Wilbur Smith's Smashing Thrillers (66 page)

Made arrogant and unyielding by her vast bulk, the Golden Dawn did not
woo the ocean, as other ships do.
Instead, her great blunt bows crushed
the swells, churning
them under or
shouldering them contemptuously aside.

Peter had been around boats since before he could walk, he too was a
sea-creature. But though his eye was keen, it was as yet unschooled, so
he did not notice the working of the long wide deck.

Sitting beside Peter on the bench seat, Duncan Alexander knew to look
for the movement in the hull. He watched the hull twisting and hogging,
but so slightly, so barely perceptibly, that Duncan blinked it away, and
looked again. From bows to stern she was a mile and a half long, and in
essence she was merely four steel pods held together by an elaborate
flexible steel scaffolding and driven forward by the mighty propulsion
unit in the stern. There was small independent movement of each of the
tank pods, so the deck twisted as she rolled, and flexed like a longbow
as she took the swells under her, The crest of these swells were a
quarter of a mile apart. At any one time, there were four separate wave
patterns beneath Golden Dawn's hull, with the peaks thrusting up and the
troughs allowing the tremendous dead weight of her cargo to push
downwards; the elastic steel groaned and gave to meet these shearing
forces.

No hull is ever completely rigid, and elasticity had been part of the
ultra-tanker's original design, but those designs had been altered.
Duncan Alexander had saved almost two thousand tons of steel, by
reducing the stiffening of the central pillar that docked the four pods
together, and he had dispensed with the double skins of the pods
themselves. He had honed Golden Dawn down to the limits at which his
own architects had baulked; then he had hired Japanese architects to
rework the designs. They had expressed themselves satisfied that the
hull was safe, but had also respectfully pointed out that nobody had
ever carried a million tons of crude petroleum in a single cargo before.

The helicopter sank the last few feet and bumped gently on to the
insulated green deck, with its thick coat of plasticized paint which
prevented the striking of spark, Even a grain of sand trodden between
leather sole and bare steel could ignite an explosive air and petroleum
gas mixture.

The ship's party swarmed forward, doubled under the swirling rotor. The
luggage in its net beneath the fuselage was dragged away and strong
hands swung Peter down on to the deck. He stood blinking in the glare
of deck lamps and wrinkling his nose to the characteristic tanker
stench.
It is a smell that pervades everything aboard one of these ships, the
food, the furniture, the crew's clothing - even their hair and skin.

It is the thin acrid chemical stench of under-rich fumes vented off from
the tanks. Oxygen and petroleum gas are only explosive in a mixture
within narrow limits: too much oxygen makes the blend under-rich and too
much petroleum gas makes it over-rich, either of which mixtures are
non-explosive, non-combustible.

Chantelle Alexander was handed down next from the cabin of the
helicopter, bringing an instant flash of elegance to the starkly lit
scene of bleak steel and ugly functional machinery. She wore a cat-suit
of dark green with a bright green
Jean
Patou scarf on her head. Two ship's
officers closed in solicitously on each side of her and led her quickly
away towards the towering stern quarters, out of the rude and blustering
wind and the helicopter engine roar.

Duncan Alexander followed her down to the deck, shook hands quickly with
the First Officer.

‘
Captain Randle's compliments, sir. He is unable to leave the bridge
while the ship is in the inshore channel.
’

‘
I understand.
’
Duncan flashed that marvelous smile.
The great ship drew almost twenty fathoms fully laden and she had come
in very close, as close as was prudent to the mountainous coastline of
Good Hope with its notorious currents and wild winds.
However, Chantelle Christy must not be exposed to the ear-numbing
discomfort of the helicopter flight for a moment longer than was
necessary, and so Golden Dawn had come in through the inner channel,
perilously close to the guardian rocks of Robben Island that stood in
the open mouth of Table Bay.

Even before the helicopter rose and circled away towards the distant
glow of Cape Town city under its dark square mountain, the tanker's
great blunt bows were swinging away towards the west, and Duncan
imagined the relief of Captain Randle as he gave the order to make the
offing into the open Atlantic with the oceanic depths under his
cumbersome ship.

Duncan smiled again and reached for Peter Berg's hand.

‘
Come on, my boy.

‘
I'm all right, sir.
’
Skilfully Peter avoided the hand
and the smile, containing his wild excitement so that he walked ahead
like a man, without the skipping energy of a little boy.
Duncan Alexander felt the customary flare of annoyance. No, more than
that - bare anger at this further rejection by Berg's
puppy
. They went
in single file along the steel catwalk with the child leading. He had
never been able to get close to the boy and he had tried hard in the
beginning. Now Duncan stopped his anger with the satisfying memory of
how neatly he had used the child to slap Berg in the face, and draw the
fangs of his opposition.

Berg would be worrying too much about his brat to have time for anything
else. He followed Chantelle and the child into the gleaming chrome and
plastic corridors of the stern quarters. It was difficult to think of
decks and bulkheads rather than floors and walls in here. It was too
much like a modern apartment block, even the elevator which bore them
swiftly and silently five storeys up to the navigation bridge helped to
dispel the feelings of being ship-borne.

On the bridge itself, they were so high above the sea as to be divorced
from it. The deck lights had been extinguished once the helicopter had
gone, and the darkness of the night, silenced by the thick double-glazed
windows, heightened the peace and isolation. The riding lights in the
bows seemed remote as the very stars, and the gentle lulling movement of
the immense hull was only just noticeable.

The Master was a man of Duncan Alexander's own choosing. The command of
the flagship of Christy Marine should have gone to Basil Reilly, the
senior captain of the fleet. However, Reilly was Berg's man, and Duncan
had used the foundering of Golden Adventurer to force premature
retirement on the old sailor.

Randle was young for the responsibility, just a little over thirty years
of age, but his training and his credentials were impeccable, and he was
an honours graduate of the tanker school in France. Here top men
received realistic training in the specialized handling of these
freakish giants in cunningly constructed lakes and scale-model harbours,
working thirty-foot models of the bulk carriers that had all the
handling characteristics of the real ships.

Since Duncan had given him the command, he had been
a staunch ally
, and
he had stoutly
defending the design
and
construction of his ship when
the reporters, whipped up by Nicholas Berg, had questioned him. He was
loyal, which heavily, tipping the balance for Duncan against his youth
and inexperience.

He hurried to meet his important visitors as they stepped out of the
elevator into his spacious, gleaming modern bridge, a short stocky
figure with a bull neck and the thrusting heavy jaw of great
determination or great stubbornness. His greeting had just the right
mixture of warmth and servility, and Duncan noted approvingly that he
treated even the boy with careful respect. Randle was bright enough to
realize that one day the child would be head of Christy Marine. Duncan
liked a man who could think so clearly and so far ahead, but Randle was
not quite prepared for Peter Berg.

‘
Can I see your engine room, Captain?
’

‘
You mean right now?
’

‘
Yes.
’
For Peter the question was superfluous.
‘I
f you don't mind, sir!
’
he added quickly. Today was for doing things and tomorrow was lost in
the mists of the future.
‘
Right now, would be just fine
.’

‘
Well now
,’
the Captain realized the
request was deadly serious, and that this lad could not be put off very
easily,
‘
we go on automatic during the night. There's nobody down there
now - and it wouldn't be fair to wake the engineer, would it?
I
t's been a hard day.
’

‘I
suppose not.
’
Bitterly disappointed, but amenable to convincing
argument, Peter nodded.

‘
But I am certain the Chief would be delighted to have you as his guest
directly after breakfast.
’

‘
The Chief Engineer was a Scot with three sons
of his own in Glasgow, the youngest of them almost exactly Peter's age.
He was more than delighted. Within twenty-four hours, Peter was the
ship's favourite, with his own blue company-issue overalls altered to
fit him and his name embroidered across the back by the lascar steward
,“
PETER BERG
”
, He wore his bright yellow plastic hard hat at the same
jaunty angle as the Chief did, and carried a wad of cotton waste in his
back pocket to wipe his greasy hands after helping one of the stokers
clean the fuel filters - the messiest job on board, and the greatest
fun.

Although the engine control room with its rough camaraderie, endless
supplies of sandwiches and cocoa and satisfying grease and oil that made
a man look like a professional, was Peter's favourite station, yet he
stood other watches.

Every morning he Joined the First Officer on his inspection.
Starting in the bows, they worked their way back, checking each of the
pod tanks, every valve, and every one of the heavy hydraulic docking
clamps that held the pod tanks attached to the main frames of the hull.
Most important of all they checked the gauges on each compartment which
gave the precise indication of the gas mixtures contained in the air
spaces under the m
ain
deck of the crude tanks.

Golden Dawn operated on the inert system to keep the trapped fumes in an
over-rich and safe condition. The exhaust fumes of the ship's engine
were caught, passed through filters and scrubbers to remove the
corrosive sulphur elements and then, as almost pure carbon dioxide and
carbon monoxide, they were forced into the air spaces of the petroleum
tanks. The evaporating fumes of the volatile elements of the crude
mingled with the exhaust fumes to form an over-rich, oxygen-poor, and
un
explosive gas.

However, a leak through one of the hundreds of valves and connections
would allow air into the tanks, and the checks to detect this were
elaborate, ranging from an unceasing electronic monitoring of each tank
to the daily physical inspection, in which Peter now assisted.

Peter usually left the First Officer's party when it returned to the
stern quarters, he might then pass the time of day with the two-men crew
in the central pump room.

From here the tanks were monitored and controlled, loaded and offloaded,
the flow of inert gas balanced, and the crude petroleum could be pushed
through the giant centrifugal pumps and transferred from tank to tank to
make alterations to the ship's trim, during partial discharge, or when
one or more tanks were detached and taken inshore for discharge.