Page 13 of Sea Siege

  With the aid of binoculars the curious had been able to identify a distant smudge as a towering mountain-island, born from the sea in a burst of flame and lava. Steam still arose from its flanks, and there was a curl of smoke at its cap. The internal fires were alive. Wheth­er it was a transient phenomenon that would sink again or whether it was there to stay, they did not know. And so far a closer examination was out of the question.

  "Now to work." Casey unstrapped the canvas roll of tools. "We'll pull off her all we can—"

  He never finished the sentence, for out of the sky above them came a sound neither had expected to hear again—the drone of a plane. Griff was on his feet shad­ing his eyes as he tried to trace that sound to its source.

  "Transport! And she's landing here!"

  "Where?" Griff glanced around. There was no pos­sible landing strip on San Is adore—unless the pilot in that lumbering ship was headed for what was left of the salt plain, which had been in the interior. Yes—he was trying for that!

  Griff began to run, Casey thumping beside him. There was shouting from other points. Griff saw others head inland. He skinned his hand on coral, felt the grit of salt-encrusted sand under his sandals. The plane was overhead now, moving in a wide circle. Something awk­ward in that suggested that it was either overloaded or in trouble. Then it came in to land.

  "Crack-up!" panted Casey. "They're going to crack up!"

  There was noise but not the splintering crash Griff had expected. He continued to climb over the sun-heated rock toward the salt-floored basin, where the lake of the flamingos had once rippled. And, thrusting his way recklessly through the thornbrush, which left oozing gashes on his arms and ribs, he came into the open. The plane, undercarriage gone, rested flat on the soil.

  "He made it!" whooped Casey. "That bird's some­thing special as a pilot!"

  As they ran toward the plane, Griff identified it as one of the passenger ships belonging to the inter-island tourist trade. One of the Seabees was tugging at the hatch as they came up. It gave, and he retreated a step or two as a tall man, his eyes bloodshot and in­finitely weary, his once-white shirt filthy and spattered with an ominous red, edged through.

  "This—is—?" He framed the question slowly.

  Before they could answer, they heard the pitiful chorus from the interior of the plane—the crying and whimper­ing. Casey reached out to support the pilot. The man winced under his touch.

  "This is San Isadore, fella." Casey's voice was gentle.

  The tall man crumpled, his legs folding under him and letting him down to the sand, his hands covering his twitching face. He was breathing in long, shudder­ing sobs, which shook his body.

  "Never thought we'd make it! Never thought we'd make it!" His words trailed off into sounds that hurt.

  But one of the others had pushed past to look inside the plane. He came out faster than he had gone in.

  "Kids!" he burst out. "There's a whole load of kids in here. Help me get them out, you guys!"

  Not all of those handed out of the plane were chil­dren. Four women, each holding a baby, staggered out into the sunlight. But some twenty children, ranging in age from toddlers hardly able to stand to three al­most in their teens, were led from the confines of the cabin, where they had been lashed for safety in bundles of blankets and foam-rubber pads.

  It was from the older children, rather than from the adults, that they got the story. A boy, his grimy hand bandaged in a strip of dirty gauze, held onto Griff.

  "Did—did my dad come?"

  "In the plane?"

  "No. He had to try the boat. The rest all had to take the boats. There was only one plane left, and they made us kids go in that."

  Griff knelt so that his eyes were on a level with the boy's. "Where did you come from, son?"

  "Santa Maria." He was shivering now. Griff drew him into his arms.

  "It's all right, sonny. You got here safe. And Santa Maria isn't far. So your dad'll be along."

  "They're things in the sea—" The boy's shudders were a dry sobbing. "They get the boats—"

  Griff was silenced. As far as he knew, there was no soothing answer to that one. He could only gather the lad closer, carry him as the cavalcade of children and Seabees moved away toward the settlement in the valley.

  "Has the water stopped coming here?" the boy asked suddenly.

  "Water? What do you mean, son?"

  "It came and covered a lot of Santa Maria. Then it came again, more every day. And Dad said we'd have to get away and get away quick or there wouldn't be any island left! The water just came and came—"

  "Well, it isn't coming here! In fact, the water went away and left us a big piece of new land. You can see it from the top of that next little hill. You don't have to worry about the water—"

  "And there're no bad things in the water here to get people?"

  "You don't have to worry about them now," Griff said firmly. "These men here are from the Navy, and they're preparing some surprises for those things in the water. You're safe. And your dad'll be here soon. You wait and see—"

  "What's your name?" his charge asked.

  "Griff Gunston. And what's yours?"

  "Jimmie Marden. You're an American, too—like Dad —aren't you?"

  "Yes." But Griff wondered if it wouldn't be more cor­rect to say now, "I was an American."

  "Dad works for the Fruit Company. Are you a sailor —in the Navy?"

  "No. I was doing other work here—diving—"

  The youngster swung about in his arms to regard him with big eyes. "You go down in the water? But didn't the bad things try to get you?"

  "There weren't any bad things here then."

  Jimmie nodded. "I remember. It was before the storm. I went out sailing with Hippy. He had a boat—he fished. But I never saw Hippy any more after the storm. Dad knows how to sail a boat, too. He's about the best sailor on Santa Maria—"

  "Then he'll be turning up before you know it," Griff suggested.

  But Jimmie's head went down on Griff's shoulder once more, and he felt the boy shiver. "—bad things—" His muted whisper could hardly be heard.

  Griff studied the tangled hair and the thin little body with a helpless feeling. There was nothing he could say that might not be a lie. If some desperate party had left Santa Maria by ship—was it possible for them to reach San Isadore? The whole seascape had changed. There were new islands, uncharted reefs—besides the sea enemy. Did such a party have the least chance of winning through?

  When they reached the settlement and turned the refugees over to the island women under the super­vision of the doctor, Griff and the rest patched together bits and pieces of a horror tale that exceeded anything they had been through. Jimmie's story was only the bare bones.

  Volcanic action had wracked Santa Maria to a far greater extent than it had San Isadore. A part of the other island had vanished within an hour as a spouting cone of flame and dust had broken through the outer reaches of the harbor. After that disaster the survivors who had fought to a perilous safety discovered that the doom of the island was sealed. In a series of landslips what was left of Santa Maria vanished hour by hour.

  Their escape had been forced upon them. Luckily a section of the airport remained above the water line. There men had labored almost in a panic to cobble to­gether out of the wreckage at least one plane that could take to the air, while others, with little hope of success, fitted up two fishing. boats for a try by sea. Most of the island's population had died in the first upheaval, or been lost in the fury of the storm, which had struck when the island was in its death throes. Out of thou­sands a handful by lucky chance made their way to the last stable land.

  The children and three women with newly born ba­bies were given the best odds in the patched-up plane, which a veteran pilot, Henry Forbes, volunteered to fly. Those left behind would take to the boats as the rising water forced their withdrawal. They would try to make San Isadore, though they had not been sure that that island was stil
l above water.

  "We're just plain lucky." Casey summed up their own reaction to the news. "Lord, we had it easy compared to them. What're we going to do about those boats, skip­per?"

  Murray looked in turn to the Navy pilot. "Any chance of getting that plane up again, Whit?"

  Hooker shook his head. "Not without a machine shop. Oh, we might do a lot of patching and hope. But it'd take days. You've that one LC 3—"

  The LC 3—an amphibian, tanklike vehicle made to plow through water and crawl over coral reefs—which by some freak of luck had survived the storm, was parked on the beach. Just that morning her internals had been checked by mechanics, and she had been pro­claimed seaworthy.

  "That's a thought," Murray conceded. "If we can rig up some sort of protection—"

  "Skipper." Casey leaned forward eagerly. "How about shock waves out from her bow. No," he corrected him­self, "we couldn't try that—too risky. But we could mount a couple of spray guns on her fore and aft. And maybe those things wouldn't attack in force if we tried a run by day. They like evening—or when it's gloomy —better."

  "How about it, Hughes?" Murray asked the ichthyol­ogist's opinion.

  "How can I tell?" Hughes's mouth was set, a perma­nent nervous tic twitched with clock-like regularity in his thin cheeks. "I don't know what makes those things do what they do! Until we can capture one, we won't know anything. And so far none of our traps and bait have worked. They think, I tell you; they can reason out just how to beat us!" His voice rose, and he was on his feet kicking at the packing case that served him for a seat. "Maybe you can shoot them out of the water. If you do, grab a body and bring it back; then maybe we'll be able to get somewhere."

  "Commander, you have no idea what course to set." Holmes entered. There was a bandage turban about his head, and he sat down quickly. "To go out on the mere chance of contacting one of those boats would be act­ing directly against our orders. We were told to estab­lish this base and wait—" He stopped suddenly as if he realized that he himself had almost committed the car­dinal sin of supplying top-secret information.

  Casey laughed outright and Murray smiled.

  "Wait here for what, Lieutenant?" jibed Casey. "More orders? From where? We're on our own now, and we have to do our thinking for ourselves. That feels kinda good." He stretched.

  "You have no real proof of that," snapped Holmes. "Commander, I would suggest that you'd be wiser not to take decisions on yourself so quickly. We have had no official news—nothing releasing us from our original du­ties—"

  Breck Murray levered himself off his crate. "There's such a thing as common sense, Lieutenant. And there're also some people out there, men and women, who have had it worse than we have. If we can make this their port of refuge, then that's for us. All right, Casey, you get Evans, Marshall, Hall, and Koblinski and see what you can do about arming the LC. The sooner you can have her ready the better!"

  IV

  SOS AMERIKANTSKY!

  "there's a volcanic island here." The pilot from Santa Maria, propped up on the cot, moved his bandaged hand to mark a cross on the chart Murray had given him. "And shoal water showing here—"

  "They'd have to swing to the south then—" mused the commander.

  But Griff spoke up. "Who were the captains in charge of the boats?"

  Henry Forbes frowned. "There was an islander—Pe­dro—Pedro Farenez. And Goodrich was slated to take out the other. Farenez knows these waters—he was to lead."

  "Pedro Farenez was a runner—at least Murdock al­ways claimed that. He'd head north instead of south; he knows that route better."

  "A runner?" Murray was puzzled.

  "Smuggler, running contraband to the States, even men who wanted to enter illegally. And he's been busy lately. Murdock said it was common talk among the is­landers."

  Murray showed Griff the map. "What's the northern route? Did Murdock ever outline it for you?"

  "I sailed part of it once in the Island Queen. But with these charts no longer accurate—" Griff surveyed the creased canvas and paper square before him with studious attention. He checked place names, the lines of solitary cays and half-hidden reefs. Slowly with his forefinger he traced the course while the commander watched, narrow-eyed.

  The route did avoid the recent blocks to navigation that Forbes had sketched in. On the other hand, the pilot had not crossed that section of sea, and more sur­prises might lie to the north. Murray rubbed his chin thoughtfully.

  "And that's Farenez's route?"

  "Pedro Farenez put in at Carterstown two months ago." The commissioner spoke for the first time. "He was always secretive about his business. Yes, he was known to be operating outside the customs laws, and perhaps against the American immigration laws, but noth­ing has ever been proven against him in court. How­ever, his knowledge of the northern cays is that of an expert. He might instinctively seek a passage through sea he knew well."

  "Like hunting a needle in a haystack! If we head off into the blue northward and they do come in from the south—! No chance of contacting them by radio, I sup­pose?"

  Forbes shook his head. "The boats are old—fishing luggers. One was not equipped with a radio at all, the other had one with parts missing. When we took off, it had not been repaired." His ghostly smile held no humor. "Why should they spend the time on it then? As far as we knew, there was no one left to pick up any calls. After the last day we had begun to believe that we were the only survivors—"

  "That makes it tougher. No radio— We could have beamed them in—though there's still a lot of static."

  "If we had two LC's—"

  Murray snorted. "If we had the fleet and a carrier on tap, we wouldn't have to worry at all." He swung to the commissioner. "What're the chances of picking up a pilot for this northern route from your people?"

  "Very poor, I am afraid. The only men who might have assisted you were Murdock and his crew. They're missing. I don't think you could force any of the others to sea now. They have too great a dread of what lies in the water. And superstition adds to that fear."

  "I plan on a five-man crew." Murray went to the win­dow to watch Casey and his crew laboring on the LC. "Two on each gun if trouble comes, the other to operate her. But a pilot would be a help—someone who knows these waters—"

  "I'll go—" Griff was startled at his own words. But the compulsion to say that had been as strong as the compulsion that had sent him into the inland pool in that reckless dive.

  Murray turned around. Griff could read dissent on the commander's face before he spoke, and he had his own argument ready.

  "I've been out there with the Island Queen. Made the run in her to Santa Maria four or five times, and once we went north along this same course. Captain Murdock briefed me on it, and I know the charts." He thrust the one they had been studying at Murray. "Lis­ten!"

  Closing his eyes to picture mentally the lines on the map, he began—first slowly, and then with rapidly grow­ing confidence—to recite sailing directions. Why, he remembered far more than he thought he had! The long sunny days when he had lounged on the deck of the Queen, listened to Angus Murdock's unhurried speech, to Chris Waite's stories, were now paying off. When he finished, he found himself the center of a surprised circle.

  "All right." Murray re-rolled the chart. "You've proved something or other. I may be five kinds of fool for let­ting you go. But maybe you'll provide what we need. I have a hunch about that."

  Burrows was nodding, too. "We can—we must de­pend now on such things—your hunch, I mean. I, also, think that it is meant for this young man to do us this service. But you do not leave tonight?"

  Forbes stirred on his cot. "They must have sailed this morning—"

  "It would be too easy to miss them in the dark," Mur­ray pointed out. "There's no help for it. We'll have to wait for dawn."

  Griff tried to sleep but found it hard. The glow of light from where the LC was being prepared was one irritant. But more important was his distrust of his own propo
sal. Had he been too sure of Farenez's route? Would the island smuggler try this time for the south­ern course? Suppose, following Griff's suggestion, they headed in the opposite direction from the party they were trying to help! His fault—it would be his fault.

  "Griff—?"

  Griff felt a hand touch his arm, slide up to his shoul­der, pressing there.