Free Ice Station Zebra by Alistair MacLean

accurately limned on the plot as he could ever expect to have it. Then he positioned the
Dolphin
just outside one of the boundary lines and gave an order for a slow ascent.
    ‘One twenty feet,’ the diving officer said. ‘One hundred ten.’
    ‘Heavy ice,’ Sanders intoned. ‘Still heavy ice.’
    Sluggishly the
Dolphin
continued to rise. Next time in the control room, I promised myself, I wouldn’t forget that bath towel. Swanson said: ‘If we’ve overestimated the speed of the drift, there’s going to be another bump I’m afraid.’ He turned to Rawlings who was still busily repairing lights. ‘If I were you, I’d suspend operations for the present. You may have to start all over again in a moment and we don’t carry all that number of spares aboard.’
    ‘One hundred feet,’ the diving officer said. He didn’t sound as unhappy as his face looked.
    ‘The water’s clearing,’ Hansen said suddenly. ‘Look.’
    The water had cleared, not dramatically so, but enough. We could see the top corner of the sail clearly outlined on the TV screen. And then, suddenly, we could see something else again, heavy ugly ridged ice not a dozen feet above the sail.
    Water flooding into the tanks. The diving officer didn’t have to be told what to do, we’d gone up like an express lift the first time we’d hit a different water layer and once like that was enough in the life of any submarine.
    ‘Ninety feet,’ he reported. ‘Still rising.’ More water flooded in, then the sound died away. ‘She’s holding. Just under ninety feet.’
    ‘Keep her there.’ Swanson stared at the TV screen. ‘We’re drifting clear and into the polynya — I hope.’
    ‘Me too,’ Hansen said. ‘There can’t be more than a couple of feet between the top of the sail and that damned ugly stuff.’
    ‘There isn’t much room,’ Swanson acknowledged. ‘Sanders?’
    ‘Just a moment, sir. The graph looks kinda funny — no, we’re clear.’ He couldn’t keep the excitement out of his voice. ‘Thin ice!’
    I looked at the screen. He was right. I could see the vertical edge of a wall of ice move slowly across the screen, exposing clear water above.
    ‘Gently, now, gently,’ Swanson said. ‘And keep the camera on the ice wall at the side, then straight up, turn about.’
    The pumps began to throb again. The ice wall, less than ten yards away, began to drift slowly down past us.
    ‘Eighty-five feet,’ the diving officer reported. ‘Eighty.’
    ‘No hurry,’ Swanson said. ‘We’re sheltered from that drift by now.’
    ‘Seventy-five feet.’ The pumps stopped, and water began to flood into the tanks. ‘Seventy.’ The
Dolphin
was almost stopped now, drifting upwards as gently as thistledown. The camera switched upwards, and we could see the top corner of the sail clearly outlined with a smooth ceiling of ice floating down to meet it. More water gurgled intothe tanks, the top of the sail met the ice with a barely perceptible bump and the
Dolphin
came to rest.
    ‘Beautifully done,’ Swanson said warmly to the diving officer. ‘Let’s try to give that ice a nudge. Are we slewing?’
    ‘Bearing constant.’
    Swanson nodded. The pumps hummed, pouring out water, lightening ship, steadily increasing positive buoyancy. The ice stayed where it was. More time passed, more water pumped out, and still nothing happened. I said softly to Hansen: ‘Why doesn’t he blow the main ballast? You’d get a few hundred tons of positive buoyancy in next to no time and even if that ice is forty inches thick it couldn’t survive all that pressure at a concentrated point.’
    ‘Neither could the
Dolphin,’
Hansen said grimly. ‘With a suddenly induced big positive buoyancy like that, once she broke through she’d go up like a cork from a champagne bottle. The pressure hull might take it, I don’t know, but sure as little apples the rudder would be squashed flat as a piece of tin. Do you want to spend what little’s left of your life