Hungry as the Sea (3 page)

Nick stepped out of the saloon and Vin Baker’s voice was pitched to reach him. It was a truly dreadful imitation of what the Chief believed to be a Royal Naval accent.

“Logoo, chaps. Jolly good show, what?”

Nick did not miss a step, and he grinned tightly to himself. It’s an old Aussie custom; you needle and needle until something happens. There is no malice in it, it’s just a way of getting to know your man. And once the boots and fists have stopped flying, you can be friends or enemies on a permanent basis. It was so long since he had been in elemental contact with tough physical men, straight hard men who shunned all subterfuge and sham, and he found the novelty stimulating. Perhaps that was what he really needed now, the sea and the company of real men.

He felt his step quicken and the anticipation of physical confrontation lift his spirits off the bottom.

He went up the companionway to the navigation deck, taking the steps three at a time, and the doorway opposite his suite opened. From it emerge the solid grey stench of cheap Dutch cigars and a head that could have belonged to some prehistoric reptile. It too was pale grey and lined and wrinkled, the head of a sea-turtle or an iguana lizard, with the same small dark glittery eyes. The door was that of the radio room. It had direct access to the main navigation bridge and was merely two paces from the Master’s day cabin.

Despite appearances, the head was human, and Nick recalled clearly how Mac had once described his radio officer. “He is the most anti-social bastard I’ve ever sailed with, but he can scan eight different frequencies simultaneously, in clear and morse, even while he is asleep. He is a mean, joyless, constipated son of a bitch – and probably the best radio man afloat.”

“Captain,” said the Trog, in a reedy petulant voice. Nick did not ponder the fact that the Trog recognized him instantly as the new Master. The air of command on some men is unmistakable. “Captain, I have an all ships signify.”

Nick felt the heat at the base of his spine, and the electric prickle on the back of his neck. It is not sufficient merely to be on the break line when the big wave peaks, it is also necessary to recognize your wave from the hundred others that sweep by.

“Coordinates?” he snapped, as he strode down the passageway to the radio room.

“1 7 2 1 6 south 3 2 1 2 west.”

Nick felt the jump in his chest and the heat mount up along his spine, The high latitudes down there in the vast and lonely wastes. There was something sinister and menacing in the mere figures. What ship could be down there? The longitudinal coordinates fitted neatly in the chart that Nick carried in his mind, like a war chart in a military operations room. She was south and west of the Cape of Good Hope - down deep, beyond Gough and Bouvet Island, in the Weddell Sea.

He followed the Trog into the radio room. On this bright, sunny and windy morning, the room was dark and gloomy as a cave, the thick green blinds drawn across the ports; the only source of light was the glowing dials of the banked communication equipment, the most sophisticated equipment that all the wealth of Christy Marine could pack into her, a hundred thousand dollars’worth of electronic magic, but the stink of cheap cigars was overpowering.

Beyond the radio room was the operator’s cabin, the bunk unmade, a tray of soiled dishes on the deck beside it.

The Trog hopped up into the swivel seat, and elbowed aside a brass shell-casing that acted as an ashtray and spilled grey flakes of ash and a couple of cold wet -chewed cigar butts on to the desk. Like a wizened gnome, the Trog tended his dials; there as a cacophony of static and electronic trash blurred with the sharp howl of morse.

“The copy?” Nick asked, and the Trog pushed a pad at him. Nick read off quickly.

CTM. Z. 0603 GMT. 72 16 S. 320 12 W. ALL SHIPS IN A POSITION TO RENDER ASSISTANCE, PLEASE SIGNIFY. CTM. Z.

He did not need to consult the R. T. Handbook to recognize that call-sign CTMZ’

With an effort of will he controlled the pressure that caught him in the chest like a giant fist. It was as though he had lived this moment before. It was too neat. He forced himself to distrust his instinct, forced himself to think with his head and not his guts. Beyond him he heard his officers voices on the navigation bridge, quiet voices - but charged with tension. They were up from the saloon already.

“Christ!” he thought savagely. “How do they know? So quickly?” It was as though the ship itself had come awake beneath his feet and trembled with anticipation.

The door from the bridge slid aside and David Allen stood in the opening with a copy of Lloyd’s Register in his hands.

“CTMZ, sir, is the call sign of the
Golden Adventurer
. Twenty-two thousand tons, registered Bermuda 1975. Owners Christy Marine.”

“Thank you, Number One,” Nick nodded. Nicholas knew her well; he personally had ordered her construction before the collapse of the great liner traffic. Nick had planned to use her on the Europe-to-Australia run. Her finished cost had come in at sixty-two million dollars, and she was a beautiful and graceful ship under her tall light alloy superstructure.

Her accommodation was luxurious, in the same class as the France or the united States, but she had been one of Nick’s few miscalculations. When the feasability of operation on the planned run had shown up prohibitive in the face of rising costs and diminishing trade, Nick had switched her usage. It was this type of flexible and intuitive planning and improvisation that had built Christy Marine into the goliath she was now.

Nick had innovated the idea of adventure cruises - and changed the ship’s name to
Golden Adventurer
. Now she carried rich passengers to the wild and exotic corners of the globe, from the Galapagos Islands to the Amazon, from the remote Pacific islands to the Antarctic, in search of the unusual. She carried guest lecturers with her, experts on the environments and ecology of the areas she was to visit, and she was equipped to take her passengers ashore to study the monoliths of Easter Island or to watch the mating displays of the wandering albatross on the Falkland Islands. She was probably one of the very few cruise liners that was still profitable, and now she stood in need of assistance.

Nicholas turned back from the Trog. “Has she been transmitting prior to this signify request?”

“She’s been sending in company code since midnight. Her traffic was so heavy that I was watching her.” The green glow of the sets gave the little man a bilious cast, and made his teeth black, so that he looked like an actor from a horror movie.

“You recorded?” Nick demanded, and the Trog switched on the automatic playback of his tape monitors, recapitulating every message the distressed ship had sent or received since the previous midnight. The jumbled blocks of code poured into the room, and the paper strip printed out with the clatter of its keys.

“Had Duncan. Alexander changed the Christy Marine code?” Nick wondered.

It would be the natural procedure, completely logical to any operations man. You lose a man who has the code, you change immediately. It was that simple. Duncan had lost Nick Berg, he should change. But Duncan was not an operations man. He was a figures and paper man, he thought in numbers, not in steel and salt water. If Duncan had changed, they would never break it. Not even with the decca. Nick had devised the basis of the code. It was a projection that expressed the alphabet as a mathematical function based on a random six-figure master, changing the value of each letter on a progression that was impossible to monitor.

Nick hurried out of the stinking gloom of the radio room with the print-out in his hands.

The navigation bridge of Warlock was gleaming chrome and glass, as bright and functional as a modern surgical theatre, or a futuristic kitchen layout. The primary control console stretched the full width of the bridge, beneath the huge armoured windows. The oldfashioned wheel was replaced by a single steel lever, and the remote control could be carried out on to the wings of the bridge on its long extension cable, like the remote on a television set, so that the helmsman could con the ship from any position he chose. Illuminated digital displays informed the master instantly of every condition of his ship: speed across the bottom at bows and stern, speed through the water at bows and stern, wind direction and strength, together with all the other technical information of function and mulffunction. Nick had built the ship with Christy money, and stinted not at all.

The rear of the bridge was the navigational area, and the chart-table divided it neatly with its overhead racks containing the 106 big blue volumes of the Global Pilot and as many other volumes of maritime publications. Below the table were the multiple drawers, wide and flat to contain the spread Admiralty charts that covered every corner of navigable water on the globe. Against the rear bulkhead stood the battery of electronic navigational aids, like a row of fruit machines in a Vegas gambling hall.

Nick switched the big Decca Satellite Navaid into its computer mode and the display lights flashed and faded and relit in scarlet. He fed it the six-figure control, numbers governed by the moon phase and date of dispatch. The computer digested this instantaneously, and Nick gave it the last arithmetical proportion known to him. The Decca was ready to decode and Nick gave it the block of garbled transmission - and waited for it to throw back gibberish at him. Duncan must have altered the code. He stared at the printout.

CHRISTY MARINE FROM MASTER OF ADVENTURER. 2216 GMT.

72 16 S. 32 05 W. UNDERWATER ICE DAMAGE SUSTAINED MIDSHIPS STARBOARD.

PRECAUTIONARY SHUTDOWN MAINS.

AUXILIARY GENERATORS ACTIVATED DURING DAMAGE SURVEY.

STAND BY.

So Duncan had let the code stand then. Nick groped for the croc-skin case of cheroots, and his hand was steady and firm as he held the flame to the top of the thin black tube. He felt the intense desire to shout aloud, but instead, he drew the fragrant smoke into his lungs.

“Plotted,” said David Allen from behind him. Already on the spread chart of the Antarctic he had marked in the reported position. The transformation was complete, the First Officer had become a grimly competent professional. There remained no trace of the high-coloured undergraduate.

Nick glanced at the plot, saw the dotted ice line far above the
Adventurer’s
position, saw the outline of the forbidding continent of antarctica groping for the ship with merciless fingers of ice and rock.

The Decca printed out the reply:

MASTER OF ADVENTURER FROM CHRISTY MARINE. 22.22 GMT.

STANDING BY.

The next message from the recording tape was flagged nearly two hours later, but was printed out almost continuously from the Trog’s recording.

CHRISTY MARINE FROM MASTER OF ADVENTURER. 0005 GMT.

72 18 S - 32 05 W. WATER CONTAINED. RESTARTED MAINS.

NEW COURSE CAPE TOWN DIRECT. SPEED 8 KNOTS. STAND BY.

Dave Allen worked swiftly with parallel rulers and protractor. “While she was without power she drifted thirty-four nautical miles, south-southeast - there is a hell of a wind or big current setting down there,” he said, and the other deck officers were silent and strained.

Although none of them would dare crowd the Master at the Decca, yet in order of seniority they had taken up vantage points around the bridge best suited to follow the drama of a great ship in distress.

The next message ran straight out from the computer, despite the fact that it had been dispatched many hours later.

CHRISTY MARINE FROM MASTER OF ADVENTURER. 0546 GMT.

72 16 S. 32 12 W. EXPLOSION IN FLOODED AREA. EMERGENCY SHUTDOWN ALL.

WATER GAINING. REQUEST YOUR CLEARANCE TO ISSUE ALL SHIPS SIGNIFY.

STANDING BY.

MASTER OF ADVENTURER FROM CHRISTY MARINE. 0547 GMT.

YOU ARE CLEARED TO ISSUE SIGNIFY. BREAK. BREAK. BREAK.

YOU ARE EXPRESSLY FORBIDDEN TO CONTRACT TOW OR SALVAGE WITHOUT REFERENCE CHRISTY MARINE. ACKNOWLEDGE.

Duncan was not even putting in the old chestnut, except in the event of danger to human life. The reason was too apparent. Christy Marine underwrote most of its own bottoms through another of its subsidiaries. The London and European insurance and Finance Company, The self-insurance scheme had been the brain-child of Alexander Duncan himself when first he arrived at Christy marine. Nick Berg had opposed the scheme bitterly, and now he might live to see his reasoning being justified.

“Are we going to signify?” David Allen asked quietly.

“Radio silence!” snapped Nick irritably, and began to pace the bridge, the crack of his heels muted by the cork coating on the deck.

“Is this my wave?” Nick demanded of himself, applying the old rule he had set for himself long ago, the rule of deliberate thought first, action after. The
Golden Adventurer
was drifting in the ice-fields two thousand and more miles south of Cape Town, five days and nights of hard running for the
Warlock
. If he made the go decision, by the time he reached her, she might have effected repairs and restarted, she might be under her own command again. Again, even if she was still helpless,
Warlock
might reach her to find another salvage tug had beaten her to the scene. So now it was time to call the roll.

He stopped his pacing at the door to the radio room and spoke quietly to the Trog. “Open the telex line and send to Bach Wackie in Bermuda - quote call the roll unquote.”

As he turned away, Nick was satisfied with his own forethought in installing the satellite telex system which enabled him to communicate with his agent in Bermuda, or with any other selected telex station, without his message being broadcast over the open frequencies and monitored by a competitor or any other interested party. His signals were bounced through the high stratosphere where they could not be intercepted.