The faint trellis of girders was on my left and I turned and moved in that direction, my heart thudding because the organism had been perturbed. Basic forebrain cerebration was starting up again as the effect of the nitrogen narcosis began wearing off: at the crude decision-making level I was able to plan what I was going to do for the next few minutes. Consideration of later problems was beyond me for the moment: it was enough to be alive.
When I reached the surface below the deck of the rig I removed the mouthpiece and turned off the air and hooked both arms across a horizontal girder and hung there, filling my lungs, slowly and deeply, again and again, sending oxygen through the system and driving the residue of carbon dioxide out of the body tissues, hanging as limp as I could and thinking of nothing, closing my eyes.
The water lapped at the girders, a slow swell moving the surface without disturbing it; I heard a sea bird call as it flew between the islands; another answered, far away.
Then the riveter started up again and the shock went through me and I opened my eyes, thinking I'd slept: maybe I had. It was time to go.
I didn't find it easy to put the mask on and the mouthpiece between my teeth because there'd been death down there and I didn't want to go there again, but I couldn't stay here by daylight: there was no certain cover for me above the water-line.
Orientate.
The island was to the north, and I could see it clearly: a series of humped green hills and a fall of granite rock where I knew there were caves. The sea between here and Heng-kang Chou was glass smooth under the climbing sun, except where the flotsam made a patch of black, its edges shining. They could see it too, because I heard cries and in a moment the riveter stopped and their voices were clearer. They were calling in Mandarin but I understood well enough: it was one cry repeated, man overboard, and interspersed with short sharp words of enquiry and response, where, there.
The hiss of the welding plant died away now and the only background was the murmur of the diesel generators. The men's voices were raised sharply against it and I heard the first order being shouted. Feet began ringing on the iron decks.
I dived.
Sound burst suddenly against my eardrums: the power launch was tied up on the far side of the rig, below bad-weather derricks, and its engines started up as I began a long curving path that took me through the girders on the north side of the substructure with the minefield ten or fifteen feet above my head. I turned slowly on my back and saw their dark blobs against the flare of the surface. The body of the diver floated above them and the oblong shape of the launch went curving across, its draught too shallow for the keel to foul the outrigger framework that held the mines suspended. Its engines were loud now, filling the sea with their sound.
With fifty feet on the depth gauge I was invisible from the surface and this was as deep as I wanted to go because the pressure was already tangible and it was urgent that I stayed free of narcosis. There was also a lingering sense of fear as I moved again in the deeps, watching the enemy above me through a dead man's mask.
Ignore.
I kicked with the fins, setting a steady rhythm, still swimming with my face to the surface in the hope of navigating. The compass was useless at this distance from the rig and I couldn't go up and check my bearings: all I could do was to keep the pool of sunlight in my wake and on my left. But it was amorphous and diffuse, its glare dazzling me. I shut my eyes against it. The boat's engines were idling now as they took the body aboard and examined it.
Desultory thought process: Mandarin was blown. The cover story Ferris had given me had been thin at best but now it wouldn't stand a chance because they knew by now that the diver hadn't just got into difficulties down there: his mask was missing and his air tube had been severed with a knife. The three secret service men who'd escorted Tewson to and from the Golden Sands Hotel were almost certainly on board the rig and there'd be a naval defence cadre with frogmen responsible for underwater maintenance and security and if they were good at their job they'd inspect the substructure down to the sea bed and find my gear and the radio.
I didn't see any point in going back to the rig when night came, just to get picked off by rapid fire or caught alive and grilled and taken to Pekin and grilled again and thrown on the heap.
I could hear the launch again, taking him back to the rig. The thing that narked me was that I couldn't tell Ferris we'd blown the operation and he couldn't tell London to switch that red light off and shut down the station on Mandarin. Ferris would go on brooding over the chart and haunting the radio room in Swordfish and Egerton would go on ordering trays of tea for his mission staff in Operations and punching out requests for a situation report and all they'd get was silence.
Well, they shouldn't bloody well ask me to do the impossible.
All right I'd done it before but there were limits and this time they'd blown the fuse. Some stupid pratt in the Ministry of Defence had seen the news about Tewson's shark thing and got the wind up and hit the button and told the Bureau to go and verify and set up an operation to get him out of Hong Kong if he was still alive. That was all right till we told them he was under an armed guard on Chinese territory in the middle of the sea: that was when Control should have told them to go home and shut up about it and maybe that was what Egerton had in fact done but they wouldn't listen.
Well, they'd listen now all right. Your bright little boffin's gone and run away from home and he's not coming back so you'd better change the combinations on the files and take that launcher off the secret list and stop his pension because there's nothing more we can do for you.
The sun was in my eyes.
It was all I had to steer by but it wasn't very precise: it was just a big dazzling area that changed shape sometimes when the swell ran heavy and created surface undulation, and if I went off course I'd waste time and air and energy and I didn't want to waste any of those things because they were the means of life. But the only hope of taking a straight line to the island was by surfacing and correcting my bearings and I was still only half a mile from the rig and the look-outs were alerted.
Sun in my eyes.
I closed them.
No go.
I had to watch the surface all the time to keep the flare of light in my tracks and on my left and I had to check the gauge every thirty seconds to keep at a constant depth.
Dazzle.
The sound of the engines was faint now but I could hear they were idling: they hadn't been shut off. The body was being put aboard the rig. Another sound was coming in, fainter still but regular, and I couldn't place it. I didn't think it was the riveter: that would make a sharper vibration through the water and they wouldn't have started work again so soon.
The sun was going down, its brightness flowing away to my left and leaving me in twilight. A kind of peace was coming into me, a stillness, and my eyes were closing of their own accord, drawing darkness across the last of the day, while -
Watch it.
The twilight deepening to night, where nothing -
Christ sake watch it will you!
Been rolling over, I'd been rolling slowly over, hypnosis induced by the dazzle.
Orientate.
But it was difficult because there wasn't anything for the eye to fix on except that shifting pool of light and if I didn't stay locked on to it. I could swim in a circle: in these weightless conditions with my only navigational reference tending to induce hypnosis there was no way of making the island unless I surfaced and took bearings and I couldn't do that because I knew what the sound was, the new one.