Part 15 (1/2)
Out of the vapours three men approached, each dressed in a flying suit. One of them had a pistol in his belt; another carried a sub-machine gun. I hesitated, but then the unarmed member of the trio pushed up his goggles.
”Meadows!” cried Pyke, clasping me by the shoulders. ”Welcome to Habbakuk!”
”So this is Habbakuk,” I said, looking around. ”I'm none the wiser.”
”Good. Let me explain. We're making super-strengthened ice for use in constructing s.h.i.+ps. It's all happening under the auspices of Lord Mountbatten, as I think I already explained. My laboratory a.s.sistants are commandos from his Combined Operations staff. I call them Verses One, Two, Three and so on-after Habakkuk in the Bible. Or almost. On official doc.u.ments it's spelt with two bs and two ks, because of a typing error.”
”What's all this got to do with making s.h.i.+ps from ice? Is that even possible?”
”'Look among the nations, watch, and wonder marvellously; for I am working a work in your days, which you will not believe though it is told you,'” Pyke intoned, half repeating what he had said in the pub in Dunoon. ”Chapter one, verse five. Oh, never mind. Come and see Julius.”
”Brecher? Is he here?”
”Yes. I snaffled him from the Cavendish Lab in Cambridge for a few days. He's mixing up some Pykerete. That's the stuff we're making the s.h.i.+ps out of. It was Mountbatten's idea to name it after me, not mine. Julius,” he called, ”look who I've got here.”
Brecher was rotating a large spatula in a basin of loose ice slush mixed with something else. The mixture resembled some kind of bran and the spatula, I realised, was a canoe paddle. The light of the lamps was reflecting off his shaven head.
Brecher looked up. ”Meadows! I was thinking of you the other day. That friend of yours in Scotland. I wrote to her with the result of my blood tests but she never replied.”
I was perversely glad that Gill was as remiss in letter-writing as I; although, of course, the scale of the two omissions was hardly comparable. ”What did you say?”
”Well, it's all rather personal.”
”It's all right,” I said. ”She's a friend.” The overstatement, or lie as it might be called, came out with the squirming fluency of a trout held between a fisherman's hands.
Brecher looked at me. ”Very well,” he said. ”She wanted to know whether two samples of blood she sent me had any rhesus incompatibility. I told her they probably did not, though one of the samples was very patchy and old, so it was quite hard to do the test. She sent it me on a handkerchief of all things.”
I realised he was talking about my own blood. He continued stirring the ice as he spoke.
”You see, almost all blood cells carry antibodies of one type or another and under certain conditions-for example, fetal cells crossing over into the maternal circulation during pregnancy-this can cause problems. But we don't fully understand this aspect of things.” He p.r.o.nounced it aspekt aspekt, in the German way, with the stress on the second syllable.
”What sort of problems?”
”Ultimately, intrauterine fatality. Death in the womb.”
I suddenly saw-as if down a long pa.s.sageway-the series of miscarriages, each little homunculus scampering towards Gill and Ryman, half-formed, screaming. In this field, at least, the role of science as an aid to humanity, a helpmeet for civilisation, was clear.
”This is wood pulp,” said Pyke, who had shown scant interest in my conversation with Brecher. ”What we've done is mix ice with wood pulp to increase its mechanical strength. There's a pay-off between ductility and strength, depending on the amount of pulp or sawdust you put in.”
”That should do it,” said Brecher. He removed the paddle and sc.r.a.ped it against the side of the tub, then left it balanced across the top so the residue of the mixture could drip back in. ”I'm off back to Cambridge now, Geoffrey. Nice to see you again, Meadows.” He gave a conspiratorial smile.
”Come and look here.” Pyke led me to another part of the room where one of the commandos was turning a block of ice on a lathe. ”A four per cent suspension of the material we are working on. Quite strong. Show him the hammer, Five.”
The commando put the football-sized block of ice on the floor and picked up a sledge-hammer. He gave it a mighty swing-but on contact the hammer just bounced off the ice as if it were steel. The commando put down the hammer and rubbed his wrist.
”Rather unforgiving,” said Pyke, grinning, his tobacco-stained teeth glowing like citrine against the surrounding whiteness. ”There's something else I want to show you.”
He led me over to a large panel of ice-six or seven feet high, three feet thick-next to which armed commandos were standing. ”Show him, Three.” The commando with the pistol lifted it and fired at the panel. Rather than penetrating it completely, the bullet entered only a few inches.
I was amazed by the mysterious properties of Pykerete. ”How did you manage that?”
”Ordinary ice,” explained Pyke, ”has a crush resistance of about five hundred pounds per square inch-whereas in the case of Pykerete the figure is more like three thousand pounds.”
The experiment was repeated with a Tommy gun, which Pyke fired himself, then with a .303 rifle. The noise of the reports was deafening in that confined s.p.a.ce, but both times the bullets remained trapped in the Pykerete.
”Depending on the power of the gun, the bullet will only go in between three and six inches,” Pyke said. He dug out a bullet with a penknife. ”See? Do the same thing with pure ice and it would penetrate fourteen inches. And what are the other figures, Five?”
”Twenty-five inches into softwood, six inches into brickwork, two inches into concrete, sir!”
”Very good, Five. Now, come and see my only vice, ha ha.”
He took me over to the industrial vice I had noticed before. It was pressing on a block of ice no more than a foot square. I could hardly see it between the iron jaws, but the piece seemed to be resisting well: the pressure gauge above read 2,000 Ib.
”A little block like that could support the weight of a motor car,” said Pyke. ”Simply because of the micro-reinforcement of wood particles. Fire at it, torpedo it, saw it, and Pykerete will resist you. We showed it to Churchill and he jarred his hand trying to split a block of it with a chopper, and then he showed it to Roosevelt. It was rather amusing. The PM had a waiter bring in a pitcher of boiling water and two punch bowls. Churchill put a piece of ice in one of the bowls and a piece of Pykerete in the other. Of course, the pure ice melted at once, but the Pykerete just bobbed about in the boiling water as if it were cork.”
”What are you going to do with all this?”
”I was coming to that. Ice warfare has not yet been developed to the levels it could reach. Remember, a bullet fired in Lapland costs fifty times a bullet fired in central Europe.”
”I don't understand.”
”Because of the transport costs. The idea is that we could build aircraft carriers and other s.h.i.+ps from Pykerete for next to nothing. Berg s.h.i.+ps, made in the remote recesses of the Arctic night. Refuelling depots for aircraft. Or a mid-Atlantic base from which to attack U-boats. Or ice-breakers to cut a new north-west pa.s.sage and send supplies from America to Russia. Or sprayed frozen water could be used to incapacitate sh.o.r.e defences during an invasion of mainland Europe.”
I must have looked a bit sceptical. How much of this was true? There seemed to be no end to his technical abilities and the fecundity of his imagination, but his excitable att.i.tude to it all was like that of a child at Christmas. It struck me again that his enthusiasm was rather similar to Ryman's-even though he was utterly committed, fervent even, about using science in war.
Looking into the clouds of ice vapour I suddenly seemed to see Ryman's face, his bushy hair and downturned mouth becoming different-exaggerated, as if redrawn by the surrounding swirls...becoming contorted as it had been when he was hanging from the wire. I shuddered with nausea, closing my eyes to put away the vision.
”Mr Churchill himself has said the advantages of Habbakuk are dazzling,” said Pyke, cheerily. ”We've been given the go-ahead. Workmen on Lake Patricia, Ontario, have already built a prototype berg s.h.i.+p of a thousand tons. She is flat-bottomed, lozenge-shaped, sixty feet long, thirty feet wide. Her Pykerete hull is sheathed in timber and pitch, and a petrol-driven refrigeration plant sends cold air through iron pipes set in the ice.”
”You are joking?”
”Of course not. She's stayed afloat! Brecher and I went out to see her. The plan now is to move to Corner Brook, Newfoundland, to build a full-scale s.h.i.+p. Will you be our meteorologist and study the effects of turbulence on Pykerete? Have a look at these numbers and think it over. For G.o.d's sake, don't let them go astray. Right, must crack on!”
He shoved some papers into my hand and began to hustle me towards the door, which in those bulky suits was not an operation that could be effected at speed. I went up in the lift, changed in the anteroom and, putting on my overcoat, stepped back out into ringing c.o.c.kney voices of the meat market.
Fourteen.
I spent the next three days in a state of high excitement. Pyke's plans were as full of difficulties as fascinations, but they drove the awful incident at Kilmun from my mind. I wrote a note to Sir Peter explaining which way I had jumped. I did not go into too much detail about how I had come to my decision, but did not neglect to thank him for all the support he had given me in my career so far. At last, I thought on posting the note, I now had a clear course of action. I felt I'd reached what meteorologists call a point of occlusion: a moment-a place-where warm and cold fronts meet. spent the next three days in a state of high excitement. Pyke's plans were as full of difficulties as fascinations, but they drove the awful incident at Kilmun from my mind. I wrote a note to Sir Peter explaining which way I had jumped. I did not go into too much detail about how I had come to my decision, but did not neglect to thank him for all the support he had given me in my career so far. At last, I thought on posting the note, I now had a clear course of action. I felt I'd reached what meteorologists call a point of occlusion: a moment-a place-where warm and cold fronts meet.