one and bring it in, like roping wild horses. How would you handle it?
she objected. It's too big. My two tugs hustle forty-four thousand
horses - we could pull in Everest, if we wanted. Yes, but once you get
it to the Persian Gulf? We cut it into manageable hunks with a laser
lance, and lift the hunks into a melting dam with an overhead crane, She
thought about it. It could work/ she admitted.
It will work/he told her. I've sold the idea to the Saudis already.
They are already building the dock and the dams.
We'll give them water at one hundredth the cost of us nuclear condensers
on sea water, and without the risk of radio-active contamination. She
was absorbed with his vision, and he with hers. As they talked deep
into the long watches of the night, they drew closer in spirit only.
Although each of them treasured those shared hours, somehow neither
could bridge the narrow chasm between friendliness and real intimacy.
She was instinctively aware of his reserves, that he was a min who had
considered life and established his code by which to live it. She
guessed that he did nothing unless it was deeply felt, and that a casual
physical relationship would offer no attraction to him; she knew of the
turmoil to which his life had so recently been reduced, and that he was
pulling himself out of that by main strength, but that he was now wary
of further hurt. There was time, she told herself, plenty of time - but
Warlock bore steadily north by north-east, dragging her crippled ward up
through the roaring forties; those notorious winds treated her kindly
and she made good the six knots that Nick had hoped for.
On board Warlock, the attitude of the officers towards Samantha Silver
changed from fawning adulation to wistful. respect. Every one of them
knew of the nightly ritual of the eight-to-midnight watch.
Bloody cradle-snatcher! groused Tim Graham.
Mr. Graham, it is fortunate I did not hear that remark/ David Allen
warned him with glacial coldness - but they all resented Nicholas Berg,
it was unfair competition, yet they kept a new respectful distance from
the girl, not one of them daring to challenge the herd bull.
The time that Samantha had looked upon as endless was running out now,
and she closed her mind to it. Even when David Allen showed her the
fuzzy luminescence of the African continent on the extreme range of the
radar-screen, she pretended to herself that it would go on like this -
if not for ever, at least until something special happened.
During the long voyage up from Shackleton Bay, Samantha had streamed a
very fine-meshed net from Warlock's stern, collecting an incredible
variety of krill and plankton and other microscopic marine life. Angel
had grudgingly given her a small corner of his scullery in return for
her services as honorary assistant under-chef and unpaid waitress, and
she spent many absorbed hours there each day, identifying and preserving
her specimens.
She was working there when the helicopter came out to Warlock. She
looked up at the buffeting of the machine's rotors as they changed into
fine pitch for the landing on Warlock's high-deck, and she was tempted
to go up like every idle and curious hand on board, but she was in the
middle of staining a slide, and somehow she resented the encroachment on
