A Ravel of Waters

I said, more to comfort her than with any plan in mind, 'Three days is a long time, Kay. Anything could happen before we reach Molot.'

'Molot!' she echoed. 'How I hate that name already! What is it? What does it mean? It has an evil ring, like Trolltunga.'

'It's Russian, that's for sure. What it means is as much a mystery as where it is.' -

Then we joined Tideman in the main 'ward'. He was listening to Kay's radio, turning it every way to try and improve reception.

'I had the Cape Town news’ he said. 'It reported concern because no signals had been received from Jetwind for a day. There was an interview with Thomsen. I couldn't hear clearly – something about no contact with the ship.'

Kay voiced the concern uppermost in all our minds. 'John – Peter – why should the Russians be interested in me? I haven't any secrets!'

Tideman switched.off the radio with a significant gesture. He said gravely, 'You have, Kay.' 'I? Secrets?'

He waved us into a couple of hard chairs round a low table. He opened a drawer by his bed and produced a pack of cards, obviously provided for patients. He nodded towards the watching sentry.

'If we hold a discussion in the ordinary way I'm sure we'll rouse his suspicions,' he said quietly. 'We'll pretend we're playing cards. I'll explain.'

Kay's hand was shaking when Tideman dealt the first round. 'Secrets?' she repeated incredulously.

'Aye, secrets, Kay. Remember when the Schiffbau Institut was making the final wind-tunnel tests of Jetwind's sails and masts?'

'Sure -I was there!' she exclaimed. 'You were there, too. That's where we met.'

'I was – at the invitation of Axel Thomsen himself. He'd heard of my runs round the Horn as a member of the British Services Adventure Scheme and thought I might be able to contribute something practical to the theoretical tests.' 'I stressed the same thing to Thomsen,' I interjected.

'That's what probably made him interested in you as a skipper – your practical experience in Albatros.' He looked anxiously round the sick-bay. 'I take it this place isn't bugged, is it? If so, we might as well say goodbye in the light of what I'm going to say now.' 'Grohman hasn't had any opportunity,' I replied.

'Here goes, then. Both of you know, of course, that Jetwind's sails are made of dacron, not canvas.'

He stressed his statement so carefully that Kay said, 'Of course, John – but that's no secret.'

'Bacron is tougher and smoother and therefore more aerodynamically efficient than canvas.'

Kay was staring at him, and he warned, 'Try and keep your eyes on your cards, Kay.'

She gave a little shake of her head, half reproach, half incredulity.

'Dacron is also far more expensive than canvas,5 Tideman went on. 'Therefore it is worth protecting in a way canvas need not be. Jetwind’s sails alone cost a fortune.'

' Albatros’s dacron sails at the end of my run were as thin from sun damage as the Ancient Mariner's ghost ships,' I said.

'That's it – sun damage!' he went on. cJetwind’s designers realized that to prevent sun damage from infrared and ultra-violet rays the sails would have to have a plastic coating. You realize the problem this poses – what plastic could stand up to the continual flexing, reefing, furling and endless changes in wind pressure? There was also the problem of cracking and flaking. The protective coating would have to withstand that also.'

Kay said, 'I remember the headaches that caused. But the Schiffbau team came up trumps in the end.'

'It was brilliant inventiveness,' Tideman went on. 'The specialists evolved a completely new plastic in the polymer group – the same chemical group as dacron itself. It was named polyionosoprene. The day we tested the new plastic and found that it absorbed infra-red and micro-waves was sensational.'

I threw down a card at random on the table. It was the top ace in the pack.

Tideman gave value to the pause, gathering up the pack and riffling the deck like a professional card-sharp. The guard beyond the glass partition was lolling, disinterested.

'That absorption was due – we believed though we couldn't prove it – to an unknown chemical reaction occurring between the dacron and polyionosoprene.' ‘That doesn't sound too dramatic, John.'

'I was there,' Kay added. 'Everyone seemed quite pleased but not over-excited at the discovery.'

A slight smile broke the seriousness of Tideman's explanation. 'It was in fact one of the biggest strategic breakthroughs of the satellite age.

'Infra-red and micro-waves are the basic elements of American and Russian spy satellites. However, infra-red rays are strongly absorbed by water vapour, with the result that a spy satellite cannot "see" through cloud, which means restricting their use to cloud-free days.' He slapped down a card. 'Now – here is polyionosoprene, an artificial substance which similarly absorbs these rays.'

Kay looked dumbfounded. ‘I never guessed it was that important.'