North Cape

"Listen for my count. As we come up the wave I'll start counting backward from ten. When I get to one, be ready to put the helm over hard… and better keep the turbine engines idling up to speed as well. We'll have plenty of need of an extra kick" Folsom nodded and Larkin turned away, jamming the helmet down over his head. He snapped the throat mike into place, tested it quickly, then pulled down the faceplate and left through the emergency hatch. Once outside, still in the lee of the bridge, he checked the microphone again, then buckled his safety straps to the railing. With the safety line trailing behind, he was now about as safe as he could possibly be… until the first good wave decided to wash him overboard. Against the power of those tons, of water the line would snap; or, if it held, would probably cut him in half. The plates of the catway leading around the top of the bridge structure were caked solid with ice. That ice, washed constantly by spray, was slippery underfoot, and he moved carefully to keep his footing. As he came out of the lee of the deckhouse, Larkin grunted in surprise as the wind cut through the nylon and electrically heated layers of foam padding as if they did not exist. Almost immediately his fingers and toes went numb. The temperature close to —20°, when combined with the 110-knot wind, gave a chill index of —98°. Unprotected, he would not last more than a minute before his heart stopped beating. As Larkin moved out onto the forward position of the weather deck, the wind pulled and plucked at him to send his feet sweeping away. He crashed against the steel wall of the deckhouse with stunning force, and for several minutes was unable to clear his head enough to get to his feet. The — forty-foot journey from the deck hatch, up the narrow ladder, and around the curve of the bridge was made, an inch at a time, on hands and knees. The wind was a solid wall of force through which he had to tunnel, and finally he was reduced to using his hands to pull himself from stanchion to stanchion along the railing. The stanchions were set every six feet, just beyond the grasp of his extended arm. He had to wait between each stanchion, arms stretched wide to hold the stanchion and the edge of the catway, resting, readying himself for the lunge to the next. Then, when he grasped it, he had to pull himself painfully up to the frozen metal and reach for the next. His task was made even harder by the fact that each stanchion supported a wedge of ice nearly two feet long to windward. His gloves froze to the ice and he had to pull them loose each time. If he lost a glove, he would also lose a hand. An uncovered hand would freeze into uselessness in less than two minutes. And Larkin needed the use of both hands to make any progress at all. Larkin stretched out full length on the ice-coated deck to reduce the amount of his body exposed to the wind. The wind was like a solid hammer of steel pounding away in rhythmic gusts, thumping him into the ice, and then, as it got under his body and lifted him clear of the deck, flinging him back against the safety line. The struggle soon became concentrated into forcing his Land out to grasp the next stanchion and pull himself along the deck. He had thirty-five more feet to go to reach the center of the catway.

The strain on Larkin's shoulders was causing the muscles to 'scream, in-protest each time he reached for the next stanchion. Then it happened.

Between the fourth and fifth stanchion, his hand slipped off the ice-coated tube. The wind reached, slamming him back against the harness, and the line fouled. Another gust of wind caught him and almost pulled him through the railing before he got the straps cleared. Then the petulant wind smashed him back, cracking his leg viciously against the bridge plating as if it were alive and frustrated by the puny efforts of this unbearable, unnoticeable insect. For a minute Larkin lay crumpled against the bulkhead while the pain in his leg slowly subsided. Then by sheer strength of will he pulled himself to the next stanchion.

After twenty minutes he had managed to get as close to the center of the bridge as he could.

So much ice, he thought. He would never have believed it. Every square inch of the ship above the water line was coated with several feet of ice that glistened here and there in the bridge lights. The forward part of the deck was covered with mounds of ice that obscured bollards and lines and winches. No wonder the RFK was riding so low. If he had filled that hull tank the extra tonnage of water in the bow would have brought her so low in the water that they would have been swamped in short order. Although the RFK was no submarine, she could ride low for a long while, But eventually the weight of the steadily accumulating ice would send her to the bottom as surely as if the patch had opened.