. Well, this is how it is. This lead here stopped closing in about half an hour ago. but it doesn't matter now: we can drop down any time and still hold our position. What does matter is that we have located the fault in the ice machine. It's a damned tricky and complicated job, and I expect it will take several hours yet to fix. But I think we'll wait until it is fixed before we try anything. I'm not too keen on this idea of making a dead-reckoning approach to this lead near Zebra, then letting off a shot in the dark. Since there's no desperate hurry, I'd rather wait till we got the ice fathometer operating again, make an accurate survey of this lead then fire a torpedo up through the middle. If the ice is only four or five feet thick there, we shouldn't have much trouble blowing a hole through.'
'That would be best,' Hansen agreed. He finished off his medicinal alcohol — an excellent bourbon — rose stiffly to his feet, and stretched. 'Well, back to the old treadmill again. How many torpedoes in working order?'
'Four, at the last count.'
'I may as well go help young Mills load them up now. If that's okay by you, skipper.'
'It is not okay by me,' Swanson said mildly, 'and if you'll take a quick gander at that mirror there, you'll understand why. You're not fit to load a slug into an air rifle, much less a torpedo into its tube. You haven't just been on a Sundayafternoon stroll, you know. A few hours' sleep, John, then we'll see.'
Hansen didn't argue. I couldn't imagine anyone arguing with Commander Swanson. He made for the door. 'Coming, Doc?'
'In a moment. Sleep well.'
'Yeah. Thanks.' He touched me lightly on the shoulder and smiled through bloodshot and exhausted eyes. 'Thanks for everything. Good night, all.'
When he was gone Swanson said, 'It was pretty wicked out there tonight?'
'I wouldn't recommend it for an old ladies' home Sundayafternoon outing.'
'Lieutenant Hansen seems to imagine he's under some kind of debt to you,' he went on inconsequentially.
'Imagination, as you say. They don't come any better than Hansen. You're damned lucky to have him as an exec.'
'I know that.' He hesitated, then said quietly: 'I promise you I won't mention this again, but, well, I'm damned sorry, Doctor.'
I looked at him and nodded slowly. I knew he meant it, I knew he had to say it, but there's not much you can say in turn to anything like that. I said: 'Six others died with him, Commander.'
He hesitated again. 'Do we — do we take the dead back to Britain with us?'
'Could I have another drop of that excellent bourbon, Commander? Been a very heavy run on your medicinal alcohol in the past few hours, I'm afraid.' I waited till he had filled my glass, then went on: 'We don't take them back with us. They're not dead men, they're just unrecognizable and unidentifiable lumps of charred matter. Let them stay here.'
His relief was unmistakable and he was aware of it, for he went on hurriedly, for something to say: 'All this equipment for locating and tracking the Russian missiles. Destroyed?'
'I didn't check.' He'd find out for himself soon enough that there had been no such equipment. How he'd react to that discovery in light of the cock-and-bull story I'd spun to him and Admiral Garvie in the Holy Loch I couldn't even begin to guess. At the moment I didn't even care. It didn't seem important; nothing seemed important, not any more. All at once I felt tired, not sleepy, just deathly tired, so I pushed myself stiffly to my feet, said good night, and left.
Hansen was in his bunk when I got back to his cabin, his furs lying where he had dropped them. I checked that he was no longer awake, slipped off my own furs, hung them up, and replaced the Mannlicher-Schoenauer in my case. I lay down in my cot to sleep, but sleep wouldn't come. Exhausted though I was, I had never felt less like sleep in my life.
I was too restless and unsettled for sleep, too many problems coming all at once were causing a first-class log jam in my mind. I got up, pulled on a shirt and denim pants, and made my way to the control room. I spent the better part of what remained of the night there, pacing up and down, watching two technicians repairing the vastly complicated innards of the ice machine, reading the messages of congratulation which were still coming in, talking desultorily to the officer on deck, and drinking endless cups of coffee. It passed the night for me, and although I hadn't closed an eye. I felt fresh and almost relaxed by the time morning came.
At the wardroom breakfast table that morning everyone seemed quietly cheerful. They knew they had done a good job, the whole world was telling them they had done a magnificent job, and you could see that they all regarded that job as being as good as over. No one appeared to doubt Swanson's ability to blow a hole through the ice. If it hadn't been for the presence of the ghost at the feast, myself, they would have been positively jovial.
'We'll pass up the extra cups of coffee this morning, gentlemen,' Swanson said. 'Drift Station Zebra is still waiting for us, and even though I'm assured everyone there will survive, they must be feeling damned cold and miserable. The ice machine has been in operation for almost an hour now, at least we hope it has. We'll drop down right away and test it, and after we've loaded the torpedoes — two should do it, I think — we'll blow our way up into this lead at Zebra.'
Twenty minutes later the «Dolphin» was back where she belonged, 150 feet below the surface of the sea — or the ice cap. After ten minutes' maneuvering, with a close check being kept on the plotting table to maintain our position relative to Drift Station Zebra, it was clear that the ice machine was behaving perfectly normally again, tracing out the inverted ridges and valleys in the ice with its usual magical accuracy. Commander Swanson nodded his satisfaction.
'That's it, then.' He nodded to Hansen and Mills, the torpedo officer. 'You can go ahead now. Maybe you'd like to accompany them, Dr. Carpenter. Or is loading torpedoes old hat to you?'
'Never seen it,' I said truthfully. 'Thanks, I'd like to go along.' Swanson was as considerate toward men as he was toward his beloved «Dolphin», which was why every man in the ship swore by him. He knew, or suspected, that apart from the shock I felt at my brother's death, I was worried stiff about other things. He would have heard, although he hadn't mentioned it to me and hadn't even asked me how I had slept, that I'd spent the night prowling
