A Ravel of Waters

'Senorita!' Grohman's eyes were hard. 'You will come with me!' He addressed me. 'You and Tideman will stay here. I have ordered that if you make any attempt to interfere with the controls you will be shot. Is that clear?' 'Peter!' Kay appealed desperately to me.

It was blind rage – and love – and I lunged at Grohman. Maybe he'd been expecting this. The blast from the automatic seemed to go off in my face. I felt the cordite grains sear my left cheek. I spun round, stunned, caught a glimpse of a finned barrel clubbing at my head, and then everything went black.

I don't know for how long I was out. When I came round Tideman was propping me up. I felt as if the whole of Jetwind’s top-hammer had clouted my head. The bridge was empty except for Grohman's stooge with his finger on the trigger of his gun. 'Kay! Where's Kay?'

'Take it easy, Peter,' said Tideman. 'That was a stupid thing to do. You're lucky to be still alive.' I felt sick and dizzy. 'John! Where is she?'

Tideman hefted me to my feet. 'There!' He pointed to the fleet.

The agony in my head was nothing to the sight of Jetwind's boat heading towards the Akademik Kurchatov, which was moored nearer Jetwind than the rest of the squadron.

He said quietly, 'I think you should make up your mind to the fact that you won't see Kay again.'

I staggered to the starboard wing of the bridge and watched the disappearing boat. 'Did she finally give in?' I asked at last.

'She fought like a wild-cat. They had to rope her to get her into the boat.'

Now I had only a distant sight of her receding into the fog. The way to Kyyiv. The way to hell. 'There are four of them in the boat,' I remarked.

'Yes. Grohman took another of his gang along. The fourth is Sir James.'

The mists swirling across my brain resembled those about the fleet. Like them, there were clear patches. 'Worth a million dollars.'

'Grohman has gone for orders from Molot Command. We can only wait and see when he returns.'

Another round of small explosions reverberated from Trolltunga. 'What the hell are they doing!'

'Explosion seismology is the name for it, Grohman said after consulting HQ,' explained Tideman. 'A party of Red scientists are using small charges to measure acoustically the thickness of Trolltunga below the water level.'

I spotted one of the group leaving the pinnace with an armful of fresh charges.

The idea tugged at the back of my mind. 'How far is that pinnace from Jetwind, John?’

He eyed me. 'Three cables, a trifle more, maybe.' 'Five hundred metres?' 'About that.'

'Explosion – seismology.' I turned over the words slowly, thoughtfully. Tideman watched me, waiting for an explanation. As yet, my plan was too nebulous to formulate in words.

As we stood, the sun suddenly broke through the storm clouds. The sunset mist swirled and flowed and ebbed like pink foam from a lung-shot. Molot became even more unreal. The ice was blue-white; the grey lengths of the warships were tinged with red, the colour of their ensigns. Soon the long Antarctic summer night would begin, a night which never really got dark.

The boat with Kay vanished behind the Akademik Kurchatov. 'The sub's moving!' exclaimed Tideman.

His keen eye had spotted the narrowing of the sail's angle against the white back-drop of Trolltunga. 'She's coming out,' he added. 'No,' I replied. 'She's heading for the fleet replenisher.'

The sub edged towards her big sister. Which warship housed the faceless Molot Command? The sub neared the Berezina. 'The gantry – look!' exclaimed Tideman.

My muzziness was passing; I could focus again. The cut from Grohman's blow was small and did not bleed much but the bruise felt the size of Trolltunga.

A section of the Berezina's prominent athwartships gantry slid out of its housing to reach over the sea like a horizontal crane. Then, cables with massive hooks attached spilled into the water. 'Watch!' said Tideman excitedly. 'This is something no Westerner has ever witnessed! The fleet's fuelling! They're bringing up the jellifjed fuel from the undersea dump!'

Tens of thousands of hectolitres of jellified fuel! Each massive container in itself a bomb big enough to sink a ship! Molot itself – the whole anchorage – a more gigantic bomb still! It only needed a trigger to detonate it! And then my plan was born: I knew how I would attempt it. But it would kill Kay.