splintering of glass.
It was coming from the second door in front of him. He eased up to it and peered in. The radio console with its main, emergency, and high-frequency transmitters, its receivers, and its desk and typewriter stand, was in the middle of the room, facing the door. Sparks had all three transmitters tilted out in the servicing position with their circuits and components exposed, and was standing with his back to the door, using a fire ax to reduce them to electronic hash.
Lind never missed a bet, Goddard thought. He should have realized a mind like that would never overlook even the possibility there might be another qualified operator aboard. He sighed, stepped softly up behind the Latin on bare feet, and slugged him over a kidney. Sparks slumped in agony, and dropped the ax. Goddard twisted an arm behind his back and ran him across the room into the steel bulkhead. His knees buckled. Goddard flipped him over onto his back even as he was collapsing, and he lay looking up, dazed but still conscious, the dark eyes eloquent with hatred. Kneeling beside him, Goddard patted his pockets. They were empty.
'I want a gun,’ he said.
‘Where is it?’ Goddard leaned back and could just reach the head of the dropped fire ax. He set the pointed side of it on Sparks’ throat. ‘Why not tell me now? When this goes through your voice box, you’ll have to point.’
‘I haven’t got one.’
‘I guess I should have told you,’ Goddard said. ‘I’m short of time.’ He began to press on the ax.
‘If I had a gun, I’d be glad to give it to you.’
‘Sure, I know. And where.’
‘Listen. If you’ll take that thing out of my throat, maybe I can tell you so you’ll believe me. I hate you. I hate your guts. I hate all of you arrogant pigs. But if I had a gun and thought you could stop that murdering
Goddard frowned, but released the pressure on the ax. ‘Why?’
‘I went into this for the money, because I needed it, and nobody was going to be hurt. But now it’s gone bad, so he’s going to leave the whole crew here to burn.’
‘What about that?’ Goddard gestured toward the wrecked transmitters.
‘He said he’d gut me. In public. And he would.’
Score another one for the Lind mind, Goddard thought; public was the operative word. You couldn’t depend on scaring a Spaniard with death; only with humiliation. He got up and tossed the ax into one of the transmitters. ‘Have at it.’
Sparks stared. ‘Just take my word for it? You’re not going to tie me up?’
‘I haven’t got time,’ Goddard said. ‘Anyway, nobody that hates me could be all bad.’ He went out and hurried down the companionway.
He might be taking a chance. If Sparks called Lind, he and Karen would be dead in the next five minutes, but he didn’t think he would. In a world of office-seekers and deodorant commercials, how could you doubt a posture like that?
Smoke was growing thicker in the passageway on the crew’s deck, boiling up in dense clouds through the hatch from below. When Karen opened the door of the hospital she was coughing with it and tears ran down her cheeks. They were out of time already; they had to do something, and now.
‘Sparks didn’t have a gun,’ he said, ‘so we’re down to the desperation stuff. We’ve got to go for Otto, and there just may be a way I can do it. As long as he’s in the middle of the deck, there’s not a prayer, because it’s at least fifty feet from the corner of the deckhouse, all in the open, and I’d never make it. But if I can get him to come toward me—’
‘How?’
If I go out on deck on one side, the men in the well-deck will see me. They wouldn’t give it away intentionally, but out of thirty at least ten will keep looking in that direction, so he’ll know there’s somebody around the corner. He’ll come over to see, and if I can hear him I can tell when he’s close enough to try to jump him.’
‘And you’re a producer?’ She shook her head. ‘Harry, that man has gone toward that corner, or door, in a thousand pictures, and the only thing that’s always the same is that the gun is straight out ahead of him, ready to shoot. If you were close enough to dance, it wouldn’t work. But there is a way.’
‘What?’
‘Diversion. It’s just as old, but in this case it’ll do the trick. We both step out, on opposite sides, but I come on past the corner so he can see me. He’s certain I’m dead miles back there in the water, so he’ll freeze just long enough for you to reach him.’
‘Sure. And that grease gun will be pointed right at you, so when I land on him he’ll cut you in two.’
‘No. Just before you hit him, I’ll duck back past the corner. It’ll be only one step.’
He nodded. There was another way, too, that he could ensure the gun would be off her before a reflex could trigger it. ‘Okay,’ he said, ‘but one more thing. That rail where he is is solid, so if we crawl forward, the men in the well-deck won’t see us and give it away. But you stand up two or three steps before you get to the corner. Give him some preparation, so you won’t startle him into shooting before he thinks.’
‘Don’t worry, Harry.’ She was supremely confident. ‘I tell you he’ll freeze.’
He had to have a weapon. They found a twelve-inch crescent wrench in a locker. It had a brutal heft to it, which was just what he wanted; it had to be done with one blow, and he didn’t care if he drove Otto’s skull into his pelvis. He slipped forward to the messroom porthole and checked again. The big sailor was still in the same place.
They stepped out onto the after end of the deck to the roar and the heat of the fire. It was like a scene from hell, he thought, but the fury of the squall was beginning to slacken a little. He chose the starboard side. That way he’d be running for Otto with the bulkhead on his left, his right unhampered. They went in opposite directions, and when they reached the corners they looked back at each other. She smiled and gestured with circled thumb and forefinger. He wished he felt that relaxed; he was beginning to have butterflies. That was going to be the longest fifty feet in the world. He dropped to his knees and started to crawl.
It was awkward because he could use only one hand. With nothing on but a pair of shorts he had no place to carry the wrench except in the other, and he couldn’t let it bump the deck. As he went forward he rehearsed it in his mind. One stride before he reached Otto, he’d sing out. The sailor would start to whirl, swinging the gun, so it would be well off her before the wrench landed. That was simple enough, but he wasn’t as certain about the other signal, that to the men in the well-deck.
Mayr or Lind, or both, would be watching the well-deck too, and they would kill a lot of men on those ladders, shooting straight down from the bridge. But if he could signal them not to rush the minute they saw him get Otto, they wouldn’t have to file up like ducks in a shooting gallery. They’d all make it if he could get them to hold, as if Otto were still there, until he could go up to the after end of the boat deck and give them covering fire.
He looked out at the sea. The wind and rain were lessening all the time now, and he could see the pall of smoke blowing out to leeward for several hundred yards. It was only a few more feet to the corner. He was beginning to tighten up. Suppose Otto happened to be looking this way just as he peeked around the corner? Well, for Christ’s sake, what could he do about it? Why get in an uproar over something entirely out of his control?
He was there. With his hand as near the deck as he could get it, he leaned forward and peered around. Otto was in profile fifty feet away, staring unwaveringly down into the well-deck in front of him. His belly was against the rail, and though his forearms were resting on it, he held the weapon at ready, in both hands, with a finger inside the trigger guard. Goddard took a long, deep breath, and waited, conscious of that impulse to yawn which in a situation like this was just the opposite of what it implied.
Thirty more seconds went by. She was giving him plenty of time to be set. But not too much, Danish doll; this can get pretty hairy. Now! Otto’s head was turning; he was looking to the left. The men in the well-deck had seen her. He tried to breathe against the tightness in his chest, and gathered himself to leap. Then Karen Brooke stepped out into the open at the other corner of the deck house. He stared, and almost forgot to go into action, with an impression he must be as goggle-eyed as Otto. She’d taken off Antonio’s jacket.
She was facing Otto completely nude above the nylon briefs, and if that weren’t enough to nail any normal male under ninety-five solidly to the deck, she was also as wet and dripping as if she’d just emerged from the sea, and drowned strands of blonde hair were plastered over her face. She made a beautiful ghost, he thought, but he almost felt sorry for Otto as he got into gear at last and started running softly across the long expanse of open
