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 saboteur driving his head into Martyr’s face so that the back of his head smashed stunningly against the wood. The tactic was repeated, equally successfully, before the saboteur 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 grace into a painful retreat. Martyr shambled forward, punching out by instinct, connecting once by luck. The saboteur hurled forward once more, ducking under the blows to drive his shoulder into the chief’s lean belly. The American folded forward and his opponent straightened at once, bringing the bludgeon of his skull back into play.
This time Martyr fell to his knees, badly stunned. The saboteur stepped back and unleashed a massive kick, knocking Martyr onto 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 saboteur stood, choking for breath, more shocked than exhausted, wondering feverishly what he could use as a weapon. In the final analysis 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 enough, after the first three or four blows — the saboteur was striking wildly and taking no account of numbers — Martyr stirred feebly and started fighting back. He clawed at the saboteur’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 would-be murderer. Blind in the darkness, he translated every variation of impact communicated to his sweating palm by the rubberized 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 onslaught.
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 a gargoyle horror of a death mask before he hurled the torch aside and ran like a lunatic from the place.
He came out onto 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.
And 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 that 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.
He tensed himself to dash down the length of the deck, past that horrific column of fire, to his life raft, hidden under the spare anchor on the forecastle head.
But then, above the dreadful roaring of the fire, he heard a voice. “Here’s one!” it yelled to someone far away. Close by, between him and his distant goal. No way past but to kill again.
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?” asked the murderer, as though he, too, had been looking.
“Nobody’s seen the chief since the generators went.”
“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,” said the murderer decisively. “If there was anyone alive down there I’d definitely have seen him.”
“That’s it, then,” said the other. “Let’s go.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
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 upward, 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 in a pinch, in case they needed extra of anything, or in case 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, Martyr, Napier, an unknown number of GP seamen — say five. That meant ten in all still missing.
While he waited, his mind was occupied, his stinging eyes were busy, watching the silhouetted figures coming over the high side, then 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. It looks sabotaged to me. I doubt he even had time to send a mayday. Napier and the chief are still missing. Salah says two of his men are also unaccounted for. There must be seven more seamen and stewards dead. We’ve searched everywhere. No sign of life at all. And, 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 toward 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 bad cuts from flying glass; a few of whom 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, though everybody, it seemed, was covered in scratches, cuts, and bruises.
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 odd 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 lifeboat’s engine and the soft slap of the waves.