The Coffin Ship Read Free Page B

Gallaher propped against the Fire Control Room, apparently peacefully asleep. Nine bodies. No captain.
    Without further hesitation, he crossed to the Fire Control Room: his first priority still Levkas.
    The captain was lying at the foot of the far wall, curled on his side, clutching an oxygen cylinder. The mask was loosely over his nose and mouth. Martyr crossed to his side at once, pushing the mask more firmly into place. He checked the cylinder pressure. It was empty. He replaced the whole thing. Only when the mask was firmly in place and pumping oxygen did he check for vital signs.
    He could find none.
    He straightened quickly, searching for the manual override to the firefighting equipment. It was on the wall nearby. He switched it off and the fans on. They would clear the inert gas in time, but in hours, not minutes. Only then would the atmosphere in here be safe. Only then could the bodies be moved. Until then, there was nothing to be done.
    He looked down at the captain curled uselessly around the life-giving bottle like a dead child in the womb. He thought he might as well finish the job he had come down here to do. He took the hunched shoulders and tore them off the floor with a massive effort. He propped the inert body against the wall and stooped, letting it fall over his shoulder. Then he straightened, lifting the dangling feet into the air.
    For some reason he glanced up as he passed through the Fire Control Room door, saw the blackened, shorted-out wires above the lintel, and began to understand.
    He was breathing like a bellows when he reached the foot of the ladder up to the escape hatch. He glanced up at the distant hatchway and the one bright star that seemed to fill it. Should he go across and open the door? He could hammer on it to warn anyone who might bestill outside. For all he knew the corridor was still full of the carbon dioxide that had leaked out before he had closed off the Pump Room. And, ultimately, that was the trouble. There were decks and working areas below this. The engineering decks—his own domain. The thought of filling them with deadly pockets of heavier-than-air inert gas was something he could not accept. He turned again and started to climb. With each rung, the captain’s inert body became heavier. With each added strain on his own body, Martyr’s consciousness closed down, keeping pain and fatigue at a necessary distance until he had completed his task.
    How long it took him to complete the ninety-foot climb was something else he would never be sure of. He didn’t even notice when the ladder ended. He fell out of the open hatchway with his grim bundle onto the cool iron deck, to lie there like another dead man until Salah Malik, leader of the seamen, had the pair of them carried away.
    But there was too much to do. He struggled back to wakefulness before they even reached the bridge, then stood watching as they lugged the captain’s body on into the brightness.
    “Our first job is to contact the owner,” he said to Malik, who loomed competently at his side. “Then we’d better start clearing the Pump Room. I’ll write the Accident Report and make up the logs, since there doesn’t seem to have been a watch officer on the bridge for nearly two hours. Nor in the Engine Room since the lifeboat drill.
    “I’ll have to guess what happened to Nicoli and his team, I guess. Any idea what they were doing down there with that ladder?”
    Ghostly in the shadows, Malik’s shoulders shrugged.
    “Well…Let’s get to it then. Two of your seamen gone I know. The rest just officers, I think. And Gallaher. Tsirtos in the Radio Room?”
    “I suppose.”
    He was. Sitting wide-eyed with shock, staring at the bright displays. “They’re all dead, aren’t they, Mr. Martyr? Everyone who went into the Pump Room,” he said as the chief put his head through the door. “Thank God you stopped me from following them! I walked round the ship after you closed the door. The stewards were all in