have been sorrow but was more probably exasperated anger, flung the wig
over the side; and returned to the hold, taking the tommy gun with him.
His companion followed.
“Our friend didn’t seem too happy,” I murmured. “He’s a devil, a
devil!” dr. Caroline’s voice was shaking; only now was he beginning to
realise the narrowness of his escape, how closely death had brushed him
by. “You heard him. One of his own men dead and all he could call him
was a crazy fool, and he just laughed when the other man suggested they
turn the ship to look for him.”
“You understand spanish?”
“Pretty well. He said something like: ‘just like that sadistic
so-and-so to force caroline to open the rail so that he could see what
was coming to him.’ he thinks I turned on the guard, grabbed his gun,
and that in the fight, before we both went overboard, my wig was torn
off. There was a handful of my hair sticking to the underside of the
wig, he says.”
“Sorry about that, dr. Caroline.”
“Good god, sorry! you saved both our lives. Mine anyway. Sorry!”
dr. Caroline, I thought, was a pretty strong nerved person; he was
recovering fast from the shock. I hoped his nerves were very strong
indeed; he was going to need them all to survive the ordeal of the next
few hours. “It was that handful of hair that really convinced him.”
I said nothing, and he went on: “please tell me exactly what is
going on.”
for the next five minutes, while I kept watch through that crack in
the doorway, dr. Caroline plied me with questions and I answered them
as quickly and briefly as I could. He had a highly intelligent,
incisive mind, which I found vaguely surprising, which in turn was a
stupid reaction on my part: you don’t pick a dim-wit as the chief of
development for a new atomic weapon. I supposed his rather
comical-sounding name and the brief glimpse i’d had of him the previous
night a man bound hand and foot to a four-poster and looking into a
torch beam with wide and staring eyes looks something less than his best
had unconsciously given me the wrong impression entirely. At the end of
the five minutes he knew as much about the past developments as I did
myself; what he didn’t know was what was to come, for I hadn’t the heart
to tell him. He was giving me some details of his kidnap when carreras
and his companion appeared.
they replaced battens, tied the tarpaulins, and went forward
without any delay. That meant, I supposed, that the fusing of the
auxiliary time bombs in the other two coffins was complete. I unwrapped
the torch from its oilskin covering, looked round the store, picked up a
few tools, and switched off the light.
“Right,” I said to caroline. “Come on.”
“Where?” he wasn’t keen to go anywhere, and after what he’d been
through I didn’t blame him.
“Back down that hold. Hurry. We may have little enough time.”
two minutes later, with the battens and tarpaulin pulled back into
place as well as possible above us, we were on the floor of the hold. I
needn’t have bothered bringing any tools; carreras had left his behind
him, scattered carelessly round. Understandably he hadn’t bothered to
remove them: he would never be using those tools again.
I gave caroline the torch to hold, selected a screw driver, and
started on the lid of the brass plaqued coffin.
“What are you going to do?” caroline asked nervously. “You can
see what i’m doing.”
“For pity’s sake be careful! that weapon is armed!”
“So it’s armed. It’s not due to go until when?”
“Seven o’clock. But it’s unsafe, highly unsafe. It’s as unstable
as hell. Good god, carter, I know. I know!” his unsteady hand was on
my arm, his face contorted with anxiety. “The development on this
missile wasn’t fully completed when it was stolen. The fuse mechanism
was only in an untried experimental state, and tests showed that the
retaining spring on a trembler switch is far too weak. The twister is
dead safe normally, but this trembler switch is brought into circuit as
soon as it is armed.”
“And?”
“A jar, a knock, the slightest fall-anything could overcome the
tension of the spring and short-circuit the firing mechanism. Fifteen
seconds later the bomb goes up.”
I hadn’t noticed until then, but it was much warmer down
in that hold than it had been on deck. I raised a soaking sleeve
in a half-witted attempt to wipe some sweat off my forehead.
“Have you told carreras this?” the warmth was also affecting my
voice, bringing it out as a harsh, strained croak.
“I told him. He won’t listen. I think-i think carreras is
a little mad. More than a little. He seems perfectly prepared to
take a chance. And he has the twister tightly packed in cotton wool and
blankets to eliminate the possibility of a jar.”
I gazed at him for a long moment without really seeing him, then
got on with the next screw. It seemed much stiffer than the last one,
but it was just possible that I wasn’t applying so much pressure as I
had been before. For all that I had all the screws undone inside three
minutes. Gently I slid off the lid, placed it to one side, slowly
peeled back a couple of blankets, and there lay the twister. It looked
more evil than ever.
I stood up, took the torch from caroline, and said, “armed, eh?”
“Of course.”
“There are your tools. Disarm the bloody thing.” he stared at me,
his face suddenly empty of expression. “That’s why we’re here?”
“Why else? surely it was obvious? get on with it.”
“It can’t be done.”
“It can’t be done?” I caught him by the arm, not gently. “Look,
friend, you armed the damned thing. Just reverse the process, that’s
all.”
“Impossible.” finality in the voice. “When it’s armed, the
mechanism is locked in position. With a key. The key is in carreras’
pocket.”
chapter 11
[thursday 1 a.m.-2.15 a.m.]
the weakness in my left leg, a near-paralysing weakness, hit me all
of a sudden and I had to sit down on the baffle and hang on to the
ladder for support. I gazed down at the twister. For a long time I
gazed down at it, with bitter eyes, then I stirred and looked at dr.
Caroline.
“Would you mind repeating that?”
he repeated it. “I’m terribly sorry, carter, but there you have
it. The twister can’t be rendered safe without the key. And carreras
has the key.”
I thought of all the impossible solutions to this one and
recognised them at once for what they were impossible. I knew what had
to be done now, the only thing that could be done. I said, tiredly, “do
you know, dr. Caroline, that you’ve just condemned forty people to
certain death?”
“I have done that?”
“Well, carreras. When he put that key in his pocket he was
condemning himself and all his men to death just as surely as the man
who pulls the switch for the electric chair. And what am I worrying
about, anyway? death’s the only certain and permanent cure for scourges
like carreras and the people who associate with him. As for lord
dexter, he’s rolling in the stuff. He can always build another
campari.”
“What are you talking about, mr. carter?” there was apprehension
in his voice as he looked at me; more than apprehension, fear. “Are you
feeling all right, carter?”
“Of course i’m all right,” I said irritably. “Everybody’s always
asking the same stupid question.” I stooped, picked up the rope grommet
and halftrac midget hoist i’d taken from the bo’sun’s store, then rose
wearily to my feet. “Come on, doctor, give me a hand with this.”
“Give you a hand with what?” he knew damned well what
I meant but the fear in his mind wouldn’t let him believe it. “The
twister, of course,” I said impatiently. “I want to get
it over to the port side, hidden in the tarpaulins behind the
baffle.”
“Are you crazy?” he whispered. “Are you quite crazy? did you
hear what I said? you’re going to lift it out of its coffin with-with
that? one little slip, the tiniest jar
“Are you going to help me?”
he shook his head, shuddered, and turned away. I hooked the hoist
on to a head-high rung of the ladder, pulled the lower block until it
hung just above the twister, picked up the grommet, and moved round to
the tail of the weapon. I was stooping low over it when I heard a quick
footstep behind me and a pair of arms locked themselves round my body,
arms informed with all the strength of fear and desperation. I
struggled briefly to free myself but I might as well have tried to shrug