The River of Diamonds

9

There was a little vein by the bridge of her nose; it began to beat noticeably.

'My father!' she exclaimed. 'My father! It isn't possible.'

'It fits the facts. That is why they were at Strandloper's Water. A name like the Hottentots' Paradise was good enough to camouflage their real reason.'

We stood staring at one another, while the enormous implications of what I had said dawned upon us. The little vein pulsed again. I gathered up the clothes she had selected.

'Rhennin must know about this — at once.'

She nodded without speaking, and we set off down the damp, wet-slicked corridor towards his quarters. She stumbled over the high lintel of the first water-tight door we came to.

Breaking the seriousness of our mood, I said, 'That's almost a Mazy Zed in the minuet.'

She smiled and hummed softly: '"… for she is such a sweet little craft, such a neat little, sweet little craft, such a bright little, light little, trim little craft…"'

Despite my preoccupation with what was racing round in my mind, I found myself grinning, too..'Koeltas puts it much more forcibly than Gilbert and Sullivan.'

She wrinkled her nose at my closeness. 'Seal!'

'They were sort of kind to me.'

She said, 'I thank the seals, but I think it will be better for everyone if I keep your fresh clothes until… until…'

I laughed at her shyness. '… until I can sample the Mazy Zed's bathrooms.'

I knocked on Rhennin's door and he opened it quickly. The cabin was as bare as the desert: a big desk and some untidy chairs matching the battleship grey of the uncarpeted steel decking. Big-headed rivets marched in battalions along the overhead beams. An air conditioner whined softly against the heavy pulse of the diamond pumps. Fluorescent lighting robbed Mary's make-up of colour and left her lips and nails a weird violet-blue. The cabin was stacked with charts — old German and new British ones on easels as well as my detailed surveys; a blown-up version of Angras Juntas hung over the back of a Kennedy rocking-chair near the desk. On its surface lay a glass tube of sea-diamonds.

Rhennin opened his mouth to greet us, but it closed again in surprise at our air. For a moment I looked at Mary. She knew what was coming.

I said without preamble, 'Felix, you believe in sea-diamonds, don't you?'

He was puzzled, uneasy. He shrugged. 'You two are damnably serious about something. Is this a conspiracy?'

I waited, not sure where to begin. The idea was so big, so fantastic, I had to put it to Rhennin the right way.

He got up, considering, watching our faces, and poured three brandies. 'Naturally I believe in sea-diamonds, John. You remember that when we started the Mazy Zed project nearly four years ago now we thrashed out whether there could be such a thing. It was basic to the project. It seems the most reasonable thing geologically that there should be an extension of shoreline deposits such as were found at Oranjemund into and under the sea. We know marine terraces exist. There is no reason to say that just because the high-water mark is here or there, the shoreline deposits should end at that line. Of course they don't. And today we've proved it — the Mazy Zed became history when she took diamonds from the sea.'

I shook my head. 'It wasn't history, Felix. It was all known before. There was nothing original about it at all.'

He became puzzled and angry. 'What the hell has bitten you, John? For years you've planned and schemed with me, backing your hunches, and now today, when the Mazy Zed has proved herself, you change your mind. I don't understand. Has Shelborne's attempt against you given you cold feet?'

I went over to the porthole. All that the light had left of the implacable shore was a faint luminosity. There was a distant sound of an engine being revved up: Bob Sheriff was on the job.

Mary came across and looked at the faint coastline with me. Caldwell would have felt proud of her, as I did, when she spoke. 'Diamonds are travellers, you know. Like all travellers, they seem to head instinctively for the sea. They are tough voyagers, though. Look at today's stones — you can't find any wear on them to measure the length of their journey. If they did show it, what John is about to tell you would be easier to demonstrate. I just want you to remember that — the diamonds on the Sperrgebiet, washed as they are by the ocean currents, did not come far.'

Mary's was a true Caldwell analogy; Caldwell had been that above all, a traveller. He had the wanderlust.

Rhennin waited. Mary went on: 'Currents, waves — remember them also. They shift all sorts of material from place to place and sort it, tirelessly, twenty-four hours a day, and they have done so for thousands of years.'

We saw the iron-bound Sperrgebiet, the wind and the sea, as a gigantic sorting-jig; Shelborne saw them as symbols of life and death.

Mary had given me the opening, and I followed up quickly. 'Felix, Mary is right: diamonds are travellers. But travellers must come from somewhere, mustn't they?'

'What are you trying to say?'

'Stratton told the court…'

'Stratton was a bore.'

The words tumbled out, not the way I had meant to muster them, but with the same rush and thud as the water through the Mazy Zed's pumps.

'Stratton told how diamonds were washed down by the Orange River, or other unnamed prehistoric rivers, into the sea and were then thrown back along the coast by the action of the currents…'

'We went into all this at the outset, John.'

'What we didn't go into was where do they come from, Felix? Today's haul, for example?'

'From the sea.'

The sea didn't make them.'

'You mean, from what part of the sea-bed did they originally come?'

'Listen: I believe that under the sea off the Sperrgebiet coast somewhere lies a single volcanic pipe, a bigger and better source of diamonds than either Kimberley or Cullinan, from which diamonds are washed ashore today — as they have been washed ashore for a million years…'

Mary supplemented, 'We think there is a parent crater, an undersea fountainhead.'

'Shelborne knows where it is,' I resumed. 'Caldwell discovered it. Shelborne murdered Caldwell for his seabed concession. That's why he fought us in court. That is why he won't give in, even now. That is why he could afford to throw away a couple of big diamonds in a lodestone matrix to kill me. He knows the whereabouts of this fountainhead, but it is too big for him to tackle…'

Rhennin was on his feet: 'But not too big for the Mazy Zed}'

The Hottentots' Paradise was so much hooey. A man of Caldwell's integrity would not fall for that one. Nor would he abandon everything, including his wife and infant daughter…' I waved at Mary. '… for the sake of a pub tale like that. The parent crater under the sea from which all South-west Africa's fabulous diamonds have orginated — don't you see, man, how that discovery would have righted the balance, cancelled all Caldwell's previous monumental failures and ill luck? Oranjemund, the richest field in the world, is paltry compared to the fountainhead, because Oranjemund has only got in its terraces stones the parent rock can spare. Caldwell went after his big chance — his fate — but he missed again because Shelborne killed him at Strandloper's Water.'

Mary said quietly, 'I still don't believe that.'

Rhennin's voice trembled with excitement. 'By God, John! We've all become so bemused with the technical problems of mining diamonds — on land at Oranjemund or at sea in the Mazy Zed — that we've lost sight of the cardinal question of where they come from. We've had it so good that we never thought to look farther! We have been satisfied with the eighteen million pounds a year from diamonds that we can lay our hands on.'

'It took a man like Caldwell to find it,' I said, turning to Mary. 'He had to play the stakes big. Fate had tossed down the odds three times before and each time he had lost. He was playing for everything.'

Rhennin was carried away: 'When I started on the Mazy Zed idea I spent months analysing the diamond returns of defunct German companies which first worked the shore deposits. I wanted some indication whereto begin…'

The words died on his lips. I had left the porthole to put down my glass on a low table. Incredulity and amazement showed in his face as his eyes fell on the opening in my shirt, which sagged open, buttonless, as I bent down.

The Knight's Cross hung on its golden chain.

He started forward and snatched it so that the chain broke.

'Where did you get this?' he managed to say in a strangled voice.

'Read the back,' I said.

His hands were shaking so that he could hardly turn it over.

'"Korvettenkapitan Dieter Rhennin. L7-68.. May 1942." Did… did you find Dieter's body?'

'No,' I replied. 'I didn't find a body. I found a graveyard, though. First I want to know who Dieter Rhennin was.'

'He was my brother. Is he dead?'

I told him about Shelborne's death-in-life acre overlooking the sea. He sat down hard on the desk chair. The strip lighting blanked out his right side, etching the left in severe, tired strokes. In the middle of what I started to say he got up and splashed three more brandies for us, without asking.

'What was Dieter Rhennin doing at Mercury?' I asked.

He said slowly, 'I was once a German Naval Intelligence officer. I mean to find out.'

'At the expense of the Mazy Zed project?'

'No,' he said. 'Let me tell you.' He ran his hand through his hair and closed his eyes. 'I used to be personal staff officer to the Oberbefehlshaber der Marine — the High Command Number One. You get used to sorting things out.'

'But you didn't sort out your brother's death — that's why the sight of that gave you a shock. What has Dieter's death got to do with the Mazy Zed?'.' I demanded.

'I knew he was in the area. He and five U-boats. A whole U-boat Rudel, a wolf-pack as you call it.'

'What were they doing?'

He replied, 'Korventtenkapitan Rhennin was one of the most daring of the latter-day U-boat aces. He was too late for the great early battles in the North Atlantic, but still he won this…' He balanced the diamond-studded Knight's Cross in his hand. 'He had the same dash, the same intuitive flair for the Schwerpunkt as the great captains…'

'Schwerpunkt?'

He gestured with his hand. 'Our U-boat terms — the British and the Americans hardly understood them. The U-boat men used words which began as having one meaning and then, in the Western Approaches, the blood and the flames and sinkings passed into the words and they mutated. They had a name for diesel oil which meant death by choking, death by flame. Death could come via a crack in the casing under the depth-charges… There were delicate nuances of meaning… It could come through nothing more than a blurred periscope graticule…'

Mary prompted him: ' Schwerpunkt?'

'Ah, yes,' he replied. 'The centre of gravity, perhaps we might translate it thus.' The English term was bald and cold compared to the mystic savour he gave it; he had been at the heart of the U-boat offensive. 'A convoy, a port, a warship, any of these might be a Schwerpunkt. Not a target. A pivotal point, whose destruction might be success or failure. It takes a great captain to know where that centre of gravity is when everything is fire, explosion, sudden death.'

We waited. The air conditioner whined, the pumps thudded.

His words became a torrent: 'They gave Dieter four of the finest U-boat captains. He himself was the fifth; there was no doubt about the choice of leader. The boats were all new — the IXC class, all of them, eighteen knots on the surface, seven submerged; each had six torpedo tubes and a crew of forty-eight. They made up Gruppe Eisbar, the Polar Bear Group. They sailed to destroy the British round the Cape of Good Hope. My brother sent a signal. The attack was ready…'

I thought of the almost magical prognostications of the Submarine Tracking Room at the Admiralty.

They were all sunk,' I said.

He looked at the Knight's Cross. 'I wish to God I knew.' In his agitation he repeated himself. 'They rendezvoused and sent a signal. Then — Gruppe Eisbar vanished.'

Mary said, 'The British knew the rendezvous? Where was it?'

Rhennin's voice was thick. He waved to the porthole. 'Angras Juntas. The bay of the meeting of the captains.'

The old Portuguese name for the bay! Four hundred years ago Henry the Navigator's captains had gathered here to find a way to sail across the world. What had been Gruppe Eisbar's mission?

Mary was obviously mystified by the dramatic disappearance of the crack squadron.

Rhennin went on, 'There are four faces to the kill when the U-boat is hunting. Dieter — first, the awareness of the victim: tension, lips thrust forward, eyes leftwards under the Turcoman cap he always wore in action; second, close for the attack, cap gone, lips parted, death and pity, the eyes shadowed; third, the widening of the nostrils, the head thrown back, the desperate ticking of the seconds on the stop-watch while the torpedoes run; fourth, the smile, the relaxed smile of success.'

Mary was staring at him. I remembered Shelborne's symbols of life and death.

'You hear death in the noise of your own motor alternator when they've forced you 400 feet down, those British destroyers above with the ping-scratch of the Asdic. You've got to use the compass gyroscope and hydrophones in spite of the noise of that motor. You know it is death to use it; it might be death not to.'

It was fully a minute before I broke in, he was so carried away. 'Why Angras Juntas, Felix? There's more to this than meets the eye, — it's like Shelborne. Five U-boats… a powerful raiding force like Gruppe Eisbar does not simply disappear. There are signals, prearranged exchanges, orders between such a group and operations staff. It is still easy to check back: all the records of U-boat operations were published at the time of the Nuremberg trials.'

'Seekriegsleitung was a highly efficient machine,' replied Rhennin. 'I should know. I was at headquarters.'

'Why didn't Seekriegsleitung order Gruppe Eisbar to rendezvous on the high seas in the safe area south of St Helena? Dieter wasn't after shipping at the Cape, was he? Was he looking for what you are looking for: diamonds!'

A slight flush spread up Rhennin's face. For a moment I thought he would get up and thump the table in the best German officer manner, — instead he poured himself another stiff drink, tossing the Knight's Cross up and down in his palm.

'Yes, John, you are right, they were after diamonds. This is the story: it was a double mission. I'm speaking of June-July 1942. British shipping was pouring round the Cape in the build-up of men and supplies for the Battle of El Alamein. SKL — Seekriegsleitung — guessed that the British knew after they had sunk the Bismarck in 1941- that we had a refuelling rendezvous deep in the South Atlantic near St Helena. The British patiently gathered their information. Then they struck. I forget how many vital supply ships we lost when they did. So Seekriegsleitung decided to assign Gruppe Eisbar a land rendezvous. Angras Juntas would be safe, we reckoned. It was out of range of the land-sea patrols and the nearest radar was 300 miles away. There were no humans except a few Bushmen in the desert.'

Mary said, 'I remember the excitement in Cape Town when the U-boats came close.'

Rhennin smiled faintly. That must have been later. Before Gruppe Eisbar the U-boats had left the Cape route alone. Polar Bear was meant to be the big — the first — surprise. In June 1942 a convoy of fifty-three ships was to gather in Table Bay, headed by the Queen Mary, with a whole division of troops aboard. There was also the Mauretania, the Aquitania, the lie de France, all big ships. Gruppe Eisbar had orders to annihilate the convoy.'

'Indiscriminately?'

Rhennin nodded. 'Indiscriminately. At anchor, in Table Bay. Cape Town's defences were worth nothing: the air patrols were poor and the radar useless.'

Rhennin was too sure, too confident. Gruppe Eisbar had probably foundered on similar cocksureness.

'I suppose Gruppe Eisbar finished up in the British minefields guarding the port.'

Rhennin shook his head. 'No. We knew where the minefields were. The British had put a new channel into use just before the convoy arrived. We had sent another U-boat in weeks before to reconnoitre. We could scarcely believe her report that a hostile port was so lightly defended. Everything was like peace-time. There was no black-out and the lighthouses were all shining.'

'Walvis Bay was an alternative mustering-place for the deep-sea convoys.' I added.

'I know,' he went on irritably. 'We all knew. The Rudel, the Gruppe Eisbar wolf-pack, followed our surface raiders' Route Anton — the German secret route through the South Atlantic where U-boats were forbidden to attack — and they were off Angras Juntas on schedule. One of the boats — U-504 I think it was — had some trouble with her hydroplanes, but she kept station. The captains used to say later that the hydroplanes of the big boats were too small to keep them steady in the heavy seas of the Cape of Storms and you only have to read their logs to see how many torpedoes they wasted because of this…'

Mary said diffidently, breaking in, 'I suppose the Royal Navy intercepted Gruppe Eisbar.'

'No! no! The British never sank Gruppe Eisbar! I've been through all the Nuremberg records. The British South Atlantic Command knew that U-boats were on the way to attack the Cape, but only in a general way, nothing particular. No, Gruppe Eisbar simply vanished. It caused the greatest dismay and heart-searching at headquarters.'

I shook my head. 'Five U-boats, armed to the teeth, with fighting crews, don't vanish without a trace. There would be some wreckage, oil, clothing — something.'

'I know! I know!' He clenched his fists. 'I know! Listen!' He wrenched open a drawer of the desk and pulled out a paper. 'This is my brother's sighting signal. It was in code, of course, but here it is plain: Commander Eisbar to OKM. Rendezvous on schedule. No sign defences or enemy activity. Shore recognition signal satisfactory.'

'Shore recognition signal?'

He laughed uneasily. 'I see you are both bursting to know about the diamonds. After all, whether or not Gruppe Eisbar was lost or not lost, and whether my brother lived or died, is purely of academic interest to you.'

'Are you looking for U-boat wreckage with the Mazy Zed's equipment and not for diamonds at all?'

'No, Mary, it's diamonds I'm after all right.'

I added, 'And Dieter was after diamonds too.'

'Not the same diamonds or in the same way,' he replied. Some of the tension seemed to go out of him. 'You remember, Caldwell's concession was countersigned by Goering, Reichskommissionar for the Protectorate of Luderitzland, the Luftwaffe chief's father? Doctor Heinrich Goering had the same love of finery and medals as our Field-Marshal. Bismarck sent him out originally to get the local native and Hottentot chiefs on Germany's side. South-west Africa was then the centre of a big diplomatic game. Doctor Goering, in white uniform, cocked hat, sword chased in gold, rode in as the conqueror. He had an army with him — twenty half-castes, riding broken-down donkeys! Goering himself rode an ox. It was pure comic opera.'

'Luftwaffe Goering wasn't comic opera,' said Mary.

'Nor was this Goering really,' said Rhennin. 'He was in fact very shrewd. He also became one of the world's richest men. He could have bought out a brace of Rockefellers.'

'So Goering sent out a powerful U-boat raiding force…'

'Goering didn't. But Gruppe Eisbar was, nevertheless, to bring home the bacon, the Goering bacon of diamonds to Germany. He had enough stashed away in a cave on the Sperrgebiet coast to have made a big impression on neutral countries at a time when Germany's economy was on the rocks…'

'Come, come,' I interjected. 'Not enough to make any difference to Germany's bankruptcy. I don't believe it.'

'We wanted the hoard as a showpiece to create the impression among South American neutrals that we had millions and millions more like it,' Rhennin replied.

'And Dieter required five U-boats to convey the cache, which at most could not have weighed as much as a quarter of a sack of coal?'

Rhennin flushed at my tone. 'No. I said, it was a double operation. The shore recognition signal was from a spy who knew exactly where the sea cave was. It wasn't situated at Angras Juntas, that I know. I never saw Dieter's secret orders. Dieter, as commander of the Gruppe, would carry the diamonds. The U-boats would then go on to the Cape and destroy the great convoy. Tormentoso, the British gave it a code-name. Not very imaginative.'

'Cabo Tormentoso — the Cape of Storms,' echoed Mary.

I said, 'Divide the cache between four U-boat captains and 240 men, and you still have a sizeable fortune left for every individual. Winner's pickings to the commander, too, in the best piratical style.'

Rhennin didn't explode, as I thought he would do. 'The same was said by even those who knew and trusted Dieter,' he replied levelly. 'Every German agent in South America was warned to watch out for Korvettenkapitan Rhennin and his- notorious Gruppe Eisbar, if he showed up. He never did. Gruppe Eisbar simply vanished.'

'Where was the sea cave?' asked Mary.

'It was somewhere close to Angras Juntas — .the spy knew where. Local knowledge was essential to find it.' -

I said quietly. 'Below Mercury lies just such a sea cave — the Glory Hole. No one has entered it. In the graveyard above I found that.'

Mary exclaimed, 'Shelborne could not have done it!'

Rhennin's eyes blazed. 'No, one man cannot destroy a whole U-boat pack. But we shall go and have a look. I, too, mean to see what is inside the Glory Hole.'

'So do I,' I said. I went into some detail of my dispute with Shelborne aboard the Gquma and then of his oddly co-operative mood, by contrast, at Mercury itself.

'The key to it all seems to be, who was the spy?' said Mary.'

'Shelborne?' I followed up.

'No, no,' replied Rhennin. 'I know who he was — don't forget, I was right in on it as one of the most senior officers in German Naval Intelligence. His name was Werner, Abel Werner. He had worked for the old German Administration in South-west Africa.'

'Could have been Shelborne masquerading under another name. He knows every hidey-hole on the coast. In war-time it would have been easy for him to have slipped down the coast and taken over the spy's role…'

Rhennin laughed. 'You've got Shelborne on the brain, John. Grant you everything: so Shelborne, single-handed, disposes of five U-boats and their crews and successfully conceals hundreds of bodies and five submarine hulls? No!'

There is his graveyard…' I replied lamely; but what Rhennin said was›true.

He went on grimly: 'I intend to look into that, too, John, even if I have to break open every coffin to find Dieter's body.'

Mary shuddered. 'You know, people are as different as diamonds — they also feel different from one another. Today's diamonds were the coldest I've ever touched. Ordinarily the stones are cold — it's not like touching glass, you know — but today's from the sea were the coldest.'

Rhennin said, 'My study of the old records showed that on the Sperrgebiet coast they increase in average size as one moves north…'

I said meaningly, 'Towards Mercury and towards Strandloper's Water.'

'Schwerpunkt,' said Mary. 'Centre of gravity.'

'By God!' exclaimed Rhennin. 'Yes, by God!'

She went on: 'You are both set on going to Mercury, for the diamonds and for your brother, Felix.'

I interrupted. 'Felix, was there any indication that the Goering cache was — protected?'

'Protected? We were certain there were no defences!'

'No, not that sort of defences.'

He came nearer to me, and I thought I detected some fear in his eyes. 'Well, how were they defended then, if not militarily? The only other enemy we had was the sea.'

I picked my words. 'If there were some other guardian, a guardian capable of disposing of five U-boats and their fighting crews?'

'What are you driving at, John?'

I told them about the Bells of St Mary's, and of Koeltas's fears and those of the seal robbers. Mary seemed paler in the cold light.

Rhennin shook his head like a boxer after a head punch. 'And this — guardian you call it — Shelborne controls?'

'Not controls. I think he understands it.'

'Isn't he afraid of it?'

'He's afraid of it all right.'

'Why?'

'Otherwise he would have exploited his secret. I believe he also knows how the diamonds are distributed from the fountainhead to the point where the currents take over.'

There was a long silence. The thudding of the pumps echoed my heart beats.

'A guardian of the hoard, that Shelborne understands but is afraid of.' Rhennin turned it over. 'I mean to find out what it is.'

'You'll take the Mazy Zed to Mercury then?'

'We'll cut the diamond run tomorrow.'

Mary said, 'I want some fresh air after this superheated discussion. Take me up on deck please, John.'

'One last thing, Felix: your U-boats didn't carry grabs or dredges — equipment like that?'

'No. What they were after was transportable; they weren't trying to mine diamonds.'

'Was there nothing else at all…?'

'Dieter had orders to report by radio every day at 1700 hours. SKL chose that time specially for the South Atlantic because it is half-light and half-dark and a submarine surfaced is very difficult to spot. When he reached Angras Juntas, Dieter signalled dead on time. A U-boat captain would unless he were in big trouble. Then nothing. Nor ever again. But…'

'Yes?'

'One of our surface raiders, the Lohengrin, was near St Helena the day after Dieter signalled from Angras Juntas. She reported receiving a garbled message shortly before 1700 hours. It was a jumble — not code, not anything. But en clair half-way through it said plainly in German, "fouler Zauber". You could translate it by "silly humbug".'

'Lohengrin didn't get a D/F bearing on the message?'

'No. It was quite strong, but hopelessly confused. It was German, but where it came from was anyone's guess.'

'St Helena,' I said. 'She was close enough to Angras Juntas then to pick up even a weak message.'

'Or close enough to Mercury,' said Rhennin.

We left him silent, preoccupied, and went on deck. The night was dark except for Orion's studded belt. We paused at a pair of steel nozzles, each as tall as myself, in a rack. The intakes were strongly shielded by thick metal bands. These were the 'Hoovers' for the ocean bed. Compressed air, forced down a small inner pipe, bubbled and disturbed the mud, — water rushed into and up the outside pipe into the Mazy Zed's sorting machinery. It was the jet lift principle applied on a massive scale.

Mary slapped the metal impatiently with her open palm. 'There's something awry in our ideas, John. I feel we should stir up our ideas, disturb the mental mud, as these pipes do, and throw out the accumulated residues of preconceived ideas we're more and more fitting into a pattern. We're wrong somewhere, I tell you, we're wrong. I know it deep down.'

'It all fits. So does Shelborne.'

She smiled, leaning back against the nozzles. 'It doesn't. You know, John, we should both be wearing diamonds — they were once considered a cure for lunacy.'

'Where's the lunacy?'

'I can't pinpoint it, John — I wish I could, but there's some error somewhere in your working out of this thing.' She straightened up so that she was close to me. 'It's funny; it was always the men who used to wear diamonds. They were thought to have magic powers, and were worn as amulets. It's really only recently that women have taken to them.'

'I am sure I am right about Shelborne.'

'I could believe that he has some sort of magic power. Maybe he picked it up from being near diamonds all his life.'

'You believe in him because he was close to your father: it blinds you to the rest.'

There was a flare from one of the Mazy Zed's smokestacks high above us. I saw the flecks in her eyes and the minute pulse of the vein by her nose.

'Diamonds are in the sky, too, you know. Look at a meteorite — it's graphite, and that's cousin to diamonds. They have predetermined paths up there…' She gestured to Orion.

I opened my mouth to reply. A lazy stream of lights arced in from the sea. They weren't meteorites. Blue, red, white. Tracer bullets! The brittle rattle of a machine-gun outpaced them.

They were coming at the Mazy Zed. I dragged Mary to the deck. The glowing arc ripped through the thick hose and struck a welter of sparks off the big nozzles. I threw myself across her. A hot ricochet plucked at my shoulder and I smelt the acrid cordite. „Then the whole world seemed to explode as a torpedo crashed into the Mazy Zed.