Iceberg

"Six hours, forty-five minutes since we left the Catawaba. Not bad time."

"Probably could have shaved that considerably if we weren't handicapped with an extra fuel tank."

"Without it we'd be back there somewhere trying to swim four hundred miles to shore."

Pitt gri

"Judging from the mood Commander Koski was in when we took off, I doubt if he'd put himself out for us if we were drowning in a bathtub and he had his hand on the plug."

"In spite of what Koski thinks of me, I'd vote for him as admiral any time he decided to run. In my book he's a damn good man."

"You have a fu

"We gave him the truth as far as it went. Anything else would have been fifty percent guesswork. The only real fact that we omitted was the name of Fyrie's discovery."

"Zirtonium." Hu

"I barely squeaked through my geology class," Pitt said, smiling. "zirconium? What makes it worth mass murder?"

"Purified zirconium is vital in the construction of nuclear reactors because it absorbs little or no radiation.

Every nation in the world with facilities for atomic research would give their eyeteeth to have it obtainable by the carload. Admiral Sandecker is certain that if Fyrie and his scientists did indeed discover a vast zirconium bonanza, it was under the sea close enough to the surface to be raised economically."

Pitt turned and stared out of the cockpit bubble at the dark ultramarine blue that stretched almost unripPled to the south. A fishing boat with a chain of dories sailed out to sea, the tiny hulls moving as easy as if they were gliding across a tinted mirror. He watched them through eyes that barely saw, his mind dwelling on the exotic element that lay — covered by the cold waters below.

"A hell of an undertaking," he muttered, just loud enough to be heard over the drone from the engine's exhaust. "The problems of raising raw ore from the sea bottom are emense."

"Yes, but not insurmountable. Fyrie Limited employs the world's leading experts at underwater mining.

That's how Kristjan Fyrie built his empire, you know, dredging diamonds off the coast of Africa." Hu

That's where Fyrie stood out from the rest-he had a shrewd and creative mind.

"If diamond deposits could be found on land not two miles from shore, he reasoned, why couldn't they lie underwater on the continental shelf? So every day for five months he dove in the warm waters of the Indian Ocean until he found a section of the seabed that looked promising. Now the trick was scrounging the financing to buy the needed dredging equipment. Fyrie had arrived in Africa with nothing but the shirt on his back. To beg from the white moneyed interests in the territory would have been a waste of time. They would have taken everything and left him with nothing."

"One percent of something is often better than ninety-nine percent of nothing," Pitt interjected.

"Not to Kristjan Fyrie," Hu

Pitt noticed a dark speck in the sky, several thousand feet higher and in front of the Ulysses. "You certainly seem to have studied the Fyrie history."

"I know it sounds strange," Hu

"Just gave it away?"

"Lock, stock and the popular barrel. He distributed every share of his stock to the native stockholders, set up a black administration that could run efficiently without him, and took the next boat back to Iceland. Of the few white men held in high esteem by the Africans, the name of Kristjan Fyrie stands right at the top."

Pitt was watching the solitary dark speck in the northern sky turn into a sleek jet aircraft. He leaned forward, screwing up his eyes against the bright blue glare. The stranger was one of the new executive jets built by the British- fast, reliable and capable of whisking twelve passengers halfway around the world in a matter of hours without a fuel stop. Pitt barely had time to realize that the stranger was painted an ebony black from nose to tail when it swept past his range of vision traveling in the opposite direction.

"What did Fyrie do for an encore?" he asked.

"Mined manganese off Vancouver Island in British Columbia and brought in an offshore oil field in Peru to name a few. There were no mergers, no subsidiaries. Kristjan built Fyrie Limited into a great industry specializing in underwater geological exploitation, nothing else."

"Did he have a family?"

"No, his parents died in a fire when he was very young. All he had was a twin sister. Don't really know much about her. Fyrie put her through a finishing school in Switzerland, and, so rumor has it, she later became a missionary somewhere in New Guinea. Apparently her brother's fortune meant nothing to-" Hu

It was then Pitt became aware of the machine gun shells striking the fuselage aft of the seats. The sudden uncontrolled maneuver temporarily saved their lives; the gu