And now here was the nightmare resurrected, his madness almost subsumed in Muslim fundamentalism, still at war with the world, and with Heritage Mariner. Able to lay his hands on all the weapons in a modern terrorist’s arsenal. The thought was absolutely chilling. Never in his wildest dreams would he have guessed that the mysterious Englishman and the unfortunate twin in blind Sinbad’s story should have been so closely related to themselves. It was as though Fate truly had a hand in this: the force, not the platform. Though who could tell the difference any more?
The lift doors behind him opened and John gasped in pain as he turned in the chair to see who was coming. “We can get her started,” called Robin. She and Martyr had been looking at the engine.
“We can get under way whenever you want.” The American’s deep bass replaced Robin’s warm contralto, and Richard turned to meet their expectant gazes at last.
Chris and Doc were on Katapult. Asha was in the surgery. Salah was checking the stores. The others were here, waiting for orders.
“Right,” said Richard. “We sail at sunset. It will take us twenty-two hours to get down the Gulf. If we move out of the lanes and slow down a little toward evening tomorrow, we can get everything set up and arrive with the last of the light. We’ll have three watches on the bridge but none in the engine room. Set that on auto and leave it. It should be all right for a day. Starting at eighteen hundred, John will be on watch up here with Salah and Asha. C. J., you will relieve them at ohone hundred tomorrow with Chris and Doc.”
“Fine,” agreed Martyr. “What about Katapult if they’re up here?”
“I’ve thought about that. We’ll have to tow her. It’s the only way. We need constant watches. If they sail her, they’ll have to keep twenty-four-hour watch themselves while we’ll be doing six hours on and six off. We’d all be exhausted by the time we hit Fate.”
“Yeah. I can see that. Okay, I’ll go tell them to batten down…”
“No. I’ll go in a minute. You and Robin had better go and get the engines ready. John, I’ll find Asha and send her up here. Then I’ll get the others out of Katapult. Secure her to the stern and see if the three of us can get the hook up.”
“Tall order for half an hour’s work,” observed John.
“It’s going to be bloody hard work for all during the next twenty-four hours, on watch and off. Can you work at the chart table, without too much discomfort?”
“Yes,” lied John cheerfully, heaving himself up out of the chair.
“Good. I need our best route to Fate worked out ready for when we set sail.”
“Consider it done,” said John. “In fact it has been done. I’ll check his workings if you like, but I’ll bet you that what Ben Strong has marked there will be just the ticket.”
“Perhaps,” said Richard dryly. “But he must have been laying for a smaller ship. The one that took them off last night.”
“I hadn’t thought of that.”
“It’ll probably be the same. He was a good seaman.” Richard paused. “Then we’ll just have to hope,” he added as he went, “that whoever is steering Prometheus can follow the madman’s course.”
Richard found Asha in her surgery and sent her to the bridge. She was pleased enough to go, knowing that John would need her there if he was going to do much moving around. Salah was in the ship’s refrigerator, checking provisions as ordered. Richard sent him up to the bridge as well. He knew John would need an experienced helmsman the instant they got under way. He had designed the watches carefully so that there would be an experienced officer and helmsman available to each as well as a third person for lookout and emergency backup. Robin and he would take the last watch themselves, starting at 09:00 hours in the morning, while the others caught up on sleep or made final preparations. And after the end of their watch, at sunset tomorrow, Prometheus would either have a full complement once more, or she would be in no condition to need any watchkeepers at all.
These reflections were quite enough to take him out onto the baking foredeck where he came face to face with Chris and Doc, who had just finished securing Katapult at the foot of the accommodation ladder. Succinctly, Richard explained to them what he had told the others and the Australian nodded his agreement. Ten minutes later, Katapult was resecured on a long line to Prometheus’s afterdeck and the three of them were on the way to the forecastle head, racing like children on BMX bikes.
It was by no means a difficult or a lengthy task to winch Prometheus’s great anchor up off the shallow, sandy seabed, and, in the absence of tide, it made no real difference to her disposition whether the hook was up or down. Not even the south wind would move the inert mass of the tanker. Only her great screws could do that. And sure enough, as they sped back up toward the bridge, the deck began to throb beneath them and the steady blast of the southerly seemed to swing around the quarters so that as they returned the BMXs to the rack under the awning aft of the A deck door, a steady headwind blew in their faces along the deck. Prometheus was under way.
Five hours later, Richard sat back, massaging his tired eyes. Completed on the worktop before him were all his notes and contingency plans rendered into manageable form. He patted them with grim satisfaction. They would go into the log so that if anything went wrong in eighteen hours’ time…At the thought he glanced at his watch: 23:05 local time. Damn! He had run over the hour. He flicked a switch on the big transceiver beside him and caught the tail end of the World Service news.
“…the worst plague of recent years still moving north destroying millions of acres in the Ethiopian Rift Valley and on the Danakil plain in Eritrea. Experts hope that the strong southerly winds will blow them across the Red Sea and into the desert of Ar-rab al Khali where they will perish. This seems to be a faint hope and in the meantime, the people of Saudi Arabia are bracing themselves for the onslaught. And finally, cricket. The English batting collapsed at the Oval this afternoon in the face of an unremitting onslaught from the West Indian pace attack. England’s top scorer, with a total of seventeen runs, was…”
Richard made a peculiarly Scottish sound of disgust and turned it off. Time for bed, he calculated. A busy day over and a busier about to begin. He sat back in the spare chair on the bridge, the image of John’s captain’s chair except that it was on the starboard side. Salah Malik stood at the helm. John sat, half asleep, in the captain’s chair. Asha, her face green and ghostly, divided her scrutiny between her patient and the collision alarm radar that watched the waters around them, alert for danger there.
“I’ll just set this to an open emergency channel. Then I’ll leave you to it,” he said. But he showed no sign of moving. For the first time since coming aboard he had a little leisure to luxuriate in the simple fact of being back aboard. Katapult had been like a holiday, vivid and exciting. But this was like coming home. All his senses were attuned to the familiar sensations around him, from the steady throbbing of the engines coming through the floor to the sight of a star-bright, calm Gulf night distanced by the clearview. The smell of the conditioned air. The taste of it on the back of his tongue. The sheer size of his bridge. Of his vessel.