Behind Gorov, atop the steel sail, the satellite tracking dish moved slowly from east to west. Its continuous change of attitude was imperceptible at a glance, but it was locked on to a Soviet telecommunications satellite that was in a tight subpolar orbit high above the masses of slate-colored clouds. Gorov’s message had been transmitted by laser four minutes ago. The tracking dish waited to receive Moscow’s reply.
The captain had already imagined the worst possible response. He would be ordered to relinquish command to First Officer Zhukov, who would be directed to put him under twenty-four-hour armed guard and continue the mission as scheduled. His court-martial would proceed in his absence, and he would be informed of the decision upon his return to Moscow.
But he expected a more reasoned response than that from Moscow. Certainly the Ministry was always unpredictable. Even under the postcommunist regime, with its greater respect for justice, officers were occasionally court-martialed without being present to defend themselves. But he believed what he had told Zhukov in the control room: They were not all fools at the Ministry. They would most likely see the opportunity for propaganda and strategic advantage in this situation, and they would reach the proper conclusion.
He scanned the fog-shrouded horizon.
The flow of time seemed to have slowed almost to a stop. Although he knew that it was an illusion, he saw the sea raging in slow motion, the waves building like ripples in an ocean of cold molasses. Each minute was an hour.
Bang!
Sparks shot out of the vents in the steel-alloy casing of the auxiliary drill. It chugged, sputtered, and cut out.
Roger Breskin had been operating it. “What the hell?” he thumbed the power switch.
When the drill wouldn’t start, Pete Johnson stepped in and dropped to his knees to have a look at it.
Everyone crowded around, expecting the worst. They were, Harry thought, like people gathered at an automobile accident—except that the corpses in this wreckage might be their own.
“What’s wrong with it?” George Lin asked.
“You’ll have to take apart the casing to find the trouble,” Fischer told Pete.
“Yeah, but I don’t have to take the sucker apart to know I can’t repair it.”
Brian said, “What do you mean?”
Pointing to the snow and frozen slush around the partially reopened third shaft, Pete said, “See those black specks?”
Harry crouched and studied the bits of metal scattered on the ice. “Gear teeth.”
Everyone was silent.
“I could probably repair a fault in the wiring,” Pete said at last. “But we don’t have a set of spare gears for it.”
“What now?” Brian asked.
With Teutonic pessimism, Fischer said, “Back to the cave and wait for midnight.”
“That’s giving up,” Brian said.
Getting to his feet, Harry said, “But I’m afraid that’s all we can do at the moment, Brian. We lost the other drill when my sled went into the crevasse.”
Dougherty shook his head, refusing to accept that they were powerless to proceed. “Earlier, Claude said we could use the ice ax and the power saw to cut some steps in the winter field, angle down to each package—“
The Frenchman interrupted him. “That would only work if we had a week. We’d need six more hours, perhaps longer, to retrieve this one bomb by the step method. It’s not worth expending all that energy to gain only forty-five feet of safety.”
“Okay, let’s go, let’s pack up,” Harry said, clapping his hands for emphasis. “No point standing here, losing body heat. We can talk about it back at the cave, out of this wind. We might think of something yet.”
But he had no hope.
At 4:02 the communications center reported that a message was coming in from the Naval Ministry. Five minutes later the decoding sheet was passed up to the bridge, where Nikita Gorov began to read it with some trepidation.
MESSAGE
NAVAL MINISTRY
TIME: 1900 MOSCOW
FROM: DUTY OFFICER
TO: CAPTAIN N. GOROV
SUBJECT: YOUR LAST TRANSMISSION #34-D
MESSAGE BEGINS:
YOUR REQUEST UNDER STUDY BY ADMIRALTY STOP IMMEDIATE DECISION CANNOT BE MADE STOP SUBMERGE AND CONTINUE SCHEDULED MISSION FOR ONE HOUR STOP A CONTINUATION OR NEW ORDERS WILL BE TRANSMITTED TO YOU AT 1700 HOURS YOUR TIME STOP