Ice Station Zebra by Alistair MacLean

black line that meant thin ice overhead. The first of those polynyas might have accommodated a small row boat, but it would certainly never have looked at the _Dolphin_; the other had hardly been any bigger.
      Shortly before noon the hull vibration died away as Swanson gave the order for a cut-back to a slow cruising speed. He said to Benson, "How does it look?"
      "Terrible. Heavy ice all the way."
      "Well, we can't expect a polynya to fall into our laps right away," Swanson said reasonably. "We're almost there. We'll make a grid search. Five miles east, five miles west, a quarter mile farther to the north each time."
      The search began. An hour passed, two, then three. Raeburn and his assistant hardly ever raised their heads from the plotting table, where they were meticulously tracing every movement the _Dolphin_ was making in her criss-cross search under the sea. Four o'clock in the afternoon. The normal background buzz of conversation, the occasional small talk from various groups in the control center, died away completely. Benson's occasional "Heavy ice, still heavy ice," growing steadily quieter and more dispirited, served only to emphasize and deepen the heavy, brooding silence that had fallen. Only a case-hardened undertaker could have felt perfectly at home in that atmosphere. At the moment, undertakers were the last people I wanted to think about.
      Five o'clock in the afternoon. People weren't looking at each other any more, much less talking. Heavy ice, still heavy ice. Defeat, despair hung heavy in the air. Heavy ice, still heavy ice. Even Swanson had stopped smiling. I wondered if he had in his mind's eye what I now constantly had in mine: the picture of a haggard, emaciated, bearded man with his face all but destroyed with frostbite, a frozen, starving, dying man draining away the last few ounces of his exhausted strength as he cranked the handle of his generator and tapped out his call sign with lifeless fingers, his head bowed as he strained to listen above the howl of the ice storm for the promise of aid that never came. Or maybe there was no one tapping out a call sign any more. They were no ordinary men who had been sent to man Drift Ice Station Zebra, but there comes a time when even the toughest, the -bravest, the most enduring will abandon all hope and lie down to die. Perhaps he had already lain down to die. Heavy ice, still heavy ice.
      At half-past five Commander Swanson walked across to the ice machine and peered over Benson's shoulder. He said, "What's the average thickness of that stuff above?"
      "Twelve to fifteen feet," Benson said. His voice was low and tired. "Nearer fifteen, I would say."
      Swanson picked up a phone. "Lieutenant Mills? Captain here. What is the state of readiness of those torpedoes you're working on? Four? Ready to go? Good. Stand by to load. I'm giving this search another thirty minutes, then it's up to you. Yes, that is correct. We shall attempt to blow a hole through the ice." He replaced the phone.
      Hansen said thoughtfully, "Fifteen feet of ice is a helluva lot of ice. And that ice will have a tamping effect and will direct ninety per cent of the explosive force down the way, You think we _can_ blow a hole through fifteen feet of ice, Captain?"
      "I've no idea," Swanson admitted. "How can anyone know until we try it?"
      "Nobody ever tried to do this before?" I asked.
      "No. Not in the U.S. Navy, anyway. The Russians may have tried it, I wouldn't know. They don't," he added dryly, "keep us very well informed on those matters."
      "Aren't the underwater shock waves liable to damage the _Dolphin?_" I asked. I didn't care for the idea at all, and that was a fact.
      "If they do, the Electric Boat Company can expect a- pretty strong letter of complaint. We shall explode the warhead electronically about a thousand yards after it leaves the ship: it has