Free Stranded by Bracken MacLeod Page B

percent. He was the kind of stoic sailor his grandfather had been. Mickle wiped at his nose with the back of a finger. It came away red. The man rubbed at the blood with a thumb until his skin was a slightly ruddier shade of pale, but said nothing about it, as if it wasn’t anything Noah should feel concerned about.
    â€œMartin told me he’s seeing … things. Movement in his peripheral vision.”
    Mickle’s eyes widened for a second before his face settled back into its normal inscrutability. “He’s not the only one,” he said.
    The door behind the men slammed open and Boucher stood pointing at Noah. “You think the Old Man was kidding, Cabot? Move your ass!”
    The second officer nodded, silently suggesting they’d talk about it later.
    â€œHang in there, Doc.” Noah marched out of the room, brushing past Boucher, who stood like a prison guard leading him to the gladiator yard. The bosun slammed the door as soon as Noah’s heel cleared the opening and shoved past, waving a hand for Noah to follow.
    Boucher led him to the aft end of the cargo deck where Brewster stood waiting. While they’d battled the ice buildup during the storm, there was still considerable ice on the deck and gunwales. Not so much that the ship was in danger, but enough that they had to step carefully to avoid falling or sliding into or under something solid. The trio climbed the ladder onto the catwalk. Brewster leaned out over the side and tried to see. Although it was a shorter distance to the surface than over by the lifeboats, the swirling mist still obscured everything below. It might have been twenty feet to the surface or twenty thousand. Noah couldn’t tell. None of them, experienced seamen all, had seen a fog this thick last this long.
    â€œListen,” Noah said. He nodded his head toward the void. “You hear it?”
    Brewster shrugged. “What?”
    â€œExactly. You don’t hear anything because it’s frozen solid all around us.”
    â€œYou walked on it? Did you make it all the way around? Are you sure the ice closed up behind us?”
    He shook his head. “I was off the starboard bow. I got a look from there to maybe amidships. But the ice was compact. I didn’t even see cracking or breakup beside the hull. It’s like we’ve been sitting still in it for days. And it looks thick, too. Like second-year ice.”
    â€œSecond-year ice. Impossible!” Brewster said. “You read that in one of your books?”
    â€œThere,” Boucher shouted, pointing. He grabbed Brewster’s sleeve and tugged. The Old Man leaned back over the side and squinted. Like the day before, a short gust of wind peeled back the fog and showed them a glimpse of what it hid. A field of mottled white and cold purple reached to the ship, drifts of snow blowing over the surface. The mist closed in again. The Old Man straightened up, shoving his bare hands in his pockets. The wind pinked his skin and made him blink his watering eyes, but Brewster didn’t seem affected by the cold otherwise. He didn’t hunch his shoulders, or shiver, standing like there was merely a touch of chill in the air, like the brisk crispness right before a light snowfall.
    â€œI told you, it’s consolidated and we aren’t breaking through it. We aren’t going anywhere without help. We have to call for an icebreaker.”
    Brewster slowly shook his head and exhaled through his nose. His breath hung in the air like words frozen before they could be heard, his plan to free the ship taken by the cold before blowing away to disappear in the mist. Shoving Noah out of the way with a stiff arm, Brewster climbed down from the catwalk and stalked off toward the superstructure. Noah followed behind, skidding and slipping on the same ice that didn’t seem to affect the Old Man. He called after him, “So what now?”
    Brewster spun around. “We can’t