Overton had thought that, being aboard the Navy ship, he would be in the thick of the action, but had come to feel isolated. He did not know what was happening in the rest of the world. If the frigate was getting information about riots and protests in capital and Pacific Coast cities, no one was passing it on to him.
As he sat on his stool and watched the angry seas in the searchlights and reappreciated Joseph Conrad, a bobbing yacht appeared on the left side, sliding into the flood of light from the frigate.
Giant lettering plastered the hull.
It was not foundering, but it looked a little sick, fighting its way up the steep slopes of waves. The flying bridge was cornpletely wrapped in canvas and clear vinyl, and the foredeck seemed to be constantly awash.
Overton stood up and turned back to the communications compartment.
The ensign on duty saw him and said, “Can I help you, Mr. Overton?”
“Therms an Ocean Free boat out there. Can you raise him on the radio?”
The ensign looked around at the consoles manned by his technicians, selected one, and said, “Come on over here, Mr. Overton.”
After attempting several different marine frequencies, the operator contacted a sleepy-sounding Curtis Aaron, then passed the microphone to Overton.
After Overton identified himself, Aaron did not sound as sleepy.
“Are you on that Navy ship, Mr. Overton?”
“Yes, I am, Mr. Aaron.”
“You in contact with your paper?”
“That’s right. What is Ocean Free doing here?” Overton asked, flipping pages in his notebook to a blank page. He headed it with the date and time.
“Representing the people.”
“I see. And what do the people say about all of this?”
He listened to some ranting about Vietnam and Washington forests and interference with Lady Destiny.
“Is that a departure from your usual position?” Overton asked.
“Departure? What departure?” Perhaps because the yacht was so close, Aaron’s voice sounded very clear over the radio. The deep, resonant voice carried the tone of hurt feelings.
“As I recall, you normally have been concerned with mankind’s disruption of nature. What does destiny have to do with this?”
“Nature and destiny are very much allied,” Aaron said, but he sounded unsure of himself.
“You’re saying that the reactor should stay where it is, on the bottom of the Pacific?”
“Have you ever heard of predestination, Mr. Overton?”
“This is foreordained?”
“Every man must follow his own precepts.”
“Look, Mr. Aaron, can I get a direct quote from you? What do we do with the reactor?”
“You’ve got your story,” Aaron said and signed off.
Leaving Overton with the disturbing thought that he had pushed a confused man in the wrong direction.
Avery Hampstead called his sister.
“Do you know what the hell time it is, Avery? The sun’s not up.”
“Yes, it is, Adrienne. You Manhattan people just can’t see it until it’s direcdy overhead.”
“Call me back when it is.”
“Actually, I wanted to call you earlier, but I decided to wait until a decent hour for you.”
She sighed theatrically and asked, “Your decent and my decent are two different concepts. What time is it there?”
“Almost twelve-thirty.”
“So this is important?”
“Yes,” he admitted. “I need to know something.”
“From me?”
“Yes, my dear.”
“Shoot.”
Hampstead cleared his throat and said, “You make an awful lot of money from people shelling out their hard-earned bucks to see something of a, for want of a well-thought-out word, sleazy program.”
“Sleazy! I wouldn’t call it sleazy!”
“You have a better vocabulary than I do, Adrienne.”
“My matches are not sleazy!”
“What are they?” Hampstead asked.
“They’re what people want them to be.”
“True championships?”
“Entertainment. That’s what people pay for, Avery. Entertainment.”
“And you don’t feel” — he almost said “disgust” — “badly about taking their money?”
“What’s this all about, Avery?”
“I just want to know how you feel about your work.”
“Do I sleep at night, you mean?”
“Yes.”
“Ahhh. This relates to you, does it?”
“Yes, my dear, it does.”
“I sleep exceptionally well at night, brother of mine. I’m true to me. People are going to pay for what they want, anyway, and I simply provide them with what they want. I’m not making any moral or ethical choices. They’ve already been made.”
“Thank you, dear. That was helpful.”
After he hung up, he was not certain how helpful. Hampstead got up from the chair he had come to know well, rounded the end of the table and headed for the corner where four of the nuclear experts were gathered.
He pulled out a spare chair and sat down.
Harlan Ackerman said, “Avery?”
“Straight up, Harlan. Is the reactor supercritical?” Ackerman glanced at Henrique d’Artilan, the man from the International Atomic Energy Agency, then said, “Right now?”
“Right now.”
“It’s possible, Avery. If they in fact used the same switching circuitry on the Four as they did on Topaz Two, it’s likely.”
“Just because of that damned switch?”
“Yes. It’s really an integrated circuit, accepting signals from different sensors. If it senses catastrophe, it’s supposed to shut down the reactor.”
“But it’s wired wrong?”
“Yes.”
“And our people are at risk?”
“More people will be at risk if we don’t go ahead with the recovery”
“Shouldn’t Brande and his people be allowed to make their own decision?”
Ackerman did not answer.
Hampstead turned to the Frenchman, but he was not going to answer, either.
“Have you been watching the plot, Avery?” Ackerman asked.
Hampstead turned to look up at the display.
“The Soviet ships are converging,” he said.
“Exactly. We think they’ve got it pinpointed,” Ackerman said.
“And we don’t want to clog up the process just now, do we?” d’Artilan asked.
When the starboard weight did not drop, there had been a supreme moment of panic, when the adrenaline hit top pumping limits.
Brande had felt it the second the LED did not go green, and the red LED began flashing. Involuntarily, he stopped breathing. His forearm tightened up on him, and he looked down to see Connie Alvarez-Sorenson’s tiny hand gripping it. Her face was pale.
“What … what happened?” she asked.
“Nothing, I’m afraid,” Brande told her.
The interior of the pressure hull felt a great deal colder than it was.
Brande tried the emergency release switch, but the LED kept flashing, and the weight did not release.
Behind him, Kim Otsuka let her breath go in a long ragged sigh. Then she said, “Atlas?”
“I think so,” Brande said. “Connie, let’s you and me change places.”
She was tiny, and that helped as Brande let her slide across his lap, then settled himself into the right seat.
Otsuka called the surface. “Who’s on? Okey?”