Fire And Ice Read Free

stunt in years."
    Ronnie galloped back to the cockpit. "Did you see, Mum?"
    "You will give me gray hair before you give me grandchildren."
    "Did you see, Dad?"
    "I'm impressed," said Stone. "When did you learn that?"
    "Pictured it last night in bed. I could see it, so I knew I could do it."
    "Please inform me first if you ever picture wings."
    "Daddy— Do you see the ship, Mum? It's bigger than Pulo Helena. Maybe they'll invite us aboard and serve us lunch and—and show movies and have a swimming pool and video games and TV—I bet they have satellite TV!"
    "Perhaps," Sarah said gently, exchanging a look with Stone. "But don't get your hopes up, darling."
    "I think they're waiting for us," Ronnie ventured, then embraced her theory with vigor. " Bet you someone's sick and waiting for you to treat them." Just last spring in the Philippine Sea they had boarded
    a Danish car carrier to doctor an engineer burned in a pump explosion. The comfortable crew accommodations had looked palatial to Ronnie, the ship a floating storehouse of modern treasures for a child who saw ice cream twice a year. Ever since, she hungered after passing ships like a privateer. Stone was presently at work building a decoder for her for Christmas, so she could watch satellite television.
    "Well, if that's the case—and even if it isn't—we'll be landing soon. I want you to go below, eat your breakfast. And then have a nice shower and wash your hair—we'll water at Pulo Helena. See, Dad's trimmed his beard and I'm all spiffed. Call me when you're done and I'll brush it for you."
    Ronnie cast a longing look at the ship and dove down the companionway. The three atolls that formed the Pulo Helena group came into view. The ship lay among them, in the lee of the main island, protected from the rollers, which the islands split. Its house stood higher than their feathery rows of palm trees.
    The VHF rumbled to life with the drawl of South Texas. "Ahoy, sailboat flyin' the red cross. Sailboat flyin' the red cross. You all wouldn't happen to be the hospital boat?"
    "They're waiting for us," said Sarah.
    Stone thumbed Transmit. "This is Veronica. What can we do for you?"
    "Man, are we glad to see you. This is Dallas Belle. We're outta Surabaya bound for Tokyo. The old man's hurt. Took hisself a header. We need a doctor, bad. You want us to come out and meet you?"
    Stone looked at Sarah. The Surabaya-to-Tokyo run lay hundreds of miles west of Helena.
    "Not in these swells. We'll board you in the lee of the atoll. Just sit tight. We'll be there in forty-five minutes."
    "You're the boss, Doc."
    Sarah took the radio. "When was your captain injured?"
    "Yesterday, ma'am."
    "Is he conscious?"
    "Sometimes."
    "Is he vomiting?"
    "No, ma'am. Folks on the ham net said you was coming this way. Thank God we lucked out."
    Stone released the preventer, disengaged the self-steering, and altered course to swing around the south side of the main atoll. The water was turning confused as the land divided the swells, and he thought he could hear the first faint mutter of the surf that battered the fringing reef.
    Sarah touched his arm as they headed toward the sound, and brought up a subject that they'd been debating for days now. "Have you thought about East Timor?" Stone looked away, scanned the roiled seas, the low round atolls, the reefs, and the sandcolored ship, which had a soft, hazy plume rising from its smokestack. "Darling, I still can't seem to make you understand—it is too dangerous." The Indonesians had invaded East Timor when the Portuguese colonists left and had for years waged a war of terror against the protesting Timorans. Sarah wanted to sail Veronica there to treat the wounded.
    "Those people are helpless. The world doesn't care. The least we—"
    "And what do I do when an Indonesian patrol boat catches us playing doctor in some rebel anchorage? We can't outrun them in a sailboat."
    "The boat is plastered with red crosses. How would they know we're not an