Dead Sea by Peter Tonkin

white-streaked elephant grey beneath the equally distant downpour away to her right.
    It was an instant of clarity that Robin had never experienced before and was never likely to experience again. The entire enormity of it burned itself indelibly into her subconscious. Then the reality slammed back into place as the icy air was in motion around her. Suddenly very actively indeed. A squall wind hit her shoulder like a rugby forward tackling high. A heartbeat later it was as though she and
Katapult
were trapped in a wind tunnel.
    But Robin was by no means standing idle as she took that one startled glance. The whole of her attention was claimed by the monster lazily sweeping in towards her. The wind on her back like a living force. The race to get
Katapult
out into the light. With the helm hard over, she gunned the motors to maximum, feeling
Katapult
struggling to answer the conflicting dictates of the forces unleashed within and around her. The motors turned a pair of racing propellers seeking to thrust her full ahead. The rudder sought to swing the three points of her bow hard over to the left. The wind howling through what little rigging she possessed was trying to blow her to the right, into the grip of the waterspout which – counter-intuitively – was sailing relentlessly towards her, dead against the wind itself. But of course it was creating the wind by sucking air into the enormous gyre at its heart. The harder it inhaled, the stronger the wind blew, the faster the spout approached, drawing the atmosphere relentlessly into itself. Spewing it up, like the mackerel, into the wildly writhing storm cloud above.
    Had
Katapult
possessed a keel like
Flint
, that might have steadied her, made the water cling to her in spite of the wind – but she had outriggers instead. And the starboard outrigger was porpoising increasingly deeply into the water as the triple hull fought to turn away from the spout while the wind pulled the masts towards it. Robin slammed her left hand off the wheel, overrode the computer control system and pushed both outriggers down into the water, feeling the skittish hull steady beneath her widespread feet, though the wheel began to turn back relentlessly against her one-handed grip. Immediately, a wall of spray whipped up the wind and slapped painfully into her face as though the spout was angered by her action. It was the outer edge of the inverted cone at the foot of the thing. Robin was deluged with water in an instant. Water that felt shockingly warm except that the wind chill of the relentless gale turned it icy at once. Robin realized inconsequentially how little she was wearing – and that made her feel more vulnerable still.
    For a heart-stopping moment, Robin found herself inside the cone of spray, trapped for an instant between the buffeting curtain of waterdrops made dazzlingly bright by the sunlight of the half day beyond. As though a jewel box full of diamonds and sapphires had been caught in a tornado. And, on her left, less than a hundred metres distant, the foot of the spout itself. The surface of the water in between was fizzing as though the ocean had become champagne. The sound of rushing water, foaming bubbles and screaming wind made an already dizzying experience almost hallucinatory. She saw the great white trunk of the thing lift off the water with a slow majesty she had never expected. It settled back again, then lifted once more, unexpectedly fine, almost diaphanous.
    The wind howling past her seemed to hesitate for an instant. She slammed the rudder back hard over.
Katapult
’s screaming motors pulled her left at last – smashed her back through the gemstone wall, which immediately lost its diamond and sapphire brightness, turning instantly as dark and threatening as the low, writhing sky.
    But that moment, that one flaw in the wind, that instant of hesitation by the monstrous spout, made all the difference.
Katapult
began to gather way, turning obediently