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back and shoulders. His heels left the floor and his knees bent slightly. His chin tucked down toward his chest. “Come on, then,” he said quietly. His voice and face had changed too. When he raised his fists, they were surprisingly big.
    Martyr, far beyond control, threw another huge haymaker at the icy Englishman. Mariner rocked backslightly and let the blow pass within an inch of his nose. Then he leaned in over the chief’s guard, hooking a vicious right to the angle of his jaw. Martyr staggered forward and Mariner danced behind him delivering a crisp combination of right-left-right jabs to his kidneys. Martyr answered with a right hook to Mariner’s ribs concealed by his turning body and delivered like a landslide. The Englishman hissed and staggered back a step or two before starting to dance again, using the movement to swing a left of his own back over Martyr’s guard to the side of his head.
    Any of these blows would have destroyed lesser men, but the captain and the chief were hardly slowed. Martyr, his turn stopped by the simple physics of Mariner’s counterblow, put his head down and charged. After two steps, he gathered the Englishman to his shoulder, but Mariner twisted before the American’s grip could tighten and, taking that great cannonball head under his arm, he ran forward, using the chief’s own weight and the force of his charge, guiding the blind man into the door.
    He had closed the heavy teak door behind him as he had entered, last of the officers, a few minutes ago. Now he opened it again with the top of Martyr’s head and his own shoulder. Not so much “opened” as “demolished.” And the massive force of the movement, centered on the top of Martyr’s skull, knocked him unconscious at once.
    Richard let go as they exploded through the door and spun away, catching at the handrail along the wall, saving himself from falling, turning back at once to see Martyr landing facedown like a dead man. And in motion once more, stepping back over his adversary through the splintered door. There was a cheer quelled instantly by the look in his eyes.
    Tsirtos was on his knees, puking weakly and swearing viciously in Greek. Suddenly the radio officer looked less boyish. His brown eyes were hard. His face vicious. Making Richard remember inconsequentially, that it was the Greeks, not the Sicilians, who invented the vendetta.
    The video picture had changed. Its subject matter had not. “Switch that off!” snapped Richard Mariner.
    There was a click. The screen went mercifully dark.
    “Sweet Jesus!” said somebody.
    Mariner glared around the room, suddenly overcome with absolute fury.
“Quite so!”
he snapped. Even Ben Strong quailed before his gaze.
    And Richard really began to remember what it was like to be the captain of a ship.

C HAPTER S IX
    A short while later, Richard was standing on the bridge by the helmsman looking past his reflection and the twinkling lights on the console before him into the black velvet of a Gulf night. There was no moon. The dancing stars were like the huge, misshapen pearls they collected from the shallow seabeds here. He was thinking of a dawn five years ago. Of a beautiful, spoiled woman lying alone in her berth rigid with loathing for him. Making her plans for a messy, painful divorce; looking forward to hurting her husband and her father as much as she possibly could, out of pure childish spite.
    She was in his thoughts almost constantly, this woman wasting the last seconds of her life on hatred.
    Slope was behind him to his left, looking down into the green bowl of the Collision Alarm Radar. In those days the Gulf was too busy to let the
Prometheus
do everything for herself. There were always dhows up to no good, smuggling guns, pearls, slaves; small tankers and cargo ships; VLCCs; the odd ULCC, twice as big; SMBs; sandbars; rigs; tiny, uncharted islands; heaven knew what else. It was almost as bad as the Channel and no place to be sloppy or off guard. There