"No! No!" he cut in savagely, and then the years of hatred and frustration and humiliation began pouring out.

Ruby listened quietly, slowly beginning to understand it all, marvelling at the acc.u.mulation of pain and hatred that he exposed for her. He remembered conversations from twenty years ago. Small childhood episodes, innocent remarks that had festered and rankled for a decade.

"You don't want him to succeed, is that it?"she asked.

I want to crush him, break him, humiliate him." For ten seconds Ruby was silent.

"Well, what are we going to do about it?"she asked flatly.

"Nothing, I suppose." Benedict's tone irritated her. "He always comes out on top, you just can't-, "Nonsense," Ruby snapped. She was angry now. "Let's go over it carefully, and see how we can stop him. He is only human, and you have shown me enough to prove you are a brilliant and successful businessman." Benedict's expression changed, becoming trusting and animated. He turned to her almost eagerly: he blinked his eyes. "Do you really believe that?"

The bunk was too narrow, Sergio Caporetti decided, much too narrow.

He would have one of the carpenters alter it today.

He lay on his back, wedged in firmly, with the blanketcovered mound of his belly blocking his view southwards.

He lay and a.s.sessed his physical condition. It was surprisingly good. There was but a small blurred pain behind his eyes and the taste of stale cigars and rank wine in the back of his throat was bearable.

The leaden feeling in his lower limbs alarmed him until he realized that he was still wearing his heavy fisherman's boots. He remembered one of the girls complaining about that.

He hoisted himself on one elbow, and looked at the girls.

One on each side of him, jamming him solidly into the bunk with magnificent hillocks of pink flesh. Big strong girls both of them, he had chosen them with care, neither of them an ounce under twelve stone.

Sergio sighed happily it had been a wonderful weekend. The girls were snoring, in such harmony that it might have been a rehea.r.s.ed stage act.

He listened to them with mild admiration for a few minutes, then crawled over the outside girl and stood in the centre of the cabin, clad only in his heavy boots. He yawned extravagantly, scratching the thick black wiry curls that covered his chest and belly, and c.o.c.ked an eye at the bulkhead clock. Four o'clock on a Monday morning, but it had been a truly memorable weekend.

The table was hidden under a forest of empty wine bottles, and dirty plates. There was a congealed ma.s.s of cold spaghetti bolognaise in a dish and he picked it up. As he clumped out of the cabin on to Kingfisher's bridge he was scooping up spaghetti with his fingers and cramming it into his mouth.

He stood at the rail of the bridge, a naked hairy figure in tall black boots clutching a dish of spaghetti to his chest, and looked around the dockyard.

Kingfisher was in stocks undergoing the modifications that Johnny Lance had ordered. She was standing high above the level she would attain when she was launched.

Although she was a vessel of a mere 3,000-ton displacement, she appeared black and monstrous in the floodlights that illuminated the ship-builders" yard. It was obvious from her unusual silhouette that she was designed for a special purpose. Her superstructure was situated well aft like that of an oil tanker, while her foredeck was crowded by the huge gantry which would control the dredge, and by the ma.s.sive storage tanks for the compressed air.

At this hour of the morning the shipyard was deserted, and wisps and tendrils of sea mist drifted about Kingfisher's bulk.

Standing fifty feet above the dry dock, still wolfing cold spaghetti, Sergio urinated over the rail - deriving a simple honest pleasure from the long arching stream and the tinkle of liquid striking the concrete far below.

He clumped back into his cabin, and looked down fondly on his two sleeping Valkyries while he finished the last of the spaghetti. Then he wiped his fingers carefully on his chest hair and called to them gently.

"Come, my kittens, my little doves, the time for play she has pa.s.sed the time for work she commences." With Latin gallantry he bundled them into a taxi at the dockyard gates, pressing on to each of them a l.u.s.ty kiss, a banknote, a bottle of Chianti, protestations of deep affection, and the promise of another party next Friday night.

He picked his way back through the dockyard jungle of machinery and buildings, lighting a long black cigar and inhaling smoke pleasurably until he came in sight of Kingfisher and halted with surprise and annoyance. There was a big honey-coloured Bentley parked near the gangway that led up to Kingfisher's deck. He resented visits from the Company bosses, especially this one, and especially at this ridiculous hour on a Monday morning.

The hose spiralled down into greenness, and they followed it down holding hands. Tracey was still a little nervous. This was not like the Mediterranean, a warm blue friendly embrace of waters to welcome the diver - it was the wild Atlantic, coldly menacing, green and untamed. It frightened her, and Johnny's hand gave her comfort.

Their Draeger demand valves repeated their breathing in a singing metallic wheeze, and icy leaks and rivulets kept finding their way into the cuffs and neck of Tracey's rubber suit.

Sixty feet below the surface Johnny paused, and peered into the gla.s.s window of her mask. He grinned at her, his mouth distorted by the bulky mouthpiece, and she gave him a thumbs-up sign. They both looked upwards. The surface was silvered like an imperfect mirror, and the black cigar shape of the boat was lapped in strange light. The hose and anchor chain pierced the silver ceiling and hung down into the shady green depths.

Johnny pointed downwards, and she nodded. They put their heads down, pointed their flippers to the surface, and still hand in hand they paddled steadily towards the sea bed.

Tracey was aware of a crackling hissing sound now, and from out of the greeny blackness below them scudded clouds of silver bubbles twisting and writhing towards the surface.

She strained her eyes downwards, following the line of the hose, and slowly out of the murk materialized the black rubber-clad forms of the two men working at the end of the hose; they appeared weird and mystical like black priests performing a satanical ma.s.s.

She and Johnny reached the sea bed and hung just above it, a little way off from the two men on the hose. Johnny indicated the depth gauge that he wore like a wrist watch.

It showed a depth of 120 feet. Then he turned and by a hand signal showed her the direction of the reefs.

They were in a valley between these long peaked underwater ridges of black rocks, the same reefs that Tracey had seen from the air.

There was a distinct pull of water as the current drifted at right angles to the direction of the reefs.

Johnny squeezed her hand, and then pulled her down.

They lay on their bellies on the floor of the sea, and Johnny scooped a handful of the white sand, washed it quickly so that the smaller particles were carried away in a cloud on the current, then he showed her the coa.r.s.e gravel which remained. Again he grinned, and she returned his smile.

Still leading her by the hand, he swam slowly towards the two men working on the hose, and stopped to watch them.

Attached to the end of the hose was a rigid steel pipe two inches in diameter, and twenty feet long - although now only half of its length was visible above the sand bottom. The two divers were forcing it down through sand and gravel to reach bedrock. The hose itself was attached to a compressor on the deck of the boat which was generating a vacuum in the hose and sucking up the sand and gravel as the steel pipe was forced downwards.

They were prospecting the Thunderbolt and Suicide field. Taking these two-inch samples at 500-foot intervals to ascertain the depth of water, the thickness of the overburden, and the content of the gravel beds. They were also mapping and plotting the reefs, so that by the time Kingfisher arrived they would have a fairly clear picture of the topography and aspect of the field. They would know where to begin dredging, and roughly what to expect when they did.

So far the results had endorsed Johnny's most optimistic expectations. There was a good thick catchment of gravel in the gullies between the reefs. As he had expected, the heavier gravels had been laid down in the gullies closest to the gap between Thunderbolt and Suicide, and the smaller and lighter gravels had been carried further. In some of the gullies the gravel beds were fifteen feet deep, and the types of stone present were all highly promising. He had isolated garnet, jasper, ironstone, beryl chips and t.i.tanium dust.

However, the conclusive and definite proof had also come up through that two-inch hose out of the depths.

They had already pulled the first diamonds from the Thunderbolt and Suicide fields. When you considered the odds against finding a stone in a two-inch sample at 500-foot centres and that payable gravel contained one part diamond in fifty million, it was exciting and encouraging that they had already recovered four diamonds. Small stones, to be sure, not one of them more than half a carat, but diamonds for all that, and some of them of excellent quality.

One of the men on the hose turned and gave Johnny a flat-handed cut-out sign. The pipe was on bedrock. Johnny nodded and jerked a thumb upwards, and drawing Tracey with him, started for the surface.

They climbed the ladder over the survey boat's counter, moving clumsily under the weight of the air bottles strapped to their backs, but there were willing hands to help them aboard and strip off the heavy equipment, and unzip the clinging rubber suits.

Tracey accepted a towel gratefully from one of the crew, and while she tilted her head to dry her sodden mane of hair, she looked across half a mile of green sea to the two white whale-backed islands with their attendant clouds of seabirds. The wave bursts on the cliffs sounded like distant artillery, or far thunder.

"G.o.d, this is a wild and exciting place." Her voice bubbled with excitement as she scrubbed at her hair. "It makes one come alive," Johnny understood her feelings, it was the forbidding restless sea and the harsh land that promised danger and adventure. He was about to reply, but the two hose men came aboard at that moment, the taller of them spitting out his mouthpiece and letting it fall to his chest.

"We'll move up to the next point, if it's okay by you, Mr. Lance?"

The man pulled off his mask and hood, exposing white-blond hair and a sun-broiled face.

"Fine, Hugo,"Johnny agreed, and watched approvingly as Hugo Kramer gave the orders to get the anchor and the hose up before taking Wild Goose seawards to her next prospecting point. Johnny had been reluctant to charter Wild Goose as the prospecting vessel and as the service boat for Kingfisher. He did not know Hugo Kramer, and Benedict van der Byl's insistence on the man had made him suspicious.

However, it was natural that they should use a skipper from the van der Byl fleet and Johnny was now prepared to admit he had been wrong. Kramer was an intelligent and willing worker, resourceful and trustworthy, a fine seaman who handled Wild Goose with all the skill it would need to bring her alongside Kingfisher in a heavy sea. His unfortunate physical appearance Johnny hardly noticed any more, although the original shock of that pink face, white hair and those blind-looking eyes had been considerable.

Tracey was not so charitable. The man made her uneasy.

There was a wild-animal ferocity about him, a barely controlled violence. The way he looked at her sometimes made her skin p.r.i.c.kle.

He did it now; turning back from issuing his orders he ran his eyes over her body. In the black silk costume her good round b.r.e.a.s.t.s showed at their best, and Hugo Kramer looked at them with those white-fringed bland eyes. Instinctively she covered them with the towel, and it seemed as though his lips twitched with amus.e.m.e.nt as he turned to Johnny.

"They tell me this dredger of yours is something special, Mr. Lance?"

"She is, Hugo. Not like the other half-baked barges and b.a.s.t.a.r.dized conversions that have been tried by other companies. She's the first diamond recovery vessel designed expressly for the job."

"What's different about her?"

"Nearly everything. Her hose is operated off a gantry on the foredeck, it goes out through a well pierced through her hull."

"What kind of hose?"

"Eighteen-inch armoured woven steel with rubber liner.

We can get it down to a hundred fathoms, and it has a compensating section in it to stop it plunging with the wave action of the hull."

"Eighteen inches is pretty big. How will you build up vacuum?"

"That's the point, Hugo. We don't suck - we blow! We evacuate water from the hose by purging it with compressed air, the inrush of water into the opening of the hose sucks in the gravel."

"Hey, that's neat. So the deeper you work the more effective it will be."

"Right "What about the actual recovery? Are you going to have the usual screening, ball mill, and grease table arrangement?"

"That's what killed the other companies - trying to separate by the old methods. No. We've got a cyclone to start with."

"Cyclone?"

"You know a cream separator?"

"Yeah."

"Same principle. just spin the gravel in a circular tank and float off everything with a specific gravity of less than 2.5. Take what is left, dry it, spread it on a conveyor belt and run it under an X-ray machine which pinpoints every single diamond. As you know, diamonds fluoresce under X.

rays and they show up crisply. The X-ray machine reports the diamond to the central computer. Johnny's voice and whole att.i.tude was charged with enthusiasm which was impossible for his listeners to resist. Tracey was carried along with him, watching his eyes and his mouth as he talked, smiling when he smiled, her lips following his faithfully.

This is the cyclone room," Benedict van der Byl explained as, with a hand on her elbow, he helped Ruby Lance down off the last rung of the ladder. "I explained to you how it worked."

"Yes." Ruby nodded, and looked around the room with interest. The roughly riveted and grey painted plating of Kingfisher's hull formed a square metal box, in the centre of which stood the cyclone. It was also painted battleship grey, a ten-foot-high cone-shaped circular tower.

"The gravel is blown in through here." Benedict indicated the eighteen-inch pipe which entered the cyclone room through the forward bulkhead, then connected to the bottom of the cyclone. "Up it goes."

Benedict flung his hand upwards. "And round it goes." He made a stirring motion.

"The heavy stuff is thrown off and led away through that." A smaller pipe emerged from the shoulder of the cyclone and disappeared through the farther bulkhead. "While the lighter stuff shoots out through the top and is sprayed overboard again."

"I understand. Now, where is the weak spot?"Ruby asked.

"Come." Benedict led her across the room, picking their way among the litter left by the workmen who still swarmed through Kingfisher.

They reached a steel door in the bulkhead.

"Watch your head." They ducked into a long pa.s.sageway with doors at both ends. On their right hand was an enclosed tunnel that ran the length of the room.

"This is the conveyor room," Benedict explained. "The concentrated gravels fall through a hot air draught from an electric furnace to dry them. They are gathered on a conveyor belt, concealed in that tunnel, and carried through into the X-ray room." "This is where you will fit it?" Ruby asked.

"Yes. In the conveyor tunnel. It will mean moving that inspection hatch back twelve feet to give us the s.p.a.ce." Ruby nodded.

"The man who will do the work - can you trust him? "Yes. He has worked for me before." Benedict did not add that the same man had designed the electronic equipment for the balloons used by the Ring, and had flown out from j.a.pan to convert the ASDic equipment on Wild Goose.

"All right." Ruby seemed satisfied. More and more she was becoming the driving force in the alliance, bolstering Benedict's resolution when he showed timidity or when he tried to evade the actions which must, in time, lead to a confrontation with Johnny Lance.

"Let's see the X-ray room." It was a tiny cupboard-like compartment. The floor, roof and all four walls were clad with thick sheet lead. Suspended from the roof was the X-ray machine, and under it a circular table the surface of which was covered with a honeycombpatterned stainless steel sheet.

"The concentrated gravel spills on to the table, and the table revolves under the X-ray machine which fluoresces each diamond and the computer picks it up and reports its size and exact position on the table. The computer then commands one of those - " Benedict pointed to a forest of hard plastic tubes, each attached to a metal arm, to swing out over the table exactly above the diamond and suck it up. The computer selects the correct diameter of tube for the size of the diamond - and, after the tube has obeyed the computer, the table pa.s.ses under a second X-ray machine which confirms that the diamond has been collected. If, by chance, the tube fails to suck up the stone, then the computer automatically sends the table on another circuit. If, however, the diamond is safely gathered then the waste material is sc.r.a.ped from the table and it swings round to pick up more gravel from the cyclone room and repeat the whole process. The system is 100 percent effective.

Every single diamond is recovered by it. Even stones as small as sugar grains." "Where is the computer?"Ruby asked.

"There." Benedict pointed through the small leaded gla.s.s window which overlooked the X-ray table. Beyond it was another small compartment. Ruby flattened her nose against the gla.s.s, and peered in.

The computer occupied most of the room, a huge glossy enamelled cabinet not unlike a refrigerator despite the switches and dials.

Benedict peered in beside her.

The computer runs the entire operation. It controls the flow of compressed air into the dredger pipe, it regulates the cyclone, runs the X-ray machine and the table, it weighs and counts the diamonds recovered before depositing them in a safe, and it even navigates the Kingfisher and reports to the bridge her exact position over the sea bed, it checks the lubrication and temperature of the engines and power plant and on request will make -complete and immediate report of the whole or any part of the operation." Ruby was still peering into the computer room.

"What happens to the diamonds once they have been picked off the revolving table?" she asked.

"They are sucked through an electronic scale which weighs each stone, then they are carried through into the computer room and deposited in that safe." Benedict pointed out the steel door set in the bulkhead. "The safe has a time and combination lock. So the system works without a diamond being touched by human hand."

"Let's go and talk to the Italian peasant," suggested Ruby, and as she turned from the window Benedict slipped his arm about her shoulders and hugged her possessively.

"Not now," snapped Ruby irritably, shrugging off his arm, and she led the way out of the X-ray compartment, pa.s.sing the locked door of the computer control room opposite the door to the conveyor room. She was impressed with the ingenuity of the system - but the fact that it had been constructed by Johnny Lance made her angry.

Her loyalties had changed completely, going to the highest bidder.

sergio Caporetti felt a small twinge of pity when he looked at Ruby Lance. So thin, and with a backside like a boy. She would be little comfort to a man on a cold night. Sergio worked the cheroot from one corner of his mouth to other, anointing the stub with saliva in the process. Also she was cold-blooded, he decided. Sergio had a very sensitive intuition when it came to judging the temperature of a woman's pa.s.sion. Cold like a snake, he decided, his pity giving way to revulsion. He repressed a small shudder as he watched her settle on to the day couch in his cabin, and cross her long golden legs precisely.

just like a snake, she would eat a man as though he were a little hopping frog. Sergio had admiration for Johnny Lance, but - he decided not even he would be safe with a woman like this.

"You like my ship?" he asked, an attempt at friendliness.

"She is very fine ship." Sergio actually used a more forceful adjective than very, one that suggested Kingfisher was capable of procreation, and Ruby's lips curled with disgust. She ignored the question and lit a cigarette, swinging one leg impatiently, and turned her head to stare through the porthole.

Sergio was hurt by the rebuff, but he had no time to brood on it for Benedict van der Byl came to stand in the centre of the cabin with his hands clasped lightly behind his back.