Алистер Маклин - The Golden Rendezvous

“I don’t want to use this,” I said quietly. “Next time I will. My promise. Can’t you stop shaking long enough to realise that I’m trying to save all our lives, not throw them away. Don’t you realise that anyone might pass by up top any moment, see the loose tarpaulin and investigate?”

He stood there, hunched against the metal, staring down at the floor. He said nothing. I turned, took the torch in my teeth, placed the grommet on the edge of the coffin and bent down to lift the tail of the Twister. Or to try to lift it. It weighed a ton. To me it did, anyway, what with one thing and another I wasn’t as fit as I had been. I’d managed to lift it perhaps three inches and didn’t see how I was going to hold it there for even a couple of seconds when I heard a footstep and a kind of moan behind me. I tensed, braced myself for the next assault, then relaxed slowly as Dr. Caroline stepped past me, bent down and slid the grommet round the tail of the Twister. Together we managed to move the grommet up to approximately the mid-point of the missile. Neither of us said anything.

I hauled on the Haltrac pulley until it became taut. Dr. Caroline said hoarsely: “It’ll never take it. That thin cord–”

“It’s tested to a thousand pounds.” I hauled some more and the tail began to lift. The grommet wasn’t central. I lowered it again, the grommet was adjusted, and next time I hauled the Twister came clear along its entire length. When it was about three inches above its cotton wool and blanket bed, I set the automatic lock. I mopped my forehead again. It was warmer than ever down in that hold.

“How are we going to get it across to the other side?” Caroline’s voice had lost its shake now, it was flat and without inflection, the voice of a man resigned to the dark inevitability of a nightmare.

“We’ll carry it across. Between us we should manage it.”

“Carry it across?” he said dully. “It weighs 275 lb.”

“I know what it weighs,” I said irritably.

“You have a bad leg.” He hadn’t heard me. “My heart’s not good. The ship’s rolling, you can see that that polished aluminium is as slippery as glass. One of us would stumble, lose his grip. Maybe both of us. It would be bound to fall.”

“Wait here,” I said. I took the torch, crossed to the port side, picked up a couple of tarpaulins from behind the baffle and dragged them across the floor. “We’ll place it on these and pull it across.”

“Pull it across the floor? Bump it across the floor?” He wasn’t as resigned to the nightmare as I had thought. He looked at me, then at the Twister, then at me again and said with unshakable conviction: “You’re mad.”

“Oh, for God’s sake, can’t you think of something else to say?” I grabbed the pulley again, released the lock, hauled and kept on hauling. Caroline wrapped both arms round the Twister as it came clear of the coffin, struggling to make sure that the nose of the missile didn’t collide with the baffle.

“Step over the baffle and take it with you,” I said. “Keep your back to the ladder as you turn.”

He nodded silently, his face strained and set in the pale beam of the torch. He put his back to the ladder, tightened his grip on the Twister, an arm on each side of the grommet, lifted his leg to clear the baffle, then staggered as a sudden roll of the ship threw the weight of the missile against him. His foot caught the top of the baffle, the combined forces of the Twister and the ship’s roll carried him beyond his centre of gravity, he cried out and overbalanced heavily across the baffle to the floor of the hold.

I’d seen it coining – or, rather, I’d seen the last second of it happening. I swept my hand up blindly, hit the auto-lock and jumped for the swinging missile, throwing myself between it and the ladder, dropping my torch as I reached out with both hands to prevent the nose from crashing into the ladder. In the sudden impenetrable darkness I missed the Twister – but it didn’t miss me. It struck me just below the breast-bone with a force that brought an agonised gasp from me, then I’d both arms wrapped round that polished aluminium shell as if I were going to crush it in half.

“The torch,” I yelled. Somehow, in that moment, it didn’t seem in any way important that I should keep down my voice. “Get the torch!”

“My ankle–”

“The hell with your ankle! Get the torch!”

I heard him give a half-suppressed moan, then sensed that he was clambering over the baffle. I heard him again, his hands scuffing over the steel floor. Then silence.

“Have you found it?” The Campari had started on its return roll and I was fighting to keep my balance.

“I’ve found it.”

“Then switch it on, you fool!”

“I can’t.” A pause. “It’s broken.”

That helped a lot. I said quickly: “Catch hold of the end of this damn’ thing. I’m slipping.”

He did, and the strain eased. He said: “Have you any matches?”

“Matches!” Carter showing inhuman restraint, if it hadn’t been for the Twister it would have been funny. “Matches! After being towed through the water for five minutes alongside the Campari ?”

“I hadn’t thought of that,” he said gravely, A few moments’ silence, then he offered: “I have a lighter.”

“God help America,” I said fervently. “If all her scientists – light it, man, light it!”

A wheel scraped on flint and a flickering pool of pale yellow light did its pitiful best to illuminate that one tiny corner of the dark hold.

“The block and tackle. Quickly.” I waited until he had reached it. “Take the strain on the free end, knock off the lock and lower gently. I’ll guide it on to the tarpaulins.”

I moved out half a step from the baffle, taking much of the weight of the missile with me. I was barely a couple of feet away from the tarpaulins when I heard the click of the auto-lock coming off and suddenly my back was breaking. The pulley had gone completely slack, the entire 275 lb. of the Twister was in my arms, the Campari was rolling away from me, I couldn’t hold it, I knew I couldn’t hold it, my back was breaking. I staggered and lurched forward, and the Twister, with myself above and still clinging desperately to it, crashed heavily on to the tarpaulins with a shock that seemed to shake the entire floor of the hold.

I freed my arms and climbed shakily to my feet. Dr. Caroline, the flickering flame held just at the level of his eyes, was staring down at the gleaming missile like a man held in thrall, his face a frozen mask of all the terrible emotions ever known. Then the spell broke.

“Fifteen seconds!” he shouted hoarsely. “Fifteen seconds to go!” He flung himself at the ladder, but got no further than the second step when I locked arms round both himself and the ladder. He struggled violently, frantically, briefly, then relaxed.

“How far do you think you’re going to get in fifteen seconds?” I said. I don’t know why I said it, I was barely aware that I had said it, I had eyes and mind only for the missile lying there, my face probably showed all the emotions that Dr. Caroline’s had been registering. And he was staring too. It was a senseless thing to do but for the moment we were both senseless men. Staring at the Twister to see what was going to happen, as if we would ever see anything, neither eyes nor ears nor mind would have the slightest chance in the world of registering anything before that blinding nuclear flash annihilated us, vaporised us, blew the Campari out of existence.

Ten seconds passed. Twelve. Fifteen. Twenty. Half a minute. I eased my aching lungs – I hadn’t drawn a breath in all that time – and my grip round Caroline and the ladder. “Well,” I said, “how far would you have got?”