Alistair MacLean - Fear is the Key

"I'm afraid he's right, Mr. Vyland." The unexpected help came from Royale. "We haven't all that much time."

For a long moment Vyland said nothing. Then he lowered his gun, turned and walked out of the room.

Royale, as always, showed no sign of strain or emotion whatever. He smiled and said: "Mr. Vyland has gone to eat over on the other side. Lunch is ready for all of us," and stood to one side to let us out through the door.

It had been a strange off-beat episode. It didn't make sense, it didn't even begin to make any kind of sense at all. I pondered it, I tried to find even a shadow of an explanation while Larry collected his gun and ammunition clip, but it was no good, I couldn't find an explanation to fit the facts. Besides, I'd suddenly realised that I was very hungry indeed. I stood to one side to let all the others except Royale precede me, not so much out of courtesy as to ensure that Larry didn't shoot me in the back, then hurried, without seeming to, to catch up on Mary and Kennedy.

To get to the other side of the rig we had to cross the hundred-foot width of the well-deck where I'd talked to Joe Curran, the roustabout foreman, in the early hours of that morning. It was by all odds the longest, wettest and windiest hundred feet that I'd ever walked.

They'd rigged up a couple of wire life-lines clear across to the other side. We could have done with a couple of dozen. The power of that wind was fantastic, it seemed to have redoubled in strength since we had arrived on the rig four hours previously and I knew now that we could expect no boat or helicopter to approach the rig until the storm had passed. We were completely cut off from the outer world.

At half past two in the afternoon it was as dark as twilight and out of the great black wall of cumulo-nimbus that all but surrounded us the wind flung itself upon the X 13, as if it were going to uproot it from its thirteen-leg foundation, topple it and drown it in the depths of the sea. It roared and howled across the deck of the oil-rig in a maniacal fury of sound, and even at the distance of a couple of hundred feet we could plainly hear above the deep thunder of the storm the cacophonous obbligato, the screaming satanic music as the great wind whistled and shrieked its falsetto way through the hundreds of steel girders that went to make up the towering structure of the drilling derrick. We had to lean at an angle of almost forty-five degrees against the wind to keep our balance and at the same time hang on grimly to one of the life-lines. If you fell and started rolling along mat deck you wouldn't stop until the wind had pushed you clear over the side: it was as strong as that. It sucked the breath from your lungs and under its knife-edged hurricane lash the rain flailed and stung the exposed skin like an endless storm of tiny lead shot.

Mary led the way across this exposed storm-filled working platform, and right behind her came Kennedy, one hand sliding along the wire, his free arm tightly round the girl in front. At another time I might have been disposed to dwell on the subject of luck and how some people seemed to have all of it, but I had other and much more urgent things on my mind. I came close up to him, actually treading on his heels, put my head close to his and shouted above the storm: "Any word come through yet?"

He was smart, all right, this chauffeur. He neither broke step nor turned round, but merely shook his head slightly.

"Damn!" I said, and meant it. This was awkward. "Have you phoned?"

Again the shake of the head. An impatient shake, this time, it looked like, and when I thought about it I couldn't blame him. Much chance he'd had of either hearing or finding out anything with Larry dancing around flourishing his pistol, probably ever since he had come out to the rig.

"I've got to talk to you, Kennedy," I shouted.

He heard me this time too; the nod was almost imperceptible but I caught it.

We reached the other side, passed through a heavy clipped door and at once found ourselves in another world. It wasn't the sudden quiet, the warmth, the absence of wind and rain that caused the transformation, though those helped: compared to the other side of the rig from which we had just come, this side resembled a sumptuous hotel.

Instead of bleak steel bulkheads there was some form of polythene or Formica panelling painted in pleasing pastel shades. The floor was sheathed in deep sound-absorbing rubber and a strip of carpeting covered the length of the passageway stretching in front of us. Instead of harsh unshaded lighting falling from occasional overhead lamps, there was a warm diffused glow from concealed strip lighting. Doors lined the passage and the one or two that were open looked into rooms as finely furnished as the cabins you might find in the senior officers' quarters aboard a battleship. Oil drilling might be a tough life, but the drillers obviously believed in doing themselves well in their off-duty hours. To find this comfort, luxury almost, in the Martian metal structure standing miles out to sea was somehow weird and altogether incongruous.

But what pleased me more than all those evidences of comfort was the fact that there were concealed loud-speakers at intervals along the passage. Those were playing music, soft music, but perhaps loud enough for my purpose. When the last of us had passed through the doorway, Kennedy turned and looked at Royale.

"Where are we going, sir?" The perfect chauffeur to the end; anyone who called Royale 'sir' deserved a medal.

"The general's stateroom. Lead the way."

"I usually eat in the drillers' mess, sir," Kennedy said stiffly.

"Not today. Hurry up, now."

Kennedy took him at his word. Soon he had left most of them ten feet behind — all except me. And I knew I had very little time. I kept my voice low, head bent and talked without looking at him.

"Can we put a phone call through to land?"

"No. Not without clearance. One of Vyland's men is with the switchboard operator. Checks everything, in and out."

"See the sheriff?"

"A deputy. He got the message."

"How are they going to let us know if they had any success? "

"A message. To the general. Saying that you — or a man like you — had been arrested at Jacksonville, travelling north."

I should have loved to curse out loud but I contented myself with cursing inwardly. Maybe it had been the best they could think up at short notice, but it was weak, with a big chance of failure. The regular switchboard operator might indeed have passed the message on to the general and there would toe a chance that I might be in the vicinity at the time: but Vyland's creature supervising the operator would know the message to be false and wouldn't bother passing it on, except perhaps hours later, by way of a joke: nor was there any certainty that even then the news would reach my ears. Everything, just everything could fail and men might die because I couldn't get the news I wanted. It was galling. The frustration I felt, and the chagrin, were as deep as the urgency was desperate.

The music suddenly stopped, but we were rounding a comer which cut us off momentarily from the others, and I took a long chance.

"The short-wave radio operator. Is he on constant duty?"

Kennedy hesitated. "Don't know. Call-up bell, I think."

I knew what he meant. Where, for various reasons, a radio post can't be continuously manned, there is a device that triggers a distant alarm bell when a call comes through on the post's listening frequency.

"C amp;n you operate a short-wave transmitter?" I murmured.

He shook his head.

"You've got to help me. It's essential that—"

"Talbot!"

It was Royale's voice. He'd heard me, I was sure he'd heard me, and this was it; if he'd the slightest suspicion, then I knew Kennedy and I had exchanged our last words and that I was through. But I passed up the guilty starts and breaking of steps in mid-stride, instead I slowed down gradually, looked round mildly and inquiringly. Royale was about eight feet behind and there were no signs of suspicion or hostility in his face. But then there never were. Royale had given up using expressions years ago.