'Him and his slide-rule,' Nora had said.

Ferris shot me a couple of queries about crew strength and the type of missile and I told him I thought there was only a skeleton unit on board while the boffins sorted out the stuff for the console. I couldn't tell him anything about the actual missile except that I hadn't seen any exhaust ducts or heat shields. There might be Then the riveter started banging again and I nearly fell off the bloody girder and Ferris began complaining about the interference: the generators had been bad enough but this din was affecting the air acoustics as well as the signal and I was getting fed up.

209 — 376–177 — 286–164 — 1.

It threw me and then I got it: I'd read US print Polaris for US Sprint Polaris. Both missiles had a compressed gas launcher giving them a super-fast initial ascent with virtually no heat involved and getting them out of sight almost immediately and this could be the same type, which would explain why I couldn't see any exhaust ducts or shields.

He was asking me more about the camouflage but when I started off he cut in at the first interval and said he couldn't hear me through the jam so I told him to stand by and we sweated it out for twelve minutes till the riveter stopped and by that time I was right on the edge of my nerves because the logical time for a daily inspection of the minefield below me was first thing in the morning.

I turned down the volume for receive while Ferris put specific questions and then raised it for transmission and spoke close to the mike with the welders for background cover… configuration on both planes perfectly consistent with oil rig… telemetry requirements identical in many respects… giving similar installation images…

While I was filling in the picture it occurred to me that it made a certain amount of sense to build a missile base right on the doorstep of a UK possession and call it an oil rig. The Chinese Republic had silos all over the mainland for reaction-take-off missiles but they were being photographed regularly by the American SR71 from eighty thousand feet and by the Soviet Turo-9 from somewhere just under that altitude: it wasn't possible to hide things any more. Aerial surveillance by high-altitude plane and satellite units had been jacked up to the point where you couldn't plant a row of beans without getting a call the next morning from the CIA or the KGB to say that according to their photographs you'd put them in upside down.

There were immense problems involved in building a conventional-take-off missile base on the continental shelf in terms of getting the exhaust gas away but if you first thought of an oil rig as a disguise and then considered the similarities between an oil rig and a submarine and used compressed gas to pop the missile up the tube as they did with the Sprint and the Polaris then you'd build one of these things.

Question: how far was George Henry Tewson from the design concept of Polaris?

'He was with the Ministry of Defence,' she'd said grandly, high on bubbly, then she'd remembered they told her not to say things like that, 'actually his work wasn't important, to tell you the truth,' poor little bitch, out of her depth.

287 — 387–498 — 190 — 54…

He was on mission factors now: how long did I think I could stay on board the rig with any security? What was my life-support status in terms of rations, air, essential rig-to-island gear? How long would the radio stand up in these conditions?

Necessary to leave rig immediately exchange concluded. Fair chance of returning at nightfall but -

Bloody riveter began banging away and I called a 20–20 into the mike for stand-by and cut it dead to save the batteries and started to sweat it out again, watching the iron ladders and trying to think what I could do if Ferris asked me to keep station while he got into signals with London. That'd take up to an hour in cypher and I couldn't wait that long: I couldn't wait another two seconds with any security and he knew that because I'd told him.

Banging away, the whole of the superstructure vibrating, the rivets going into my head.

09.37.

If they just found me clinging to the girder looking dead beat the cover story might hold up long enough for me to try some kind of a get-out but if they found me with a radio it wouldn't hold up at all. There wasn't anything I could do about that: the instant I saw them on the ladder I could knock the Hammerlund into the sea behind the pontoon leg but they'd hear the splash and investigate and find the rest of the stuff. No go.

09.40.

There had to be a limit and in five minutes I'd open up the set and keep sending fifteens: Situation contained but leaving station. London was in a panic or they wouldn't have pushed me into this kind of position but if I could get out to Heng-kang Chou and delay the action for eight or nine hours till nightfall and take it up again from there they'd still have a live executive in the field and total security in the target zone. If I gave it more than another five minutes on board this rig they'd have a dead duck.

09.44.

The riveter stopped and I hit the set with twos.

He came in straight away with another question but I didn't answer it. I told him the situation was too insecure and I had to leave station.

He asked for a repeat and that brought the sweat out again.

We were throwing each other contractions for this exchange: the phrasing was right out of the book because the executive was in a red sector and had to get out and the director was having to decide whether to let him go or punch in a priority signal when he had him on the air. Contractions take very little time indeed but I didn't have any to spare because my instinct was yelling at me to get the hell out of this death-trap: send him fifteens and shut down the set and drop into the sea and pull out.

10.

Priority message.

Blast his eyes.

I waited.

He wasn't going to ask me for time while he talked to London. He didn't have to. He'd already done that.

Basic contractions: 2–8 — 0.

Executive will withdraw objective from target zone.

The objective was normally a file or a document or a chunk of strictly hush electronics but this time it was a man and what they were asking me to do was bring Tewson off the rig.

Chapter Fourteen: FLOTSAM

Something moved away from me in the sand as my fins touched the sea bed, and a flash of silver showed against the pontoon as a group of pomfret took refuge.

The depth on the gauge was 106 feet and I was aware of the pressure here at 4 atmospheres. Movement felt heavy and the silence brooded. The light was diffused, scattering down from the surface and leaving no shadows where the pontoon legs stood braced on the sand. Visibility was twenty or thirty feet: the girders were sharply defined in the immediate vicinity but grew hazy on the other side of the pontoon, finally vanishing into the insubstantial wall where sight was halted.

I'd changed air tanks on the surface, buckling the full ones into the backpack as a routine safety measure and bringing the old ones down with me to leave here with the radio and some of the rations. There might not be fresh water on Heng-kang Chou and I was taking one quart along with me. The hammerlund would have to be left here and I'd been worrying about that but there wasn't any choice: if I took it to the island I'd be able to stay in signals with Ferris during the next nine hours and with minimum background interference, but the waterproof bag was showing signs of giving out and the two-mile trip wouldn't improve it. The radio was a component in the life-support chain of this operation and I'd have to leave it lashed to the rig with the other gear for picking up tonight.