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He picked up his cigarette, turning in his chair and looking at me, his dark eyes large behind the steel-rimmed glasses. 'You know we're headed for Aberdeen?' Morse crackled from the loudspeaker and he reached out tobacco-stained fingers for his message pad, listening with his pencil poised. Then he relaxed. 'That rig again. So much traffic for Redco 2 I've hardly been able to send at all, and the old man desperate to jump the queue and get us slipped.'

'He hasn't notified the Aberdeen police?'

'Not his job to do that. The office knows, of course, so maybe they have.' He leaned back, his eyes fixed on me, but half his mind on the Morse. 'They're waiting to haul anchors so I suppose they got no joy on the Bressay Bank. Les is fit again, by the way.' And he added, 'Sorry about that. The old man'll be sorry, too, in a way. Les isn't the best mate in the fleet. What'll you do when we get in?'

I hesitated, wondering whether the police would be waiting for me at Aberdeen. 'Go on the club again, I suppose.' One trip in six months. I was hating myself for being so dependent on trawler owners for employment, conscious of a deep-seated urge to start something on my own.

'Why don't you switch to oil — supply ships, something like that? That's where the future is. Trawling…' He shrugged his shoulders. 'Doesn't matter to me. I go where Marconi send me. But a man like you, with a master's certificate, you want to go where the future is.' He jerked his head at the sound of the Morse. 'He's talking to the tug owners now, a big German job steaming north from Heligoland. The forecast's good, so they'll be under tow tomorrow night. Every trip it's the same; down past Brent and Auk, all this area of the North Sea, nothing but rig talk — Bluewater, Staflo, North Star, Glomar. Take my advice — I listen and I know. There'll be more rig supply ships than trawlers soon.'

'Maybe.' I stood there for a moment listening to the crackle of the Morse. Clydebank, Newcastle, Hull, all the political involvement of my life… My mind switched to Shetland, to the islands now far down below the horizon. Was it the island blood in my veins that had made me abandon capitalist America as a kid? Was that why I had started on my wanderings, seeking the values I could hot find in the rich world my mother had embraced? Or was it the legendary IS figure of my father? Had I built him up as a hero in my mind simply because she had tried to bury him? I didn't know. My mind was confused. All I knew for certain was that everything I had done, everything I had believed in, had suddenly turned sour.

And then Sparks murmured, 'The offshore capital of the world.' He coughed over his cigarette. 'Aberdeen — you know it?'

I shook my head. 'Never been there.'

He smiled. 'Well, that's what they call it.' The Morse ceased and he glanced at the clock, his fingers reaching for the dials, turning to the emergency waveband. 'Take a walk round the harbour when you get there. Have a look at the pipe storage depots, the diving outfits, all the clutter of stuff the oil rigs need. You'll get the message then all right. Aberdeen's no longer a fish port. It's an oil rig supply base, and if I were in your shoes…' He stopped then, his body suddenly tense as a ghostly voice, calling in clear, began repeating the single word — 'Mayday, Mayday, Mayday…' The voice was urgent, giving details now… It was a trawler with its engines out of order being swept on to a rock-bound coast in heavy seas.

'Shetland.' Sparks was scribbling it down on his pad, and as the voice began to repeat the vessel's position, he glanced up at a large-scale map. 'Looks like he'll drive ashore on Whalsay Island.' He ripped the sheet off his pad and got to his feet. 'Nothing we can do about it, but the old man better know.' And he hurried past me through into the bridge.

The name of the trawler was the Duchess of Norfolk. We looked her up out of curiosity. She was just under 200 tons, built at Lowestoft in 1939 and owned now by G. Petersen of Hamnavoe, Shetland. New engines 1968, Paxman diesels, so what had gone wrong? All the Chief said was, 'Bloody Shetlanders, they wouldn't know a crankshaft from a camshaft.' He didn't like the Shetlanders, having been stuck there once with gales and a leaking ship.

The Duchess of Norfolk was in fact south of Whalsay and, with the wind backed into the north-east, she drove towards South Nesting. We caught snatches of radio talk, very faint, as the trawler Ranger steamed to her assistance. It gave me something to occupy my mind, following her progress on the Shetland Isles chart No. 3059. She cleared Muckle Fladdicap, a bare three cables to the eastward, drifted inside Muckla Billan and Litla Billan, missed the rock islet of Climnie by a shift of the tide and hit Fiska Skerry at 13.46. By then the trawler Ranger was almost up with her and inside of half an hour had a line aboard. That was the last I heard of her, for we were already in sight of Aberdeen's North Pier, with the city showing grey through the murk above the pale line of the Links, and I was busy getting ready to dock.

The skipper took us in, heading straight for Albert Basin, where the trawlers lay. As we approached Point Law, a survey vessel sweeping past us began to open up. Sparks appeared at my elbow. 'See what I mean?' He nodded towards a cluster of tanks to starboard with supply ships moored alongside. 'Mud silos,' he said. The area beyond was being developed, the sound of reconstruction work coming to us across the water. 'That's the future you're looking at.'

It was an extraordinary sight, the whole harbour area crowded with ships, drilling ships, survey vessels, seismic ships, tugs and ancillary craft all jam-packed among the fishing vessels. And; upriver from Torry Harbour, a litter of pipes and buoys, equipment of all sorts, lay piled up on the quay, more mud silos and a new berth nearly completed. As we moved slowly into Albert Basin we passed very close to Point Law and the supply ship bunkering there. It was the first time I had been really close to one of these flat-bottomed, tug-like vessels that keep the rigs drilling.

'I only know trawlers,' I said. Moored there, the ship looked very sleek, very efficient, but I had seen one once heading out to the Brent in a strong westerly gale, seas breaking over the flat, open afterdeck. 'I'd rather have the Fisher Maid up around Bear Island than one of those in a North Sea gale.'

He shrugged, his eyes smiling behind his glasses. 'All I'm saying is, if you got in on the act, you wouldn't be short of a ship for years, not the way new rigs are coming into service.'

A trawler passed us very close, another just ahead of us, as we nosed our way down the length of Albert Quay, searching for a berth. I could see the fish market now, and then a gap opened up and the skipper said quietly, 'Looks a laikely hole. Reckon there's just room for us.' He ordered port wheel, our bows swinging, and I took the loudhailer out on to the wing of the bridge.

We were tied up by 14.00, the lumpers offloading the catch. Since Aberdeen was not our home port, there was no pay, only subs from the local agent to see the boys home. They had a long rail journey ahead of them and most of them were away by the time the first pound boards were being replaced and the emptied compartments hosed down. The skipper called me to his cabin. He was packing his bag. 'You in a hurry to get back?' He knew I was the only officer who hadn't got a wife waiting for him in Hull.

I shook my head.

He was standing holding a shirt and a bundle of dirty socks in his hand, a slug of whisky on the locker behind him. 'Ah thought not.' The bulging eyeballs stared at me. 'Take it then you won't object to staying the night aboard. We've no ship's husband here, you see, and Les doesn't arrive till tomorrow.' He waited a moment and then nodded. 'Good. That's settled then. Better use my cabin so's you can keep an eye on things laike.'