He had seen all that and more, was disturbed and exalted by it, yet used it as his route of escape from the shame of his recent past... Great blocks of rock and ice, flashing chasms of snow, a shroud made of dark, drifting cloud, a sudden, upthrusting glacier... Time pa.s.sing and stopping. His gloved hands on the ship's railing. Then ice-encased mountains, seals and whales and pelagic birds, the air dazzlingly clear, then the anchor being dropped in blue water where the sky was a mirror...

He had certainly left home far behind him.

Yet he wasn't made happy by it, because he was still unable to forget what he had lost in his private and public lives: the career he had wanted since childhood and the woman he still loved.

He had wanted to be a rocket engineer and gain Ingrid's respect.

And had failed on both counts.

Instead, he had become a military policeman and jaded degenerate, living only for instant thrills with willing ladies... or with wh.o.r.es like Brigette.

Ah, yes, Brigette and Ingrid, his wh.o.r.e and his wife. He thought about them night and day, but mostly at night, when he tossed and turned in his tiny cabin, on his uncomfortable bunk bed, listening to the splashing sea, the moaning wind outside the porthole, drifting in and out of an uneasy sleep punctuated by recollections and dreams of sensual experience. He thought of Ingrid with romantic longing, of Brigette with helpless l.u.s.t, and spent himself shamefully in the darkness, with an adolescent's despair, blushing guilt, and irresistible self-pity.

The days were less tormenting, but certainly more boring, because all he could really do was patrol the creaking ship and check that his men were not up to mischief which, given this particular location, was highly unlikely. Not cut out to be a seaman, he was easily confused by the ship's bewildering array of hatches and bulkhead doors, steep steps and low-slung pipes, with its constant rumbling and groaning and creaking, its claustrophobic confines. For this reason he could hardly endure even the common cabin, where he sometimes tried to read; instead, he spent as much time as possible in the open air, watching the seaplanes being catapulted off the end of the nearest aircraft carrier, or coming in to land on that same, dangerously swaying deck, silhouetted in the sun's silvery striations or against the rippling, gla.s.sy sea.

If not the planes, a wandering albatross, flocks of prions, Cape pigeons, or the volcanic rock of the distant South Sandwich Islands, which, rising jaggedly on the horizon, looked like portals at the entrance to some ghastly, supernatural world. The purgatory to which he would be condemned for his recent debauchery.

'G.o.d help me,' he whispered more than once to the night's starlit darkness.

Luckily, he was often joined in his lonely vigils by Captain Alfred Richter, the commander of the expeditionary fleet, a grizzled, dishevelled, gray-haired, pink-faced veteran who enjoyed conversation, did not mince his words, and was volubly contemptuous of the people Ernst had come to revere.

'Remarkable!' Richter had said with a sneer during their first conversation, over dinner, in his cramped, smoky cabin. 'The Bavarian window cleaner has finally returned home, driving back into Vienna in his Storm Trooper uniform, giving the fascist salute, welcomed by pealing church bells and hysterically cheering crowds who appear to be delighted that he's made their country a mere province of Germany... But since, four days later, their beloved Fhrer announced the so-called spring-cleaning of Austrian Jews, I think we can a.s.sume that their cheering has tailed off into silence.'

Though shocked at such disrespect for the Fhrer he so admired, Ernst offered no protest, instead letting Richter break the monotony by rambling on about the madness of the Third Reich and those who controlled it.

'Drug addicts, s.e.xual degenerates, occultists and mystics the lunatics have taken over the asylum and called it the Third Reich. And who's in charge of the lunatics? Another two lunatics! Hitler and Himmler two mild souls possessed by demons one wanting to be G.o.d of a pure Aryan Earth, the other hoping to create the Super Race with a bunch of blond morons. These are leaders of men?'

If Richter despised the Third Reich and all it aspired to, he was particularly venomous about the man who had dreamed up this Antarctic expedition, namely the Reichsfhrer, Heinrich Himmler.

'A madman!' Richter rasped. 'He belongs in an insane asylum! Unlike you, I don't know him personally, but I know what I've heard. He's a bureaucrat of demonology, an administrator of inane dreams, a superficially cool customer who thrives on demented enthusiasms mesmerism, reincarnation, clairvoyance, runes, the Thousand Year Reich, the possibility of turning mortal men into immortals, the search for Hrbiger's world of ice and fire and this lunatic shares his dreams with Hitler, who is equally mad!'

At first Ernst was outraged, as if hearing blasphemy, and he turned away, hiding his flushed cheeks, and looked out to sea. An immature albatross had been circling out there for hours, always close to the surface, supported by the updraughts of air produced by the whitecapped swells. It made Ernst remember the wonders of aerodynamics and the work going on in the hangars of k.u.mmersdorf with the American genius, Wilson, the German egomaniac, Schriever, the ailing Italian physicist, Belluzzo, and their engineering a.s.sistants, Habermohl and Miethe, and this knowledge filled him with a healthy flush of resentment at what Himmler had done to him.

Instead of working as an engineer with Projekt Saucer at k.u.mmersdorf, he was supervising the dropping of flagged poles into the Antarctic wilderness.

It wasn't even a joke.,

'A world of ice and fire?' he asked Richter to distract himself. 'Is that why we're here?'

Richter laughed sardonically. 'What do you think?' he said. 'Has he not told you what he believes in? His mad dream of the Super Race?'

'No,' Ernst replied honestly, 'he hasn't. He only gives me my orders.'

So Richter told him about Himmler, about his bizarre faiths and ambitions, pointing out that his SS was essentially a religious order, that his men were bound by blood and oath, and that he wanted to isolate them, to brainwash then and remould them, to mate them with the purest German women and produce blond perfection, then forge those already perfect men in the strengthening flames of eternal war.

'He used to process chickens,' Richter said with a sneer, 'and now he wants to process people. He has a dream of a disciplined order of masters and slaves the masters like human G.o.ds, the slaves to do their bidding and he wants them in a world of ice and fire, which is where we are right now. The fire is the endless war that Himmler hopes to wage he believes, after all, that war keeps a nation strong - and the ice is right here in the Antarctic, which he views as the natural home of Nordic man.'

They were now on the open deck, looking across the ice-filled sea. Richter waved his hand to indicate the distant, snow-capped peaks and glaciers, obscured in a white haze.

'That's why he wants this place as the secret base for his New Order. He wants to finish here what he began in the Wewelsburg Castle: his secret society, a Black Jesuit order, with its Death's Head insignia, reversed swastika and occult rites, dedicated to the re-creation of the Germanen Order, which he views as the Super Race. The man is mad and unstoppable.'

Ernst cast his gaze southward, looking beyond the Antarctic Convergence, where dark clouds hovered over an oasis of light and frozen mountain peaks and ice falls, which, being but dimly perceived, looked like part of a mirage. He tried to visualize that vast wasteland, the brown earth between ice and snow; then he pondered the possibility of the finest of his SS comrades being imprisoned and trained there, set free only when called upon by their leader, the Reichsfhrer, Heinrich Himmler, to set a torch to the world of normal men and turn history to ashes.

Himmler... and Wilson... and Projekt Saucer... in a world of Eternal Ice.

'Areas free of ice,' he whispered to Richter, though really addressing himself. 'He specifically asked us to find areas free of ice. Places where we could land.'

'Of course!' Richter exclaimed. 'Why do you think he's claiming that land for the Third Reich? Photographing it? Having it mapped out?'

'I'm not sure. I '

'Lebensraum s.p.a.ce! German conquest and expansionism. That madman wants to come here, to bring his Death's Head SS here. He wants to isolate them from the world as completely as possible well beyond the reach of normal men and what could be more removed and isolated than that h.e.l.lhole of snow and ice? He'll create his new order there, beyond the influence of the human world, and those who are raised there will know nothing but what they've been taught. They'll be raised and trained for war, and nothing but war, the eternal conflict that Himmler believes is necessary to an order of Supermen.' Richter rubbed his frozen nose. 'Do you understand, Stoll? It's Hrbiger's so-called cosmic world of ice and fire and Himmler hopes to create it out there, in that frozen world, underground. That's why we're stealing Queen Maud Land.'

Ernst finally understood and was struck dumb with the knowledge, simultaneously overwhelmed by the grandeur of the concept and deeply shocked that he had learned about it only through this old naval captain, whose contempt was appalling.

Avoiding Richter after that, he stayed alone as much as possible, thinking of Wilson's flying saucer, potentially the world's most powerful aircraft, and relating it to this Antarctic expedition and the search for ice-free land.