Shaw stared in horror, almost paralysed at the thought of what would have happened if that jet had reached its maximum down in the double bottom.
A moment later the jet faltered, died away, retreated back very suddenly into the sea. Almost at once there was a hollow booming noise, followed by a sharp crack like close thunder. The water behind the ship rose up in a mound, green, translucent, steamy and foam-capped. It broke towards the New South Wales and a blast of hot air hit her, rocked her, The water boiled up around, and a heavy swell surged out past her hull, out into the Pacific.
Wearily, blindly, filthy dirty and shaking, Shaw stumbled up the ladders and along the decks, making for the bridge. Silently, a handful of men in scattered groups watched him go.
Sir Donald ran down the ladder to meet him.
Shaw said, “It’s all right now, sir.” Then everything seemed to catch up with him, and his eyes went hazy, and he felt as though the deck was coming up to hit him. Sir Donald caught him just before he fell.
The signal went at once to the Captain of the Port and the A. and P. offices that the New South Wales was safe though somewhat leaky from the underwater blast, and was coming in, and somehow or other that news spread like lightning, beating even the official loudspeaker vans to it. And by the time the liner had turned back for the Heads, and then was coming down the West Channel and making up to come between St George’s Head and the Sow and Pigs reef, the crowds had returned and so had many of the little boats.
The New South Wales moved inwards in nothing short of bedlam. The people of Sydney went mad that afternoon as they streamed back to the shores of the harbour and waved and yelled and cheered, backed up by the passengers from the boats. The liner moved on, came beneath the great structure of the Bridge. On that huge span, the traffic was stilled; people crowded to the side. A storm of cheering swept down on to the vessel’s near-empty decks. That deep storm of cheering was taken up and tossed by a gusty wind, came to the men grouped on the liner’s navigating bridge in short, loud bursts of sound. Girls waved frantically, blew kisses. Sir Donald Mackinnon, his face still stiff and grey with strain, replied by giving a brief, formal salute as his ship moved so slowly on, her high mast, just abaft where he was standing, appearing as though its truck must cleave through the spider’s-web above.
Then he was beneath the network and passing on to Pyrmont, and the most deeply felt welcome that the generous heart of Sydney had ever given.
Afterwards Shaw went down with reaction, fatigue, and a raging fever which for a long time seemed to take the guts out of him. People came to see him at the King George V hospital in Camperdown once he was out of danger and on the mend. Sir Donald Mackinnon and Judith Donovan were among them; also James, and James told him that there had been a big turn-up at Bandagong, where quite a little flock or collaborators appeared to have nested. He also told him that three bodies had turned up along Ninety Mile Beach just north of Port Albert near Wilson’s Promontory. One was Lubin, one was believed to be Karstad but this awaited positive identification by Shaw — the Swedish Government, James said, had been mighty surprised to learn the real identity of their agent — and the third was an unidentified
Chinese. James said that he didn’t for a moment suppose that they’d got the whole lot who had been in on the project, but he and the security section would be keeping their eyes open as usual and they would all drop in the net one day. One of those still missing was the ship’s engineer, Siggings, and he was being looked for by the police authorities on a primary charge of illegally entering the Commonwealth by jumping ship. It wouldn’t be long before he was hauled in, and then he would face the major charge of conspiracy and attempt at wholesale murder. The passenger, Markham, who had provided Karstad’s alibi, was being held and charged with being an accessory to the murder of Colonel Gresham, which appeared to be the extent of his involvement.
Shaw, naturally, was glad to hear the news but on the whole he was too weak to take it all in and he couldn’t talk for long; and it wasn’t until he’d been discharged from hospital and was convalescing at James’s home in the Blue Mountains that he could take any real interest in things. Then, one evening, James came back from a visit to Melbourne with some more news.
He came to where Shaw was sitting in a deck chair, and he smiled down at him. He said, “Well — it was touch and go right enough! We’ve just had the intelligence reports through — at last.” He chucked down a stack of Top Secret documents. “Briefly, it’s this. Our yellow pals were all ready to go. They’d actually planned to land here in Australia, up north by Cape Otway, to strike down for Brisbane… but when the New South Wales berthed safely, well, they just faded quietly away, all those armies and air forces, and tried to pretend they’d never meant any harm at all.”
He sat down beside Shaw, mixed himself a John Collins from the tray on a small table. He said, “And it’s all thanks to you, of course.”
Shaw grunted, and shifted uncomfortably. He asked, “No more news of the minor operatives?”
“Not yet, but that’s our worry.”
Shaw murmured, “Of couse, Lubin’s the boy really and he’s dead. Now he’s gone, there won’t be any repetition of all that.”
James nodded. “Reckon that’s right. By the way, Latymer’s hypothesis of Lubin having a double in Voronezh, that was right too, I’d say. Anyway, we hear the bloke, the ga-ga one that was supposed to be Lubin, has been hauled in. I reckon he’s either dead or in Siberia by this time.” He hesitated. “When you’re feeling fit enough, there’s some explosives experts want to have a word with you about that flame-thrower gadget. You got any ideas on that, Esmonde?” Shaw said, “Well, I don’t know… could have been a new and very highly concentrated form of magnesium. Or something in the atomic or rocket-fuel line even, I dare say, but I certainly hadn’t time for a detailed examination of it!” He added, “It was something the Asian mind dreamed up, you know — I suppose it would have burned through pretty well anything.”
James gave a short laugh. “Up into the reactor was the idea, to soften it up for the main charge. That’d have been enough!”
“Yes, it would.” Somehow Shaw’s mind wouldn’t concentrate. He wanted only to forget now. He looked away from James, looked out from the peaceful, shady veranda across the mountains, purple and blue and green, shot with red under a splendid sunset… it was, he thought, a very lovely land, this Australia, wide open and free and forward-looking. A fine place to get well in, to live in too. The air was keen and fresh and invigorating; it was like the wine of life. There was a cheerfulness, a content, an optimism in living out here which England hadn’t got any more. And you never saw a sunset like that in England. A sunset, here a commonplace, was in England something which people remarked on, took you out into the garden to look at. Shaw sat there very still and very quiet. After some minutes James gave a low chuckle. He asked,