North Cape

As ha spoke, the obscuring patch of light disappeared, and there, toward the center of: the screen, was an intense white dot, flickering in and out of scale with a steady pulsation. It appeared to be nearly two hundred miles southwest of them, which would put it somewhere close to the coast of the North Cape. At least Larkin hoped it would. It would be all too easy in this miserable storm to miss the coast and drop into the ocean. The ejection cap-sule was designed to stay afloat in water, but he doubted very much that it could withstand for long a storm as intense as this.

"Cet a damned accurate fix on that blip," he snapped. Then Larkin swung around to the plotting table. "Mr. Folsom, set a course for the coast and make as much speed as you can."

Moments later the great ship came around in a short, half circle that leaned her far to port like a sloop in a high wind. Tons of water flew from under (her heel and piled up behind in a tattered rooster's tail as the nuclear engines jumped to flank speed and she straightened out abruptly and settled into the waves. She resembled nothing as much as a motor torpedo boat, rather than a 16,5oo-ton battle cruiser, as she fought her way south toward the Cape, ignoring the waves piling before her bow. Low in the water as she was from the immense tonnage of ice, Folsom managed to crank twenty-three knots from the engines while a worried engineering crew watched the instruments below. Finally, Barrows could stand it no longer. He reached over and flicked on his intercom, dialed the bridge, and demanded the executive officer. When Folsom answered, he wasted no time on preliminaries.

"Mr. Folsom, if we don't cut back, we won't have any auxiliary condensers left either. They can't take the load from flank speed much longer."

"Then make do," Folsom said grimly.

Barrows, unaware of the events on the bridge, stared at the intercom in disbelief. Then be shook his head. "In that case, Mr. Folsom," he said acidly, "I Suggest we shift to the boost engines for one quarter power output."

Without waiting for an answer from the bridge, he flicked off the intercom and swung around to his waiting crew and began snapping orders. Within four minutes the boost gas turbine engines were coupled to the main drive shafts and the last of the explosive starter cartridges were echoing in the narrow steel cavern of the engine room. Barrows watched as great gas turbines, now on line, whined up to peak RPM, then he began trimming them back until the ship was running steady under the combined thrust of five of the six power plants.