Hart brooded. The flames were dying down. The diary lay open on his bunk where Fritz had left it before retiring. Two survived. What did that mean? He didn't trust Jurgen Drexler. He wanted to talk to Greta.
What were the words Fritz had used to describe her? Yes, he remembered now: your girlfriend. Was his interest in Greta so transparent? Had he unwittingly entered into some competition with Drexler that he was destined to lose? Conflicting impulses tore at him. He realized he was beginning to lose his certainty about why he was here, about what his role was.
He slipped into the corridor. The ship was quiet, everyone exhausted from the events of the past three days. He made his way to Greta's cabin and rapped softly. "Greta?" There was no answer. Maybe she was asleep. Maybe she was ignoring him. He stood, undecided. Wasn't the diary's news important? He tried the knob.
Her cabin was empty. Guiltily, he glanced about. It was neat, impersonally so. There were no photographs, no decoration. A white nightgown hung on a closet hook, the room's sole concession to femininity. That, and its scent of perfume. The bed was made, its blanket displaying a military tautness. Hart swallowed. Was she with Drexler?
He eased the door shut again. Just go back to sleep, he told himself.
But answers might be in her laboratory. Maybe she was still working.
He moved quickly down a ladder and along a passageway. The laboratory had no lock but someone had posted a crude sign on the cabin door. ENTRY FORBIDDEN. There was a skull and crossbones drawn above. Plain enough, Hart thought, but he knocked anyway. There was no answer. He tried the knob and it opened. The laboratory was dim, lit by two lamps on a center table. No one was there.
She's with Jurgen, he thought again.
The awful certainty of it made him reckless. To hell with German rules and secrets. He slipped inside, closed the door, and flicked on the main light. He wanted to know. Know as much as Jurgen Drexler did.
The laboratory was as neat as her cabin, but crowded. Two microscopes on a bench. Shelves with formaldehyde jars ranked like soldiers, filled with fresh organisms she'd netted from the sea. Notebooks similarly cased, and neatly labeled. A large storage locker beyond, stacked with nets and buckets and oilskins and rubber boots. And on a table in the center were rows of covered glass dishes. Petri dishes, she'd called them. Each half filled with a golden gelatin and labeled. Some on ice, some on a hot plate, some under the lamps, some covered by dark cloth. Her cultures. None of them looked like anything to him. Had she failed?
He heard voices and footsteps. Her feminine tone, so unique on the ship, and then Drexler's. Low and anxious. Both coming this way. He doused the main light and looked around in a panic of potential embarrassment. He quickly retreated to the shadow of the storage locker and slipped behind the hanging oilskins.
The door swung open and Drexler stalked in, looking impatient. Greta followed, her face tight. They were fully clothed, Hart noticed immediately: in the same outfits they'd worn at the after-dinner meeting. Relief washed over him. She'd never gone to bed.
"I understand your concern, Greta," Drexler said tiredly, taking out a gauze mask from a box and handing it to her, then tying on one of his own. Both pulled on rubber gloves. "But the expedition is in crisis and the risk is acceptable. This is the kind of discovery that can make your career back in Germany. That can change your life. Our life."
"Or end it, Jurgen. I think we're playing with fire here."
"We have a chance to use this like fire, as a tool. For Germany. For advancement." He bent over the petri dishes. "It's encouraging they grew so fast. Which ones?"
She pointed, unenthusiastically. "There. And there and there."
He held one to the light. "Just white dots."
"Each speck is a colony. Enough, presumably, to kill us all."
"If you are careless."
"And it is me, isn't it, Jurgen? I who have to culture a plague. I who have to safeguard it. This isn't a proper laboratory. It's crazy, bringing this aboard."
"It's only temporary until we know what we're dealing with." He put the dish down and laid a hand on her shoulder. "Greta, listen to me. Norway will be breathing fire over that unfortunate… incident with the whaler. They'll be in full cry, demanding compensation, boldly asserting their claims. It was critical we find something that would offset that irritation- throw the expedition in a positive light. Now God has put that something in our grasp- an organism unlike any other, a bacterium that seems to kill with a speed and lethality that makes other plagues look like a common cold! And you are the key scientist. All of us are depending on you. You alone are going to know how to culture this thing, how to study it. The world's expert on… what? I don't know. Maybe we'll even name it after you."
"What an honor." Her voice was sarcastic.
"Or not, whatever you wish. My point is that to simply burn the corpses and sail away would be even crazier. Perhaps we can stop a future plague with our discovery. Make this island safe for a base. Understand a new polar biology. Greta, we're doing the right thing."
"Then why the spores? Why does Schmidt care about the spores?"
"He's a scientist, like you."
"No he isn't. He's a doctor and hardly even that- a quack pathologist- cracking open those Norwegians' chest cavities like a greedy coroner to look for spore coats. Why?"
"To understand the biology. To locate the source."
"I'm not stupid, Jurgen."
"To learn, Greta."
She shook her head. "I read the literature. I know what a government could do with the right plague bacteria…"
"Like the British in Scotland?"
"With a spore-coated microbe…"
"Like the British and anthrax? Their sly little experiments, on the possible eve of war?"
"You don't know that for sure…"
"I know far, far more about such matters than you'll ever know." He failed to keep a note of condescension out of his voice. "Greta, you're a good biologist, but you're as naive about politics as that ill-educated American. The Great Powers want to crush the Reich, darling. Crush it. Before it grows too strong. Because we represent the future. And if something like this can buy us time…"
"Don't talk about him like that."
"Who?"
"Owen. He's good at what he does and yet you always mock him, insult him."
"He's nosy and contentious. And you always flirt with him."
"That's a lie! You're so insecure…"
"I'm simply tired of that damned American and tired of you defending him. We should never have asked him aboard. Now I simply ask that we- you and I- focus on Germany."
"Don't patronize me with your Nazi patriotism! Schmidt doesn't want to buy time. He wants to build a weapon!"
"To counter their weapons, to make their evil unusable. Can't you see that? Schmidt thinks we've stumbled on a power never before seen. And Germany can use it to preserve a balance of power."
"Jurgen, I don't want to work on this," she said in frustration. "Not with that ghoul Schmidt. I saw him at that funeral pyre on the beach- he was completely in his element. Let's just go home, get on with our lives…"
"This is our life. And you will work on it!"
"Listen to me! These dishes could kill us! What if they break? I swear, I'll destroy the cultures!" Her warning sounded real.
He stared at her then with surprise, a surprise that swiftly evolved to barely contained outrage. His face was tight from lidded anger and his voice quieted with menace. "Now you listen to me, Greta Heinz. You will work on it as a loyal member of a Reich expedition- or by all the saints I'll not protect you from the consequences when we return! I'm not going to allow your childish and simplistic view of things to derail our future! My future."
She looked so shocked at his vehemence that her look halted him. He bit his lip, struggling to regain control of his emotions. His face twisted with the inner pain of self-betrayal. He took a deep breath. "What you don't understand is that I love you," he finally managed, more weakly. "I love you, Greta. And all I'm asking is that you do this one thing, work on this one discovery, for us. For us and for the Reich. For Germany. As the right thing to do."
Her face screwed up. "Jurgen, I can't!" she pleaded. "I'm frightened!"
"I'm frightened too. By the possibility of failure." He looked at her solemnly, his expression confessing his need. "You can't let that happen to me." He took off his mask and gloves and leaned stiffly to kiss her rigid cheek. Then he walked out.
Hart stood still, frozen. There was a small sound. Greta was weeping.
The tears were running into her mask and she lifted her rubbered hands up to try to brush them. Then she angrily tore the gloves off, flinging them and the mask in a corner. "Damn it," she sobbed, "damn all men, damn these plates, I'm so afraid of these cultures- "
"It didn't kill everyone."
Her head jerked up. Hart felt he could hardly breathe.
"It didn't kill everyone," he repeated. He clumsily stepped out from the storage locker. She whirled.
"You!"
"We found a diary and- " He lifted a hand toward her.
Instantly, her anger fastened on him. "My God! How long have you been standing there? How dare you- "
"Greta, please, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to, I came to the lab to share this news but you weren't here and then I heard footsteps and, and…" It sounded lame, he knew.
Her face was shiny with tears. "What did you hear? How long were you there?"
He shrugged.
"You heard everything, didn't you?"
"Yes, but I wasn't trying- "
"Get out, leave here now!"
"Two survived the disease- "
"Get out, get out, get out! God, I hate both of you so much!"
He backed to the door, cringing from her rage, and then shut it behind him, leaning against it, his eyes closed.
Inside, he heard her wail. "God, how I wish I could get off this cursed ship!"
Hart couldn't sleep, his mind a tumult of emotions. Always a disaster, every time he went near her. Would she tell Drexler? He'd be lucky they didn't throw him overboard as a damned spy. Lord, he was tired…
Then there was a thump and he found himself stunned. He realized he'd slept finally, and not just slept but descended into the drugged sleep of the exhausted. Now he had rolled out of his bunk. The deck was sharply canted and bright polar sunlight poured through his porthole. "What the hell?" Were they sinking again?
The pilot became aware of loud banging and clanging but realized groggily that it was the noise of purpose, not confusion. There was a deeper rumble of pumps. He looked at his watch. It was early afternoon; he'd slept a long time. Groaning, he stood unsteadily against the tilt, feeling gritty. The Norwegian diary had skittered across the floor and he picked it up and inserted it under his mattress, then dressed clumsily and made his way to the top deck.
The Schwabenland was moored against the half-sunken Bergen, sailors swarming over both. Cables from the higher German ship had been strung to winches on the Norwegian one. Some of the German cargo had been temporarily unloaded onto the Bergen's deck and more- the numbered crates that had puzzled him- were being ferried ashore. Selective flooding of compartments and winching had tilted the Schwabenland far enough to port to allow the breach in the hull to clear the water. Lifeboats had been tied alongside the long gash and sailors were beating, cutting, and riveting metal. At the raised bow of the Norwegian ship a section of plating was being cut away with a shower of sparks. Ropes had been strung to bar entry to the interior of the Norwegian whaler but even so, the sailors wore precautionary gauze masks. Heiden was stalking this way and that, closely observing and issuing orders.
Hart looked for Fritz and didn't spot him. He approached Heiden.
"Why are supplies going ashore? Are we staying?"
"No," Heiden replied. "Jurgen's idea. A cache for next year."
So the Germans planned to return. "Have you seen Fritz?"
The captain shook his head. "No. If you do, tell the lazy bastard to get to work."
"Do you know when we can leave?"
"When my ship is repaired." The tone was impatient and short.
The pilot backed off and went to the stern, looking morosely out across the cold lagoon. Once more, Antarctica had proved a disaster. Drexler despised him, despite their successful flight together. Greta apparently hated him. The clash with the whalers had probably eliminated any chance of cheerful publicity. Fritz had disappeared. He felt utterly alone.
And then she was at his elbow, the hood of her parka down, her red hair stealing softly across his shoulder as she leaned on the railing. He started, it was so sudden.
"Who survived?"
Her question was clinical, betraying nothing. She looked at him flatly. "Well? Who survived, Owen?"
"Two of the sailors," he half stammered. "The Norwegian whalers. They lived, and took a lifeboat, and sailed out of the lagoon. I doubt they finally made it."
She nodded, absorbing this. "How?"
"I don't know. They didn't know. They were exploring a cave, and they came out, and then the disease hit except that they didn't get it…"
"A cave? What cave?"
"The one Fritz and I found. I mentioned it last evening at the meeting. There, you can see it from here." He pointed across the caldera to the crater wall.
She followed his arm, then looked back again. Her tone was still peculiarly detached, as if she'd used up all her emotions the night before. "What was in the cave?"
"I don't know. They didn't say. We didn't explore. There's a hot spring and a sulfur smell- I think it's an old lava tube- and that's all I know. I thought you might know. That's why I came to your lab."
She thought a long time about this. "Do you know what the temperature of this harbor is?"
"No."
"One point eight degrees centigrade. Comfortably above freezing. Peculiar, no?"
"Is it?"
"The ocean outside the crater is below the freshwater freezing point; only salt and pressure prevent it from turning solid. But in here the water is warmer. There's no ice and the crater slopes have little snow: this is a warm place, yes?"
"It's a volcano, Greta."
She nodded. "Exactly. Alive with heat and energy." She looked across the water, studying the cave. "I remember you spent part of your childhood spelunking. Correct?"
He grinned uncertainly. "The best years of my life."
"Owen, I want a cure."
"A what?"
"An antidote to whatever killed the Norwegians. Do you think it could lie inside that cave?"
"That's what I came to ask you. Last night, I mean. I… I'm sorry I listened."
"You should be sorry." She smiled sadly. "Do you know why I don't always like you, Owen?"
He didn't answer.
"Because you always seem to know a little too much about me. Just like Jurgen."
He didn't know how to respond.
"Well, I have reproduced a microbe, and now I want a way to kill it. As a safety valve. As a way to retain control over whatever you crazy men try to do next. And I'm intrigued by this cave. Will you take me there?"
"Me? I thought you were angry."
"I am angry. But I'm also calm. I can't afford the luxury of my anger."
"So is this for Jurgen? Or for Germany?"
"You won't help me?"
"I didn't say that."
She bit her lip. "It's for science."
"Ah. Like this voyage."
"And for me."
He bowed his head in acknowledgment. "Then I'll do it."
"And for us."
"Which us?"
She didn't reply.
"You want to go now?"
She shook her head. "Tonight. When Jurgen can't see. He'd never let me go with you."
"We'll be looking for a cure?"
"We'll be looking for something to make all this madness worthwhile."