“It’s tested to a thousand pounds.” I hauled some more and the tail began to lift. The grommet wasn’t central. I lowered it again, the grommet was adjusted, and next time I hauled the twister came clear along its entire length. When it was about three inches above its cotton-wool and blanket bed, I set the autolock. I mopped my forehead again. It was warmer than ever down in that hold.

“How are you going to get it across to the other side?” Caroline’s voice had lost its shake now; it was flat and without inflection, the voice of a man resigned to the dark inevitability of a nightmare.

“We’ll carry it across. Between us we should manage it.”

“Carry it across?” he said dully. “It weighs two hundred and seventy-five pounds.”

“I know what it weighs,” I said irritably. “You have a bad leg.” he hadn’t heard me. “My heart’s not good. The ship’s rolling; you can see that that polished aluminium is as slippery as glass. One of us would stumble, lose his grip. Maybe both of us. It would be bound to fall.”

“Wait here,” I said. I took the torch, crossed to the port side, picked up a couple of tarpaulins from behind the baffle, and dragged them across the floor. “We’ll place it on these and pull it across.”

“Pull it across the floor? bump it across the floor?” he wasn’t as resigned to the nightmare as I had thought. He looked at me, then at the twister, then at me again, and said with unshakeable conviction, “you’re mad.”

“Oh, for God’s sake, can’t you think of anything else to say?” I grabbed the pulley again, released the lock, hauled and kept on hauling.

Caroline wrapped both arms round the twister as it came clear of the coffin, struggling to make sure that the nose of the missile didn’t collide with the baffle.

“Step over the baffle and take it with you,” I said. “Keep your back to the ladder as you turn.”

He nodded silently, his face strained and set in the pale beam of the torch. He put his back to the ladder, tightened his grip on the twister, an arm on each side of the grommet, lifted his leg to clear the baffle, then staggered as a sudden roll of the ship threw the weight of the missile against him. His foot caught the top of the baffle; the combined forces of the twister and the ship’s roll carried him beyond his centre of gravity; he cried out and overbalanced heavily across the baffle to the floor of the hold.

I’d seen it coming, rather, I’d seen the last second of it happening. I swept my hand up blindly, hit the autolock, and jumped for the swinging missile, throwing myself between it and the ladder, dropping my torch as I reached out with both hands to prevent the nose from crashing into the ladder. In the sudden impenetrable darkness I missed the twister but it didn’t miss me. It struck me just below the breastbone with a force that brought an agonised gasp from me; then I’d both arms wrapped round that polished aluminium shell as if I were going to crush it in half.

“The torch,” I yelled. Somehow in that moment it didn’t seem in any way important that I should keep down my voice. “Get the torch!”

“My ankle”

“The hell with your ankle! get the torch!” I heard him give a half-suppressed moan, then sensed that he was clambering over the baffle. I heard him again, his hands scuffing over the steel floor. Then silence.

“Have you found it?” The Campari had started on its return roll and I was fighting to keep my balance. “I’ve found it.”

“Then switch it on, you fool!”

“I can’t.” a pause. “It’s broken.”

That helped a lot. I said quickly, “catch hold of the end of this damned thing. I’m slipping.” He did, and the strain eased. He said, “have you any matches?”

“Matches!” Carter showing inhuman restraint; if it hadn’t been for the twister it would have been lunny. “Matches! After being towed through the water for five minutes alongside the Campari?”

“I hadn’t thought of that,” he said gravely. A few moments’ silence, then he offered, “I have a lighter.”

“God help America,” I said fervently. “If all her scientists — light it, man, light it!”

A wheel scraped on flint and a flickering pool of pale yellow light did its pitiful best to illuminate that one tiny corner of the dark hold.

“The block and tackle. Quickly.” I waited until he had reached it. “Take the strain on the free end, knock off the lock, and lower gently. I’ll guide it on to the tarpaulins.”

I moved out half a step from the baffle, taking much of the weight of the missile with me. I was barely a couple of feet away from the tarpaulins when I heard the click of the autolock coming off and suddenly my back was breaking. The pulley had gone completely slack; the entire two hundred and seventy-five pounds of the twister was in my arms; the Campari was rolling away from me; I couldn’t hold it, I knew I couldn’t hold it, my back was breaking. I staggered and lurched forward, and the twister, with myself above and still clinging desperately to it, crashed heavily on to the tarpaulins with a shock that seemed to shake the entire floor of the hold.

I freed my arms and climbed shakily to my feet. Dr. Caroline, the flickering flame held just at the level of his eyes, was staring down at the gleaming missile like a man held in thrall, his face a frozen mask of all the terrible emotions he’d ever known. Then the spell broke.

“Fifteen seconds!” he shouted hoarsely. “Fifteen seconds to go!” he flung himself at the ladder but got no further than the second step when I locked arms round both himself and the ladder. He struggled violently, frantically, briefly, then relaxed.

“How far do you think you’re going to get in fifteen seconds?” I said. I don’t know why I said it, I was barely aware that I had said it. I had eyes and mind only for the missile lying there; my face probably showed all the emotions that Dr. Caroline’s had been registering. And he was staring too. It was a senseless thing to do, but for the moment we were both senseless men. Staring at the twister to see what was going to happen, as if we would ever see anything; neither eyes nor ears nor mind would have the slightest chance in the world of registering anything before that blinding nuclear flash annihilated us, vaporised us, blew the Campari out of existence. Ten seconds passed. Twelve. Fifteen. Twenty. Half a minute. I eased my aching lungs — hadn’t drawn breath in all that time — and my grip round Caroline and the ladder. “Well,” I said, “how far would you have got?”

Dr. Caroline climbed slowly down the two steps to the floor of the hold, dragged his gaze away from the missile, looked at me for a long moment with uncomprehending eyes, then smiled. “Do you know, Mr. Carter, the thought never even occurred to me.” his voice was quite steady and his smile wasn’t the smile of a crazy man. Dr. Caroline had known that he was going to die and then he hadn’t died and nothing would ever be quite so bad again. He had found that the valley of fear does not keep on going down forever: somewhere there is a bottom, then a man starts climbing again.

“You grab the trailing rope first and then release the autolock,” I said reproachfully. If I was lightheaded, who was to blame me? “not the other way round. You might remember next time.”

There are some things for which to make an apology is impossible, so he didn’t even try. He said regretfully, “I’m afraid I’ll never make a sailorman. But at least we know now that the retaining spring on the trembler switch is not as weak as we had feared.” he smiled wanly.

“Mr. Carter, I think I’ll have a cigarette.”

“I think I’ll join you,” I said.

After that it was easy — well, relatively easy. We still treated the twister with the greatest respect — had it struck at some other angle it might indeed have detonated but not with respect exaggerated to the extent of tiptoeing terror. We dragged it on its tarpaulin across to the other side of the hold, transferred the halftrac hoist to the corresponding ladder on the port side, arranged a couple of spare tarpaulins and blankets from the coffin to make a cushioned bed for the twister between baffle and ship’s side, hoisted the missile across the baffle without any of the acrobatics that had accompanied the last transfer, lowered it into position, pulled over the blankets, and covered it completely with the tarpaulins on which we had dragged it across the floor.