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.The pilot regained control of his machine and spoke to the Siberian without looking at him.'It would be safer if you sat down.Colonel!''It would be safer if we were already aboard that ship! Take her down, I said!''Landing conditions are very dangerous.I have enough fuel left to stay up.'Papanin sat down next to the pilot in the observer's seat, put his face close to the pilot's, enunciated the words carefully.'I am ordering you to land on that ship.I have not got the time to hang about in mid-air because you require the sea to be as smooth as a baby's bottom! Take her down!'He turned away from the pilot and looked down at the ocean.The view was scarcely encouraging.The huge research ship, the showpiece of the Soviet merchant marine, her vast radar dome aft of the bridge gleaming in the moonlight like some strange seaborne mosque, was heaving slowly in a considerable swell.Three hundred feet below them, she rode great sea crests trundling south, her whole structure tilting and then falling, the spike at the top of the radar dome tipping sideways, pausing, climbing again as the seas lifted the vessel.Close to the icefield, ice floes drifted in the surging waves, climbed a crest, slammed down against the bows.The helicopter began to descend.The pilot, his facial muscles tight, leaned well forward for his first sight of the radar dome.Under these dangerous conditions the dome was his only guide to the whereabouts of the landing pad, immediately aft of the dome.He had to touch the pad at just the right moment; - when it was level -otherwise they would tip over sideways.Spume, caught by the wind, came up and splashed over the perspex, obscuring his view.Feeling the Siberian's stare, he continued the descent.Something like a huge pendulum swivelled beyond the perspex.The masthead, topped by a radar wing.The mast was laden with electronic gear.The Revolution, launched officially as the world's greatest research vessel, was really the Soviet Union's largest spy-ship.The machine went lower.The dome filled the view now, sliding with the massive sea swell, but the pilot hardly saw it; he was watching the masthead beyond, swinging towards the vertical.When it reached the vertical, paused there for brief seconds, the invisible landing pad would be level.The skids below the undercarriage hit the pad, slammed into it.Waiting technicians rushed forward, clamped the anchor rings tight.The Siberian opened the door while the rotors were still whirling, looked back at the pilot.'You see! You never know what you can do until you try!5He jumped to the deck as the pilot glared at him, crouched to avoid the rotors, splayed his huge legs to hold his balance, then he was clawing his way along the rail when the sea sent an avalanche inboard.He clung to the rail, holding his breath until the water receded, and there were frozen spits of ice on his sleeves as he hauled himself up the tilting ladder leading to the great bridge.Captain Anatoli Tuchevsky, the ship's commander, opened the door to let him in.'Colonel Papanin!' The Siberian, dripping water, took off his sodden parka and dropped it on the floor.'You are Tuchevsky? Good.A change of clothing, please! Something belonging to the largest rating aboard! Why are you heading north at this turtle pace?'Tuchevsky, a lean, self-contained man with a beard, grim-faced and thoroughly alarmed about what was happening to his ship, gave an order for fresh clothing to be brought and then led Papanin to the chart-room behind the bridge.He sent away an officer working over a chart with a pair of dividers, shut the door and faced the Siberian.'I have to protest most strongly.''Protest noted f'I haven't told you what I'm protesting about yet.''I'm not interested!''These are dangerous waters for a vessel of this size.''Now tell me something new!' Papanin stripped off his outer gloves, peeled off his mittens underneath, dropped the sodden articles on a side-table.Taking out a pair of steel-rimmed spectacles, he stared at the chart on the table, picked up a pencil, made a cross.'The American icebreaker Elroy was about there when I last saw her.She will now be smashing her way out of the ice.She will sail due south.' He scrawled a brutal line down the chart.'We continue sailing due north.' His pencil went straight back up the line.'So get on this course.And make this old tub of yours move!'Tuchevsky took off his cap, dropped it on the chart so the Siberian could make no more markings, folded his arms and stared straight at Papanin.'I command this vessel.I have an order to receive you, to carry out your instructions - but I am still in command.''Of course!' Papanin towered over the five-foot-six Tuchevsky as he beamed down at him.'I fashion the bullets, you fire them!' Sitting down on the floor, he tugged off one boot and then the other, still grinning at the captain.'I wish to protest formally about this order to proceed due north,' Tuchevsky continued with an edge in his voice.'The Revolution is our latest and most modern research vessel.It cost millions of roubles.And yet I am ordered to take this vessel into a sea littered with icebergs.''The Elroy made it - and part of the way without radar.I saw she had lost her masthead equipment.You have that damned big ear twitching at the top of your mast - use it!' Papanin stood up in his stockinged feet and began padding about the chart-room, looking at things.'I want to speak to the radio-jamming officer,' he went on
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