tenaciously and brought him to a musclejarring stop. Then, as if triggered by instinct, in the same motion he threw a sleeve of his jacket to Hunnewell.
The thoroughly frightened scientist needed no coaxing. He grasped the nylon fabric with a grip that no vise could have equaled and hung on, trembling for almost a minute, waiting for his middle-aged heart to slow down to a few beats above normal. Fearfully, he stole a glance sideways and saw what his numbed senses could not feel-the edge of the ice ledge cut across his waist at the navel.
'When you're up to it,' Pitt said, his voice calm but pierced with a noticeable trace of tenseness, try pulling yourself toward me.'
Hunnewell shook his head. 'I can't,' he murmured hoarsely. 'It's all I can do to hold on.'
'Can you find a foothold?'
Hunnewell didn't answer. He only shook his head again.
Pitt bent over between his outstretched legs and tightened his grip on the jacket. 'We're sitting here though the courtesy of two hard rubber heels, not steel cleats. It won't take much for the ice to crack around them.' He flashed an encouraging grin at Hunnewell.
'Make no sudden movement. I'm going to pull you clear of the ledge.'
This time Hunnewell nodded. He felt a sick ache in his stomach, the tips of his torn fingers throbbed, his sweatsoaked face reflected the terror and pain. One thing, and one thing only, reached through his blanket of fear: the determined look in Pitts eyes. Hunnewell stared at the calm face, and in that moment he knew that Pitt's inner strength and confidence were gaining a toehold in his own frightened mind.
'Stop your blasted grinning,' he said faintly, 'and start pulling.'
Cautiously, an inch at a time, Pitt hauled Hunnewell slowly upward. It took him an agonizing sixty seconds before he had Hunnewell's head on a plane between his knees. Then Pitt, one hand at a time, let go of the jacket and grabbed Hunnewell under the armpits.
'That was the easy part,' Pitt said. 'The next exercise is up to you.'
His hands free, Hunnewell wiped a sleeve across his sweaty brow. 'I can't make any guarantees.'
'Your dividers, are they on you?'
Hunnewell's expression went blank for a moment.
Then he nodded. 'Inside breast pocket.'
'Good,' Pitt murmured. 'Now climb over me and stretch out full length. When your feet are solidly on my shoulders, take out the dividers and jam them into the ice.'
'A piton!' Hunnewell exclaimed, suddenly aware.
'Damned clever of you. Major.'
Hunnewell began hauling himself over Pitts prostrate form straining like a locomotive climbing the Rockies, but he made it. Then, with Pitts hands firmly clamped on his ankles, Hunnewell pulled out the steelpointed dividers that he normally used for plotting distances on charts and rammed them deeply into the ice.
'Okay,' Hunnewell grunted.
'Now we'll repeat the process,' Pitt said. 'Can you hold on?'
'Make it quick,' Hunnewell answered. 'My hands are nearly numb.'
Tentatively, one heel still imbedded in the ice as a safety measure, Pitt tested his weight on Hunnewell's legs. The dividers gripped firm. Working as swiftly and as smoothly as a cat, Pitt crept past Hunnewell, felt his hands grope over the edge of the slope where it leveled out, and wiggled up onto safe ground. He didn't waste an instant. Almost immediately, it seemed to Hunnewell, Pitt was throwing down a nylon line from the helicopter. Half a minute later, the pale and exhausted oceanographer sat on the ice at Pitts feet.
Hunnewell gave a great sigh and gazed into Pitts relieved face. 'Do you know what I'm going to do first thing when we set foot in civilization?'
'Yes,' Pitt said, smiling. 'You're going to buy me the finest gourmet dinner in all Reykjavik, round up all the booze I can drink, and introduce me to a sensuous, buxom, Icelandic nymphomaniac.'
'The dinner and the booze are yours-I owe you that much. The nymphomaniac, I can't promise. So many years have passed by since I've negotiated for a woman's charms, I'm afraid I've lost the touch.'
Pitt laughed, clapped Hunnewell on the shoulder and helped him to his feet. 'Don't sweat it, old friend.
Girls are my department.' He stopped abruptly and said sharply: 'Your hands look like you held them against a grindstone.'
Hunnewell lifted his hands and stared indifferently at the bleeding fingers. 'Not really as bad as they look.
A bit of antiseptic and a manicure and they'll be as good as new.'
'Come on,' Pitt said. 'There's a first-aid kit in the copter. I'll fix them up for you.'
A few minutes later, as Pitt tied the last small bandage, Hunnewell asked, 'Did you find any sign of a tunnel before I took my spill?'
'It's a slick piece of work,' Pitt replied. 'The entire circumference of the entrance cover is beveled, a perfect match with the surrounding ice. If someone hadn't got careless and cut a small handgrip, I'd have walked right over it.'
Hunnewell's face suddenly grew dark. 'This accursed iceberg,' he said grimly. 'I swear that it bears a personal enmity against us.'
He flexed his fingers and solemnly studied the eight little bandages masking the tips. His eyes seemed strained and his face looked weary.
Pitt walked over and raised a round slab of ice three feet in diameter by three inches thick, revealing a circular hole barely large enough for one man to crawl through.
He turned his head away. The stench of burnt paint, fabric and fuel, mixed with torched metal, rose from the opening.
'That should prove I can detect smells through an ice cube,' Pitt said.
'Yes, you've passed the nose test,' Hunnewell said smilingly. 'But you've failed miserably on your thermite charge theory. 'That's nothin' but a burned-out hulk down there.' he paused to give Pitt a scholarly gaze over the tops of his spectacles. 'We could have blasted until next summer without doing any damage to the derelict.'
Pitt shrugged. 'Win a few, lose a few.' He passed a spare flashlight to Hunnewell. 'I'll go first. Give me five minutes before you follow.'
Hunnewell crouched at the edge of the ice tunnel as Pitt knelt to enter.
'Two. I'll give you two minutes, no more. Then I'll be right behind you.'
The tunnel, illuminated by the shattered rays of the sun through the ice crystals above, ran downward at a thirty-degree angle for twenty feet, stopping at the blackened steel plates, charred and bent, of the hull.
The smell by this time was so strong that Pitt found it an effort just to breathe. He shook off the irritating odor and dragged himself to within a foot of the fire-scarred metal, discovering that the tunnel curved and parallelled the hull for another ten feet, ending finally at an open hatch. savagely twisted and distorted. He could only wonder at the wite-hot temperatures responsible.
Crawling over the jagged edge of the hatchway, he stood up and swung the beam of his flashlight, surveying the heat-defaced walls. It was impossible to tell what purpose the compartment served. Every square inch was' gutted by the terrible intensity of the fire. Pitt suddenly felt a dread of the unknown. He stood dead-still for several minutes, forcing his mind to regain control of his emotions before he stepped across the debris toward the door leading to the alleyway and shone the light into the darkness beyond.
The beam torched the whole black length as far as the stairway to a lower deck. 'The corridor was barren except for the charred ashes of a carpet. It was the silence that was eerie. No creaking of the plates, no throb of the engines, no lapping of water against a weedencrusted hull, nothing, only the complete soundlessness of a void.
He hesitated in the doorway for a long minute, his first thought, conviction rather, was that something had gone terribly, terribly wrong with Admiral Sandecker's plans. This wasn't what they had been led to expect at all.
Hunnewell came through the hatchway and joined him. He stood next to Pitt, staring at the blackened walls, the distorted and crystallized metal, and the melted hinges that once held a wooden door. Wearily he leaned the doorway, his eyes half closed, shaking his head as it coming out of a trance.
'We'll find precious little that's of any use to us.'
