The Aurora Australis was fleeing and Hart assumed the Germans would let it go. Drexler came running back to the stern after the Norwegian harpooning, wild with frustration. He stopped and stared in disbelief at the chaos.
"What happened?"
"They speared us," one of the sailors said.
Drexler looked at the red-stained stern of the retreating whaler. "Who was hurt?"
"Two of the soldiers almost drowned. Reinhard is dead." The sailor's voice was wooden, numbed by shock.
Drexler's eyes flitted around nervously. "What about the other plane?"
No one answered him.
"Who could fly the other plane?"
Again, no answer. His gaze jerked around, then settled on Hart.
The pilot stared menacingly back at him. It was a look that spoke volumes. There would be no more flying today.
"That murdering bastard," Drexler muttered. Then he turned and ran back toward the bridge.
As he watched the German leave, Hart realized he was trembling from reaction. Reinhard Kauffman had unwittingly saved his life by ordering him out of the plane. Yet, what kind of destiny did Hart confront now, with Drexler having created an international incident that was certain to overshadow whatever the expedition had accomplished?
From the ship's motion in the rising swells, the pilot could tell they were picking up speed again. The added wind was cold. He stood up to see. The stern was temporarily deserted but he noticed a commotion toward the bow. The SS troops were piling loose crates and gear to form a barricade and laying weapons behind it. Hart's chill increased. He stiffly climbed up on the catapult to get a better view ahead. They were steaming south at full speed into an archipelago of icebergs, still chasing the Aurora Australis, its stern a taunting lure. The horizon was shrinking as the wind grew. Feder's storm was coming.
Enough is enough. Hart began walking back to the bridge. Twice he saw bullet holes. Brass shell casings rolled and tinkled on the canting deck like strewn toys. Madness!
The bridge was a welcome pocket of heat but Drexler swung on him immediately.
"I told you to stay away!"
Hart ignored him, turning to Heiden. "Captain, as an expedition member with experience in Antarctic waters, I must protest our speed and course. The ice and weather make it entirely unsafe."
"Hart, I want you below!"
"Captain?"
Heiden was silent.
"Captain, you know I'm right. You've been in the Arctic. Or ask Feder. This is risky."
The gap between the two ships was slowly narrowing. A berg the size of a city block slid by on the port side, its underwater bulk like a swollen blue cheese.
"We're pursuing a criminal, Hart," Drexler said. "A ship which killed one of our company. Destroyed one of our planes."
"Captain Heiden, please."
Heiden finally swiveled in his chair to address the pilot. "We can't end it like this. Or we're finished anyway."
"That's better than sinking!"
"No it isn't." Heiden was resigned. "Things have gone too far, Hart. We'll close in half an hour."
"But what are we going to do if we catch them?"
"I don't know." He nodded toward Drexler.
The political liaison turned away, fixing his gaze on the stern of the whaling ship. An ice floe banged against the hull, ringing it like a bell.
"Barometer is still dropping," Feder said worriedly into the hush. "It's growing dark."
Hart glanced around. The Germans avoided his gaze. Ahead, the Aurora Australis was disappearing into a cold fog. Flakes of snow drifted down.
Drexler bent to the intercom. "I need more speed!"
"Jurgen, we're not going to be able to see," Feder warned.
The liaison nodded. "Two men out on the wings, listening for surf on the ice."
Heiden issued the order.
Hart noticed that the helmsman was sweating. "This is crazy," the pilot insisted.
No one answered. The atmosphere was one of controlled fury. Instead of losing his grip on the group, Drexler had strengthened it. Defeated, Hart clomped down the stairs toward the galley, feeling impotent.
Greta was there, a mug of tea in front of her, staring at the table. Hart hesitated a moment, then got some coffee and slumped into a chair across from her. The biologist's hair hung around her face like a curtain and her hands were splayed on the surface as if she were examining them for the first time.
Slowly she looked up. Her eyes were moist. Whatever had divided the pair was momentarily forgotten. "I didn't think our sampling would lead to that," she said, shaking her head in disbelief. "I didn't think men would go that far."
Hart let her words hang in the air. Then he said: "This voyage was always about politics, not science, wasn't it?"
She looked at him fiercely. "It was about both. You can't separate so neatly- it's naive to think you can. Everything we humans do is confused by human relationships. That's what made me so angry on the beach- that you recognized that element in regards to my own presence aboard. Of course Jurgen made a difference. Of course he's a reason I'm here, me instead of any of a hundred other biologists. That doesn't mean I know what to feel, how to behave, what standard I can use to judge myself. What role I've really played."
Hart inwardly winced. She was blaming herself. "Greta, you're not responsible for Jurgen Drexler. Or Sigvald Jansen."
"I'm responsible for me."
He reached out and placed his hand on hers. It was cold to his touch and his was larger, like a blanket. She didn't pull away. "We do our best and go on," he said. "The lucky ones know how to pray. I had a friend who believed angels sat on your shoulder."
She laughed at that. "Sounds like my nuns." For a moment her thoughts were far away and then the sadness came back. "But we don't look for magic any longer, it seems, we look for resources." The last word was bitter. "Owen, I don't want to help Germany hunt whales any longer."
He held her hand now, his fingers against her palm, marveling at her fineness. He nodded. "You won't have to. I think we're about done down here- "
But his sentence was cut off by an enormous boom, so loud it was as if they were suspended inside a drum. They were jerked off their chairs and hurled onto the deck amid a cascade of splintering crockery and clattering tableware. There was a long, grating, terrifying squeal of tortured metal. Then the lights went out.
She felt for him in the dark. "What happened?"
"Ice, I think. They gambled and lost." He could hear confused shouts, the pounding of feet, the slamming of hatches. Maybe gushing water too, or perhaps he was imagining that. He struggled to sit up, the deck tilt not too severe yet. "Are you all right?" Dim light, he noticed, still filtered through the galley portholes.
"I think so. It hurt, but I think so." She sat up too, holding on to his sweater. "I'm sorry. I'm frightened."
"So am I. We're a long ways from help." He was reluctant to leave her touch but he gently moved her hands to her lap for a moment and stood up. His feet slid on loose shards of dishes as he staggered to a porthole. A wall of ice filled his view. The ship groaned as it rose and fell in clumsy embrace with the berg as the ice leveraged a wider gash in the hull.
The pilot went back to Greta and boosted her up. Her hand in his was electric, sensual, like an act of sex. He could feel his pulse quickening. Like a schoolboy, he thought. "Let's try to get to the bridge."
He led up the companionway toward the bridge, listening to the creak of torn metal and the rattle of skittering debris as the ship rolled. Then the lights flickered, once, twice, and came back on. A sailor was above them and she dropped his hand as if it were hot. He noticed now the reassuring thud of the engine. It seemed to be shifting from forward to reverse in an effort to move the ship off the ice.
The expedition officers were clustered around the wheel. Sailors continued to shout, some of the voices pitched unnaturally high. The iceberg had slipped away and the Schwabenland was backing with a wallow, leaning to starboard where they had struck.
Drexler and Heiden wouldn't even look at him. "What went wrong?" he whispered to Feder.
"We heard the surf but not soon enough to stop; we were going too fast. The captain said the berg must have had a prong of ice that hit us below the steel reinforcing belt at the waterline; it's the lowest compartments that are flooded. Where the flotation drums are. We sealed the hatches but the drums are banging around down there. It's not good."
Hart listened. Even on the bridge he could hear a dull rhythmic drumming of the flotation devices shifting with each wave.
Schmidt had come up from the infirmary, anxious and agitated. "Do we send an SOS?"
Drexler laughed bitterly. "To who, down here?"
"The Norwegians, I suppose."
"They'd think it a trick. Besides, I won't ask those bastards for help until I'm neck-deep. We're not desperate yet. We're not sinking."
"But if they steam away…" Schmidt let the thought hang there.
"They steam away." Jurgen glanced at Greta and then looked down, realizing bravado had gone too far. She was struggling not to cry.
The pilot remained quiet. There was no need to say anything.
"Well, what's your plan then?" Schmidt's tone was insistent. The doctor was not going to be easily deflected.
Drexler was uncharacteristically silent.
Heiden spoke up. "If we can make the ship seaworthy we can steam for repairs. To Cape Town or Montevideo or even the Falklands. But it's almost impossible to do much at sea with ice all around. We need a quick harbor. The coast, an island: somewhere to work on a temporary patch. If we don't create one we risk having the hull unzip."
"Wonderful," Schmidt said caustically.
"Hamburg Bay," offered Feder. "The first one where we landed…"
"Too far," Heiden said. "And too far into the ice. The mainland if we must, but an island farther north would be less risky as the season grows late. Less ice."
Feder bent over a largely blank chart. "These waters are mostly unexplored…"
Greta had closed her eyes.
"The plane." It was Drexler.
"Yes?" Heiden said.
"The Boreas. We still have one airplane. We'll use it to find a refuge."
The captain shook his head. "We've got one pilot dead, another wounded. The barometer's still dropping. It's night. Even if we could get a plane off I don't know if it could fly in this weather or if we could recover it. Could it land amid this ice? In these seas? I doubt it."
There was a silence for a moment, the shouts of the sailors echoing up to the bridge.
"It could land in the harbor," Hart said, half wishing he'd stayed quiet.
Heiden turned to him. "What good would that do?"
"I'll find a harbor, let you know where it is, land there and wait for you."
"The radio is down."
"I'll drop directions, coordinates, to the ship. I've dropped things before."
Drexler studied him suspiciously.
"There's only one flaw in this plan," Schmidt said. "What if you don't find a harbor in this storm? Then you have to try to land out here amid the ice on the ocean. Maybe you'll make it, maybe not."
Hart nodded. "That's the flaw all right."
Greta looked at him worriedly. "There has to be a better way."
The pilot looked at Drexler. "Unfortunately, there isn't."
Heiden considered. "It's the best gamble, considering the welfare of the entire crew."
"How do we know you're not going to fly off to the Norwegians?" Drexler said.
Hart laughed. "They already harpooned one plane. You think I'm going to let them within range of the other? I was there when Reinhard died. It wasn't pretty." He looked hard at the German. "Besides, I have friends on board the Schwabenland." He nodded toward Greta.
"You've emergency food," Heiden said. "Lines and anchor. But you need someone to help you search, drop the message, secure the plane. Your little friend Fritz perhaps."
Hart nodded. "If he volunteers."
"No." It was Drexler, taking a breath. "I'll go. I took the risk and lost. Now I need to try to get us out. I'll fly with Hart."
Heiden frowned. "We know you don't like to fly, Jurgen…"
"I don't. And Hart doesn't like to fly in this kind of weather. He's going because he must, and I'm going because I must. We'll hunt together. And survive or die together." He looked defiantly at the American.
Well, that would be one satisfaction, the pilot thought. Taking him with me.
"Together," Hart agreed aloud. "The brief summer dusk will start to lighten again in a couple hours. We'll launch as soon as we can see."