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without me noticing and I was starting to feel comfortably numb.
    “ Now I wouldn’t put it past them,” he commented, “but before I went into that hole, I’d have peed myself laughing at you.”
    He continued his story.
    So I set off along that passageway, me, little Charlie who only needed to shave twice a week, with eleven grown men behind me. We’re used to small spaces on this hunk of junk, aren’t we? But I was coming down with the dose of claustrophobia to end them all. The further we went, the more scared I got that we weren’t ever going to get back out. I’m sure the other guys felt it too, like we were being swallowed and the only way out was either be puked up or wind up as lumps of shit. Don’t laugh. That’s how it felt. The girders stretched ahead as far as the flashlights showed and kept on coming up one after the other. Behind me other beams flashed up, down, around. There was no sign of life, no sign that anything could live there. I wondered if the rats hadn’t all escaped out of that hole already, moved house and left the old one spotless, without even a turd to show where they’d been, ready for the new tenants.
    We came to a pipe which crossed the passage at head-height. I’ve looked for this one on the specs and it’s not marked, but I guess it’s one of the water-coolant feeders for the prop shaft. Fred took out an oilcloth from his pocket and tied it around the pipe so it was a marker buoy. We pushed on.
    You know how I was talking about sensing movement rather than hearing it? It’s a trick we all pick up down here. Well, I started getting that itchy feeling in my head but I didn’t know why. OK, so there were folk moving behind me, but it wasn’t them, I knew about them . It was something else that I couldn’t see except in the corner of my eye. Shit, I don’t know. I stopped and looked around. Couldn’t see a darn thing. Big Fred had noticed it too. He looked at me all calm and steady, and it meant, “Stay cool, don’t lose it,” but I tell you, I was about to run back past the lot of them and to hell with the embarrassment. Cowardice don’t mean shit in that kinda situation. But Fred grabbed my arm, Fred in his Mickey Mouse ear-defenders, and I could willingly have fallen to my knees and worshipped him then and there because he gave me some of his strength. Dumb, huh? Yes, well. He might have been a mean fucker of mothers most of the time but when it really mattered you could count on Fred. That’s why he was boss. He was the strongest link in the chain and – forget the old saying – if he held, then the weaker links like me could sure as hell hold too.
    So I walked on trying to look like I hadn’t gone bugshit for a second and the itchy feeling got itchier, and it also got clearer, targeting itself like head sonar – you know what I’m saying? – and it was pointing upwards, upwards over our fucking heads in the fucking darkness. I poked the flashlight beam up and it was OK for about fifty feet and then it grew fainter and the darkness grew thicker. It loomed over us. That’s the word. The darkness loomed and whatever was in that darkness (had to be rats, didn’t it?) was unseen and watching us and scurrying about in its excitement. I had that thought again about an army with a general. They had us where they wanted us, the perfect ambush.
    It was then that I began to break out in sweat. The noise of the turbines was distant now and all I could hear was the pulse of blood in my ears. Must be like that in the womb, eh? Only there you’re safe and snug, but between those cold slabs of steel rising up for ever you were never safe. The back of my overalls was damp. The handle of the shovel was slimy wet in my palm. I had that thing in my guts like you’re never going to be able to eat anything again. I had that taste in my mouth. And there was so much movement about us. You couldn’t ignore it if you wanted to. Most of the guys’ flashlights were trained