Geoffrey Jenkins - A Ravel of Waters

In that brief interval while he gathered his aim, I made the remaining rungs to the lights.

I swiped madly with my heavy paw. There was a crash of breaking glass, a blinding flash of short-circuiting electrics. Then everything went dark. A general fail-safe switch tripped out the rest of the overhead lights inside the mast. I hurled myself up — fumbling, slipping, panting.

There was an ear-ripping jangle of sound. The blackness below was polka-dotted with red malice. The interior of the mast seemed full of ricocheting bullets.

Grohman was firing wild. He was hoping that the lethal spray would somehow find its target but the shots were all landing below me. He wasn't getting his angle of fire. The shattering sound cut off. I guessed the magazine was empty after that prolonged burst. To change it would give me a few precious moments. Up! Up!

Jetwind's yards were spaced at five equal intervals of ten and a half metres up the mast. The mast itself towered fifty-three metres above the deck. I had now covered the first ten and a half metres. The mast was divided into three sections; the lower mast, the top-mast, and the top-gallant. It was this latter which contained the ring charges at its juncture with the topmast thirty-four and a half metres above deck. The interior profile of the mast was elliptical and diminished progressively the higher one went.

At the point where each of the six yard-arms joined the mast there was a servicing compartment. Apart from a maze of pipes and valves, the main feature of these compartments was a pair of massive vertical rollers, each ten and a half metres in length, on which the sails were rolled in along tracks like a giant roller blind.

The bottom compartment, whose lights I had just smashed, was the largest. It measured about two and three-quarter metres long and was about half that broad. A steel cat-walk extending from the main ladder enabled technicians to stand and work.

I hesitated for a moment on this cat-walk. Its open grille provided no protection against a volley from underneath. There was a metallic clinking from below. What was Grohman up to? He hadn't fired off the UZI's full forty rounds. There was another snap and clink, then — unmistakable — the clack of a magazine being rammed home.

I knew enough about the UZI to realize that the big forty-rounder was too heavy to climb with. He had substituted for it a smaller twenty-five rounder. That still didn't account for all the delay. Another series of clicks reached me. He was probably unhitching the skeleton butt, converting the weapon into a compact, manoeuvrable automatic pistol. He was taking his time — he was very sure of me, pinned without hope of escape inside an ever-narrowing field of fire.

I could see faint Antarctic night-light filtering in through the chinks through which the sails rolled and unrolled. Urgently I looked for some weapon.

From the heel of each roller projected what looked like an old-fashioned car crank. I'd seen these before — manual back-up cranks in case the power-driven mechanism failed by which the sails were furled. I wrenched it from its socket and peered down. Below was darkness. I could not see Grohman's position but I heard faint movements.

I dropped the heavy bar and leapt upward again. There was a thud and a savage oath. For an answer, a shot whanged and whined from side to side inside the mast. The initial impact of the slug was much too close for comfort. I deduced from this that Grohman could now raise the automatic to a deadlier elevation.

I hadn't gone more than a couple of metres when the thought crashed home on me — at the next yard-arm bay I would have to stand and fight! It was the last bay before the juncture of the top-mast and top-gallant where the ring charges were sited. How much was left of the ten minutes until Tideman fired them? I hurried upwards.

Grohman hadn't fired again. I suspected that he was holding back until he thought I was trapped at the crow's nest and the top.

If I were going to use the dagger, I would need elbow room, provided just above my head, in the cat-walk of the next bay.

I hauled myself on to the next set of steel gratings. Now my second enemy was the light coming through the gaps between the sail rollers. I blocked some of the light by standing back against it, but the upper section-still emitted a give-away glow. How to fool Grohman into believing that I was still climbing? Perhaps if I pitched another crank-handle — but I was afraid that if I moved he would see me against the light. While I stood still where I was, I was tolerably safe. The automatic clanked against the ladder.

God! He was close! I even thought I could hear his rapid breathing.

I felt round desperately. My hand touched something metallic that felt like a small dumb-bell. It must have a function in snugging home the sail into the roller. I tried to insinuate myself between the two sail rollers in the same way, as according to Grohman's lies, Captain Mortensen had died. Perhaps the 'dumb-bell' was the blunt instrument whose mark the London pathologist had detected.

I tossed the heavy metal thing carefully through the catwalk ladder opening. At the same moment I thrust myself, back first, between the two sail-covered rollers.

There was a cry, an oath, a scrabbling of feet and a jangle of gun against rung. From the sound of it, Grohman must have slipped and fallen a few rungs. I could plainly hear his rasping breath.

This time he did not waste ammunition. The silence that followed was more gut-tearing than noise. I could picture the man in the darkness, steadying up, getting a grip on his fury before elevating the UZI into a firing position. The gun would have to be held well above his head if he didn't want to blind or maim himself.

The volley came — a cut-off six-rounder. It crashed and screamed through the confined space. There were also noises high above. Some slugs must have travelled all the way up to the masthead. If I had been on the ladder, I'd have been ripped apart from backside to neck.

There were more flashes of flame from the muzzle — I could almost reach down and touch them!

I took the knife from between my teeth and got a firm grip of the haft. My moment would come as Grohman came into the bay at cat-walk level. There the UZI's handiness would be at its most limited.

The light was dim, elusive. The grating poised crisscross like a steel trap waiting for Grohman's head. Red-painted stop-cock valves glowed danger signals. Copper hydraulic tubes writhed like disembowelled viscera. I waited.

It wasn't Grohman's head that came first. I heard a grunt, then his right hand clutching the UZI swung up and over on to the cat-walk. He wasn't much more than a metre from my funk-hole. My reflexes were swifter than my thinking.

In a flash I was out. I stamped on the UZI, pinning the gun-hand to the gratings.

They'd been right in choosing Grohman to lead Group Condor. He was tough; he could take it.

That booted foot must have hurt like hell. He didn't make the mistake of releasing the weapon. Instead, he used my ankle to lever himself into a fighting position. His head and body seemed to explode out of the opening. Crank and bull-whanger had done more damage than I thought. Blood was pouring from a long gash across his head.

With his free hand he swept my other foot from under me. I crashed beside him on the gratings. He rolled sideways, with cat-like agility. I followed, with survival-suit agility. Now the gun was under him; equally, the knife was trapped under my own bulk.

I pawed at him with a right fist, but even a punch-drunk palooka could have dodged the blow. Grohman jack-knifed on to his hunkers..The UZI must have been heavier than I guessed, or else my first savage stamp must have damaged his wrist more than I — or he — thought. He hadn't the strength in his right hand alone to raise the barrel fully to aim. It wavered, wandered off-target. A target bigger than a house.'