Count Backwards to Zero

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The first two days out of Southampton, rain was incessant. But gradually, as the Queen Elizabeth II swung south into warmer waters, the sea began to smooth out and the weather improved. This was the big ship’s final westward crossing of the year. For the next few months she would be cruising out of Miami, and that was her present destination.

Dr. Quentin Little, in a corner of the first-class bar, hadn’t noticed the changes in the weather. He had eaten nothing since leaving England. He was drinking vodka gimlets.

“Waiter,” he said, indicating his empty glass.

“Yes, sir.”

Little looked at his watch, staring at the figures until what they were telling him succeeded in penetrating through the vodka haze. With a ballpoint pen, he made a calculation on a soggy cocktail napkin.

He had seventy-one hours to live.

The waiter turned at the bar. A dark-haired girl spoke to him, picked the gimlet off his tray and brought it across to Little. Her name was Anne Blagden. She was amazingly pretty, with an enthusiastic style and the figure of a very good gymnast or ballet dancer. She was an American, in her mid-twenties, and in spite of her striking good looks, Little was beginning to find her a bit of a pest. He didn’t want or need conversation. All he wanted was to sit exactly where he was and blot out seventy-one hours. Drinking and going to the bathroom now and then — that was program enough.

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