Read Online Ice Station Zebra by Alistair MacLean - Free Book Online

now, real deep, and open up all the stops."

      When Commander Swanson had said he was going to hurry, he'd meant every word of it. In the early hours of the following morning I was awakened from a deep sleep by a heavy hand on my shoulder. I opened my eyes, blinked against the glare of the overhead light, then saw Lieutenant Hansen.
      "Sorry about the beauty sleep, Doc," he said cheerfully. "But this is it."
      "This is what?" I said irritably.
      "85° 35' north, 21 °20' east--the last estimated position of Drift Station Zebra. At least, the last estimated position with estimated correction for polar drift."
      "Already?" I glanced at my watch, not believing it. "We're there already?"
      "We have not," Hansen said modestly, "been idling. The skipper suggests you come along and watch us at work."
      "I'll be right with you." When and if the _Dolphin_ managed to break through the ice and began to try her one-in-amillion chance of contacting Drift Station Zebra, I wanted to be there.
      We left Hansen's cabin and had almost reached the control room when I lurched, staggered, and would have fallen but for a quick grab at a hand rail that ran along one side of the passageway. I hung on grimly as the _Dolphin_ banked violently sideways and around like a fighter plane in a tight turn. In my experience, no submarine had ever been able to begin to behave even remotely in that fashion. I understood now the reasons for the safety belts on the diving-control seats.
      "What the hell's up?" I said to Hansen. "Avoiding some underwater obstruction ahead?"
      "Must be a possible polynya. Some place where the ice is thin, anyway. As soon as we spot a possible like that, we come around like a dog chasing its own tail, just so we don't miss it. It makes us very popular with the crew, especially when they're drinking coffee or soup."
      We went into the control room. Commander Swanson, flanked by the navigator and another man, was bent over the plotting table, examining something intently. Farther aft, a man at the surface fathometer was reading out ice-thickness figures in a quiet, unemotional voice. Commander Swanson looked up from the chart.
      "Morning, Doctor. John, I think we may have something here."
      Hansen crossed to the plot and peered at it. There didn't seem to be much to peer at--a tiny pinpoint of light shining through the glass top of the plot and a squared sheet of chart paper marked by a most unseamanlike series of wavering black lines traced out by a man with a pencil following the track of the tiny moving light. There were three red crosses superimposed on the paper, two very close together, and just as Hansen was examining the paper the crewman manning the ice machine--Dr. Benson's enthusiasm for his toy did not, it appeared, extend to the middle of the night-- called out "'Marl!" Immediately the black pencil was exchanged for a red and a fourth cross made.
      "'Think' and 'may' are just about right, Captain," Hansen said. "It looks awfully narrow to me."
      "It looks the same way to me, too," Swanson, admitted. "But it's the first break in the heavy ice that we've had in an hour, almost. And the further north we go, the poorer our chances. Let's give it a try. Speed?"
      "One knot," Raeburn said.
      "All back one third," Swanson said. No sharp imperatives, not ever, in the way Swanson gave his orders, more a quiet and conversational suggestion, but there was no mistaking the speed with which one of the crewmen strapped into the diving-stand bucket seat leaned forward to telegraph the order to the engine room. "Left full rudder."
      Swanson bent over to check the plot, closely watching the tiny pinpoint of light and the tracing pencil move back toward the approximate center of the elongated triangle formed by the four red crosses. "All stop," he went on. "Rudder amidships." A