The men shouted to Stieg. Jake didn’t speak a word of their language, but he understood perfectly that they wanted him to speed up. The net was in danger of becoming too tangled to be of any use.

Stieg was turning the winch for all he was worth, but despite his strength, the effort was taking its toll and instead of getting faster, he was actually slowing down. Jake rushed forwards to help. Standing opposite the Swede, he grabbed onto the winch handle and pulled with all his might. Behind him, one of the other two men was pushing the cables away from the hull of the ship with a long pole, trying his best to prevent the net from crashing into the side. The third man continued to shout instructions. The crashing sound of the heavy string-and-steel construction hitting the water told them all that they had made it. Jake and Stieg both fell back from the winch, gasping for breath.

“We have to get a motor on that thing,” Jake said as soon as he could get the words out.

“It’s not going to be easy pulling it up again, this much is for sure.”

The two men joined the others leaning over the side. The net was submerged, and against all odds, had ballooned perfectly below the surface. As it dragged along to the side and very slightly behind the Spirit of Arcadia, it was sure to swallow up any marine life it encountered. The only question was whether any such life remained. With food stocks already running dangerously low, this operation was critical.

Five

“I DO NOT think I have ever seen anything quite like this before. And you say these legions have grown larger since you dressed them?” Doctor Grau Lister peered at Scott’s legs, frowning.

“Yes, definitely. I made sure each one was entirely covered, and now the bandages don’t look big enough. Doctor Lister, why do you think he’s unconscious? Apart from his legs, I can’t find anything obviously wrong with him.”

“You have been very thorough, Kiera. You have done a good job. At this point in time, I am as much in the dark as you. My best guess would be that the pain from these sores has caused him to black out. That is something I have seen before. We will know more when the drugs take full effect, but for the time being they are more likely to keep him under.”

“What about the rot?”

“It is very strange. Have you talked to the girl? The daughter?”

“Yes. She’s very upset, it’s hard to get much sense from her. And she’s very young of course. But she was adamant that he hadn’t hurt himself, and that this isn’t something that’s happened before.”

Lister folded his arms and stared at the floor, deep in thought. “We will start a course of antibiotics. If it’s some kind of bacterial or fungal infection, that should bring about rapid improvement. I will have a better idea when I have had time to analyse his blood sample. In the meantime, we will keep this room clear; we do not know if his condition is contagious.”

• • •

Jake closed the conference room door, hesitated, and then bolted it. He didn’t return to the chair in which he’d spent the last hour. Instead he opened a cabinet in the corner, moved aside some stationary and books, and took out a bottle of Irish whisky and a glass tumbler. He carried both back to the large oval table that filled the room, slumped down in an armchair, and unscrewed the cap. There wasn’t much of the amber liquid left. He drained the remainder into the glass and wasted no time in gulping down a good measure. He didn’t know how he was going to get another bottle from Barry’s secret stash. This was the second one he’d finished in a week. Barry was sure to ask awkward questions. Drinking on the job was a new experience, but he’d found it was the only way to survive these committee surgery sessions.

Today’s meet-and-greet had gone the same way as all the others since the committee had initiated the daily drop-in. It was supposed to be a forum for anyone to put questions directly to the captain, or whoever from the committee was hosting the session, in the spirit of openness and transparency. Events since the asteroid had, understandably, led to a general lack of trust in authority on board. In reality though, the meetings were always the same. The distressed and depressed, hoping or expecting miracles.

Mostly it was those unwilling or unable to accept that the world as they knew it, had ended. They insisted that efforts be made to contact their families, or divert the ship to their home country. These interviews rarely ended well, and on more than one occasion Jake had needed to call on Max to help him remove people from the conference room. Not before they’d poured their hearts out though. Everyone had a story to tell, and they were going to make sure Jake listened, because nobody else would. It was therapy, of sorts, but the endless outpouring of melancholy took its toll on the young captain, and he found it increasingly tough to lift his own spirits after these sessions.

Today, food had been a recurring theme. In the first week or so since the disaster, Claude and his team of chefs had worked their way through the fresh and perishable produce on board, to ensure that nothing spoiled and was therefore wasted. The freezers were also being emptied in a bid to save power. Now the rationed meals comprised mostly of dried, tinned, and dehydrated ingredients, and it had not gone unnoticed.

Coote had anticipated this development. He’d warned Jake it would happen. He had experienced first-hand the kind of problems a lack of food could cause. An unexpectedly long mission underwater with insufficient supplies had almost cost him a submarine once, as a large proportion of his crew had attempted mutiny. Ironically it was the fact that they had then engaged the enemy that had saved them, the distraction and danger bringing them to their senses.

The Spirit of Arcadia was not a warship, and the biggest danger they faced was malnutrition. All Jake could do was try and reassure people that the situation was in hand, that efforts were being made on a number of fronts to provide sustenance. Being able to inform them that he had personally seen the first fishing net being deployed just hours earlier was a good start, but they wanted more. The Palm Plaza—the huge open-air park area in the middle of the ship—was being turned into a small farm, but the farmers managing that project were adamant that nothing was going to grow until they got much further south, so there was nothing Jake could report in terms of fruit and vegetables. Canned soup and fruit juice was going to have to do for the foreseeable future.

He downed the last of the alcohol, and wondered if Lucya had any more vodka in her cabin. They shared a tiny measure every now and then, but he had no idea where she kept it; she slept in his room now. He stuffed the empty bottle into the litter bin. Whoever was on recycling duty would find it later, long after he had gone.

• • •

Jake arrived at deck seven just as Martin was finishing up the installation of a motor. The trawler men waited anxiously; they wanted to get the net back on board, to find out if they had caught anything. Indeed, everyone wanted to know if there was anything left to catch.

No signs of life had been seen since the asteroid. No fish, no dolphins, no whales, nothing. The hope was that marine life had largely been unaffected, that it had simply moved deeper, out of the reach of the toxic ash that had been strewn across the planet, destroying everything it touched.

“Hey, Jake, we’re almost ready. Just a few bolts to tighten.”

“Where did you get the motor, Martin?”

“It’s from the winch for the second tender, the one you broke. As we won’t be needing it on there any more…” Martin grinned.