Harry gestured impatiently.
Pulling down his snow mask, Breskin hurried to them. “Is he alive?”
“Not by much.”
“What happened?”
“I don’t know. Let’s get him into one of the snowmobile cabins and let the warm air work on him. You take his feet and I’ll—“
“I can handle him myself.”
“But—“
“It’ll be easier and quicker that way.”
Harry accepted the flashlight that Roger passed to him.
The big man bent down and lifted Brian as if the kid weighed no more than ten pounds.
Harry led the way back through the drifts and hummocks to the snowmobiles.
At 4:50 the Americans at Thule radioed Gunvald Larsson with more bad news. Like the Melville before her, the trawler Liberty had found the storm to be an irresistible force against which only big warships and fools tried to stand. She simply could not head straightaway into the massive, powerful waves that surged across nearly all of the North Atlantic and the unfrozen portions of the Greenland Sea. She had turned back five minutes ago when a seaman discovered minor buckling of the starboard bow plates. The American radioman repeatedly assured Gunvald that everyone stationed at Thule was praying for those poor bastards on the iceberg. Indeed, prayers were no doubt being said for them all over the world.
No number of prayers would make Gunvald feel better. The cold, hard fact was that the captain of the Liberty, although certainly of necessity and only with great remorse, had made a decision which virtually sentenced eight people to death.
Gunvald couldn’t bring himself to pass on the news to Rita. Not right away, not that minute. Maybe on the hour—or at a quarter past. He wanted time to get in control of himself. These were his friends, and he cared about them. He didn’t want to be the one who delivered their death notice. He was trembling. He had to have time to think about how he would tell them.
He needed a drink. Although he was not a man who usually sought to relieve tension with liquor, and in spite of being known for his steely nerves, he poured himself a shot of vodka from the three-bottle store in the communications pantry. When he had finished the vodka, he was still unable to call Rita. He poured another shot, hesitated, then made it a double, before putting the bottle away.
Although the snowmobiles were stationary, the five small engines rumbled steadily. On the icecap, in the middle of a fierce storm, the machines must never be switched off, because the batteries would go dead and the lubricants in the engines would freeze up within two or three minutes. The unrelenting wind was growing colder as the day wore on; it could kill men and machines with ease.
Harry came out of the ice cave and hurried to the nearest snowmobile. When he was settled in the warm cabin, he screwed off the top of the Thermos bottle that he’d brought with him. He took several quick sips of the thick, fragrant vegetable soup. It had been brewed from freeze-dried mix and brought to the boiling point on the hot plate that they had used earlier to melt snow at the open blasting shafts. For the first time all day, he was able to relax, though he knew this was a temporary state of peace.
In the three snowmobiles to his left, George Lin, Claude, and Roger were eating dinner in equal privacy. He could barely see them: dim shapes inside the unlighted cabins.
Everyone had been given three cups of soup. At this rate, they had enough supplies for only two more meals. Harry had decided against rationing the remaining food, for if they were not well fed, the cold would kill them that much sooner.
Franz Fischer and Pete Johnson were in the ice cave. Harry could see them clearly, for his machine’s headlamps shone through the entrance and provided the only light in there. The two men were pacing, waiting for their turn at warm cabins and Thermos bottles full of hot soup. Franz moved briskly, agitatedly, almost as if marching back and forth. In perfect contrast, Pete ambled from one end of the cave to the other, loose-jointed, fluid.