"I still don't believe it," I said.

"We cleared the Holy Loch a little earlier than I expected, before seven," Swanson admitted. "I had intended to carry out some slow-time dives to adjust trim, but it wasn't necessary. Even the lack of twelve torpedoes up in the nose didn't make her as stern-heavy as I'd expected. She's so damned big that a few tons more or less or here or there doesn't seem to make any difference to her. So we just came barreling on up — "

He broke off to accept a signal sheet from a sailor, and read through it slowly, taking his time about it. Then ho jerked his head, walked to a quiet corner of the control center, and faced me as I came up to him. He still wasn't smiling.

"I'm sorry," he said. "Major Halliwell, the commandant of the drift station… You said last night he was a very close friend of yours?"

I felt my mouth begin to go dry. I nodded, and took the message from him. It read:

A further radio message, very broken and difficult to decipher, was received 0945 Greenwich Mean Time from Drift Ice Station Zebra by the British trawler «Morning Star», the vessel that picked up the previous broadcast. Message stated that Major Halliwell, Officer Commanding, and three others, unnamed, critically injured or dead, no indication who or how many of the four are dead. Others, number again unknown, suffering severely from burns and exposure. Some message about food and fuel, atmospheric conditions and weakness in transmission made it quite indecipherable. Understood from very garbled signal that survivors in one hut unable to move because of weather. Words "ice storm" clearly picked up. Apparent details of wind speed and temperature, but unable to make out.

«Morning Star» several times attempted contact Drift Station Zebra immediately afterward. No acknowledgment.

«Morning Star», at request of British Admiralty, has abandoned fishing grounds and is moving closer in to Barrier to act as listening post. Message ends.

I folded the paper and handed it back to Swanson. He said again, "Sorry about this, Carpenter."

"Critically injured or dead," I said. "In a burnt-out station on the ice cap in winter, what's the difference?" My voice fell upon my ears as the voice of another man, a voice flat and lifeless, a voice empty of all emotion. "Johnny Halliwell and three of his men. Johnny Halliwell. Not the kind of man you would meet often, Commander. A remarkable man. Left school at fifteen, when his parents died, to devote himself to the support of a brother eight years younger than himself. He saved, he scraped, he sacrificed, he devoted many of the best years of his life to doing everything for his younger brother, including putting him through a six-year university course. Not till then did he think of himself, not till then did he get married. He leaves a lovely wife and three marvelous kids. Two nieces and a nephew not yet six months old."

"Two nieces — " He broke off and stared at me. "Good God, your brother? «Your» brother?" He didn't, for the moment, seem to find anything peculiar in the difference of surname.

I nodded silently. Young Lieutenant Raeburn approached us, an odd expression of anxiety on his face, but Swanson abruptly waved him away without even glancing in his direction. He shook his head slowly and was still shaking it when I said abruptly: "He's tough. He may be one of the survivors. He may live. We must get Drift Station Zebra's position. We «must» get it."

"Maybe they haven't got it themselves," Swanson said. I could see that he was grateful for something to talk about. "It «is» a drifting station, remember. The weather being what it is, it may have been days since they got their last fixes, and for all we know, their sextants, chronometers and radio direction finders have been lost in the fire."

"They must know what their latest fix was, even though it was a week ago. They must have a fairly accurate idea of the speed and direction of their drift. They'll be able to provide approximate data. The «Morning Star» must be told to keep transmitting non-stop with a continuous request for their position. If you surface now, can you contact the «Morning Star?»"

"I doubt it. The trawler must be the best part of a thousand miles north of us. His receiver wouldn't be big enough to pull us in — which is another way of saying that our transmitter is too small."

"The B.B.C. have -plenty of transmitters that are big enough. So have the Admiralty. Please ask one or the other to contact the «Morning Star» and ask it to make a continuous send for Zebra's position."

"They could do that themselves direct."

"Sure they could. But they couldn't hear the reply. The «Morning Star» can — if there's any reply. And she's getting closer to them all the time."

"We'll surface now," Swanson nodded. He turned away from the chart table we'd been standing beside and headed for the diving stand. As he passed the plotting table he said to the navigator: "What was it you wanted, Will?"

Lieutenant Raeburn turned his back on me and lowered his voice, but my hearing has always been a little abnormal. He whispered: "Did you see his face, Captain? I thought he was going to haul off and sock you."

"I thought the same thing myself," Swanson murmured. "For a moment. But I think I just happened to be in his line of vision, that's all."

I went forward to my cabin and lay down in the cot.

"There it is, then," said Swanson. "That's the Barrier."

The «Dolphin», heading due north, her great cylindrical bulk at one moment completely submerged, the next showing clear as she rolled heavily through the steep quartering seas, was making less than three knots through the water, the great nuclear-powered engines providing just enough thrust to the big twin eight-foot propellers to provide steerage way and no more. Thirty feet below where we stood on the bridge the finest sonar equipment in the world was ceaselessly probing the waters all around us but even so Swanson was taking no chances on the effects of collision with a drifting ice block. The noon-day Arctic sky was so overcast that the light was no better than that of late dusk. The bridge thermometer showed the sea temperature to be 28°F., the air temperature — I 6°F. The gale-force wind from the northeast was snatching the tops off the rolling steel-gray waves and subjecting the steep-walled sides of the great conning tower — "sail," the crew called it — to the ceaseless battering of a bullet-driven spray that turned to solid ice even as it struck. The cold was intense.

Shivering uncontrollably, wrapped in a heavy duffel coat and oilskins and huddled against the illusory shelter of the canvas wind-dodger, I followed the line of Swanson's pointing ann; even above the high, thin, shrill whine of the wind and the drum-fire of the flying spray against the sail, I could hear the violent chattering of his teeth. Less than two miles away a long, thin, grayish-white line, at that distance apparently smooth and regular, seemed to stretch the entire width of the northern horizon. Fd seen it before and it wasn't much to look at but it was a sight a man never got used to, not because of itself but because of what it represented: the beginning of the polar ice cap that covered the top of the world, at this time of year a solid, compacted mass of ice that stretched clear from where we lay right across to Alaska on the other side of the world. And we had to go under that mass. We had to go under it to find men hundreds of miles away, men who might be already dying, men who might be already dead. Who probably were dead. Men, dying or dead, whom we had to seek out by guess and by God in that great wasteland of ice stretching out endlessly before us, for we did not know where they were.