It was amusing, in a grim sort of way. Fate had placed him in the same old position — in the middle and at risk from both sides at once. If only he could be certain about Mariner…
Well, Heritage had nothing incriminating in her cabin.
Who was next on the list? Strong.
No. Higgins would just have taken over the watch. Check Higgins first. Leave Strong till later.
Robin came out of her room and hesitated in the flat brightness of the corridor. It was enough to make one believe in ghosts, even in this bland atmosphere, but she had the feeling again that someone had just been there. And, as if to emphasize her fears, the draft in the corridor suddenly brought the soft, otherworldly song of Nihil’s strange flute from the crew’s quarters. Perhaps it was just the storm, but little currents of icy air were everywhere, disturbing the normally tranquil ambiance of the accommodation areas, as though the ill-fitting boards were giving access to a lot more than mere storm wind. She shivered, tightened her cold-weather gear around her, and hurried down to Ben’s cabin.
Richard would be wondering where the hell she had got to, for she had spent some moments checking through her cabin again, completely mystified as to who would want to search it or why. She began to jog down the corridor, possessed of a sudden urgency, moving silently on her Wellington-ed feet, the only sound the whisper of her waterproof leggings.
When she got to his door she didn’t even bother to knock. She knew well enough where he was. He was on the bridge.
Or was he? — The light in his cabin was on!
She hesitated in the dark vestibule of his quarters. They were laid out like the captain’s: curtain in front, dayroom office on the left, light-edged cabin door on her right.
If the light was on, the man was in, she reasoned. And he would have heard her come in this far. No help for it, then: she turned the handle and entered the cabin.
“Ben…”
The cabin was empty.
Richard forced himself to sit at ease while every nerve in his body was agonizingly taut. He was used to meeting tension with action; he had forgotten how hard it could be simply to sit and be in command.
He had opened the bright yellow waterproof jacket but had made no other concession to the stifling closeness of the bridge. He might well have to go outside again — perhaps in a hurry — and fighting his way into recalcitrant cold-weather gear would only slow things up. The closeness was not simply a matter of atmosphere, either, he realized suddenly: though the air in here was too warm, too full of unexplained currents of tension, it was really the nature of the storm itself. There was no visual element to it. It was as though the hurricane winds were themselves coal-black. They forced themselves against the windows like the flanks of monstrous animals and it was impossible to see. Off the coast of South Africa, the storm, terrible though it was, had at least been visible — had at least attained some scale and grandeur. This was a much more personal — disturbing — thing; and the fact that it had wrapped the howling shroud of itself around the bridge windows made the normally airy place seem constricted, confining.
Nor was he alone in this thought. Ben stirred at last from his brown study at the helmsman’s side. “I’ll stand out on the bridge wing. Check the lookout,” he yelled. Richard nodded.
Ben slopped through the puddle Richard had made on his last entrance and took the door handle.
Several things happened at once.
Ben opened the door. A large sea gave Prometheus a right hook that caused her to jump. The squall responsible for the rogue wave took the door and flung it open, then closed.
Ben was hurled backward over the slippery floor. He lost his footing and crashed down, striking his head against the edge of the chart table. He rolled over and lay still.
“Ben!” Richard was at his side immediately, gentle fingers probing along the scalp line to discover a large gash oozing blood. But Ben’s eye flickered open at once, bright and clear. “You okay?” Richard asked.
“Yeah!” Ben’s own fingers traced the wound. He sat up. “Fine.” But even as he spoke, a bright worm of blood began to crawl down toward his right eye.
“Better get that looked at,” said Richard, turning toward John, who was looking anxiously across from the Collision Alarm Radar.
“No,” said Ben at once. “You can’t spare anyone here. I’ll slip down and see to it myself.”
Richard hesitated, then nodded. Ben was right. If he could see to it himself it would be better. With Robin still below, he could ill-spare John. And Quine knew nothing of first aid. So he helped Ben to his feet and guided him a step or two until his godson could cross the rest of the bridge unaided.
At the door, Ben turned and looked back, but the others were already preoccupied. He wiped the blood back up into his hairline and allowed himself a grim little smile. Couldn’t have arranged it better, he thought. Now no one would suspect a thing.
Robin hesitated in Ben’s cabin, thinking fast. Under other circumstances what she was about to do would be absolutely unacceptable — and extremely distasteful — but the memory of that look on his face drove her on. She started to search the cabin, but the search revealed nothing untoward. This was hardly surprising, since she had no idea what she was looking for. Committed to doing this now, she moved into his office quickly. And there she found what she had been looking for — just enough to make her suspicious. By his desk was a small safe. As first officer, he was responsible for any valuables aboard. The safe was open. Empty. And, above it, on the desk itself, stood Ben’s only real treasure, a photograph of his dead parents.
Except that it wasn’t there. The frame remained, lying dismantled on the desktop, but the photograph was gone. She was standing, holding it, thinking like lightning when the door slammed wide.
Ben hesitated on the stairs, a wave of nausea threatening to overcome him. He held on to the banister and wiped the back of his right hand over his forehead. It came away thick with blood. Impatiently, he pushed the congealing liquid back into his hair. It wasn’t as bad as it looked but it was worse than it was meant to be. He hadn’t felt as bad as this since the night of the explosion going down to try to sink her for the first time.
But the time and the circumstances were too good to be missed now. The storm would cover the sound of the pumps — he had set them low and quiet anyway, expecting them to be doing their deadly work in a quiet anchorage. The storm would cover the loss of the ship — like the bomb was supposed to. It was a cataclysm so large that it would cover everything, no questions asked. He did not pause to consider the loss of his shipmates — right from the start he had known most of them were doomed.
As soon as his head cleared, he ran on down the stairs. He considered going to his cabin — he had enough medication there to staunch the blood — but he went to the Cargo Control Room first.
There was no need to switch the lights on. His deft fingers found the control-console keys in the dark and tapped in the secret code. The screen flickered and lit up:
LADING SCHEDULE 11. LADING SCHEDULE LOGGED IN.
He typed in: EXPEDITE and pressed RETURN.
At once the screen went blank, also according to the original program.
He paused, listening with every fiber of his being, but he could not hear the pumps begin their deadly work. They were lost in the sound of the storm. But he knew well enough what they would be doing. The extra schedule he had programmed the machine to accept in Durban, called for all the cargo to be transferred to one tank. And as the pumps tried to obey the computer’s order, so the forces they obediently unleashed would tear the ship apart.