Free Redcap by Philip McCutchan Page A

at once enfolded in an atmosphere of luxury and efficiency, a scene of controlled bustle.
    There was the familiar ship-smell, the familiar background noise of ventilating systems at work, of forced-draught blowers, a noise which at first beat on the ears and then became just one more of many ship-noises. A line of white-jacketed stewards waited to take the Naples passengers’ hand-gear and lead them to their cabins, up or down spotless, gleaming staircases, and along cabin corridors in whose decks one could see one’s own reflection. Shaw was only just aboard when a man came forward to take his grip; but not before he had been peremptorily barked at by the Chief Steward, who was standing just inside the gunport. Shaw glanced briefly at the Chief Steward, wondered if that order had been really necessary.
    He moved on behind his guide, deep into that glittering world of luxury and service, the world of the first-class section of a modern liner. As he went up the main staircase towards his stateroom on A deck, the liner’s topmost accommodation deck immediately below the main lounges of the veranda deck, he saw a man leaning nonchalantly back against a bulkhead in the square at the top, smoking a cigar. Just for a second, their eyes met and then Shaw had passed on.
    But he had an uncomfortable feeling that the man knew him and was now looking at his back. He had noticed the eyes; curiously penetrating eyes which were, in some vague way, almost familiar. The eyes apart, there was nothing in the least outstanding about the man—he was heavily built, pasty, expensively dressed, going a little bald. Very ordinary really; liners were full of such people. But all at once Shaw’s tautened nerves seemed to detect a note of unease in the customary throb of a ship . . . he looked back over his shoulder. The man had gone, and he shrugged slightly. A few moments later they reached his stateroom, a big compartment with a small entrance lobby and a private shower in a bathroom leading off it, and a square port which looked out on to the promenade deck.
    Shaw looked round. The cabin was as luxurious as he might have expected from what he had already seen of the ship, luxurious and sophisticated enough to attract wealthy men and women on holiday and business. And yet, despite the elegance, Shaw felt the beginnings of a sense of apprehension, almost a fear of the unknown . . . there was something wrong in the air, a tenseness. The steward who’d brought him along, for one thing ... the man had been perfectly attentive, but there had been a curious lack of warmth, the warmth which one learns to associate with cabin stewards in liners. The efficiency was there all right, but it was a little machine-like, glum and cold, unsmiling. The man had seemed like a soulless automaton.
    Shaw sighed and began to unpack.

    Two hours later a bugle sounded over the loudspeakers, calling the crew to stations for leaving harbour. Fifteen minutes after that the engines of the New South Wales throbbed into life, a cufuffle formed beneath her stem and she came off the pierhead and turned slowly, ponderously, headed outwards, faster and faster under the tremendous power of her nuclear reactor’s energy. She headed out of Naples Bay past Capri, and into the Tyrrhenian Sea to come south into the Mediterranean and set her course for Port Said and the Suez Canal, a mighty ship with over three thousand men, women, and children in her Captain’s charge. And—as it seemed to Shaw it must be regarded—the future of the world crated in her hold.
    And under threat.

    The first, the incredible, thing happened shortly after the ship had cleared the berth.
    Shaw was in his cabin when the tap came at his door and when the girl walked in he could scarcely believe his eyes. He said harshly, “What the devil are you doing here?” He felt his hackles rising, nails digging into his palms. He stared down at her, long jaw thrust out, face stiff with anger. Then, remembering her