off the tentacles of a squid. I tried to stamp on his instep but all I
did was hurt my heel: i’d forgotten that I wasn’t wearing shoes. “Let
go!” I said savagely. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“I’m not going to let you do it! i’m not going to let you do it!”
he was panting, his voice low and hoarse and desperate. “I’m not going
to let you kill us all!”
there are certain people in certain situations with whom there is
no arguing. This was such a situation and caroline such a person. I
half turned, thrust backwards with all the power of my good leg, and
heard him gasp as his back struck heavily against the ship’s side. A
momentary loosening of his grip, a wrench, and I was free. I picked up
the big marlinespike and showed it to him in the light of the torch.
“I don’t want to use this,” I said quietly. “Next time I will. My
promise. Can’t you stop shaking long enough to realise that i’m trying
to save all our lives, not throw them away? don’t you realise that
anyone might pass by up top any moment, see the loose tarpaulin, and
investigate?”
he stood there, hunched against the metal, staring down at the
floor. He said nothing. I turned, took the torch in my teeth, placed
the grommet on the edge of the coffin, and bent down to lift the tail of
the twister. Or to try to lift it. It weighed a ton. To me it did,
anyway; what with one thing and another I wasn’t as fit as I had been.
I’d managed to lift it perhaps three inches and didn’t see how I was
going to hold it there for even a couple of seconds, when I heard a
footstep and a kind of moan behind me. I tensed, braced myself for the
next assault, then relaxed slowly as dr. Caroline stepped past me, bent
down, and slid the grommet round the tail of the twister. Together we
managed to move the grommet up to approximately the mid-point of the
missile. Neither of us said anything. I hauled on the halftrac pulley
until it became taut. Dr. Caroline said hoarsely, “it’ll never take
it. That thin cord
“It’s tested to a thousand pounds.” I hauled some more and the
tail began to lift. The grommet wasn’t central. I lowered it again,
the grommet was adjusted, and next time I hauled the twister came clear
along its entire length. When it was about three inches above its
cotton-wool and blanket bed, I set the autolock. I mopped my forehead
again. It was warmer than ever down in that hold.
“How are you going to get it across to the other side?9, caroline’s
voice had lost its shake now; it was flat and without inflection, the
voice of a man resigned to the dark inevitability of a nightmare.
“We’ll carry it across. Between us we should manage it.”
“Carry it across?” he said dully. “It weighs two hundred and
seventy-five pounds.”
“I know what it weighs,” I said irritably.
“You have a bad leg.” he hadn’t heard me. “My heart’s not good.
The ship’s rolling; you can see that that polished aluminium is as
slippery as glass. One of us would stumble, lose his grip. Maybe both
of us. It would be bound to fall.”
“Wait here,” I said. I took the torch, crossed to the port side,
picked up a couple of tarpaulins from behind the baffle, and dragged
them across the floor. “We’ll place it on these and pull it across.”
“Pull it across the floor? bump it across the floor?” he wasn’t
as resigned to the nightmare as I had thought. He looked at me, then at
the twister, then at me again, and said with unshakeable conviction,
“you’re mad.”
“Oh, for god’s sake, can’t you think of anything else to say?” I
grabbed the pulley again, released the lock, hauled and kept on hauling.
Caroline wrapped both arms round the twister as it came clear of the
coffin, struggling to make sure that the nose of the missile didn’t
collide with the baffle.
“Step over the baffle and take it with you,” I said. “Keep your
back to the ladder as you turn.”
he nodded silently, his face strained and set in the pale beam of
the torch. He put his back to the ladder, tightened his grip on the
twister, an arm on each side of the grommet, lifted his leg to clear the
baffle, then staggered as a sudden roll of the ship threw the weight of
the missile against him. His foot caught the top of the baffle; the
combined forces of the twister and the ship’s roll carried him beyond
his centre of gravity; he cried out and overbalanced heavily across the
baffle to the floor of the hold.
i’d seen it coming, rather, i’d seen the last second of it
happening. I swept my hand up blindly, hit the autolock, and jumped for
the swinging missile, throwing myself between it and the ladder,
dropping my torch as I reached out with both hands to prevent the nose
from crashing into the ladder. In the sudden impenetrable darkness I
missed the twister but it didn’t miss me. It struck me just below the
breastbone with a force that brought an agonised gasp from me; then i’d
both arms wrapped round that polished aluminium shell as if I were going
to crush it in half.
“The torch,” I yelled. Somehow in that moment it didn’t seem in
any way important that I should keep down my voice. “Get the torch!”
“My ankle”
“The hell with your ankle! get the torch!” I heard him give a
half-supressed moan, then sensed that he was clambering over the baffle.
I heard him again, his hands scuffing over the steel floor. Then
silence.
“Have you found it?” the campari had started on its return roll
and I was fighting to keep my balance.
“I’ve found it.”
“Then switch it on, you fool!”
“I can’t.” a pause. “It’s broken.”
that helped a lot. I said quickly, “catch hold of the end
of this damned thing. I’m slipping.” he did, and the strain
eased. He said, “have you any matches?”
“Matches!” carter showing inhuman restraint; if it hadn’t been for
the twister it would have been lunny. “Matches!
after being towed through the water for five minutes alongside the
campari?”
“I hadn’t thought of that,” he said gravely. A few moments’
silence, then he offered, “i have a lighter.”
“God help america,” I said fervently. “If all her scientists
-light it, man, light it!”
a wheel scraped on flint and a flickering pool of pale yellow light
did its pitiful best to illuminate that one tiny corner of the dark
hold.
“The block and tackle. Quickly.” I waited until he had reached
it. “Take the strain on the free end, knock off the lock, and lower
gently. I’ll guide it on to the tarpaulins.”
I moved out half a step from the baffle, taking much of the weight
of the missile with me. I was barely a couple of feet away from the
tarpaulins when I heard the click of the autolock coming off and
suddenly my back was breaking. The pulley had gone completely slack;
the entire two hundred and seventy-five pounds of the twister was in my
arms; the campari was rolling away from me; I couldn’t hold it, I knew I
couldn’t hold it, my back was breaking. I staggered and lurched
forward, and the twister, with myself above and still clinging
desperately to it, crashed heavily on to the tarpaulins with a shock
that seemed to shake the entire floor of the hold.
I freed my arms and climbed shakily to my feet. Dr. Caroline, the
flickering flame held just at the level of his eyes, was staring down at
the gleaming missile like a man held in thrall, his face a frozen mask
of all the terrible emotions he’d ever known. Then the spell broke.
“Fifteen seconds!” he shouted hoarsely. “Fifteen seconds
to go!” he flung himself at the ladder but got no further than the
second step when I locked arms round both himself and the ladder. He
struggled violently, frantically, briefly, then relaxed.
“How far do you think you’re going to get in fifteen seconds?” I
said. I don’t know why I said it, I was barely aware that I had said
it. I had eyes and mind only for the missile lying there; my face
probably showed all the emotions that dr. Caroline’s had been
registering. And he was staring too. It was a senseless thing to do,
but for the moment we were both senseless men. Staring at the twister
to see what was going to happen, as if we would ever see anything;
neither eyes nor ears nor mind would have the slightest chance in the