Night Of Error by Desmond Bagley

Author:Desmond Bagley [Bagley, Desmond]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: adventure

Chapter Six** 1*

It was good to be at sea again, pounding along under the unfailing impulse of the trade wind. It would take about six days to sail to Tonga and we soon settled into shipboard routine.

Geordie was up and about. Although his face looked like the map of a battlefield he was fit enough otherwise, and took over the command from a reluctant Ian, who had gloried in his brief spell as skipper. The fresh wind blew away the last taint of Tanakabu and everyone benefited, and Kane's disappearance had lifted the last reserve of secretiveness. They were all in the know now, including Geordie's own crewmen, as we felt that it was only fair to warn them all of possible danger ahead, though none had taken advantage of Geordie's offer to pay their fares home if they wished to leave us.

And Paula was still with us. Somehow that had been taken for granted and she had fitted in so well to shipboard life that there was no sense of surprise in her having agreed to come along. She and Clare set one another off nicely.

I immersed myself in text books and charts. I wanted to study currents, so I asked Geordie for pilot charts of the area. 'Not that they'll be any great help,' I said. 'The currents might have changed considerably in the last fifty thousand years.. That's why Mark worked with Norgaard – he was an expert at that sort of thing.'

The pilot charts only have the surface currents,' said Geordie. 'Who knows what goes on under the surface?'

There are gadgets that can tell that sort of thing, though I haven't one with me. And they can't tell us what went on fifty thousand years ago, more's the pity.' I expounded. 'Here is Fonua Fo'ou. There's a warm offshoot of the South Equatorial Current sweeping south-west past the island. That should mean that any nodule deposits will also be laid down south-west of the island. But it's a surface current – there may be other currents lower down, going in different directions. That we'll have to check, if we can.'

I frowned at my own words. 'The thing is, have those currents changed direction in those last fifty thousand years? I don't know, but I shouldn't think so. It's not very long.'

Geordie snorted.

I put my finger on the chart. 'What I'm really worried about is this spot here. That's the Tonga Trench – our dredge will only go to 30,000 feet, and Horizon Depth in the Trench is nearly 35,000.'

'Quite a bit of water,' said Geordie dryly. 'That's over six and a half miles – a man could drown in that depth of water.'

'If the high-cobalt nodules have formed at the bottom of the Trench we're wasting time,' I said, ignoring his baiting. 'You could dredge them up, but it wouldn't be an economic proposition – it would just amount to pouring money into the sea. By the way, I haven't mentioned this to the boss. It would only cause alarm and despondency, and it might never happen.

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