“Or…?”

“Or we’re totally off course altogether. We’ll know in another fifteen minutes when we can take some more accurate bearings. But gut feel? I’d say we’re on course, just running behind.”

“How do you know the currents have changed?” Jake asked suddenly, the question popping into his head.

Dave blushed. “Because our fuel consumption is worse than expected.”

Jake looked around, wanted to make sure nobody else was listening. Pedro was busy keeping lookout, and Melvin was falling asleep in his chair.

“How did you know that? I didn’t talk to anyone but Martin about that!”

“I’ve got a mate down in engineering. He called to ask if I knew why we were burning fuel so quickly. He said Martin did the calculations and he never gets them wrong. So I thought about it, and this is the only thing that makes sense.”

“Any way to know for sure?”

“Not while we’re moving. We could come to a full stop and drop some measuring equipment over the side, but as we’ll know in the next quarter of an hour anyway, that idea seems redundant.”

Jake sighed. “Okay, well keep me posted. As soon as there’s anything new, I want to know.”

“You’ll see it at the same time as us,” Lucya said. “If Dave’s right, you’ll see a big lump of land out that window quite soon.”

• • • • •

Fifteen minutes later there was a loud “whoop!” from the navigation station. Jake looked over to see Dave beaming from ear to ear.

“Report?”

“Sir, I was right sir!” came the reply.

Lucya’s face was thunder. “I can confirm we are on course and should see land within the next few minutes.”

Jake stood up and walked over to the front facing floor to ceiling window that ran the length of the bridge. He picked up a pair of binoculars and slowly adjusted them, bringing the horizon into sharp focus. It was a grey blur. No sign of land. No sign of ash, either. It turned out the fears of floating ash islands had been without basis. They had passed some patches of the stuff, thin layers floating on the surface like seaweed, or the islands of plastic garbage that they often saw in the Pacific. But it hadn’t coalesced into rocks, or if it had, those rocks had sunk without a trace.

“Land ahead!” Pedro called.

Jake adjusted his binoculars again. He still couldn’t see anything, just a mass of grey. Were his eyes getting old? Could he trust his own vision? He was beginning to wonder when, right on the horizon, part of the grey appeared to thicken, and then solidify. As he watched, it began to take shape, to form into something with real mass. There was no doubt about it, there really was land ahead.

He walked over to the communications console where he swapped the binoculars for a headset. A thin microphone grew out of the right hand earpiece and curled round under his nose. He pressed a button marked “Channel 7”.

“This is Max.”

“Max, it’s Jake. We’re seeing land ahead. You’d better brief your men, people are going to get excited when they see this. Who knows how they’ll react or what they’ll do.”

“Okay, thanks for the heads up.”

“Max, how’s your new lad doing?”

“Flynn? Yeah, he seems to be a good man. Committed. Good with people.”

“Can you assign him to deck ten? Or do you have specific plans for him?”

“Sherwood wants him floating about all over the place, but honestly that’s just a pain. I can stick him on ten. Why?”

“Just thinking if there are any more passenger revolts, having a cone patrolling around here might help.”

“You expecting trouble?”

“I don’t know. I just think that when they see land, a lot of people are going to want to try and get off…”

“No problem, I’ll station him on ten. Any sign of trouble I’ll call you on the radio.”

Jake pulled off the headset and set it down carefully.

Over at the navigation station, Lucya and Dave were busily working the radar, fine tuning the course.

“How are we doing time wise?” Jake asked.

“Another hour or so and we will pull level with Spitsbergen island.” Lucya didn’t look up from the radar as she spoke. “Then, we slow down. It’s rocky out there, we can’t take chances. We have to circumnavigate Spitsbergen and Prince Charles Foreland, then sail up the Isfjorden. We’re lucky, at this time of year there will be a lot less ice around, but Pedro is still going to have his work cut out.”

A knock at the door, and Silvia entered with more trays of food. The crew settled down to eat, Pedro and Jake taking turns to keep a lookout, and Lucya and Dave alternately manning the radar. By the time everyone had finished their dinner, land was very clearly visible on the port side. Jake tried to get a better look with his binoculars, but the rocky archipelago was so desolate and inhospitable that is was impossible to tell if it was covered in asteroid ash, or was an untouched snowy wasteland.

“I think it’s time to get some rest. Lucya, you can take first watch. You’re in command, I’ll replace you at oh-three hundred hours. Dave, you’re taking a break, get some sleep. Pedro?”

“Yes Captain?”

“Can you find someone to take over from you? I need you rested and alert when we enter the fjord.”

“Of course Captain.”

“Be back here at oh-three hundred. Melvin, you organise yourself and Stacy however you want.”

Jake looked around at his reduced crew. They were holding up well, all things considered. He himself felt dead on his feet, and he knew the others must be equally exhausted, more so even. But none of them complained. Even Melvin had held his tongue for most of the afternoon.

He walked slowly back to his cabin, passing Captain Ibsen’s quarters on the way. Lucya has asked him why he hadn’t moved in there, but after what had happened in those rooms, he had no desire ever to return. And anyway, with four or five hours of sleep a night, any cabin was more than adequate for his needs. He kicked off his shoes, undressed, and fell into bed. He was asleep within seconds.

Thirty-Three

FLYNN BAKEMAN WAS wandering the corridors of deck ten. He couldn’t have been happier to have been stationed near the bridge. Max hadn’t given him any specifics about why he’d been moved up here, but he could guess. Any passenger action would target the bridge. Flynn was in exactly the right place to assist any such approach.

A group of passengers were headed towards him, talking among themselves excitedly. They were two young couples and three children, two girls and a boy. The children were chasing each other round the legs of their parents, the adults didn’t seem to mind. One of the women spotted Flynn and hurried over. He’d been issued with a crew jacket, complete with a badge that labelled him as security.

“Hey there, how you doing honey?” the woman spoke to Flynn as if she’d know him for years.

“Just fine thank you, just fine. And what can I do for you fine people?”

By now the rest of the group had joined them.

“We were all wondering, like, we saw the land outside.” She pointed vaguely in the direction of the exterior, although in this windowless passageway it wasn’t easy to be sure of one’s bearings. “So, are we, like, going to be stopping any time soon? Because we love the cruise ship and all, but we would really like to get off soon.”

“Ah, well. Now, I’m not supposed to tell you this, but only a few people are getting off when we get to where we’re going.”

“Where are we going? Nobody has told us anything about that!” one of the men in the group asked, indignantly.

“Well, again, I’m not supposed to say. I’m not even supposed to know. I don’t work for the cruise line you see, I’m a regular passenger like you, just helping out because they need my expertise and experience. But I figure everyone has a right to know what’s going on, so I’m going to tell you good people anyway.”