“No planes visible,” said Robin. “Not that you’d see them in this.”
“Not till they hit you,” agreed Weary, knowledgeably.
“Nothing up there,” announced Hood almost immediately.
“Something down here, though,” observed Richard grimly, gesturing with a broad, callused hand. The water between the two vessels was alive with sharks.
“I’ve never seen so many,” whispered Robin.
Abruptly, Hood was beside her. She gasped as he produced a handgun. He leaned over and shot one between the eyes. The gray spade of its forehead exploded. The great fish fell away slowly, turning its empty skull from side to side, as though yet unaware that it was dead. It had enough life left in it to strike back at the first attacker that followed the trail of blood down. The two creatures writhed together obscenely, the jaws of each fastened in the flank of the other. More sharks charged in.
Smooth as a machine, Hood drew a bead on another.
“No!” The cry of disgust came from Robin. The writhing knot of tearing, torn flesh — all that remained of the first two sharks — was still in sight and she would will such a terrible fate on no other living thing. No matter how loathsome the vicious predators were, she could not let Hood continue to exterminate them for his own gratification…But she hesitated on the thought, already suspecting the truth. Hood ignored her. Another shot. Robin flinched. Richard’s arm went round her shoulders instantly. “It’s the only way,” he said, giving words to her thought as he so often did. As though reading her mind.
She understood the American’s plan as Richard spoke, of course, and might have felt like kicking herself except that she still felt in the right. As though a secret signal had been broadcast, the fins that had been cruising dangerously between them and the ship were now all heading purposefully toward that place — well astern now — where Hood had shot the sharks. Abruptly, the water there heaved itself up, boiling bloodily. Feeding frenzy had become mad slaughter.
Robin turned and looked forward at the freighter now towering above them. The rumble of its burning drowned out the terrible sounds of the sharks’ self-destruction.
“No use looking for anything smaller than lifeboats after this,” said Weary, his voice strained.
“Ain’t that a fact,” agreed Hood flatly. “No one in the water would’ve stood a chance.”
He was right, of course. And he had acted not a moment too soon, for even as he spoke, Weary spun the wheel, taking the way off Katapult. In one motion, even before she could begin to wallow, he hit the sail-furl buttons and gunned the engine, guiding her delicately over the last few yards toward the burning freighter. With a quiet whine, automatic motors began to furl the sails safely inside the mast. Two booms, one fore and one aft, telescoped obligingly inward.
If the tramp had seemed sinister drifting, dead, down on them, this was nothing compared to the air of desolation she gave off close-to. There was a taste to her that sat far back in their throats. Smoke clawed at them, so Weary turned to run parallel rather than pass under the reeking shadow of her stern.
This close, it was possible to feel the heat she was giving off. The afternoon was stultifying in any case, but as Katapult turned and began to run parallel to her starboard side, their skin began to glow with the added heat she was emitting: the most palpable expression of the danger she presented.
But this close, the sight of her had more horrors to offer. A pocked rash of bullet strikes spread across the darkness of her whole hull. Invisible until now, a ragged mouth had been blown at the foot of the bridge-house. Above the gaping steel lips of this massive wound dangled the pathetic splinters of a lifeboat, destroyed on its davits. Halfway down her length, some of the crew had obviously tried to abandon. A long line angled back, its upper end snagged on the deck railing, its lower end dragging the torn, half-eaten wreck of an inflatable liferaft. More terribly still, hanging vertically from beside the tangled line on the deck rail, was a rope ladder. The last good rung hung a man’s length above the sullen water. Beneath that hung another, stained, bitten in half. The dark metal beneath it was scraped and scratched and splattered.
It was chilling to imagine the fate of the last people who had used this route, but if anyone from Katapult were going aboard, the ladder would give the easiest access. Used to positioning his craft precisely, even with her unwieldy outriggers, Weary swung the wheel and snugged her stern beneath the last good rung. As soon as he did so, the other three jumped up out of the cockpit and onto the after-section of Katapult’s deck. Too large to be a mere lazarette, the after-section contained the lightweight engine and steering gear as well as much of the yacht’s storage space. The deck above it was a series of hatches laid flush and tight so that it was easy for anyone surefooted to cross over it. There was, for added safety, a low rail around it.
Richard, Robin, and Hood together made for the stern and paused there. Hood caught the ladder and tugged it. Richard reached his shoulder, then glanced up. It occurred to him at last to hail the ship. Until now they had all been stunned into silence by her.
But he didn’t know her name: it was gone off the wrecked forecastle, it was obliterated by the lethal smoke oozing over her stern. “Hello the ship!” he cried up, his voice all but buried under the sullen rumble of her burning. “Is there anyone aboard?”
But even as he and Hood hesitated, a slim, strong body sprang past them. Robin, lighter and far more agile than they, swarmed up toward the deck. Richard automatically, used to her intrepid ways, gave her a hand up and then froze, riven with horror as he remembered — they were onboard Katapult instead of scuba diving in the Seychelles because she was pregnant with their first child.
She had informed him on Silhouette, largest of the Seychelle Islands in the Indian Ocean, on the first night of their first real holiday in years. They were here to go diving and it suddenly occurred to her that there might be a risk to the baby if they did so.
They had seen Katapult anchored off the island, on the second day. Entranced by her, they had tracked down Hood and Weary at once. The shipbuilders had been conducting trials on Katapult almost lazily, after years of scrimping, saving, designing, and planning to build her. They were not really interested in taking passengers for pleasure cruises and had already turned down several offers. But Robin and Richard were different. Not only was it obvious that the sea ran in them; not only was it clear that the powerful Englishman and his dazzling wife were a team of unusual competence — they were completely different from everyone else Hood and Weary had met. And the difference lay in who they were, not what. They were Heritage Mariner, one of the largest independent shipping fleets in Europe. Their quiet English tones spoke for enormous wealth, almost unimaginable power in the international shipping world.
And Heritage Mariner had been looking for ways to broaden its base for years. Perhaps by going into pleasure craft, if a suitable design could be found. And now it had. If Heritage Mariner went into production with Katapult, Hood and Weary would be wealthy men. So Robin and Richard had put their diving gear into Katapult’s lazarette and moved their suitcases into the forward cabin — easily big enough to sleep four — and pitched in with a will. Katapult had taken to them: four was the perfect number to crew her. They tested the vessel with increasing awe in a long run northwest across the Indian Ocean. The voyage had been almost idyllic until Hood picked up that first faint “Mayday!” in the dead hours before dawn this morning.