The Bomb Ship

by Peter Tonkin

  Then he went to bed. ‘Wake me in four hours,’ was his final order. ‘I want to look at the bows before we get anywhere near the ice barrier.’

  Nico nodded, watched Richard stagger into the captain’s day room behind the chart room, walked over to the watch-keeper’s chair and proved how wide awake he was by removing two beef sandwiches from the seat before he sat in it.

  *

  ‘Captain Mariner went right over and climbed around on it,’ said Nico, four and a half hours later.

  ‘She would,’ said Richard. ‘But you won’t get me over there, Nico, so don’t draw up any plans to resume your command just yet. Still, that’s a hell of a mess. What about the hole into number one?’

  ‘It should have sunk us. We were lucky. But ...’

  ‘But?’

  ‘The two who were down here at the time. They were not so lucky.’

  Richard nodded. He had known Jamie and had met his parents; he had not known Biggs personally but he felt their loss equally keenly. They had both been Heritage Mariner men. More than that, they had been Crewfinders men.

  Clotho was ploughing determinedly along the course Richard had set. Johnny Sullivan was on watch, Bill Christian was trying to raise Heritage House and Andrew was working on the pumping system with Harry Piper. They were sailing deeper and deeper into the area of high pressure. The conditions were idyllic. High, clear skies of picture-postcard blue, and long, quiet seas one shade of green off the same colour. No wind to speak of, and a high, bright, early afternoon sun. The two men on the battered deck should have been wearing shorts and T-shirts, not the cold-weather gear they still required if they were going to be outside for any length of time.

  Any thoughts of summer wear, however, were cancelled by the view dead ahead. The barrier was just below the horizon, but it made its presence known with breathtaking power. There was the faintest haze of fog above the corrugated raft of ice. It was hardly thick enough to be called cloud, but the suspension of water droplets and ice crystals extended quite a long way up the sky. Sunlight blazing off the dead-white surface below lit the fog like neon so that only Clotho could bear to look directly towards where they were headed. There the blue of the sky faded as though it was increasingly frosted over itself. At its lower edge, pale blue became blazing white and that whiteness seemed to contain the brightness of a chain of nuclear explosions burning all along the very top of the world.

  ‘Have you checked the hole at all?’

  ‘No. Like I say, Captain Mariner went over. But I won’t.’

  ‘Neither will I, but we need to have a look. I think we might be able to make a full assessment from inside the hold itself.’

  ‘You don’t think it’s enough that we know the water has stopped coming in, that we have balanced the weight with the pumps so that the hull sits well in the water and we know we can sail safely forward? Why do you want to look at the hole?’

  ‘How near the surface is it? Will it start to let in water if the conditions get to force five on the Beaufort scale? Force six? Will we be safe in a force-nine gale? Force-ten storm?’

  ‘What storm, Captain? Is dead calm —’

  ‘How is the ice-strengthening at the waterline? Does the hole come through it? Over it? How far over it? Yes, it is a dead calm, but we’re heading into ice. What thickness of ice can we go through? Six inches? Will she ride over six feet?’

  ‘The hole into number one hold won’t tell you much about that, Captain.’

  ‘But it will tell me something. And, when we get nearer the ice, I might well find ways to look more closely from the outside. Looking from the inside now will save time then. And it might tell us something we could find useful in the meantime. Was this hatch closed when the hold broke open?’

  ‘No. I came down and closed it later. Hard job, too, in the dark with the safety lines all tangled here and where the gantry went overboard. Tow line writhing around on the deck like some great big snake. I don’t like your Western Ocean. I prefer the quieter seas. I am a Mediterranean man.’

  ‘Yes, I know. Well, you’ve got some nice Mediterranean weather today.’

  ‘Don’t get that much ice off Napoli, Capitano.’

  Section by section they rolled back the McGregor hatch and daylight flooded in to reveal a dark, dirty-looking little sea of water restlessly heaving down in the number one hold. Striking in across the wave tops and throwing them into stark relief was a searchlight beam of brightness from the hole in the forward wall of the hold.

  ‘That’s enough,’ said Richard after three sections were back. ‘I only want to go down the forward wall and look at the hole itself.’

  ‘Ladder don’t look too safe no more,’ observed Nico. ‘You’d better wear a lifeline if you don’t want to go swimming.’

  ‘Good idea. It’s a bit cold for a dip.’

  A few moments later, Richard had clinched the line round his waist and Nico had tight hold of it. Then Richard carefully climbed over the raised edge of the hatch and put his feet on the first rungs of the ladder. It had been attached to the forward wall of the hold but the inrush of water through the hole had ripped a good deal of it free. After the first few steps, he found himself apparently climbing down a ladder made of rubber, which bounced and wavered with each new step and movement, no matter how slow and careful.

  But Richard wasn’t really concerned with this. There was no real danger, simply the outside chance of an unwelcome swim. Only if by some unimaginable accident was he thrown through the hole in the wall before him down into the Labrador Sea was there any actual chance of him coming to harm. By the look of things, the hole was quite big enough for him to fit through. It was near the top of the wall, centred perhaps two-thirds up from the inundated floor. It seemed to be very roughly circular with a radius of perhaps three feet. The edge was an obscene bloom of twisted metal petals not only from the hold wall but from the ruined bow immediately beyond it. In a strange way, the damage seemed to be acting almost like a monstrous rivet, joining the two layers of metal together.

  Another few careful steps down brought him to a position from which he could see almost vertically down the cutwater of his ship to the creamy mess of her bow wave.

  It was very difficult to judge distances in these circumstances, but it seemed to Richard that he had about eight, maybe ten feet of solid bow there between the hole and the wave tops. There was even a section, maybe a metre, of seemingly undamaged bow immediately above the tumbling foam. He would have to consult Andrew McTavish about that. ‘Nico,’ he called up, ‘did Robin say anything about an undamaged section just at the waterline?’

  ‘No, Captain. But I think she is riding much higher in the water since she lost the gantry.’

  ‘That would make sense. Okay, I’ll just go down a step or two more, then I’ll be up again.’

  Here, in fact, the ladder was almost horizontal, bent far back by the force of the water which had burst through the wall. Its base was another ten feet down in the water, bent back in towards its original attachment points. But it was no longer actually riveted to the wall, and really it should have been jumping up and down much more actively under Richard’s weight. He had no way of knowing it as he moved across the twisted rungs like a monkey on a trampoline, but he was being held safely in place by the inertia of two dead bodies whose safety lines had bound them to the metal. But the more he moved, the more these bindings were loosened, so that, just as he decided that there was nothing more to see and began to climb back up, the body of Jamie Curtis followed him in ghastly pantomime up the rungs from under the water, the handle of the assassin’s knife chiming faintly against the hollow rungs as he moved.

  ‘What was that?’ Richard called up to Nico.

  ‘What? I heard nothing.’

  ‘I don’t know, a kind of ringing ...’

  As he spoke, Nico’s walkie-talkie buzzed urgently. The Italian turned as soon as Richard’s head came out of the hold. ‘Pronto?’

  As Richard pulled himself
onto the deck, Johnny Sullivan’s voice boomed out excitedly, ‘Tell the captain I think we’ve got Atropos.’

  They left the hatch as it was and ran up the deck without a further thought. In the wheelhouse, Sullivan was standing with a big flimsy printout. ‘I think this is it,’ he said as they charged breathlessly in. ‘The conditions are so perfect that the satellites are sending down brilliant weather pictures.’

  He spread the printout on the chart table and Richard could see what his lieutenant meant. He was looking at an enhanced weather picture of the Labrador Sea. Not a whole picture but a highly enlarged section perhaps ten miles by ten on the earth’s surface.

  ‘Where did you get this?’

  ‘We’re back in contact with Heritage House. Not just the radio. The machines too. They enlarged it. They faxed it over.’

  Richard nodded and leaned forward.

  The picture, in stark monochrome, showed a long tongue of white ice. To the south of it was black water. To the north of it, black water, which gave way almost immediately to a stippling of white which thickened relentlessly until the top of the picture was dead white again. To the east, the ribbon of black water was wider before the stippling warned of gathering ice floes. To the west, it was narrower, and right in the north-western corner there was something else. What this extra section could be was not clear, but it was big and it seemed to be pushing the floes down in front of it — which meant that it was moving.

  And that was worrying, for, nestled against the straight edge of the ice barrier immediately in its path was a tiny speck of brightness too vivid to be a floe. Too vivid, in fact, to be anything but Atropos.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE - Day Ten

  Friday, 28 May 00:00

  Robin hauled herself up out of a seemingly bottomless black pit of exhaustion to find someone was shaking her. That was the first thing her reluctantly wakening body realised: that she was being shaken very forcefully by the shoulder. Then other sensations came — the fact that the shoulder was bruised and tender, the fact that she was in a warm and comfortable bed. The fact that the bed was on a ship.

  Her eyes opened and a face slowly pulled itself into focus, broad forehead frowning with concern, wide blue eyes which crinkled at the edges into laugh lines stretching back to the ears. High cheekbones, with long valleys joining them to a square chin with just the hint of a dimple under the gold-dust stubble. The firmly sculpted mouth, its top lip framed by a moustache, was talking to her, revealing perfectly even teeth. ‘Stone says he thinks he’s getting through to your home base, Captain,’ said Henri LeFever. ‘Hogg wasn’t sure whether to wake you but I figured you’d want to know.’

  ‘You figured right. What time is it?’

  ‘Just gone midnight.’

  ‘Time I was up anyway.’ She swung herself out from under the blankets without thinking and was relieved to find Ann had put her in a long silk nightgown. She rose and crossed to the pile of neatly folded clothes on the chair beside the doorway into her main cabin. ‘I’ll be on the bridge in five minutes,’ she said and turned to face him. Something about his eyes made her look down and she realised that the light coming from behind her made the gossamer confection she was wearing almost transparent. ‘Five minutes, Mr LeFever,’ she snapped.

  ‘Aye aye, Captain,’ he answered and went past her looking studiously at the floor.

  She dressed quickly, not quite certain whether she was angry with the scientific officer or not. It was strange that, after thinking that she might join Ann as ship’s sex object if Captain Black recovered, she should find herself being so observed by the one man aboard she had not thought of as a rabid sexist. Perhaps she had been over-impressed by LeFever after all. Or perhaps she had been so busy being a captain that in a way she had forgotten that she was a woman. She had not forgotten her femininity, she had simply moved it down the list of priorities a rung or two. It was not a question of how she saw herself, it was a question of how she wished others to see her. When she walked into a ballroom, she wished to be seen primarily as a woman. When she walked into a board meeting, she wished to be seen primarily as an executive. On a powerless ship, out of communication with home base, tied up against an ice barrier in the Labrador Sea, she wanted to be seen simply and solely as the captain. Not the short captain or the tall captain or the well-groomed captain or the scruffy captain or the white captain or the black captain or the weak captain. The strong captain; yes, certainly the strong captain. But not the woman captain; not the pretty captain; not — heaven forfend — the sexy captain. Just the captain. As in ‘Yes, Captain! No, Captain! Three bags full, Captain!’

  This was something she had achieved in the Heritage Mariner fleet, to such an extent that she never gave it a second thought because no one else seemed to either. But LeFever’s look showed her that she might still have some work to do here. The thought was very unwelcome; she had so much other difficult work to do. She missed her officers from Clotho. Had she not had so many of her crew aboard, she might have felt isolated.

  Still lost in these thoughts, which had much of their basis in the fact that she was so tired and for once in her life had not sprung fully awake at the first touch, she walked out of her cabin onto the corridor and found herself face to face with Captain Black. Later she realised that this was hardly surprising — Ann Cable had put her in the captain’s cabin and the drug addict had woken in Reynolds’s accommodation and was trying to return to familiar surroundings. But it gave her a shock at the time.

  She had the advantage. She was properly dressed in overalls which were marked with a captain’s badges of rank. He was in pyjamas which had seen better days and an ill-tied silk dressing gown several sizes too small for him. He wore no slippers, he needed a shave and his hair was a grey mare’s nest.

  ‘Who are you?’ he demanded in tones of trembling outrage. ‘What’s some damn woman doing in my quarters?’ He drew himself up, gathering his clothing around him like King Lear putting on his dignity in his rags and madness.

  ‘Captain Black, are you well?’ she asked gently. ‘How do you feel, sir?’

  Her gentle approach nonplussed him. Made him actually think about it. ‘Well, I ...’ He began to shake, as though he were in the grip of the arctic wind which had been blowing outside. He looked down, and then up at her again. In the instant he looked away, he had aged ten years and his eyes had overflowed. Tears streaming and nose beginning to run, he said, ‘As a matter of fact, I am not quite myself, I ...’

  And he went down at her feet in a dead faint as though cold-cocked from behind. She considered leaving him there but she could not do it. Back she went into the cabin and called up to the bridge. Hogg answered. ‘Mr Hogg. Captain Black is lying out cold outside the door to the captain’s sleeping quarters. Have someone collect him and put him safely to bed, please.’

  On her way back past him, going on up to the bridge at last, she paused to check his pulse and breathing. So it was nearly ten past midnight when she actually reached the wheelhouse. With a nod to Hogg sitting comatose in the watchkeeper’s chair, she swung through to the radio shack, crowding in beside Ann and Henri. ‘Well?’

  Harry Stone looked up at her. ‘I’ve got Heritage House about strength five at least,’ he said, and handed her the microphone.

  ‘Heritage House? This is Captain Robin Mariner aboard Atropos. Can you hear me, over?’

  The airwaves hissed and whispered. Then, abruptly, there was a fierce crackling sound as though the radio equipment had caught fire somehow. ‘... very faint ...’ said a woman’s voice.

  ‘This is Captain Robin Mariner aboard Atropos. Can you hear me, over?’

  ‘Say again, please.’

  ‘This is Captain Robin Mariner. Is my husband there?’

  ‘No. I’m afraid not.’

  ‘Please get a message to him or to Sir William. All well at present ...’

  ‘You are fading ...’

  ‘Have you any news of Clotho?’

  ‘Say again ...’r />
  ‘Clotho?’

  ‘... Damn! ...’ And she was gone.

  ‘Well,’ said Robin to Harry, ‘at least they know we’re alive. And still nothing from your headquarters in Sept Isles?’

  ‘They don’t have the kind of equipment your guys at Heritage Mariner have. They may be closer, but that don’t mean a hell of a lot in these conditions.’

  ‘You didn’t ask for help,’ said Ann. She sounded shocked, almost accusatory. LeFever nodded as though he agreed with her.

  ‘No need. Making contact should be enough. They have the progress reports I phoned in while we had contact. They know everything that happened up to the second part of the tow. Now they know which ship I’m on, which is one thing that’s new; and they know I’ve lost contact with Clotho, which is the other thing that’s new. They’ll call up Canada on the phone or fax the information across. Or I guess the Heritage computer will update the Sept Isles computer automatically. In any case, the message will get through in next to no time.’

  ‘Harry has set the short wave to broadcast our identification signal. It’s more powerful than the voice radio because it works on Morse code. In theory, just from that transmission, and maybe from others that weren’t quite strong enough for voice contact, either of our bases should be able to locate us, or our general area. If the weather clears and the clouds go, then there’s a fair chance someone will be able to enhance a satellite picture enough to get an idea of our general condition. Then they’ll know what to do. In the meantime, our priority is to try and get the ship working again one hundred per cent.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Well, Mr LeFever, we’ve got a spare propeller and unless we’re offered a tow within the next two or three days, I see no reason why we shouldn’t set about putting it in place and sailing ourselves out of this mess.’

  ‘But how —’

  ‘Yes, well, I haven’t quite worked that one out yet, Ann.’ The plump, crumpled figure of Hogg loomed in the doorway.