“She is no good.” Sergio spoke morosely. “We come too close to the rocks. I get sick in my heart looking at them.” The dust clouds did not carry this far out to sea despite the vicious screeching of the wind. The visibility was a mile or more, quite enough to show the brooding twin hulks of Thunderbolt and Suicide. The storm-crazed swells burst against them, throwing white spray two hundred feet into the gloomy sky, then surging back to expose the gleaming white rock.
“Hold her,” growled Johnny. Twice during the night they had changed position, each time edging down closer on the gap between the two islands. Kingfisher was battling gamely to hold her ground against the insidious sucking current that added its pull to that of the swell and the wind.
Johnny was not attempting to work any one of the gullies extensively, he wanted only to sample as much of the field as possible in the time that was left to him. The storm would not stop him - for Kingfisher was constructed to work in worse weather than this. Her compensating hose section was keeping the dredge head on the bottom despite the lift and fall of her pull.
“Calm down, Sergio.” Johnny relented a little. “The computer is foolproof.”
“The god damned computer she no got eyes to see those rocks.
Me, I got eyes - and it gives me a sick heart.” Twice during the night
Johnny had gone down into the control room and ordered the computer to report its recovery of diamonds. Each time the reply had been consistent - not a single stone over four carats, and a very precious few of any others.
“I’m going through to the plot. Watch her,” Johnny told Sergio, and staggering against the pitch and roll he went through the door behind the bridge.
He paused behind the repeater screen of the computer, and at a glance saw that Kingfisher was holding her primary operation and all departments were running normally. He passed the screen and leaned over the chart table.
The large-scale chart of the South West African coast between
Luderitz and Walvis Bay was pinned down on the board. The Wild Goose soundings were pencilled in, and the pattern of Kingfisher’s sweeps were carefully plotted around the islands of Thunderbolt and Suicide.
Johnny picked up a pair of dividers and stared moodily at the chart. Suddenly a surge of anger rose in him against those two names.
They had promised so much and delivered so little.
He stared at the names Thunderbolt and Suicide printed in italics among the maze of soundings, and his anger turned to blind red hatred.
With the points of the dividers he slashed at the chart, ripping the thick linen paper once, and twice, in a ragged cross-shaped tear.
This small act of violence dissipated his anger. He felt embarrassed, it had been a petty childish gesture. He tried to smooth the edges of the tear, and through the gap he felt another loose scrap of paper which someone had slipped under the chart. He probed a finger through the tear in the chart and wormed the scrap out. He glanced at the scribbled title and the lines of figures and numbers that followed.
The sheet was headed: KAMINIKOTO SECONDARY RECOVERY PROGRAMME.
He studied it, puzzled by the title but recognizing the numbers as a computer programme. The writing was in Sergio Caporetti’s pointed continental style. The easiest way to resolve the mystery was to ask
Sergio. Johnny started back for the bridge.
“Boss,” Sergio called anxiously, as Johnny stepped through the door. “Look!” He was pointing ahead into the eye of the wind. Johnny hurried to his side, the paper crumpled and forgotten in his hand.
“Wild Goose.” Sergio-identified the small craft that was staggering and plunging towards them out of the gloom.
“What the hell is he doing here?” Johnny wondered aloud. Wild
Goose was lost for long seconds behind the walls of green sea, then again she was lifted high into unnatural prominence, showing the red lead of her bottom as she rode the crests; water poured from her scuppers, before she shot down the steep slope of the next wave to bury her nose deep in frothing water. She came down swiftly on the wind, rounding to and beginning to edge in under Kingfisher’s counter.
“What the hell is he playing at?” Johnny protested, and then in disbelief he saw a slim figure dart from Wild Goose’s wheelhouse and run to the side nearest Kingfisher.
“It’s Tracey,” shouted Johnny.
She reached the rail just as another swell burst over the bows and smothered her. Johnny expected to see her washed away, but she was still there clinging to the rail.
Thrusting the page of paper into his pocket, Johnny went out through the wing of the bridge and swarmed down the steel ladder to the deck, jumping the last ten feet and running the instant he landed.
He reached the side and looked down on the drowned-kitten figure of
Tracey.
“Go back,” he yelled. “Go back. Don’t try it.” She shouted something that was lost in the next smother of spray, and when it cleared he saw her poising herself to jump the gap of surging water between the two vessels.
He flung himself over Kingfisher’s side and climbed swiftly down the steel rungs.
He was still ten feet above her as she gathered herself for the leap.
“Go back,” he shouted desperately.
She jumped, missed her hold and fell into the murderous stretch of water between the hulls. Her head bobbed below Johnny, and he was aware of the next swell bearing down on them. It would throw Wild
Goose against the steel cliff of Kingfisher, crushing Tracey between them.
Johnny went down those last ten feet and hanging outwards by one arm he got his other arm around her, and with a heave that crackled in his muscles and joints he plucked her from the water just as the two vessels dashed together with a crunching impact that tore splinters from Wild Goose’s planking, and left a smear of alien paint on
Kingfisher’s steel plating.
Wild Goose swung away, and with her diesels bellowing went bucking off into the wind.
With puddles of sea water forming around her feet from her sodden clothing, Tracey stood in the Tcentre of Kingfisher’s guest cabin. Her dark hair was plastered down her face and neck, and she was shivering so violently from shock and the icy water that she could not talk. Her teeth chattered together, and her lips were blue with cold.
Desperately she was trying to form words, her eyes never leaving
Johnny’s face.
Quickly he stripped off her clothing and throwing one towel round her shoulders he began roughly to chafe warmth back into her with another.
“You little idiot,” he berated her. “Are you stark staring bloody mad?”
“Johnny,” she gasped through her chattering teeth.
“Christ - that was so close,” he snarled at her as he knelt to rub her legs.
“Johnny, listen.”
“Shut up and dry your hair.” Humbly she obeyed him, her shivers became controllable as he crossed to the locker and found a thick jersey which he pulled over her head. It hung almost to her knees.
“Now,” he said, taking her roughly by the shoulders.
“What the hell is this all about?” And she told him in a rush of words that poured out like water from a broken dam. Then she burst into tears and stood there forlornly in the voluminous jersey with her damp hair dangling about her shoulders, sobbing as though her heart was breaking.
Johnny took her in his arms.
For a long minute Tracey revelled in his warmth and strength, but she was the first to pull away.
“Do something, Johnny,” she implored him, her voice still thick with tears. “Stop them. You mustn’t let them get away with it.” He went back to the locker, and while he ransacked it for clothing that might fit her, Johnny’s mind was racing over the story she had told him.
He watched her pull on a pair of blue serge trousers and tie them at the waist with a length of cord. She folded back the cuffs and tucked them into thick woollen socks, before thrusting her feet into a pair of sea-boots
