shouldering them contemptuously aside.
Peter had been around boats since before he could walk, he too was a
sea-creature. But though his eye was keen, it was as yet unschooled, so
he did not notice the working of the long wide deck.
Sitting beside Peter on the bench seat, Duncan Alexander knew to look
for the movement in the hull. He watched the hull twisting and hogging,
but so slightly, so barely perceptibly, that Duncan blinked it away, and
looked again. From bows to stern she was a mile and a half long, and in
essence she was merely four steel pods held together by an elaborate
flexible steel scaffolding and driven forward by the mighty propulsion
unit in the stern. There was small independent movement of each of the
tank pods, so the deck twisted as she rolled, and flexed like a longbow
as she took the swells under her, The crest of these swells were a
quarter of a mile apart. At any one time, there were four separate wave
patterns beneath Golden Dawn's hull, with the peaks thrusting up and the
troughs allowing the tremendous dead weight of her cargo to push
downwards; the elastic steel groaned and gave to meet these shearing
forces.
No hull is ever completely rigid, and elasticity had been part of the
ultra-tanker's original design, but those designs had been altered.
Duncan Alexander had saved almost two thousand tons of steel, by
reducing the stiffening of the central pillar that docked the four pods
together, and he had dispensed with the double skins of the pods
themselves. He had honed Golden Dawn down to the limits at which his
own architects had baulked; then he had hired Japanese architects to
rework the designs. They had expressed themselves satisfied that the
hull was safe, but had also respectfully pointed out that nobody had
ever carried a million tons of crude petroleum in a single cargo before.
The helicopter sank the last few feet and bumped gently on to the
insulated green deck, with its thick coat of plasticized paint which
prevented the striking of spark, Even a grain of sand trodden between
leather sole and bare steel could ignite an explosive air and petroleum
gas mixture.
The ship's party swarmed forward, doubled under the swirling rotor. The
luggage in its net beneath the fuselage was dragged away and strong
hands swung Peter down on to the deck. He stood blinking in the glare
of deck lamps and wrinkling his nose to the characteristic tanker
stench.
It is a smell that pervades everything aboard one of these ships, the
food, the furniture, the crew's clothing - even their hair and skin.
It is the thin acrid chemical stench of under-rich fumes vented off from
the tanks. Oxygen and petroleum gas are only explosive in a mixture
within narrow limits: too much oxygen makes the blend under-rich and too
much petroleum gas makes it over-rich, either of which mixtures are
non-explosive, non-combustible.
Chantelle Alexander was handed down next from the cabin of the
helicopter, bringing an instant flash of elegance to the starkly lit
scene of bleak steel and ugly functional machinery. She wore a cat-suit
of dark green with a bright green Patou scarf on her head. Two ship's
officers closed in solicitously on each side of her and led her quickly
