Such was her concentration on this dilemma amid the splashing restlessness of the icy water that she didn’t hear the first of her crewmates approaching until Florence appeared at her shoulder. ‘Feel for the footholds,’ bellowed the Australian. And as she advised this, Liberty’s fingers found a foothold. She closed her fingers to a fist, though they felt like sausages by now, and heaved herself upwards. Florence shoved a shoulder beneath her backside, risking a bruise or two from her thrashing legs, and shoved. Liberty slid up on to the flat surface. Spread-eagled herself at once and scrabbled herself round. Thrust her head and shoulders back over the edge. Held on like grim death with her left hand as she reached down with her right. A moment of frenetic activity later, Florence was lying beside her. ‘You seen the others?’ gasped Liberty.
‘Nope.’
Liberty gingerly gathered herself on to all fours, then slowly and carefully pulled herself upright on her knees. The sail beneath her heaved as she moved, but it was a surprisingly solid platform. It was the best part of twenty-five metres long with a surface area of several hundred square metres. It was light, but incredibly strong and solid. Even so, she didn’t want to risk standing upright, for the surface was so perfectly aerodynamic that it was also as slippery as ice — especially at the moment, when it was awash. She knelt there, looking back at the vacancy of choppy water, trying to work out exactly where the triple hull had gone down. Quite apart from anything else, if there was a chance of getting down to it, she might take the risk. Somewhere in the wreck was a proper life raft equipped with all sorts of signalling devices. But, unlike the Gill Marine lifejackets, it would only inflate if someone got down to it and pulled the emergency cord — a preference she regretted now, but one born of a panic aboard an earlier racing yacht where the life raft had inflated mid-race because some water had flooded into the cabin. That incident had cost her the race, a good deal of precious kit and very nearly her life. And in any case, Liberty was the sort of person who liked to be in control as well as on top and in the lead. So it looked as though the life raft was on its way to the bottom of the Pacific, along with everything else aboard. In the meantime, they only had the sail. And the AIS signaller on that would be out of commission once again.
At first she thought there was nothing left to mark the passing of her command and everything it contained. But then she noticed something that she hadn’t even considered. At first she thought it was a massive shark’s fin sticking up out of the water, and her heart gave a terrible lurch at the sight. But then she realized that it was the base of one of the J sections from Katapult8’s side. Like the sail, it was solid and buoyant. As she focused on it, she realized that there were two bedraggled women clinging to it. Her heart gave another lurch and her eyes filled with tears once more. ‘Emma!’ she bellowed. ‘Emma! Maya! Can you hear me?’
A wearily waved arm was answer enough. Liberty looked around. The sail she was kneeling on seemed far too large to try to control — even if they’d had anything other than their hands to paddle with. If the four of them were going to get back together, Emma and Maya were going to have to propel the J hook over this way, or abandon it and swim. The distance between them was not great, but for some reason beyond Liberty’s immediate understanding, it was widening. They were going to have to make the decision soon and take action immediately after that.
‘Can you get to us?’ shouted Liberty. ‘The sail seems safe for the time being. It’ll keep us out of the water, at least.’
Once again, a weary arm waved to show that the others had understood. And immediately the J hook started to move determinedly towards the sail as Maya and Emma started kicking in unison. Satisfied that there was nothing else she could do for them for the moment, Liberty began to look around. Her kneeling position on the sail gave her a view over the tops of the waves, though she couldn’t see all that far. The set of the steep-sided chop all around them was disturbed by what looked like a ring of bright orange basketballs. They curled around almost in a circle, then wandered away downwind into the distance. And right in the shadowy heart of that distance, every now and then, something shone with the same jewel brightness as the rescue lights on their Gills. It was only when she saw the bright orange balls and recognized them as net floats that Liberty began to understand what had happened to them.
‘Flo,’ she said to her companion, ‘it looks as though we got tangled up in some kind of drift net. But I can’t see a trawler. It must have come free.’
‘Really?’ Florence answered, her voice flat with exhaustion and depression. ‘Better hope whoever left some kind of drift net drifting out here hadn’t caught much in it, then.’
‘Why?’
‘Scavengers. Sharks. They’ll be around as soon as they smell death. And they won’t care whether they’re eating dead tuna or a living yachtswomen.’
‘OK,’ allowed Liberty bracingly, narrowing her eyes automatically and looking out for Maya and Emma, only to realize at once that the waves which surrounded them all looked like sharks fins anyway. ‘But on the other hand, whoever lost the net might well look for it. Especially if the catch was good.’
‘I suppose.’ Florence’s tone made it clear she supposed nothing of the sort.
‘And in any case, my dad’ll be coming after us as fast as he can the moment he realizes he’s lost radar and AIS contact.’
‘Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to get so far ahead of him after all.’
Liberty bit back a retort. Then she took a deep breath, thinking that Katapult8 must have meant so much more to the daughter of the man who designed and built her — who designed and built a fair bit of her herself — than it did to the woman who’d merely bought her and sailed her. ‘You think?’ she said instead. But as she spoke, the float nearest to them jerked under the surface, as though something pretty big had become caught in the net. Or as though something pretty big was eating something that was caught in the net. ‘Come on, Emma,’ she called. ‘Give it all you’ve got, girl!’
A few moments later, the shark fin of the J hook was bumping against the metre-high wall of the sail’s edge. Liberty reached down and caught Emma’s raised hand, hanging on tightly to one of the toeholds, just as she had done with Florence, and pulled the Japanese Olympic sailor aboard. Flo shook herself out of her depressed inactivity and pulled Maya on to the sail as well, using the grab handle on the lifejacket. The sail was so massive and so buoyant that it hardly registered the added weight or activity. It just sat on the water like a huge black raft. Then the four of them lay spread out like starfish and gasped at the humid air, waiting for their pulses to slow down.