It was just bad luck that she broke down in that God-forsaken part of
the world. When will she be ready for sea? Allen promises noon
tomorrow. Do you want to telex him for an update on that? Later.
Nicholas wet the tip of a cheroot carefully, without taking his eyes off
the plot, calculating distances and currents and speeds.
Golden Dawn? he asked, and lit the cheroot while he listened to
Bernard's reply.
Her pod tanks arrived under tow at the new Orient Amex depot on El
Barras three weeks ago. Bernie picked Up the pointer and touched the
upper bight of the deep Persian Gulf . They took on their full cargoes
of crude and lay inshore to await Golden Dawn's arrival. For a moment,
Nicholas contemplated the task of towing those four gigantic pod tanks
from Japan to the Gulf, and then he discarded the thought and listened
to Bernard.
Golden Dawn arrived last Thursday and, according to my agent at El
Barras, she coupled up with her pod tanks and made her turn around
within three hours. Bernard slid the tip of the pointer southwards down
the eastern coast of the African continent. I have had no report of her
since then, but if she makes good her twenty-two knots, then she'll be
somewhere off the coast of Mozambique, or Maputo as they call it now,
and she should double the Cape within the next few days. I will have a
report on her then, she'll be taking on mail as she passes Cape Town.
And passengers/ said Nicholas grimly; he knew that Peter and Chantelle
were in Cape Town already. He had telephoned the boy the night before
and Peter had been wildly elated at the prospect of the voyage on the
ultratanker.
It's going to be tremendous fun, Dad/his voice cracking with the onset
of both excitement and puberty. We'll be flying out to the ship in a
helicopter. Bernard Wackie changed the subject, now picking up a sheaf
of telex flimsies and thumbing swiftly through them.
I've confirmed the standby contract for Sea Witch.
Nicholas nodded, the contract was for Jules Levoisin and the new tug to
stand by three offshore working rigs, standard exploration rigs, that
were drilling in the Florida Bay, that elbow of shallow water formed by
the sweep of the Florida Keys and the low swampy morass of the
Everglades, It's ridiculous to use a twenty-two-thousand-horsepower
ocean-going tug as an oil rig standby/ Bernard lowered the file, and
could no longer contain his irritation, Jules is going to go bananas
sitting around playing nursemaid. You are going to have a mutiny on
your hands - and you'll be losing money. The daily hire won't cover
your direct costs. She will be sitting exactly where I want her, said
Nicholas, and switched his attention back to the tiny dot of an island
in the middle of the Indian Ocean. Now Warlock.
Right. Warlock. Bernie picked up another file. I have tendered for a
deep-sea tow. Cancel it/ said Nicholas. Just as soon as Allen has
repaired his generator, I want him running top of the green for Cape
Town. For Cape Town - top of the green? Bernard stared at him. Christ,
Nicholas. What for? He won't be able to catch Golden Dawn before she
rounds the Cape, but I want him to follow her. Nicholas, you're out of
your mind! - do you know what that would cost? If Golden Dawn gets
into trouble he'll be only a day or two behind her. Tell Allen he is to
shadow her all the way into Galveston roads., Nicholas, you're letting
this whole thing get out of all proportion. It's become an obsession
with you, for God's sake! With her superior speed, Warlock should be up
with her before she enters the 'Listen to me, Nicholas. Let's think
this all out carefully.
What are the chances of Golden Dawn suffering structural failure or
crippling breakdown on her maiden voyage - a hundred to one against it?
It's that high? That's about right. Nicholas agreed. A hundred to
one. What is it going to cost to hold one ocean-going salvage tug on
standby, at a lousy fifteen hundred dollars a day and then to send
another halfway around the world at top of the green? Bernard clasped
his brow theatrically. It's going to cost you a quarter of a million
dollars, if you take into consideration the loss of earnings on both
vessels that's the very least it's going to cost you. Don't you have
respect for money any longer? Now you understand why I had, to stall
the Sheikhs, I couldn't shoot their money on Nicholas smiled calmly a
hundred-to-one chance - but it's not their money yet.
It's mine. Sea Witch and Warlock aren't their tugs, they are mine.
Peter isn't their son, he's mine. You're serious/ said Bernard
incredulously. I do believe you are serious. Right/ Nicholas agreed.
Damned right, I am. Now get a telex off to David Allen and ask him for
his estimated time of arrival in Cape Town. Samantha Silver had one
towel wrapped around her head like a turban. Her hair was still wet
from the luxurious shampooing it had just received. She wore the other
towel tucked under her armpits, making a short sarong of it. She still
glowed all over from the steaming tub and she smelled of soap and talcum
powder.
After a long field trip, it took two or three of these soakings and
scrubbings to get the salt and the smell of the mangroves out of her
pores, and the Everglades mud from under her nails.
She poured the batter into the pan, the oil spitting and crackling with
the heat and she sang out, How many waffles can you eat? He came
through from the bathroom, a wet towel wrapped around his waist, and he
stood in the doorway and grinned at her. How many have you got? he
asked. She had still not accustomed her ear to the Australian twang'.
He was burned and brown as she was, and his hair was bleached at the
ends, hanging now, wet from the shower, into his face.
They had worked well together, and she had learned much from him.
The drift into intimacy had been gradual, but inevitable. In her hurt,
she had turned to him for comfort, and also in deliberate spite of
Nicholas. But now, if she turned her head away, she would not really be
able to remember his features clearly. It took an effort to remember
his name - Dennis, of course, Doctor Dennis O'Connor.
She was detached from it all, as though a sheet of armoured glass
separated her from the real world. She went through the motions of
working and playing, of eating and sleeping, of laughing and loving, but
it was all a sham.
Dennis was watching her from the doorway now, with that slightly puzzled
expression, the helpless look of a person who watches another drowning
and is powerless to give aid.
Samantha turned away quickly. Ready in two minutes/ she said, and he
turned back into the bedroom to finish dressing.
She flipped the waffles on to a plate and poured a fresh batch of
batter.
Beside her, the telephone rang and she sucked her fingers clean and
picked it up with her free hand.
Sam Silver/ she said.
Thank God. I've been going out of my mind. What happened to you,
darling? Her knees went r
ubbery under her, and she had to sit down
quickly on one of the stools.
Samantha, can you hear me? She opened her mouth, but no sound came out.
Tell me what's happening - She could see his face before her, clearly,
each detail of it so vividly remembered, the clear green eyes below the
heavy brow, the line of cheek-bone and jaw, and the sound of his voice
made her shiver.
Samantha., How is your wife, Nicholas? she asked softly - and he broke
off . She held the receiver to her ear with both hands, and the silence
lasted only a few beats of her heart, but it was long enough. Once or
twice, in moments of weakness during the last two weeks, she had tried
to convince herself that it was not true, That it had all been the
viciousness of a lying woman. Now she knew beyond any question that her
instinct had been correct. His silence was the admission, and she
waited for the lie that she knew would come next.
Would it help to tell you I love you? he asked softly, and she could
not answer. Even in her distress, she felt the rush of relief.
He had not lied. At that moment it was the important thing in her life.
He had not lied. She felt most it begin to tear painfully, deep in her
chest. Her shoulders shook spasmodically.
I'm coming to get you, he said into the silence.
,I won't be here/ she whispered, but she felt it welling up into her
throat, uncontrollably. She had not wept before, she had kept it all
safely bottled away - but now, the first sob burst from her, and with
both hands she slammed the telephone back on to its cradle.
She stood there still, shaking wildly, and the tears poured down her
cheeks and dripped from her chin.
Dennis came into the kitchen behind her, tucking his shirt into the top
of his trousers, his hair shiny and wet with the straight lines of the
comb through it, Who was that? he asked cheerfully, and then stopped
aghast, What is it, love? He started forward again, Come on now.
Don't touch me, please/ she whispered huskily, and -he stopped again
uncertainly. We are fresh out of milk, she said without turning. Will
you take the van down to the shopping centre, By the time Dennis
returned, she was dressed and she had rinsed her face and tied a scarf
around her head like a gypsy. They chewed cold, un-appetising waffles
in silence, until she spoke, Dennis, we've got to talk No/he smiled at
her. It's all right, Sam, You don't have to say it. I should have
moved on days ago, anyway. Thanks/ she said.
It was Nicholas, wasn't it?
She regretted having told him now, but at the time it had been vitally
necessary to speak to somebody.
She nodded, and his voice had a sting to it as he went on.
I'd like to bust that bastard in the mouth. We levelled the.
score, didn't we? she smiled, but it was an unconvincing smile, and she
didn't try to hold it.
Sam, I want you to know that for me it was not just another quick shack
job. I know that. Impulsively she reached out and squeezed his hand.
And thanks for understanding - but is it okay if we don't talk about it
any more?
Peter Berg had twisted round in his safety straps, so that he could
press his face to the round perspex window in the fuselage of the big
Sikorsky helicopter.
The night was completely, utterly black.
Across the cabin, the Flight Engineer stood in the open doorway, the
wind ripping at his bright orange overalls, fluttering them around his
body, and he turned and grinned across at the boy, then he made a
windmilling gesture with his hand and stabbed downwards with his thumb.
It was impossible to speak in the clattering, rushing roar of wind and
engine and rotor.
The helicopter banked gently and Peter gasped with excitement as the
ship came into view.
She was burning all her lights; tier upon tier, the brilliantly lit
floors of her stern quarters rose above the altitude at which the
Sikorsky was hovering, and, seeming to reach ahead to the black horizon,
the tank deck was outlined with the rows of hooded lamps, like the
street-lamps of a deserted city.
She was so huge that she looked like a city, there seemed to be no end
to her, stretched to the horizon and towering into the sky.
The helicopter sank in a controlled sweep towards the white circular
target on the heliport, guided down by the engineer in the open doorway.
Skilfully the pilot matched his descent to the forward motion of the
ultra-tanker, twenty-two knots at top economical, - Peter had swotted
the figures avidly - and the deck moved with grudging majesty to the
scend of the tall Cape rollers pushing in unchecked from across the
length of the Atlantic Ocean.
The pilot hovered, judging his approach against the brisk north-westerly
cross-wind, and from fifty feet Peter could see that the decks were
almost level with the surface of the sea, pressed down deeply by the
weight of her cargo.
Every few seconds, one of the rollers that raced down her length would
flip aboard and spread like spilled milk, white and frothy in the deck
lights, before cascading back over the side.
Made arrogant and unyielding by her vast bulk, the Golden Dawn did not
woo the ocean, as other ships do.
the swells, churning Instead, her great blunt bows crushed them under or
shouldering them contemptuously aside.
sea-creature. But though his eye was keen, it was as yet unschooled, so
he did not notice the working of the long wide deck.
Sitting beside Peter on the bench seat, Duncan Alexander knew to look
for the movement in the hull. He watched the hull twisting and hogging,
but so slightly, so barely perceptibly, that Duncan blinked it away, and
looked again. From bows to stern she was a mile and a half long, and in
essence she was merely four steel pods held together by an elaborate
flexible steel scaffolding and driven forward by the mighty propulsion
unit in the stern. There was small independent movement of each of the
tank pods, so the deck twisted as she rolled, and flexed like a longbow
as she took the swells under her, The crest of these swells were a
quarter of a mile apart. At any one time, there were four separate wave
patterns beneath Golden Dawn's hull, with the peaks thrusting up and the
troughs allowing the tremendous dead weight of her cargo to push
downwards; the elastic steel groaned and gave to meet these shearing
forces.
No hull is ever completely rigid, and elasticity had been part of the
ultra-tanker's original design, but those designs had been altered.
Duncan Alexander had saved almost two thousand tons of steel, by
reducing the stiffening of the central pillar that docked the four pods
together, and he had dispensed with the double skins of the pods
themselves. He had honed Golden Dawn down to the limits at which his
own architects had baulked; then he had hired Japanese architects to
rework the designs. They had expressed themselves satisfied that the
hull
was safe, but had also respectfully pointed out that nobody had
ever carried a million tons of crude petroleum in a single cargo before.
The helicopter sank the last few feet and bumped gently on to the
insulated green deck, with its thick coat of plasticized paint which
prevented the striking of spark, Even a grain of sand trodden between
leather sole and bare steel could ignite an explosive air and petroleum
gas mixture.
The ship's party swarmed forward, doubled under the swirling rotor. The
luggage in its net beneath the fuselage was dragged away and strong
hands swung Peter down on to the deck. He stood blinking in the glare
of deck lamps and wrinkling his nose to the characteristic tanker
stench.
It is a smell that pervades everything aboard one of these ships, the
food, the furniture, the crew's clothing - even their hair and skin.
It is the thin acrid chemical stench of under-rich fumes vented off from
the tanks. Oxygen and petroleum gas are only explosive in a mixture
within narrow limits: too much oxygen makes the blend under-rich and too
much petroleum gas makes it over-rich, either of which mixtures are
non-explosive, non-combustible.
Chantelle Alexander was handed down next from the cabin of the
helicopter, bringing an instant flash of elegance to the starkly lit
scene of bleak steel and ugly functional machinery. She wore a cat-suit
of dark green with a bright green Patou scarf on her head. Two ship's
officers closed in solicitously on each side of her and led her quickly
away towards the towering stern quarters, out of the rude and blustering
wind and the helicopter engine roar.
Duncan Alexander followed her down to the deck, shook hands quickly with
the First Officer.
Captain Randle's compliments, sir. He is unable to leave the bridge
while the ship is in the inshore channel. I understand.
Duncan flashed that marvelous smile.
The great ship drew almost twenty fathoms fully laden and she had come
in very close, as close as was prudent to the mountainous coastline of
Good Hope with its notorious currents and wild winds.
However, Chantelle Christy must not be exposed to the ear-numbing
discomfort of the helicopter flight for a moment longer than was
necessary, and so Golden Dawn had come in through the inner channel,
perilously close to the guardian rocks of Robben Island that stood in