The Antarctic wind cut across the upper bridge of the Vanguard with the sharpness of a honed steel blade, carrying with it the icy spray of the Southern Ocean. Heavy ice floes bumped and groaned against the cruiser's iron-reinforced bow, leaving long white scars along her dark waterline as she pushed six hundred miles south of the Pacific relay.
Below deck, the forced-draft blowers whined in high-pitched harmony with the polar gale. The twin quad-expansion turbines worked at full torque, keeping the hull moving through the ice pack at eight knots.
In the soundproofed radio shack just beneath the main wheelhouse, the brass reception coils of the master receiver glowed a dull, heat-distorted red. A continuous, rhythmic pulse—dot-dot-dash, dot-dash-dot—echoed through the speaker, driving the inked glass recording stylus across a long paper scroll in sharp, mathematical peaks.
