interrupted him abruptly.
When last did you inspect the drawings of Golden Dawn, Nick paused,
taken in full stride and a little off balance.
He frowned as he cast back I walked out of Christy Marine just over a
year ago. And the darkness of those days settled upon him, making his
eyes bleak.
A year ago we had not even been awarded the contract for the
construction of Golden Dawn. Charles Gras twisted the stem of his wine
glass between his fingers, and thrust out his bottom lip. The ship you
have just described to us is very different from the ship we are
building out there. In what way, Charles? Nick's concern was
immediate, a father hearing of radical surgery upon his first-born.
The concept is the same. The mother vessel and the four tank pods, but
- Charles shrugged, that eloquent Gallic gesture, it would be easier to
show it to you.
Immediately after lunch. D'accord/ Jules Levoisin nodded. But on the
condition that it does not interfere with the further enjoyment of this
fine meal. He nudged Nicholas you eat with a scowl on your face, mon
vieux, you will grow yourself ulcers like a bunch of Loire grapes.
Standing beneath the bulk of Golden Dawn, she seemed to reach up into
that low grey snow-sky, like a mighty alp of steel. The men working on
the giddy heights of her scaffolding were small as insects, and quite
unbelievably, as Samantha stared up at them, a little torn streamer of
wet grey cloud, coming up the Loire basin from the sea, blew over the
ship, obscuring the top of her navigation bridge for a few moments.
She reaches up to the clouds/ said Nick beside her, and the pride was in
his voice as he turned back to Charles Gras. She looks good? It was a
question, not a statement.
She looks like the ship I planned Come, Nicholas. The little party
picked its way through the chaos of the yard. The squeal of power
cranes and the rumble of heavy steel transporters, the electric hissing
crackle of the huge automatic running welders combined with the roaring
gunfire barrage of the rivetters into a cacophony that numbed the
senses. The scaffolding and hoist systems formed an almost impenetrable
forest about the mountainous hull, and steel and concrete were
glistening wet and rimmed with thin clear ice.
It was a long walk through the crowded yard, almost twenty minutes
merely to round the tankers stern - and suddenly Nicholas stopped so
abruptly that Samantha collided with him and might have fallen on the
icy concrete, but he caught her arm and held her as he stared up at the
bulbous stern.
It formed a great overhanging roof like that of a medieval cathedral, so
that Nick's head was flung back, and the grip on her arm tightened so
fiercely that she protested. He seemed not to hear, but went on staring
upwards.
Yes, Charles Gras nodded, and the lank black hair flopped like against
his forehead. That is one difference from the ship you designed. The
propeller was in lustrous ferro-bronze, six-bladed, each shaped with the
beauty and symmetry of a butterfly's wing, but so enormous as to make
the comparison laughable. It was so big that not even the bulk of
