“Crackle, hiss…Khalil here, Captain. Returning to bridge as ordered…”
Richard, too, stepped back a few feet onto the living half of the deck. He turned and looked down toward the bow, his mind already lost in the innumerable practicalities of the situation. Better get Quine to send a general distress signal. Have some Vessel Not Under Command warning lights ready in case the bow stayed afloat. Better get those down there quickly. Two red lights in a vertical line, not less than six feet apart, visible for at least two miles.
Visible for about two hundred yards in this lot…
Suddenly, a prolonged, mournful howl burst out of the throat of the storm. Richard jumped, looking wildly around, before he realized it was the cry of his own ship. John had managed to get the fire-damaged foghorn working. It would sound a prolonged blast every two minutes now until visibility cleared.
He turned and looked back toward the bow. The wind rammed him again, sending him staggering back into Salah, who had put his glove back on as though his hand were still complete. It would be useless to order him to the sick bay until Kerem came safely back from the forecastle head.
And there was a figure now, stumbling out of the screaming murk. Running oddly, but that was surely the effect of the storm…
And, behind, two more figures…
Richard stepped forward onto the dead section of the deck. Immediately it seemed to jump down a couple of feet, throwing him flat, as though his extra weight were too much to bear.
He picked himself up. The running man saw him and froze. Then he turned and was gone sideways into the shadows.
Richard staggered forward again, only to be driven down by another lurch as the whole bow fought to tear itself free. The other two figures fought to pick themselves up as he did, staggering in toward him. He recognized them at once — Robin and Martyr; there could not be two others like them aboard. And the running man…Ben!
What in hell’s name was going on here?
Yet another figure appeared, this one much closer. Kerem. He jogged unsteadily up to Richard, gesturing over his captain’s shoulder away toward the bridge, his normally impeturbable countenance twisted with concern. Richard turned again. The dead deck beneath his feet had fooled him, giving no warning. Behind him, what had once been a plain was now an escarpment. The stern was riding three, perhaps four, feet higher than the bow. The edge of the decking gleamed dull silver, sharp as though machine-tooled.
He looked back. Martyr and Robin had vanished again. He swore and turned away, running back toward the bridge, aware that in all probability only the horizontal pipes running along the center of the deck toward the forward tanks were keeping the ship together. As he reached the edge, the gap yawned again and he saw, incredibly, sixty feet below, clear water boiling through the heart of his ship.
He hurled himself forward wildly into the waiting arms of Salah and Kerem. “Get me rope!” he yelled.
“On its way,” yelled Salah in reply. “I counted three still on the other side.”
“That’s right. We’ll set up near the walkway. Those pipes are all that’re holding her.” They stumbled across the deck, reeling like landsmen as the stern section began to ride the waves with the beginnings of freedom, like a normal ship.
The rope arrived at the same time they did, carried by Bill Heritage himself. Pausing only to clap the grand old man on a yellow-coated shoulder, Richard led them up one of the midship companionways to the walkway amid the flexing hawser of pipes. It was like some terrifying fairground ride, half remembered from his youth: as he and Salah stood side by side while Bill and Kerem secured the ropes around their waists then belayed safely behind them, they watched the narrow path they were to walk twisting and writhing like a live thing. Steel was flexing with more and more freedom; beginning to steam in places where the cold rain hit. Wood bent like a bow, sparking and splintering. The halves of the ship ground together like toothless jaws, moving with wilder and wilder motion.
She had never had a real keel like a lesser vessel, so you could hardly say her back was broken. She had been constructed simply of great U-shaped sections — six in all — welded together. The bow and stern sections had been added later. Within these sections, the tanks had been placed, discrete and solid with huge double walls at their ends. And the join between the third and fourth U-shaped sections, currently breaking open, mercifully coincided with the double wall between the two main midship tanks. Both bow and stern remained, for the meantime, watertight; and there was little or no leakage of oil.
— Or of South African water, thought Richard grimly. Even now, dying like this, Prometheus was keeping her secrets safe. Like a battered child protecting its parents with silence.
A blow on his shoulder broke the train of thought. The rope round his waist was secure. He shambled forward onto the snaking, roller-coaster walkway.
At once he was glad of his heavy gloves. He had to keep tight hold of the railings, and the mahogany — not the most flexible of woods — was quilled with splinters already. He was glad, too, of his thick-soled boots, for the metal beneath them was hot — and getting hotter — as he moved through the steam over the yawning, snapping chasm in his ship.
Wildly in the blinding bluster he searched below for the bright wet-weather gear of the officers on the dead deck. At first he could see nothing, but then the storm relented and he began to see glimpses of furtive movement.
There was a bizarre game of hide-and-seek going on down there. What in blazes was happening? Didn’t they realize the danger they were in? He could have screamed with frustration. And, at the very thought, one wild figure hurled up a companionway immediately in front of him.
“BEN!” he bellowed.
Ben whirled to confront him and Richard staggered back. The expression on his godson’s face was beyond belief. Their eyes locked. Ben stopped and suddenly pulled something from his pocket. It was a gun.
Then Martyr and Robin came up as well, one from either side, erupting out of the shadows to hurl themselves at him. But he was too quick for them, dancing nimbly back toward the bow, still holding the gun.
Richard was jolted out of his momentary inactivity as Salah hurled bodily past him and tackled Martyr round the waist, lifting him clear of the catwalk to drag him back. Instantly he dived forward himself, lying along the wooden handrail, belly down, to grab Robin. The rope jerked him back onto his feet and his shoulders popped, crushing her to his chest. Staggering backward on the wild, hot steel, he lost his footing and sat. She sat in his lap.
The wind stopped.
There was a second of calm. Just long enough for Ben to dance forward again, to tower over them, the gun held firmly, familiarly, in both hands. He froze, his face a mask of confusion, the gun wavering between them.
Ben’s mind was a whirl of bloodlust, but he had a bewildering choice of targets. He was going to kill Richard because he was responsible for Ben’s father’s death. He was going to kill Martyr for interfering in his plans. And he was going to kill anyone else who knew what he had done. Starting with the girl.
He pointed it at Robin first, therefore, snarled, “Good-bye!” and pulled the trigger.
The instant Ben said, “Good-bye” and pressed the trigger, the greatest of the storm’s rogue waves hit Prometheus’s bow exactly from the side.
The concussion, like a right hook to a boxer’s jaw, threw the whole bow section to starboard, against the steady pressure of the ship’s turn to port, and it sheared the pipes already weakened by the movements of the two sections.
Prometheus broke in two.