NV Tsunami - Part 1

by judyk

This story was started in the 1980s and is UNFINISHED. It is also a long read, running to 10 chapters in part 1, plus the first two chapters of part 2. If enough people would like to read the rest of it, I will finish it. It is a disaster-at-sea story in which the Tracys are both rescuers and rescued. There is a fair bit of tech in it and a lot of action.

NV TSUNAMI - PART ONE

CHAPTER 1

SYDNEY : CALM

Smoke rises vertically

(Force 0 on the Beaufort Wind Scale)

TETHERED TO PIER thirty-four of Sydney harbour's New Ocean Terminal by eight hemp ropes, each thicker than a bodybuilder's arm, the N.V. Tsunami was receiving the last of her cargo. A fast five-star passenger and cargo carrying hydrojet of some thirty thousand tons, she had taken on board on this hot day six hundred and fifty living souls, provision for their keep and entertainment, and what freight could be crammed into her limited hold space, in preparation for her four p.m. departure, now just three hours away.

Incoming stores still littered her service gangways, blocking the goods elevator doors located above the hydrojet channels that straddled like outriggers at each side of her eight-hundred-and-fifty foot waterline. Among the items deemed essential for her voyage and still to be manhandled into the comparative cool of her opulent interior were two blockbuster movies awaiting their Pacific Rim premiers in a locked steel case, five crates of breakage-replacement monogrammed dining china, half a hundredweight of fresh asparagus and, more an indication of the demands of her numerous bars than a traditional necessity of shipboard nutrition, two thousand Queensland lemons.

The more basic requirement of fuel her sweating dock gangs and harassed wharf manager dabbing his neck in the sun had no need to worry about, as she was nuclear-powered, and the heat from disintegrating atoms supplied the force that sucked in water at her bows and blasted it out behind her with sufficient strength to push her through the ocean at speeds in excess of a hundred knots, or one hundred and fifteen miles per hour. The same tireless energy lit her, ran the computer systems in the raked double towers of the navigation and control bridges that reared towards her stern, and fed the money-making apparatus of her bars, nightclubs and casino in the mushrooming forward superstructure that made her, to a seaman's eye, just a little top-heavy for elegance.

On this trip her power was to take her north and east, across the invisible boundary of the Tropic of Capricorn and to the port of Suva in Fiji, from where, after a pause to take on the last of her passengers and offload her mainland-produced cargo for the island traders, she would holiday-cruise on through the warm waters of the tropical South Pacific to Samoa and French Polynesia, making her final call, before the sun set on her passengers' pleasurable and expensive voyage, at Tahiti.

Now, with the Sydney sun just past its zenith, her white-painted upper works against the unrelieved blue of the sky were painful to look at, and on the wharf the hemp, the dock gangs and a few late-coming passengers sweltered in the heat, the smells of hot rope and softened bitumen mingling with the faint benzene taint rising from the filmed and scummy water of the dock. At the end of the wharf, behind a lowered barrier marked 'PIER 34 - LADING', two high-wheeled container trucks vibrated on tickover, heat from their overtaxed cooling systems creating a suffocating miasma around them. At the foot of the leading truck's ladder its driver stood in his cab's narrow shade, watching a group of uniformed figures conversing earnestly in the unrelenting glare out on the cargo hard-standing.

Just a little over medium height, but broad shouldered under his sweat-plastered overalls, he ran a hand in a gesture of impatience through thick brown hair worn short at the sides and long on top, and swept back into a lion's-mane above his forehead. The action released a cloud of orange dust and he frowned, lowering a pair of fierce dark brows that dominated an otherwise habitually good-natured and open face. From the group on the hard-standing the sound of heated arguing came to his ears faint and unintelligible: there was a sudden burst of raised voices and an excited waving of arms and he tensed in expectation, but the men lapsed back into a huddle, and he let his shoulders drop again.

At the tail of his waiting vehicle with its long SeaFreight container, the cab door of the second truck swung wide and a blond youth jumped down, slim, long-legged and just a little shorter than the driver of the first, but with the narrow, undeveloped shoulders of a boy still evident under his brightly coloured western-style shirt. He trotted up to the front of the short convoy, turning a pair of questioning baby-blue eyes on his companion out of a cheerful, youthfully optimistic face.

"What's the hold-up, Virgil? Our loading deadline expires in fifteen minutes; it's high time we got ourselves out onto that wharf."

"It's those guys, Alan." Virgil answered with a contrasting flash of brown eyes and an exasperated wave in the direction of the arguing group. "They wont let us through. We've driven non-stop from Billabong Creek today to make it in time for this sailing, and we drove from Broken Hill to Billabong Creek yesterday; that makes around six hundred miles all told. Okay, we broke down in the bush and got lost in the suburbs, and we had to wait because the guy at the gate lost our papers, but we got here just two minutes late, and now they're saying we can't go aboard. If we don't make the deadline we'll miss our connection in Suva tomorrow, then there's nothing sailing out the way we want to go for another two weeks." He drew a deep breath. "We're going to miss the boat, Alan. I knew something like this was going to happen."

"Sure." Alan stretched his cramped muscles unconcernedly, knocking his own share of the outback's red dust out of a powder-puff of baby-fine, sun bleached hair. "And you knew that that car was tailing us back at Gum Lake, and that the guy at the road station last night was a spy just because he asked a few friendly questions. Loosen up, will you? You've been on edge this whole trip. Take a leaf out of Penelope's book and play it cool."

"Cool?" Virgil blotted his forehead with a sleeve, glancing over at a derelict area of dock where smoke from a rubbish fire was rising in a thin straight column, untroubled by the slightest movement of air. "That's the last thing anyone's going to be on a day like this. But what are we going to do? It isn't going to be easy trying to argue our way past the World Navy."

"The World Navy?" Alan shaded his eyes, noticing for the first time the clear distinction between the crisp white merchant navy uniforms out on the Tarmac and the others, made of a dull dark serge that absorbed the furious dockside light and disposed of it cleanly beyond some tailors' cunningly-contrived event horizon, returning virtually no colour to the eye at all. As if aware of their stares one man looked round, and the heavy gold WN on his cap badge flashed briefly, the only acknowledgement of the sun. Beside him another man also turned to watch them attentively, a stubby automatic rifle slung from his shoulder. Alan stared. "What're they doing here? I thought this was a merchant ship."

"It is." Virgil pointed to a single civilian figure with a clipboard at the centre of the group. "But the wharf manager's guy there says that the Navy have got a shipment of their own aboard, something about this being the quickest way to get some urgent components out to one of their Pacific fleets. Seems they're afraid of any commercial shippers loading electromagnetic sources or anything else that might damage their sensitive gear, and our consignment's due to travel in the same hold as theirs. Our clearance forms were lost with our other papers, so they're not happy about us being let through, at least not without a visual check." He shook his head. "I just can't figure out a way around it. If we let them look inside these containers our cover would be blown wide open. It'd mean we might as well have worn our uniforms and painted 'International Rescue' on the trucks. I tried showing them our inventory, but that didn't seem to cut much ice."

"Tracy Marine Engineering." Alan quoted the inventory's heading from memory. "Directors Alan and Virgil Tracy, Sydney, New South Wales. Marine engines, hydraulic pumps and related miscellaneous equipment, bound for Suva." He shook his head. "It all reads like pretty harmless stuff, and I guess it all is, as long as it only gets used by us. But you're right, we'll have to think of something. We could try telling them that Tracy Marine Engineering's developed some revolutionary new engines, and that we can't open up because of the industrial espionage risk."

"We wouldn't be telling them any lies. Okay, the parts for the Mole we've got in there aren't listed, but the new boosters for Thunderbird Four are marine engines alright, and they're certainly revolutionary. That's why we can't afford to play it cool over security, Alan. There're plenty of people right across the world who'd love to take a good long look at the contents of those crates, with or without our permission."

"Guess that'd probably include the World Navy." Alan grinned, shading his eyes to look more closely at the distant group. "I'd say that they must have some pretty security-sensitive cargo to worry about themselves: that guy with the gun looks like a marine, and you don't carry that sort of protection along for a parcel of nuts and bolts. And are they speaking English? They're making enough racket, but I can't make out a word."

"It isn't English, but I figure they're Europeans." Virgil followed his eyes. "Some national fleets operate independently within the service, and there're still some European-owned territories out here." He raised his wrist and frowned down at his watch, fingering a button on the bezel indecisively. "Maybe we should call Dad. The trucks are due back at the rental office, too, and if they don't find our papers pretty soon we could be stuck here with no boat, no transport and two steel crates someone's going to start wanting us to move."

"Call him if you want." Alan shrugged, still absorbed in the distant scene. "This is your mission. But if you want my advice you won't bother him until we know exactly what's happening. And something could be happening right now. Look!" He pointed. "If the bunch of papers that guy's running down the dock with has nothing to do with this it's sure grabbed the Navy's attention. And your friend with the clipboard looks pretty pleased."

"Our papers!" Virgil gave a whistle of pure relief. "They must've turned up at the other gate. Okay, Alan, let's be ready to get moving as soon as they lift this barrier, or we really will miss the boat." He turned back to his vehicle. "We've got ten minutes to unload the trucks and get them back to the hire yard over there. Then we've still got to sort out all the other paperwork."

"And get ourselves aboard," Alan reminded him, then his lingering grin widened and brightened in anticipation. "And then we can go find Tin-Tin. Come on, let's get going!"

Below decks their eyes, still aching from the blaze outside, adjusted slowly to the artificial light of Tsunami's plush interior. Down on D deck the conditioned air was cool, and deep carpets and simulated wood panelling softened the sounds of stewards and passengers moving in a good-humoured, embarkation day confusion through the labyrinth of narrow corridors.

"D fifty-eight and D sixty." Alan stopped on the brink of a flight of steps and examined his cabin key. "We must've passed them again."

"Yes." Virgil looked at the busy corridor, then at the other flights of the wide shore-style staircase, sweeping impressively up and down. "This isn't a boat, Alan. It's a floating five-star hotel."

"Ship," Alan corrected, "anything this size is a ship. You can't get this lost on a boat." He took a few exploratory steps downwards, then gave an excited shout. "Hey! It's Tin-Tin!" He ran on down exuberantly, springing off the bottom steps with a flourish, and, more soberly, Virgil followed him.

Coming to meet them was a slim but curvaceous girl with sea-green eyes and the ivory skin of a European, but the smaller, more delicate frame and the lustrous silk-black hair of an Asiatic. Her almond eyes brightened and she waved as they approached, a smile of relieved recognition on her sweetly pretty, heart-shaped face.

"Alan! Virgil! Where have you two been? I've been looking everywhere for you."

"We've been looking everywhere for our cabins." Alan slipped his arm around her waist and gave her a cursory kiss. "How was your flight?"

"No problems." Proud of herself, she lifted her chin. "Your father let me fly the Ladybird. It's in the airport park, ready to take us home in two weeks' time."

"Two weeks!" Alan said ecstatically, "I'd almost forgotten. Tavarua, here we come! As of now we're on vacation."

"Well, I'm not," Virgil reminded him. "And your job isn't over until we get those containers to Suva. Now, it's high time we checked in with Dad. Come on; let's find these cabins."

Their cabins were a little further down the lower half of the split-level corridor. Virgil threw his case onto the bunk of his small, heavily panelled room, shut and secured the manually-operated sliding door, then returned to Alan's cabin where Tin-Tin sat on the bunk, her arms folded in front of her with a hint of defensiveness.

"…but I've told you, you'll love Tavarua," Alan was saying, a little irritably. "I would've thought you'd be impressed by the idea of sun, surf, great food, and some actual night-life for a change. It's the most exclusive island resort in Fiji, or probably anywhere round this area."

"I didn't say it wasn't," Tin-Tin objected mildly. "I just said I liked the idea of a sea cruise, that's all. You have to admit that Tsunami's a beautiful ship. They say she's only just been bought by the shipping line, and that this is her maiden voyage with them." She looked up and smiled as Virgil came in. "And I think it's a pity Virgil isn't coming with us. It would be lovely if we could all spend the fortnight together. Don't you think so, Alan?"

"No," Alan said emphatically, "I don't." The first creases of a scowl began to pucker his forehead. "After all the time it's taken to talk Dad and your father into letting us get away for a vacation on our own, now you're trying to fix us up with a chaperon. Or maybe you think you'll be bored with only me to talk to, is that it?"

"Alan's right," Virgil put in hurriedly, "three's a crowd. Besides, someone has to look after those containers."

Privately, he had his doubts about Tavarua. Tin-Tin's affection for the youngest member of International Rescue was genuine, he was sure, but he could anticipate that two weeks of undiluted Alan might strain the relationship, or more. Things were different at home, with five admittedly rather isolated brothers good-humouredly vying for the attention of one girl, though since Alan had first staked his claim a careful limit had been set for the remaining four that by silent agreement had never been breached. Tin-Tin, he suspected, though fond of Alan considered herself party to no agreements at all in this early stage of her life, and he remembered occasions when her attitude to himself in particular had inspired some ideas that had made it difficult to meet Alan's eyes too squarely over the dinner-table. He diverted his train of thought firmly out into limbo, where it belonged, and shut the cabin door. "Now, better let Dad know that we're safely aboard." He raised his arm and touched the button on the bezel of his watch, pressing firmly this time, and after a half-second delay the hidden telecommunications circuits replaced the dial display with a miniature screen.

"Hello, Son," Jefferson Tracy said. "You're ten minutes late."

"I'm sorry, Father." Virgil frowned, contrite. Through the magic of the telecom's window the two faces viewed each other across the miles, one ageing, one young: different but with an underlying similarity, like two images sculpted by the same hand. "We had some radiator trouble in the outback; sure was hot out there. Then the World Navy wanted to inspect our shipment: seems they've got some sensitive gear aboard they're worried about, and there was a little problem with our papers. But they eventually let us through."

"Mmm." Jeff Tracy grunted and scratched his receding crest of steely hair. "Well, if they decide to check on your credentials they'll find Tracy Marine Engineering properly registered as a Sydney company, with you and Alan as co-directors. How about the containers, everything okay?"

"Yes. The crate with the new boosters for Thunderbird Four was waiting for us at Broken Hill just as you arranged, and we collected the replacement parts for the Mole direct from the foundry there. Looks like they've followed Brains' drawings perfectly. They said they were proud to have made the drilling equipment for the new Tracy opal mine."

Jeff smiled. "I'm glad they weren't suspicious, because that's one thing no-one's going to find. So, the rest of the operation goes ahead to plan?"

Virgil nodded. "We should reach Suva at sixteen hundred hours tomorrow; that's four p.m. local time. Tin-Tin and Alan take the helijet ferry for Tavarua, while I get the containers transferred to the tramp steamer Queen Of The Pacific. She sails at eighteen hundred hours, so that should give me just enough time. Then it's two days' slow-boat to the island of Mauila, and we have our delivery boat pick them up from the quay there just as if they were part of our regular stores supply."

"Good. Your indirect route home may seem over-elaborate, but it's vital that no-one realises we're importing specialised equipment. Anyone who knows our island knows it as just another tax-haven home for the idle rich, and that's the way we have to keep it."

"Right. But I hope things stay idle until I'm back. It'd be pretty difficult in an emergency without Thunderbird Two."

On the screen, Jeff Tracy frowned. "Just let me worry about that. At the moment your responsibility's those containers. Your next check-in's due at sixteen hundred hours tomorrow, when you reach Suva, and make sure it's on time next time." He reached forward to terminate the call. "And tell Alan and Tin-Tin to enjoy their vacation. They should do, it's certainly costing me enough." The screen blanked out, and the hours and minutes returned to the face of the watch.

"He's on form today," Alan said, cheerful again. "Guess he must be missing your cooking, Tin-Tin."

"I thought he sounded in quite a good mood," Tin-Tin said. "But you haven't told me anything about your drive. I don't think those lorries could have had any air conditioning, by the look of both of you."

"I don't know which was worse, the heat or the dust." Virgil pulled at his sticky overalls with a grimace. "Or that straight, empty road. It'd sure be easy to nod off at the wheel out there; it's almost hypnotising."

"Except that it wasn't too straight at Gum Lake." Alan smirked. "We made a little diversion because Virgil thought we were being tailed. It took an hour to find out that the guys in the car behind us had tagged along because they were lost, and they figured a couple of truckers would be bound to be heading for one of the main routes. Then it took another two hours for all of us to find our way back to the highway again. Then there was the 'spy' at the Billabong Creek road station, where we stayed the night. He was just your regular talkative barfly; you know, the kind who wants to know all your business and tell you his."

"Okay, Alan." Virgil frowned. "Maybe I did get it wrong, on both counts. But some of the characters around that place looked pretty shady."

"It was a dive," Alan agreed. "Back in the States you wouldn't get away with serving up that kind of food to the hogs, and I don't figure those beds could've been changed in weeks." He scratched absently. "Don't know about you, but I got the feeling I wasn't alone."

"Alan Tracy!" Tin-Tin sprang up off the bunk, staring at Alan with horror-widened eyes. "How could you? Letting me sit in here, with… with…" She scurried for the door, giving Virgil a wide berth, and backed out hastily. "I'll see you later, after you've showered and changed. And that goes for both of you." The door rolled violently sideways and slammed.

"Guess that means we're back in civilisation." Alan grinned. He crossed to the cabin's compact bathroom and looked in, starting to unbutton his shirt. "And this sure is an improvement on Billabong Creek: it's going to be a real pleasure to get under some hot running water again. If you don't want to spend the rest of the voyage in your own company you'd better do the same."

Virgil opened the cabin door. "Nothing I'd like better, but I figure they should be ready to load our containers just about now. I want to make sure that we don't have any little last-minute hitches."

"Don't you ever quit worrying?" Alan stepped out of sight as Virgil turned to shut the door, and a snatch of his voice and the sound of a running shower came back through the closing crack. "Why not ease up and relax? Unwind and enjoy the trip. I tell you, Virgil, from now on it's all going to be nothing but plain sailing."

CHAPTER 2

LIGHT AIR

Smoke slowly drifts

Ripples with the appearance of scales are formed

(Force 1 on the Beaufort Wind Scale)

C DECK, RUNNING aft from the flat platform of the observation deck at Tsunami's bow, was the lowest deck of her leisure complex, housing her gymnasium and the Tahiti Lounge, the largest of her many bars. Half way down her side the complex gave way to the central well deck over her holds, and there C deck was truncated, ending in a railed and netted walkway that provided any interested passengers with a view of her navigation and control bridges, and, beyond these, of her quarterdeck astern.

Out in the sun and sweating again, Virgil climbed the steps towards the walkway. At the back of his neck was a hardening knot of tension, the product of an unexplained unease that had been growing since the container trucks' departure from Broken Hill. On the drive it had manifested itself as a constant worry about their schedule and an obsessive concern with security, trying Alan's limited patience and making his own journey a nightmare. Now, with the containers safely unloaded and time left to spare, it had undergone a transformation, re-emerging as a vague presentiment of some unknown trouble to come that refused to take on concrete form or go away, however much he tried to rationalise it.

At the centre of the walkway he leaned on the rail and shielded his eyes against the sun, looking down through the safety netting. The well deck was a long flat space between the mass of the forward superstructure and the foot of the navigation bridge, and sunlight beating up from hot deck plates and blazing from white-painted bulkheads, steps and gantries melted all detail in a crucible of light, leaving the black mouth of an open cargo hatch the only easily discernible feature. On the dockside the container handler, a cab and a winch on four thirty-foot legs, was making its final run, and he recognised the familiar big SeaFreight container as it swung across the deck in the claws of the handler's grab. Perhaps the glare was affecting the operator, because as it neared the hatch the travelling winch hesitated then jerked forwards again, setting grab and container swaying. Virgil frowned and narrowed his eyes. A small red helijet, of the leisure or light business type and fresh from the production line, was lashed to the deck near the foot of the navigation bridge, dangerously close to the container's arc. No doubt destined for some rich islander and deemed too fragile to stow in the hold, it now sat like a tethered target as the winch jerked again and the container swung with a purposefulness that was almost malicious. No question of which would come off worst in a collision, and an insurance investigation would mean identification. He drew a sharp breath.

"Your jet?" a voice asked at his elbow, and he looked round, startled, to see that a sandy-haired man had walked up unnoticed to lean on the rail beside him. Above his lightweight cream suit the stranger's mouth was curved into a smile, but his eyes were invisible, hidden behind a pair of gold-rimmed, light-reactant sunglasses.

Virgil shook his head. "No. My crate."

The man held out a hand. "You looked so worried that it had to be one or the other." He spoke American English with what at first sounded like a watered-down Texan drawl, but colouring the drawn-out vowels was an odd nasal twang that Virgil couldn't immediately identify. "Meadows," the man went on cordially, "Richard Meadows. You're not a regular shipper on this route?"

"No, it's our first trip. I'm Virgil Tracy," Virgil replied, Meadows' lingering grip and expectant smile forcing the reciprocal introduction.

"You say our. You're not travelling alone, then?"

"With my brother," Virgil answered a little reluctantly, then, deciding to air their cover story as a defence against further questions, went on: "We're marine engineers. Nothing big, just the leisure market." As he spoke the handler operator at last found the right controls and the SeaFreight container descended, vanishing into the black depths of the hold like a ship going down, quickly and without any fuss. He straightened up.

"Someone getting an expensive new yacht, I expect?" Meadows beamed unflinchingly towards him into the blinding sun. "Over in Samoa? Or Tahiti, perhaps?"

"We're only going as far as Suva." Virgil shook his head. "I'd better check that the container wasn't damaged. Good to meet you; see you around sometime."

Meadows nodded, still smiling. "We'll probably run into each other again before Suva. I've got an interest in boats myself, maybe we'll have a talk."

"Look forward to it," Virgil said.

At the bottom of the steps a door led into the shadows of C deck and Virgil took it, as the quickest way out of the gaze of Meadows, still watching from the rail above. Despite the briefness of their meeting something about his new acquaintance had set his teeth on edge; perhaps the crisply laundered cream suit and pure white shirt, uncreased and unstained in the oven heat, or perhaps his fondness for asking questions, and the too-easy friendliness that gave him an unsettling knack of getting answers to them. Virgil frowned uncomfortably. A talk with Meadows was something to be avoided, not looked forward to: maybe his motives were as innocent as those of the drunk at Billabong Creek, but with the combined nautical knowledge of Tracy Marine Engineering limited to Alan's information that Tsunami was a ship, even an idle quizzing on their pretended profession could prove to be worse than embarrassing.

His own clothes, unlike Meadows' inhumanly perfect suit all too obviously the worse for the heat, were stickily uncomfortable and he thought about his cabin and its shower, but responsibility and the nagging unease at the back of his mind led him to a companionway a little way ahead signposted 'FREIGHT - ENQUIRIES' and he jogged his way resignedly down, heading for E deck and the holds.

In this least pretentious part of the ship the surroundings were starkly utilitarian. A broad grating-floored corridor ran almost the width of her beam, with a row of large steel-shuttered doorways giving access aft into the crammed caverns of her holds, and at the distant end of the corridor a sealed hatch bearing the black sun-ray of a radiation warning indicated a crew-only route to the sanctum of her reactor complex. About half way down the corridor a good-looking brunette with an hourglass figure stood alone, studying a graffiti-smutted deck plan pasted to a bulkhead. No-one else was in sight. Sunlight and a stream of slightly fresher air coming from under the raised shutter of the third hold doorway in the row suggested the presence of an open hatch beyond, and as Virgil started forwards the brunette turned and went for the same door, walking through to vanish over the threshold. A few seconds later, Virgil followed her in.

At first his eyes were dazzled by light flooding down through the open hatch above. Heat from the sun's own reactor enveloped him in its furnace breath, and the sounds of activity from the dock crowded in, loud and almost painful after the relative quiet of Tsunami's cocooned interior. As his eyes adjusted he saw that the hold was large, and filled almost to capacity with containers and a consignment of chained-down trucks, all arranged in staggered rows to form a maze of steel-walled canyons, some blind, some leading off into the shadows, away from the hatchway's square of light. The brunette was nowhere in sight, and neither were the SeaFreight containers. He started off in search of them. One crate looked very much like another, and anyone else might have hired their containers from the SeaFreight yard, so when he found a likely candidate he would have to examine the customs labels. Stooping to check one red sticker he saw something wedged in the grating floor, and picked up a tiny square of plastic, backed with a pin, like a blank-faced lapel badge. He held it up, and saw that its unmarked face was shiny, dark, and slightly tinged with green. Mildly curious, he pocketed it and carried on. The alley he was following, a narrow squeeze between a row of containers and a line of trucks, opened suddenly out onto an empty space, and he saw that part of the hold had been cordoned off with heavy floor-to-ceiling canvas. Wondering why it was there, he barely had time to note the coarse fabric's roughly stencilled WN, when the air was torn by a shriek and the brunette suddenly re-appeared, stumbling backwards from behind the canvas pursued by a black-clad marine with stiff extended arms, his nervous fingers clasping the butt and trigger of a Navy automatic pistol.

In the split second that Virgil stood frozen in surprise the inevitable happened: the woman's high-fashion shoe caught in the metal grating underfoot and she fell, crashing down in a heap. She struggled to rise, but her pursuer raised the heavy weapon butt-upwards above the line of his shoulder, to all appearances just one movement away from bringing it down like a club.

"Hey! Are you crazy? What do you think you're doing?" Virgil sprinted towards them. The marine whirled, taken for a second off his guard, then lunged forwards, and the full force of an unexpected blow directed up under his rib cage sent Virgil staggering backwards as fast as the victim on whose part he had intervened, to sprawl gasping across the bonnet of a truck. Instinctively his adversary levelled the pistol against retaliation, and Virgil, suddenly staring down its barrel, struggling for breath and numb with astonishment, reacted with a similar reflex action, reaching down for a gun belt that wasn't there.

In the confines of the hold the pistol's blast was ear-splitting, a second's auditory agony in a tin box being slammed with a sledgehammer. Only the noise, the shock of the impact and a slight shake of the truck had time to register, and Virgil stood stock still, feeling but only beginning to assess the implications of the warm sticky liquid that was suddenly spraying into the air to spatter his face and overalls. After a second that seemed like an age he put a tentative hand to his cheek, and his fingers came away dripping with a fluid that was blue and glutinous: anti-corrosives and water from a still-hot, perforated radiator. As he stumbled away from the shot truck there was a clatter of boots from the direction of the corridor, then the glint of gold on white; two men in the light tropical uniforms of Tsunami's merchant navy officers.

"What the devil's going on in here?" The senior officer stared, eyes wide. "Stand down, marine!"

The pistol wavered, but only slightly, then from the depths of the hold another set of running feet brought an officer in blue serge, his cuffs stiff with braid and his cap weighted down with the now-familiar, heavy gold WN. The gun vanished quickly into its holster, and the white- and dark-uniformed camps faced each other over the sprawled form of the brunette, who still sat open-mouthed, gazing up at them from the gratings. Virgil leaned against the truck, wiping his face with a sleeve and trying to control his breathing.

"Do you understand me? I asked what's happening here." The senior merchant officer glared at the his World Navy counterpart, who held an incomprehensible exchange with his marine, then waved at the canvas and pointed down at the woman.

"She is the cause of this. She enter our secure area, against regulations, then she strike our guard and run. He simply put out a hand to restrain her -"

"That's his story," the brunette interrupted acidly, her voice revealing her as another American, this time unmistakably and unashamedly Bronx. "If you'd been restrained where I was restrained, buster, you'd have slapped that big ape, too."

"Alright." Tsunami's officer looked at Virgil. "And this man?"

"He try to interfere in her arrest. At the time, he act as if he have a gun. Our guard had reason to believe they were in league together."

"That's crazy!" Virgil stepped forward, shock looking for an outlet, and beginning to bubble over into anger. "I've never seen her before in my life. And does it really look as if I'm armed? Someone needs their head examined, playing around with loaded weapons on a civilian ship, and that guy there shouldn't be in charge of a pop-gun. First he threatened to batter her brains out with a pistol butt, then he turned the business end on me. He must've missed me by less than an inch."

"What were you doing in here in the first place?" Tsunami's officer asked.

"I've got some goods aboard; I came down to check on them. When I saw him waving the gun around I thought he must be having a brainstorm."

"That's right; that ape was going to kill me." Obviously recovered, the woman struggled to her feet. She pointed to Virgil. "He saved my life."

"And why were you in here?" Tsunami's officer drew a deep breath.

"I got lost." She batted her lashes. "I was looking for the little girls' powder room."

The officer threw her a glance suggestive of a more explosive kind of powder, muttered something barely audible, then obviously made up his mind. "Alright: get lost again, both of you." He raised a hand as the World Navy officer opened his mouth to protest. "A warning should've been posted outside this hold and it hasn't been, so I'll give you both the benefit of the doubt. But this area's been commandeered; it's off-limits to passengers now, and from the moment we sail it'll be off-limits to everyone except World Navy personnel. The World Navy will use arms if necessary to enforce that rule, and as you've seen their ammunition's live. I trust that's fully understood?"

"But you can't just let them play around with live ammunition here, aboard a passenger ship!" Virgil stared at him in amazement. "It must be against a dozen civilian statutes, and it's asking for trouble. Next time someone could be killed."

"Under world security law they can do more or less as they see fit." Tsunami's officer levelled a meaningful look. "Once we're at sea this hold will be sealed, so I suggest you leave it while you still have the chance. Amongst other things they're empowered to put suspected troublemakers under restraint." He nodded curtly to the World Navy officer. "This is obviously a misunderstanding: we'll escort these two out. In future if anyone's worried about their shipments you'll have to arrange for your people to check the goods on their behalf. And I suggest that you secure that door. I'll have to report the damaged truck; I take it you don't want anything else to add to the list."

"Cement heads," the brunette said dismissively as the steel shutter dropped into place and they found themselves outside in the empty corridor. "Are you okay?"

"Sure." Virgil frowned down at fingertips that were still a little shaky. "What I can't believe is the way they're taking it all so lightly. Just a misunderstanding? If that guy had been a better shot they'd have a fatality on their hands right now, and they still could have one if someone else wanders into there. I figure the Captain might be interested in hearing about this."

"Don't waste your breath." She shook her head. "With the kind of laws the World Navy will have pulled on him he won't be able to do a thing; that's why those guys just wanted to sweep it all under the carpet." She looked him up and down appraisingly, a new interest beginning to dawn in her eyes. "So, tell me, what were you really doing in there?"

"Doing?" He frowned again, nonplussed. "Just trying to check my shipment, like I said."

She shrugged. "Okay, if that's how you want to play it, that's your business. But you really are something. Were you actually ready to walk into a slug in there just for me?"

"Guess I wasn't exactly expecting one," Virgil confessed. In her eyes he could see her interest changing fast to open admiration, but in spite of her obvious charms some mental warning lamp was blinking, and the feeling her look inspired in him fell well short of enthusiasm. He readied an excuse to go, but she started to rummage in her bag.

"Sue them, that's where the big money is these days. Squeeze them until those little gold pips squeak. I'll give you the number of one of the best lawyers on the mainland: he'd find a way to prove that the earth's hollow and the moon's made of green cheese if the price was right."

"Thanks." He tried to sound grateful. "But if I wanted to make something of it we've got a pretty good family attorney." He touched his spattered overalls. "Now I'd better go, before this stuff sets hard and they have to cut me out of these."

"Please yourself." She made a mock-rueful face. "But if you need a drink later I'll be in the Samoa Saloon. Guess you're the first guy who ever saved my life, so remember: if there's anything I can do…"

"Okay," Virgil promised. "I'll remember."

On his way back up the companionway he had to grab for the handrail as his surroundings made an unannounced lurch to the right. There was a deep-throated blare that resonated through the fabric of the ship, then the answering whoop of a tug from somewhere in the dock basin outside. He looked at his watch. It was two minutes after four, and Tsunami was under way.

The cliffs of North and South Head hunched on the horizon far astern, the last outposts of Sydney harbour and of the continent sloping steeply away beneath Tsunami as she turned her bow north-east, into the Pacific and towards the hoped-for cool of the coming evening. Even out over open water the heat was thick and still oppressive, and the exhausts of the departing pilot launch left a blue-grey jellyfish of diesel smoke pulsating, drifting almost imperceptibly in the heavy air.

"Looks like we're bang on schedule." Alan propped his elbows on the well-deck rail as he watched the launch bounce away, bows slapping water. "They should be cutting in the hydrojets any minute. No need to worry now about not reaching Fiji on time."

"I hope you're right." Virgil leaned on the rail beside him. "The quicker we're in Suva, off this boat and away from the Navy the happier I'll be."

"Take it easy." Alan glanced at him. "Okay, that business in the hold was pretty nasty, but let's change the subject: we've hardly talked about anything else for the last two hours. Don't forget that you must've given that guy as big a shock as he gave you, going for the draw that way, and if they're shipping components for their fleet they need to be careful, a lot could be at stake. If one of those marksmen shoots to kill he doesn't miss: he was giving you a warning, that's all. Now they'll probably lock themselves in down there for the rest of the trip, and no-one else will be in danger, because no-one will see them again." He grinned. "Anyway, admit it: you're just still sore because someone pulled a gun on you."

"Maybe," Virgil admitted. "But it's little things like that that you remember, Alan."

The sarcasm was lost on Alan, but Tin-Tin moved up to join them from a little further down the rail.

"Well, I still think it was terrible. I agree with Virgil: I don't think they should be allowed to carry guns on a passenger ship. I think it's a miracle he wasn't killed."

Perhaps not a miracle, but even two hours after the event it still felt like a closer-than-average shave. Virgil breathed in and took time to savour a lungful of warm air as he watched a tiny breeze rise briefly on the surface of the water to scatter a clutch of bright little fish-scale ripples. In the distance Tsunami's departing escort of tugs retreated across a Pacific that was unbounded and blue, and down over the rail the long grey line of a hydrojet channel broke surface like a cruising whale's back, dipping and shining in the water. Inboard the decks were colourful and crowded, as they had been since the spectacular passage under Sydney's great bridge, and would be until the last rite of departure was over, with the activation of the hydrojets. Nearby a large Japanese family group were milling with their cameras at the rail, and in their midst a girl with the fine and perfect features of a geisha wore a translucent sun-hat that seemed to be made of exquisitely matched and fitted panels of tortoiseshell. She met his glance with an amused almost-smile and he lowered his eyes, aware of his stiff and filthy overalls that somehow, in all the time since he had left the hold, still hadn't been changed. Unconsciously he tried to smooth them down, then feeling something sharp in the pocket, he turned back to Alan and Tin-Tin.

"Say, I meant to show you something I came across before they tried to perforate me down there. Do you recognise it?"

Alan took the plastic badge and examined it closely. "That's funny. It's a dosimeter."

"A what?" Tin-Tin bent her head round Alan's shoulder to look.

"It's a way of registering radiation exposure," Alan said. "Everyone working near a radiation source, like a reactor, has to wear one. It's a safety measure."

"Right." Virgil nodded. "Could be that's how it got in the hold; there's a door to the reactor area nearby. Maybe some technician wandered in."

"Well, I hope he's got himself a new dosimeter." Alan handed the badge to Tin-Tin. "There you go, you can have it. Better wear it, especially if you're anywhere near the stern; that's where the ship's reactor containment will be. If the chemical strip stays black or green you're okay. If it goes red you won't need a lamp in your cabin tonight: you'll be able to read by your own glow."

"You're not frightening me, Alan." Tin-Tin took the badge with pointed equanimity. "I know how strict safety regulations are for nuclear ships in the Pacific nowadays. After all, no-one in this part of the world wants another Mururoa."

"You can say that again," Alan agreed. "When that atoll cracked apart last century it was the end of atomic weapons testing around here. And the end of fly-by-night shipping lines running unlicensed nuclear vessels. We're safe enough: there'll be a three-foot-thick concrete containment down below decks to ensure there's no danger of sea contamination."

"And the Mururoa disaster was the end of the French Polynesian fishing stocks for over ten years," Virgil reminded them. "The marine life out there's just starting to recover, to say nothing of the islanders who're still sick from eating contaminated food. But the guys running the weapons tests thought that that atoll could contain the radiation, and they were too stubborn to listen to anyone who disagreed with them. Guess it just shows that you can't be too careful."

"Look!" Tin-Tin cut in excitedly. "Something's happening!"

Down over the rail the sea at the rear of the hydrojet channel had been still; now with startling suddenness it began to churn as Tsunami's turbines felt the push of steam from her nuclear furnace, freshly stoked and glowing with a deadly luminescence in its regulation point-nine-metre thick, reinforced concrete firebox deep in the bowels of the ship. There were no shouts of stokers, clank of barrows or the rattle of coal but her fires leapt up and her boilers bubbled at her heart and exhaled their searing, irresistible breath in same way as boilers had since the first sea-crankshaft turned the first sea-paddle, and her passengers leaning on the rail felt it buzz and thrum with energy as Tsunami came to life. At the stern the sea thrashed into foam then a solid wall of water shot up, funnelling out into a curling green shock wave as the ship lurched forward and rose up, lifting breathtakingly and miraculously to stand up on the ocean as her speed increased, water and weed cascading away in a great curtain all along her side.

"Microfoils," Virgil said, looking down over the rail. He laughed. "She's a flying boat!"

Tsunami answered with a bass blast then a whoop and a shriek, applauding her own performance. The reply of the distant tugs drifted back, conveying a final bon voyage, and the house flag limp above her navigation bridge crackled and streamed out in a sudden fresh breeze that brought the first real tang of ocean, welcome and exhilarating. Beside the rail the Japanese girl gasped and then laughed as the tortoiseshell hat took flight, and Virgil had a momentary vision of retrieving it, but it was rescued by a quick hand out of the surrounding crowd. As the ship steadied Tin-Tin leaned out to look at its wake, high aggressive twin waves falling rapidly behind in a widening 'V' of foam. "Tsunami." She raised her voice above the thunder. "I think I see why now."

"What's that?" Alan asked.

"Tsunami. It means 'harbour wave' in Japanese. It's a very destructive sort of tidal wave. I didn't know she was a hydrofoil."

"She isn't," Alan answered, "she's too big for that, the hull's only half-way out of the water. But the microfoils speed her up by cutting down drag, and it should make for a pretty smooth ride." He turned from the rail and gazed up at the T-shaped tower of the navigation bridge. "Well, now that's over let's take a look around. Reckon we can get up there?"

"Don't try it," Virgil advised. "If they don't have a lunatic with a pistol handy they can always hang you from the yardarm. And remember what I said: look out for that Meadows guy."

"Why, where're you going?" Alan asked.

Virgil glanced down at his overalls. "Where I was going a couple of hours ago when I met up with you two. To take a shower."

Under the hot water the world took on a more optimistic aspect, and he combed the last of Australia's red dust out of his hair with his fingers, feeling the taut muscles in his neck and shoulders gradually relax. The strains of the drive and the confrontation with the Navy became suddenly easier to forget, but the vague, unaccountable sense of foreboding declined to be soaped away with the grime, hanging sharp but remote somewhere above the cubicle ceiling like an invisible Sword of Damocles. He made a mental effort to reach for it, to grasp it and by identification render it harmless, bringing it under his control, but the harder he tried the further it retreated, dodging into hiding in the shadows in a corner of his mind. It was crazy, he decided, and turned his thoughts away. Time to take Alan's advice and enjoy the trip: they didn't have long aboard Tsunami, and the Queen Of The Pacific, if the law of inversely proportionate names was anything to go by, would probably be a rust-bucket.

Feeling considerably better he towelled himself dry, dressed, then wandered back into the main part of the cabin. On a little rail-topped table was a set of glossy brochures and, he was gratified to see, a courtesy bottle of a good Australian wine. He poured himself a glassful, selected a brochure and stretched out on the bunk to read.

'NV Tsunami - cruising experience of a lifetime,' the brochure's cover announced. He flipped through its pages. 'The Nuclear Vessel Tsunami offers stateroom-quality accommodation for 800 passengers, and a 3-deck leisure complex including two night-clubs, a casino, pool and spa. With her revolutionary hydrojet propulsion system she has attained trials speeds of 100 knots, but when cruising will normally maintain a comfortable 80. Stabilised microfoils ensure a smooth journey in all normal weather conditions, and this, together with the close attention to detail and luxurious appointments throughout the ship, makes a cruise in the NV Tsunami, flagship of Capricorn Lines, one of the most exclusive leisure opportunities available anywhere in the world today.' Then, at the foot of the last page: 'Capricorn Lines - our growing fleet includes the NV Tempest, launched 2020, the NV Typhoon, launched 2022, and the NV Tsunami (formerly the Orion), launched 2023 .'

He glanced around the cabin. It was certainly luxurious, with its brass fittings and what could pass at a moderately close inspection for real walnut panelling. It would be a comfortable trip, a great start to their vacation for Alan and Tin-Tin, but for him at least it was unlikely to prove to be the experience of a lifetime. The justification for paying Capricorn Lines' exclusive prices was the speed with which Tsunami could get them to Suva, and he hoped that the brochure's promise of a steady eighty knots was more than just advertising-copy writers' optimism.

A vaguely star-shaped knot in the wood panelling above him caught his eye, and he gazed at it idly: 'formerly the Orion'. Why the change? Orion seemed a reasonable name, whereas Tsunami was odd, hardly confidence-inspiring, especially for any Japanese passengers. Some time back Gordon had re-christened the Tracys' small launch after its third collision: 'Change her name, change her luck,' he had said. Maybe Orion had stuck on the slipway, or failed to bring the dollars in as fast as Capricorn had hoped, and now re-born as Tsunami was supposed to set sail into a new sea of better fortune. He rejected the idea, thinking of her sister-ships' equally alarming names. More likely, as Tin-Tin had said, she was a recent acquisition, and had lately become Tsunami for no better reason than the whim of corporate naming convention. But had she been a lucky ship? Then to change her name would be foolhardy, if Gordon's theory was correct...

He lay back, suddenly tired, the glow of the wine crawling outwards from his empty stomach in the mysterious way of alcohol to reach and numb his fingertips without passing through any territory in between. The star on the panelling blurred, and as his mind began the necessary disconnections to busy itself with sleep, he wondered oddly if so many people would bring their money to these bright holiday ships if they once thought of the mass of superstition still caked like ancient sea-growth down below the waterline. Spit on the deck and you spit in Neptune's face; whistle and you'll call up a storm, and an albatross, as everyone knows, is no bird but a spirit that comes to a dying ship to receive the souls of the drowned…

Behind his closed eyes, a flight of white birds that might have flown out of memory or been the products of imagination wheeled in a blue morning sky over a strangely agitated sea to carry his thoughts away, and a few moments later the brochure slipped from his fingers and fell to the floor.

All around him Tsunami was busy, preparing for the first night of her voyage. Her hydrojet pumps in their underwater housings sucked up the Pacific and spewed it out behind her in a steady maelstrom, their performance constantly monitored, chivvied and clucked over by the engine room computers and their oil-stained, sweating acolytes. In her galleys her catering staff were accounting for over a third of the load on her generators, temperatures and tempers rising inexorably towards the climax of their day, while driven by the steady heartbeat of routine a constant flow of stewards and waiters trod their programmed paths through the bustling arteries of her corridors. With the passage of time money trickling in across the bars and gaming tables of her leisure complex became a steady stream, and on her now blessedly cooling upper decks passengers stood or strolled, breathing the exhilerating air of ocean and watching the sun dip down beyond the endlessly diverging contrails of her wake.

Above the navigation bridge the blank eyes of her radar and satellite systems rotated ceaselessly, alert to the invisible, and in the weather room at the heart of her control bridge the prognosis for the night flopped into a printer basket and was pinned to a board, unremarked and unremarkable. In a final flush of fire that lit her pale superstructure like a touch of benediction the sun disappeared, and Tsunami sailed on into the evening ocean, cruising through the calm water at a comfortable and steady eighty knots.

CHAPTER 3

LIGHT BREEZE

Small wavelets; crests have a glassy appearance

(Force 2 on the Beaufort Wind Scale)

SOMEONE WAS HAMMERING on the door.

"Virgil? Virgil! Are you asleep in there?"

Alan's voice: Virgil sat up with a start. Convinced that he was at home and had slept through a rescue alert he looked round wildly for the missing bedside intercom, then remembering where he was his next thought was for the containers. Springing up he unlatched the cabin door and rolled it aside a little too heavily, crashing it into the end of its metal tracking.

"What is it? What's happened?"

"Nothing. Take it easy, will you?" Alan stood in the corridor, regarding him with a mixture of amusement and surprise. "I came to make sure you'd be ready in time for dinner. Seems it's just as well I did." He pushed past and into the cabin.

"Dinner?" Virgil repeated blankly, staring at his brother's neat bow tie and silk-trimmed jacket.

"That's right." Alan flopped down on the bunk, taking a small box from his jacket pocket. "Thought it'd be a good time to give Tin-Tin the bracelet I bought her in Broken Hill." He opened the box, and blue and red sparks winked in the hearts of a clutch of tiny opals. "Or maybe I'll wait till we get to Tavarua, then she might stop talking about how great it would've been to be taking a cruise instead. I've heard nothing but how she'd like to stay on in this tub since we came aboard. What do you think?"

"You woke me up to ask me that?" Virgil blinked, incredulous.

Alan snapped the box shut, smiling broadly. "Sorry, didn't I say? You've got five minutes to get yourself changed and get down to the first-class dining room: it's dinner with the officers, tuxedo obligatory, and since we're only aboard for one night we drew the Captain's table." He looked at his watch. "Four minutes now. Wish you could see your face."

"He's going to ask us all about marine engineering," Virgil said in dismay, diving into the bathroom. "What am I going to say?" He turned the tap and cold water splattered into the basin with unexpected force, soaking the towel. He threw some of the icy liquid over his face with an odd twinge of revulsion and shook his head, gasping. "Why didn't you wake me sooner?"

"Tin-Tin and I have everything worked out," Alan called back. "Anyway you'd just have panicked, like you're doing now. Why spoil your evening?"

Virgil ducked back through the door and aimed the wet towel at his brother's immaculate jacket with clammy accuracy. "Very thoughtful, Alan. Thanks."

Dinner was, unexpectedly, a success. The Captain proved to be a large and affable man, happy to be steered like a good-tempered liner on any course of conversation his guests introduced, and who spent most of the meal explaining the intricacies of his own profession for the benefit of Tin-Tin, who, elegant in an azure silk creation of her own design, was at her sweetest, seeming to have an inexhaustible supply of questions on the workings and running of the ship.

Across the room the Japanese girl stood out in an arresting trouser suit of gold-embroidered red, flashing her quick, light smile on the members of her family squeezed round their extended table, and Virgil, taking an occasional glance and enjoying the good food, fair wine and soaking up the room's convivial atmosphere, gradually relaxed. After drinks and small talk the gathering ended with an invitation for Tracy Marine Engineering to inspect Tsunami's bridge at any time, and the Captain departed to process his evening's paperwork, taking leave of Tin-Tin with an obvious reluctance that set her blond co-conspirator scowling at him resentfully across the table.

Left alone, they decided to investigate the leisure complex and made their way in an easy and cheerful mood up and out onto the deck. In keeping with her passengers Tsunami too was dressed for the evening in time-honoured fashion, ropes of little multicoloured lights running fore and aft from her navigation bridge and slung in scalloped relays from post to post above her rails. The air outside was welcomingly cool, soft and redolent of ocean; water thundered gently away from the distant stern in an invisible, unbroken wave, and above the fairground bulbs and the glow from the busy upper decks the stars were shining.

"Oh, isn't it beautiful?" Tin-Tin breathed, looking up. "I almost wish we weren't going ashore tomorrow. I wish I could stay here for ever."

They wandered forward to the observation deck, away from the lights. The sky overhead was sparkling with stars, huge, white and brilliant, dusted across the immense vault of the night from one faintly-glowing horizon to the other. Alan and Tin-Tin moved a little way off on their own and stood hand in hand, gazing out over the gently undulating, starlit water. Virgil looked up. The Southern Cross hung in the centre of the sky, bright and compact beside the scattered lights of Centaurus, while nearer the horizon, in the sprawling constellations of the River and the Ship, the giant stars Achernar and Canopus glowed, cold and remote in the vast silence. Abruptly, in the starless region just above the Cross, an unexpected movement caught his eye: a tiny white spark blazed into life, arcing down so quickly he could hardly follow it. It swelled and bloated, incandescent, then was gone, its trail fading rapidly behind it. A meteor, maybe, or some scrap of orbiting space junk burning up on its headlong dive into the atmosphere. He watched, but nothing else happened: not a meteor shower, then. Inexplicably, the sense of some catastrophe about to happen returned with oppressive force, and he felt the cool air suddenly cold, and shivered. From the lighted doorways of the Tahiti Lounge at the after end of the deck music was drifting, and he called to Tin-Tin and Alan. "Come on, let's go get a drink."

Tin-Tin smiled as they joined him, the opal bracelet now out of its box and reflecting the starlight dully from her wrist. "Look what Alan's given me. It's a wonderful present, for a wonderful night. I've never seen so many stars." She gazed up at the glittering bowl, lost in admiration.

"I just saw a shooting star," Virgil told them.

"Really?" Tin-Tin turned her face to him, childlike in enchantment. "Did you make a wish?"

"Guess I forgot." He smiled at her, charmed. "You can have it."

"But don't tell anyone what it is, or it won't come true." Alan slipped his arm around her waist, guiding her on proprietorially.

"And careful how you use it," Virgil added, remembering Tavarua as he fell dutifully in behind them. "Things don't always turn out just the way you think."

The Tahiti Lounge was a big bar room, running the length and most of the breadth of the lower deck of the leisure complex. Some stuffed southern bluefins in great trophy cases and draped, hand-knotted Polynesian fishing nets announced its designer's theme, and fixed to the canopy of the long central bar was a full-sized Tahitian outrigger sailboat, canvas starched to cement stiffness, heeling wildly in the non-existent wind on a solid polyplastic sea. The bar appeared to specialise in cocktails, and they selected some that looked interesting, Tin-Tin changing her mind several times before opting for a poisonous-blue concoction which arrived in a glass so heavily frosted that Alan's fingers froze to it as he carried to the table. They settled down in a quiet corner near the after doors, where soft lights and alcove seating gave a measure of anonymity, and Alan sucked his stinging fingertips.

"What did they call that thing?"

"An Icebreaker." Tin-Tin fished out an intricate swizzle stick from among the crushed ice and cubes. "Look, you get a little boat with it. I suppose that's the icebreaker, battling through the bergs."

"Or the Titanic, sailing smash into one." Alan took hold of the stick mischievously, dunking it upended into the viscous blue depths of the glass. "There; sunk with all hands." He let it go.

The miniature plastic ship drifted sadly round the bottom of the glass, and Virgil watched it, toying with his own drink. The chill on the observation deck had drawn the charm from what had begun to seem an almost magical night, and now for no particular reason he manoeuvred his rum-based cocktail until light falling through it projected its red pool directly on the swizzle stick wreck. The sight of the combination of blue frozen-ocean and fire created a sudden shock like a punch in some mental solar plexus, and he drew a sharp breath, feeling that somewhere a door had opened for an instant that was unimaginably brief then slammed, erasing all memory of what had been glimpsed beyond it. Shaken, he saw Tin-Tin eye him curiously, and found himself correcting Alan with an emphasis that was unintended.

"You're wrong, Alan. The Titanic didn't go down with all hands: she left quite a few survivors. But she sank so quickly that none of those old coal-fired ships had time to reach her, and she only carried enough lifeboats for half the number of her passengers. That sort of thing couldn't happen today, with modern safety regulations."

"Sure; I know that." Alan shrugged, then pulled a face. "I bet that north Atlantic water must've been pretty cold then, in spring. They say the night was clear and the visibility was good: no-one could've believed they could run slap into a chunk of ice the size of a house in those conditions. Maybe some of them went out on deck to look at the stars, just like us. And I guess a lot of them must've been in the bar when it happened, just like-"

"Oh, Alan, can't we talk about something less gloomy?" Tin-Tin pleaded, but Alan's face lit as a new idea arrived.

"Say, if only we'd been around then! How do you reckon International Rescue would've handled that one, Virg? We'd have needed Gordon and Thunderbird Four for sure, maybe Scott withThunderbird One, and you-"

"Alan!" Virgil hissed through clenched teeth, horrified. "Are you crazy? Someone'll hear."

"Who?" Alan scowled, stung. "No-one's listening. It's you who's crazy, you can't relax for five seconds. Seems like I can't even open my mouth any more: for the last two days it's been watch what you say, Alan; don't talk to anyone about what's in the containers, Alan, non-stop. And I'm sick of it." He thumped down his glass and set his jaw belligerently.

Tin-Tin opened her mouth to speak, but a new voice provided the intervention for her. A pale figure that might have materialised from the thick light of the lamps around them bent its head to scatter a grey snow of cigar ash over the table. "Mr. Tracy, and Mr. Tracy, I presume? Mind if we join you?"

Virgil looked up, and his rapidly sinking spirits touched rock-bottom. The crisp cream suit might have been the same or a lighter and more immaculate evening version, but even without the sunglasses Richard Meadows' face was unmistakable. His eyes, of an indeterminate watery colour, moved round rapidly, taking in every detail of the scene. "Richard Meadows," he went on genially, setting down a glass of weak beer. "From this afternoon, you remember?" He beckoned to the woman walking up behind him, her silvery cocktail dress flowing with the curves of her figure like water as she moved. "And this is my wife, Carolyn."

"We've met." The brunette from the hold smiled at Virgil thinly. "Richard and I have been telling each other all about you. Too bad you turned out to be the same guy."

After the inevitable introductions she settled herself next to Virgil with depressing satisfaction, while Meadows edged round the table to install himself by Alan, making Tin-Tin wince as he trod on her foot. He cast his smile around. "Glad we met up again, I'd been looking forward to a chat. Marine engineering must be a great business to be in in these parts, and a growing one. If it's not an indiscretion, may I ask what sort of annual turnover you have?"

"Hasn't it been hot?" Tin-Tin asked quickly, producing a disarming smile. "You know, the people in Sydney can't remember an autumn like it. It's the first of May tomorrow, after all, and it'll be winter very soon."

"Yes, it has been warm," Meadows agreed, surprised. "As I-"

"Of course in the northern hemisphere it's spring," Tin-Tin pointed out. "We've a friend in England, and she says it's been hot there, too. Perhaps it's something to do with global warming."

"You have an interest in the weather?" Meadows asked.

"We're interested in everything," Alan answered him, "except for business; we're taking a break from that right now. You folks from anywhere we know?"

"Well," Meadows answered slowly, as if suddenly uncertain and adrift, "we've been out of the States for some time, of course. But we're from the great old heartlands, originally. Yes, sir; Kansas born and bred."

"Kansas?" Alan showed his teeth in a suppressed grin and Virgil frowned at Meadows in undisguised suspicion. Beside him, Carolyn Meadows raised her eyes to heaven. "We're from Kansas ourselves," Alan went on, still with a smile. "Sorry, didn't recognise your accent."

Meadows had a sudden accident with the drinks, overturning his beer and Tin-Tin's glass onto the table, and as the mess was being cleaned up Carolyn Meadows leaned towards Virgil. "Take my advice and clear out of here," she suggested in a whisper. "Try the Fiji Bar."

"Why?" Virgil demanded bluntly without lowering his voice, but Meadows interrupted with an apology for his clumsiness, sliding a small leather card-case over the table.

"How about some more drinks, Carolyn? I'd get up, but I don't want to tread on Miss Kyrano's pretty toes again."

Carolyn Meadows complied without answering, and as she rose Virgil automatically got up and followed her to help. "Thanks," she told him, her face suddenly set and unreadable as they walked to the bar. "And I'm sorry."

"What for?"

She shrugged, setting the water-dress cascading like a shimmering Niagara, and averted her eyes. "If you can't use an apology now just save it for later, I say. Who knows, you may find yourself needing one."

In the crush of bodies queuing at the bar she gave a sudden squeal and staggered, and Virgil grabbed her shoulder as she fell heavily against him. "What's wrong?" he asked, locked with her for a moment in an unavoidable embrace as she struggled with obvious difficulty to regain her balance. "Are you okay?"

"Okay." Still steadying herself she reached down and held up a shoe, its high pointed heel dangling by a thin strip of leather. "Made for looks, not use. Guess I'll have to go change." She took a square of plastic from Meadows' card-case. "Use this for the drinks; it's just a cash card, there's no security number. And don't forget: a Samoa Sunset for me, Barracuda lager for Richard." She limped off, towards the forward end of the lounge and the companionway down to D deck, and increasingly suspicious without any clear reason Virgil watched her go, then he turned back to the bar.

"Barracuda?" the talkative Australian steward asked. "Sure you know what you're doing, mate?" He tapped his forehead. "Got it, it's for Mr. Meadows, right? Saw you two chatting. We always keep him a couple of crates aboard, and he's the only one I know drinks the stuff. They say it's beaut once you get used to it, but I've never been able to work out how to start. I use it to clean up the brass-work."

"He travels with you pretty regularly, then?" Virgil asked as the steward worked, trying to make the query sound casual.

"Every season. Mostly at the beginning and the end, when it's cooler and quieter and the big money's about. He likes his cards and his roulette upstairs, and he prefers his company financial." He nodded up through the ceiling bulkhead towards the casino and patted his ribs. "With plenty in the wallet."

"Crazy thing, us running into him. Turns out we're from the same state back home. Sure is some coincidence."

The steward grinned and leaned forward confidentially. "Would be, except he's no American. He's just a Woolloomooloo yank."

"A what?"

"A fake, mate. He's as much of an Aussie as I am; he used to drink in the same crook old bar in Sydney as I did. Then he went off to the States, came back with the accent and the sheila, moved into an apartment in Bondi." He looked thoughtful as he emptied out the contents of the shaker. "Nobody knows what he does for a living, though. If you find out let me in on his secret, will you? There's your grog."

Back at the table Carolyn Meadows had not returned and Meadows had disappeared. Alan and Tin-Tin sat close together, deep in conversation. "He went for a comfort break," Alan explained, pointing towards the washrooms in answer to Virgil's unspoken question. "Not sure where he is now. What have you done with her?"

"Her shoe broke, she went to change." Virgil sat down and leaned forwards, serious-faced. "Listen, I just found out about Meadows. He's Australian, the accent's faked. And he's a gambler, and it seems no-one knows where his money comes from."

"If he's a gambler maybe he cheats," Alan suggested.

"Maybe," Virgil conceded, unconvinced. "But what if he trades information, Alan? He's sure fond of asking questions. How could we get the containers back home with a spy on our tails? Right now we could be risking the security of the whole organisation."

"I don't think it's that bad." Tin-Tin shook her head. "Alan and I were just talking about it. Perhaps those two are husband and wife, but I'd say partners in petty crime might be a better description of them. If they've anything in mind it's probably to trick us out of our money, and I'm sure Alan's right about the cheating. If they suggest a visit to the casino I think we should find something else to do."

"Okay," Virgil agreed, still dubious but willing to trust Tin-Tin's insight into character a little more than Alan's. "She tried to give me some kind of veiled warning, then she started to apologise for something, but none of it made sense. If they're working together maybe it wasn't meant to." Becoming aware of Meadows' cash card in his hand for the first time since he sat down, he reached into his inside pocket. "Better put this away safe until he gets back. Then I figure we should find an excuse to leave, before one of us lets something slip." He stopped, puzzled, and patted his other pockets.

"Lost something?" Alan asked.

"My card-case." Virgil stood up, frowning. "Must've left it on the bar when we came in. The card for the account Dad set up for our expenses is in there; he'll blow a fuse if I don't get it back." He looked across the room at the crowded bar, worried and exasperated. "Heck, can't anythinggo right on this crazy ship?"

Carolyn Meadows flung the broken shoe into the wardrobe. "If we keep on working this stunt I want my clothing allowance increased: that's two pairs gone in one day. And why didn't you leave it to me when they asked where we're from? No-one could pick up an accent as thick as yours any further north than Fort Worth."

"Stop whingeing." Meadows slouched on the bunk, an open briefcase propped in front of him, a little monochrome screen alive inside its lid. "You didn't do too well with the card-case, either; his cash cards only had a couple of hundred credits between them. I've moved that into my holding account. There's one debit card, but it looks like their company account, so we may be lucky."

"Lucky, schmucky." She adjusted her hair at the mirror. "I don't want any more to do with it. They're nice people."

"Nice?" Meadows inserted a plastic card into the briefcase's reader without looking up. "You wouldn't know what the word meant."

"You're right," she conceded, "I've been around you too long. What're you doing now? They'll be getting suspicious."

"It takes time." He tapped impatiently on the compact keyboard. "The Telebank link's slow tonight, there's some kind of interference right across the frequencies. All I can do is keep trying different routes through the bank networks until I find one that'll accept an account enquiry without a security number. Then we'll see if Tracy Marine Engineering has a nice fat bank balance."

"So your box of tricks can suck it dry. I almost hope they're broke."

"Shut up, I've got something." Meadows bent eagerly towards the screen. "Eastern Pacific Bank, via Sunda Straits International, via People's Bank of New Guinea." He frowned, puzzled. "But there's nothing in the account."

She laughed. "They are broke."

"Wait. It's set up to draw on a higher-level account: it's a subsidiary." He fiddled with the keyboard. "It's linked to this one, Tracy Holdings. And to J. Tracy, Tracy USA; there're dozens of them." He typed on for a few moments with increasing speed and excitement, then stopped and looked round. "Maybe you'd like a chance to revise your opinion of me. We finally made it."

"Made what? What're you talking about?"

"We just dialled ourselves a direct line into everything we ever wanted. I'm not sure yet who your friend and his pretty-boy brother really are, but you can bet a dollar to your sweet nature they're no small-time marine engineers." He pulled the card from the reader and waved it slowly and triumphantly back and forth. "They've got over a hundred accounts in the Eastern Pacific alone. They're flamin' multi-billionaires!"

"He's back." Alan looked up as Meadows threaded his way towards them through the crowded room. "Wonder what kept him?"

Meadows sat down, making no comment on Carolyn Meadows' absence, and looked expectantly from face to face. "Is something wrong?"

"I lost my card-case," Virgil told him, holding out the borrowed cash card and getting ready to rise. "I must've left it on the bar, and now it's gone. Sorry, but we have to-"

"Tsk." Meadows took the card and tutted. "I doubt you'll find it; there's no honesty about these days. You'd best be careful, do you have your card security numbers written down? Maybe somewhere in your cabin?"

"No," Virgil said.

Meadows pressed his thumb to his cash card, letting the warmth bring out the miniature balance display, and seeing a red zero bent the plastic with a gesture of resignation and grinned. "Interesting things, security numbers. You use them every day, but if someone asked you to trot one straight out you probably wouldn't remember it. Don't expect you could tell me yours if I asked you right now."

"Guess I could, if I wanted to." Virgil frowned, staring at Meadows' flushed, excited face and wondering what was going on behind it. "What is this?"

"Nothing." Meadows went on bending his card and shrugged. "I'm just sorry for you. I've got plenty more of these, but it must come hard for you, being without money. Especially when you're used to having so much of it."

Alan looked at him sharply. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"Don't talk to anyone about what's in the containers," Meadows quoted, turning his smile on Alan. "I think those were your words. What's your real business, Mr. Tracy?"

Virgil stiffened, but Meadows gave the card a last savage bend that snapped it like a pistol crack. "And all that talk about the weather. You've got your little native girl well trained. If I'd known they were so tractable I'd keep one myself; I hear they're cheap little bits to run, and I could do with saving money."

The colour drained away from Alan's face in shock, then rushed back in a flush of fury. He sprang up, knocking over his chair, then stumbled forward against the table as the whole of C deck shook to a reverberating crash. Glasses smashed, raining from the bar and rolling off tables, and the sudden din and confusion was punctuated by a few staccato screams. The vibration of the engines died, and with a stomach-turning lurch that sent half of her still-standing passengers tumbling to the floor, Tsunami sank down into the water.

CHAPTER 4

MODERATE BREEZE

Small waves, becoming longer

(Force 4 on the Beaufort Wind Scale)

IN THE FEW moments that it took the ship to find her voice, Alan reached the open deck and the starboard rail. As Tin-Tin and Virgil stumbled breathlessly up behind him the silence of shock was beginning to give way to the gradual rising hubbub of bruised and scared humanity from every deck, and dark shapes trapped behind the windows of the overhanging A and B levels above stared down on the Tahiti Lounge passengers, who, with less restriction, poured out through its open double doors into the night. The crush at the rail was already two-deep as Alan leaned out, his voice hard-edged with tension and excitement.

"I don't get it, there's nothing here! But with a crash like that we sure hit something. And it sounded like it came from this side."

His own body tense and his heart still thumping from its second adrenalin-induced alarm of the day, Virgil leaned out beside him. Down in the now much closer water the dark shape of a hydrojet channel swam with a faint phosphorescence where the warm sea surface washed it, but there was no sign of damage or wreckage, and it lay like a tranquil whale, untroubled and indifferent. Beyond it a thin patchy mist had sprung up from nowhere and was rising like a ghostly steam to blur and dim the stars, but all around the ship the night sat thickly on the ocean, veiling its secrets with its black wings, and nothing else was visible. The little breeze Tsunami had generated as she cut through the water was gone, but a stronger and sharper stream of air had woken from the north and the ship bumped sluggishly, lying idle but still level in a lengthening Pacific swell. Virgil straightened up, and Alan met his glance with worried eyes.

"A hit below the waterline, do you figure? Doesn't feel like we're settling any."

With no answer to give, Virgil looked back inboard again. Through the rising tide of frightened voices he caught a clatter of distant feet running at the stern, and a peculiar two-tone whistle: the urgent summons of a bosun's pipe. Then, suddenly and deafeningly, the true voice of Tsunami obliterated every other sound, exhaling her superheated breath in two long foghorn blasts like the bellow of a hurt Leviathan, and an undertow of heightened fear ran in a cold current through the crowd. "Submerged rocks!" a barely controlled voice called out from the rail, "We've struck a reef, we're going to sink!" Simultaneously, the garden-party lights that trailed between the rail posts and above the superstructure all blinked out at once, letting the dark flood in, and the crowd, now pressed half a dozen deep along Tsunami's starboard side, caught its breath in a single sharp inhalation of alarm. At his side Tin-Tin's face was white beneath her elaborate coiffure, and hoping the tension in his muscles wouldn't communicate itself Virgil put his arm around her shoulders, and raised his voice.

"Take it easy: there's no water round here less than six thousand feet deep, so we sure haven't run aground. Maybe we just hit some floating junk; I figure they've doused the lights to use their spotter beam." He pointed up at the navigation bridge. A searchlight had snapped on, and as a hundred faces turned to it the beam dipped to illuminate the water by the bow, then crept slowly aft along Tsunami's drifting side. Fear still flowed like a wave in the night, running and rebounding up and down the rail from bow to stern, and afraid of a sudden mass stampede he edged Tin-Tin into the angled shelter of a lifeboat davit, manoeuvring his body between her and the ever-increasing, threatening crush of the crowd.

At the rail and intent on the water, Alan leaned out at a perilous angle. The searchlight dithered amidships, but as the growing breeze caught the mist and shredded it, it seemed to him for a second that a small dull glow, like the very last ember of a dying fire, shone up from the sea's depths towards the stern. A darker piece of darkness moved and disappeared, as if something massive had rolled and gone under, and there was a slosh of water and a quiet hiss. The searchlight beam crawled up and passed on, revealing nothing but a disc of lightly rolling, foam-flecked, empty ocean. He straightened up with a shout, to receive blank stares from the other faces watching by his side.

"Hey! I just saw… But that's crazy, I thought…" He shook his head, confused. "I saw something. But there's nothing there now."

Passing Tin-Tin to Alan, Virgil took his brother's place. He looked down, but the sight of the miniature ocean rollers licking Tsunami's flank like a hundred hungry tongues was unnerving, and seeing nothing else he raised his head again. From further down the rail he caught a flash of silver and saw Carolyn Meadows leaning well out, her disregard for her own safety suggesting either unexpected bravery or an appalling lack of common sense. On second thoughts, her eager flushed cheeks and parted lips called to mind the familiar faces too often seen pressed in around the roped-off stages of tragedy or disaster, and he dismissed her, turning back to Alan and Tin-Tin. The din from Tsunami's foghorn was still puncturing the night, two long ear-numbing blasts followed by a consistent, perfectly-measured period of silence before the cycle started again. Tin-Tin, already grasping Alan's sleeve, searched for his other hand.

"What's happening, Alan? I wish they'd tell us something. And why do they keep sounding that foghorn all the time?"

"Easy." Alan squeezed her hand. "It's just a hazard warning, to let any other vessels know we're drifting around here without our engines running. Don't forget we're right in the middle of one of the Pacific's busiest shipping lanes. And whatever has happened we're still on an even keel, and no lower in the water than you'd expect without the hydrojets operating. If we did hit something it looks like it couldn't have done much damage."

"But how could we have hit anything?" Tin-Tin persisted, not reassured. "There's nothing here. Perhaps it was something else. Perhaps an explosion…"

For some reason Virgil found himself glancing sharply towards the roped-off hatches, but the well-deck was in shadow, and he turned his eyes up to the glare from the A and B decks. "Don't worry. It can't be anything serious when they've still got the power to keep their nightclub and casino all lit up up there. And if there'd been a fire or explosion it would've triggered the alarms." The thought made him uncomfortable nevertheless, and the red glow in the heart of the swizzle stick wreck came back unbidden into his mind. Better a tangible menace, even a ghostly Titanic with its mountain of lights and towering bow embedded in Tsunami's side, than the mystery of this quiet and empty night that let imagination run riot through the suddenly-so-vulnerable bowels of the ship, constructing its own series of disaster-movie explanations. He suddenly found himself pushed roughly backwards, jostled by a movement in the increasingly nervous crowd, and wondered with growing frustration what was happening on the navigation bridge. "I just wish they'd get themselves organised and do something to calm things down out here. The way it's going the biggest danger we've got is someone getting injured in a stampede."

As if in answer the foghorn sank into silence, and a loudspeaker on a bulkhead behind them crackled as a voice rang out, distorted by its own asynchronous echoes from the other parts of the ship.

"Would all passengers please leave the rails and return to your normal activities," it requested, no hint of either anxiety or relief distinguishable in the operator's tinny tone. "There has been a minor collision with an unidentified floating object, but no serious damage has been sustained. The ship will be lying-to for a few minutes to facilitate a routine check. There is absolutely no cause for alarm."

"You see? An unidentified floating object." Alan grinned, encircling Tin-Tin with his arm. "Guess there aren't many people who can say they've taken a sea trip and run slap into a UFO." When there was no answering smile he went on seriously: "Come on, Tin-Tin; they're telling us it's all okay. Like Virgil said, we probably just ploughed into some piece of drifting flotsam."

"Well, perhaps," she answered doubtfully, still pale. "It didn't feel like a minor collision, Alan. At least we can be certain it wasn't an iceberg, I suppose."

"An iceberg? More chance of running into a sea monster this far north in the South Pacific!" Alan laughed out loud, and with some answering laughs and grins the fear in the crowd immediately surrounding them was broken, and began to ebb away. The Tannoy repeated its appeal and a few people, tamer or with more bravado, started to drift slowly back towards the light and comfort of the lounge. The rest of the crowd, which had swelled to jam the starboard rails from observation deck to well-deck, shifted uncertainly, then, perhaps becoming aware of the growing chill in the freshening breeze, broke into little groups and began to follow. Tin-Tin hesitated, looking out into the dark beyond the rail.

"I still don't like it. I didn't like what they said about there being no cause for alarm. That always makes me think that something really must be wrong."

"If anything was wrong they'd have us at our lifeboat stations by now," Alan answered, pointing to the lifeboats, ranged in reassuringly generous numbers behind their davits all along the rails. "And there're plenty of boats here for everyone, if they're ever needed. Tsunami isn't the Titanic, Tin-Tin." He disengaged her hand and took her shoulder firmly. "Come on. We'd better do as they say."

As they followed the crowd back round to the rear of C deck and the bottleneck of the lounge doors, Virgil stopped for a moment on the walkway. The searchlight was still busy at the stern, and high up behind the lighted windows of the navigation bridge little black dots moved, seemingly unhurried. Above them the mist had gone and the stars were shining as serenely as ever: Achernar still hung crisp and clear, a diamond fastened by the pin of the radio mast, but now shifted by the steady hour-hand of the night to lie a little lower in the sky. For a second he searched in vain for another familiar point of orientation, then realised that Canopus, the navigators' beacon and the sailors' guardian star, had already swung down to vanish below the horizon.

He turned back towards the warm yellow square of the doors. The crowd, and Tin-Tin and Alan had gone, but a single dark figure stood immobile near the centre of the walkway, both hands clutching the rail. Virgil paused as he passed, then when Meadows didn't move he looked down, to see two sets of locked knuckles that were white from the intensity of their grip. The head turned at last, and he looked straight into the colourless eyes.

"What you said in there," he told Meadows quietly, "better not say anything like that again."

Meadows stared at him with no sign of having heard, and when he spoke his voice was a cracked and barely audible whisper. "Why did the lights go out? Are we going to sink?"

"No. You heard the announcement."

Meadows turned away a face that was the same shade as his faultlessly laundered, perfectly pressed suit. "I can't swim," he whispered simply.

In the Tahiti Lounge smashed glassware littered a carpet that was sticky underfoot and stained in great dark patches by spilled drinks. The long bar was unattended, its stewards perhaps at their emergency stations, or, more likely, off somewhere on a search for additional cleaning equipment.

"Gee, what a mess." Virgil joined Tin-Tin and Alan as they sat back down at the chaos that had been their table. "If we did run into a piece of junk it must've been some size to cause a shock like this."

Tin-Tin reached out to rescue the swizzle stick ship from a tabletop ocean of Meadows' beer. She held it up to inspect it, then a look of worry cancelled out the colour that was beginning to creep back into her cheeks. "Oh, Alan, you don't think we could have run somebody down? Suppose a little boat like this-"

"That's impossible." Virgil interrupted with a shake of his head. "Another surface craft or a sub would've picked us up on their detectors miles away, and they'd have registered on ours at the same time. All commercial ships carry radar now, and private vessels that are too small have to keep a man on watch. Besides, when we got to the rail there would still have been wreckage or survivors in the water." He turned to Alan on a sudden thought. "What did you think you could see out there, Alan? When I looked there were only breakers."

"I didn't think I could see anything," Alan answered, a little tetchily. "I did see something; I just couldn't make it out, that's all." He sat back, folding his arms stiffly in front of him. "No-one else saw it, so I suppose you'll call me crazy, but it looked like an underwater light."

"A light?" Virgil frowned, nonplussed. "You must've seen phosphorescent algae, Alan; I saw them myself, all around the hydrojet. They're just microscopic plants in the surface layer that give out light-"

"I know what they are." Alan frowned in his turn. "I don't need a botany lesson. And this wasn't algae, it was glowing red. I knew no-one would believe me, and it was all probably some sort of reflection of our lights anyway, so why don't we just drop the whole subject, okay?"

"Okay," Virgil agreed, knowing his brother's youthful sensitivities too well to pursue the matter further, and suddenly struck by an idea himself. "Come to think of it, you might've hit on the answer anyway, Alan: maybe some luminous sea creatures do glow red, and you know how some of them attach themselves to larger animals. Maybe we ran into a whale."

"Oh, no! The poor thing." Tin-Tin stared at him, shocked.

"That's impossible, too," Alan said with some satisfaction. "Didn't you know that those guys carry around more echo-location gear than a World Navy submarine? And the Navy's sonar equipment can hear a barnacle cough. With the racket our hydrojets were making any whale would've heard us coming from the other side of the Pacific, let alone a few miles away."

"Okay, then that just leaves one answer," Virgil concluded. "We ran into some rubbish, like I said. Broken timbers or an upturned hull drifting just below the surface might've slipped by our sonar, especially if they weren't paying too much attention up on the bridge."

"You're right." Alan nodded. "Abandoned boats and other junk can float around for months if they're not spotted by the Navy's derelict patrols. Even sunken wrecks can come up again, if there's some kind of underwater volcanic activity. And not just wrecks. I read about one old shipwreck where two guys were left drifting in an open boat with no provisions, then the ship's goat came up pop, from about five hundred feet down. Great news for them, not so good for the goat. Still, it saved them having to draw lots." He grinned at Tin-Tin's shudder of disgust. "Anyway, who knows? Maybe we didn't run into anything solid at all: the sea sure is a mysterious place. Could be the ghost of the Titanic's still cruising round out here, taking her revenge on anything that floats for not making it in time to save her. Or there's the Flying Dutchman; she's been sailing round making ships sink for centuries, and they say there's nothing left of her but rotting timbers, and she's manned by rotting-"

"Alright, Alan. Like you said, let's drop the subject." Virgil frowned, seeing Tin-Tin's face grow a little paler. He checked his watch. "I just wish I knew what they were doing on that bridge. If we don't get moving soon we'll have to start worrying again about missing the boat in Suva."

Alan opened his mouth to reply, but his lingering grin changed swiftly to a scowl as Meadows walked in, marching past their table without a glance and up to the still-unguarded bar. Alan scraped back his chair. "Hey, I'd forgotten about him. You two wait here; I've got a score to settle with that guy."

"No, Alan. Please." Tin-Tin put her hand hurriedly on his arm. "It didn't bother me. He must have thought I was Polynesian, so it's quite a compliment, really. I've always wished I had the figure for one of those grass skirts."

"He isn't worth it, Alan," Virgil said. "The guy's a skunk, and the only way to deal with those animals is to avoid them. He thinks he's on to something because of a few words he overheard, but he can't know anything for sure. So let's just steer clear of him until we reach Suva, and hope he loses interest by then."

Alan subsided reluctantly and sat glowering in the direction of the bar as Meadows raided the optics, filling two bottles from Scotch and Irish whiskey dispensers indiscriminately. As he turned and strode off, a bottle under each arm, a tremor ran through the floor and Tsunami suddenly rose up smoothly to resume her forward motion, the vibration of her engines setting fallen glasses rolling and clinking together on the carpet. The atmosphere in the big room immediately became more relaxed, smiles and even laughter coming from adjacent tables.

"Great, here we go." Virgil stood up. "And there's the steward; I'll see if I can get us something to steady our nerves after that spot of excitement. You'll have to lend me some money, Alan: that's another little problem I've got to get sorted out."

The throbbing of the engines had become familiar again by the time they were making their way towards their cabins along the corridors of D deck. Virgil, walking close to the bulkhead, got the brief but disconcerting impression that the floor ahead of him was angled down to starboard, and he put out a hand to steady himself. Tin-Tin giggled.

"I think you two have overdone the brandy," she said in a low voice. "Still, I suppose it isn't every night that it looks as if your father's organisation are going to need rescuing themselves."

"We weren't in any danger." Alan pointed upwards as they passed through a thick 'O'-ring of steel set into the corridor frame. Above their heads two parallel slots stretched from wall to wall, and in the floor was a matching double recess. "See this? It's a watertight door. They're fitted all over the ship, and an information leaflet I picked up says she's got one of the latest reinforced double hulls. They said the Titanic was unsinkable, but this one really is. To sink I figure she'd have to be holed in more than a hundred compartments. Even an iceberg couldn't do that."

"And it looks like they've got water sensors, too." Virgil paused to examine a small box on the wall. "So the whole system's probably automatic. I wondered why they didn't have most of the cabins up top, like they usually do for safety, but I guess we're in the safest place we could be down here."

"I'd still rather have a sea view." Alan grinned. "Down here the Flying Dutchman could sail straight past your cabin and you'd never see a thing. Until your bunk was afloat and the abandon-ship alarms started ringing."

"Don't, Alan," Tin-Tin requested seriously. "After tonight I'm not quite sure I like the idea of all that water out there any more. Or of phantom ships and mysterious wrecks drifting round in it."

"It'll look much better in the morning, when the sun's shining on it," Virgil said. "Now, we'd all better get some sleep. I've got a busy day tomorrow, and you two will need plenty of energy to get started on some serious vacationing."

Tin-Tin stopped at her cabin door, slipping the swizzle stick ship into her bag as she took out her key. "Well, good-night. I'm keeping this little boat as a souvenir of our adventure; at least we'll certainly have a lot to tell everyone when we get home."

Alan lingered with her for a few moments, and Virgil went on down the corridor towards his own cabin. He felt a lightness that had nothing to do with his brandy nightcap, and he realised with surprise that the familiar prickling of menace at the back of his mind was missing. The Sword of Damocles had gone, and the space above him was empty and serene. Perhaps it had withdrawn, veiled behind the backdrop of the evening's drama and his more immediate worries, to reappear at some future time when the stage was clear for it again. Or, he reflected as he closed the cabin door behind him and began to prepare for bed, perhaps it had already fallen.

CHAPTER 5

STRONG BREEZE

Large waves begin to form

(Force 6 on the Beaufort Wind Scale)

THE WIND WAS cold, blowing straight out of a lurid green-yellow sky that bent to meet a purple sea at the horizon. Dark waves with foam-tipped crests were running in, vaulting the silent hydrojets to burst in kamikaze destruction along Tsunami's juddering side, and above the navigation bridge the blue banner of Capricorn Lines thrashed to escape from its staff. On the well deck the cleaning crew's hoses and brushes were out, and water lying in pools by the starboard scuppers mirrored the last of the stars, and a rising bank of cloud to the north: an ominous array of slate-blue battlements.

"Morning. If you're waiting for the show the sun's not due for another few minutes. Do you always turn out this early?"

Tin-Tin started and turned from the rail. A figure in the crisp white trousers and shirt of Tsunami's merchant officers stood at her shoulder, a broad grin on his wind-and-weather-tanned, slightly acerbic face. She smiled back.

"No, I just couldn't sleep. There was a noise going on all night, some sort of machinery running, I suppose. Then I realised we'd stopped again, and I got up to see what was happening."

"Where are your two friends?" the man asked in the neatly clipped syllables of British English, ignoring the implied question. "Don't tell me I'm going to get a chance to be alone with you at last. I'd expect someone like you to have one admirer on guard, but two's unfair."

"They're still asleep," Tin-Tin replied. "They drove a long way to catch the ship so we'd be sure of making our connection in Suva this afternoon, and I think it would take more than some noisy machinery to wake them. But now we've stopped again I'm afraid we might be going to miss our boat after all."

"Don't worry." He shook his head. "It's just another routine check, a little extra look-around we couldn't do in the dark. If we have a prang the bosun always likes to know exactly how much of his paintwork got scratched. We'll be back on the road any time now, and if the Old Man puts his foot down I promise you'll be in Suva in time for tea. Meanwhile, how about a tour of the ship?" He gestured at the empty decks. "It's the best time of day, before the riff-raff come out." Tin-Tin hesitated, and his grin broadened even further. "It's alright, you're safe with me; dishonourable intentions are a sacking offence in this job. The name's Getty, Lieutenant Getty, but my parents had a poor sense of humour so don't ask me my first name. What's yours?"

"Tin-Tin," Tin-Tin answered. "It's Malay."

As they climbed the companionway out of the well deck Tsunami's engines woke the ship with a shudder and she rose up smoothly like an elevator platform, shaking off the motion of the waves. Beyond the rail the purple sea turned to orange and caught fire, and the wave crests blazed as the rim of the sun crept up on Tsunami's starboard bow. Alongside the ship a school of dolphins leapt and gambolled joyously to find their ocean suddenly turned to liquid gold, and Tin-Tin stopped entranced to watch them, privileged for a few moments to share their blameless happiness and easy freedom. From over the port rail the wind brought the tang of the living Pacific mixed with the warm smell of baking from the galley ventilators, but woven through the interplay of scents was something more: a hint from the distant north of long shore rollers, a thousand teeming reefs, and white coral beaches waking under the same sunrise. As the sun heaved its bulk up over the horizon the tips of the blue cloud-battlements abruptly flushed a brilliant red, then the brief subtropical dawn faded rapidly and with no transitional stage into daylight, leaving the Pacific blue, the waves' white-horse crests breaking ineffectually against the skimming microfoils below.

"You see?" Getty waved a hand to encompass both the ship and the new day as Tsunami gathered speed. "All vital parts working perfectly. Now, where would you like to start? It'll be an hour before the galleys open for business, but we might scrounge two mugs of coffee with a little bit of charm. Then I'll show you why you'll be needing your sea-legs today." He pointed to the bank of cloud. "That's my department: meteorology."

Moving aft and looking down from the rail on C deck Tin-Tin paused again. A stream of oily water was gushing noisily into the sea from just above Tsunami's waterline, and she bent her head, inquisitive. "There's an awful lot of water coming out of there. What is it?"

"Nothing," Getty answered, without following her gaze. "Bilge pumps trimming the ship, that's all."

"Perhaps it was the bilge pumps I heard last night. They seemed to go on for a very long time."

Getty shrugged, seeming suddenly uncomfortable. "It might have been. More likely the turbo-generators. Now, let's get that coffee, and see if we can fiddle you a bridge pass."

"Oh, I think that'll be alright." Tin-Tin smiled. "Captain Henderson gave us an invitation anyway."

"Did he, now?" Getty said, impressed. "In that case you'd better lead the way."

Tin-Tin followed Getty as he ducked in through the doorway of the weather room. "Not much," he announced as he shut the heavy metal hatch and spun the lock, "but it's home. Wait for your eyes to get used to the dark, or you'll have a run-in with the computer console."

With the door shut the only sources of illumination were a dim bulkhead light above a notice board, and the glow from two close-packed banks of screens. A man looked up from the far side of the room, the monitor in front of him displaying an image that might have been New Zealand in an unlikely confection of reds, yellows and blues. Taped to the notice board among the maps and printouts was a brochure photograph of Tsunami, across which someone had scrawled 'keep this way up'.

"Like it?" Getty asked. "We do everything here from helping the Old Man plan his course to telling the entertainments officer when the sun's going to shine for his deck quoits. But there won't be much fun up top for the next few days, because we've an unwelcome guest in the neighbourhood." He pointed to one of the screens. "You can see it on there. Officially it's only a storm at the moment, but if the wind speeds rise a few knots it'll be a fully-fledged cyclone."

"You mean a typhoon?"

"I suppose that's what you'd call it where you come from. In the Atlantic it'd be a hurricane, out here it's a cyclone, but the technical term's a tropical revolving storm. Call it what you like, it won't mind. In our business we call it Sir and steer clear. It shouldn't be here at all this late in the season; all that lovely warm weather we've been having must have cooked it up." He pulled a chair to the front of the screen. "Here, sit down and have a look."

Tin-Tin sat. The black expanse in front of her was bordered by irregular orange patches that made no sense until she recognised the wilted rectangle of Australia at the bottom left-hand corner of the screen. Across the empty Pacific that made up most of the satellite-generated display minute and innumerable puffs of white drifted, sailing in a steady circulation west to the ocean's edge then looping back on the prevailing winds. To the right of Australia's north-east coast a much more massive clot of cloud blocked the system, absorbing the white scraps as they arrived, its centre a spiralling vortex.

"Is that it?" Tin-Tin pointed. "It's very close to us."

"It's far enough for safety. Remember, on there your fingernail's seven hundred miles wide. The storm's drifting south-west, we're down here to the south going north-east, but there's plenty of sea between us, like the central reservation on a motorway."

"There aren't any accident barriers out here, though," Tin-Tin answered dubiously.

Getty grinned. "Don't panic. If it did veer our way we could outrun it easily, even at half speed. But it is going to get a bit bumpy on our side of the street, whatever happens. Hope you've brought your seasick pills if you're of a delicate disposition." He leaned over the shoulder of the man at the far screen. "Have we got any updates on that thing?"

"Wind speeds are up to sixty-five miles per hour, sir; still below cyclone force." The junior officer checked a read-out. "And electrical interference is getting stronger. Pacific weather centre's issued a storm warning, but they've no plans to assign a name as yet."

"A name?" Tin-Tin asked, interested.

"Every cyclone gets one," Getty explained, "a man's or a woman's alternately, working through the alphabet from A to Z. We should be around T now, and I've a friend at the weather centre: how would you like to be immortalised on record? Typhoon Tin-Tin."

"I think I'd prefer to be remembered for something a little nicer," Tin-Tin said decidedly, then she looked up in surprise as Tsunami shivered and sank down gently, starting to roll slightly nauseatingly with the mounting sea. "What is it? Have we stopped again?"

"We have," Getty replied, obviously puzzled and a little concerned. "And not the best time to pick for it, either." He moved to the door. "I'll take you back down to the dining room; better get your breakfast while you still feel interested in eating it. Johnson, you get on the intercom, find out what they're playing at upstairs. If I'd wanted to spend my life drifting round with the seaweed I'd have joined the island ferry service. We've had more stops on this trip than a bumboat in Hong Kong harbour."

"Why are you up so early?" Carolyn Meadows sat at the dressing table, one curious eye on Meadows as he rummaged under the bunk. "They don't open the bars till eleven so it can't be that, and the bank link's not active on a Sunday."

"I've things to do." Meadows pulled out a sheaf of magazines. "Anyway, what about you? Up with the flamin' sun and getting yourself all prettied up. The difference is I know where you're going."

"And where's that?"

"You know what I'm talking about. We're supposed to be working in partnership, but you can't keep your eyes off the marks."

She set her mouth. "With you it doesn't stop with eyes, does it? Or maybe you forgot that brainless blonde last year."

Meadows dumped the magazines on the bunk and turned away, muttering. "I just want you to behave yourself. It's different for women."

"If you come back as a woman after they hang you I'll remind you that you said that." She relaxed her mouth and painted a careful outline with her lipstick. "Wouldn't it be nice if we all spent a little time as someone else in this life? It'd iron out a lot of misunderstandings."

"You're crazy." He sat down, leafing through the books. "Why don't you just straighten out and listen to what I've got to say? I told you, we're going to end up loaded."

"You might. I stopped expecting to get anything from you before I stopped believing in Santa Claus. The only way I'll see any more than the pittance you call my allowance is if I find the pass-key to that magic box of yours."

"You leave that alone!" Meadows' eyes strayed automatically to the locked wardrobe. "You don't understand it, you could wipe out all our funds in seconds."

"Or move them somewhere you'd never find them." She stood up. "But I've told you, I'm getting off at Suva. You go hunt your fortune, if you can get it without his security number. And I'm not helping with that. I'll make my own arrangements."

"I don't need any security number." Meadows finally found what he was looking for, a copy of Business magazine, and he held it open so that a full-fold photograph showed. "Just shut up and look at this. I got the urge for some late reading last night. For a tin can floating in the middle of the ocean they keep their library well stocked. Papers from all round the world, going back the last few weeks, and no-one watching. You could fill a sack with them."

"Petty pilfering? That'll make you rich pretty quick." She raised a disdainful eyebrow, but curiosity drew her over to look down at the page nonetheless. In the photograph a grey-haired man strode purposefully along what at first appeared to be a mine tunnel, but at closer inspection was revealed as a plushly-furnished corridor, the camera's aperture having been badly adjusted to cope with the dim interior light. The man's right hand was stretched forward in ludicrous enlargement, pushing the lens aside, and the thumb of the over-excited paparazzo snatching the forbidden shot formed an unprofessional border to the portrait. Over the man's shoulder a youth, as conservatively and expensively dressed as his companion, craned his neck, the grin lighting his blond-haired, blue-eyed features suggesting a far from conservative enjoyment of the incident.

Carolyn Meadows stared. "But it's… It looks like…"

"Yes, it is." Meadows nodded emphatically, breaking into a satisfied grin of his own. "Blondie big-mouth, your chum's little brother. Couldn't keep his face out of the shot."

"But I don't get it. Who's the grey-haired guy?"

"Turn the page. No, the other way." Meadows supervised as she went on staring. "You see?"

'TRACY BAILS OUT SINKING HESPERUS CORPORATION,' the article headline on the previous page read. At the foot of the columns of lead-heavy business analysis a small tag formed the caption to the picture overleaf:

'Jefferson Tracy in a rare appearance at his New York HQ. Alan Tracy, youngest of the five Tracy sons, is the latest addition to the board of the USA's second-largest conglomerate.'

"See?" Meadows repeated. "Alan Tracy. And your friend's one of the other four brothers." He made a face of contempt. "Using their real names. What a pair of amateurs!"

"I still don't understand." She shook her head. "How did you know all this? And Jefferson Tracy-"

"Is one of the biggest, richest dollar-collectors in the States. Or out of them: he lives somewhere round here now; probably a tax exile. The Tracy corporation's got its finger in the pie of half the world's engineering interests, and that means his wallet has to be deeper than the Marianas Trench." He pointed to the date on the magazine's cover. "And I didn't know, I was just browsing a copy of this at the airport last week. You know my memory for faces: when they mean money they stick. Thought I recognised brother Alan last night, and now I'm sure of it I've got things to do. Like I told you, I've made some new plans."

"What plans?" She picked up the magazine as he dropped it and re-found the photograph, still in half-disbelief. "Even if they've all the money in the world you can't milk that account without a security number. And I meant what I said: don't count on me to get it for you."

"Why do you keep whingeing on about security numbers?" Meadows took a whiskey bottle from the bedside cupboard, but finding it empty threw it irritably to the floor where it rolled beneath the bunk, finishing up against the starboard bulkhead with a clink. "It'd take weeks to pull out the kind of money I'm talking about with the machine, and why risk getting a bank trace slapped on our frequency when we can get what we want just for the asking? 'Don't talk to anyone about what's in the containers,' remember? There's always more than one way to skin a dingo."

"You mean blackmail?" She looked hard at him. "A little out of your class, aren't you? Anyway, Jefferson Tracy's no target. He's supposed to be some kind of public benefactor."

"Nobody gets rich by good works. He's like every other tall poppy: roots down in the slime." Meadows gestured expansively at the cabin walls. "Why do you think he hides away out here? He's got his own island, very desirable residence: short flight to the arms market in Bolivia, Golden Triangle just around the corner. Engineering plants turn out rifles, don't they? Or maybe those crates are crammed with a lucrative little cargo of raw opium."

"I don't believe it." She shook her head firmly and flung the magazine down. "They're not the type."

Meadows found a full bottle of whisky in the cupboard, and shrugged. "Believe what you like. Your nice people have a nasty little secret, but I need help to find out what it is. That's the only reason I'm asking you to stay with me."

"And what have you got in mind?"

"First, I'm going to have a drink." He flopped back down on the bunk. "Then I'll get hold of that deck-hand who helped me out last time we had a bit of aggravation; he'll do anything for the price of a bottle or two. You keep your nice chums busy, and he and I'll arrange the grand opening of those oh-so-precious containers. And then…"

"And then what?" she asked, suspicious.

"Whatever it takes. You're right, they're not the type. When they know we've found out what they're hiding, and with a little of the right kind of persuasion, they'll cave in fast enough." He grinned. "What's the matter, not getting squeamish after all this time? Come on, have a drink." He took the cap off the bottle, then Tsunami sank down without warning and the whisky poured over the bunk.

"You're disgusting." Carolyn Meadows turned for the door in contempt. "And now we've stopped again. I'm going upstairs to see what's wrong with this floating junk-heap: at this rate I'm never going to get to Suva and away from you."

The door slammed, and Meadows lay back on the reeking sheets, frowning. "Go ahead, then. We'll see if your nice new friends still seem so attractive when I've got all their money." His frown faded gradually into a reflective smile. "Yes, there's a whole lot more to Mr. Tracy and Mr. Tracy than either of them want anybody on this tub to see. But by this time tomorrow Mr. Richard Meadows is going to know exactly what it is."

"What's all this about, Tin-Tin?" Alan finished shrugging on his pullover as they climbed the companionway. "And what time is it? If this is a vacation I wish I was back at Base. At least there I get some sleep."

"We've stopped again, Alan," Tin-Tin explained. "It's the second time this morning. And there's a typhoon in the area. I thought we'd better find out what's wrong."

Tsunami's uncomfortable roll became more evident as they ascended the last of the steps up to C deck. Outside, the wind had grown stronger and the morning sun had vanished behind a thick dun haze. All around the ship green peaks with white collars rose and fell, lifting and dropping her in a jittery dance. Alan frowned. "Say, I don't like the look of this. Better get a weather check from John." He looked around. "Stay here and keep a look-out, Tin-Tin. Don't want anyone seeing me using my telecom."

Where a bulkhead met the steps up to B deck was a convenient niche, and he backed into it, raising his arm. The face of his watch blanked, stayed puzzlingly milky for a second, then a grainy image of John Tracy appeared, his tall frame bent to face the space station's cameras, but his straw-coloured thatch of hair still clipped by the top of the screen.

"Hi, John." Alan fiddled with the pinhead-sized controls. "I've got problems down here, I don't read you very well."

"It sure doesn't look too healthy," John agreed. He propelled his castored chair down his bank of consoles, into the corner of Alan's screen, and his voice came back faintly. "Yup, you're way down, strength two. Looks like atmospherics." He was silent for a moment then glided back. "3Sorry, nothing I can do. There's a big storm moving in to the north of you; must be something to do with this hot weather. There's enough static voltage in the air down there to cook Antarctica, and it's causing some pretty bad interference."

"The storm's the reason I called," Alan said. "Any chance it's coming our way?"

Just discernibly, John shook his head. "It's headed for the Republic of Vanuatu. Might get a little bit rough where you are, though."

"It already has, and we're sitting right in it. This is the third time we've stopped since we had a collision last night."

"A collision?" John repeated, a frown darkening his mild features and his broad mouth tightening in concern. "Say, that's bad. What happened, kid?"

"We hit some flotsam, that's all. Nothing serious. But if we don't get moving soon chances are we won't make Suva on time." Alan glanced up at the thickening cloud. "And now it looks like we'll be getting wet. Great start to a vacation, huh?"

"Okay." John picked up a microphone. "I'll tell Dad you're having problems."

"No, better not worry him yet," Alan said hastily. "Seems they're plenty fond of routine checks round here, and if this is just another one we could still make up the time. How're things up there, anyhow? Still quiet?"

"Quiet?" John grinned through the static. "I can hardly keep awake. Though we did have one false alarm. Remember the old Skytech space lab, the one they abandoned last year?"

"What happened to it?" Alan asked.

"Well, they were trying to bring it back for component recycling. It was supposed to splash down in the Indian Ocean, only its computers went haywire and it overshot. One time it looked like it was heading straight for the tourist areas along the Australian barrier reef, but then it just disappeared; they figure it must've burned up. Had us pretty worried, though. Four hundred tons of metal inside a white-hot thorium-steel heat shield: that would've made some hole in anything it hit."

"It sure would've," Alan agreed. "Good to know it all ended safely, anyway. I'd better go now: soon as we've got some definite news we'll call Dad direct, okay?"

"Okay." John raised a thumb. "Have yourself a great vacation, kiddo; never mind the weather. And take care of Tin-Tin. Wish you were up here and I was there."

"I'll bet you do." Alan smirked. "See you in two weeks' time."

Alan cut the connection, and alone in the space station John got up and crossed to the main console. The half-empty cups on the desktops seemed to have doubled their numbers in the privacy of the station's last nightcycle, and he searched in vain for the one that had contained his lukewarm coffee. Scooping them up he took them to the immaculate kitchen and dumped them by the washer, deciding that there weren't enough yet to justify the use of Thunderbird Five's precious recycled water, then ducking out of habit through the high doorway he wandered back into the control room.

On the big blue screen above the weather console the storm without a name sat sullenly on the ocean just east of the sparsely populated islands of Vanuatu, spiralling jerkily as the computers updated its image. He sat down at the keyboard. The storm's course was approximately south-south-west, which would take it across Vanuatu, past the tip of the tiny Loyalty Islands and, providing it didn't veer back east, down through open ocean towards the Tasman Sea, where the colder waters would suck away its energy. He tapped in a request for more information and the storm's vital statistics appeared, superimposed on its rotating disc. It wasn't growing; in fact the read-out told him it had decreased in area slightly over the last few hours. The wind speeds were steady at about sixty-seven miles per hour, still short of cyclone force, and with its south-west drift only three to four miles per hour it didn't look as if it would be going anywhere very fast. Chances were it would blow itself out where it was, maybe even before it reached Vanuatu, but getting up and stretching before going back to his star charts he decided to keep an eye on it anyway. Just for the sake of interest, he told himself.

CHAPTER 6

NEAR GALE

Sea heaps up; foam from breaking waves blown

in streaks along the direction of the wind

(Force 7 on the Beaufort Wind Scale)

"YOU REALLY SHOULD'VE woken me earlier, Alan." Virgil frowned, shaking his head to clear it as he struggled after Alan down a corridor that was pitching fore and aft with a rocking-horse motion as well as rolling nauseatingly from side to side. "It's almost ten-thirty. If I'd known this had happened I could've called the shippers in Suva and told them we'd been delayed."

"We didn't know what was happening ourselves until about twenty minutes ago," Alan replied. "Most of the crew were playing it pretty tight-lipped. But relax, we're moving now. We might still make it in time."

"Not at half speed. And not through this." Virgil slithered, grabbing for the handrail as a particularly capricious cross-sea punched Tsunami under the bow. He pushed his uncombed hair out of his eyes, standing aside as two pale-faced women in bright summer dresses that now seemed sadly inappropriate fought their way past towards their cabins. "And where's Tin-Tin?"

"In the Tahiti Lounge, with a coffee and a couple of Brains' seasick pills," Alan answered. "Hey, there's the bulletin board."

At the corridor junction just ahead a row of screens was set into the bulkhead, and on the nearest a block of text was displayed, hard facts in hard orange on black.

Due to a power reduction in the starboard propulsion unit the ship will proceed at half speed until we reach Suva. Revised docking time at Suva 18:00. Revised arrival times for subsequent ports to be posted later. Passengers are reminded that microfoils are not operational at half speed and that rough weather is expected. Seasickness medication may be purchased from the dispensary.

"Eighteen hundred hours," Virgil read out bleakly, "six p.m.; that's when the Queen of the Pacific leaves. I knew we'd never make it. What're we going to do?"

"Look." Alan's attention had moved on to the next screen. "Here's our position; we're more than half-way there. That's Fiji, and those islands to the east must be Tonga." He shifted his weight from one foot to the other. "A power reduction could mean that that collision caused more damage than they're admitting to. And have you noticed? Feels like we're listing slightly."

"There's only one thing we can do." Virgil turned away, preoccupied, answering his own question. "Get on the radio anyway. I doubt they'll hold the boat beyond her sailing time just for us, but Dad may be able to help. Let's find the radio shack."

The radio shack was a locked room with a service window giving onto the corridor. The operator inside took his feet from the desk as they approached and got up, coming forward to the glass. "Sorry, we're closed."

"Closed?" Alan echoed. "I thought we could make a call twenty-four hours a day."

"Don't blame me, blame the airways. This weather's generating so much interference we've had to shut down. With all the static that's about I couldn't hear my mother-in-law if she was screaming into the mike at the other end of the ship. The emergency channels are just about okay, but passengers can't use those. Sorry."

"Our last hope's Dad," Virgil said as they left. "If we can get through to Base he can make a call to the shippers, make it worth their while to wait for us. Better find somewhere we can use our telecoms."

In a quiet section of corridor a door stood half-open on its tracking, and Alan glanced inside. "This'll do; looks like some kind of chart room." He looked around as they went in. "I'll keep guard. Don't want anyone walking in and finding you holding a conversation with your watch."

"They won't," Virgil answered succinctly after a moment's silence, "it isn't working. Try yours, Alan."

Alan raised his arm and pressed the telecom's transmit button, then when nothing happened, the receive. The screen remained reminiscent of Tin-Tin's opals: creamily opaque, its depths marked by an occasional random flash of colour. He shook his head. "Must be the interference. Let's try up on deck; all this metal around us can't help."

As they left the room Virgil paused for a moment by the door. Spread out on a desk was a plan of the ship in vertical section, her heavy reactor shielding, watertight compartments and automatic doors all clearly visible, as if some gargantuan axe had split her in half from bow to stern. For some reason that he didn't have time to wonder about, three adjacent compartments on her starboard side down near her keel had been roughly inked-in in blue.

At half speed and without her microfoils Tsunami was a stricken seabird, no longer a carefree skimmer but sunk breast down in the water to her lowest row of ports and working hard to make progress through a worsening head-on sea. On the observation deck Alan hit the telecom's cancel button and turned away from the rail, sheltering his face from the wind and in-blown spray.

"That's it, we've got no communications. We can't raise Base, and I can't even get through to John now. Sure gives you a funny feeling."

"Sure does," Virgil agreed, enduring the wind to gaze out over the unnervingly close, inrushing ranks of white horses. "But it was probably too late to do anything, anyway." He turned back inboard again. "It's crazy, Alan. I've had nightmares about missing that boat, but now that it's happened it doesn't seem so important. What worries me is not being able to get through for our next check-in."

"How do you mean?"

"If I don't call in and Dad can't reach us, what's he going to think? Especially if he's heard the weather reports. And you know how nervous Kyrano gets when Tin-Tin's away."

"If Dad can't get through the first thing he'll do is call the space station," Alan pointed out realistically. "Then John will explain about this local interference. Take it easy, no-one's going to be worrying about us." He looked towards the closed doors of the Tahiti Lounge. "Talking of Tin-Tin, better see how she is. And with this weather getting worse we should have someone check that the containers are properly secured."

"Good idea." Virgil nodded. "You check on Tin-Tin. I'll take the crates."

"No, I'll take them." Alan turned for the C deck companionway. "We don't want a repetition of what happened last time you went down there." A trace of youthful aversion crept into his voice, and he finished quickly over his shoulder: "Anyhow, Tin-Tin might be pretty sick. You're better with that sort of thing than I am."

"Hey!" Virgil protested, but the sound of the waves seemingly drowned out his voice; anyway Alan was already gone. The wind, blowing straight off the port bow, was too strong to bear without discomfort, and he retreated from it, following the rail aft past the windows of the Tahiti Lounge. He looked through the glass. Tin-Tin was seated at a table, thankfully still looking reasonably well, and engaged in conversation with a suntanned officer. With Alan's suspicions sometimes bordering on the paranoid it was just as well that he hadn't come himself to check, then. Unwilling to disrupt the tête-à-tête Virgil went on aft to the more sheltered rear of C deck, and braced himself against the rail to watch the sea. If the plunging waves were horses they were sweating now, foam streaking their flanks and flying from their crests as the wind scalped them; he licked his lips and tasted salt. He adjusted his balance: Alan had been right, there was a definite cant of the deck to starboard, and the extra speed they seemed to have put on in the last few minutes somehow managed to strengthen the impression. Tsunami's hurrying bow rose and smashed down, and a garland of foam encircled her to her rail footings, running sternwards along her plates and streaming in white whiskers from her massive anchor flukes. The waves crowded in to lift her again; exciting, exhilarating, dangerous. He shifted his gaze, and the feeling of elation vanished. To the north the horizon was black, a line of approaching night. Green peaks gave way to grey, then under the darkness to molten lead: he felt a familiar twinge of apprehension and looked up automatically, to see heavy scurrying cloud. Something unpleasant was coming, and cut off from Base, from John, even from the sun, the only option was to ride it out, with the Navy and the Meadows pair along for company.

"Hello, handsome," a voice that stepped straight out of his reverie said, and he turned to see Carolyn Meadows clinging to the rail beside him. He had no idea how long she had been there; presumably she and Meadows had learned the art of creeping up on their victims at the same academy. "Feeling bad?" she enquired.

"No," he answered truthfully, reluctant to start a conversation but unwilling to let the implication pass all the same. "I do some flying. You get used to seeing the world from crazy angles."

"You fly?" She pointed to the red helijet that the SeaFreight container had nearly flattened, still bright and intact but looking frail as a plastic toy under its lashings at the rear of the well-deck. "Then what are we waiting for? Who needs to sit here and get wet? I'll get my things, then it's Tahiti, Samoa, wherever you like. I'll let you decide."

"But you couldn't take off from a rolling deck in that thing," Virgil said, astonished. "And anyway…"

"Forget it." She shook her head impatiently. "Just listen to me: if you want to stay healthy watch out for the cockroaches, they come bigger-sized here than anywhere else. Richard knows some of them personally; if he has his way you could be going to run into one."

"Cockroaches?" Virgil frowned. "If you've something to say why not come out and say it? Do you mean he's got friends here on the boat? And if so why should you tell me?"

She shrugged. "They say one good turn deserves another. And you've helped me make up my mind about something. Something I should've done long ago." A movement on the well-deck caught her eye, and she turned her head. Two seamen had pulled a flapping tarpaulin from a lifeboat, and were watching as the hydraulic jacks inched the craft up on its davits. "What's going on?" she asked. "If we're sinking I missed the news."

Virgil looked down at the boat, now swinging drunkenly from the falls of the davits on its cables. "It's just a drill. They always keep one lifeboat prepared and its crew in practice for emergency rescues, like someone falling overboard."

She looked at him curiously. "You seem to know a lot about rescues. I hope you don't know too much about opium."

"Opium?"

"Or rifles." Uncharacteristically, she blushed. "You might as well know. My job's to keep you clear while Richard and his cockroach use a can-opener on your containers. Richard figures you've something nasty tucked away, and if you have it won't be good news for the Jefferson Tracy business empire."

"Jefferson Tracy?" Virgil stared, the colour fading from his cheeks in a shocked counter-tone to her embarrassment. "I don't know what you mean."

She shook her head. "Don't bother. Richard knows all about you; you shouldn't go getting your pictures in magazines. But I think you're innocent, and if you'll take my advice you'll stay here for another ten minutes, or come with me and have a drink. Let them find out they're wasting their time, and don't try any heroics. Richard would like nothing better than an excuse to make a mess of you."

"You mean they're in the hold now?" Virgil stiffened.

"Yes. But if you've nothing to hide you've nothing to wor-"

"Nothing to worry about? Alan's down there!" Drawing down his brows and almost unaware of her involuntary step backwards he turned on his heel, and sprinting into the buffeting wind he covered the distance to the E deck companionway in seconds, leaving her standing open-mouthed at the rail.

Down in the wide metal-floored corridor that fronted the holds it was pitch black, and searching at the foot of the steps for a switch Virgil's hand brushed a stiff hanging tendril, spiky near its end: a wire. Another touch confirmed that it had been roughly cut, and he followed it to an open panel: the supply for the lights, luckily for him not the business end. He flattened himself against the wall, muscles tensed and heart pumping fast in readiness for whatever might be waiting in the dark, and in fear for Alan. The muted thunder of the sea outside was the only sound, which could mean it was already over. Alan was rash, impetuous, and might have waded in, even at two to one. If Meadows and his accomplice were still around it could end in two to one again, with the prize in the balance maybe being Alan's life, and brawling wasn't Virgil's particular forte. He concentrated, trying to recall the locations of fire-extinguishers or anything else in the corridor that might serve to slow down one man while he tackled the other, but his memory came up with a picture as blank as the darkness around him.

Moving quietly he inched his way forward, trying to grip the sheer bulkhead as Tsunami rolled uncooperatively. He counted the shuttered hold doors by feel: one, two, three. At the third door he stumbled over something soft lying flat on the grating floor and his heart jumped a hurdle, but kneeling quickly his hand touched heavy serge cloth and a wrist ringed with braid; there was no need to check for the badge with the chunky gold WN. Half concerned, half cursing the delay he checked the World Navy officer's pulse and found it steady; a lump on the cranium told how the man had been disabled, and rolling the oblivious form gently over to reduce the chance of choking as consciousness returned, he stood up and turned back to the hold door. The shutter had been raised about four feet, and he could feel that its hasp was bent, probably the work of a crowbar. Taking a deep breath, he ducked silently under.

The first thing he was aware of was the pencil beam of a torch, that stabbed out for a second in the depths of the hold then disappeared, leaving its retina-image fading. Then, close by, almost at his shoulder, a voice called out in a high, nasal tone that cut the darkness like a shot: "Coooeee!"

"Coooeee!" The call was echoed from near the origin of the torch beam in a voice that could have been Meadows', then a second beam snapped on, illuminating the first caller. Just feet away a giant of a man, weighing at least two hundred and thirty pounds, and with a gaudy Hawaiian shirt worn above his merchant seaman's uniform trousers, stood with his back turned. In one hand was his torch, and in the other was the crowbar. Virgil hesitated, and in that second the opportunity, if there had been one, was gone. The light clicked out, and heavy footsteps thudded away into the dark. Then, towards the far end of the hold, there was the sound of much lighter feet retreating at a stumbling run.

"There he goes!" Meadows' voice, unmistakable. "Get the flamin' little rabbit!"

"Alan!" Virgil yelled, and every other sound in the hold suddenly ceased. With their flashlight signals and bush calls to co-ordinate their movements Meadows and his henchman were closing in on Alan, but more than two could play at that game. "Alan!" he shouted again. "Turn: ninety degrees."

For a second the shocked silence persisted, then the running feet set off again, moving to the right, and there was a welcome shout of "F.A.B." Virgil started on an interception course, scraping a shin on the out-jutting fender of a truck, and feeling his way round the hard flanks of the containers as the heavy tread of Hawaiian-shirt headed uselessly back for the door. The sound of Alan's feet stopped again, and Virgil struggled to remember the layout glimpsed in his first brief visit to the hold, and the zigzag path that would bypass Meadows' position. "Alan: two-two-five degrees," he shouted, then he stumbled against a familiar container that still bore its unbroken, triple-barred seal. It seemed that Meadows had been disturbed before he had had the chance to satisfy his curiosity, at least.

"One-three-five degrees, Alan." Alan's steps changed direction, and Virgil quickened to a bruising run. A few aisles away the torches were pricking the darkness over the tops of the containers like laser beams, moving in concert now and homing in on their converging targets. A stray beam picked out the Navy's canvas partition ahead, then passed through an open gap and glittered briefly on something beyond the screen: he got a short, startling impression of black metal and a death's-head stencil, then another blindly-running body clattered out of the dark and both men tumbled to the gratings, winded.

"Alan!" Virgil grabbed his brother's shoulder as they struggled up. "This way, quickly."

The door couldn't be far away, and as they ran Virgil tried to visualise and reverse his inward route. He turned left, right, right again and left, but then the final turn into an alleyway between two containers revealed only the bulkhead at the edge of the hold, impassable as a blind canyon. They swung round, into the dazzle of the torches. A wrong turn, and now it was too late for retreat.

"Well, well, well. Two rats in a trap." Meadows' voice came from behind the leading torch beam, harsh with suppressed excitement. "I expect Carolyn's already told you that I know who you are, and now I'm going to find out what racket the Jefferson Tracy Corporation's running. Maybe this time you'll be more willing to have a chat." He motioned, and Hawaiian-shirt moved forward with the crowbar.

Virgil took a quick step forward, extending an arm to keep Alan behind him, but as hard as he tried he could find no words of defiance to say. As the giant advanced he fought Alan's attempts to push forward, and prepared for the unequal battle in silence, his eyes fixed on the printed flowers of the oncoming shirt before him: the Hawaiian lei, garland of kindness and welcome.

"Smart work, Meadows!" Alan managed to barge past Virgil to stand at the front again. "But not that smart. If you know about Jeff Tracy you know he's not stupid enough to send out a valuable shipment without professional protection. Touch us and you'll have plenty of time to work out what's in those crates while the people waiting for us up top make you swim home. With a couple of lumps of ballast tied to your ankles."

"Shut him up," Meadows commanded, but Hawaiian-shirt had halted in his tracks.

"What's he mean, protection? You told me they were a pushover; just a couple of koalas." The crowbar lowered and the man-mountain backed off rapidly behind his light. "You're a dingo, mate. You made trouble for me before, and now we're both going to end up as shark meat."

"He's bluffing, you idiot! Get back here!" Meadows shouted, and the seaman hesitated, then an echoing boom as if Tsunami had run into a wall of steel rang through the starboard bulkheads, followed by a rising screech, like steam shrilling out of an overheated kettle. The crowbar dropped to the floor with a clang, the light swung away and lumbering steps ran frantically for the door, leaving the single torch of Meadows grotesquely uplighting his face. Anger and growing fear at finding himself suddenly outnumbered mixed on his features for an instant, then with a spit of rage that missed its mark he too wheeled and ran off, returning the area to the dark.

"Whew! Good thinking, Alan." Virgil reached for Alan's arm, overwhelmed by a tide of relief, then of renewed concern for the invisible figure at his side. "What happened? Did they jump you? Are you okay?"

"Just fine." In the darkness Alan was already moving. "Come on! We can't let them get away."

"Wait, if they join up out there we'll be back in trouble again. Anyway, what the heck was that crash?" Virgil hesitated. Over the sound of the sea outside the shriek from beyond the bulkheads was still swelling. "And what do you figure that is?"

"Never mind that now." Alan pulled at his brother' s arm. "Come on, after them!"

At the end of the darkened corridor the lights shining down from D deck were enough to show them that the guard had almost recovered and was sitting up dizzily, but also that their quarry had escaped. Alan stopped and looked round as they reached the top of the first flight of steps. "What now?" He shouted to make himself heard. "They might've headed down these corridors, or up onto the deck."

Virgil glanced up and down the panelled four-way passage. "If they went this way we'd never find them anyway. Let's try up top." Looking up at the square of grey sky where the companionway ended in a partly-covered exit to the deck, and with Alan following, he started up the next flight of steps.

The explosion was almost loud enough to deafen them. Tsunami heeled drunkenly to starboard, and Virgil fell heavily as a deluge of salt water with the force of a high-pressure fire hose poured down the companionway well, pinning him helplessly to the steps. Before there was time even for astonishment the cataract stopped, and soaked and gasping he pulled himself as close to upright as was possible, his eardrums still screaming in agonised protest. The stairway was tilted at an angle that was almost impossible to negotiate, but behind him Alan was also scrambling to his feet, and guided by the instinct for self-preservation both struggled upwards towards air and daylight, slithering and slipping on the dripping treads.

As they climbed out onto the canted deck they saw that the ship was locked into a tight pirouette, bow chasing stern, her starboard well-deck rail creaming the water as her head was wrenched round in what as an air manoeuvre might have been classed as a steep banking turn. Beyond the dipping rail a great column of miraculously levitated water kicked and jerked in the air like a decapitated sea-serpent's neck, its source roughly at the centre of the submerged starboard hydrojet channel, its crown drenching the navigation bridge.

On the well-deck the lifeboat being used for man overboard drill had swung inboard against the foot of the bridge's superstructure, and hung there like a legless white bug on flypaper, pasted fast by gravity. One seaman pulled at its cables in desperation; only the other's head was visible, emerging from between boat and bulkhead, his mouth stretched open in a cavern of inaudible agony. As Virgil half-fell, half-stumbled down the well-deck steps and over the wildly sloping deck the screaming still tortured his ears, then as he realised that it was the voice of the waterspout an image from a childhood trip to Yellowstone came unbidden into his mind: the awe-struck first glimpse of a roaring geyser.

As he reached the lifeboat Alan was sliding after him down the steps. A siren had joined the cacophony and speech was useless; he tried to steer the uninjured seaman to the davit controls, but the man tore himself away. Virgil punched at the unmarked and unfamiliar buttons at random and the hydraulics miraculously cut in, taking up the slack on the cables, but the boat stayed mercilessly glued against the bulkhead. Alan ran up, Virgil took hold of the lifeboat's gunnel and all three men pulled, heaving in concert with the straining hydraulics.

The screaming stopped, cut off like slapped hysteria. The lifeboat, suddenly co-operative, swung outboard again, knocking Alan flying as Tsunami dropped dead in the water, toppling back onto an almost even keel that left her just a little more canted to starboard than before. The man who had been pinned to the bulkhead slid slowly down it, grey-faced; Virgil caught him just before he hit the deck.

Alan got up slowly, nursing a grazed elbow and a throbbing knee. A look at Virgil's expert ministrations and at the string of merchant navy figures suddenly streaming out onto the deck convinced him he could be of no further help, and he limped painfully over to the starboard rail. The waterspout was gone, and so was the smooth grey whale-back of the hydrojet channel. In its place steam and thin oily smoke rose as the waves broke over a tangle of hot scrap, the pressure tube's steel plate ripped open from within and peeled back like inch-thick banana skin. Somewhere someone finally cut the squalling siren, and only the wind and waves filled the sudden quiet. Drifting without any steerage way Tsunami pitched and wallowed aimlessly, the sea driving her port flank round to face the north.

Back at the lifeboat Virgil still knelt by the injured seaman, talking to a tanned, slightly sour-faced officer who Alan vaguely recognised. "He's in bad shape," Virgil was saying. "You'd better radio ahead to Suva, then they can have an ambulance waiting to pick him up as soon as we arrive."

"Soon might not be the best choice of word," Getty replied grimly. "And we can't call ahead, interference just washed out the last of our emergency frequencies. If we wanted to we couldn't even transmit our own position." He glanced at Alan. "Look after your little Malaysian friend; make sure she knows how to put on her life jacket. I'm not saying she'll need it, but the last thing we saw before our satellite communications blanked out was a storm celebrating its graduation to a cyclone by heading off-course and straight for us." He pointed to the smoke still rising at the starboard rail. "The Old Man decided to up the speed a little so we'd be snug in Suva before things got too rough. Now whether we get home at all depends on how fast this bucket can hop on one leg." He turned away to supervise the arriving stretcher party, and Alan and Virgil stared at each other.

"What happened?" Virgil asked.

"Pressure blow-out in the starboard hydrojet, must've been a hairline crack." Alan shook his head. "I've seen it happen with hydraulics, but never as bad as that. That noise we heard in the hold must've been the strain building up after they piled on the speed, then when she blew the down-force of the water and the torque from the port jet nearly capsized the ship. I guess I was right; that flotsam we ran into caused more damage than they were able to detect."

Virgil frowned, puzzled and concerned. "I don't get it, Alan. What kind of flotsam puts a crack in carbon-steel plate? And if Tsunami's so unstable in a tight turn how's she going to be with a cyclone blowing up?" He looked up at the lowering cloud race. "Seems we've had nothing but bad luck since we came aboard this ship. And it looks like it isn't through with us yet."

As he finished speaking the heavy sky burst, a great wind and a drenching blast of rain swept in from the rail, and the stretcher party hurried to bundle their casualty off the rolling deck.

CHAPTER 7

STRONG GALE

High waves; dense streaks of foam; sea begins to roll

(Force 9 on the Beaufort Wind Scale)

"WHATEVER THEY'RE DOING it isn't working, Alan." Tin-Tin clung to the handrail inside the doors of the Tahiti Lounge, looking out through the streaming glass. "It's been over two hours now, and I'm sure we're still going sideways."

"You can't tell." Alan stood at her shoulder. "We must be making some headway with the port jet, even if it's pretty slow. And remember, they can't use it on full power or we'll just start circling again." Dim through the rain the tower of the navigation bridge swung like a gigantic metronome from port to starboard as Tsunami rolled, and he turned to look at Tin-Tin's face. "How are you feeling?"

"Much better now. But I just wish we had enough of Brains' medicine to hand round. Everyone looks so miserable."

Across the big room a double avenue of ropes had been rigged at waist height to provide essential handholds, and a number of passengers, many all too obviously affected by Tsunami's motion, had gathered at the tables round the bar to take advantage of its bottled comfort. In a far corner a harassed steward was dispensing more approved cures to a lengthening queue of women and children, and Tin-Tin transferred her grip from the handrail to the nearest rope. "Perhaps there's something I can do to help. I'll be back later, Alan."

When she was out of earshot Alan glanced at Virgil, who stood braced against the door in silence watching the grey gusts sweeping the deck. "I figure it's okay to let her go. Meadows is too cowardly to tackle us by himself, and that pet gorilla of his should keep a low profile now he thinks we've got our own muscle-men around."

Virgil nodded. "And maybe we're not the only ones those two will be afraid of. One of them must've knocked out that guard, and I think they might've been tampering with the Navy's screen. I saw that the canvas had been pulled aside when we were down there, and I saw something behind it that was stamped with some sort of lethal-hazard marking."

"Lethal hazard?" Alan frowned. "The only lethal materials the Navy deals in would be marked as explosive, and anyway why would they violate every civilian code by loading something like that on a passenger ship? Remember how insistent they were that we weren't shipping any dangerous goods? It was pitch black in there; you made a mistake."

"Maybe. But I figure that's pretty low on our list of worries at the moment, anyway." Virgil pointed through the glass. "Look at that rain, Alan. If there's been no major change in wind direction in the last two hours then it's being blown from the north-west, but it's hitting us broadside, coming straight in over the port rail. That means we're not heading due north, like we should be to reach Suva. We're drifting east."

Alan looked at him. "Towards Tonga? But there's some pretty dangerous water over that way. And their auto-navigation systems can't be working, with the satellite links washed out. We could end up on the Minerva reefs." He looked round in growing alarm to locate Tin-Tin, eventually spotting her at the other side of the room helping the steward hand out his medication. "Tin-Tin was right: we're not making much speed, this wind's increasing all the time, our list's getting worse, and now it looks like that port jet's pushing us east. There're over six hundred people who could be in real danger here, Virgil, and that includes her, and us. There's got to be something we can do. We're International Rescue."

"Sure we are." Virgil lowered his voice. "But think, Alan: what can we do? Our organisation's what it is because of Brains' genius, and because of teamwork. You know as well as I do: without the Thunderbirds or our telecoms we're literally in the same boat as everyone else."

"I wish Scott was here." Alan kicked at the low sill of the doors in growing anger and frustration. "We wouldn't be standing around like this if he was; he'd have come up with something already, you can bet. He'd probably ask us what the heck we thought we were waiting for."

Virgil frowned, and both men fell silent, each lost in his own thoughts. Through the glass, at the foot of the navigation bridge, the small red blur of the lashed-down helijet appeared and disappeared as the rain-gusts chased each other in close and violent succession across the deck. Suddenly Virgil turned and caught Alan's arm, his face transfigured by excitement. "What're we waiting for? That's it, Alan: it's just what she said. Why sit here and get wet?" He reached up and rattled the bolt that secured the dripping glass doors. "It all depends on timing. But there's a pretty good chance it'll work."

"What will work?" Alan asked, mystified. "And just what who said? What're you talking about?"

"I'll explain on the way." Virgil drew the bolt. "Come on, Alan. We're going to take up that invitation to look around the bridge."

Outside, the wind was a solid presence, determined to batter them back as they worked their way hand-over-hand along the newly-rigged deck lines, and shrieking a mad song round the superstructure and in the standing rigging that supported the ship's high radio mast. Beyond the heaving well deck rail grey mini-mountains rose and plunged, great gobbets of spume sloughing off their peaks to join the flying spray. Wet through and hunched against the gale they stopped in the meagre shelter of the closed storm door at the base of the navigation bridge, and Virgil pointed into the rain. "The helijet, Alan. That's going to be our lifeboat; the only one anyone could launch in this storm."

"What?" Drenched, Alan clung to a handhold beside him, shouting to make himself heard. "You're crazy! We'd never make it off the deck. Besides, it'd take weeks to airlift everyone to safety in that."

Virgil shook his head. "No, you don't understand. Most of the static affecting radio frequencies comes from that low-level cloud up there. If I can fly above it I can get out a Mayday, or even a call to Base. And the jet will have its own navigation system: if short-range communications are working I can pinpoint any reefs and relay a safe course to the ship."

Alan wiped the rain from his eyes, looking at the swaying superstructure and the great cable brace, thick at its base as the trunk of a tree, that slanted up from the centre of the well deck to the top of the navigation bridge. "I still say there're too many hazards to take off from this deck. Anyhow, as soon as those lashings were off the jet would be blown over."

"We don't take them off until I'm in the air. There should be enough play in the cables to get an inch or so off the deck, then when the ship's steady we have someone knock out the securing bolts on my signal. That way the jet's held safe until she's balanced and ready to go."

Alan shook his head. "I don't like it, and I guess another person who wouldn't is Dad, but it just might work. Only thing is, I've got a better chance of getting her into the air than you have. I'm a few pounds lighter, and we're going to need every bit of fuel."

"Let's argue about that later, Alan." Virgil turned to tackle the storm door. "If this wind gets much stronger there'll be no hope of a take-off, no matter which of us is trying."

On the other side of the storm door the inner door was labelled 'NO PASSENGERS BEYOND THIS POINT'. Beyond it, the elevator was unusable due to the increasing list, and a skeletal companionway led upwards in a dizzying confusion of rails and gratings for five or six long flights. When they were half way up the last flight a door swung open below, a face turned up, and a shout and running feet pursued them, but at the top a wide set of double doors stood waiting, and Alan pushed his way through.

Waves of astonishment spread out round Tsunami's bridge like the ripples from two stones flung suddenly into a rigidly formal pool. The seaman sitting bolt upright at the central console allowed himself a glance then faced front stiffly again, tightening his grip on the automobile-scale wheel. Beside him a quartermaster turned slightly from his blank navigation screen to stare, and a group of higher-ranking officers turned round from the rain-swept window.

"Who are you?" The senior officer's face was angry, lined, a border of stubble shadowing his jaw. As he advanced his juniors fell into line abreast behind him, frigates following their cruiser in informal battle formation. "Don't you know better than to burst in here without permission? If you're from engineering I'll have your jobs."

"We're passengers, not mechanics." Alan stood his ground. "We know this ship's in trouble, and we can help."

"Passengers?" the man exploded, turning as if seeking confirmation of the statement from a gaping quartermaster. "Wandering onto the bridge as if this was happy hour on some Mediterranean gin-palace? Call the master-at-arms."

"No, wait," Virgil protested. "My name's Virgil Tracy, I'm a qualified pilot. I can get that jet you've got stowed on deck into the air and send out a Mayday, above the interference. All I need is the go-ahead and half a dozen men to free her cables when she's built up enough thrust to get clear of the deck, and I give the signal. What do you say?"

"What do I say?" The officer's face flushed purple. "I say it's the most damn-silly thing I've heard in fifteen years at sea. How dare you walk onto this bridge, against regulations, when we're dealing with a crisis and when all passengers were ordered off the decks an hour ago? It's inexcusable, except for the fact that you've both undoubtedly been drinking." His head jerked round as the door was pushed open again. "What do you want?"

"Master-at-arms," the man in the doorway said smartly. Behind him four large seamen stood at the stairhead. "You just called down, sir."

"Yes, escort these two… individuals off the bridge. And send to the Captain: my compliments, and I advise that we close the bars. The last thing we need at a time like this is any more drunken idiots running around."

"Hey, just a minute!" Alan fought free angrily as two seamen closed in to manhandle him to the door. "We aren't drunk, and we were invited up here, by the Captain himself if you want to know. We've got the only way of stopping this ship ending up on the reefs, and if you want to save it you'd better listen."

"You have to listen," Virgil pleaded. "We're not saying you don't know your job, but there're nearly seven hundred people down there waiting for you to do something, and at a time like this no-one's so efficient they can't use some suggestions. If you wait for the wind to get stronger it'll be too late to try anything."

"You haven't heard the last of this, mister." The officer spat out the term of address normally reserved for erring subordinates while sighting down a finger. "This incident will be reported to the Captain when he's got time to deal with it, and unless you're very lucky you'll be spending the rest of this voyage sobering up in the brig. Now get them out of here!"

All further protest was useless. Alan was recaptured and bundled struggling through the doors, and hustled down the companionway at a speed that precluded any further attempts at resistance and bruised their shins and ankles, they were returned to the well deck door and shoved roughly back out into the rain.

In the Tahiti Lounge Virgil sat braced against a bolted-down table, staring at his reflection in a darkened window. Tsunami toppled sideways into space and he clutched at the table automatically, then shifted his weight as she rolled slowly back, coming as close to the vertical as she had for the last half hour, some remnant of the glassware smashing at the bar. There were no smiles in the crowded room now, and no laughter. Somewhere a child was howling, raucous and incessant, and from the other side of the central bar, strangely clear and immediate through the intervening sounds, a woman was sobbing. His visit to the bridge seemed a dim memory vaguely recalled from some long-vanished place and time, and Tsunami's rolling and bucking then a comfortable paradise in contrast to her current insane roller-coaster motion. In the last few hours it had become obvious that the gale was driving them steadily south-east and that the ship had passed beyond control, and with her pitching now at a point that only a seasoned sailing stomach could endure and a premature nightfall veiling the face of daylight, the dual atmospheres of sickness and quiet fear were joined in a particularly terrible combination.

Reflected in the window-mirror, Tin-Tin and Alan sat at the opposite side of the table hand in hand, part of a privileged trio spared the worst of the physical effects by Brains' effective and bright-coloured little pills, but Tin-Tin's face was pale, Alan uncharacteristically silent. Some time ago the last reassuring engine sounds had died as the port hydrojet had been shut down, perhaps because its torque was helping the gale to tilt the ship, but if that had been the idea the measure had had no obvious effect. The starboard list had continued to increase as Tsunami's plunges had become more precipitous, her returns slower and more reluctant, and the wind above all had grown to eclipse everything, howling round her upper works outside in a gloom like primeval night, rattling and shrieking, shaking and prising to rip away the last thin barriers that still surrounded the Tahiti Lounge's frightened human cargo in its frail glass box.

Virgil gazed on at his reflection. After his drenching on the well deck he had put on a dry pullover much the same blue as his uniform shirt, and now the sweep of a stanchion outside the glass crossed the mirror image from shoulder to waist in a pale diagonal band, and the effect was worse than ironic. Shame on you, the illusory uniform told him, you're International Rescue. Get up and do something. But what? The time for the helijet plan had passed, even if anyone could be persuaded to listen, and despite Brains' medication, or maybe because of it, the clear thinking required to come up with some alternative seemed to demand an impossible amount of concentration.

'I wish Scott was here', his reflection reminded him in Alan's voice, and he lowered his eyes to avoid it. Alan was right: if their forceful elder brother had been with them on the bridge someone would have listened, no matter what had had to be done to get their attention. But Scott hadn't been there, Virgil had, and now sitting here dosed with Brains' pills until his throat tightened in rebellion at the thought of swallowing any more, but with a low undercurrent of nausea still distracting him, Virgil had failed to grasp that particular chance of salvation and now could think of no other plan. He bent his head.

'Nobody's going to be worrying about us'. In Alan's words the mocking reflection continued relentlessly. Right again, Alan. No point in hoping for outside help, because no-one would be aware of their situation. Somewhere the main weather centres would be tracking the cyclone's sudden change of course, and in some data bank Capricorn Lines must have filed Tsunami's sailing plan, but how long would it be before the wires got busy and minds occupied with other things put the two pieces of information together and realised that they added up to potential disaster? And their radio silence wouldn't trigger any alarms. In Suva Capricorn Lines' local office, aware of the interference and confident of their flagship's storm-outrunning speed, would be patiently awaiting her arrival, and if she was a little late why worry? Human nature seldom wants to be the first to press the panic button.

The wind crashed violently against the window in a sudden frenzied attack, and he straightened up, jolted into resolution. If thinking couldn't help, then maybe blind action could. Another trip to the bridge, do what Scott would do: demand to know their situation, refuse to take no for an answer, take over the communications and try every radio operator's trick to get a signal out. Or maybe just be realistic: get up to the bridge and try to think of something more practical en route. He steadied himself to rise. Alan, Tin-Tin and over six hundred other people were waiting, and anything had to be better than letting the screaming maniacal thing outside win through.

At the after end of the room there was a sudden commotion as a blast of wind and rain shrieked in, drenching the few occupants of the tables by the door. Virgil sank back, and Alan and Tin-Tin turned their heads as two seamen in glistening yellow oilskins stumbled in, secured the wildly flapping doors, and ignoring the scene of soaked misery they had created, made their way forward along one of the safety lines. Alan glanced round.

"Looks like they're heading this way."

The leading man, tall, broad and carrying a third set of oilskins, stopped and grasped at a handhold beside their table. He looked from Virgil's face to Alan's. "Tracy? Virgil Tracy?"

"Here," Virgil answered. "What is it?"

The man slapped the oilskins down, dripping on the table. "Put these on. The Captain wants to see you."

"Hey!" Alan pulled himself to his feet, indignant and alarmed. "If this is about us going onto your precious bridge I was there too; I'm Alan Tracy. If the Captain's got something to say he can say it to both of us. I'm coming along."

"Not you. Just him." The other man barred Alan's way.

"Okay, Alan. Looks like we haven't much choice." Virgil got up. "They'll send me right back once the guy's had his say, don't worry."

"Alright. But it's stupid." Alan eyed the two seamen bitterly. "Okay, we broke the rules, but it isn't fair to pick on one person. And this sure is some dumb time to choose for a lecture, in the middle of a storm."

"Just take care of Tin-Tin." Virgil fought his way into the stiff, shiny rain gear. "A chance to talk with Henderson could be just what we need; maybe I can come up with something." He finished fastening the bulky yellow suit, and the three figures set off across the lounge, one seaman clutching the hand rope in front, the other following behind as Alan and Tin-Tin watched them go. They reached the doors and disappeared, ducking out into the storm and soaking the surrounding tables for a second time, and Tin-Tin turned back to look unhappily at Alan.

"Alan, you don't think they'd really do what they said, and lock him up?"

"Not a chance." Alan shook his head, still gazing at the re-bolted doors with a frown that conveyed uneasiness rather than complete conviction. "It wouldn't be safe, having anyone caged up in the brig in this situation. There'd be no time to get them out if the-" He suddenly bit back his words and glanced at her uncomfortably.

"If the ship started sinking." Tin-Tin finished his sentence for him quietly. "It's alright, Alan, you don't have to keep pretending that nothing's wrong, for me. I know we could be heading for the reefs, I've studied the charts at home, too. But I'm not afraid, as long as we can all stay together; that's why I hope they don't keep Virgil very long. They might order us to the lifeboats at any time."

"But they couldn't launch-" Alan began, then thought better of it and put his arm round her instead. "I mean they couldn't launch the boats without getting us to our lifeboat stations first. There would be plenty of time to get back together with Virgil."

"Then there's nothing to worry about." She nodded, then was silent for a few moments, while her eyes grew unnaturally bright. "It's just that I can't help thinking of everyone at home, especially poor Father. About what he'd do if… if…" She faltered. "For such a long time we only had each other."

"Well he's got Dad now, and everyone else at home, and you've got me." Alan drew his arm more firmly round her shoulders. "Anyhow, Tin-Tin, you mustn't talk this way. In a few more hours this storm will have blown itself out, and in two weeks' time we'll all be together again back at Base, and this'll just be family history. We can tell our-"

"Alright, Alan." A small smile broke through her tears, and in a hasty but gentle gesture she lifted a finger to cover his lips. "But you really mustn't worry about me. Last night I wished on Virgil's shooting star that I could stay on this ship, but now the sooner we leave it the happier I'll feel." She slid her hand into his. "There's something I don't like about it now, and somehow I think we'd be safer in a lifeboat, taking our chances with the sea. But as long as we're all together I don't mind what we do."

"That's my girl." He squeezed her hand, then noticed her bare wrist. "What happened to your bracelet? You were wearing it earlier today."

"I must have left it in my cabin when I went down to put on some warmer clothes." She looked down in surprise, then back up at him in anxiety. "Oh, Alan, I wouldn't like it to get left behind."

"Okay." Alan nodded. "Then we'll go down and get it. But we'd better wait for Virgil, because if he turns up while we're gone he might figure something's wrong. He shouldn't be long now; we'll go as soon as he gets back."

"Alright, Alan." She brushed at her eyes and smiled in agreement, happier and reassured. "We'll go soon, then. Just as soon as Virgil gets back."

CHAPTER 8

STORM

Very high waves; rolling of the sea becomes heavy; visibility affected

(Force 10 on the Beaufort Wind Scale)

CAPTAIN HENDERSON LEANED against the navigator's console like a pierced dirigible sagging at its mooring tower, his plump cheeks sunk to show the bracing of the bones beneath, his outsize jacket suddenly over-generous as it hung from his drooping shoulders. Only his eyes in their tired red hollows were bright and lively, missing nothing. At the opposite side of the crowded bridge a small knot of World Navy men stood aloof and apart from the merchant officers and crew, grasping handholds to secure themselves against the tower's motion. A single marine stood facing outwards on the edge of their group, his rifle carried openly in front of him. At Henderson's right hand the stubble-jawed officer who had earlier had charge of the bridge waited with another merchant navy man, and the Captain turned to his visitor, waving a hand to introduce them.

"You've already met my first officer, Mr. Fleetwood, and this man's a bosun; I may be handing you over to him later. And you're Mr. Tracy, the man who burst onto my bridge and said he could get a helijet off the deck in a force nine gale. The last time we met you were a marine engineer, if I remember."

"That's right." Virgil stood facing Henderson and Fleetwood, feeling seldom-needed and unfamiliar muscles aching from fifteen minutes' waiting while trying to keep his balance on the reeling bridge, and now wondering what his summoners' intentions were and beginning to get irritated. "Doesn't mean I'm not a pilot, too. I'd have to have been crazy to volunteer if I didn't have the flying experience."

"Yes." Henderson exchanged glances briefly with Fleetwood. "I've heard all about your plan, and I understand it would take considerable experience. In fact I'm told it would be beyond the abilities of most professional naval pilots."

"Maybe that's true. What's the point of all these questions, anyhow? If you're not going to throw me in the brig or give me a dressing-down why not just let me go?"

Henderson eyed him, perhaps appraisingly, then beckoned, transferring his bulk through a series of handholds to a bank of television monitors on the central console. "Come over here. You'd better look at this."

Virgil followed him. Three of the closed-circuit screens were active, displaying three scenes which differed in their details but were all of the same essential character: in narrow, badly-lit corridors men, some stripped to the waist, were struggling thigh-deep in oily water with guttering welding gear and heavy pumping equipment. As Virgil watched, taken aback, Henderson nodded. "It looks like the set for a stock disaster movie, doesn't it? But that's H deck; I've been down there myself for the last three hours. We know now that we damaged a hydrojet in last night's collision, but at the time that was the last thing we had a chance to think about, because the starboard hull was breached. You're the first passenger to know this, but we've three flooded compartments, soon to be four, and though we've been working round the clock since the accident we've failed to pump them out."

Virgil looked at him. "You mean the flooding could spread through the whole ship?"

"No, our interior watertight doors prevent that. But as you can see and feel we've already taken in enough water to give us a serious list, and the hull was extensively damaged by whatever we hit. Starboard compartments three, four and five are already open to the sea, and both layers of our double hull in six are weakened, deformed and ready to give way. At our best guess they've been melted."

"Melted?"

"Yes. My chief engineer tells me that in the middle of the Pacific shipping lanes we ran into a floating object that was large, metallic, had a mass of at least three hundred and fifty tons and was red-hot." Henderson smiled faintly. "At the moment I'd prefer to think his judgement's been affected by stress, because I've other things to worry about." He gestured at the window, and the rain-swept ramparts of the forward superstructure. "You might have noticed we carry a lot of weight up top. That makes our centre of gravity high, but we're designed with a centre of buoyancy that's higher, and as long as the two don't change places we'll stay upright, even in hurricane force winds. But tip us slightly, for example in a list, and the centre of buoyancy falls, perhaps below the centre of gravity. If we tip further and it falls far enough we can't right ourselves; we simply go on tipping. As a marine engineer I presume you understand."

"I understand that's basic physics," Virgil answered guardedly. "You're saying that the ship can cope with being heeled over by this wind, or with a list caused by four flooded compartments, but not with both together. She could be in danger of capsizing."

"Not just in danger." Henderson shook his head. "With the wind increasing to port and a starboard list we can't remedy we will capsize; it's an inevitability. Mr. Fleetwood tells me you were concerned about us running on the reefs; I have to say we're not even likely to reach them. As you've obviously deduced we can't get the lifeboats over the side in these conditions, and we've effectively no engine power: using the port jet is only unbalancing us further." He paused. "Which is why I'm going to ask you a question now that I wouldn't ask under any other circumstances. Getting some sort of help is our only chance, and we need to be able to transmit our position. Would you still be prepared to try sending an SOS from that aircraft?"

Virgil stared at Henderson, the helijet shuddering under its lashings in the face of the near-hurricane outside suddenly superimposed on his view of the bridge like a clear and persistent after-image. Then the vision shifted back to the black water of the monitors, but this time filling panelled corridors, pouring through toppling cabins and crashing in through submerging windows.

"Okay, if it's our only hope of course I'll try it. But for Pete's sake why wouldn't you let me try before, when the wind was lighter? Maybe I had a fifty-fifty chance then. Now I don't know."

"At that time we didn't believe it could be done. Perhaps that hasn't changed, but now, as you say, it's our only hope, and you must understand that we have to try everything." Henderson hesitated. "I'm truly sorry." At a gesture from one of the World Navy men he glanced round, seeming almost grateful for the interruption. He gave a curt, embarrassed nod. "Excuse me."

Left waiting again, Virgil shifted his gaze to meet Fleetwood's stare, but after a moment the first officer lowered his eyes, and Virgil looked past him out of the wide window. Rain was blowing across it at dizzying speed, now hurtling upwards, now down, now streaking it horizontally with water. Through the deluge, almost close enough to touch in its few upper feet, the cable brace swept down from the radio mast's anchorage just above their heads, and far below, near its distant base, was the tiny red blur of the helijet. Henderson returned, carrying a slip of paper with a handwritten scrawl.

"If by any chance you're successful the World Navy would like this to be the first thing you transmit. It's coded, so I don't know the content, but I know that they have their own problems. A hold containing some Navy equipment was broken into."

"Okay, I'll take it." Virgil held out his hand. "But if I make it, this sure won't be my first call. That place's reserved for a Mayday."

Henderson smiled. "I suspect that in your place I'd have said the same thing. I'm outranked here, but once you're in that aircraft there's not a rear-admiral alive who can give you orders." He beckoned to the bosun. "Now, you said you wanted some men to help with the cables, and there's no problem about that. But I doubt that the aircraft's carrying any fuel; if necessary this officer will have the deck gang fill it up. And before we start there's one more thing."

"Yes?"

"At any other time I would have had you put in the brig before I let you try this. If you fail I suspect neither of us will be in any position to argue about your abilities as a pilot, but if we do meet again it'll mean you're one of the best there is." The Captain extended his hand. "I just want to wish you luck."

The helijet squatted out in the darkness of the storm like a drowned red beetle, rain flying horizontally from its back in a flapping cloak of water. The wind, screaming round its shock-absorber-jointed, inverted-V legs and forcing its way in under every fairing and through each vent kept up a continuous ululating wail of dread that seemed to come from the little craft itself, as if it had somehow guessed the purpose of the group that had gathered on the well deck, and wanted no part in their plans. Someone had aimed down a foul-weather searchlight from the bridge, and the jet, the nearby hatches and the six oilskin clad seamen huddled at the edge of the rain-fogged deck were thickly lit, slicked over with a sickly yellow shine. From the jet's legs its six securing cables stretched to their ring-bolts in the deck, and catching one cable as he fought to keep his balance Virgil felt the big metal hawser thrumming like a massive piano wire in the gale. Fighting the wind to reach the short boarding ladder he hesitated, turning back to look for his helpers, but water streaming from his hair and eyebrows ran into his eyes faster than he could blink it away, and he saw only a blur of yellow shapes. One of the shapes raised its arm; he supposed that they were ready. His own heavy oilskins were stiff and uncooperative and he struggled out of them, leaving them in a glistening sprawl on the deck. Soaked to the skin in seconds, he pulled open the door and climbed into the jet's welcome shelter, and into the pilot's seat.

Most of the controls were familiar. With the door shut the storm beat round the cabin's bubble of dry calm ineffectually, but with an increased noise and fury. Brushing the rain from his eyes he set the wipers working at frantic speed to clear the screen, but even on maximum setting they barely kept pace with the wind-driven Niagara outside. At the touch of a button the console lit and he flicked through the switches, bringing the little status lamps to life: red, green, blue. Fuel okay, gyros and tail-flaps okay, intakes clear. He shrugged on the safety harness then tried out the radio hopefully but it emitted a howl of static that out-shrieked even the din of the storm, and he cut it off, unsurprised but swallowing disappointment all the same. There would be no help from the bridge for the take-off, then: he was on his own.

He started the engines, watching as four blue lights on the console warmed to yellow then to orange-red, then gently as was possible with the unsophisticated system's all-or-nothing electrical response, he cut in the jets. Outside in the rain steam exploded from the mouths of the booster fairings as superheated air hit cold wet metal, and the waiting seamen bent themselves against the wind, and made for their positions by the bolts.

Tsunami rolled, then, almost as if aware of the coming of some critical event and trying to co-operate, lay unprecedentedly stable. He swallowed to ease a dry throat, drew a steadying breath, then taking a good grip on the control column and throttle stick he centred the gyros quickly to balance the jets and put pressure on the stick, easing it back with infinite care. The engine whine rose, becoming a howl as the helijet fought to escape from its moorings, and out on the streaming deck first one landing pad and then another stirred, then lifted a pencil's breadth clear. The cables groaned and the men by the bolts raised their sledgehammers, wiping rain from their faces with running sleeves. In the cabin Virgil felt the little craft take its step into the air, and fighting down elation mixed with disbelief at the perfect execution of the all-but-impossible manoeuvre he leaned forward, delayed just slightly by the pressure of the slowly-reeling harness, and reached for the landing lights' switch to give the signal.

A great wave slammed into her bow and Tsunami reeled. The deck rose up to smash into the jet's front pads, bringing it down with a jolt that flung him backwards in his seat, pulling the sensitive throttle stick with him. The harness did nothing to counter the reverse motion and his own reaction came too late; the engines roared as the jet lunged back up, under full power and cannoning off the deck, one pad buckling like a snapped ankle. The craft yawed wildly in its bonds, shuddering convulsively as the wind tried to help its uncontrolled thrust overturn it, and the cables screamed in agony, but held: in horror and just in time he found the red button and killed the engines.

The helijet slumped back to the deck on five pads, and the wind shrieked triumphantly round outside the cabin. For a few seconds he sat without moving, then removed the hand that was still clamped around the throttle stick, and hit the quick-release to free the useless harness. Out in the rain the yellow shapes had retreated, awaiting some formal instruction to abandon the hopeless task, and he drew a wet sleeve across his face, where rain running down from his soaked hair was now generously mixed with sweat. It was what he had been afraid of: the weather was too bad now to get this cute-toy aircraft, this millionaire's sunny-day-plaything into the air from any take-off point, let alone the heaving aerial obstacle course that was Tsunami's deck. And it was what he had perhaps known deep down from the start, but refused to acknowledge: that after half a day of yielding to temptation and trading discomfort for Brains' welcome pills his own drug-dulled reactions were too slow, maybe even for routine flying, and now courtesy of this, of the worsening storm and the missed opportunity on the bridge there was going to be no Mayday, and no help for Tsunami. He reached for the switch to shut off the wipers, then he thought of the silent fear and the sobbing in the lounge, and froze in a spasm of pain and indecision.

International Rescue never gives up, no matter what the cost. His father's voice, almost as if it were by his shoulder. But the phrase that had become a motto had never been meant to sanction pointless suicide, and the events of the last few minutes were telling him something; it would be lunacy not to listen. His hand hovered, and the faces of Alan, Tin-Tin and the Japanese girl seemed to appear on the rain-lashed windscreen, their eyes meeting his in mute appeal, then the wind broke them to pieces and blew them away, screaming with laughter, and he moved his hand back to the throttle stick.

"I'm not afraid of you," he found himself telling the storm aloud, frowning at the uncaring elements threateningly. "Tin-Tin, Alan: you're not having them."

The waiting seamen stumbled reluctantly back at his gesture, and checking the status lamps briefly he reset the gyros, warmed up the cooling engines, and started again. This time he was luckier than he had any right to expect. Tsunami rolled only slightly as the jet strained upwards against its cables, and as its pads cleared the deck for a second time there was even a momentary lull in the wind. Through the streaming glass and the veil of rain he saw the seamen lift up their hammers; the nearest man held up a hand, his thumb raised, and Virgil returned his signal. With a final check on the balance of the gyros and a last-minute decision to strap the harness on he touched a switch, and the deluge beyond the glass was turned to a dazzling swirl by the blaze of the landing lights. There was a blur of concerted movement from the hammers, a sudden heart-stopping whang and a crunch as a cable flying free whipped back and crazed the right-hand side of the windscreen in a spiderweb film, and then he was in the air. And then there was no time left to worry about trifles like crazed windscreens and partially obscured vision, because the fight against the wind began in earnest.

"Hey, something's happening out there." Alan took his arm from Tin-Tin's shoulders and turned his head towards the doors of the Tahiti Lounge. "I hear engines. And they've got a searchlight on." He got to his feet, suddenly obscurely nervous, and caught at a safety line. "Wait here, Tin-Tin. I want to see what's going on."

Viewed through the running glass doors the well deck outside was no more than a blur in a yellow-lit night, and despite shouts of protest from the wet and miserable passengers huddled nearby, Alan reached up and drew the bolts. Both doors flew instantly open, ripped out of his grasp to slam flat against the bulkheads as the wind howled in, and stepping into the blinding deluge that came with it he sensed rather than saw Tin-Tin following, and felt her catch hold of his hand. As the doors were heaved shut angrily behind them it was too late for argument, and as the deck rose and plunged he put a steadying arm about her waist. Rain drenched them in dense yellow clouds and vision came and went, but just discernible at the fore and aft ends of the deck the massive footings of the forward superstructure and the navigation bridge rolled through forty degrees as their towers waved wildly in the gloom overhead: a drunk's nightmare of a rain-lashed and reeling Manhattan. By the rail a group of oilskin-covered figures hunched together, clinging to the lines, and about twenty feet above them a red shape riding on two glaring lights hung shuddering as it fought the storm, inching slowly but purposefully upwards in the lee of the navigation bridge.

"I don't believe it: it's Virgil, he's trying the helijet, in this! He must be crazy!" Alan struggled towards the steps leading down to the well-deck, half in anxiety, half in excitement, then as Tin-Tin stumbled beside him he stopped for a second, watching. The helijet still rose, hugging the navigation bridge to avoid the swaying cable brace and the wind's full fury, but in fifteen feet, or maybe another twenty, there would be room to pull clear, and above that there was only free flying space, and new hope of a life-saving Mayday. He drew Tin-Tin closer to his side. "It's going to work, Tin-Tin. He's going to make it. He's going to make it!"

The helijet began a juddering turn, leaving the lee of the navigation bridge with its shelter but all its attendant dangers, then a shriek of wind and a blast of rain and seawater raked the deck, obscuring everything. Alan grabbed at a line as the planking under his feet heaved sickeningly and Tin-Tin fell against him; for one frozen second there was no sensation at all as Tsunami rode the wave, then she plunged, the next sea smashed into her bow, and the long roll back began.

"Alan!" Tin-Tin wailed beside him, and he looked up just in time to see a hundred-foot sledgehammer swinging at a fly: the great winged tower of the navigation bridge reeling back towards the helijet. Through the rain he saw a puff of fire as the jet's boosters flamed, taking it up and sideways in a desperate leap away from the bridge's trajectory, then as he opened his mouth to shout a useless warning the cable brace swung like a scimitar over the deck from the aircraft's right-hand side, and with no attempt at any avoiding action the helijet flew straight into it.

There was no sound, but a brief flash of fire that the rain quenched almost as soon as it ignited, then the tail-fin assembly dropped away, sliced off cleanly from the fuselage, and the aircraft began an accelerating drunken spiral down towards the deck. Tin-Tin screamed and Alan shouted, his knuckles white on the safety line. "Use the jets, Virgil! Use the jets!"

The men on the well-deck scattered. The jets had flamed on, but now unstable and gripped by the gale the aircraft lurched out to hang momentarily over the sea then was hurled inboard again, fighting to stay upright for the first and final landing of its short operating life. In its last seconds its engines died and the bright lights dimmed and winked out, then as it dropped down low over the deck one pad caught a hatch fairing, crumpled, and leaving a trail of debris flying through the rain the red shape bounced and overturned, cartwheeling through one hundred and eighty degrees with a nightmare slowness to crash into the base of the navigation bridge and come to rest.

Alan stood horror-struck, waiting for the ball of flame that didn't come, then as he realised that it wasn't going to he grabbed Tin-Tin and turned her around, pushing her back towards the doors of the Tahiti Lounge.

"Go back, Tin-Tin! Get inside!"

He didn't stay to see whether she complied. At the foot of the well deck steps the seamen in their oilskins hovered where they had retreated, hanging back, but one had taken a fire extinguisher from its bracket. From the dark mass at the rear of the deck a fountain of pressurised fluid was spraying into the rain, and self-preservation had drawn a cordon across the deck's centre as effective as any physical safety barrier.

"Come on, we've got to get him out of there!" Alan pulled at the nearest man, then when there was no reaction he ripped an axe from beside the extinguisher's bracket and started down the deck. The seamen fell back, and he shouted over his shoulder, furious. "Move! That isn't fuel, it's hydraulic fluid. He killed the engines and hit the safety switch. Didn't you see the lights go out?" Without waiting he half-ran, half-slithered down the deck, hauling himself bodily along a line to what was left of the helijet.

The cabin bubble was still intact. His heart thumping, he searched for a foothold on the wreckage, tearing his clothes on jagged metal. Steam hissed from twisted vents and pressurised fluids bled blue and orange onto the deck, but there was no high-octane reek. If the safety switch had been operated the electrics would be dead and the battery dumped, but one last act of the pre-programmed systems before shutting down would have been to pump a neutraliser into the fuel, increasing the chances of survival for both rescuers and pilot. At least that was the idea. The shatter-proof cabin glass was too crazed and cratered to see through clearly, but as he climbed up he could see that its inner surface on the pilot's side was smeared and spotted with red, and for the first time in the nausea-inducing weather conditions, he felt genuinely sick. He prised at the stuck door uselessly and yelled. "Hurry! I need someone with a crowbar, quick!"

Getting no answer he returned to frantically pulling at the door, then a great oilskin-clad figure hauled itself up and shouldered him aside, and as its head turned towards him he saw under the dripping sou'wester something he already had reason to associate with a crowbar: the face of Hawaiian-shirt. The meeting with the giant's inexpressive eyes lasted less than a fraction of a second, then with no sign of either favour or of malice the huge man turned away, and with one hand wrenched off the cabin door.

Inside, Virgil still sat upright in the pilot's seat, his safety harness intact, and as they stared in he turned his eyes slowly up to them from an examination of his fingers. "I cut my hand," he told them in puzzled surprise, looking round at the interior of the cabin. "Must've been the glass. Heck, what a mess."

The wind had strengthened by a few more knots, just failing to win control of the doors of the Tahiti Lounge as they were finally re-bolted. Beyond them the storm now ruled unchallenged, and the well deck was empty except for its litter of wreckage, and the rags of fire-retardant foam that flew up from the twisted mass at the foot of the navigation bridge to join the sea-spume as it carried in over the rail. Inside, on the floor in the centre of a circle of silent spectators Virgil sat with a hand to his head, still dazed and shocked, while Tin-Tin knelt beside him, her arm around his shoulders.

At the doors Alan grasped the handrail silently, looking out through the rain at the trail of debris, then at the smashed jet itself. One landing pad stuck up from the wreck at a pathetic angle, hydraulic cables flapping about it like severed tendons. Even without the knowledge his brother had gained on the bridge he was aware that it had been their final chance of salvation, and that they now had nothing left: the wind and the sea held all the cards. As he watched, around the wreckage oil mixed with foam flowed thickly down the camber of the deck, and the storm hosed it victoriously into the scuppers.

CHAPTER 9

HURRICANE

The air is filled with foam and spray; sea is completely white with driving spray;

visibility very seriously affected

(Force 12 on the Beaufort Wind Scale)

DEEP IN TSUNAMI'S stricken hull under the dim lights of H deck, Virgil leaned back against the bulkhead wearily. Here the corridors were as narrow as the monitors on the bridge had shown, but the water was deeper, filthy and unexpectedly cold, welling up from sunken gratings and an open floor hatch with a persistence and easy mastery that gave it an almost sentient identity in the minds of the exhausted bailers strung out along the walls: a hated but indomitable enemy. Beside him, hip-deep in water Alan worked with a bailing bucket, equally tired but with a close to obsessive concentration, his clothes, already ragged from the rips of the well-deck rescue now soaked and smutted with oil. At Alan's side Tin-Tin stood shivering, her face grime-stained but holding a bucket of her own, silently gripping the edge of Alan's jacket to keep her balance with a pale determination.

Down the middle of the passage a set of jury-rigged pumps, their throats underwater and motors stalling, gagged on black water they had already thrown up as they fought to pull the Pacific back up from the bow, where Tsunami was now settling by the head, astern to the midships elevator shaft where another set of faltering equipment could lift it to the main waste duct from the cabins, shunt it leakily over to the port scupper-drains and pour it back down into the bowels of the ship where the drowning bilge pumps gasped and wheezed, struggling to raise it again to dispose of it into the ocean.

To Virgil, it was an exercise in futility that went beyond provoking anger and engendered only a dull sense of despair. At each roll of the ship a flood cascading down the elevator shaft returned just a little less water than had been pumped up in the few preceding minutes, and at the head of the corridor the group of divers and engineers moving a steady flow of outdated welding equipment into and out of the hatch in the floor hauled out each machine visibly defeated by the conditions, while lowering down a replacement as unsuited to its task as the waterlogged wreck that had gone before.

Resting against the bulkhead he fought the impulse to close his eyes, aware of the presence of sleep, as permeating and overmastering as the Pacific itself, patiently searching for a crack in any weakened mental barrier to force its irresistible flood-path in. His gashed hand had been bound, but the dressing had come adrift with his bailing efforts, was flapping and oil-soaked, and salt water in the wound bit and stung like a pack of invisible jellyfish. The rest of the bailing team, once lining the corridor, had thinned to a straggle perhaps an hour ago as the last of the supervising officers, getting no help or interest from the bridge, had left the scene. But he had no idea of the time, as in the helijet wreck his telecom-watch had had its face smashed to reveal its intricate interior, and in case prying eyes should see it was a far from standard timepiece Alan had removed it, and thrown it into the ocean. Maybe it was day now, maybe night; it made little difference, either here or in the permanent storm-darkness on the battered upper decks, which had long ago been deemed too dangerous for habitation, leaving passengers and crew alike confined down in the reverberating drum that was Tsunami's hull, listening to the amplified, unremitting assault of the hurricane.

Coming to a decision, he straightened up and reached out to grip Alan's shoulder with an unmistakable purposefulness.

"Alan!" He shouted over the racket of the pumps. "We're just wasting time down here. Come on."

"What?" Alan half-turned, struggling to hear. "A waste of time? No, Virgil, if we all start thinking that way we'll never pump out that fourth compartment. If you've had enough, take a break. You should've stayed in the infirmary."

"I'm okay." Virgil shook his head, impatient. "Listen: you can see the gear going down through that hatch as well as I can. Some of it must be ten years old, and it's only designed for making temporary repairs in shallow water. With the force of water there must be down there they could never create a weld that would hold, even if they could keep the equipment running long enough to make one. It's futile, Alan. Those officers knew that; that's why they've disappeared and left us to it."

"But that's crazy. They wouldn't just have-" Alan began, then a boom from the forward end of the corridor turned all eyes just in time to see a surge of water as the hatch cover was slammed shut, the last diver out hurling his welding torch in disgust to whirl in a sputtering arc and land guttering and hissing in the water. The other seamen bent down into the flood to fasten the hatch seals, while the remaining bailers stood stock still, gripping their buckets and watching uncertainly.

"That's it, it's over." Virgil tightened his grip on Alan's shoulder. "They must've figured the only thing to do is seal off the compartment, and probably this whole area of H deck too. Let's get moving, Alan; we'll have to leave soon, anyway. Hey! Look out for Tin-Tin!" As he spoke, Tin-Tin suddenly swayed, grabbed for Alan's arm and missed, and fell heavily against the bulkhead. Alan moved quickly to support her, and she leaned against him for a few seconds, her head down. Virgil took her free arm grimly. "Come on, let's get her out of this. The air down here must be getting pretty foul by now."

As they shepherded their charge with care up the first few steps of the companionway the slog of the pumps was cut off, settling into a defeated and eerily final silence behind them. Climbing the last flights a little more easily, they heard the groans and complaints of straining cargo and fittings take over as the main accompaniment to the howl and tumult of the storm. Stepping out into an unknown corridor they stopped while Tin-Tin recovered, holding onto the bulkhead rail. She managed a smile. "I'm sorry. It suddenly seemed so airless down there. But I'm alright now. Where are we going?"

"Don't ask me." Alan wiped his brow with an oily hand, leaving a black streak parting his hair. He glanced at Virgil with a tired curiosity. "There's the guy who wanted out of there."

Virgil hesitated, looking up and down the corridor, which seemed to lead into the passenger accommodation. Against the opposite bulkhead an abandoned suitcase had spilled its contents on the floor: a toothbrush, a robe, a small smiling photograph, and at the turn of the passage two more large trunks were being dragged by an empty-eyed couple in fits and starts, seemingly towards no particular destination. The pair paused hopefully as two merchant officers rounded the corner at high speed, then they shrank back, seeing the glitter of drawn guns. Tin-Tin looked at Alan with widened eyes, and Virgil frowned as the wildly running figures passed without a glance and disappeared. "Looks pretty chaotic. I don't figure we should stay here. Let's head upwards, and get nearer to the deck so that we can assess the sea conditions. That way we'll know what to expect, and be ready to lend a hand if Henderson decides to try getting the lifeboats into the water."

"But we aren't allowed on deck," Alan pointed out. "And there's a fully-grown, no-punches-pulled cyclone raging out there. The chances of them trying to launch-"

"I didn't mean go out on deck, Alan," Virgil interrupted, a little sharply. Using the rail to keep his balance he started off, still frowning, down the corridor, forcing the others to follow him. "Like you said, we're International Rescue. I just figure we should be where we can do the most to help."

Alan fell in behind him without further argument, but Virgil felt his own words mock him as the weary group moved on. He felt strange, light-headed with tiredness and not for the first time in his life afraid, but this time with the certainty of inescapable disaster, most probably death, so close that he could feel its icy presence keeping perfect pace with him along the corridor. The Sword of Damocles had not returned, but its insubstantial spectre still intruded out of the past, brooding over their present stark reality with a chilling and uncanny I-told-you-so.

Tsunami's list was serious now and the floor sloped away at an awkward angle, but paradoxically it was easier to walk, as her rolling had grown more sluggish as she buried her head deeper with each assault of the wind and waves, taking less and less interest in the fight. Waning resistance on the part of her masters had also been evident for some time, in the unmanaged fiasco on H deck, and now with her officers armed against what might be looting, rioting or conceivably something worse. In any organised system in crisis, human body, rescue operation or ship, was a point of no return, beyond which overburdened controls broke down, entropy took over, and no amount of frantic action could retrieve the scattered cogs of the failing machine and get it tick-tocking in order ever again. He had watched that point pass while kneeling helplessly by makeshift stretchers, fought against it in vain when circumstances had conspired to defeat even Brains' incredible machines, and he felt its signature now like a charge in the air around him, slowly neutralising the wits of Tsunami's ship's company and bringing the cold hand of physics to set the program of disaster on its unstoppable course through her remaining hours. Tsunami was sinking, he now knew: by his side Alan and Tin-Tin briefly caught each other's hands, and his throat constricted at the thought of inrushing water tearing apart that grip, choking and silencing familiar voices. He meant to make for the upper decks, it was true, but thinking that the lifeboats could be launched or that any other human action might still result in the salvation of officers, crew and six hundred and fifty uncontrolled and frightened passengers would be under these conditions an almost incredible naiveté, and it was fear for the lives of Alan and Tin-Tin, the thought of somehow preventing them being trapped with the sea pouring into a foundering hull, which had driven him upwards from H deck, not with real hope, but with an increasing sense of helplessness and despair.

Selfishness; every-man-for-himself, his unsparing internal monitor accused him and he accepted its diagnosis meekly, unable to find an argument to counter it. The situation had passed beyond his abilities as a rescuer, and he found himself with nothing left to do but have International Rescue shamefacedly give priority to themselves.

The few passing faces, some blank, some fearful, some bruised or grazed from Tsunami's stumbles, soon ceased to appear, and Alan, now leading the way, stopped at a T-junction of empty, grating-floored corridor. From somewhere beyond a distant wall of steel there was a sound like a muffled shot, then a slithering rumble and a crash that propagated its vibrations through the surrounding bulkheads. Virgil listened. "This must be E deck; sounds like something just broke loose in the holds." He looked about him. "Let's try that way, Alan. Maybe we can find that D deck companionway."

The right-hand branch of the passage narrowed as it took them along, dim bulkhead lights marking it out as a service corridor. A row of closed watertight hatches punctuated the wall at widely spaced intervals on their left, then the low light revealed a dead end in front of them, in the form of a sealed, punch-code locked steel door.

"Great." Alan halted again. "What now?"

"Maybe it isn't so bad." Virgil looked at the row of hatches. "If this runs behind the holds we should be able to cut straight through one to the main access corridor." He followed the rail back to the nearest hatch and took a grip, wincing in pain, to spin the locking wheel. "Help me out, Alan. Guess I'm not up to this on my own just yet."

With the heavy hatch finally opened, then secured behind them they found themselves in darkness that at first seemed complete, then was slowly penetrated by a dim yellow light coming in under a raised shutter at the other side of the hold. In front of them a chained-down truck had snapped its moorings and smashed into a crate of packaged sugar that was slowly trickling down like a snowfall through the metal duckboards to fill the spaces underneath, and with a shock Virgil recognised the bullet-rip in the truck's radiator, and beyond it the heavy draped canvas that shut off one corner of the cavernous space. Like a repeating nightmare pivoting about the same dark point their random choice of hatch had brought them back into the World Navy's hold, although this time it seemed that its guardians had deserted their posts. The big containers looming in the dark creaked ominously and the groans and shrieks of restraining cables were growing louder at each roll of the ship, and moving carefully along the outer edge of the Navy's canvas they started towards the raised shutter as fast as was possible through the tangle of wreckage, making good headway until Tin-Tin screamed.

The sound was high, tearing, a concentrated outlet of surprise and fear, and Virgil turned, hair rising on the back of his neck as he saw it too: the sudden great figure emerging from the gap in the canvas to confront Alan at less than a heavy arm's reach: the huge, unmistakable bulk of Hawaiian-Shirt. Too far from the giant to help Alan he briefly felt fear, anger and exasperation mix, but the big man just stood still, regarding them with a blank face that gave no clue to whether he might in the next second stand aside or launch an attack. Then suddenly the giant clamped one hand on Alan's arm, turned back to face the slit in the canvas, and extended his other hand to point wordlessly through the gap into the dark.

There was a second's nonplussed stillness, then Alan tore his arm free, shouting "Get out of my way!" At almost the same time the dim light in the hold flickered, as if something had moved momentarily across its source, there was a crack that might have been another hawser snapping, then Hawaiian-shirt swayed and fell, crashing face-first onto the gratings to roll heavily over once, then lie still. Virgil followed his natural instincts and ran to kneel down at the man's side, and the neutral eyes stared up at him under spasmodically quivering lids. Alan knelt too, and as if galvanised by the movement the mouth in the big face pursed urgently, trying to shape some word, then the lids ceased to quiver, but the eyes still stared on, blank and uncommunicative.

"What happened? Can you do anything?" Alan turned to Virgil with astonishment bordering on shock.

"No." Virgil touched two fingers under the giant's jaw without needing to make the check. "He's gone, Alan, it's too late." He eased the heavy head aside gently, exposing a widening pool of blood where the spine met the base of the skull. "He's been shot. I thought I heard a cable break, but it must've been the gun." He stood up, looking towards the open shutter. "Someone was in that corridor, I saw a shadow pass between us and the lights. We have to get out of here right now; we're all in danger."

Alan got up and took a step towards the opening in the canvas. "No, we have to see what's in there first. You saw him pointing, he was trying to tell me something."

"It's too risky! He's probably dead because he saw too much. We have to go." Virgil grabbed Tin-Tin's arm and started for the open shutter, Alan protesting, but following. As they neared the shutter he pushed them both back against the bulkhead with a signal to wait, and cautiously edged up to the opening. The starboard side of the corridor was empty, sloping down to end in the locked door to the reactor area. He took a chance and edged his head out round the door frame. In the dim safety lights he could see that the port side was clear too, the companionway to D deck rising up empty as far as was visible, but canted at a difficult angle. "It's clear. Come on."

Slipping and sliding on the angled deck they reached the companionway and began to climb, using the handrails to pull themselves up the sideways-sloping steps. After three, perhaps four tiring flights, they reached a walkway leading off from the steps into the D deck corridors, the main companionway continuing on up towards the well deck, C deck and the Tahiti Lounge. A wind strong enough to be uncomfortable was blowing down from above, suggesting an open door or glassless window somewhere up on C deck, but even over its noise they heard a sudden movement on the steps above, then boots clanging on metal treads as someone overhead began ascending in haste. For a second they froze, the realisation that it might be the gunman sinking in, but Virgil was the first to move, pushing Alan forward onto the walkway.

"We need to get to D deck and our cabins. We'll pick up anything that could be useful if they decide to abandon ship, then we should look for a senior officer and find out what their plan is, if they have one." He put an arm round Tin-Tin's shoulders and propelled her after Alan, but hesitated himself, looking up at the companionway. "I'll catch you up. Get moving."

"Why?" Alan stopped. "Where are you going? We ought to stick together."

"Get Tin-Tin to the cabins and wait for me there, Alan. If I don't turn up in ten minutes then just do what I said and find one of the officers." Virgil turned back, looking upwards again in sudden resolution. "I'm going after that crazy assassin."

"But Virgil, he could be at the other end of the ship by now!" Alan stepped forward in protest, but Tin-Tin was in his path, and Virgil pushed her forwards again.

"Go! Get to those cabins, honey. And stick like glue with Alan."

Alan's shouts pursued him as he started up the companionway. Hauling himself upwards as fast as was possible, he was glad to leave Alan's voice behind, having little justification to give for his departure. Cold anger, a rare visitor in his nature, was growing at the memory of the dead giant's face, and he was aware of letting it express itself in impulsive and probably inadvisable action. He felt no great debt to the big man for pulling him out of the helijet, as he was sure that the seaman would as readily have killed him if under that particular order at the time, but the anger sprang from the manner of his death: the offhand and purposeless, almost contemptuous taking of life when no life aboard Tsunami was likely to have many hours left in any case. Shortness of time made a nonsense of thoughts of the future, but something within him would not, could not stand by and allow it to make a nonsense of the value of human life, though what justice might be dispensed by the group to which he suspected the murderer belonged, if he caught up with them, was an open question.

There was no sign of life at the companionway head, but the wind was ripping down into the lower levels through an open door that led into a corridor, and he bent his head into the storm's pressure, fighting his way forward. A stronger gust snatched at his breath, there was a crash and rattle of approaching movement from around a bend in the corridor ahead, and he found himself pinned by the wind against the bulkhead, unable to prise his shoulders free. At mad speed a painting in a heavy frame that the storm had casually plucked from its fixings rounded the corner and clattered towards him, lifted as easily as a breeze-blown paper to smash into the opposite wall in a shower of glass. As it tumbled past and he dropped the hand that shielded his eyes he recognised its subject: a scene by a long-dead Japanese artist which also hung at home above his father's treasured pieces of Imari ware - two streaming-maned elemental dragons on a mountainous sea, fighting for the pearl of immortality. As the wind released him and he struggled on, Tsunami vibrated in tune with the howl of the storm and shook, gripped in a real and more terrible game of dragons as the powers of the water and the powers of the air fought around her for supremacy, and for possession of the clawed and battered little scrap of humanity and steel that served them for their all-too-mortal pearl.

Round the turn of the corridor the wind was as solid as a bulkhead to lean against, and a mini-sea of water on the floor was being whipped into airborne froth and lashing in tidal surges across the soaked carpet as Tsunami rolled. At the low point of each roll the storm brought more water flying down a companionway well that probably led up to C deck, and added to the screaming wind-cacophony was the wild and not too distant slam-slam-slamming of an unsecured door, possibly left open in a killer's flight. Drenched and turning his head away from the wind to catch his breath he battled his way to the door, then finally emerging onto what he recognised as the well deck he found himself suddenly out in the open, unprotected by any bulkhead and face to terrifying face with Alan's fully-grown, no-punches-pulled cyclone.

No Pacific storm in his experience could have prepared him for it. The door led out into what had twenty-four hours ago been a covered promenade running aft across the well deck, but now its missing roof and smashed glass in its windows let the cyclone roar in, and staggering in the blast he caught at a steel bar in an empty window frame, hanging on with all his strength to stay on his feet. He was on the port side of the ship, at the top of a reeling mountain. Outside the wrecked promenade a precipitous hillside of a deck sloped down to the starboard rail, which was partly invisible, pounded by breaking waves that the wind was now strong enough to flatten as soon as they raised their heads, leaving the sea to vent its energy and rage in filling the air. Thick foam and spray whitened the atmosphere like a flying ocean beaten into froth and lifted bodily into the air, and he was forced to shield his face with his arm and catch his breath through the soggy filter of a sleeve. The wind attacked him furiously, now trying to rip his hair upwards and out by the roots, now flinging it back over his forehead in a stinging whip that brought more water into his eyes to join the spray. The noise was agony too; the tempest's frenzied unrelenting shriek combined with the fiercely oscillating pressure of the air to torture his eardrums, making each moment an increasingly unbearable endurance test. Awed by the flying sea, he saw through the gaps in its ragged curtain another incredible sight: at the high port rail a group of men in dark World Navy uniforms and oilskins were trying to manhandle a lifeboat outboard, only keeping themselves from being washed bodily off the ship by clinging to a safety line. The boat, close to the mid-point of the well deck rail, had been freed from its restraints and gravity and the storm were trying to swing it back inboard towards the centre of the ship, but unlike the small rescue party that had fought with the number one boat the Navy's combined muscle-power had had the brute force to ram the boat up against the rail, and the davit-lines were tightening as the hydraulics strained to give it the final heave over the side. He stared at the scene, lost as to what its purpose could be. Beyond the port rail Tsunami's listing hull must curve downwards and outwards like the exposed belly of a whale, and there was nowhere for a boat dropping from its falls to end up, except in plunging a few short yards to hit her side and be smashed to destruction.

A sudden heavy hand on his shoulder diverted his thoughts with a shock back to the missing gunman, but turning as fast as he could while still hanging onto the steel bar he recognised the face of the muffled-up figure behind him, and gestured urgently towards the foam-obscured deck. Getty was having none of it, and with a face like thunder and an iron grip on a stanchion tried to pull him back towards the door. Shouting was futile; instead Virgil extended a pointing finger towards the group at the rail and held it, hanging stubbornly onto the bar. At last Getty, seeming to realise that something more than sheer cussedness was in the air, paused to gaze out into the flying spray, then stiffened in horror and shifted his handhold, struggling towards the open deck. Virgil moved to follow, but a figure on the near edge of the boat party turned towards them, raising an arm to show a dark metallic object levelled in their direction. It was Virgil's turn to grab Getty, and dragging him back he tried to explain the danger wordlessly, but while the officer's eyes were still mystified the crack of snapping steel cables cut through the din of the storm, and looking round they saw the lifeboat launched, but on an insane career inboard down the sloping deck.

The World Navy group scattered, fell and slithered, the majority saved by their lines, but at least one figure, possibly the nearest, was plucked instantly from its anchorage and disappeared, towed in the wake of the hurtling boat. A cloud of storm-propelled splinters as deadly as razors missed the promenade by one or two feet, and the broken blade of an eight-foot oar arced up to spiral weightlessly over the deck. The boat bounced and plunged across the hatch-covers, gathering energy and shedding a storm of cables, splintered wood and fittings as it flew, then finally finding accessible water smashed the centre of the starboard well deck rail to pulp and toppled through it, vanishing into the whitened sea without a trace.

At the promenade door Getty mouthed a single vicious oath and caught Virgil's arm roughly, shouting a soundless order and pointing back into the body of the ship. Then he turned his back and this time wind-assisted he half-climbed, was half-blown back inside the doorway and was gone as swiftly as the lifeboat, disappearing down the corridor at a slithering run. Clinging to the doorpost Virgil looked for any remaining movement on the deck, but the Navy had retreated aft into invisibility, and anyone dragged off by the boat had already passed beyond consideration. His thoughts moving back to Alan and Tin-Tin he tried to turn, but finding a new grip too late he was flung violently back in through the door, just avoiding a crash into the foot of the C deck companionway by grabbing at a safety rope.

Tsunami's movements had changed, becoming less those of a ship and more like those of a wildly-vibrating musical instrument, its seams and sound-board strained and cracking in some lunatic maestro's grip. The storm's voice howled down the companionway above him in a rising note, and the sense of massive forces building in a hideous crescendo towards breaking point was crushing, making it hard to concentrate. He tried to transfer his hold to the companionway rail, but the wind beat him to it again, and thrown into a corner backwards and hard he slumped against the rail and let the cyclone pin him to it for a moment, dazed. Then Tsunami staggered, slammed by a solid wall of wind, and from above came the sound of glass breaking; no single crash but a din that no fire, earthquake or man-made device of destruction could have produced: a tearing, ripping shatter that continued without pause, a sound like every pane of glass in a block of giant skyscrapers being smashed in unremitting concert, floor by floor. And through it came a scream; not the high-pitched shrill of a frightened woman but the harsher, more terrible cry of a man in the extremity of terror, or the grip of agony. Still reeling Virgil managed to get a handhold on the rail, and the wind helped to push him roughly up the companionway steps. Trying to find shelter he came to a closed door, but as he drew its bolt he found himself plucked forward, snatched almost off his feet and into what had been the bright surroundings and familiar security of the Tahiti Lounge.

All the port windows had gone, and the cyclone was screaming in unchecked through the great dark room and out again, forming a vast-scale vacuum pump. Shards of glass were still pouring out in a glittering hail from the window frames, and tables, chairs, stuffed bluefins in their cases and anything else unfixed had been sucked up into airborne tangles against the frames, to be splintered and ripped out into the storm in clouds of debris as he watched. The noise was appalling, breathing almost impossible and he clung with both arms to the door, fighting to turn his face out of the cyclone's and into a useable pocket of air. It was a nightmare, the living embodiment of the legend of the cavern of the winds, but seawater was being sucked in and was there too, choking the atmosphere with hurtling spray. The elemental dragons had ceased squabbling over their pearl and were close up and in earnest now, claws and great bulging eyes thrust in at the windows, huge dual forces trying to squeeze themselves into their toy ship's tiny openings and burst through. Their breath carried their stink of spume and seaweed, was primal, unendurable, no environment for life of any type, but hearing another human cry he managed to turn his head and saw a figure clinging one-handed to a pillar, its legs sucked halfway out of a great picture window, struggling uselessly against the wind to bend its other arm to get a firmer grip.

By the door was a bolted-down table, and forcing strength into his muscles by sheer will he transferred his hold. Above the bar a trail of small lights that had somehow survived showed the figure above him as plump, probably out of condition, easy dragon-prey. Shouting an encouragement that was blown back into his face, he dragged himself under the shelter of the table, then hauled himself in under the next. Gasping for air he crept forward stage by painfully-slow stage, until a great blank space dividing the end of the row of tables from the pillar confronted him and he looked round desperately for another route. Then without warning the wind-pump reversed, and he was pinned down, still under a table as the remaining wreckage at the port windows was plucked back in and hurled in chaos through the air. The pain in his ears increased beyond bearing and he felt himself cry out, then through the flying foam he saw his target, no longer clinging to the pillar but being lifted bodily to the ceiling to be displayed in triumph like a flailing kite in the centre of the big room for an instant, then swept with a soundless shriek through one of the starboard windows as they exploded outwards in a storm of glass. He closed his eyes, listening to the merciless shattering until the wind with its work done shifted, and the pressure in the room eased as the forces battering it from port and starboard equalised. Released, he managed to climb to his feet, but above the table's shelter the wind still flowed like a great rip-tide through the room, and catching a post near the central bar as an anchor he found his strength suddenly gone, his muscles shaking uncontrollably. Arms clamped round the post he looked up: the polyglass sea over the bar had been smashed into fragments, and its outrigger sailboat was gone, no doubt hurled through a starboard window in the same way as everything else, to have its destruction completed by the storm and the ocean. As he stood, with no energy to move, the scream of the wind outside rose to a deafening pitch, and through the deck he could feel another change as Tsunami began to vibrate from stem to stern. He managed to turn his head, and saw, at the door he had entered by, the figure of Getty clinging to the doorpost with Alan and Tin-Tin behind him, hanging on with all their strength to the corridor rail. Getty yelled at him soundlessly, but interpretation was impossible, and with his muscles still weak and his arms shaking, Virgil was well aware that he would never overcome the pressure of the storm to reach the door.

Then suddenly, astonishingly, the wind was gone. The air in the Tahiti Lounge became instantly and almost unnaturally still, and outside the flying sea-foam thinned like a retreating snowstorm, leaving the view of the outer decks clear. Getty's shouts were now just audible, over a background din that seemed to be receding from the ship, and with a shudder like relief her rolling eased and she settled back to lie at a more comfortable angle. Releasing his grip on the post, Virgil stumbled towards the door, finding the sudden absence of the deck's wild motion difficult to adjust to. Getty stood upright, staring out at the scene beyond the Tahiti Lounge's shattered windows, nonplussed, then as Virgil reached the door, the darkness of the storm outside was broken, and a descending shaft of sunlight miraculously lit up Tsunami's navigation bridge.

Four pairs of eyes exchanged uncomprehending glances, then Getty, shouting pointlessly that they should all three have been below decks, left them, running through the ruins of the Tahiti Lounge towards a blown-out doorway, and the walkway above the well deck that gave an unimpeded view of the ship, and of the sea astern.

Alan, Tin-Tin and Virgil followed him. The walkway had survived, but a length of heavy rope netting had been blown upwards and wrapped round it a few paces from the doorway, penning them into a tiny space. They crowded at the rail, seeing the damage on the well deck and smashed glass in the navigation and control bridge windows in front of them, but all their attention was firmly drawn past these, to the wider scene beyond the ship.

In a circle all around them was a great stretch of ocean in which a confused pattern of waves was running, in some places clashing together to create massive rollers, in others cancelling each other out to leave large areas of water that were heavily choppy, but nothing more. Forming the circle's boundary, just a few hundred yards distant on Tsunami's starboard side, but perhaps a couple of miles off to her port, was a wall of flying rain and seawater that continued up in a whirling cylinder into the sky, holding back the heavy cloud and forming a towering chimney of clear air, topped with a ragged patch of blue sky. From the massive rotating cyclone at the circle's edge the moans, shrieks and screaming of the wind continued unabated: the great, huge anger of the earth's elemental forces against the tiny things crawling uninvited on its face rendered impotent in this place by the universal laws of physics, but warning of the briefness of the the time that was left for action before its imminent return.

Virgil suddenly understood. Tsunami had become a mote, blown willy-nilly into the storm's great eye.

CHAPTER 10

EYEWALL

Eyewall: n. The mass of clouds that whirls around the eye of a hurricane,

where the destructive force of the storm is most intense

(The Free Dictionary)

OUT ON TSUNAMI'S open well deck, the wind was beginning to rise again. In the hours since her unexpected entry into the cyclone's eye her starboard list had lessened, but she still lay head-down, her bow dangerously low in the water. Attempts to launch her port lifeboats had been abandoned as a waste of precious time, and hanging in disorder from their davits their bows or sterns trailed on the decking where snapped cables or exhausted machinery had left them in the futile attempts to force them outboard over her still-raised port side. The starboard boats were an easier proposition, not too close to the water to make a standard launch practical, and many had already been got away and were clustered nervously about the ship, following her slow and limping course, which was being calculated minute-by-minute on the bridge to keep the small flotilla clear of any dangerous areas of building waves and in comparatively calm water. All self-righting sealed craft, the hope was that the lifeboats would weather the maelstrom of the inevitable exit from the eye even if Tsunami did not, and that when the eyewall passed, they could ride out the remainder of the storm until help arrived. But without the port boats they were badly overcrowded, and emergency inflatables were also being lowered into the water through the gap in the ship's starboard rail.

In the last hour it had become obvious that what had once been the most distant part of the eye's towering wall of cloud, wind and rain was catching up with the ship and would soon be approaching her port side, its din starting to make talking difficult again and its threat impossible to ignore. Fear, and some anger at delays in getting the lifeboats off, were in the air, but for the most part queueing for the boats was orderly, and Alan, Tin-Tin and Virgil stood a little way off from the back of one long queue to board the number 3 lifeboat, second of the boats strung out along Tsunami's starboard side. The usual convention of 'women and children first' was being followed, but Tin-Tin had steadfastly refused to board a boat without Alan and Virgil, so all three waited together, Alan watching the flotilla of lifeboats through a pair of binoculars salvaged from his cabin. He handed the glasses to Virgil, raised his voice against the wind, and pointed. "Look out there. What the heck is that?"

Scanning the little fleet of bright orange hulls, Virgil saw something that looked like a tangle of wooden wreckage being driven by the wind alongside them, but as the sea buoyed it up he recognised the Tahitian outrigger sailboat, minus its sail and its mast but floating with perfect stability and already being boarded by a few foolhardy passengers escaping from one of the overloaded lifeboats. He shook his head in disbelief. "It's that fishing boat from the Tahiti Lounge. I don't know how it got out there in one piece, but it'll never survive once the eyewall hits. That won't save anyone's life." Feeling the growing swell that was starting to lift and drop Tsunami with a heavy motion, he turned the glasses to the looming eyewall. "I wonder how long we've got to get the rest of the boats into the water. It's hard to judge how fast that boundary's moving."

"Whatever time we've got, it probably isn't enough", Alan answered grimly. "Look aft. Seems like the World Navy think so too, and they're making their own arrangements."

Returning the glasses to Alan, Virgil looked round. At the after end of the deck a full-sized, powered lifeboat, one of Tsunami's biggest boats, was being lowered into the water, three crewmen conducting the launch, others standing by to prevent any of the ship's passengers from trying to climb aboard the vessel. A small knot of dark-uniformed Navy men waited to board it, looking on with obvious impatience.

"I figure they've commandeered it," Alan went on. "That has to be a forty-man boat, and I only see maybe eight or ten Navy guys. That's a lot of wasted seats. I'd like to know what Henderson thinks about this. That's if he even knows."

"There's nothing he can do about it", Virgil reminded Alan. "They can pretty much do what they like. And that seems to include shooting members of his crew if they get too inquisitive."

"We can't pin that on them without any proof," Alan objected. "Anyone could've been hanging around that hold, it was unguarded. It could've been that rat Meadows, getting his revenge for the guy running out on him, or another crewman with some grudge. It's pretty chaotic below decks now, and that makes for easy opportunities for someone wanting to settle old scores."

"I can't believe it was Meadows." Virgil shook his head. "He's a coward, he pays thugs to do his dirty work. And could he have fired a shot that accurate in the half-dark without professional training, a rifle and a scope? I think they've got something hidden down there that they don't want anyone to see. And they're prepared to eliminate anyone who does see it."

"Perhaps," Alan conceded. "But I figure that one of those guards turned up, meant to fire a warning shot but hit the guy by accident in the low light. When he realised what he'd done, he was shocked and he ran off. Anyway, if they really are ready to kill to keep a secret, we were all in there too. Why didn't he shoot us as well?"

Virgil had no answer. In the water, the engine of the commandeered lifeboat sprang to life, and they turned to watch the craft start away from Tsunami's side, picking up speed fast. Alan raised the binoculars. "Yup, ten Navy guys; no-one else aboard. I don't know how many were on Tsunami when we left port, but you said they made a pretty small group on the bridge, and they lost a few trying to launch that lifeboat. I'd bet there aren't many of them left on the ship."

"There probably aren't," Virgil agreed. "They certainly seem keen to get away from it." He watched the lifeboat's track. "Doesn't look to me like they're going to follow our course. If I'm right, they're headed straight for the eyewall, at top speed."

"They must be crazy," Alan said. "Why would they do that?"

"Well, we'll all be heading into it soon, Alan: we don't have a choice. I think they want to get through the eyewall and the rest of the storm as soon as they can, rather than wait for it to catch us up. Could be something to do with that coded message they wanted me to send; they seemed pretty desperate to contact their base."

As he spoke there was a stir at the back of their queue, and the line of passengers waiting for the number 3 boat began to move, some hanging on to the hand-ropes to keep their balance on the ship's increasingly rolling deck. Alan put a hand on Tin-Tin's shoulder.

"At last! Our boat's in the water." He shouted over the wind. "Come on, we want to make sure we get a seat."

They re-joined the queue. It moved slowly, and as they neared the rail they could see that canvas chutes had been rigged to get passengers down into the boats that were waiting at the ship's side, and that the number 3 boat's chute had been angled a little too steeply, causing some hesitation among the people at the queue's head. Two crewmen were trying to make adjustments, but worried at the delay Virgil stopped to look at the approaching eyewall. With a start he realised how close it now was: he had to tilt his head back to see the top of the circular wall rearing up high above the ship, and the great rags of cloud and rain that were being torn off it by the wind to fly like streaming pennants just above its rim. Tsunami lay at the inner edge of a gigantic amphitheatre moulded from thick cloud and rushing air, and the sound of the wind, now raising a howl and roar around her upper works, was like the close-up thunder of a bloodthirsty crowd. Awed, he stared at the spectacle, but his thoughts were interrupted by a hand roughly shaking his arm and the voice of Lieutenant Getty yelling in his ear.

"Look alive!" Getty shouted. "What you're seeing is something called the Stadium Effect, but there's no time to stand gawping at it. That eyewall's going to be on us in about twenty-five minutes, sooner if we're unlucky. What's going on with this boat queue?"

"They're having trouble getting the chutes deployed right. Some people are too scared to slide down," Virgil answered, now having to shout to be heard himself.

Getty's mouth shaped a string of picturesque curses, then he cupped his hands to his lips. "OK, get your brother and his little Malaysian friend and come with me. I'll get you onto a shorter queue."

"But what about the people here?" Virgil began, but Getty cut short his protest.

"I'll see to this mess in a minute. You have to get yourselves into a boat, or at least get her into one. In fifteen minutes the Old Man's closing the watertight doors, then no-one will be able to go below. That means that if we have any problems launching a boat we'll have no way of accessing our tools or replacement parts, and anyone who can't fit into the boats we have left will be stranded on the deck when the storm hits us."

"Is there any chance that the ship will make it through the eyewall?" Virgil asked, voicing the question that had been uppermost in his mind for the last few hours.

Getty made a sour face. "Depends who you ask. If you're asking me, no. Not for a second time; no chance at all. She's flooded, she's starting to roll again, and when that thing hits us everything that's still chained down below is going to break loose and slam through the bulkheads. Anyway, she's given up. The waves are hitting her and she's not fighting back, she's not recovering. You're a marine engineer, can't you feel it?" He turned round, shouting to Alan and Tin-Tin. "Come with me, now! Number five boat; just you three. Get moving!"

"What's happening?" Alan asked Virgil as Getty shepherded them along the rail to a lifeboat station with a comparatively short queue for the boat, which had just been lowered into the water. Its passengers were already boarding, not using chutes, but a simple rope ladder with wooden treads.

"Seems like he's taken us under his wing," Virgil replied, as quietly as he could. "It doesn't matter; that queue needed shortening anyway."

"Into the boat!" Getty shouted. "I'm going to sort out those chutes, and if you're not aboard by the time I get back I'll have Kapo here chuck you in." He gestured towards the crewman managing the queue, who was only slightly smaller than Hawaiian-shirt. The man raised a huge arm and flexed his muscles, and Getty turned and disappeared among the milling queues.

"You heard him," Alan told Tin-Tin as they approached the boarding ladder. "It's our turn; you first. Can you manage that ladder?"

"Of course I can," she replied, but in her face he saw her earlier anxieties returning. "But I don't want to go first. If something happened before you got in we could be separated."

"We won't be," Alan answered, a little irritated. "Anyway, whoever goes first we could still be separated. If you keep this up, we'll never get into a boat at all."

Losing patience, Virgil moved to the rail at one side of the ladder and pushed Alan to the other side. "Alan, stand there. Tin-Tin, we'll both be right here where you can see us until you're in the boat, then we'll be straight down. We're not going anywhere without you."

Tin-Tin hesitated, then accepting the inevitable turned to face inboard, put a foot over the ship's side, and started down the ladder. "Good girl," Alan shouted, but his words were lost in the noise of the wind, and in a sudden commotion from the mid-point of the well deck, where the last of the inflatable boats were being manhandled into the water. The gale from the eyewall had begun to hurl rain and spray across the ship and visibility was deteriorating, but something large with orange and black colours was bucking and twisting in the wind above the broken section of the rail, and there were shouts from crewmen and a few frightened female screams. Alan, nearest to the hubbub, turned round and pointed across the deck. "Virgil, one of the inflatables has broken loose! I'm going to help, you stay there and make sure Tin-Tin gets into the boat." With that, he ran off and was quickly lost to sight in the murk.

"Alan! Stay here!" Virgil shouted after him uselessly. "Alan! For Pete's sake!" Faced with a choice between responsibilities, he turned back to the ladder. Predictably, Tin-Tin had heard the shouts and was climbing back onto the deck. She looked at him tearfully.

"I knew something like this would happen. I have to find Alan."

"No." Virgil shook his head. "You have to get into the boat, right now. I'll go get Alan and we'll both be back with you in a few minutes." At the ladder top, another two passengers, a woman and a large man, moved in behind Tin-Tin and started to clamber slowly down. "Go on, Tin-Tin," Virgil continued. "If we stand here much longer there'll be no room left in the boat." He reached out, taking her hand in a gesture he hoped would give reassurance, and helped her back onto the ladder. She started down slowly, he let go of her hand, and called after her. "We'll be right with you. Even if it did take me a while to find Alan we could just take the next boat. But it won't come to that, I promise." Tin-Tin nodded, still a little wet-eyed, and disappeared down the ladder.

Relieved, Virgil turned away and set off after Alan. The waves were were now lifting the ship higher and dropping her harder as the sea felt the effect of the winds roaring round in the eye's approaching perimeter. At each plunge, the wave crests were breaking over her bow. He increased his pace, and pushing his way through another boat queue where passengers were boarding using a canvas chute, he almost collided with Carolyn Meadows, awaiting her turn for the chute and cradling an odd little briefcase that looked from its size and shape like some type of digital device. He tried to avoid her, but too late: she intercepted him and he drew his head back involuntarily as she put out an unexpected hand to touch his face. She gave a little sour smile, and something came into her eyes but died before it had time to communicate itself to the rest of her features, and she shook her head. "Don't go getting yourself drowned, handsome. It'd be a terrible waste." Then she turned her back, took her place at the chute and was gone, sliding down the thick canvas tube with the briefcase clasped tightly to her chest, as if the rest of her life depended on it.

Virgil hurried on. He could see that one of the inflatable boats had been picked up by the wind, probably as it was being lowered into the water, and had been caught up on the smashed end of the starboard rail. A group of crewmen were trying to disentangle it, but he could see no sign of Alan. Worried, he looked back at the number 5 boat station, but was relieved to see passengers still queueing by the ladder. He and Alan should still have time to join Tin-Tin in the lifeboat, then.

Half-way down the boarding ladder at the number 5 boat station, Tin-Tin clung to the handholds, trying to see what was holding up the passenger who was near the ladder foot but making no move to get into the lifeboat. He was a large heavy man, and a crewman and a woman who might have been the big man's wife were shouting at him from the boat. Tin-Tin saw him look up, then start climbing back upwards, motioning to her to do the same. As he moved she saw that the lower rungs of the ladder had broken away from one side rope, leaving a distance down to the lifeboat's deck that was too far for a jump. Resigned, she started back up. At the rail above her, Kapo was shouting for a replacement ladder, and as she clambered up onto Tsunami's deck he was joined by another crewman. Leaning on the rail to catch her breath, she listened to their conversation.

"No ladders left on the well deck," the crewman reported. "But there should be some in the lifeboat store on B deck. It won't take me long to get back up here with one."

"We've got less than ten minutes before the Captain hits the button." Kapo seemed undecided. "You sure you can do it in the time?"

"Easy. I'll be back with one in a couple of minutes. Or I'll bring two, just in case."

"Okay, if you're sure you can carry them. You'd better get going, then."

The crewman ran off, and Tin-Tin wondered whether to wait with the queue or try to find Alan and Virgil. Some of the queuing passengers were sitting on the deck, gripping the hand-ropes as Tsunami's pitching and rolling worsened. Most were unencumbered, but a few had items of luggage or clutched small valuables, and with a start she remembered the opal bracelet, forgotten many hours ago in the helijet incident and still in its box in her abandoned cabin. There should be time to run down to D deck and retrieve it before a new ladder could be brought up and fixed in place. Kapo's words came back into her mind unbidden, and she briefly wondered what button the Captain was going to hit, but a determination to save the bracelet took hold of her, and she could see a companionway that led down to D deck just a few yards away. She grabbed a hand-rope, bent her head into the wind, and set off towards the steps.

Down on D deck only the emergency lights were operating, and Tin-Tin made her way from the faint illumination of one greasy bulkhead lamp to the next through alternating tunnels of shadow. The ship's bow had dipped lower and her list to starboard was increasing, which with the higher waves made walking in the corridors a dangerous balancing act, but after a few moments she saw the familiar plate 'D52' on a half-open door and she stumbled in. Her cabin had been looted; drawers hung open and the wardrobe was empty, but her only concern was for the bracelet, and she looked around desperately until she remembered the bag of essentials that she had readied for a possible order to abandon ship. It was under the bed where she had left it, and a scrabble inside it produced both box and bracelet. In relief she took out the bracelet and saw the opals' fires glint dully in the low light, but suddenly all light in the cabin and the corridor was extinguished, and she was in pitch blackness. The darkness was followed by a single deafening blare of an alarm from somewhere in the corridor, and the bulkhead lights came back on briefly then set into a strobe-like pattern of on-off flashing that was punctuated by regular blasts from the alarm. Suddenly afraid, she crammed the bracelet into a pocket and ran back into the corridor.

In the disorienting see-sawing between low light and total darkness she was unsure of the way back to the well-deck companionway, but making a guess she worked her way along the corridor, hanging tightly onto the rail. She tried to move faster but Tsunami's rolling defeated any attempt at speed, then in a pause between the alarm blasts she heard an angry yell behind her and a hand grabbed hold of her arm in a crushing grip. Twisting round, she recognised in the next brief flash of the lamps the face of Richard Meadows, contorted with rage and sickly-hued in the grubby yellow light.

"So, it's the little native girl, is it?" His grip on her arm tightened cruelly and he grabbed her other wrist, twisting it and pinning her against the bulkhead. "I want my property back. Where have you hidden it?" He said something else that was lost in a blast from the alarm, and staring into his face as the lights blinked on again Tin-Tin saw that the normally colourless irises of his eyes looked as yellow and as vengeful as a cat's.

"I don't know what you're talking about," she answered truthfully. "Let me go!"

"You think I'm stupid?" His lips curled into a snarl. "You three and Carolyn, you're all in it together. She's betrayed me: I saw her with your boyfriend's brother up on deck." The alarm blared, and he paused and restarted. "I know one of you has it. I want that Telebank terminal back."

"I don't know what you mean." Tin-Tin struggled to pull away, but his grip just tightened. Then a memory from a short time ago sprang into her mind: a fleeting glimpse of Carolyn Meadows emerging from a companionway to join a boat queue on the well-deck, a small dark plastic case clasped tightly in her arms. Tin-Tin looked at Meadows defiantly. "We don't have anything of yours. But I saw your wife queuing for a boat on the well deck over half an hour ago. She had a little briefcase with her. She's probably off the ship by now."

Livid, Meadows threw back his head and roared. At the same time, the bulkhead lights came on and stayed on, the alarm stopped sounding, and an ominous clanking and shuddering started up from further down the corridor. Meadows froze for a second, his expression changing from rage to momentary puzzlement and finally to fear, then he shifted his grip to Tin-Tin's shoulders, threw her bodily across the corridor to slam hard against the opposite bulkhead and stumbled off, leaving her lying winded and bruised on the floor.

She sat up slowly and unsteadily, a little dizzy. The clanking from the corridor ahead came again, closer and louder, and the light weakened, as if something had cut off part of its source. Then from twin slots in the ceiling above her head there was the shriek of metal on metal and a double wall of steel began to descend, slowly, shakily but inexorably towards the floor. She suddenly realised what button Captain Henderson had hit, and dragged herself painfully away from the lowering watertight door as its foot clanged down and locked into place in the floor. The corridor ahead was blocked. She staggered to her feet, turning round. The corridor behind her was open, but about sixty feet away a shiver ran through the next 'O' ring set into the bulkheads, there was a grating sound and the steel foot of the next door in the closing sequence began to come down. She stumbled towards the shrinking gap, but Tsunami gave a great lurch, heeled further over to starboard, and outside the ship's hull the full force of the hurricane returned with screaming fury. Knocked to her knees Tin-Tin tried to drag herself forward all fours, then a roar like the sound of thunderous waves came up the corridor towards her, the lights went out, and a great rush of pressurised air slammed her sprawling back against the bulkhead. The dizziness welled up like rising water, and she knew nothing more.

Up on the open well deck, Virgil had finally found Alan. The rain was now torrential, the wind a physical opponent that had to be battled to make any headway across the deck, and far above the storm and the heavy racing cloud-wall that was closing in on the ship, the sun had set and the light was rapidly failing. The last lifeboats were moving away, just one still at Tsunami's side, and Alan had appeared unexpectedly, climbing inboard through the gap in the rail with Getty and a group of crewmen who had freed the stuck inflatable and lowered it down into the water. Alan saw Virgil approaching, and ran to meet him. "Virgil! Did you get Tin-Tin into the lifeboat okay?"

"Yes, she got in." Virgil shouted over the roar of the wind. "I watched her climb down the ladder. And then I had to chase after you. Why did you have to go running off like that?"

"These guys needed help." Alan shrugged. "What does it matter? We can get back to the boat and join her now."

"Not if it's already away." Seeing Getty passing, Virgil caught his shoulder. "Do you know if the number five boat has left?"

"Number five? That was Kapo's boat, the one you two were supposed to be on. Yes, it's gone, he reported it away okay a few minutes ago." Getty paused as an alarm began blaring from somewhere below them in the ship. "He's looking after the last lifeboat now, and you need to get on it: station number seven. And just for once, will you please do what you're told?" He turned his head as the alarm below sounded again. "That's the doors closing below, I need to make sure there's no-one left downstairs. But there will be; we've had no time to take proper headcounts, and Ed-ruddy-Murphy's law always applies." Tipping down the peak of his white cap to shield his eyes from the deluge, he ran off across the deck.

"At least Tin-Tin's safe," Alan said. "Come on, let's find that lifeboat." As they made their way aft a small party of men appeared momentarily through the veil of rain, obviously also making for the number seven boat station, and Virgil was shocked to recognise Captain Henderson, a bloody bandage around his head, being supported by another officer. The glimpse was blown away in the downpour, but a larger group of crewmen came into view close by, led by the now-familiar figure of Kapo. Alan saw him and called out over the racket of the storm.

"Hey! Thanks for getting the number five boat away so fast. Our friend Tin-Tin was on it; it's good to know she's safe."

Kapo slowed and stopped, eyeing Alan uncertainly. "Number five went," he shouted, "but your lady friend wasn't on it. I'm sorry."

"What?" Alan's voice was suddenly a few notes above its normal pitch.

"She went below for something," Kapo shouted, moving off. "She must have taken another boat, I didn't see her again. For God's sake, follow me and get yourselves away, we're sinking." He disappeared, running after the rest of the group into the rain.

"You said she got into the boat!" Alan whirled to face Virgil. "You said you saw her. She could be trapped below, she could be anywhere. Tin-Tin! I've got to find her." Distraught, he grabbed at a hand-rope and stumbled back over the slippery deck towards the D deck companionway.

Virgil started in pursuit but then, without any warning, the eyewall was upon the ship. In a blast like a bomb part of the port rail was reduced to flying splinters as Tsunami took the impact of the furious winds full on her port side, and she heeled over heavily to starboard, her decks tilting at a sickening angle. Gouts of sea-foam and spray were hurled through the air so fast that their impact was painful, and what visibility there had been was fast disappearing. Virgil dropped to his knees, clutching at a rope, and further forward he could make out the shape of Alan doing the same. In the battering wind it was hard to draw breath, and even harder to balance as the rapidly growing waves now towered above the rail to threaten the deck, now plunged below its level again as Tsunami climbed. A great wind-driven wave crashed over the ship's side, and as it retreated he heard the roar of water pouring down her starboard ventilators. Through the rain he saw Alan lose his grip on a rope and slide down the decking to crash hard against a hatch cover, and he redoubled his efforts, getting back on his feet and hauling himself hand-over-hand towards his brother. Alan also scrambled back upright, starting for the companionway again, but Virgil overtook him and grabbed his arm.

"You can't go down there, Alan," he shouted. "It's impossible now, it'll be full of water. You heard what Kapo said; she wouldn't have stayed below, she must've found another boat."

"Let me go!" Alan yelled, unconvinced. He struggled violently and both men fell, sliding right down the tilted deck to the starboard rail. "Tin-Tin!"Alan's voice rose over the scream of the wind.

"Alan! Think! You're not helping anyone this way," Virgil shouted urgently. He pulled Alan to his feet, but Alan, beyond reason, wrenched himself free, lashing out blindly with a clenched fist. Taken by surprise Virgil made no move to defend himself and the blow struck him on the jaw, snapping his head back and sending him staggering backwards to crash into a lifeboat davit. Alan, standing frozen, saw his brother's head make contact with the steel post, and saw the astonishment in his eyes as he crumpled to the deck. Then another great wave broke over the bow, Tsunami wallowed, and Virgil, lying perilously close to the gap in the rail torn by the runaway lifeboat, began to slide. Alan sprang forward with a cry, but he was too late. Tsunami suddenly settled deeper, the deck tipped over at a steeper angle, and Virgil rolled over the side and was gone.

The seas surged up, mountainous. Alan clung to the shattered end of the rail, splintered wood and jagged metal drawing blood from his unfeeling hands. He looked up across the wildly sloping deck towards the D deck companionway, then out at the heaving black water. With an effort he turned his face into the storm, and rain slammed contemptuously into his cheeks and eyes like a wall of flying needles. "Damn you!" he screamed at it, but the wind just gibbered with laughter at the curse and tore his breath away, and sobbing with rage and grief he took one last look at the companionway, then plunged into the water after his brother.

The cold shock of the impact drove the air out of his lungs and he sank, water boiling and hissing in his ears. He fought his way back to the surface and floundered, gasping, but there was nothing around him but water and flying, suffocating foam. All at once the sea about him rose and he found himself looking down from a shuddering hillside into a bottomless black abyss, then the wave swept down again and Tsunami's bulk was towering above him, gigantic and threatening. Through the medium of the water he felt rather than heard the symphony of destruction sound its first organ-chords inside her as bulkheads groaned and cracked, cargo and fittings strained and wailed, beginning their last long slide, and seawater, ubiquitous and terrible, poured in down her vent shafts and thundered through her corridors, choking off her still-warm breath, and that of all that might still live within her. As he watched, her last lights died, the angle of her bridge towers far above his head increased to the impossible, and fearful, he struck out away from her. 'Virgil!' he yelled with all the power left in his lungs, but the storm flung the sea into his face and he choked, swallowing salt water. Then as the next wave carried him up the veil of flying spray parted briefly, and he caught a glimpse of something in a trough below that was not a colour of the sea or foam. Frantic, he redoubled his efforts, then the sea in its caprice cast him back down, and reaching out he found his brother.

Alan clutched at Virgil's arm, but the only response was the ocean's, as the figure that floated face-up and inert was snatched and twirled like a doll by the following wave, treated with the indifference with which the sea treats all things given into its care. In desperation Alan clung on, but the sea rose up and shouldered them apart, swelling up between them in a great black wall. His brother's body vanished and did not re-appear, and with a sudden mad strength Alan struck out, struggling blindly away to lose himself in the matching frenzy of the ocean. As he swam on and weakened a mist rose before his eyes. He felt the Pacific pull at his legs, seeming to seep in through each pore to fill his bones with its weight and making all effort an increasing torture of pain and exhaustion. To his horror he found himself sinking, but once under the surface, the sea seemed suddenly warm and enfolding, a peaceful protection from the storm's battering, and he kicked his way up again only weakly. Back in the half-air, half-foam and the grip of the cyclone he heard the voice of the ocean whispering, singing softly about the pointlessness of effort, about the so-desirable, so-close and so-easily-attainable sweetness of rest. Listening, fascinated, he sank again, and with dulling awareness and open eyes he saw beneath him in the depths a small red glow that shrank like a dying fire, changed hue, then brightened and multiplied infinitely until it was the light from a million tiny sea-lamps: strange creatures, perhaps, sea-candles, the lamps of dead ships or simply drowned stars, that swelled to light the abyss below and form a glittering backdrop for the two figures who stood shoulder to shoulder gazing up at him with welcome in their eyes. They stretched out their hands and became clearer as the sea-veil parted, their faces touched with light.

"Isn't it beautiful, Alan?" Tin-Tin's face smiled up from the beckoning depths, entranced. "I wish I could stay here for ever."

"It's okay, Alan." Virgil indicated their spangled surroundings with a wave of a listless arm. "We're in the safest place we could be down here."

"Come down to us, Alan." Tin-Tin smiled up sweetly, and Virgil held out a hand.

"Come on, Alan."

"Come on, Alan."

"Don't touch me!" The lights blew out and reality roared back in with the storm as Alan fought to force his way to the surface and propel himself away from the familiar but heartbreakingly illusory faces, aware only that every waterlogged cell of his drowning being was filled with an all-consuming, desperate desire to survive. Mindless, shocking in its raw selfishness and miraculous in its power to rally oxygen-starved muscles into a last battle, it drove him to swim on, in the face of the raging sea and the cyclone, until the ocean all at once ceasing to care for the loss of its insignificant prize cast him aside, and as the waves flung him down he saw with no time or energy for fear a long curved wall of wood rising up to meet him. An explosion of agony seemed to shatter every rigid object in his side, and the pain stayed on to grip him round the ribs in a vicious unrelenting claw, but under him the Tahitian fishing boat's outrigger lifted easily to skim the following wave, and raised streaming out of the water like a netted catch he locked his knuckles round the gunnel, until half-felt hands reached out to prize them free and haul him inboard.

In the bottom of the boat, immobile and encased in pain, Alan gazed up at the sky. The world about him was disintegrating: the heavy clouds ripped apart and shreds of the Pacific flew around him, blown into tatters and gone like his own world, like the good natural order of things that had ended on the well-deck, leaving this whirling chaos where the past, the future and even up, down and the other familiar dimensions of space had lost their meaning. Here, at the end of the world, all rules were broken and the elements changed their places: as he watched, the wind-driven wall of rain was blasted and scattered by a sudden fierce light into a billion burning crystals; air caught fire, water boiled into air and overhead above upturned fearful faces one cloud became solid, coalescing into a great dark shape that descended screaming to spread its stubby wings above the scene: a mountain of green metal painted with glowing unknowable signs, supported miraculously on four living pillars of flame.

Alan stared up at the belly of Thunderbird Two, but he knew that it couldn't be Thunderbird Two because Virgil was gone, down somewhere in deep water with Tin-Tin and the huge stricken bulk of Tsunami, and somehow at the end of the world the deception seemed like a good joke. Over the thunder of the waves he heard with surprise the sound of his own voice shouting with laughter, and then the last great wave was made of darkness and it washed up and dragged him under.