The Golden Rendezvous (25 page)

getting at me at all; he was trying to get at the nurse with the sawed-off shotgun, but captain bullen didn't know that, so he laid him out." I tightened the last of the screws and said, "don't breathe a word of this back in the sick bay-the old man talks non-stop in his sleep-or anywhere else. Not even to your parents. Come on. That sentry may come to any minute."

"You you're going to leave that thing her?" she stared at me in disbelief. "You must get rid of it you must!"

"How? carry it up a vertical ladder over my shoulder? that thing weighs about three hundred fifty pounds altogether, including the coffin. And what happens if I do get rid of it? carreras finds out within hours. Whether or not he finds out or guesses who took it doesn't matter: what does matter is that he'll know he can no longer depend on the twister to get rid of all the inconvenient witnesses on the campari. What then? my guess is that not one member of the crew or

passengers will have more than a few hours to live. He would have to kill us then no question of transshipping us to the ticonderoga. As for the ticonderoga, he would have to board it, kill all the crew, and open the sea cocks. That might take hours and would inconvenience him dangerously, might wreck all his plans. But he would have to do it.

The point is that getting rid of the twister is not going to save any lives at all; all it would accomplish is the certain death of all of us."

"What are we going to do?" her voice was strained and shaky, her face a pale blur in the reflected light. "Oh, johnny, hat are we going to do?"

"I'm going back to bed." heaven only knew I felt like it. Then i'll waste my time trying to figure out how to save r. Caroline."

"Dr. Caroline? I don't see-why dr. Caroline?"

"Because he's number one for the high jump, as things stand. Long before the rest of us. Because he's the man who's going to arm the twister," I said patiently. "Do you think he'll transfer him to the ticonderoga and let him acquaint he captain with the fact that the coffin he's taking back to the states contains not senator hoskins but an armed and ticking atom bomb?"

"Where's it all going to end?" there was panic, open panic, in her voice now, a near hysteria. "I can't believe it, I can't believe it. It's like some dark nightmare." she had her hands twisted in my lapels, her face buried in my jacket well, anyway, her old man's jacket and her voice was muffled. "Oh, johnny, where's it all going to end?"

"A touching scene, a most touching scene," a mocking voice said from close behind me. "It all ends here and now. This moment."

I whirled round, or at least I tried to whirl round, but I couldn't even do that properly. What with disengaging susan's grip, the weakness in my leg, and the lurching of the ship, the sudden turn threw me completely off balance and I stumbled and fell against the ship's side.

A powerful light switched on, blinding me, and in black silhouette against the light I could see the snub barrel of an automatic.

"On your feet, carter." there was no mistaking the voice. Tony carreras, no longer pleasant and affable, but cold, hard, vicious, the real tony carreras at last. "I want to see you fall when this slug hits you. Clever-clever carter. Or so you thought. On your feet, I said!

or you'd rather take it lying there? suit yourself."

the gun lifted a trifle. The direct no-nonsense type, he didn't believe in fancy farewell speeches. Shoot them and be done with it. I could believe now that he was his father's son. My bad leg was under me and I couldn't get up. I stared into the beam of light, into the black muzzle of the gun. I stopped breathing and tensed myself. Tensing yourself against a.38 fired from a distance of five feet is a great help, but I wasn't feeling very logical at the moment.

"Don't shoot!" susan screamed. "Don't kill him or we'll all die."

the torch beam wavered, then steadied again. It steadied on me.

And the gun hadn't shifted any that I could see. Susan took a couple of steps towards him, but he fended her off, stiff-armed.

"Out of the way, lady." i'd never in my life heard such concentrated venom and malignance. I'd misjudged young carreras all right. And her words hadn't even begun to register on him, so implacable was his intention. I still wasn't breathing and my mouth was as dry as a kith.

"The twister!" her voice was urgent, compelling, desperate. "He's armed the twister!"

"What? what are you saying?" this time she had got through. "The twister? armed?" the voice malignant as ever, but I thought I detected overtones of fear.

"Yes, carreras, armed!" i'd never known before how important lubrication of the throat and mouth was to the human voice; a buzzard with tonsillitis had nothing on my croak. "Armed, carreras, armed!"

the repetition was not for emphasis; I couldn't think of anything else to say, how to carry this off, how to exploit the few seconds' grace that susan had bought for me. I shifted the hand that was propping me up, the one in the black shadow behind me, as if to brace myself against the pitching of the campari. My fingers closed over the handle of the hammer i'd dropped. I wondered bleakly what I was going to do with it.

The torch and the gun were as steady as ever.

"You're lying, carter." the confidence was back in his voice.

"God knows how you found out about it, but you're lying: you don't know how to arm it."

that was it: keep him talking, just keep him talking. "I don't.

But dr. Slingsby caroline does."

that shook him, literally. The torch wavered. But it didn't waver enough.

"How do you know about dr. Caroline?" he demanded hoarsely. His voice was almost a shout. "How do you

"I was speaking to him to-night," I said calmly. "Speaking with him! but but there's a key to arm this. The only key to arm it. And my father has it."

"Dr. Caroline has a spare. In his tobacco pouch. You never thought to look, did you, carreras?" I sneered.

"You're lying," he repeated mechanically. Then, more strongly:

"lying, I say, carter! I saw you to-night. I saw you leave the sick bay-my god, do you think I was so stupid as not to get suspicious when I saw the sentry drinking coffee given him by kindhearted carter?locked it up, followed you to the radio office and then down to caroline's cabin.

But you never went inside, carter. I lost you then for a few minutes, I admit. But you never went inside."

"Why didn't you stop us earlier?"

"Because I wanted to find out what you were up to. I found it."

"So he's the person we thought we saw!" I said to susan. The conviction in my voice astonished even myself. "You poor fool, we noticed something in the shadows and left in a hurry. But we went back, carreras. Oh yes, we went back. To dr. Caroline. And we didn't waste any time talking to him either. We had a far smarter idea than that.

Miss beresford wasn't quite accurate. I didn't arm the twister. Dr.

Caroline himself did that." I smiled and shifted my eyes from the beam of the torch to a spot behind and to the right of carreras. "Tell him, doctor."

carreras half turned, cursed viciously, swung back. His mind was fast, his reactions faster; he'd hardly even begun to fall for the old gag. All he'd allowed us was a second of time, and in that brief moment I hadn't even got past tightening my grip on the hammer. And now he was

going to kill e.

but he couldn't get his gun lined up. Susan had been waiting for the chance; she sensed that i'd been building up towards the chance.

She dropped her lantern and flung herself forward even as carreras had started to turn and she ad only about three feet to go. Now she was clinging despirately to his gun arm, all her weight on it, forcing it down towards the floor. I twisted myself convulsively forward and that two-pound hammer came arching over my shoulder and flew straight for carreras' face with all the power, all the hatred and viciousness that was in me.

he saw it coming. His left hand, still gripping the torch, as raised high to smash down on the unprotected nape of Susan's neck. He jerked his head sideways, sung out his left arm in instinctive reaction: the hammer caught him just below the left elbow with tremendous force; his torch went flying through the air, and the hold was plunged into absolute darkness. Where the hammer went I don't know; a heavy rate screeched and rumbled across the floor just at that moment and I never heard it land.

the crate ground to a standstill. In the sudden momentary silence I could hear the sound of struggling, of heavy breathing. I was slow in getting to my feet; my left leg was practically useless, but maybe it only seemed slow to me. Fear, hen it is strong enough, has the curious effect of slowing p time. And I was afraid. I was afraid for susan.

Carreras, except as the source of menace to her, didn't exist for me at he moment. Only susan: he was a big man, a powerful man; e could break her neck with a single wrench, kill her with a single blow.

I heard her cry out, a cry of shock or fear. A moment's silence, a heavy soft thump as of falling bodies, a scream of agony, again from susan, and then that silence again.

they weren't there. When I reached the spot where they had been struggling, they weren't there. For a second I stood still in that impenetrable darkness, bewildered, then my hand touched the top of the three-foot baffle and I had it: in their wrestling on that crazily careening deck they'd staggered against the baffle and toppled over on to the floor of the hold. I was over that baffle before I had time to think, before I knew what I was doing; the bo'sun's knife was in my hand, the needle-pointed marlinespike open, the locking shackle closed.

I stumbled as the weight came on my left leg, fell to my knees, touched someone's head and hair. Long hair. Susan. I moved away and had just reached my feet again when he came at me. He came at me. He didn't back away, try to keep out of my reach in that darkness. He came at me. That meant he'd lost his gun.

we fell to the floor together, clawing, clubbing, kicking. Once, twice, half a dozen times he caught me on the chest, the side of the body, with sledgehammer, short-arm jabs that threatened to break my ribs. But I didn't really feel them. He was a strong man, tremendously strong, but even with all his great strength, even had his left arm not been paralysed and useless, he would have found no escape that night.

I grunted with the numbing shock of it and carreras shrieked out in agony as the hilt of macdonald's knife jarred solidly home against his breastbone. I wrenched the knife free and struck again. And again.

And again. After the fourth blow he didn't cry out any more.

carreras died hard. He'd stopped hitting me now; his right arm was locked round my neck, and with every blow he struck the throttling pressure of the arm increased. All the convulsive strength of a man dying in agony was brought 0 bear on exactly that spot where I had been so heavily and bagged. Pain, crippling pain, red-hot barbed lances of re shot through my back and head; I thought my neck was going to break.

I struck again. And then the knife fell from y hand.

when I came to, the blood was pounding dizzily in my ars, my head felt as if it were going to burst, my lungs were heaving and gasping for air that wouldn't come. I felt as if were choking, being slowly and surely suffocated. And then I suddenly realised the truth. I was being suffocated; e arm of the dead man, by some freak of muscular contraction, was still locked around my neck. I couldn't have been out for long, not for more than a minute. With both hands I grasped his arm by the wrist and managed to tear it free from my neck. For thirty seconds, perhaps longer, I lay ere, stretched out on the floor of the hold, my heart pounding, gasping for breath as waves of weakness and dizziness washed over me, while some faraway insistent voice, as desperately urgent as it was distant, kept saying in this remote corner of my mind, you must get up, you must get up. And then I had it. I was lying on the floor of the hold and those huge crates were still sliding and crashing around with every heave and stagger of the campari. And susan. She was lying there too.

I pushed myself to my knees, fumbled around in my pocket 11 I found marston's pencil flash, and switched it on. It still worked. The beam fell on carreras and i'd only time to notice that the whole shirt front was soaked with blood I involuntarily turned the torch away, sick and nauseed.

susan was lying close in to the baffle, half on her side, half on her back. Her eyes were open, dull and glazed with shock and pain, but they were open.

"It's finished." I could hardly recognise the voice as mine.

"It's all over now." she nodded and tried to smile.

"You can't stay here," I went on. "The other side of the baffle-quldck."

I rose to my feet, caught her under the arms, and lifted. She came easily, lightly, then cried out in agony and went limp on me. But I had her before she could fall, braced myself against the ladder, lifted her over the baffle, and laid her down gently on the other side.

in the beam of my torch she lay there on her side, her arms outflung. The left arm, between wrist and elbow, was twisted at an impossible angle. Broken, no doubt of it. Broken. When she and carreras had toppled over the baffle she must have been underneath: her

left arm had taken the combined strain of their falling bodies and the strain had been too much. But there was nothing I could do about it.

Not now. I turned my attention to tony carreras.

I couldn't leave him there. I knew I couldn't leave him there.

When miguel carreras found out that his son was missing he'd have the campari searched from end to end. I had to get rid of him, but I couldn't get rid of him in that hold. There was only one place where I could finally, completely and without any fear of rediscovery, put the body of tony carreras. In the sea.

tony carreras must have weighed at least two hundred pounds; that narrow vertical steel ladder was at least thirty feet high; I was weak from loss of blood and sheer physical exhaustion and i'd only one sound leg, so I never stopped to think about it. If I had, the impossibility of what I had to do would have defeated me even before I had begun.