Far From The Sea We Know

CHAPTER 39

  The next day, Penny was too busy to worry about events moving too quickly. Chiffrey, like everyone else, had come around to believing it best not to bring on new people. “Don’t mess with success,” he had said. That meant they wouldn’t bring over anyone from the Navy tanker to help with refueling. The Valentina’s crew had to manage the hookup on their own, and they had never done it before. That, along with connector incompatibilities, resulted in the operation taking longer than expected.

  But they managed in the end. It was hard for Penny not to admire how they worked so well together. What had changed? Maybe they were just more aware of those around them.

  The resupply went much smoother, and it didn’t hurt that the seas were running low. Chiffrey had backed Andrew’s request for everything they might need. The Captain wanted to be ready for anything, and the Navy had come through supplying them from what was in effect a shopping plaza in the holds of the resupply ship.

  Lines with pulleys were set up between the two vessels, as they sailed into the waves on the same heading. With this simple rig, they transferred net after net of containers over the water. Almost everyone on the Valentina was needed to chain the supplies onto the deck, and later to move them down into storage spaces. The crew had formed around this task with little in the way of direction. No one told anyone else what to do, they each just flowed into the right place and did what needed to be done. It was hard for Penny not to feel good about this, and she enjoyed the movement. Matthew was cheered and so was the crew. Even Chiffrey had pitched in. Only for the last twenty minutes, true enough, but Penny counted that as a win. Everyone seemed tired but happy in the end.

  Taking people off the ship had been a different matter. Yet another Navy ship arrived and sent over a launch. One person, who originally said he would go, unexpectedly decided to stay. Andrew called him on it, but he held firm. Four others, who earlier had chosen to remain, changed their minds, most likely because of Ripler’s final apocalyptic outburst. The warm and fuzzy atmosphere on board had ebbed, and was in a far more tempered form. It was as if Ripler, even in his psychotic delusion, still had been canny enough to further his agenda.

  Those who were leaving stepped into the Navy launch as if onto a bus departing a casino after a bad weekend. Penny couldn’t really blame them. Even though she opposed Chiffrey’s tendency to play on threats, surely there was a risk of some kind for those who stayed. The smaller crew would still be enough to keep things going, but everyone would have to work that much harder.

  Daryl, the cameraman along with the helicopter pilot, Lorraine’s now-former TV crew, boarded the launch after the last of the students. The pilot looked subdued, while Daryl took one last opportunity to thank everyone, as if they had personally saved his life. Only Dirk and Lorraine seemed completely confident and at ease as they took their place on the launch, still holding hands. As Dirk had announced to Penny that morning, “The way lay not straight, but ’tis gleaming clear,” or some such nonsense. And they weren’t just happy. They were completely enthralled by their own bliss, and how delicious it must be, but joy like that could not last, could it? In spite of Lorraine’s implied skill at seeing the future, if they really did get married, the only thing that seemed certain would probably be lawyers.

  Of those who chose to stay, many seemed to believe they were under some special kind of protection, perhaps the result of Chiffrey spiking the punch with his ideas about the transceiver and Matthew. Andrew seemed to have come to similar conclusions. And the few times the subject had come up, it was hard for Penny not to feel that it made sense in some unfathomable way.

  After the launch departed, everyone who didn’t have duty headed for the galley for dinner. Chiffrey announced to them that he had at last procured the Navy ROV video from the center of the circle. In his usual annoying way, he coyly suggested that if anyone were interested in “having a look,” he would show the video in C-lab at eight o’clock. That is, he said, if someone could help him set it up.

  Malcolm popped up like a whack-a-mole, said, “On it!” and was out the door with his mouth still half-full of Navy-supplied French fries. The fast that he and Emory had undertaken was apparently over.