I’d seen it coining—or, rather, I’d seen the last second of it happening. I swept my hand up blindly, hit the auto-lock and jumped for the swinging missile, throwing myself between it and the ladder, dropping my torch as I reached out with both hands to prevent the nose from crashing into the ladder. In the sudden impenetrable darkness I missed the Twister—but it didn’t miss me. It struck me just below the breast-bone with a force that brought an agonised gasp from me, then I’d both arms wrapped round that polished aluminium shell as if I were going to crush it in half.
“The torch,” I yelled. Somehow, in that moment, it didn’t seem in any way important that I should keep down my voice. “Get the torch!”
“My ankle——”
“The hell with your ankle! Get the torch!”
I heard him give a half-suppressed moan, then sensed that he was clambering over the baffle. I heard him again, his hands scuffing over the steel floor. Then silence.
“Have you found it?” The Campari had started on its return roll and I was fighting to keep my balance.
“I’ve found it.”
“Then switch it on, you fool!”
“I can’t.” A pause. “It’s broken.”
That helped a lot. I said quickly: “Catch hold of the end of this damn’ thing. I’m slipping.”
He did, and the strain eased. He said: “Have you any matches?”
“Matches!” Carter showing inhuman restraint, if it hadn’t been for the Twister it would have been funny. “Matches! After being towed through the water for five minutes alongside the Campari?”
“I hadn’t thought of that,” he said gravely, A few moments’ silence, then he offered: “I have a lighter.”
“God help America,” I said fervently. “If all her scientists—light it, man, light it!”
A wheel scraped on flint and a flickering pool of pale yellow light did its pitiful best to illuminate that one tiny corner of the dark hold.
“The block and tackle. Quickly.” I waited until he had reached it. “Take the strain on the free end, knock off the lock and lower gently. I’ll guide it on to the tarpaulins.”
I moved out half a step from the baffle, taking much of the weight of the missile with me. I was barely a couple of feet away from the tarpaulins when I heard the click of the auto-lock coming off and suddenly my back was breaking. The pulley had gone completely slack, the entire 275 lb. of the Twister was in my arms, the Campari was rolling away from me, I couldn’t hold it, I knew I couldn’t hold it, my back was breaking. I staggered and lurched forward, and the Twister, with myself above and still clinging desperately to it, crashed heavily on to the tarpaulins with a shock that seemed to shake the entire floor of the hold.
I freed my arms and climbed shakily to my feet. Dr. Caroline, the flickering flame held just at the level of his eyes, was staring down at the gleaming missile like a man held in thrall, his face a frozen mask of all the terrible emotions ever known. Then the spell broke.
“Fifteen seconds!” he shouted hoarsely. “Fifteen seconds to go!” He flung himself at the ladder, but got no further than the second step when I locked arms round both himself and the ladder. He struggled violently, frantically, briefly, then relaxed.
“How far do you think you’re going to get in fifteen seconds?” I said. I don’t know why I said it, I was barely aware that I had said it, I had eyes and mind only for the missile lying there, my face probably showed all the emotions that Dr. Caroline’s had been registering. And he was staring too. It was a senseless thing to do but for the moment we were both senseless men. Staring at the Twister to see what was going to happen, as if we would ever see anything, neither eyes nor ears nor mind would have the slightest chance in the world of registering anything before that blinding nuclear flash annihilated us, vaporised us, blew the Campari out of existence.
Ten seconds passed. Twelve. Fifteen. Twenty. Half a minute. I eased my aching lungs—I hadn’t drawn a breath in all that time—and my grip round Caroline and the ladder. “Well,” I said, “how far would you have got?”
Dr. Caroline climbed slowly down the two steps to the floor of the hold, dragged his gaze away from the missile, looked at me for a long moment with uncomprehending eyes, then smiled. “Do you know, Mr. Carter, the thought never even occurred to me.” His voice was quite steady and his smile wasn’t the smile of a crazy man. Dr. Caroline had known that he was going to die and then he hadn’t died, and nothing would ever be quite so bad again. He had found that the valley of fear does not keep on going down for ever: somewhere there is a bottom, then a man starts climbing again.
“You grab the trailing rope first and then release the auto-lock,” I said reproachfully. If I was light-headed, who was to blame me? “Not the other way around. You might remember the next time.”
There are some things for which to make an apology is impossible, so he didn’t even try. He said regretfully: “I’m afraid I’ll never make a sailorman. But at least we know now that the retaining spring on the trembler switch is not as weak as we had feared.” He smiled wanly. “Mr. Carter, I think I’ll have a cigarette.”
“I think I’ll join you,” I said.
After that it was easy—well, relatively easy. We still treated the Twister with the greatest respect—had it struck at some other angle it might indeed have detonated—but not with respect exaggerated to the extent of tiptoeing terror. We dragged it on its tarpaulins across to the other side of the hold, transferred the Haltrac hoist to the corresponding ladder on the port side, arranged a couple of spare tarpaulins and blankets from the coffin to make a cushioned bed for the Twister between baffle and the ship’s side, hoisted the missile across the baffle without any of the acrobatics that had accompanied the last transfer, lowered it into position, pulled over the blankets and covered it completely with the tarpaulins on which we had dragged it across the floor.
“It’ll be safe here?” Dr. Caroline inquired. He seemed almost back to what I should have imagined his normal self to be, except for the hurried breathing, the cold sweat on his brow and face.
“They’ll never see it. They’ll never even think to look here. Why should they?”
“What do you propose to do now?”
“Leave with all possible speed. I’ve played my luck far enough. But first the coffin—must weight it to compensate for the absence of the Twister, then batten down the lid again.”
“And then where do we go?”
“You’re not going anywhere. You’re staying here.” I explained to him just why he had to stay there, and he didn’t like it one little bit. I explained to him some more, pointed out carefully, so that he couldn’t fail to understand, that his only chance of life depended on his staying there and he still didn’t like it any more. But he saw that it had to be done, and the fear of certain death eventually outweighed the very understandable and almost hysterical panic my suggestion had caused him. And after that fifteen second lifetime when we had waited for the Twister to detonate, nothing could ever seem so terrifying again.
Five minutes later I battened down the coffin lid for the last time, thrust the screwdriver into my pocket and left the hold.
The wind, I thought, had eased a little: the rain, beyond question, was heavier by far, even in the pitchy darkness of that night I could see the blur of whiteness round my stockinged feet as the heavy wind-driven drops spattered on the iron decks and rebounded ankle-high.
I took my time making my way forward. There was no hurry any more, and now that the worst was behind I had no mind to destroy us all by undue haste. I was a black shadow, at one with the blackness of the night, and no ghost was ever half so quiet. Once two patrolling guards passed me by, going aft, once I passed a couple huddled miserably in the lee of “A” accommodation deck, seeking what little shelter they could from the cold rain. Neither pair saw me, neither even suspected my presence, which was just as it should have been. The dog never catches the hare, for lunch is less important than life.
I ha
d no means of telling the time, but at least twenty minutes must have passed before I once more found myself outside the wireless office. Every major event in the past three days, right from the very first, had in some way or other stemmed from that wireless office: it seemed only fitting that it should also be the scene of the playing of the last card left in my hand.
The padlock was through the hasp and it was locked. That meant there was no one inside. I retreated to the shelter of the nearest boat and settled down to wait. The fact that there was no one in there didn’t mean that there wasn’t going to be someone there very soon. Tony Carreras had mentioned that their stooges on the Ticonderoga reported course and position every hour. Carlos, the man I’d killed, must have been waiting for just such a message, and if there was another report due through, then it was a certainty that Carreras would have his other operator up to intercept it. At this penultimate state of the game, he would be leaving nothing at all to chance. And, in the same state of the game, neither was I: the radio operator bursting in and finding me sitting in front of his transmitter was the last thing I could have afford happen.
The rain drummed pitilessly on my beat back. I couldn’t get any wetter than I was, but I could get colder. I got colder, very cold indeed, and within fifteen minutes I was shivering constantly. Twice guards padded softly by—Carreras was certainly taking no chances that night—and twice I was sure they must find me, so violent was my shivering that I had to clamp my sleeve between my teeth to prevent the chattering from betraying me. But on both occasions the guards passed by oblivious. The shivering became even worse. Would that damned radio operator never come? Or had I outsmarted myself, had I double-guessed and double-guessed wrongly? Perhaps the radio operator wasn’t going to come at all?
I had been sitting on a coiled lifeboat fall and now I rose to my feet, irresolute. How long would I have to wait there before I would be convinced that he wasn’t going to come? or maybe he wasn’t due for another hour yet, or more? Wherein lay the greater danger—risking going into the wireless office now with the ever-present possibility of being discovered and trapped in there, or waiting an hour, maybe two hours, before making my move, by which time it would almost certainly be too late anyway? Better a chance of failure, I thought, than the near certainty of it, and now that I’d left number four hold the only life which would be lost through my mistakes would be my own. Now, I thought, I’ll do it now. I took three silent steps, then no more. The radio operator had arrived. I took three silent steps back.
The click of a key turning in the padlock, the faint creak of the door, the metallic sound of it shutting, a faint gleam of light behind the curtained window. Our friend preparing to receive, I thought. He wouldn’t stay long, that was a safe enough guess, just long enough to take down the latest details of course and speed of the Ticonderoga—unless the weather was radically different to the north-east it was most unlikely that the Ticonderoga could have fixed its position that night—and take it up to Carreras on the bridge. I presumed that Carreras would still be there, it would be entirely out of keeping with the man if, in those last few crucial hours, he didn’t remain on the bridge and take personal charge of the entire operation as he had done throughout. I could just see him accepting the sheet of figures with the latest details of the Ticonderoga’s progress, smiling his smile of cold satisfaction, making his calculations on the chart.
My thoughts stopped dead right there. I felt as if someone had turned a master switch inside me and everything had seized up, heart, breathing, mind and every organ of sensation I felt as I had felt during those dreadful fifteen seconds while Dr. Caroline and I had waited for the Twister to blow up. I felt that way because there had abruptly, paralysingly flashed on me the realisation that would have come to me half an hour ago if I hadn’t been so busy commiserating with myself on the misery I was suffering. Whatever else Carreras had not established himself as—and there were many things—he had established himself as a consistent prudent and methodical man: and he’d never yet worked out any chart problems on figures supplied him without coming to have a check made by his trusty navigator, Chief Officer John Carter.
My mind churned into low gear again, but it didn’t make any difference. True, he’d sometimes waited some hours before having his check made, but he wouldn’t be waiting some hours tonight because by then it would be far too late. We couldn’t be more than three hours now from our rendezvous with the Ticonderoga, and he’d want a check made immediately. Waking up a sick man in the middle of the night would hardly be a consideration to worry Carreras. Nothing was surer than that within ten or fifteen minutes of that message coming through he’d be calling at the sick-bay. To find his navigator gone. To find the door locked from the inside. To find MacDonald waiting with a gun in his hand. MacDonald had only one automatic, Carreras could call on forty men with sub-machine-guns. There could only be one ending to any battle in the sick-bay and the end would be swift and certain and final. In my mind’s eye I could just see stammering machine-guns spraying the sick-bay, could see MacDonald and Susan, Bullen and Marston—I crushed down the thought, forced it from my mind. That way lay defeat.
When the radio operator left the office, if I got inside unseen, if I was left undisturbed to send off the message, how long would that leave me to get back to the sick-bay? Ten minutes, not any more than ten minutes, say seven or eight minutes to make my way undetected right aft to the port side to where I had left the three ropes tied to the guard-rail stanchion, secure one to myself, grab the lifeline, give the signal to the bo’sun, lower myself into the water and then make the long half-drowning trip back to the sick-bay. Ten minutes? Eight? I knew I could never do it in double that time, if my trip from the sick-bay to the after-deck through that water had been any criterion, the trip back, against instead of with the current, would be at least twice as bad: and the first trip had been near enough the end of me. Eight minutes? The chances were high I’d never get back there at all.
Or the radio operator? I could kill the radio operator as he left the office. I was desperate enough to try anything and frantic enough to have a fair chance of success. Even with the patrolling guards around. That way Carreras would never get the message. But he would be waiting for it, oh, yes, he would be waiting for it. He would be very anxious indeed to have the last check, and if it didn’t come within minutes he was going to send someone to investigate and when that someone found the operator was dead or missing the balloon would be up with a vengeance. Guards running here, guards running there, lights on all over the ship, every possible source of trouble investigated—and that still included the sick-bay. And MacDonald would still be there. With his gun.
There was a way. It was a way that gave little enough hope of success, with the added drawback that I would be forced to leave those three incriminating ropes attached to the guardrail aft: but at least it didn’t carry with it an outright guarantee of failure.
I stooped, felt for the coiled fall rope, cut it with my clasp-knife. One end of the rope I secured to my waist with a bowline: the rest of it, about sixty feet, I wrapped round my waist, tucking the end in. I fumbled for and found the radio office key that I’d taken off the dead Carlos. I stood in the rain and the darkness and waited.
A minute elapsed, no more, then the radio operator appeared, locked the door behind him and made for the companionway leading up to the bridge. Thirty seconds later I was sitting in the seat he’d just vacated, looking up the call-sign of the Fort Ticonderoga.
I made no attempt to hide my presence there by leaving the light off. That would only have aroused the suspicions, and quickly, too, of any passing guards hearing the stutter of transmitted Morse coming from a darkened wireless office.
Twice I tapped out the call sign of the Ticonderoga, and on the second occasion I got an acknowledgment. One of Carreras’s radio operator stooges aboard the Ticonderoga was certainly keeping a pretty sharp watch. I should have expected nothing else.
It was a brief message,
speeded on its way by the introductory words “HIGHEST PRIORITY URGENT IMMEDIATE REPEAT IMMEDIATE ATTENTION MASTER FORT TICONDEROGA.” I sent the message and took the liberty of signing it “FROM THE OFFICE OF THE MINISTER OF TRANSPORT BY THE HAND OF VICE-ADMIRAL RICHARD HODSON DIRECTOR NAVAL OPERATIONS.” I switched off the light, opened the door and peered out cautiously. No curious listeners, no one at all in sight. I came all the way out, locked the padlock and threw the key over the side.
Thirty seconds later I was on the port side of the boat-deck carefully gauging, as best I could in that darkness and driving rain, the distance from where I stood to the break in the fo’c’sle. About thirty feet, I finally estimated, and the distance from the fo’c’sle break aft to the window above my bed was, I guessed, about the same. If I was right, I should be almost directly above that window now: the sick-bay was three decks below. If I wasn’t right—well, I’d better be right.
I checked the knot round my waist, passed the other end of the rope round a convenient arm of a davit and let it hang down loosely over the side. I was just about to start lowering myself when the rope below me smacked wetly against the ship’s side and went taut. Someone had caught that rope and hauled it tight.
Panic touched me but the instinct for self-preservation still operated independently of my mind. I flung an arm round the davit and locked on to the wrist of the other hand. Anyone wanting to pull me over the side would have to pull that davit and lifeboat along with me. But as long as that pressure remained on the rope I couldn’t escape, couldn’t free a hand to untie the bowline or get at my clasp-knife.
The pressure eased. I fumbled for the knot, then stopped as the pressure came on again. But the pressure was only momentary, no pull but a tug. Four tugs, in rapid succession. If I wasn’t feeling weak enough already, I’d have felt that way with relief. Four tugs. The pre-arranged signal with MacDonald to show I was on my way back: I might known Archie MacDonald would have been keeping watch every second of the time I was away. He must have seen or heard or even felt the rope snaking down past the window and guessed that it could only be myself. I went down that rope like a man reborn, checked suddenly as a strong hand caught me by the ankle and five seconds later was on terra firma inside the sickbay.
The Golden Rendezvous Page 25