"Isn't there supposed to be someone in here?" asked Becky Dityatin, looking around the long, empty room. "Who's driving the ship?"

She stared in confusion at the bridge of the Vinland Majesty, one of the largest cruise liners in the world. It was the full width of the ship, with a row of windows that gave a view out over the prow, where the calm waters of the North Atlantic were being thrown up in a white spray as the ship ploughed through them at 22 knots.
In the centre of the long room was a pair of workstations, with comfy, padded chairs facing rows of computer screens and a bewildering assortment of controls. The rest of the room was bare, though. Nothing but an expanse of carpet between the forward and rear bulkheads. It seemed to exist only for people to pace up and down along it, looking important. Becky, a cloth in one hand and a bottle of spray polish in the other, looked back and forth as if expecting someone to come into view at any moment, having popped out to answer a call of nature perhaps, but the room remained stubbornly empty.

"This place is pretty much just for the tourists," the other woman replied.  Sally Jones, head of the ship's Housekeeping staff. "There'll be a couple of officers in their pretty uniforms when they're coming and going from port, standing near the windows where they can be seen from the shore, and also when the Captain brings someone up to 'see the bridge', but the ship's really controlled from the control room, down on deck four. I mean, you could control the ship from here, but there's really no need for all these windows when you can see a lot further with radar. Most of the time, there's nothing to see but an empty horizon anyway."

"Can you see that on the radar?" asked Becky, looking out the window at a dark cloud on the horizon that marred an otherwise clear sky. "Looks like we're heading straight for it."

Sally Jones followed her gaze and frowned. The cloud had an eerie green glow, and seemed to reach all the way down to the surface of the water. "Never seen a storm like that before," she said. "Never mind. This ship's too big to be bothered by rough weather. We cruise right through the biggest waves without even noticing." The dark cloud, flickering with lightning, held her attention, though, and caused very a vague disquiet for no reason she could identify. She turned her back on it and tried to put it out of her thoughts.

"Come on," she said. "We'd better get to work. The Captain won't be pleased if he comes up here and finds the place all covered with dust and fingerprints. Get this place done, and you can go back to your normal duties, but with Elaine down with whatever she's got we needed someone to cover for her at the last minute. If she's off sick for a while, this might become one of your regular duties." She smiled. "Your first trip, and you're already cleaning the ship's bridge."

Becky smiled nervously back. "I'll try to do a good job," she said.
"I'm sure you will. The rest of the stuff you need is back in that closet. There's a bathroom through that door there, for if any of the bridge crew get caught short, and a tea room through that door there. They like their cups of coffee." Becky nodded soberly, looking at the indicated doors in the rear bulkhead.

"Do the floor last, you know the routine," Sally added. "And don't forget the wet floor sign when you've finished. We don't want any injuries or lawsuits."

She sprayed some polish onto her cloth and wiped it along the shiny, metal surfaces of the nearest workstation. Becky went to the other workstation and did the same. She tried to concentrate on the job, wanting to make a good impression, but she couldn't help looking at the computer screens, busily displaying a bewildering variety of information that meant nothing to her. She forced herself to ignore them and focus on her work, but then a crack of thunder drew her attention back to the mysterious glowing cloud waiting for them up ahead.

"Why's it green?" she asked. "That's not normal."

"Probably St Elmo's fire or something," Sally told her. "Ignore it. We'll be cosy and dry in here no matter what it's doing out there."

"I know," Becky replied with an embarrassed smile. "I just don't like lightning, that's all. Never have, since I was a little girl."

"Attend to your work, and you won't have time to think about it," her supervisor told her, spraying some more polish onto her cloth. She looked across to see how the other woman was doing. "That's it," she said. "You've got the idea."

"It's just like doing the bathroom back home," said Becky with a smile. "Obviously I'll take greater care here, though. Make sure I do a better job."

"Don't stress about it," her supervisor advised. "Bathroom quality will be just fine. The important thing is to be able to find your way around the ship. It can be like a maze until you're used to it. Once you learn where everything is, though, you'll be cleaning this place all by yourself."

"All by myself," said Becky, looking up at the workstation. "On the bridge of a ship carrying five thousand people. What if I accidentally touch a control and send the ship off course?"

"The controls don't do anything unless an officer puts his password in," Sally replied. "Even so, best not to touch them."

Becky nodded and returned to work, carefully wiping the cloth around each knob, button and display screen. From the storm came another ominous crack of thunder.

☆☆☆

"How are we looking?" asked Captain David Tennyson, allowing the door to close behind him as he stepped into the control room.

It was much smaller than the bridge, ten decks above, and more crowded. The four men on duty pretty much filled it, but it gave the room a cosy atmosphere that the Captain liked. It allowed him to see the large, display screens without having to move far from the door, and a single glance told him that all was well even before Olav Solberg, the Chief Mate, answered him.

"All good," he said in his exotic Danish accent. "We are maintaining speed and heading. Radar shows nothing but clear sea all around us, and the weather report says calm winds and bright sunshine for the rest of the day. Just how the passengers like it."

"I thought I heard thunder a few moments ago," said the Captain, though. He stepped forward to look at the weather radar. There was nothing on it.

"Probably just Travis Dixon dropping his wallet," said Harry Hoffman, one of the junior ratings on duty.

"If he dropped his wallet, the whole ship would be off balance," Trevor Mackie, the other junior rating, replied. "We'd probably capsise like the bloody Poseidon adventure."

The Captain smiled at the banter, a good sign that all was well aboard his ship. "Just so long as you don't let him hear you making jokes about him," he warned. "That man could buy DFL Cruises lock, stock and barrel and not even notice. He might do it just on a whim, because someone pissed him off, and sack the lot of us."

"Plenty of other cruise companies hiring," said Harry Hoffman. "Might be worth it just to see the look on his face when I piss all over his shiny crocodile shoes."

"You shouldn't be so quick to risk your job when your uncle worked so hard to get it for you," said Tennyson, putting a stern frown on his face, but his good humour was too strong and he couldn't keep the smile from coming back.

"Your uncle?" asked Mackie.

"Alan Fielding is the brother of this young man's mother," the Captain told him. "He pulled a few strings with the company."

Mackie's eyes widened. "Quite useful to have the Second Officer as your uncle," he said. "He could make sure you get all the cushy jobs."

"There's no favouritism on this ship," the Captain warned him. "Both Mister Hoffman and Mister Fielding know that if Hoffman screws up, their relationship won't save him, so be careful about what Travis Dixon hears you saying." He fixed his eyes on the junior rating, who nodded glumly.

"Who pays twenty thousand quid for a pair of shoes anyway?" asked Solberg. Hoffman smiled at him gratefully.

"He does," said Tennyson with a warning frown, "and if the stories are right, he buys a new pair every week."

"Does he replace all his clothes every week?" asked Solberg, "or just his shoes?"

"Damned if I know," Tennyson replied. "Just keep him happy, and he'll lose enough in the casino to keep DFL in the black for the next five years. They'll probably be able to buy a new ship or two with what he'll lose on the roulette wheel before we get to Rio."

There was another crack of thunder, and this time they all heard it. "Still nothing on the weather radar." said Olav, looking at the screens. "Must be an ocean bed sound."

"Never heard one like that before," said the Captain thoughtfully.
The sea bed was filled with minor fault lines, and they occasionally shifted in minor earthquakes, too small to be felt ashore. Then there were deep-crustal caverns and passages through which seawater flowed and eddied, creating eerie sounds that could be heard by the crews of surface vessels. The oceans were a menagerie of strange phenomena, many of which were poorly understood, and the effects they created on the surface had inspired many myths and legends among the superstitious sailing folk that had experienced them over the centuries. The Captain wasn't worried, therefore. The weather radar said that the skies were clear. There was no chance of any rough weather that might dampen the spirits of the passengers, most of whom had paid a small fortune to be aboard. When he had some spare time, he thought, he might do a bit of research to try to see what had created the sound, but until then he put it out of his mind.

"Bit dusty in here," he said, wiping a finger along the screen of the echo sounder. It left a clean line across it, through which the garish colours shone more brightly. It was currently showing that the water they were sailing through was flat and level, around four thousand metres deep.

"This room is constantly in use when we're at sea," the Chief Mate reminded him. "It only gets cleaned when we're back home, in Southampton. Two weeks ago."

"We could use the real bridge for a couple of hours while the cleaners spruce this place up a bit," suggested Hoffman. "Be nice to see the sky for a change."

"You can see the sky as much as you want when you're off duty," the Captain told him. "Too many accidents have happened because a crewman was watching the scenery when he should have been watching the instruments."

"What scenery?" the rating asked. "We're a hundred miles off the coast of Brazil."

The comment prompted Tennyson to step closer to the nearest workstation, to look at the radar screen. Sure enough, the coast was too far away to show up on it. There were several ships accompanying them along the South American coast, though, none of them closer than twenty miles, he was pleased to see. When the ship you were on had a three-mile stopping distance, you really didn't like people getting too close.

"There's clouds," said Hoffman with a mischievous smile. "I like clouds. You can tell what weather's coming just by looking at the clouds. My dad said that a good seaman always keeps an eye on the clouds."

"Fortunately, we have the weather forecast," said the Captain, taking another look at the weather radar. It showed the same total lack of weather as it had before. "A much more reliable guide than just looking at the clouds."

"And you can tell the depth of the water by looking at what the waves are doing," the rating added, his smile broadening as if he enjoyed twisting the Captain's tail. "Shallow water, smaller waves. He said that one time, when he was driving a tanker across the Med, the echo sounder decided to act up and started giving false readings. If he hadn't been up on deck, looking out across the water, he said they might have run aground on a sandbank that had shifted after an undersea earthquake."

"Very interesting, Mister Hoffman," said the Captain. "Fortunately, our echo sounders are rather more reliable than those of a thirty year old oil tanker." He couldn't keep himself from looking at the echo sounder again, though, to see if any anomalous readings were showing on the glowing, multicoloured screen. He looked back at Hoffman, to see that his smile had widened. He couldn't help but smile back. Yes, all was well here.

"All right," he said, tiring of the banter. "Everything seems to be in order. I'll leave you to it. Alan's got the next shift, hasn't he?"

"Yes," Olav replied. The Chief Mate and the Second Officer tended to take turns in the control room, while the Captain roamed the ship, making sure that everything was as it should be. "In about two hours."

"He still playing chess with Carlos Alberti?" asked Hoffman. Carlos was an officer aboard a container ship heading for Port of Santos. The crew often chatted with the crews of other ships as a way of passing the time. The Captain allowed it, because boredom led to mistakes. He didn't hear Olav's answer, though, as he left the room, allowing the door to close behind him.