Night of Error. Desmond Bagley

it. So do they. It’s a case of we know that they know that we know, and so on. It’s a bastard of a position to be in.’

      ‘It’s like a game with perfect information – chess, for example. It’s the man who can manoeuvre best who wins.’

      ‘Not quite. Both sides have imperfect information,’ he corrected me patiently. ‘We don’t know how much they really know. They might have the exact location of the nodules we’re after, and only have to drop a dredge to prove their case, but perhaps they’re behind us in planning and need to stop us somehow first. On the other hand, they don’t know how much we know. Which is precious little. Maybe as much as, or no more than them. Tricky, isn’t it?’

      ‘It would take a logician to sort it out. Talking of knowing, have you made any progress with the diary?’

      Campbell snorted. ‘I gave it to a top-flight cipher expert and he’s having his troubles. He says it isn’t so much the peculiar shorthand as the sloppy way in which it’s written. But he says he can crack it, given time. What I wish I knew was how Suarez-Navarro got on to this in the first place?’

      My own thoughts were that Mark, cheated out of Campbell’s involvement – I guessed that’s how he would see Campbell’s loss, only in terms of his own disappointment – had approached them himself. But I still didn’t know enough about how Campbell viewed Mark to say so. It hung between us, a touchy subject that we both carefully avoided.

      So he went off to Canada to further his own progress, we speeded up ours as much as possible, and it was with great relief that I heard Geordie announce one day that we were at last ready for sea. All he needed to know was where to head for.

      I said, ‘Do you know the Blake Plateau?’

      ‘Never heard of it.’

      ‘It’s just off the coast of Carolina. We’ll test the winch and the rest of our gear there, and it’s a long enough voyage for you to pull your crew together. I don’t want to go into the Pacific to find that anything doesn’t work for some reason or other. If there’s anything wrong we can get it fixed in Panama – they’ve got good engineering shops there.’

      ‘Okay. But why the Blake Plateau?’

      ‘There are nodules there. I’ve always wanted a closer look at Atlantic nodules.’

      ‘Is there any place where there aren’t any?’ he asked.

      I nodded. ‘They won’t form where there’s heavy sedimentation, so that cuts out most of the Atlantic – but the Blake Plateau is scoured by the Gulf Stream and nodules do form. But they’re poor quality, not like the ones in the Pacific.’

      ‘How deep?’

      ‘Not more than three thousand feet – deep enough to test the winch.’

      ‘Right, boy. Let’s go and scoop up some poor quality wealth from the bottom of the sea. We should be away in a few days now.’

      ‘I can’t wait,’ I said. I was in fact boiling with impatience to be gone.

      II

      We made a fair and untroubled crossing of the Atlantic. Geordie and Ian, together with the regular crew members, soon got the others into a good working pattern and spirits ran high. Kane, we were pleased to notice, fitted in well and seemed as willing and above-board as the others. Knowing that they were all curious as to our purpose I gave occasional rather deliberately boring lectures on oceanography, touching on a number of possible research subjects so that the matter of manganese nodules got lost in the general subject. Only two people retained an interest in what I had to say, and to them, in semi-private, I spoke at greater length about our quarry. One was Geordie, of course, and the other, not too surprisingly and in fact to my satisfaction, was Bill Hunter. Already our diving expert, his interest and involvement might well be crucial.

      One afternoon they both joined me in the laboratory, at my request, to learn a little more. A quiet word from Geordie to Ian made sure that we weren’t going to be interrupted.

      Geordie picked up a nodule which I’d cut in half – I had brought a few on board to help my explanation along.

      He pointed to the white central core.

      ‘I suppose you’ll tell me again that it’s a shark’s tooth in the middle of this rock. You never did get around to explaining that, did you?’

      I smiled and held up the stone. ‘That’s right, it is.’

      ‘You’re kidding.’

      ‘No I’m not – it happens often. You see, a shark dies and its body drifts down; the flesh rots or is eaten, the bones dissolve – what bones a shark has, it’s cartilage really – and by the time anything reaches the very bottom there’s nothing left but the teeth. They are made of sodium triphosphate and insoluble in water. There are probably millions of them on any ocean bottom.’

      I opened a small box. ‘Look here,’ I said and gave him a larger white bone. It was as big as the palm of his hand and curiously convoluted.

      ‘What’s this?’

      ‘It’s a whale’s earbone,’ said Bill, looking over his shoulder. ‘I’ve seem ‘em before.’

      ‘Right, Bill. Also made of sodium triphosphate. We sometimes find them at the core of larger nodules – but more often it’s a shark’s tooth and most frequently a bit of clay.’

      ‘So the manganese sticks to the tooth. How long does it take to make a nodule?’ Geordie asked.

      ‘Estimates vary from one millimetre each thousand years to one millimetre each million years. One chap estimated that it worked out to one layer of atoms a day – which makes it one of the slowest chemical reactions known. But I have my own ideas about that.’

      They both stared at me. ‘Do you mean that if you find a nodule with a half-diameter of ten millimetres formed round a tooth that the shark lived ten million years ago? Were there sharks then?’ Geordie asked in fascination.

      ‘Oh yes, the shark is one of our oldest inhabitants.’

      We talked a little more and then I dropped it. They had a lot to learn yet and it came best in small doses. And there was plenty of time for talk on this voyage. We headed south-south-west to cut through the Bahamas and the approach to the Windward Passage. Once in the Passage we kept as clear as possible of Cuba – once we came across an American destroyer on patrol, which did us the courtesy of dipping her flag, to which we reciprocated. Then there was the long leg across the Caribbean to Colon and the entrance to the Panama Canal.

      By then we had done our testing. There were minor problems, no more than teething troubles, and generally I was happy with the way things were going. Stopping to dredge a little, trying out the winch and working out on-station routines, was an interesting change from what we had been doing and everyone enjoyed it, and we remained lucky with the weather. I got some nodules up but there was a lot of other material, enough to cloud the issue for everyone but Geordie. Among the debris of ooze, red clay and deposits we found enough shark’s teeth and whale’s earbone to give everyone on board a handful of souvenirs.

      Both Geordie and Bill were becoming more and more interested in the nodules and wanted to know more about them, so I arranged for another lab. session with them one day. I’d been assaying, partly to keep my hand in and partly to check on the readiness of my equipment for the real thing.

      ‘How did the Atlantic nodules turn out?’ Geordie asked. On the whole he did the talking – Bill watched, listened and absorbed.

      ‘Same old low quality stuff that’s always pulled out in the Atlantic,’ I said. ‘Low manganese, low iron and hardly anything else except contaminants, clay and suchlike. That’s the trouble in the Atlantic; there’s too much sediment even on the Blake Plateau.’

      ‘Why