Sea of Troubles Box Set

by Peter Tonkin

  The Cargo Control Room was a mess too. He should have foreseen that but it came as a surprise to him. One glance through the splintered door was enough to tell him it would be useless to enter. All the machines were dead. The shattered windows were so full of searing flames from the Pump Room that he turned away at once, drenched in sweat. So Plan No. 1 - insurance No. 1, so carefully set up during the long days in Durban - was ruined. Now he had to go on down below. It was the heat, he told himself, not fear which made him sweat. And, indeed, the heat was building fiercely as he went down. As though he were nearing the centre of the earth, he told himself. Or Hell. Yes, all in all Hell was much more likely. But down he plunged regardless, into the bowels of the ship.

  The noise increased disproportionately as soon as he got beneath deck-level. It became a deafening roar, echoing through the corridors as though the ship were bellowing like a beast in agony. He was used to the incessant grumble of engine or generators which caused a perpetual trembling in everything aboard, but this was infinitely louder and dangerously overpowering. A deafening, disorientating din which made the floor vibrate so hard the soles of his feet itched unbearably and his teeth chattered painfully. Were the walls shaking, or was it just that his eyeballs were trembling in their sockets? Tears sprang on to his cheeks, born of the acrid smoke and the juddering of his eyes. He leaned against a rail to catch his breath, but the vibration only shot up his arm and caused his very heart to palpitate. 'Five hundred thousand pounds,' he cried aloud, using the sum he had been promised to bolster up his courage. 'Half a million.' And after a moment more he went on with his secret mission to ensure the death of the ship. Unable now to log in his secret programme to move the cargo and break her in two, he was going to open the sea-cocks and let the Atlantic into her. Even ablaze as she was, he could not rely on her cargo blowing up. Her destruction had to be ensured.

  The engine control room was empty. He glanced around it quickly and did not linger. His mission must take him further down still.

  His procedure for opening the sea-cocks and flooding the ship was designed to be relatively simple. Down here, out of the way, in a place where it would not be too hard for the engineers to overlook it, was a switch. As soon as it was turned, the sea-cocks would begin to open. Not too complicated, even under these circumstances which were so much worse than anything ever envisioned. And so discreet! Moreover, it was very nearly fool-proof, granted only two things: granted that he could get to the switch, and granted that the generators maintained enough electrical flow to make the system work.

  In the final analysis, after all he had been through, after all his bravery, all his reckless greed, it was the generators which let him down. He was deep in the ship, in the area - though on the opposite side - where Haji had died, with his fingers actually fastened on the switch itself, illumined by the beam of his torch, when the distant lights went out and that tiny, all-important element of the background noise fell silent.

  The murderer was overcome at once by dread. At first he imagined that the engine room must have flooded - the bomb in the Pump Room having sunk the ship after all - and he waited for several dreadful seconds anticipating that first cold lick against his legs which would tell him he was dead. It did not come. Thankfully, he began to move the switch now useless and his presence here pointless. He turned and began to pick his way back along the path which had brought him here. His first priority now was to obey his Captain's last order and abandon.

  But his steps, which had been quick enough in bringing him here through the fully illuminated ship, were slower now, and suddenly dogged by ghosts, as Levkas’s had been. The dark was an oppressive force. It had weight. It wrapped itself around him like a blanket. The sensation became so vivid that he found it hard to breathe. He began to wonder if some gas were really choking him. Then the face of Haji Hassan rose before his eyes, terrifyingly vivid. He cried out in fear, gasped with shock, and found he could breathe normally again.

  He pulled a shaking hand down over his dripping face, gathering enough cold sweat to flick an enormous shower of it away into the massive darkness.

  In the engine control room there was a glimmer of light. It did not come from any of the consoles - they were all dark. As were all the high-tech aids on the bridge now: Prometheus without her generators was blind, deaf, dumb; dead. The light came, a reflection of a reflection, glancing off bright surfaces, round corners, up and down, from the sun-bright furnace of the Pump Room.

  And still there had been no further explosion.

  But that was nearly a miracle now. Even knowing what he knew of that, he could no longer subdue the fear under promises of massive wealth. He had to escape. Now.

  He swung the broad, bright beam of his torch over to the door and lit up the startled face of the Chief Engineer.

  'What ...' said Martyr, blinded.

  The murderer hurled himself forward, silently offering a prayer of thanks that the brightness of the beam masked him, but at the same time cursing the Chief for being here now. Why was he here? Had he come to try to fix the generators so that the others could abandon in greater safety? Or was it he who had switched them off, trying even now to save the ship? The terrible suspicion flashed into the killer's mind just as their bodies met.

  They met with a shock of force, two big men charging for each other full-tilt. The torch spun out of the killer's hand and rolled away across the floor. Then, but for that vague light from the furnace at the ship's heart, they fought in darkness. And, but for their guttural grunts of effort or pain, in silence.

  As each was aware of the other only as a darker presence in the surrounding shadows, as the slightest of sounds amid the jarring rumble of the fire, they did not stand back and fight each other scientifically. They closed with each other and half wrestled, throwing in great invisible punches where and when they could; sometimes connecting with each other, sometimes with the steel-hard objects around them. They crashed back against the doorframe, the murderer driving his head into Martyr's face so that the back of his skull smashed stunningly against the wood. The tactic was repeated, equally successfully, before the killer drove his knee up into his opponent's groin. This was not so successful. His knee hit the same edge as Martyr's head, turning what should have been the coup de grâce into a painful retreat. Martyr shambled forward, punching out by instinct, connecting once by luck. His opponent hurled forward once more, ducking under the blows to drive his shoulder into the Chief's lean belly. The American folded forward and the other man straightened at once, bringing the bludgeon of his skull back into play.

  This time Martyr fell to his knees, badly stunned. His assailant stepped back and unleashed a massive kick, knocking Martyr on to all-fours. Another, from the side, rolled him right over, and he kept rolling, trying to avoid the merciless feet; but he collapsed motionless in the torch's beam as one last kick relentlessly tore into the side of his head.

  The murderer stood, choking for breath, more shocked than exhausted. The death of Haji - he thought of it as murder - had been so quick, had required so little thought. This was different. Yet it had to be done.

  Ultimately, he used the torch because no other club was to hand and his fists were simply too sore. The first blow, to the back of Martyr's head, broke the bulb, so the rest was done in darkness.

  Oddly, after the first three or four blows - the killer was striking wildly and taking no account of numbers - Martyr stirred feebly and started fighting back. He clawed at the other man's face and they wrestled briefly for a moment or two. It was an uneven struggle and the American soon collapsed back against the foot of the nearest console. He did not move again. But the victim was now lying face up, and this made a terrible difference to the murderer. Blind in the darkness, he translated every variation of impact communicated to his sweating palm by the rubberised handle of the torch into a vivid mental image. With his eyes tight closed, he nevertheless saw all too clearly what he was doing as Martyr's long face disintegrated under the wild onslaugh
t.

  He saw teeth come bloodily through lips and splinter. He saw the chin shatter and the jawbone break open. He saw the nose crushed and the temples collapsed. He saw the whole face ruined to the gargoyle horror of a deathmask before he hurled the torch aside and ran like a lunatic from the place.

  He came out on to the starboard side of the stricken ship, having run wildly through the furnace of the A deck corridor, leaving footprints of molten rubber behind him from the soles of his desert boots. The emptiness of the port side had alerted him to the probability that the main escape had been made from the opposite side while he had been on his abortive mission below.

  Sure enough, although the forward, smaller lifeboat hung in splinters from its davits, the other two big boats, each capable of carrying forty at a pinch, were gone. It came to him then, with a force which brought a cry of alarm to his lips, that he was utterly alone on the doomed ship. Alone except for the man whose face he had just beaten in.

  But then, above the dreadful roaring of the fire, he heard a voice. 'Here's one!' it yelled to someone far away.

  The murderer turned. 'Here!' he called.

  A figure appeared beside him, its features masked in shadow, the only light on the stricken ship coming from the column of fire before the bridge. 'Glad to've found you,' said the figure. 'Seen any of the others?'

  'Who's still missing?' he asked, as though he too had been looking.

  'Nobody's seen the Chief since the generators went,' said the figure.

  'No,' said the murderer. 'I went down to the engine room to see if I could help, but there's nobody there at all.'

  'You sure? We'd hate to lose the Chief.'

  'Absolutely certain. If there was anyone alive down there I'd definitely have seen them.'

  'That's it, then,' said the other. 'Let's go.'

  Chapter Eighteen

  Richard fought to keep the big lifeboat snug against the side of his blazing ship as the last of Salah Malik's search party climbed down the rope ladder into her. Even down here the sound and the heat were incredible. He licked the sweat off his upper lip and squinted upwards trying to see how many more were to come.

  The smaller lifeboats, the port one of which he and Martyr had used to rescue Slope, had been reduced to kindling by the blast. They had taken the two large ones from the starboard side, though all of them could have fitted into one at a pinch, in case they needed extra of anything, or the equipment in one proved faulty. Robin was in charge of the other one. If he looked over his shoulder he would be able to see her lights seemingly on the horizon, but actually only a couple of hundred yards distant. She had McTavish and Rice with her, together with Kerem Khalil, 'Twelve-toes' Ho and some of the wounded.

  He had the rest with him and was waiting now only for Tsirtos, Ben, John Higgins and Martyr; Levkas, Napier, an unknown number of GP seamen - say four; ten in all.

  While he waited, his mind was occupied, his stinging eyes were busy, watching the silhouetted figures coming over the high side, changing magically from black to white against the black cliff of Prometheus's hull. After Malik only two more figures appeared, and he began to fear the worst even before John, the first aboard, came up the length of the boat and reported. 'Tsirtos is gone, Richard. The shack is a mess. Looks sabotaged to me. I doubt he even had time to send a mayday. Levkas, Napier and the Chief are all missing. Salah says two of his men are missing, unaccounted for. There must be seven more seamen and stewards dead. We've searched everywhere. No sign of life at all. With the generators down now too, I'm afraid there's no real chance of finding anyone else, even if they're still alive.'

  He had hardly finished speaking when Ben was at his side, and his terse report confirmed everything the Second Mate had said. 'That's it, then,' said Richard crisply. 'Let's go before she blows. There'll be time to mourn them later, when all the rest are safe.'

  He gunned the engine and pulled the tiller towards him. The big lifeboat gathered way, heading out into the cool dark to join her sister in a great arc to starboard.

  Nobody was sitting idle. By the light of the big battery and oil-powered lamps, they were tending the wounded, most of whom had suffered cuts from flying glass; a few had been deafened and blinded and scorched by the blast. Luckily, nobody was too badly hurt. The simple fact was that the explosion had been so fierce that anyone who had been close enough to get themselves seriously injured was dead. Only those well clear or well protected had survived. It was in the crew quarters just as it had been on the bridge, thought Richard grimly: if you were lying down you were alive; if you were standing up you were dead. Nothing much in between.

  While the wounded were being seen to by Ben and Malik, John was checking through the stores, starting, in the light of what they now suspected about Tsirtos, with the radio.

  Nobody had much to say, or any real occasion to speak. There was the occasional murmured instruction to a wounded man, a stifled groan or two; but generally, as they came out of the rumble of the fire into the silence of the night, there was only the growl of the engine and the soft slap of the waves.

  So the concern in John's voice as he said to Ben, 'Would you mind shining that lamp over here a moment?' was evident to everyone at once.

  'What is it?' asked Richard.

  'Dunno. This radio ...Thanks, Ben ...'

  The silence returned for a few more minutes, then, 'Nope. That's the damnedest thing. Ben, was it OK when you tested it?'

  'Fine,' replied the First Mate. Then, with gathering concern, 'Why ...'

  John interrupted him. 'Could anyone have put them out of action since?'

  'Wouldn't have thought so ...Captain?'

  'You're right, Ben. It's not very likely. And the cover was still on when we swung her down.'

  'There you are, then,' said Ben morosely.

  'But has it been sabotaged?' asked Richard, thinking grimly of what he had been told of the mess in the radio shack.

  'Hard to tell.' John was still fiddling with it, trying to find out what was wrong. 'Probably find that out when I find out why it's not working.'

  Silence returned until they came within hailing distance of Robin's boat. Then she called across, 'Our radio's been sabotaged. Whole panel of transistors gone. How about yours?'

  'The same,' yelled back John.

  Ben left the man he was nursing. 'Maybe we'd better check in case anything else has been mucked about with since my last full inspection,' he whispered. He needn't have bothered lowering his voice. His words carried clearly to everyone on both boats.

  They looked as carefully as they could under the light of the lamps, and everything else seemed fine until Richard, almost out of sight now of the blazing Prometheus, checked the compass. No matter where it was pointed, the needle remained glued to 'N' on the card. Robin's was the same. Even when 'N' was pointed due south estimated by the faint, cloud-masked stars, and the overcast gathered rapidly so that the stars were soon obscured. In the end, the Captain and his Third Mate simply put their backs to the distant column of light which marked their wounded ship, and hoped that they were sailing east into an African dawn.

  They were still so far from land that the sun rose through the sea ahead. It was a sudden thing, almost like an explosion. One moment the horizon was a steady line above which the cloudless sky was like a duck's egg gilded with almost transparent foil. Then the sea lit up, first at a point, then from north to south, a dazzling emerald as the sun shone through it. And this was only the beginning. As soon as the rim of the sun peeped over the edge of the world, it sent great beams speeding almost visibly towards them, through the cobweb tendrils rising with silent majesty off the slick backs of the waves. All around them the huge sea, heaving rhythmically in the dead calm with the great green rollers that would pound Africa in time, was smoking with greater and greater intensity. The nascent fog, rising out of the heart of a warm current, into the crisp chill of the clear morning, gave the beams of the rising sun form and substance, seeming to flatten them first into grea
t blades; eventually obscuring them altogether.

  By mid-morning, visibility was down to a matter of yards. Richard had a rope secured between the two boats in case they lost each other. The sun became a pale copper disc. They remained lost, but safely wrapped in a cocoon of coolness. Richard did not look forward to the moment when a blazing tropic sun burned that protective layer away and revealed to them all the immensity of the ocean on which their frail little boats bobbed so helplessly. Prometheus had been so vast that she had kept them utterly apart from the seas they were sailing. The contrast, when it came, was likely to be anything but salutary.

  For another day and two more nights they drifted in the fog. The boats, held almost magically in still water at the confluence of three great currents drifting south, nevertheless were pushed by what fitful wind there was so that their heads kept turning north. Indeed, at dawn on the third day, Ben Strong who had the tiller of the lead boat looked unbelievingly as the sun lit up the emerald sea behind his right shoulder instead of dead ahead. So surprised was he, for he had been certain that they were heading due east, that it took him a moment or two to realise that the fog had gone. The boats were still tied together and he glanced back into Robin's boat where Rice was dozing at the helm. Nobody seemed to have noticed how badly off course they were. Good. He put her over and took them in a gentle arc towards the bright new dawn. Richard felt the change at once and looked up from under lowered lids, noting what was happening before he apparently went back to sleep.