Michael did see his point.
“The captain’s up on the bridge. If I were you, I’d be prepared to have him tear me a new one.”
At the moment, Michael just wanted the feeling back in his fingers. He wiped the hand briskly back and forth on his pant leg, but the cloth was so wet it didn’t help much. He unzipped his parka, and shoved his hand inside, into his armpit.
Kazinski gestured at the stairs leading up to the bridge, as if it were the way to the gallows. Maybe, Michael thought, it was.
He went up them slowly, and as soon as he entered the brightly lighted bridge, Captain Purcell swiveled in his chair and said, “What the hell do you think you were doing out there? Are you out of your fucking mind?”
Michael shrugged and finished unzipping his coat, letting the flaps fall open. “Probably not the best idea,” he offered, knowing how feeble it sounded, “but I thought I might get some great shots for the magazine.”
The other two officers seated in front of the navigation consoles stifled their amusement.
“I’m used to some pretty harebrained stunts from the scientists I have to ferry around down here,” Purcell said, “but I figure they’re so smart, they’re entitled to act stupid sometimes. You, I can’t figure out at all. You’re no scientist, and you’re sure as hell no sailor.”
Ensign Gallo, who was standing at a silver wheel mounted on a freestanding console, said, “Barometric’s falling again, sir.”
“What to?” Purcell barked, swiveling back in his chair and adjusting the headset that had slipped askew while he was chewing out Michael.
“Nine eighty-five, sir.”
“Jesus, we’re in for it tonight.” His eyes scanned the glowing screens and dials, the sonar, the radar, the GPS, the fathometer, all of which showed a constantly changing and multicolored stream of data.
A spattering of hail clattered against the square windows on the westward side, and the ship heaved like a great hand had just slapped it. Michael snatched at one of the leather straps that dangled from the ceiling and hung on tight; he’d already heard tales of seamen who had been flung from one end of the bridge to the other and broken arms and legs in the process. He wondered if his public flogging was over, or if he was supposed to wait around for more.
Despite the roar of the sea outside, the slashing of the rain and the howling of the winds that seemed to be coming from all directions at once, the atmosphere in the bridge quickly returned to the tranquillity of an operating room. The flat white light panels in the ceiling cast a cold even glow around the blue walls of the room, and the officers all spoke to each other in low, deliberate tones, their eyes fixed on the instrument arrays before them.
“Port engine, full forward,” the captain said, and Lieutenant Commander Ramsey, whom Michael had met a couple of times, reached for a short red-handed throttle. He repeated the captain’s words as he executed the order.
Then, Ramsey nodded discreetly toward Michael—who was still standing around like a kid who’d been haled into the principal’s office—and said offhandedly to Purcell, “If Mr. Wilde is no longer needed here, sir, perhaps he should join the Ops in the aloft con? It’s impossible to fall overboard from there, and he might like to see how the ship is steered.”
Purcell blew out a breath of disgust, and without turning around, said, “If he does fall out, tell him he can float all the way back to Chile before I turn this ship around.”
Michael didn’t doubt it, and he took it as his cue to step toward the spiral stair that Ramsey gestured at, and swiftly start climbing.
“How’d you like some company, Kathleen?” he heard Ramsey say into his headset, but he didn’t slow up to find out if he wasn’t welcome. He went straight up until he was well out of the bridge, and found himself standing on a platform in a virtually black funnel, with only a steel ladder leading higher. The ship juddered, and his shoulders crashed against the rounded wall; he felt like he was in the chimney of the house in The Wizard of Oz, the one that got picked up by the tornado and spun all around. Up above, at least twenty or thirty feet, he could see a blue glow, a lot like you’d get off a TV screen, and he could hear the beeping and hum of machinery.