Chapter 4

"Damned right I have!" Hera uncrossed her arms and pointed at him. "You!" she cried. "You should not be making decisions for us. You lost the ship. Your incompetence has left us stranded here on an alien planet!"

A gasp went up from the crew. But Athena noticed that Apollo and Poseidon had moved up to stand either side of Hera as if in support.

For a moment Zeus remained speechless. Then he pulled himself together with a visible effort and carried on, his voice quiet and menacing. "And how, exactly, do you think I might have avoided that?"

"You stripped the ship! You spent time stripping the ship instead of repairing the power source. By the time you had finished your hare-brained scheme it was too late and it blew."

Zeus looked around him as if for support, clearly completely taken aback by this unexpected attack. Hephaestus stepped forward. "If I may speak, Captain " he began.

"Don't call him that!" Hera shrieked. "He is no longer the captain. He has no ship to be the captain of."

"Nevertheless, he remains the captain unless or until the proper procedures are followed." He turned to Zeus. "May I?"

Zeus gave a curt nod.

"We did indeed consider working on the power source, but given its instability it was far too dangerous." Hera looked as if she was about to speak but Hephaestus carried on, raising his voice slightly. "We also considered removing it to a safe place, such as an island out to sea, where we could work on it later, but it was too dangerous and difficult. We would have irradiated the ship, rendering all our precious supplies useless, and we would have needed to employ virtually the entire crew." As Hera once again moved as if to speak, he held his hand up in a silencing gesture. "And it would have taken several days. Time we didn't think we could afford."

He fell silent, his gaze moving amongst the crowd, some of whom were looking uncertain. One or two, Poseidon and Apollo in particular, looked mutinous.

"If anyone feels we made a bad decision I am sure the Captain is prepared to discuss it later."

"The captain!" Hera spat the words. "He is no longer the captain. We are no longer his crew. We should have a vote."

Zeus stepped forward again. He looked deathly tired. "We can do all those things," he began, "but first we need to decide what to do next."

"No!! Now. We need to decide on a new leader!"

Some of the crew were shuffling their feet.

"Right, that's it!" Zeus had reached the end of his tether. "If you don't shut up right now, I'll have you thrown in the brig!"

"Hah!" She threw back her head and laughed. "What brig? There isn't a bloody brig because you lost the bloody ship!"

"That does it!" Zeus barked. "Apollo, Poseidon, tie her to the mast!"

They looked at each other in bewilderment.

"The communications mast, man. There!" he shouted, pointing wildly to the silver mast on the other side of the plateau. "Get her out of my sight!"

"But " Apollo began. Hephaestus stepped forward, pushed Apollo out of the way and grasped Hera firmly by the arm. After a moment's hesitation, Poseidon grasped the other and they marched her, struggling and screaming, out of the meeting area towards the mast.

Athena looked at Hestia, who was standing beside her apparently unmoved by the whole episode. "Bitch!" she said, under her breath. Hestia turned to look at her, eyebrows raised. "My Daddy saved us all. We could have died on that ship. We could have died. He saved us and that bitch "

"That will do," Hestia said. Then, bending her head close to Athena's, "She is lonely and frightened. And she has nothing to do. Remember, she is the only person out of all us who has no job. She is only here because she is married to the captain. She has nothing to do but make trouble."

Athena thought about this. It was true. Every one of them had a job, either as an expedition scientist or as a member of the crew proper, like Hephaestus, who was the engineer, or Ares, who was in charge of security. Some of them even had two jobs. Like Zeus himself, who was both captain and scientist.

"Except me," Athena said.

"What?"

"Except me. I don't have a job," she said in a small voice.

"Of course you have a job," Hestia snapped. "Your job is to keep us all happy."

Athena brightened up at this and then fell silent as Zeus began to speak again.

~*~

Prometheus woke with a start. Incredibly, in spite of his extreme terror, he had fallen asleep. He had no idea whether he had slept for just a few seconds or for hours. And then he heard the sounds snuffling and whimpering, the slight crunching noise of claws among the debris of rocks, dust and bones that littered the floor of the cave. The beast had returned!

He pushed himself up against the wall behind him, as if the rock would take him in and shield him. As quietly as he could, he drew his killing axe from his belt. It seemed a small and flimsy thing to use against a bear. For bear it was. He could smell it as it came closer. He could feel its breath now. The weird whimpering noise it was making seemed to be right in his ear. Some small detached part of his brain wondered why it was whimpering. Was it injured?

He gripped the axe more tightly, tensed ready to thrust it at the animal.

Then, as it was almost upon him, it moved off to his right down some side tunnel into the mountain. He heard the snuffling and whimpering sounds diminishing as it moved further away.

For a few minutes he was frozen in immobility. Then he began to shake uncontrollably, sliding down to slump on the cave floor. When the shaking stopped, slowly and as quietly as he could, he began to crawl back the way he had come, the axe still clenched in his hand, hoping he could find his way back to the entrance.