Page 10 of Sea Siege

  Hughes and Griff came down to the shore line. To Griff's startled eyes, it appeared as if all the fish for miles around had been herded into the circumscribed area of the bay. Yet they had not been drawn naturally as by some oversupply of food—as he had seen them gather so quickly when a diver had broken loose sponge creatures and flat worm cases. But these, now so thick in the water that it was being whipped to froth, had fled in panic from some danger greater than had existed in their world before.

  Scaled bodies rose in the air, plumped aboard the anchored boats, to flop over already comatose brethren. And above their heads, the sea birds were screaming themselves hoarse as they dived for such a rich feast­ing as they had never known before. A flea-bitten mon­grel trotted by Griff, nosed at a dying fish, and snapped it up, to go to the next.

  "What brought them here?"

  Hughes shrugged helplessly. "I don't know. Never saw anything like this in my life!"

  "Mistuh Hughes—Mistuh Gunston—" The constable, his topee pushed to the back of his head, but with his tunic correctly buttoned, bore down upon them. "Com­missioner say—please to come along Government House now."

  The islanders were in retreat, vanishing into their homes. And shutters were being banged shut in spite of the heat.

  "The fish go mad. Now maybeso mons go mad, too," the constable muttered. "This be bad time—"

  Like the roll of the sea, the murmur of voices rose and fell in the hall of the commissioner's office. Brax­ton Wells, Le Marr, and Burrows represented San Isa­dore on one side of the mahogany table—while facing them were Commander Murray, Lieutenant Holmes, Casey, and a young officer who wore pilot's wings clipped to his shirt front.

  "I'm laying it right on the line, sir," Murray was say­ing as the two Americans entered. "War has been de­clared. What is going on in the north now is your guess as well as mine. The radio is jammed, and there's in­terference on all bands. Our supply ship chose to take a chance and head back to the States this morning. She was following her orders. Our orders are—"

  Holmes put out his hand as if in protest. Murray did not even glance at him.

  "Our orders—the last ones—were to stick on the job here. But it's a hundred-to-one chance whether what we are building will ever be put to use. In fact—I'm being frank with you, gentlemen—I don't honestly know the reason for the base. We have a mountain of sup­plies and certain installations that cannot be completed —or won't be—unless we get another shipment from the north. Until we get reliable news of some sort—" His voice trailed off.

  "That is your problem, Commander," the commis­sioner replied. "Frankly I feel that it does not concern us. But what is of importance here is the morale of my people. Already they have destroyed the Gunston labora­tory. Had there been no further unusual happenings this morning, we could have brought them to order. But now—with this disturbance in the bay—I have one constable, I have the support of Mr. Le Marr, Mr. Wells here. Captain Murdock, upon whose influence we could have depended to a very great extent, is miss­ing, and his disappearance has only added to our burden. In Carterstown we are now sitting on a keg of gun­powder while a lighted match is being applied to the powder train. And, while gunpowder may sound ridicu­lously old-fashioned in this atomic era, it does explode with unpleasant force. I am going to ask you, Com­mander, to stay at your own end of the island and keep your men there. You have the right to defend your­selves—but the last thing I want is riot here!"

  "Amen to that!" Murray agreed. "All right, we'll stay at home. You won't see us—unless there is need. But I'm going to leave a walkie-talkie unit with you, linking us. It may be necessary to get in touch in a hurry."

  "For that I will thank you, Commander. Given a short spell of normality, we of San Isadore will settle down. In the meantime, the unit will suffice to exchange news. I have a steady watch on the wireless here— should I pick up anything—"

  "It is the same with us. We'll let you know." Murray arose.

  "Commissioner!" The constable hovered in the door­way. "The boat of the Navy mons—it sink! The fish fill it all up!"

  "What—!" Murray pounded into the hall, but his run­ning strides were matched by Casey. And the rest raced behind them. As they burst out into the day, Griff gasped. Where the brassy sun had beat down, there was an odd greenish light under massing clouds. It was un­natural—somehow horrible. Yet it reminded him of the water world into which he had dived—what arched over them now might not be the sky but the bowl of the sea!

  A family party, their belongings lashed to the backs of three donkeys, came out of a side lane and then dodged back swiftly as the men from the Government House ran by. Where there had been an absence of wind, they now plowed through rapidly thickening gloom into the salt spray driven inland by gusts, which almost knocked the runners from their feet.

  Clearly a storm was coming—such a storm as Griff had never experienced before. Yet it had none of the charac­teristics of a hurricane. The greenish gloom was now a dusk as dark as nightfall, yet it couldn't be noon. Griff blundered into a figure, heard Casey swear—an oath that was bitten off to become the muttered words of a formal prayer.

  They did not reach the wharf. There was no longer a wharf—no longer fishing boats, Navy cutters. There was a writhing sea, which bore struggling bodies ashore to slam them on the rocks, bash them against the walls of two crumbling houses. The men stopped and then retreated slowly. An eight-foot shark struck the ground beyond Murray and twisted, its murderous teeth slash­ing. Someone screamed, the wild cry of panic, and a figure ran back up the street. Griff was engulfed knee-high in a curling wave; a sharp pain scored his leg. He leaped back, dragging the nearest man with him.

  A sharp explosion sounded even above the howl of the wind. One of the party was firing into that murk of water—though why, Griff, in a moment of rational thinking, could not understand.

  They were back again, almost to the open space be­fore the Government House, a knot of men who could not believe the evidence presented by their eyes. Palm fronds torn from buffeted trees were hurled lancewise through the air. Yet it wasn't a hurricane—it wasn't any­thing San Isadore had ever known!

  "Oh, Lord—look!" A voice hardly human in its aban­donment to raw fear shrilled weirdly.

  This wasn't true, Griff assured himself. Nightmare! It had to be a nightmare! That—that thing wallowing down the streaming road, the water curling before it as it came—was nothing for any sane world to spawn. Light­ning ripped across the sky, a jagged purple sword. And a monstrous head swung; fanged jaws opened and— closed! A ragged scarecrow thing mewled and squirmed and then hung limp between those jaws, as the dark came down once more.

  Griff was running now, but when he felt the lift of the Government House steps, he stumbled and went down painfully. Some inner urge made him twist about. At the foot of the slight rise, which formed the core of the town, four—no—five white-clad figures wavered ghostlike in the dusk. Then Griff heard the crack of side arms. Whatever horror was following them was being met by fire.

  But they had not yet faced the worst to be hurled at them that day, for under them the very stuff of San Isadore heaved. Griff, recalling the caves that underlay the island, thought that this was the end—that they were fated to go down with a sinking land. And it was in that moment that light came in a burst—not the lightning of the sky, but a pillar of flame out at sea, hur­tling skyward, bathing them all in a bloody glare.

  Griff crouched without knowing that he was sobbing. He watched while weatherworn houses collapsed—some in a sudden flattening, some slowly, stone by stone. There were screams lacing the fiery murk. But he re­mained where he was, seeing the men at the other end of the plaza break and run at what came through.

  Death, monstrous because it lived and wallowed for­ward on flipper feet, death such as no man had faced before. And on its back—! Griff whimpered and buried his face in his shaking hands.

  Again the ground rolled and wrenched. There was a trumpeting of angu
ish, a roar of titanic pain. Griff dropped his hands. From a mound of rubble that hor­rible neck trailed and wriggled convulsively. The thing was half-buried, struck down. But Griff was only thank­ful that he could no longer see what had ridden it in.

  The blazing torch at sea had not been quenched. And the land was still moving. Then hands fell on his shoul­ders, jerking him upright. A voice shrieked in his ears words without meaning. But he turned, obedient to those tugging hands. This was the end of the world; why try to escape? Only some instinct far inside him kept him going over the reeling ground, even led him to stop and help claw another staggering figure to its feet. They were out of the town now. Scrub thorn and cacti tore at them as they pushed unheedingly through it. The red fires of hell blazed to light them on—on where? There was nothing left for man—no hole to hide in.

  PART TWO

  Operation Survival

  I

  THE GREAT SILENCE

  griff gunston stood once more on an island cliff. But this was not the San Isadore of the past, and his memories of that peaceful stretch of salted land and reef-bound water were now so dimmed by what lay between that it was difficult to believe that other island had ever existed, or that he, Griff Gunston, had led such a carefree—or reasonably carefree—existence there.

  A thick grayish dust covered the ground, clung to tattered bushes, and made a murk in the air through which the sun had not been able to penetrate until yes­terday. It packed as mud on the mask he had improvised from salvaged diving materials, and he had to keep scraping it away in order to see. Somewhere not too far to the east a volcano born out of the ocean was still spouting throat-searing fumes, dust, and molten rock in­to the air. And the same action that had given it birth had rocked and broken San Isadore, bringing a mass of new land from beneath the waves and plunging other sections into the depths. They did not know even yet how many of the islanders had survived the night and day of agony when that change was in progress. Yes­terday at the first hint of clearing the Navy party had started overland to discover what had happened to the base, but as yet they had heard nothing from them.

  Overland—Griff had crept to the edge of the racked rocks of the cliff to catch a glimpse of the sea. That was the worst—the sea was no longer under the rule of his kind. He knew now that he had not lost his mind in that instant when he had seen the sea monster advance into sinking Carterstown under direction. Under direc­tion! There was a menace lurking out in the bay—about the shallows. A creature with a mind, with intelligence, directing thought-out attacks upon any human being who ventured within range of its weapons. Only yesterday he had seen what happened to an unwary islander who had paused beside one of the inland sea wells. A loop, or it might have been a suckered arm, cast about the man's leg, snapping him into the water from which there was no escape, leaving his two companions to flee in mad panic.

  Hughes, the only expert they knew, had no answer for them. He had made a daredevil venture down into the water-logged town to inspect the remains of the thing that had been caught by the falling house. It was of the same species as that found on the beach, but that was all he could tell. Of that which had ridden it he found nothing, for he did not try to dig into the half-awash rubble. Though octopi had been known in the past to exist out of water for short periods, that creature which had directed the sea serpent was a breed with even greater powers of endurance.

  There had been no more earth shocks for three days now, and they had begun to hope that the worst of that particular phase was past. The survivors were camping out on the highest point of the interior, the salt plain where the lake of the flamingos had existed a week or so ago.

  Luckily, on the second night, there had been a heavy rain. And they caught the water—which was partly mud and stank of sulphur—but it kept life in them. It was Casey and Murray, with less skilled help from the is­landers, who had rigged a crude apparatus for distilling fresh water from salt, and though the yield was small, there were those precious drops garnered to be used for the sick, the women, arid the children.

  They had organized parties to gather supplies from the town. And the three shotguns found had proved useful in halting the stampede of wild cattle, which had threatened to beat out their camp on the third day. Perhaps fifty people huddled there, fifty out of —how many had Carterstown sheltered—at least several hundred. There might be other survivors in the bush who would eventually drift into the settlement.

  Some trick of the wind blew aside the drifting dust, and Griff saw what had once been Frigate Bay. The line of the reef tilted up in one place to form another island, its upthrust rocks slimed with dying sea things. And smashed squarely down upon it was a small boat—an island yawl or a fishing smack. But the dust curtain dropped again before he could be sure.

  With a sigh Griff turned to plod along, using a fish­ing spear to test each suspicious patch of ground as he limped forward. His task was to explore the southern portion of the island, bearing westward, to locate any survivors and start them into the central camp, and in­cidentally, to mark down any garden patch, any coconut palm, or other food that could be harvested.

  He came out onto a strange strip of land, where the former beach had been raised elevator-fashion several hundred feet into the air. He walked over sand that the week before had been washed by waves now dash­ing on a new strand far below. His mask kept out some of the stench of the decaying sea life already half-buried under the soft cloak of the dust. But crabs scuttled and tore with clicking claws at the rare feast.

  Wind! His head went up as he felt that familiar rip­ple in his matted hair. Wind! He turned his back to the force of it, very glad for the mask that protected his eyes against the blowing grit. Maybe it would clear the air.

  But instead it whipped up the light stuff and thick­ened the murk until Griff, battling through the soupy substance, fetched up against a rock with a force that brought a grunt out of him. He decided to shelter there. No use fighting through this when a misstep might plunge him to the bottom of a crevice.

  He crouched on the lee side, wedging his shoulders against the comforting solidity of the stone, his head down on his knees, waiting with all the patience he could muster for the storm to clear. Rain came—a visible curtain of water, washing the grit from his body in a warm flood, channeling the muddy silt away except where it was caught in brown pools.

  Griff ripped off the mask and held his face up to that downpour. He drank his fill from a rock hollow, filled the gourd that was his canteen from another. The bushes, the clog of dust washed from them, showed their natural silvery gray. Griff got up, eager to take advantage of this break in the dust fall.

  He came to the end of the lifted strip of beach and faced by a jagged stretch of rock, doubled back to an easier climb. A streamlet born of the rain was already dripping from the upper levels, and twice he stopped to drink for the sheer pleasure of rolling the water in his feverish mouth. It was the stream that guided him into the valley.

  Through some freak of the earth's settling, this cup had been born. A ragged row of palms were rooted strongly enough to be still standing. Here the bushes and ground shrubs, washed clean of the dust, were new and green. A trough of rock was turning into a pool of rain water. But beyond that was one of the single-room coral block houses. Its thatched roof had been ripped away, the walls were cracked—but it stood. And against it huddled three donkeys. With them were two of the wild horses, hardly larger than ponies. They stamped uneasily as he came, but they did not bolt.

  "Who come?"

  Out of the twisted hut crawled a woman. Her ragged dress was plastered to her body; a battered straw hat kept the worst of the flooding streams from her shrewd brown face.

  "Oh," she identified him, "Mistuh Gunston, from the fish place. Well, there's a plenty fish now, ain't there?"

  "Liz!" He recognized her as the sturdy and inde­pendent widow who had done the lab laundry, cooked for them on occasion, and had been their mainstay for general help until the month before
when she had been sent for to nurse an ailing daughter-in-law.

  "That's me." She smiled. "We done have ourselves a time, ain't we?"

  "You here alone?" Griff leaned on his spear to rest his leg. The tear he had received the night of the disaster was healing, but he still had to favor it.

  "No, sir. We all done got 'way. Lily—she's ailin'—" Liz jerked her head back at the cabin. "She's got Jamie an' Jess wi' her. Luce—he took the boys 'long him. They go off see they find water." She laughed richly. "They come back an' find water done come to us!" Triumphant­ly she pointed to the growing pool before her.

  "We've a big camp up on the salt flats," Griff told her. "Commissioner wants people to come in there if they need anything." Glancing about the valley, Griff privately thought that Liz and her clan were better off here, and she said so herself.

  "This here's a goodly place, Mistuh Griff. Thank you kindly for tellin' us. Now we got us some water we don't need nothin', nothin' at all. Come in, sir, an' have yourself a rest time an' tell the news—"

  He allowed himself to be shepherded into the hut. On a pile of palm fronds and dubious bed coverings the ailing Lily lay, her attention all for the answers he gave to Liz's flood of questions, while the two youngest of Liz's grandchildren crawled out of the same nest and crept across the floor to sit staring solemnly up at him. He nursed the thick mug of some herb brew Liz had pushed into his hands and sipped it gingerly as he tried to satisfy her curiosity.