"The Ice Limit" - читать интересную книгу автора (Preston Douglas)

"But why so complicated an arrangement?"
"We had to solve a little problem," said Glinn. "At ten thousand tons, the meteorite must be absolutely locked into place, immobilized in the hold. If the Rolvaag encounters heavy weather on the way back to New York, even a tiny shift of the meteorite's position could fatally destabilize the ship. That network of timbers not only locks the thing into place, but distributes its weight evenly throughout the hull, simulating the loading of crude oil."
"Impressive," said Britton. "You took the internal frames and partitioning into account?"
"Yes. Dr. Amira is a computational genius. She worked up a calculation that took all of ten hours on a Cray T3D supercomputer, but it gave us the configuration. We can't finish it, of course, until we get the exact dimensions of the rock. We've built this based on Mr. Lloyd's flyover data. But when we actually unearth the meteorite, we'll build a second cradle around it that we can plug into this one."
Lloyd nodded. "And what are those men doing?" He pointed to the deepest depths of the hold, where a gaggle of workmen, barely visible, were cutting through the hull plates with acetylene torches.
"The dead man's switch," said Glinn evenly.
Lloyd felt a surge of irritation. "You're not really going through with that."
"We've already discussed it."
Lloyd struggled to sound reasonable. "Look. If you open up the bottom of the ship to dump the meteorite in the middle of some storm, the damn ship's going to sink anyway. Any idiot can see that."
Glinn held Lloyd with his gray, impenetrable eyes. "If the switch is thrown, it will take less than sixty seconds to open the tank, release the rock, and reseal it. The tanker won't sink in sixty seconds, no matter how heavy the seas are. On the contrary, the inrush of water will actually compensate for the sudden loss of ballast when the meteorite goes. Dr. Amira worked that all out, too. And a pretty little equation it was."
Lloyd stared back at him. This man actually derived pleasure from having solved the problem of how to send a priceless meteorite to the bottom of the Atlantic. "All I can say is, if anyone throws that dead man's switch on my meteorite, he's a dead man himself."
Captain Britton laughed — a high, ringing sound that carried above the clangor below. Both men turned toward her. "Don't forget, Mr. Lloyd," she said crisply, "it's nobody's meteorite yet. And there's a long stretch of water ahead of us before it is."



Aboard the Rolvaag,
June 26, 12:35 A.M.


MCFARLANE STEPPED through the hatchway, carefully closed the steel door behind him, and walked out onto the fly deck. It was the very highest point of the ship's superstructure, and it felt like the roof of the world. The smooth surface of the Atlantic lay more than a hundred feet below him, dappled in faint starlight. The gentle breeze carried the distant cry of gulls, and smelled wonderfully of the sea.
He walked over to the forward railing and wrapped his hands around it. He thought about the huge ship that would be his home for the next few months. Directly below his feet lay the bridge. Below that lay a deck left mysteriously empty by Glinn. Farther below lay the rambling quarters of the senior officers. And a full six stories down, the maindeck, stretching ahead a sixth of a mile to the bow. An occasional dash of starlit spray washed over the forecastle head. The network of piping and tank valves remained, and placed around it were a maze of old containers — the laboratories and workspaces — like a child's woodblock city.
In a few minutes his presence would be required at the "night lunch," which would be their first formal meal on board ship. But he had come up here first to convince himself that the voyage had really begun.
He breathed in, trying to clear his head of the last frantic days, setting up labs and beta-testing equipment. He gripped the railing tighter, feeling a swell of exhilaration. This is more like it, he thought. Even a jail cell in Chile seemed preferable to having Lloyd constantly looking over his shoulder, second-guessing, worrying over trivial details. Whatever lay at the end of their journey — whatever it was that Nestor Masangkay had found — at least they were on their way.
McFarlane turned and made the long walk across the deck to the aft rail. Although the thrum of engines came faintly from the depths of the ship, up here he could feel no hint of vibration. In the distance he could see the Cape May lighthouse winking, one short, one long. After Glinn secured their clearance papers through some private means of his own, they had left Elizabeth under cover of darkness, maintaining secrecy to the last. They would soon be in the main shipping lanes, beyond the continental shelf, and would then turn due south. Five weeks from now, if all went as planned, they would see the same light again. McFarlane tried to imagine what it would be like if they did recover it successfully: the furious outcry, the scientific coup — and, perhaps, his own personal exoneration.
Then he smiled cynically to himself. Life didn't work like that. It was so much easier to see himself back again in the Kalahari, a little more money in his pocket, a little chubby from ship's food, tracking down the elusive Bushmen and renewing his search for the Okavango. And nothing would erase what he had done to Nestor — particularly now that his old friend and partner was dead.
As he gazed out over the ship's stem, McFarlane became aware of another odor on the sea air: tobacco. Looking around, he realized he wasn't alone. From the far side of the fly deck, a small pinpoint of red winked against the dark, then disappeared again. Someone had been quietly standing there; a fellow passenger enjoying the night.
Then the red ember jerked and bobbed as the person rose to approach him. With surprise, he realized it was Rachel Amira, Glinn's physicist, and his own alleged assistant. Between the fingers of her right hand were the final inches of a thick cigar. McFarlane sighed inwardly at having his solitary reverie intruded upon, especially by this sardonic woman. "Ciao, boss. Any orders for me?"
McFarlane remained silent, feeling a swell of annoyance at the word "boss." He hadn't signed on to be a manager. Amira didn't need a nursemaid. And she didn't seem too pleased with the arrangement either. What could Glinn have been thinking?
"Three hours at sea, and I'm bored already." She waved the cigar. "Want one?"
"No thanks. I want to taste my dinner."
"Ship's cooking? You must be a masochist." She leaned against the rail beside him with a bored sigh. "This ship gives me the willies."
"How so?"
"It's just so cold, so robotic. When I think of going to sea, I think of iron men running all over the decks, jumping at barked orders. But look at this." She jerked a finger over her shoulder. "Eight hundred feet worth of deck, and nothing stirring. Nothing. It's a haunted ship. Deserted. Everything's done by computer."
She has a point, McFarlane thought. Even though by modern supertanker standards the Rolvaag was only moderate sized, it was still huge. Yet only a skeleton crew was necessary to man it. With all the ship's complement, the EES specialists and engineers, and the construction crew, there were still fewer than one hundred people aboard. A cruise ship half the Rolvaag's size might carry two thousand.
"And it's so damned big," he heard her say, as if answering his own thoughts.
"Talk to Glinn about that. Lloyd would have been happier spending less money for less boat."
"Did you know," said Amira, "that these tankers are the first man-made vessels big enough to be affected by the earth's rotation?"
"No, I didn't." Here was a woman who liked the sound of her own voice.
"Yeah. And it takes three sea miles to stop this baby with engines full astern."
"You're a regular fund of tanker trivia."
"Oh, I'm good at cocktail conversation." Amira blew a smoke ring into the darkness.
"What else are you good at?"
Amira laughed. "I'm not too bad at math."
"So I've heard." McFarlane turned away, leaning over the rail, hoping she would take the hint.
"Well, we can't all be airline stewardesses when we grow up, you know." There was a moment of blessed silence as Amira puffed at the cigar. "Hey, you know what, boss?"
"I'd appreciate it if you didn't call me that."
"It's what you are, right?"
McFarlane turned to her. "I didn't ask for an assistant. I don't need an assistant. I don't like this arrangement any more than you do."
Amira puffed, a sardonic smile hovering, her eyes full of amusement.
"So I've got an idea," McFarlane said.