North Cape

"Radio room to bridge, we have the translation."

"Go ahead," Larkin ordered.

"'Shore party calling ST-101, shore party calling ST-101.' This was repeated six times, sir. Then, 'We have landed without injuries. Lifeboat is badly damaged. Will begin search immediately. Radio contact will be re-established hourly on this frequency.' End of message. There was no reply from the ship, sir. They used a standard band, shortrange radio at 120 kc."

"Very good. Establish a continuous monitoring watch as of now. Feed everything you pick up to Virginia, top priority, after running it through the computers for translation. I want Virginia's literal translation as a check."

"Aye, sir."

Larkin turned to Bridges, still seated at Folsom's console. "Well, Mr. Bridges, we are off. Gontact Mr. Folsom and tell him what has happened. Tell him I will call him again at"—

he looked at his watch—"0600 with instructions… ah, amend that to suggestions. In the meantime, they are to get all the sleep they can. Also, they are not to call us except in an emergency. No sense in letting their position be pinpointed."

"Aye, sir." Bridges turned to the radio operator as Larkin went below for some badly needed rest.

Teleman came slowly awake to the sound of a hushed voice. For several minutes, still drugged with exhaustion, he lay in the sleeping bag, scarcely aware that he was awake. A darkness, half dispersed by a light source that he could not see, drew a curving line directly above his eyes. For a minute he thought he was back in the aircraft, looking down on the earth from two hundred thousand feet, seeing the bisecting dawn line. The lighted portion of whatever it was above/below him, he could not tell which, was a darkish blue color, the same as the earth from altitude at dawn. The other half was dead black and the bisecting line itself was fuzzy, shading through a spectrum of bluish gray from light to dark.

The voice puzzled him, but as yet he was not able to turn his head, for some perverse reason. Gradually he became aware that he was stripped to the skin and covered with some kind of heavy, heated material. Then he remembered the intense cold, the cold and the wind.

He mustered the will to turn his head. For a moment the scene refused to focus and vertigo gripped him, spinning him end over end. Gradually the picture before him steadied and he slowly began to make out details. The first was the fabric line of a sleeping bag. Beyond, the hunched backs of two other men bending over something hidden by their bodies. Various pieces of gear were stacked around the walls of the tent. The lantern casting the dim light was suspended from the center of the tent, a heavy flashlight, giving off a steady light.

Both men were unaware that he was watching and wondering who they were and where he was. Then in a rush the memories came back as that part of his brain cleared with an almost physical jolt. He remembered the aircraft, the long flight across Asia, the desperate running from the Russian interceptors, the ejection over the North Cape. The last thing he remembered was a. hissing flare landing nearby. As the fuzziness evaporated, Teleman began to realize that he had been picked up by somebody. But Russians, Americans, or Norwegians? He turned his head again to see the man whose back was nearest him nod two or three times, then reach out to part the tent flaps. Immediately a gust of wind danced in, bringing whirling snow with it.

"As far as we know right now, they sent only one boatload, maybe twenty men in the landing party." The voice that came over the radio was almost lost in the sound of the wind battering the tent.

"Any idea how long it will take them to get here?" Teleman felt a flood of relief pour through him. At least they spoke English. They must have come from the rendezvous ship, he thought.

The tiny radio voice came again. "The MTI radar shows the coastal cliffs in that area as quite low and sloping back into what the map indicates as a level plain. I don't see them waiting until the 'storm lets up. They are east of you by twenty-two miles."

"Well, assuming that the terrain isn't much different from what we've seen here, rd say it would take them nearly twenty-four hours to get this far. I'd also guess that they don't know exactly where the pilot went down, or else they might have tried a landing farther up the coast."

"That may be. But of course if they had wanted to avoid detection as much as possible they would. have landed in Parsangerfjord. It's the only sheltered spot along the entire coast all the way to the naval base."

'Well, unless the weather changes drastically, I'll go along with your estimate of twentyfour hours. They have an awful lot of searching along the way to do in the meantime."

"Yeah. I just hope we are reading the situation right and that they somehow did not track our boy by radar or somesuch. I'd look mighty foolish if they came marching in several hours from now, not even winded."