Part 10 (2/2)

The dead weight of crystal-gla.s.s and metal dropped like a boulder out of the crimson darkness, collided squarely with the bal.u.s.trade spanning the s.p.a.ce - Sylvester still only half way across - and smashed through it. The splintered bal.u.s.trade tumbled after the chandelier into the gloom, now just so much matchwood, as the huge light fitting plunged into the roiling inferno beneath.

Of the man from Umbridge Industries there was no sign. Ulysses didn't even see him go. One minute he was there on the bridge, the next there was nothing but the immense bulk of the darkened chandelier, and then... nothing at all.

The shock and horror of realisation took a while to sink in amongst the party, some not realising what had happened at all until they witnessed the horrified reactions of their fellows, so concerned were they with their own intense personal struggles for survival.

So it was that, accompanied by stupefied silences, child-like sobbing and angry denials of what had happened, Ulysses Quicksilver and Captain McCormack eventually managed to herd the party - already minus one - to the lift doors on the other side of the Grand Atrium, their target all along.

Ulysses was about to push the b.u.t.ton to call the first of the two lifts when he paused.

”What is it, sir?” Nimrod asked, at his shoulder once more.

”Look,” Ulysses said, pointing at the row of still glowing lights above the elevator doors that showed the progress of the lift through the s.h.i.+p. The lights were blinking on and off, one after another. ”It's already on its way.”

With a delicate chiming the progress of the lights stopped and a moment later, with the grating of opening mechanisms, the lift doors opened. Ulysses stood and stared in dumbfounded amazement.

”Please accept my humblest apologies,” Harry Cheng said, bowing deferentially. 'We would have been here sooner, but matters rather overtook us somewhat.'

The hulking Mr Sin stood at his side but, at a hissed command in Chinese from Cheng, the brute shuffled back to make room for more.

”Please, ladies and gentlemen, join us.”

Without needing any further invitation, the VIPs began to pile into the lift. Ulysses hung back with those who would have to use the second elevator, rendered speechless by the miraculous arrival of his rival.

”Going up?” Cheng asked the Captain.

”No, Mr Cheng. Down, to the sub-dock.”

”Ah, I see. Very well,” he said, his hand at the deck selector panel. ”Down it is.”

With a slightly different chiming timbre, the second lift joined them. With a grinding clanking the doors eased open.

A torrent of seawater flooded out, was.h.i.+ng across the carpeted floor of the balcony level and soaking the feet of everyone standing there.

”Ah,” said Ulysses, finding his voice at last, ”perhaps down isn't the best idea after all.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN.

The Deep ”Quick! Into the lift!”

”Everybody move!”

At Captain McCormack's urgent command and Ulysses' cajoling, the party of survivors piled into Cheng's lift. As the Neptune's officers herded the anxious and the uncertain between the doors, Ulysses dared a glance back at the flooded atrium. Something must have given or blown somewhere - part of the hull, a compromised bulkhead, a porthole, who-knew-what? - the result being that the s.p.a.ce below was filling more rapidly, the chandeliers vanis.h.i.+ng beneath the surge of white water and bobbing bodies. The water, still finding an outlet through the second open lift, poured off the edge of the balcony, cascading down to meet that which was surging upwards from the drowned atrium below.

There was only one way out of this and that was up.

As the last of the VIP party crowded into the bra.s.s and gla.s.s box of polished mirrors, Ulysses' eyes fell on the smart plaque that stated no more than a maximum of ten persons should use this lift at any one time. As the purser hammered a b.u.t.ton on the deck selector panel and the doors grated shut behind him - the last one in - Ulysses closed his eyes and held his breath, offering up a quick prayer to whatever saint it was that watched over the workings of elevators, that the carriage would be able to take the strain.

There was a rising hum and a series of systematic clanking sounds, then a terrible split-second sensation of dropping, which made all those trapped within the small box gasp in unison. But then the lift carriage began to rise.

Gears grinding, it felt to Ulysses that the elevator was making heavy weather of the journey. He thought he could hear the bubbling rush of water somewhere below them and wondered which was rising faster, the lift or the level of the seawater flooding the elevator shaft. He was trying hard to ignore the hot-wire stabbings of prescience in his skull; he did not need any unearthly sixth sense to tell him that they were in constant mortal danger for the foreseeable future.

The smell of fear permeated the human sardine tin; fear and sweat and brine and burning. In any other situation such enforced proximity to others would not have been tolerated by those who were now forced to huddle together so closely. There was not an inch between any of them, from the Chinaman Cheng and the ma.s.sive Mr Sin, to Lady Denning or the chaperoned couple, or the billionaire owner of the s.h.i.+p, the current crisis having robbed him of practically any difference in status he had beyond the least of them, his own PA being forced to sit on his lap to make sure that everyone could pack into the lift.

The realisation suddenly struck Ulysses that the lift could all too easily become a ready-made coffin, should the water level rise more quickly than the struggling elevator, or should some part of the beleaguered machinery fail under duress, or should the - whatever is was - that attacked the Neptune decide to come back for another go.

But, despite the obvious risks and inherent dangers a.s.sociated with their current predicament, Quicksilver's spirit wouldn't let him be beaten by such overwhelming odds. He would keep fighting to save himself - to save these people - until the deep, or the horrors that inhabited it, forced the last breath from him as he went down kicking and screaming. Just as there had been nothing in his power that he could do to save the wretched Glenda, he would do all in his power to save those who remained. He would not let another Glenda Finch or Dexter Sylvester be taken by the dying s.h.i.+p, the cruel sea or the monsters that dwelt there.

The lift ground onwards as the gears of Ulysses' mind worked over the problem of how they were going to get out of this mess. The further the elevator rose up its compromised shaft, the more he found himself dwelling on the fact that the plan had been to head down to reach the sub-dock and the submersibles Ahab and Nemo, to escape the wreck of the Neptune as swiftly as possible before the sea or the drowned liner claimed them all.

The plan. It was worthless now. All that stood between them and oblivion was adaptation, improvisation, spontaneity, ingenuity, inventiveness and cold, hard animal instinct. Or, to look at it another way, the plan had to evolve or they would die.

And what of the sub-dock and its two transports? Ulysses had to believe that it was still attainable, the craft operable. To think anything else would mean the end of all hope for them.

The lift was slowing now - horribly quickly - the ratcheting gears clunking away the last few inches. For a moment the carriage heaved and there was that horrid feeling that the lift was at the apex of its ascent and was about to commence its all too rapid descent again. Then the whole thing seemed to lurch upwards. There was the rattle and clunk of clamps locking the elevator in place, the steel cables holding it up held tight in the steel teeth of the riser's locking mechanisms. The chiming of the lift arriving at its destination cut through the numb silence inside. All on board gave a collective sigh of relief.

The doors ground open once again and, without having to be invited to do so, the VIPs piled out of the carriage. Ulysses led the way, enjoying the sudden sensation of s.p.a.ce around him.

”Where are we?” asked a shaky Dr Ogilvy.

”Top deck,” Ulysses read from a sign screwed to the wall next to the open lift doors. ”Casino Royale, the Bistro, Shopping and the Promenade Deck.”

”So where now, McCormack?” Jonah Carcharodon asked.

But the captain and his staff were already examining another pa.s.senger s.h.i.+p plan. Ulysses joined them, the rest of the party, left without guidance, milling about behind, taking in the wreckage and devastation apparent on this level as well, lit by the sparking lights hanging from the ceiling.

”So, Captain, any ideas?” Ulysses asked.

Captain McCormack breathed out noisily. ”Well, we're here” - he indicated Level 1 on the plan in front of them - ”having travelled from here” - he identified the point where they had crossed the devastated Grand Atrium - ”and we need to get to here.” His finger alighted on the outline of the sub-dock at the bottom of the s.h.i.+p.

”Indeed,” Ulysses mused.

”We know that chances are that the bulkhead here” - the captain pointed out what should have been a watertight section below the level of the Grand Atrium - ”is no longer intact and so from here to here” - his outstretched finger swept across the plan taking in several compartments of the sub-liner - ”will be underwater.”

”But that leaves the sub-dock still untouched.”

”Hopefully,” McCormack said guardedly.

”But how to get there.”

”Precisely. If the compartment under the atrium's gone, we can't be certain which other compartments may also have been breached.”

”Have you consulted with the AI again yet?” Ulysses asked, eyeing what he now understood was the comm-b.u.t.ton hidden beneath the trident logo on the panel.

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