Sea Siege Read online

  "They's gone wild—those mons up there! The deb­ble out o' the night sits in their minds, an' they thinks wild things. You up there—maybeso more trouble— bad trouble—an' that's not good. They 'fraid—an' 'fraid mons hit out at the first thing they see. They don't think, they do! You come, wi' me. The commissioner, he talk. When the wild go—these mons be shamed. Then they listen, they walk small for long time."

  "Are they burning the lab?" Griff asked. That some­thing he had sensed in the town earlier in the day had now returned a hundredfold. It was thick in the air. He could almost clutch it in his hand, taste it—the fear, the panic of a mob.

  "They can't burn the walls—they burn what they find-"

  Hughes writhed, and a torrent of raging words poured out of him. But the outburst was short. In a moment he was able to ask in an almost normal voice, "They took everything?"

  Le Marr released his hold on the older man and squatted back on his heels. "They missed some things. I tell Heber, Ross, Lechee—take an' hide your papers. They be in my house waitin'."

  "But why?" Hughes sat up. He sounded honestly puz­zled.

  "They 'fraid. The Island Queen be missin'. There be debbles in the sea. Before the doctor came, before you came, these things were not. They believe you dive in the sea, stir up bad trouble for island mons. If they burn what is your magic things, then you go 'way and the debble go with you. Now you come commissioner's house, make better plans there. Soon these foolish mons begin to think again—better let them do that then have more trouble now."

  Griff aided Hughes to his feet. "You win, Le Marr," the assistant said bleakly. "But all the chief's work— it's criminal!"

  "These mons—" Le Marr arose too. His hand twitched in vague shooing movements as if he would hurry the two Americans on before him to the Government House. "They ain't thinkin' now—they is 'fraid. Mon 'fraid, he do things what he don't do when he think. But when you 'fraid, you do same. Navy mons 'fraid now—they build, build, hurry-hurry, 'cause they is 'fraid."

  Griff could feel it—that net of tension. It had been slowly tightening about the island for days; he had be­gun to realize that—a feeling that they were all perched on the rim of a steep cliff with a wave rising to lick them into the raging water below.

  They found the commissioner still in the radio room. He might not have moved since Griff had left. Brax­ton Wells, the storekeeper, his grizzled, closely cropped hair a silvery cap, sat by the far wall. Without remem­bering, Griff glanced around in search of the other two who made up the inner circle of San Isadore. But Cap­tain Angus Murdock and Chris Waite were missing. In­stead George Hanson balanced timidly on the edge of a chair, jumping to his feet and jerking his tunic into order as the Americans and Le Marr entered. His topee with its patiently shined constable's crest hung on a wall Peg.

  The commissioner might be in the same position as Griff had left him, but he looked years instead of hours older. His face had a drawn expression. He no longer wore the headphones but nursed them in his hand, glancing down at them now and again as if they were totally strange objects.

  "What's going on here!" Hughes burst out. "Those hoodlums smashing up the lab! We're here under the protection of your government as well as our own, Com­missioner. You'll hear from headquarters about this outrage"

  The commissioner raised his head. "You are perfect­ly at liberty to file any type of protest you wish, Mr. Hughes, with your government or mine—if either is left by tomorrow morning." The colorless timbre of his voice, the tone of a dead man, stopped Hughes's pro­tests as effectively as if he had been slapped across the mouth.

  "What's happened?" Hughes rephrased his question of the moment before, watching the commissioner nar­rowly. This was more than any outburst of violence on the island, more than the disappearance of the Queen.

  "We received a message relayed from Santa Maria. Two hours ago Cape Town ceased to be."

  "Cape Town?" Hughes echoed stupidly. What did Cape Town have to do with—

  "Cape Town, South Africa, Wellington, New Zealand, Sydney, Australia, Singapore, and"—his tired eyes flick­ered from one American face to the other—"Seattle—"

  "Seattle!" That struck home. "But what-?"

  Burrows continued, stating wild facts as if he were repeating the current market prices on conch meat. "There's censorship clamped down tight now, and dur­ing the past hour they've been jamming so that noth­ing at all gets through. But something happened off the coast of China. They blamed it on the Western Con­federation, so they have started wiping out the great seaports one by one until they get what they demand-unconditional surrender—"

  "Why not London—New York—Paris?" demanded Hughes.

  The commissioner put down the earphones. "Perhaps they don't want to ruin too much before they take over. We've been told enough tales about what will follow out-and-out atomic warfare. The reports which have come in suggest bombardment from hidden subs, not air­borne missiles. And we've heard nothing for the past hour—other cities may be gone by now."

  Griff's hold on the back of the nearest chair tightened. He tried not to imagine what might be happening be­yond the rim of the sea. Back home they had always sworn they would not fire the first shot. But whey they were attacked, there would be a reply the world would remember. Had that attack and reply been already launched?

  Hughes was almost shouting. "They said nothing to us about this at the base—but they must have known!"

  "Commander Murray said nothing?"

  Griff shook his head. "He was speeding up the job there, would hardly listen to me. There couldn't be some mistake?"

  "No, the broadcast was official, though we don't know —or they won't tell us—more than a few bare facts. Those cities ceased to communicate—then the ultima­tum from the East—"

  Hughes shook his head. "They must have gone mad. They know what we'll do in return—"

  "They might have gambled on something else," Brax­ton Wells pointed out in his off-island accent. "What if the Western Confederation does not reply in kind? What if they won't take the risk of using the big ones—?"

  "You mean—surrender on demand? That's pacifist reasoning—"

  "Some men think it is better to endure a bad government for a space than to turn the earth into a cinder by retaliation."

  "And I say"—Hughes rounded on the little man— "that the men who argue that way should be forced to live in the Eastern Bloc and learn what it means."

  "Do you know how many million people signed the last pacifist petition?" countered Wells.

  "I know how many million are going to face the firing squads when the Reds take over if we fold up under this! Maybe that's why they've dared to make this move —those mouthy pacifist petitions have the Reds think­ing we won't stand up to them."

  The commissioner put on the headset and then turned up the volume of the broadcast receiver. From the loud­speaker on the table came a nerve-wracking clamor.

  "Jamming—still jamming. Gentlemen"—the commis­sioner spoke now with a quiet authority—"I believe that we must now assume that a condition of world-wide war may exist."

  "And that base may bring it here to us!" Wells snapped.

  "Quite true. But it is too late to do anything about that," Burrows pointed out. "And I believe that you will all agree that we have no defense against subs whose weapons can destroy cities such as have already been wiped from the map. Heretofore, wars have been waged and their action has not touched this island. Le Marr, has the real meaning of modern war penetrated to the people here?"

  "No, sir. Tonight they fear the sea debbles—they don't fear war. War don't mean nothing."

  "Then I must ask all of you here"—Burrows' gaze caught and held the party in the room—"to let it continue that way. We can welcome the disturbance at your lab­oratory, Mr. Hughes, wanton as that destruction may seem to you. It will occupy their minds. Tomorrow all who took part in it will lie low. But there shall be ar­rests, fines; we shall be very busy with it. But can we
afford a panic—the whole island going mad with fear? You understand that we cannot!"

  Braxton Wells opened his lips as if to speak and then closed them. Hughes wore a defiant expression, but re­luctantly he nodded.

  "All right. I promise to go along. But we must get some sort of news!"

  "Most certainly. So I suggest, gentlemen, that the five of us now here will do sentry duty at the radio— but that we alone shall have access to it. Unless the Naval party takes us into their confidence, we have this as our only link with what is happening out there. And since you are homeless Mr. Hughes, Mr. Gunston, please take quarters here. We shall arrange time for each to be on call here. Do you agree?"

  "Do we have any choice now?" Hughes wanted to know.

  IX

  WAR TWO WAYS

  griff swallowed and then ran his tongue over dry lips. He had a stale taste in his mouth; his body ached as he moved stiffly on the hard chair. He must have slept; there was a bar of sunlight advancing from the window. Getting clumsily to his numb feet, he stamped to hur­ry the return prickle of circulation and went to that window to look out upon Carterstown.

  The sour smell of the town hung heavy with no wind to lighten it. He became conscious of that—no wind. A bird chittered in the foliage and was answered by the squalling bray of a distant donkey. But there was no sighing wind, and a dank cloak of heat had fallen heavily on the houses.

  His shirt clung to him stickily. Griff wanted a shower, a change. Then he remembered the fate of the lab and all their possessions there. At least it would do no harm to go up and look around.

  Not wanting to meet anyone, to have to talk, Griff hurried down the hall and out of the door. A woman in the road outside glanced up at him and then away, staring straight ahead of her as she scuttled by.

  But the American strode on unheeding. In the dark­ness of the previous night he had been able to agree with Le Marr that it was best they stay away from the scene of disaster. But in the brassy sunlight he could not be so moved.

  And the sunlight was brassy. It glared down with an intensity that kept him in all possible bits of shade. Perhaps it was only his reaction to the past hours, or perhaps there was some actual change in the quality of the air. Then, with the memory of what might have happened elsewhere striking home, Griff stopped, one hand against the reasonable, sane roughness of a coral block wall, keeping that touch with reality as he fought a surge of panic. No man could honestly foretell the result of an atomic conflict. There had been so many imaginative constructions, so many learned opinions talked about during the past twenty years. Men had sol­emnly built ghost towns, peopled the houses with dum­mies, and then, rained this new destruction upon that handiwork to study the consequences. But none of those experiments could equal the real thing!

  The burrow of a land crab showed at the roots of a palm a few feet beyond him. If the occupant of that hole were caught in the sun, prevented from seeking the cool dark of its daytime hiding place, it would die —speedily—from the heat baking its shell. Were all of his own kind now caught in the open—without any bur­row of safety?

  A lizard flashed, a streak of brilliant coloring, jet black, yellow, ultramarine, along the rut of the road. Mechan­ically Griff began to walk after it. The heat was a flame funneled down upon the island. Without the usual al­leviation of the wind, it became torment. Griff's body steamed. He was forced to halt now and then, panting, as he made the climb to the lab.

  Now he could smell the stench of the fire, and with­in moments he came through bushes withered by its heat. Someone else was there before him, digging with an energy that made Griff marvel. To one side lay a pile of wreckage the other had apparently drawn out of the charred mess, and he was pulling out a tangle of black­ened metal Griff identified with a flash of anger as one of the diving air tanks. So they had destroyed those too!

  Hughes wiped his arm across his face, branding him­self with a smear of black. Beneath that he was drawn, haggard. His eyes met Griff's dully.

  "They made a clean sweep." He poked the air tank, pushing it to his salvage station. "We're finished here— unless we can get new supplies."

  Finished here—that meant return to the States. For a second or two Griff was wildly excited. That was what he wanted. But how could they go to the States now? Was there—was there anything at all left there? If the worst had happened— Resolutely he tried not to think of his father, or others he knew back home. Back home —was there a "home" now?

  "Any more news?" The ruin about them had no mean­ing if what they feared had occurred.

  "All wave lengths still jammed, or were when I came up here." Hughes was indifferent. Then he paused, looked straight at Griff with a measuring that held some of his old conscious superiority.

  "Maybe everything has blown up. But we're still alive."

  "No—not dead yet." Griff was wryly amused at the change in Hughes's expression. Did the other believe he was going to have a hysteric case on his hands in the younger Gunston?

  Griff stooped, hooked his fingers under the flame-grimed tank, and heaved it over the rest of Hughes's rescued odds and ends. Who knew—they might just find a use for it sometime.

  "Did you get the papers from Le Marr?"

  "They're the only thing that was saved. They stole the skull of the sea serpent." Hughes had fallen into the habit of giving that beached monster the traditional name. "I suppose it's on display in their devil-devil sanctum sanctorum! Every other specimen went into this." He toed the malodorous, half-burned rubble.

  Griff wandered over to the spray pool. A black and ugly wad lay on the once clean sand of the bottom, and fish floated belly up, washing in a scummy deposit on the surface. He searched for the small octopus. But it was a moment before he saw the limp tentacle trailing from beneath a stone. Chance had crushed the cephal­opod. Two of the crabs, whose clan had furnished its favorite prey the day before, were now tearing at its flaccid arms.

  A shout brought his attention back to the plundered lab. But Hughes was pointing up—into the molten blue bowl of the sky. Griff saw those white bands of ex­haust—four—no—five of them! Jets! He was on his feet, watching those traces of the planes they could not see fade from sight.

  "Headed south—"

  Sure, they were headed south— South! But why south? Why not north toward the States? Were they in pursuit of some enemy, or fleeing—ships that no longer had home fields—seeking a place to land?

  The air trails were lost. Griff's eyes fell to the sea. Down in the bay the full fishing fleet of San Isadore was still moored. No one was to be seen on the wharf or along the beach. But Frigate Bay did not look natural. Though the surf was no higher than it had been, the waters inside the circling reef showed movement. A school of flying fish—and there must have been more than a hundred of them—broke the water so close to the shore that most of them skidded onto the sands.

  "What in the world—!" Griff could spot the swirls beneath the surface, but he could see no logical ex­planation. "Frank—look here!"

  Hughes moved up beside him as triangular fins cut the water. Griff began to count aloud. "Ten—twelve-fifteen— Fifteen sharks down there!"

  "Fish!" Hughes's wonderment was open. "The whole bay's filling up with them!"

  The turmoil under the water was increasing. More flying fish soared aloft, flopping miserably ashore. Some­one shouted in the streets of Carterstown, and people ran for the water's edge. A squid launched into the air, struck upon the deck of one of the fishing boats, and lay there writhing. Venturesome children waded into the shallows scooping out fish with their hands. But very shortly they were being snatched back by their elders. There was too uncanny an air about this; the islanders wanted no part of the abundance being driven into their own dooryards.

  "What's bringing them in?" Griff asked Hughes, the authority. But the other man only shook his head.

  The confused shouting of the islanders was fading to a murmur as they drew back from the shore, retreating slowly, alway
s facing the bay as if ready to defend them­selves against sudden onslaught. There was a hail from the sea. The Navy cutter was coming in to the wharf, but the men on board it were striking down into the water, levering off the masses of sea dwellers crowd­ing in. The fins of the sharks drew in about the cutter quickly.

  "They're eating those cut to pieces by the propeller," Hughes said wonderingly. "If those Navy chaps don't watch out, they'll be swamped! Swamped by fish!"

  Somehow the cutter reached the wharf. And Griff watched the foreshortened figure of the commissioner, his white ducks as rumpled as if he had slept in them, go down to meet the men who came ashore. Then the whole party started toward the center of town.

  As they went, the islanders stood aside. It was plain that they wanted no contact with the Americans.