A Ravel of Waters

Chapter 28

I do not clearly remember Tideman palming me the lethal slide-rule from his pocket, or my leaving the sick-bay. The nerve-stretched take-off to the operation produced a kind of amnesic blank in my mind. I surfaced in Kay's cubicle with her lips and her body against mine. She was shaking with emotion like a loose back-stay in a gale.

'Darling, my darling!' she whispered. 'I can't let you, I won't let you! This is plain suicide! You're not even seeing me, you're so preoccupied! I love you, I want you — I'm going to lose you!'

I kissed her, tried to soothe her. 'Even kamikazes have their moment of glory, my darling.'

Her mouth sought mine; it was salty with tears. 'There's no glory in a burst from an automatic,' she sobbed.

'What's the alternative?' I asked. 'Being led like sheep to the slaughter?'

Her head fell on my chest. 'What chance did our love get?' she asked brokenly. 'A week? A fall overboard? Being imprisoned together with this awful shadow hanging over us? And now…'

I kissed her fair hair and combed it back past her ears with my thumbs. 'There was no time, my darling — either then, or now.'

A final convulsive sob shook her body. Then she took control of herself. She eased me away from her. 'Don't kiss me goodbye,' she said, her head turned aside. 'I can't handle it. And it is — goodbye.'

I said nothing. Already part of my mind was focused on the guard.

The survival suit hung like a crucified monster on its hanger. It had big ungainly boots which were integral with the legs. The suit came in one size only and it was made of a substance called foam neoprene, the latest in survival gear. Tideman had told me that the manufacturer claimed one could get into the suit in half a minute. Key feature of the outfit was a sealing zipper which had been developed for the United States space programme. Silently I handed Kay the dagger, indicating that she should not meddle with the blade release. The suit certainly bore out the maker's claims — with Kay's assistance I was into it in what seemed seconds. Almost immediately the insulation made me sweat; perhaps fear of being surprised by the guard also had something to do with it. The visor and cap came last. By pulling the cap forward and tilting my head, my face was hidden. In that position, however, I could see nothing of anyone above waist-level.

Finally, Kay clasped my fingers round the dagger. They were as ungainly as bandaged bananas. I wondered whether I would ever be able to trigger the blade release. My success depended on one lightning-quick stroke before the guard suspected the suit had an occupant. If I fumbled even for a second, I was done. Then Kay was gone. I maintained the hanger pose — slumped, head down, arms out. Time ceased to pass.

My sole clock to mark the passage of the minutes — or was it hours? — was the drip of my sweat. The suit became a sauna.

I could not hear because of the waterproof cap; I dared not raise my head in case the next moment found the guard there. The next moment he was.

My sight of him was like a cut-off television camera shot — a trigger hand, a finned barrel, a pair of legs, a firing crouch. The muzzle held steadied on the suit. On me.

I waited for the shot. A blob of sweat chased itself inside my neck, down my chest, past my stomach. I felt every millimetre of its progress. No shot.

The guard's torso swung away. Feet followed. His boots were a boxer's ankle-hugging type. Now!

My fingers inside the glove were slippery with sweat. I flexed them for the stroke.

The guard's toes swivelled. A boxer dodging a knockdown punch couldn't have matched their speed. They pointed straight at me. Had the gunman heard? Had he seen? I froze — if that was the word in a bath of sweat.

Maybe he had caught, animal-like, some vibration of my rolling tension. Perhaps he even smelt my fear. I kept my head low, my eyes unsighted. Slowly, slowly, I watched his knees ease their tension. Slowly, slowly, that on-target barrel shifted away from my guts.

I did not know how long I could keep every muscle tight as a fence-wire without one making an involuntary giveaway ripple. Sweat cascaded down my knife-fingers.

The guard's toes pivoted ninety degrees. His back was towards me. Now!

Perhaps the switch-blade gave a click on release. Perhaps my body movements beat it by a milli-second. Or perhaps he only sensed rather than heard anything. Whatever it was, he was already turning, left shoulder following the UZI round, when I lurched at him.

There wasn't time for the orthodox overhand dagger thrust. The clumsy suit would not have allowed it. It was a low, savage up-and-under to the heart.

The jar up my arm could have been a glance off the UZI's breech, or the bone armour of his rib-cage.

I fell on him, enveloped him — a crude parody of a rugby smother-tackle. My knife hand skewered him. If he screamed or uttered any sound, I did not hear it. We cannoned off a partition wall, pitched into the main sickbay, carrying the curtain with us.

I had a momentary sight of the UZI being snatched up by another hand — Tideman's. The guard and I lay face-to-face, I on top. I was grateful for my visor. The man's mouth was contorted. Tell-tale pink sprayed from it. blurring the Perspex. He gave a final convulsion and was still.

It was Kay with shaking hands who freed my cap. Tideman knelt a pace away with the automatic's barrel trained on the guard's head. There was no need. He was dead. 'Quick!' I rapped out. 'The bridge — both of you!'

There was no direct access to the bridge from the sickbay. The wheel-house, radio office, chartroom and pilot office were all situated on the floor above us. The route from sick-bay to bridge was along a corridor running athwartships, flanked by officers' cabins. At the far end was the captain's suite. There were twin upward companion-ways, one to port, the other to starboard. These ladders debouched from our level into a central well immediately abaft the wheel-house itself. This well was bisected by № 2 mast, which I now intended to climb via the servicing door which Kay and I had used during our first ascent. The whole of this well area could be isolated in an emergency by means of watertight bulkheads. In short, the central well was the junction of all routes to the bridge. Tideman and Kay started to the sick-bay door.

'John!' I said. 'In ten minutes — no sooner, no later — you will blow the mast charges. Is that understood?' 'Aye,' replied Tideman. 'Whatever.' 'Good luck!' The two sprinted off.

I ballooned along the corridor in their wake. I felt like a grotesque carnival figure. That is where the resemblance to fun ended. The knife was bloodied to the hilt.

I lost Tideman and Kay at the first ladder to the mastwell. I negotiated it with the nimbleness of a baby elephant.

I found myself in the well itself. The mast towered in front of me like a burnished lift-shaft. The access door was shut. It had a type of fancy quick-release press-catch. My banana fingers fluffed it. I shifted hands with the dagger, tried again. I felt it yield, open. Sound poured down from the floor above — a burst of automatic fire. Then — shorter, staccato. The mast was relaying the sound of the bridge action. One — two — single shots.

The UZI seemed to appear from the direction of the captain's suite before the man. A seeking black muzzle, the unmistakable heavy finning, a hand on the trigger, Grohman!

Why didn't he blast me? I shall never know. He could not have missed, at less than four metres. I think it must have been the sight of the ludicrous apparition which froze his finger. Or perhaps it was the sight of that bloody dagger,

In that moment of arrested time I realized that Kay had failed in her part. She had not reached the hydraulics console in time to throw the vital bulkheads switch which would have caged Grohman and the other Group Condors. Those last isolated rat-tat-tats from above could have been her epitaph.

My savage despair at the attack's misfire gave me the courage to stand there facing my killer for a split-second long enough to ensure that he would come up the mast after me.

I slammed the door shut. A siren-like whoop reverberated everywhere. Emergency alarm! Kay had managed the bulkhead switch! But it was too late. Grohman had escaped the trap.

I fumbled with the lock of the mast door. Against it from outside came a savage battering. It wasn't done by hand. It was a magazine full of 9 mm shells.

The emergency siren told me that my part of the plan was still on. I had to get aloft — climb with feet like snow-shoes, a suit the size of a hangover, and mittened hands 1 could scarcely feel through! The visor and cap I left loose against the nape of my neck. It would only take a second to zip them into place when the mast blasted off.

I couldn't climb with my weapon hand encumbered. So I put the dagger between my teeth and hefted my leg on to the first rung.

The confined space rang with two or three concussions. Grohman was trying to shoot open the lock, carefully aiming individual shots.

I levered myself up the ladder. The going was tougher than I had expected. Until I managed the rhythm of lifting the feet and understanding their non-feel against the rungs, I was certain Grohman would pick me off before I reached the level of the lower mainyard. All he would have to do, once he had blasted open the door, was to fire straight upwards. I presented the perfect target against groups of lights fitted for servicing purposes at the juncture of each yard with the mast. The first group was at the lower mainyard. I had to reach them before Grohman broke in the door. I fought my way up. "There was another rattle of shots from below. Heavy slugs began to tear through the door and were banging about at the foot of the ladder. Grohman wasn't inside yet.

The group of four naked electric bulbs was close. I threw myself up at them. One foot slipped, and I hung on by my right hand.

The mast door crashed open. I glanced down. Grohman brought the UZI to his shoulder. I was clambering directly above him, like a bird waiting to be picked off a branch.

It is difficult to fire straight overhead. My position allowed him no angle, however slight. He would either have to lean completely backwards or lie on his back to aim.

In that brief interval while he gathered his aim, I made the remaining rungs to the lights.

I swiped madly with my heavy paw. There was a crash of breaking glass, a blinding flash of short-circuiting electrics. Then everything went dark. A general fail-safe switch tripped out the rest of the overhead lights inside the mast. I hurled myself up — fumbling, slipping, panting.

There was an ear-ripping jangle of sound. The blackness below was polka-dotted with red malice. The interior of the mast seemed full of ricocheting bullets.

Grohman was firing wild. He was hoping that the lethal spray would somehow find its target but the shots were all landing below me. He wasn't getting his angle of fire. The shattering sound cut off. I guessed the magazine was empty after that prolonged burst. To change it would give me a few precious moments. Up! Up!

Jetwind's yards were spaced at five equal intervals of ten and a half metres up the mast. The mast itself towered fifty-three metres above the deck. I had now covered the first ten and a half metres. The mast was divided into three sections; the lower mast, the top-mast, and the top-gallant. It was this latter which contained the ring charges at its juncture with the topmast thirty-four and a half metres above deck. The interior profile of the mast was elliptical and diminished progressively the higher one went.

At the point where each of the six yard-arms joined the mast there was a servicing compartment. Apart from a maze of pipes and valves, the main feature of these compartments was a pair of massive vertical rollers, each ten and a half metres in length, on which the sails were rolled in along tracks like a giant roller blind.

The bottom compartment, whose lights I had just smashed, was the largest. It measured about two and three-quarter metres long and was about half that broad. A steel cat-walk extending from the main ladder enabled technicians to stand and work.

I hesitated for a moment on this cat-walk. Its open grille provided no protection against a volley from underneath. There was a metallic clinking from below. What was Grohman up to? He hadn't fired off the UZI's full forty rounds. There was another snap and clink, then — unmistakable — the clack of a magazine being rammed home.

I knew enough about the UZI to realize that the big forty-rounder was too heavy to climb with. He had substituted for it a smaller twenty-five rounder. That still didn't account for all the delay. Another series of clicks reached me. He was probably unhitching the skeleton butt, converting the weapon into a compact, manoeuvrable automatic pistol. He was taking his time — he was very sure of me, pinned without hope of escape inside an ever-narrowing field of fire.

I could see faint Antarctic night-light filtering in through the chinks through which the sails rolled and unrolled. Urgently I looked for some weapon.

From the heel of each roller projected what looked like an old-fashioned car crank. I'd seen these before — manual back-up cranks in case the power-driven mechanism failed by which the sails were furled. I wrenched it from its socket and peered down. Below was darkness. I could not see Grohman's position but I heard faint movements.

I dropped the heavy bar and leapt upward again. There was a thud and a savage oath. For an answer, a shot whanged and whined from side to side inside the mast. The initial impact of the slug was much too close for comfort. I deduced from this that Grohman could now raise the automatic to a deadlier elevation.

I hadn't gone more than a couple of metres when the thought crashed home on me — at the next yard-arm bay I would have to stand and fight! It was the last bay before the juncture of the top-mast and top-gallant where the ring charges were sited. How much was left of the ten minutes until Tideman fired them? I hurried upwards.

Grohman hadn't fired again. I suspected that he was holding back until he thought I was trapped at the crow's nest and the top.

If I were going to use the dagger, I would need elbow room, provided just above my head, in the cat-walk of the next bay.

I hauled myself on to the next set of steel gratings. Now my second enemy was the light coming through the gaps between the sail rollers. I blocked some of the light by standing back against it, but the upper section-still emitted a give-away glow. How to fool Grohman into believing that I was still climbing? Perhaps if I pitched another crank-handle — but I was afraid that if I moved he would see me against the light. While I stood still where I was, I was tolerably safe. The automatic clanked against the ladder.

God! He was close! I even thought I could hear his rapid breathing.

I felt round desperately. My hand touched something metallic that felt like a small dumb-bell. It must have a function in snugging home the sail into the roller. I tried to insinuate myself between the two sail rollers in the same way, as according to Grohman's lies, Captain Mortensen had died. Perhaps the 'dumb-bell' was the blunt instrument whose mark the London pathologist had detected.

I tossed the heavy metal thing carefully through the catwalk ladder opening. At the same moment I thrust myself, back first, between the two sail-covered rollers.

There was a cry, an oath, a scrabbling of feet and a jangle of gun against rung. From the sound of it, Grohman must have slipped and fallen a few rungs. I could plainly hear his rasping breath.

This time he did not waste ammunition. The silence that followed was more gut-tearing than noise. I could picture the man in the darkness, steadying up, getting a grip on his fury before elevating the UZI into a firing position. The gun would have to be held well above his head if he didn't want to blind or maim himself.

The volley came — a cut-off six-rounder. It crashed and screamed through the confined space. There were also noises high above. Some slugs must have travelled all the way up to the masthead. If I had been on the ladder, I'd have been ripped apart from backside to neck.

There were more flashes of flame from the muzzle — I could almost reach down and touch them!

I took the knife from between my teeth and got a firm grip of the haft. My moment would come as Grohman came into the bay at cat-walk level. There the UZI's handiness would be at its most limited.

The light was dim, elusive. The grating poised crisscross like a steel trap waiting for Grohman's head. Red-painted stop-cock valves glowed danger signals. Copper hydraulic tubes writhed like disembowelled viscera. I waited.

It wasn't Grohman's head that came first. I heard a grunt, then his right hand clutching the UZI swung up and over on to the cat-walk. He wasn't much more than a metre from my funk-hole. My reflexes were swifter than my thinking.

In a flash I was out. I stamped on the UZI, pinning the gun-hand to the gratings.

They'd been right in choosing Grohman to lead Group Condor. He was tough; he could take it.

That booted foot must have hurt like hell. He didn't make the mistake of releasing the weapon. Instead, he used my ankle to lever himself into a fighting position. His head and body seemed to explode out of the opening. Crank and bull-whanger had done more damage than I thought. Blood was pouring from a long gash across his head.

With his free hand he swept my other foot from under me. I crashed beside him on the gratings. He rolled sideways, with cat-like agility. I followed, with survival-suit agility. Now the gun was under him; equally, the knife was trapped under my own bulk.

I pawed at him with a right fist, but even a punch-drunk palooka could have dodged the blow. Grohman jack-knifed on to his hunkers..The UZI must have been heavier than I guessed, or else my first savage stamp must have damaged his wrist more than I — or he — thought. He hadn't the strength in his right hand alone to raise the barrel fully to aim. It wavered, wandered off-target. A target bigger than a house.'

The split second more he needed to get his left round to heft up the UZI to fire was too long. I threw the knife. It stuck out from his Adam's apple.

He just knelt there with the UZI raised to blast me, with that obscene brass haft projecting from his throat. Then he pitched forward through the ladder gap.

I heard the body hit the bottom of the mast and the single shot that went off. He must have hung on to the trigger, even in death. I crouched on the cat-walk, gulping air. I seemed to be swimming inside a suit of sweat. My muscles kicked from reaction. Time! The ring charges! Twenty-one metres, seventy feet to go!

I threw myself at the rungs. The anti-blast cap! I stopped, jerked cap and visor over my head and face. Securing the sealing zipper with my outsize fingers seemed to take a year. Up!

I was still scrambling feverishly, blindly, in darkness on the upper mast-head side of the top-gallant bay, heading for the crow's nest, when the charges blew.

My first thought from the concussion's hammer-blow was that I had slipped and fallen the entire length of the mast.

Pilots who eject to safety are heroes; circus human cannons have a soft ride compared to mine from Jetwind.

The cap and visor saved my ear-dreams from blast, my eyes from flash, and my lungs from compression. All I knew was that one moment I was battling upwards and the next I felt a vertebrae-ripping punch in the back. The detonation pinned me like a fly against the steel rungs. The detached mast cartwheeled high into the air.

The water was to be my cushion on splash-down; I will never believe it provides cosmonauts with a soft landing. The jar when the tube of light alloy hit the sea was certainly almost as bad as take-off. Between the two, there was a merciful time-warp of oblivion.

I became aware of water glinting inside the floating mast. A circle of light showed at the severed end. It was filling fast. I knew I had to get out — faster — before it sank.

I crept towards the opening on all fours through icy water which deepened at every pace. Then-I was out.