He listened, looked up. "'X' and 'Y' only.
Medium settings.
Target 11 knots."
He spoke into the phone. "How long?"
"How long, sir?" Carrington repeated.
"Ninety seconds," Vallery said huskily.
"Pilot-starboard 10."
He jumped, startled, as he heard the crash of falling binoculars, saw the Admiral slump forward, face and neck striking cruelly on the edge of the windscreen, the arms dangling loosely from the shoulders.
"Pilot!"
But the Kapok Kid was already there.
He slipped an arm under Tyndall, took most of the dead weight off the biting edge of the screen.
"What's the matter, sir?" His voice was urgent, blurred with anxiety.
"What's wrong?"
Tyndall stirred slightly, his cheek lying along the edge of the screen.
"Cold, cold, cold," he intoned. The quavering tones were those of an old, a very old man.
"What?
What did you say, sir?" the Kapok Kid begged.
"Cold.
I'm cold.
I'm terribly cold!
My feet, my feet!" The old voice wandered away, and the body slipped into a corner of the bridge, the grey face upturned to the falling snow.
Intuition, an intuition amounting to a sudden sick certainty, sent the Kapok Kid plunging to his knees.
Vallery heard the muffled exclamation, saw him straighten up and swing round, his face blank with horror.
"He's-he's got nothing on, sir," he said unsteadily. "He's barefoot!
They're frozen-frozen solid!"
"Barefoot?" Vallery repeated unbelievingly. "Barefoot!
It's not possible!"
"And pyjamas, sir! That's all he's wearing!"
Vallery lurched forward, peeling off his gloves.
He reached down, felt his stomach turn over in shocked nausea as his fingers closed on ice-chilled skin.
Bare feet!
And pyjamas!
Bare feet-no wonder he'd padded so silently across the duckboards!
Numbly, he remembered that the last temperature reading had shown 35
"Leave this to me, sir.
Right, Petersen, take him below."
Nicholls's brisk, assured voice, the voice of a man competent in his own element, steadied Vallery, brought him back to the present, and the demands of the present, more surely than anything else could have done. He became aware of Carrington's clipped, measured voice, reeling off course, speed, directions, saw the Vytura 50
"Set course, local control." Carrington might have been on a peace-time exercise in the Solent.
"Local control," Turner repeated.
He hung up the set, looked round. "You're on your own, Ralston," he said softly.
There was no reply.
The crouched figure on the control position, immobile as graved stone, gave no sign that he had heard.
"Thirty seconds!" Turner said sharply. "All lined up?"
"Yes, sir." The figure stirred. "All lined up." Suddenly, he swung round, in desperate, final appeal. "For God's sake, sir!
Is there no other-----"
"Twenty seconds!" Turner said viciously. "Do you want a thousand lives on your lily-livered conscience?
And if you miss..."
Ralston swung slowly back.
For a mere breath of time, his face was caught full in the harsh glare of the Vytura: with sudden shock, Turner saw that the eyes were masked with tears.
Then he saw the lips move.