14
He peered out. There was nobody in sight. Over the noise of the fire he could hear a metallic banging from the boat deck above him. It had been more than five minutes now, and he had to hurry before the men below decided something had happened to him and made a break for it. He set the gun on continuous fire, but was hampered by the spare clips; he had no way to carry them except in a hand. He stepped out, cautiously watching the openings at the tops of the two ladders, slipped over to the port one, and started up. His head came level with the deck above. He peered over.
Directly ahead of him near the forward end of the deck, the bos’n and Karl were wrecking the port lifeboats. The covers and strongbacks had been removed, and Karl was standing up in the forward one using the pointed side of a fire ax to destroy the flotation units. The after one already had a long hole cut out of the bottom along the turn of the bilge, and the bos’n was squatted on the deck below the forward one with the torch, doing the same to it. Karl’s back was to him, and the bos’n was wearing goggles as he guided the torch. Goddard’s view of the starboard side was cut off by the steel gable of the engine room skylight. Its high point was about three feet above the deck, and it was only a few feet forward of him.
He shot another glance toward Karl and the bos’n, slid up over the edge of the deck, and snaked his way toward it, crawling on his forearms as he carried the gun and spare clips. He was behind it now. He dropped the clips, took the gun in both hands, and peered over the edge of it. He had a clear view of the whole boat deck from here. The two starboard lifeboats also had their covers and strongbacks removed, and the after one was swung out in its davits and lowered until its gunwales were just below the level of the deck. Lind was standing in it, stowing something. Mayr was near the wheelhouse on the starboard side of the bridge, looking down into the forward well-deck with the machine pistol in his hand.
Goddard took another deep breath against the tight band around his chest, raised to his knees, and started shooting. He fired a burst of three into the canvas dodger where Mayr’s legs should be, swung the gun right, and loosed three more into the starboard lifeboat where Lind was standing. The hulls were flying out of the gun, some of them still in the air and the noise assaulting his eardrums as he swept the gun left and raked a burst across the port lifeboats. Karl dived headfirst into the forward one, and the bos’n dropped the torch and hit the deck behind a cradle.
Goddard swung right again. Mayr was no longer in view on the wing of the bridge, but he loosed another burst into the canvas above where he should be as the gun swung on past onto the starboard boats. Lind had dived into the bottom of the one where he’d been standing, and now was raising his head above the level of the deck, lifting a gun. Goddard pulled the trigger again, and on the second shot the clip was empty. Lind ducked back.
Goddard dropped behind the steel wall of the skylight, yanked out the empty clip, and shoved in a fresh one. A gun crashed somewhere forward of him, and a bullet screamed off the skylight just over his head. He slid over three feet, and peered around the edge. The bos’n was prone behind the lifeboat cradle, his face and arm in view as he raised the gun for another shot. Goddard put a burst into the deck beside him, throwing splinters, and swung fast to the right. Mayr was raising over the canvas dodger on the bridge. He shot. The bullet gouged the deck just to Goddard’s left. Goddard fired, and Mayr dropped from sight. Still swinging, Goddard fired a string across the top of the boat Lind was in. Lind was still out of sight. He jerked the gun around and threw three more shots into the cradle in front of the bos’n. Karl had never appeared at all since the din began. Goddard put another short burst through the canvas dodger above Mayr, and that clip was empty.
All the crew should be up out of the well-deck now, and if he could keep them pinned down for another minute, help would come pouring out of the wheelhouse behind them. He’d dropped and was yanking out the empty clip when his whole back turned to ice and his mind shouted the warning he should have had seconds ago. Lind! He’d never reappeared. And from that partially lowered boat he could swing down to the rail of the deck below.
He swiveled and saw the face of the big mate already above the level of the deck just feet behind him, one hand out in front of it with the .45 ready to shoot him in the back of the head. In a continuation of the same turning movement, he threw the gun backhand. It hit the hand just as the .45 went off and then slammed on into Lind’s face between the ladder railings. Lind dropped back down the ladder. Goddard plunged headfirst down on top of him. His momentum carried the two of them off the ladder, to wheel out and down onto the steel deck below, and even as they were falling he was conscious of shouts and the sound of guns going off above them.
They landed with a bone-jarring impact and rolled. Goddard broke free. The .45 had been knocked from Lind’s hand, and he had to get to it first; against the great strength and catlike reflexes of this man he had no chance at all in a bare-handed fight. Lind would beat him to the deck and choke him to death in minutes. He looked frantically around and saw it behind the ladder. Lind was already bouncing up. The thrown gun had opened a cut on his check and blood was streaming from it below the cold light of the eyes. He lunged at Goddard. Goddard sidestepped and hit him on the side of the neck hard enough to drop a lesser man, but Lind merely staggered for an instant and whirled to come for him again.
Goddard reached behind the ladder for the .45. He had it in his fingers when Lind hit him from the side. They went down, and the gun skated and bounced toward the scupper on the port side of the deck. They rolled. Goddard smashed at his face, and even in all this madness he was conscious of the smoke pouring out of the passage beside them and the shouts of the men on the boat deck above. He got a knee into Lind’s stomach, slammed a fist into his throat, and managed to break free from those terrible arms once more. He plunged to his feet and ran toward the gun.
He scooped it up, but was going too fast on the wet and slippery deck and couldn’t stop or turn. He was wheeling, still out of control and going on toward the rail, when the big man caught him from behind. His feet were snatched off the deck as Lind whirled him about and lifted him to throw him over the rail. Lind’s hip crashed into the rail, and with all of Goddard’s weight and his own pulling them outward, his feet skidded backward on the deck and they both wheeled over it and fell into the sea.
It was over thirty feet, past the promenade and crew’s deck. They hit the surface with agonizing impact and went far under, still locked together. Goddard fought to break the grip of those arms. He caught a thumb, pulled back and down on it until he felt it break. The arm relaxed for a moment. He pushed, and then kicked, and was free, already losing consciousness as he rose to the surface. He gulped for air. The deck above was full of men, and he saw Karen, screaming. Then he was pushed under, and Lind had his legs locked about him, and he knew it was the end; they were like steel. He hadn’t got enough air, and his struggles were growing weaker.
Darkness was closing in on him when somewhere far off through the singing in his ears he heard a cracking sound and then another as though his ribs were beginning to break. Then, strangely, the massive legs went limp and he was free and drifting upward to flounder helplessly on the surface. He took a deep breath and opened his eyes. The great blond head was awash beside him, beginning to drop away below the surface, and the water around it was stained with blood. He looked up. Harald Svedberg was above him on the corner of the boat deck with a gun in his hand. Two sailors jumped in beside him from the crew’s deck, and somebody was throwing a line. Goddard turned and looked down and saw the giant body make one last convulsive movement as Eric Lind drifted from his sight.
The sailors grabbed him and made the line fast under his arms. One of them grinned. ‘Don’t you ever get enough of this stupid ocean?’
They hauled him up and lifted him over the rail. His strength was returning now, and he was able to stand. Water ran out of his hair. His shorts were ripped all the way up one side, and his hands were battered and bleeding. The fire roared on from number three hatch, but two hoses were throwing water into it now, and he could hear more hard jets beating against the bulkheads inside the deckhouse. Men pounded him on the back as they unbent the line about his chest. Karen Brooke was looking at him with tears streaming down her face.
‘I—I wonder what you would think,’ she said in a tiny voice, ‘if you ever saw people just walking aboard a ship on a g-g-gangplank.’ She broke up then into sobs and laughter.
* * *
They began to gain on it, and in an hour they knew they were going to win. The fire in the shelter deck was out, and three hoses were pouring tons of water into number three hold where there was now more smoke than fire.
Mayr and the bos’n were dead, shot by Harald Svedberg in the fight on the boat deck. Mayr had been wounded in the legs by one of the bursts from Goddard’s gun, but had tried to shoot Svedberg as the men ran up through the chartroom and out onto the bridge. Karl had surrendered, and was locked in the hospital along with Spivak and Otto, who had regained consciousness. Sparks was allowed to remain free, and was assessing the damage to the radio equipment. The main and high-frequency transmitters were beyond repair, but he thought he could have the emergency in operation by the following afternoon.
By eleven o’clock there were no more flames, only dense steam and smoke rising from the hatch. Karen had gone up to her cabin to get dressed, and Goddard was watching as the crew continued to throw water into the hold. One of the sailors looked at him in his torn shorts, and shook his head.
‘Well, men, I guess we got to take up another collection for this Hollywood big-shot.’
‘Yeah,’ another said, with a grin. ‘Talk about schooner-rigged. Every time you see him his ass is hanging out somewhere else.’
‘If I ever get back there,’ Goddard said, ‘I’m going to start a new status symbol. Owning your own underwear.’
The chief reported that everything below was under control and they could get under way. Sparks told them about the rendezvous with the Phoenix, so Mr. Svedberg said they would steam north for two hours before resuming course. Nobody had any desire to encounter the craft.
Twenty minutes later, the Leander vibrated hesitantly, as though testing herself, and began to move slowly ahead. Goddard mounted to the promenade deck. Karen Brooke was just emerging from her cabin. Her hair was still wet, but she had put on a dress and some makeup.
‘Hey,’ he said, ‘what happened to the better half of my combat team?’
‘She’s just become a devout civilian. And you can quote me.’
‘I can do better than that.’ He grinned. ‘I’m going to join you.’
They went into Madeleine Lennox’ cabin, where, several years ago, it seemed, they had decided they should try to save her life. She still lay quietly, apparently in the same position, covered with her sheet. Goddard felt her pulse, looked at Karen, and nodded.
‘She’s okay.’
‘And just think,’ Karen said, ‘sometime late this afternoon, she’ll wake up and ask what happened.’
* * *
Captain Steen awoke late that night, but was ill and in pain from whatever Lind had given him, so it was three days before he was up. Until then, Harald Svedberg and the second mate stood watch-and-watch. Goddard found an ink pad in the captain’s desk and he and Mr. Svedberg did what he thought was a fairly creditable job of taking Mayr’s fingerprints before he was buried. The third mate had also started the job of questioning the remaining members of the plot.
‘None of them know very much, or say they don’t,’ he told Goddard the second day after they were under way again. ‘I think, actually, they’re telling the truth; Lind kept it all under his hat. Sparks doesn’t even have any idea what the Phoenix was, where she was from, or where they were going to take Mayr. Lind just gave him some fake call letters and a list of illegal frequencies they changed every day, and everything was coded. It was all handled in radiotelegraph, of course. We don’t have a radiotelephone. He said the other man was a good operator, and that’s all he knows.’
The rendezvous was supposed to be at night, Mr. Svedberg went on, with the Phoenix showing no lights. There would be another engine room breakdown rigged by Spivak, and Mayr and Krasicki would be slipped off the after well-deck on a rubber raft, to be picked up by the Phoenix after the ship had gone on. They all swore nobody was supposed to be killed. That could be true enough, the third mate thought, but there was no doubt Lind and Mayr were prepared for it if it became necessary to judge from the number of guns they carried.
And where did you lay the blame for the fact that it had gone wrong, Goddard wondered, with the result that now six men were dead, one of them, Koenig, entirely innocent? On his casual remark about the direction of the scene? On Madeleine Lennox’ careless meddling? No, the most probable answer was that Lind was unstable, as Karen insisted; he was paranoid, or on the borderline, and any trivial remark might have triggered the whole ghastly mess.
The Leander plowed on, shorthanded, scarred, and smelling of smoke, but she would make Manila only a little over a day late. Captain Steen took over a watch, and Antonio Gutierrez was moved up to be the dining room steward. Sparks got the emergency transmitter in operation on the second day, located a ship that would relay for him, and they rejoined the rest of the world. Pleas for news poured in from the wire services by the hour, and Goddard could imagine the furors in the world press.
The third evening after dinner Goddard mixed a tall gin and tonic and went out on the forward end of the promenade deck with Karen Brooke to watch the sunset. They were leaning on the rail struck silent by the vast orchestration of color when Captain Steen came by and remarked for what must have been the twentieth time that it had been an awful thing.
Then he regarded the drink with pious disapproval, and said, ‘It seems to me, Mr. Goddard, you ought to be down on your knees thanking the Lord you’re alive, instead of drinking that stuff.’
‘I expect you’re right, Captain,’ Goddard agreed. Then, because the impulse was irresistible, he added, ‘I imagine when we get to Manila, there’ll be quite an investigation.’ Steen shuddered.
‘I mean,’ Goddard went on innocently, ‘what with a conspiracy, a fire, a mutiny, and a fake SOS. Probably be quite a bit of paperwork.’
Steen departed. Karen smiled at Goddard and shook her head. ‘You shouldn’t do that to the poor man.’
‘Let him find his own sunset.’
They fell silent for a moment, and then she said, ‘You claim I saved your life, and now you’ve saved mine. Is it a standoff?’
‘Not a chance,’ Goddard replied. ‘I won going away; I saved the best one. Ask any of the crew.’
‘Well, they’re sailors. There is a certain amount of prejudice.’
He looked around at her. ‘What about that old Chinese belief of responsibility? Do we cancel each other, or is it doubled?’
‘That’s an interesting point. What do you think?’
‘I don’t know,’ Goddard said. ‘But when we get to Manila, we could run over to Hong Kong and look into it.’
‘I have to go to work.’ She hesitated. ‘But I suppose I could get another week’s leave.’
‘Then it’s a deal,’ he said. ‘And don’t feel you’ll be ashamed of me; I’m sure the crew will give me another pair of pants.’
She laughed. ‘Well, I’ll think about it.’
‘Forget that line,’ he said. ‘It’s just that I’m out of practice and it’s hard for me to say anything I mean. And what I meant was simply that I wish you would.’
‘I know,’ she said. ‘I’m beginning to break the code. Now, tell me about your daughter.’
For the first time in five months he could. It was twenty minutes later when Madeleine Lennox came around the corner of the deckhouse looking for him. She stopped, arrested by something in the attitude of the two figures leaning on the rail, and shrugged. You won a few, you lost a few. She turned, and went aft in search of Barset.