The sea was dead calm and the light milky, with the waning moon trailing a pale gold disc above me on the surface. Minutes later I thought I heard the pulsing of the sub's engines but I wasn't sure: the senses were having to adjust to the laws of this other world where the ears must listen under pressure and the eyes see things as larger than they were, and closer. Halfway to the rig I turned and floated on my back, sighting along the surface through the faceplate. The island was there on the near horizon: Heng-kang Chou. I'd been moving off-course, and when I turned again I saw the rig's configuration had altered noticeably. This worried me because there'd been no figures we could hope to work out for the target-zone duration: I could hold out for three days in terms of rations and drinking-water but that didn't have any reference to the amount of time I'd spend submerged. Standard practice was to economize with the air supply and leave a ten per cent margin of error in making calculations, and you don't economize with the air supply by going off-course.
Watch what you're bloody well doing.
I'd been using the compass because they had radar and there'd be look-outs on the rig. The phosphorescent dial was clear enough to read accurately but the steel substructure was beginning to send the needle wild and from now on I'd have to risk it and take direct visual checks at intervals with the faceplate clear of the surface till I could pick up the base of the rig below water. I was moving almost due south and the moon was climbing in the east and I'd have to avoid tilting my head to the left when I surfaced the faceplate, to minimize reflection from the glass.
They didn't have sonar. We'd known that, long before we'd reached our position. If they'd had sonar they would have sent the chopper aloft to investigate our sound and we'd have seen it and Ackroyd would have turned about or surfaced, signalling difficulties. The main danger would have come from divers below the rig: if the substructure was under repair or there were modifications being made they'd have divers down and they would have picked up the sound of our screws.
I submerged again, moving a few feet below the surface, low enough to prevent the kick of the fins from making a disturbance, high enough to preserve buoyancy. I began looking for the outlines of the substructure ahead of me now but the water was cloudy in patches: it could be just plankton or weed debris, or the machinery on board the rig was perpetually disturbing the sea bed. I began worrying about exhalation bubbles but there wasn't anything I could do: they'd still break the surface from whatever depth I went down to. Ignore.
The world was silent around me, my own sound alone disturbing it: the hollow and echoing rhythm of my breathing as the living bellows of my lungs fed on the inert reservoirs of air and blew it out, each breath exhausting it by degrees, and irrecoverably. Sometimes the reserve tanks and the other gear caught an eddy from my fins and pulled me sideways a little, dragging on the nylon cord, and every time this happened I rose and broke the surface with the faceplate to correct my course: but I didn't like having to do it because this whole operation was so bloody sensitive.
This was a Ministry of Defence thing and they'd got something so big on the board that they'd panicked and thrown us a crash-access and the Bureau hadn't been able to stop them. Control had been kicked into motion with almost nothing to go on: we had to reach Tewson as fast as we could and we didn't have to ask any questions. There was obviously a chance that he'd show up again at the Golden Sands but they couldn't give us time to mount an orderly snatch and that was all right but they couldn't have it both ways: they'd hair-triggered Mandarin to the point where the target was so sensitive that I'd almost certainly blow it before I could get there.
Tewson was the target: Tewson and the rig. And the instant they realized we were getting too close they'd whip him into China. Tell you what London had sent me here to do: I had to stalk a bird bare-handed and catch it before it flew up.
Bloody London for you.
The cord tautened again and I was pulled sideways, getting fed up with it. When I broke surface with the faceplate I saw the configuration had altered, but not too much: I was learning how to do it better, every time. The flare at the tip of the stack made a diffused glow and I took off the mask and demisted it, pulling the mouthpiece away for a moment to drag in the dry taste of ozone.
The rig looked about half a mile away and as far as I could see there was no movement on board: the lights were stable and their pattern didn't change. I'd have liked to audio-survey for a few seconds but it wouldn't be easy: it wouldn't be any good just pushing one ear through the surface because it'd be full of water: I'd have to drain it and that meant putting the whole of my head through and if they had any short-range scanners they'd pick up the blob.
I went down again and listened below water, holding my breath for five seconds. Nothing.
From the information Ferris had picked up from local sources the oil rig had been operational for three months: the crude was said to be already on stream and they'd set up a tanker shuttle between the rig and the refineries along the South China coast. If they were burning residual lean gas at the flare pilot they must be running at production capacity and they ought to be working round the clock because on an operational oil rig there's no difference between night and day.
There was on this one. No sound of machinery. No sound of life.
I checked the time at 01.46. Airstream normal, buoyancy easy to manage, the spare tanks no real problem. During the next long haul I made two brief visual checks from the surface and then stayed below: the faint yellow stain of the flare pilot was now on the surface and I used it as my lode star until the dark trellis pattern of the substructure began showing against the sea bed a hundred feet below.
The glow of the derrick bases flared softly for two or three minutes on the surface and then dimmed out as I arched my back slightly and brought my head down, diving to twenty feet on the gauge. I was assuming there were look-outs and the air tanks on my back could pick up scattered light. It was almost totally dark at this depth and I stopped kicking and drifted, using my free hand to bring me more or less upright. My eyes had been used to the moonglow for some time now, and the flare pilot and then the white reflected light from the derricks had closed the irises to something like half their original diameter, and I needed time to accommodate. The trellis pattern of the rig was very faint now, although I was closer, and the sea was a dark wall around me.
Silence.
Then the long-drawn sound of my inhalation, hollow and strange, as if I could hear only the echo, and not the sound itself. Silence again and then the bubbling as my breath rose from behind me and floated above my head. At each interval between inhalation and exhalation the silence was total.
Slight stress beginning because of this, and because of the dim light. The onset of disorientation: normal but uncomfortable. The organism was starting to ask where it was, what it was doing here where it couldn't see things very well, couldn't hear things. To be ignored, or better still contained. Keep still and keep quiet, listen to what you can: the sound of your own life-giving breath. Look at what you can: the faint pattern of the girders, and above them the square configuration of the superstructure, delineated by the night glow of the sky, and the diaphanous cloud of debris drifting past as the current flowed from the south.
Breathe. See. Hear. All is normal. Relax.
The nylon cord tugged slightly as the current moved the reserve tanks, turning me gently round. With one hand I spun myself slowly back, to keep the girders in sight. They were becoming clearer, darker against the sands beyond, except where the cloud floated, moving nearer against my faceplate, and lower. Its edge was blotting out part of the girders, as if it were opaque, and becoming larger. One of the background girders ran straight upwards from it, thin and perpendicular, and I looked down to follow it, then up again to watch the cloud itself. Its configuration had altered suddenly, and protrusions appeared, perfectly equidistant; and as it bumped against me I put my free hand out to push it away, but it wasn't easy because it was a cable above it, not a girder in the background, and these protrusions bumping against me in the current were detonation horns.