The cord tautened again and I was pulled sideways, getting fed up with it. When I broke surface with the faceplate I saw the configuration had altered, but not too much: I was learning how to do it better, every time. The flare at the tip of the stack made a diffused glow and I took off the mask and demisted it, pulling the mouthpiece away for a moment to drag in the dry taste of ozone.

The rig looked about half a mile away and as far as I could see there was no movement on board: the lights were stable and their pattern didn't change. I'd have liked to audio-survey for a few seconds but it wouldn't be easy: it wouldn't be any good just pushing one ear through the surface because it'd be full of water: I'd have to drain it and that meant putting the whole of my head through and if they had any short-range scanners they'd pick up the blob.

I went down again and listened below water, holding my breath for five seconds. Nothing.

From the information Ferris had picked up from local sources the oil rig had been operational for three months: the crude was said to be already on stream and they'd set up a tanker shuttle between the rig and the refineries along the South China coast. If they were burning residual lean gas at the flare pilot they must be running at production capacity and they ought to be working round the clock because on an operational oil rig there's no difference between night and day.

There was on this one. No sound of machinery. No sound of life.

I checked the time at 01.46. Airstream normal, buoyancy easy to manage, the spare tanks no real problem. During the next long haul I made two brief visual checks from the surface and then stayed below: the faint yellow stain of the flare pilot was now on the surface and I used it as my lode star until the dark trellis pattern of the substructure began showing against the sea bed a hundred feet below.

The glow of the derrick bases flared softly for two or three minutes on the surface and then dimmed out as I arched my back slightly and brought my head down, diving to twenty feet on the gauge. I was assuming there were look-outs and the air tanks on my back could pick up scattered light. It was almost totally dark at this depth and I stopped kicking and drifted, using my free hand to bring me more or less upright. My eyes had been used to the moonglow for some time now, and the flare pilot and then the white reflected light from the derricks had closed the irises to something like half their original diameter, and I needed time to accommodate. The trellis pattern of the rig was very faint now, although I was closer, and the sea was a dark wall around me.

Silence.

Then the long-drawn sound of my inhalation, hollow and strange, as if I could hear only the echo, and not the sound itself. Silence again and then the bubbling as my breath rose from behind me and floated above my head. At each interval between inhalation and exhalation the silence was total.

Slight stress beginning because of this, and because of the dim light. The onset of disorientation: normal but uncomfortable. The organism was starting to ask where it was, what it was doing here where it couldn't see things very well, couldn't hear things. To be ignored, or better still contained. Keep still and keep quiet, listen to what you can: the sound of your own life-giving breath. Look at what you can: the faint pattern of the girders, and above them the square configuration of the superstructure, delineated by the night glow of the sky, and the diaphanous cloud of debris drifting past as the current flowed from the south.

Breathe. See. Hear. All is normal. Relax.

The nylon cord tugged slightly as the current moved the reserve tanks, turning me gently round. With one hand I spun myself slowly back, to keep the girders in sight. They were becoming clearer, darker against the sands beyond, except where the cloud floated, moving nearer against my faceplate, and lower. Its edge was blotting out part of the girders, as if it were opaque, and becoming larger. One of the background girders ran straight upwards from it, thin and perpendicular, and I looked down to follow it, then up again to watch the cloud itself. Its configuration had altered suddenly, and protrusions appeared, perfectly equidistant; and as it bumped against me I put my free hand out to push it away, but it wasn't easy because it was a cable above it, not a girder in the background, and these protrusions bumping against me in the current were detonation horns.

The shock was explosive because the nerves were being hit by imagination as well as fact and in an effort to keep me alive the imagination was picturing for me what would happen if I touched that thing again and for an instant I saw the blinding light and felt the tearing apart of life in the roaring waters and then the inrush of eternal dark.

Christ sake stick to the facts and think, try to think, get back to where you were a second ago, the bloody thing hasn't gone off and you're still alive so do something to stay that way. It could have blown us right - shuddup you snivelling little tick -you'll never see Moira again if it -- get out of my head, it didn't go off and we're just the same as we were before but we have to think.

There wouldn't just be this one.

It drifted away a little on the current and then came back, tethered by the thin steel cable. I moved away slowly, fanning the water with both hands, retreating from it but not too far.

They wouldn't have put just this one here. There wouldn't be any point. I was in a minefield.

Fanning with my hands, keeping upright, maintaining the organism in the vertical attitude it was used to, so that it could operate without too much stress. But more data was being rammed into the brain. A whole mass of it to do with my hands, information about my hands, information and questions, why were they both free, my hands, where had the, I don't know.

Turn. Spin slowly and mind the air tanks because if they hit that -- take care, take normal care, if it was a beach ball the tanks would never hit it, it's only because it's full of TNT that you think they might, relax. Turn slowly and look, look everywhere. It can't have drifted far.

Instinct is devoted almost totally to keeping us alive and it functions at nerve speed and it doesn't even refer to higher authority: it doesn't waste time asking the brain what to do. It acts. It short-circuits the normal system that processes the data and presents it for decision-making and signals the motor nerves and contracts the muscles. It doesn't demand cerebration because that would slow the action. And it can't think for itself: it thinks as much as a gun thinks after the trigger's been pulled. If it sees a spark coming it shuts your eyes and if it sees a snake it stops you dead in your tracks and if it sees a high-explosive mine it frees your hands and drives them flat against the water to push you away and that was why I'd lost my hold on the nylon cord and that was why the reserve tanks and the radio and the rations were drifting somewhere in the gloom where I couldn't see them.

Where I had to see them.

But it was getting darker.

Water pressure felt the same but I could be mistaken because in these conditions of dim light and silence and weightlessness the threshold of disorientation was low and if I couldn't maintain psychic stability the senses would have to start struggling to bring in the data and if I missed any data it could be fatal. I wanted to check the depth gauge but the idea of moving my arm, of moving anything at all, was unnerving: but it was the only way to find out if I was sinking imperceptibly to the sea bed and increasing darkness.

I kept my arm to my side, bringing it up by the shortest path until my wrist was in front of the faceplate and I was peering at the gauge like a man going blind. No information. The luminous dial had lost its brightness and the light around me wasn't enough to pick out the shape of the needle. I tilted my head by degrees, moving slowly, the sensory nerves of my skin beneath the rubber suit alerted for tactile signals. Above me it was less dark: a greyness was diffusing the faint light from around the platform of the rig. So I wasn't sinking and they hadn't doused their lights and there was nothing in the water to cloud my vision. I'd been sweating, that was all.

The shock had raised the blood heat and brought the sweat out and the faceplate had misted over and in normal conditions I'd have known what was happening but in these conditions it had taken a lot of finding out and the idea wasn't pleasant because if a diver doesn't know when his faceplate's misted over he's pretty far gone.

Christ sake relax. Take the bloody thing off and wipe it and put it back and do something about that stuff drifting around.

Or do nothing.

Mental blocks were getting in the way of rational thought because the organism was still frightened: not about what would have happened if I'd hit that thing with one of the heavy metal air tanks instead of my chest, but about what might happen if I went after the reserve tanks and came on them just as they reached a mine.

I took off the faceplate and put it back and blew out through the nose. It wouldn't stay clear for long but I didn't want to surface yet and use saliva. A decision had to be made and the whole of the mission would depend on it: I was going to look for that equipment and try to find it before it struck a mine or I was going to get out.

All decisions are subject to chance and chance is incalculable. You can only predict likelihood and I thought it was likely that the reserve tanks would hit a mine if they went on drifting with the current. If they hit a mine there would be debris on the surface and the crew of the rig would see it and examine it and fit the clues together: a buckled radio component caught in the remains of a waterproof bag, an air pocket bringing it to the surface; a carton of protein concentrate, some biscuits still in their waxed paper. They'd know how close we were getting and they'd double the guard on Tewson or fly him out. Either way, Mandarin was blown.

But I'd be alive. The island of Heng-kang Chou was two miles away and I could get there underwater with the air I had left in the tanks. The break-off rendezvous for this access phase was twenty-four hours from the commencement of solo operations by the executive in the target zone: 01.29 hours today when I'd left Swordfish. Location was Heng-kang Chou Island, rotating quarter zones as per standard practice for this topographical situation: the north shore if I could find caves or some other refuge, east shore if there was nothing available in the north, south shore if both were blank, so forth. Life support was no problem in terms of food and water: thirst would develop but that would be containable for the short period involved. I'd be in good condition when Ferris picked me up.

Mission aborted: executive withdrawn.

Because it'd be no good sending in the reserve: there'd be nothing for him to do. George Henry Tewson would be somewhere in the three-and-a-half million square miles of the Chinese mainland. Reserve recalled. And close the file on Mandarin.

Egerton wouldn't like it.

He works for the good of the cause. They all have their different motivations, the London Controls. Loman's working for a knighthood and he doesn't give a damn for his ferrets: look at what the bastard wanted me to do in Tunisia-blow myself up. Parkis is working for some grand and distant checkmate when the board is cleared of the pawns and in the meantime he moves us around and he doesn't care whether we live or die so long as we block the knights and the rooks while he plans his strategies. But Egerton works for Queen and Country and his morality is First World War, with tattered banners and muted bugles and the Greatest Game of them all to win, except for one thing: he won't send you over the top without a chance. As Ferris had put it to me on board the August Moon: 'the Egg doesn't care at all for sending people on suicide stunts.'

The alternative to getting out was going in.

Egerton wouldn't like that either.

But he'd never know, because there's always a phase in the mission when you're suddenly and critically in need of Control direction on a major issue and can't get it or don't want to. There's nothing London can do about it. They can plan the whole operation from initial briefing and access down to the final support liaison that's designed to get the executive into the target zone and out again with a clear exit path and a whole skin and the merchandise they're buying with what they pay him to do it. But you can't always stick to the blueprint and unless you're lucky you're going to find yourself cut off in a red sector one fine day with the access blocked or the radio jammed or someone treading all over your face because you opened the wrong door and then you're going to want field direction or something from Control and you're not going to get it.

They can bust a gut designing a set-up that'll get you past all the pins without flashing a light but there's nearly always a time when you've got to go it alone. We know that. It's why we're in this thing, most of us: the ferrets have got their motivations too. We don't go looking for trouble but if we get it we think we can deal with it and that's when we try very hard because if we fail we're going to have to live with ourselves forever afterwards and that's tough because we're vain.

So when we get close to the edge we don't go back: we look over. It's just another way of getting rid of infantile aggression and if you don't like it you can do the other thing.

There wasn't any real problem. If I let that stuff go on drifting it'd either blow a mine or move free and wallow around in daylight tomorrow and attract attention and if either of those things happened it'd finish the mission and that wasn't the object of what I was doing here. I was here to complete Mandarin according to plan. It didn't look as if I had a chance in hell of coming out alive but that wasn't a reason for not going in at all: it was gut-think.

Immediately around me was an area of dim light and beyond it was a soft gathering wall of dark and somewhere on the other side that stuff was drifting in the current: two steel cylinders, each of them charged at a pressure of two thousand pounds a square inch and capable of smashing through the wall of a building and flying three streets away and going through the side of a bus and that was just if the valve broke. They could do better than that if they went the wrong way through a minefield.

The one factor that had any value for me was that of time: the longer that stuff went on drifting the less chance I'd have of finding it before it hit one of those bloody things and blew the sea apart. So I thought I'd better start now.

Chapter Thirteen.

DIRECTIVE.

The water was grey-green, growing lighter and darker as I rose and fell, gliding through the grey-green world, going my way in silence.

Three minutes.

They drifted past me in the shifting light and shadow, their steel spheres glowing as they caught a gleam of light from above, their copper horns thrust outwards from them, naked and quiet.

Two minutes.

I threaded my way between the cables, sinuous and slow and taking care. Nothing lived here and nothing moved except this black rubber creature as it passed through the cloudy avenues of spheres, but a presence was here, of a kind so different from my own that I felt its hostility: the blind trapped presence of a thing unborn, a thing that once free would hurl the sea apart. I made my slow way through it.