has dropped again, sir. Down to 1005 Very well, Nick drew Warlock
gently away from the liner's stern, and held her fifty feet off. Only
then did he flick his eyes up at the sky. The midnight sun had turned
into a malevolent jaundiced yellow, while the sun itself was a ball of
dark satanic red above the peaks of Cape Alarm, and it seemed that the
snowfields and glaciers were washed with blood.
It's beautiful. Suddenly the girl was beside him. The top of her head
was on a level with his shoulder, and in the ruddy light, her thick
roped hair glowed like newly minted sovereigns in red gold. Her voice
was low and a little husky with shyness, and touched a chord of response
in Nick, but when she lifted her face to him he saw how young she was.
I came to thank you, she said softly. It's the first chance I've had.
She wore baggy, borrowed men's clothing that made her look like a little
girl dressing up, and her face, free of cosmetics, had that waxy plastic
glow of youth, like the polished skin of a ripe apple.
Her expression was solemn and there were traces of her recent ordeal
beneath her eyes and at the corners of her mouth. Nick sensed the
tension and nervousness in her.
Angel wouldn't let me come before/ she said, and suddenly she smiled.
The nervousness vanished and it was the direct warm unselfconscious
smile of a beautiful child that has never known rejection. Nick was
shocked by the strength of his sudden physical desire for her, his body
moved, clenching like a fist in his groin, and he felt his heart pound
furiously in the cage of his ribs.
His shock turned to anger, for she looked but fourteen or fifteen years
of age; almost she seemed as young as his own son, and he was shamed by
the perversity of his attraction. since the good bright times with
chantelle, he had not experienced such direct and instant involvement
with a woman. At the thought of Chantelle, his emotions collapsed in a
disordered tangle, from which only his lust and his anger emerged
clearly.
He cupped the anger to him, like a match in a high wind, it gave him
strength again. Strength to thrust this aside, for he knew how
vulnerable he still was and how dangerous a course had opened before
him, to be led by this child woman. Suddenly he was aware that he had
swayed bodily towards the girl and had been staring into her face for
many long seconds, that she was meeting his gaze steadily and that
something was beginning to move in her eyes like cloud shadow across the
sunlit surface of a green mountain lake. Something Was happening which
he could not afford, could not chance - and then he realized also that
the two young deck officers were watching them with undisguised
curiosity, and he turned his anger on her.
Young lady/ he said. 'You have an absolute genius for being in the
wrong place at the wrong time., And his tone was colder and more remote
than even he had intended it.
Before he turned away from her, he saw the moment of her disbelief turn
to chagrin, and the green eyes misted slightly. He stood stiffly
staring down the fore-dec where David Allen's team was opening the
forward salvage hold.
Nick's anger evaporated almost at once, to be replaced by dismay. He
