The Terror

The Terror by Dan Simmons Page A

Book: The Terror by Dan Simmons Read Free Book Online
Authors: Dan Simmons
Tags: Fiction, thriller
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fate of his engineer. Warrant Officer James Thompson, Engineer First Class, graduate of the Navy’s steam factory at Woolwich — the world’s best training grounds for the new breed of steam-propulsion engineers — is here stripped to his filthy undershirt, shoveling coal like a common stoker in an ice-locked ship that hasn’t moved an inch under its own power now for more than a year.
    “Mr. Thompson,” says Crozier, “I’m sorry I haven’t had a chance to talk to you today since you walked over to
Erebus.
Did you have a chance to confer with Mr. Gregory?”
    John Gregory is the engineer aboard the flagship.
    “I did, Captain. Mr. Gregory’s convinced that with the onset of real winter, they’ll never be able to get at the damaged driveshaft. Even if they
were
able to tunnel down through the ice to replace the last propeller with the one they’ve jury-rigged, with the replacement driveshaft bent as badly as it is,
Erebus
is going nowhere under steam.”
    Crozier nods.
Erebus
bent its second driveshaft while the ship was throwing itself desperately on the ice more than a year ago. The flagship — heavier, with a more powerful engine — led the way through the pack ice that summer, opening leads for both ships. But the last ice they’d encountered before being frozen in for the last thirteen months was harder than the iron in the experimental propeller screw and driveshaft. Divers that summer — all of who suffered frostbite and came close to dying — had confirmed not only that the screw had been shattered but that the driveshaft itself was bent and broken.
    “Coal?” says the captain.
    “
Erebus
has enough for… perhaps… four months of heating in the ice, at only one hour of hot-water circulation through the lower deck per day, Captain. None at all for steaming next summer.”
    If we get free next summer,
thinks Crozier. After this last summer, when the ice never relented for a day, he’s a pessimist. Franklin had used up
Erebus
’s coal supply at a prodigious rate during those last weeks of freedom in the summer of 1846, sure that if he could smash through those last few miles of pack ice, the expedition would reach the open waters of the North-West Passage along the northern coast of Canada and they’d be drinking tea in China by late autumn.
    “What about
our
coal use?” asks Crozier.
    “Perhaps enough left for six months of heating,” says Thompson. “But only if we cut back from two hours a day to one. And I recommend we do that soon — no later than the first of November.”
    That is less than two weeks away.
    “And steaming?” says Crozier.
    If the ice relents at all next summer, Crozier plans to cram all the surviving men from
Erebus
aboard
Terror
and make an all-out effort to retreat the way they’d come — up the unnamed strait between Boothia Peninsula and Prince of Wales Island, down which they rushed two summers ago, past Walker Point and Barrow Strait, out through Lancaster Sound like a cork from a bottle, then rushing south into Baffin Bay with all sail set and the last coal being burned, going like smoke and oakum, burning extra spars and furniture if need be to get the last bit of steam, anything to get them into open water off Greenland where whalers could find them.
    But he’ll also need steam to fight his way north through the south-flowing ice to Lancaster Sound, even if a miracle occurs and they are released from the ice here. Crozier and James Ross once sailed
Terror
and
Erebus
out of the south polar ice, but they’d been traveling
with
the currents and bergs. Here in the damned arctic, the ships have to sail for weeks
against
the flow of ice coming down from the pole just to reach the straits where they can escape.
    Thompson shrugs. The man looks exhausted. “If we cut off the heat on New Year’s Day and somehow survive until next summer, we might get… six days steaming without ice? Five?”
    Crozier merely nods again. This is almost certainly a death

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