Thin Air

by George Simpson

  Three beams played down an empty passageway, picking out a network of rubber-coated electric wiring that stretched fore and aft.

  "Dockside power for the dehumidifiers," Hammond said.

  As dank and gloomy as it was outside, it was dry as a bone inside. To reinforce the impression, a motor switched on somewhere forward and they felt a flow of air against their cheeks as the dehumidifiers sucked up the moisture they had let in upon entering.

  Yablonski took the lead, guiding them down the passageway from memory, passing several staterooms with their doors open. Inside, there were bed frames bare of mattresses, hanging lockers with their doors secured to hooks on gray-painted bulkheads.

  "Officers' wardroom should be coming up," Yablonski said in a throaty whisper.

  They stepped into a large room, then stopped, aware of a drumming sound overhead. It took a moment for them to realize it was raining. They looked warily around the wardroom. The long table was still in place, but everything else had been stripped out.

  McWilliams played his light over the forward bulkhead, stopping midway across, about a foot below the ceiling.

  "What are you looking for?" asked Hammond.

  "See those four holes? That's where the identification plate was. Someone's taken it, screws and all."

  "Souvenir hunter?"

  McWilliams shook his head. "I'd say yes if she was going to be cut up for scrap. But she's still carried on MARAD's permanent list. You just don't do that."

  Hammond spent several minutes rummaging around, his light probing into the open, empty cabinets that lined the bulkhead. The end result was a big fat zero. Exasperated, he straightened and realized that only he and McWilliams were in the wardroom.

  "Where's Yablonski?"

  McWilliams shrugged. "Out in the passageway."

  Hammond darted out of the wardroom and saw the rays of Yablonski's flashlight forward of him. He hurried down the corridor to where Yablonski was standing and warned, "Let's keep together, Cas."

  Yablonski didn't answer. He shined his light on a closed cabin door. Hammond reached for the knob.

  "I've already tried it. It's locked." Yablonski's light did down to the deck. "Take a look at that."

  At first, Hammond didn't see what Yablonski was pointing out, so he circled it with his light: a cut-out portion at the bottom edge of the wood- where it fitted against the doorjamb. Gray wire was neatly spliced into the thicker wire that ran along the base of the bulkhead.

  "Now, that's interesting," said Hammond.

  McWilliams joined them and the three men stared at the closed door. Hammond put his shoulder to it, but it wouldn't budge. Yablonski moved him aside, braced his hack against the opposite wall, and lashed out with his foot. The toe of his shoe slammed into the doorknob and snapped it off. Hammond slowly pushed the door open.

  Yablonski hung back. Hammond heard him beginning to breathe shakily. In the eerie light, his face looked dangerously grim. Hammond stepped into the cabin with McWilliams ducking behind him. Their eyes took in a made-up cot, a small electric heater, and a hot plate. Several books were piled neatly in a corner next to a closed locker. Hammond opened it and stared at the clothing hanging inside.

  He pulled out a set of yardbird's coveralls and tossed them on the bed. It was the officer's rig that interested him. He held the dark blue jacket out in front of him, his light picking up a nameplate over the breast pocket:

  McCarthy, L.

  "Cas!" Hammond barked.

  Yablonski stepped in, his face already pale. He stared at the uniform jacket, emotions playing over his features.

  "Jackpot," said Hammond, smiling.

  McWilliams reacted only to what he saw. "Someone's been living down here!" he announced, like Papa Bear discovering Goldilocks.

  "Living, eating, sleeping, and sneaking around," agreed Hammond, giving the uniform a shake. "With this, he can get on or off the base at will, and with that"—he threw the jacket on the cot with the coveralls—"dressed as a yard- bird, he can move around anywhere on these ships."

  He was interrupted by the whine of a generator starting up. It jolted all of them. Yablonski listened briefly, then groaned and sagged against the wall, his eyes bulging. Hammond could almost taste his fear.

  "Yablonski!" he snapped,

  Cas struggled for control. McWilliams shifted his gaze from one to the other in confusion. "That's coming from somewhere aft," he said.

  Hammond unholstered the Browning and said quietly, "This time it won't be so one-sided." He eyed Yablonski. "We better have a look at the engine room."

  Yablonski sucked in a deep breath and lurched out of the cabin. He waited uneasily while Hammond and McWilliams put the cabin back in order. They stepped into the passageway and Hammond closed the door, then led them toward the stern.

  They dropped down one deck level, ducked through a hatch, and stepped out on a platform. The engine room lay below them.

  Four hooded lights, evenly spaced along the overhead, threw weak cones of illumination over the entire compartment. The whine was louder, coming from a generator at the far end, between the engines. As Hammond scanned the compartment, checking for movement, he wondered who had switched all this on. Hadn't he specifically told Chief Mills over the phone, no interior lights?

  Hammond snapped off his flashlight. The room seemed out of balance to him: everything shifted to the starboard side, and there was too much open space to port. Yablonski went down the ladder and stood in the center of that empty space.

  Hammond and McWilliams descended and joined him. "Is this where the force-field machinery was?" Hammond asked.

  "Yes, all the way up to the bulkhead behind you."

  Hammond glanced around. There was nothing there now, nor any sign that anything had ever been there, yet what about the open space? Yablonski pointed to open stud-holes bored into the deck. And marks in the steel decking where machinery once must have been. The herringbone pattern was not as thoroughly scuffed there as elsewhere.

  Yablonski said quietly, with full confidence, "This is the Sturman."

  McWilliams had moved to the center of the engine room, gaping at the enormous diesels that sank below deck and rose through the overhead. He stopped by the generator and noticed something odd. "Hey, look at this," he called.

  He was pointing to a digital timer set on the deck beside the generator. Hammond and Yablonski came over to examine it, but Hammond was more intrigued by the cables running from the generator into the mass of tanks and pump casings on the starboard side. He followed the cables into a dark corner to a wooden crate.

  The crate looked solid enough, but when Hammond lifted it he realized it was a very light wood, probably balsa, like a movie prop. And when he held it away, he found himself looking down at a duplicate of the pedestal he had seen at Bloch's house.

  His breath constricted in his chest for a moment, until he was aware of the other two peering over his shoulder.

  "Now we know what the generator's for," he said thickly.

  Yablonski backed away, bumping into McWilliams, whose curiosity had set him to bouncing on his heels. "Would somebody like to tell me what's going on?" he asked.

  Hammond set the crate down on a pump casing, stared v at the pedestal, wondering where the computer controls might be, then he turned to McWilliams. "I want you in the next compartment. If you hear anyone coming, let us know—quietly."

  McWilliams looked hurt.

  "Now, Lieutenant!" Hammond snapped.

  McWilliams' mouth clapped shut; he bobbed his head and left.

  Hammond knelt down by the pedestal, tempted to yank out the cables. Just another station along the network, he thought. He'd give odds they would find the brother of this one buried somewhere in the Boston Navy Yard—and more of them God knew where else.

  Hammond rose, brushed past Yablonski, and stared at the numbers glowing on the face of the timer. They changed. New time-ticks appeared. The sequence was meaningless to him, but the implications were ob
vious.

  "This clock is programmed to switch on the generator at assigned intervals," he explained. "The power drain is minimal, so it doesn't attract any attention. Late afternoon, too. Quitting time at the yard. Not a chance in the world anybody would be aboard to hear this thing." He shook his head. "The bastards think of everything."

  Yablonski shifted behind him, his shoes scraping on the deck plates, his face rigid with fear. "Can we get out of here?" he croaked. His voice echoed in the emptiness and Hammond had a sudden crazy impression that all the talking they had been doing was echoing throughout the ship and at any moment McCarthy would come through a hatch—shooting.

  Hammond straightened, tightening his sweaty grip on the Browning. "I don't want to leave," he said. "We've finally nailed a spot where McCarthy hangs his hat. Wouldn't you like to get your hands on him?"

  Yablonski nodded, but his eyes rolled toward the pedestal. "But let's get away from that fucking machine."

  Hammond desperately wanted to find the computers to try to put them out of commission. But Yablonski was far too edgy to stand still for a systematic search.

  Hammond turned on his heel and led the way out, not bothering to cover the pedestal with the crate. They picked up McWilliams and spent the next thirty minutes combing through the below-deck compartments, moving carefully, Hammond covering them with the; Browning. They were all jittery now, like little boys exploring a haunted house. McWilliams had a dozen questions to ask, but his companions' grim faces were discouraging.

  By the time they returned to the main deck, Yablonski's fear had settled into a general uneasiness. It was still raining, but after the dry confines of the ship's interior, the moisture was refreshing. Hammond looked up at the superstructure, noting that he couldn't hear the generator from where they were standing.

  He slipped the Browning back into his holster and moved to the ladder. "Let's check the bridge," he said. "Then we can leave."

  They climbed, wet rungs slippery under their hands and feet. Yablonski forced open a hatch and they entered the navigating bridge, ducking under the lines securing the yellow tarp.

  Yablonski's light settled on a square glass window forward of the helm. It ran from knee level almost to the overhead; it was triple thickness, bedded into a metal frame. The covering tarp had completely concealed it from the outside. Yablonski moaned. "That's the clincher..."

  "What is?" asked Hammond.

  "The window. It was built specially, for observation, so the captain could keep an eye on us during the experiments."

  "He's right," said McWilliams. "That's not standard. Ships of this class had round ports across the bridge."

  Hammond studied the glass. He jumped when he heard Yablonski gasp. "The compass—look at it!" Hammond glanced down.

  The binnacle light was on; shining softly, it bathed the compass in a red glow. The compass card was moving. It swung steadily until magnetic north had been pulled through a 180-degree arc.

  Yablonski's eyes bulged, darting around the compartment.

  "What the hell could do that?" Hammond asked. "The generator?"

  Yablonski shook his head. He was backing away, forcing McWilliams back behind him. McWilliams froze, sure that he had bumped into something. But nothing was there. His fingers stretched into the darkness and felt around. He touched something at about shoulder level and three feet away, but he couldn't see what.

  "Jesus!" he sputtered. "What the hell is this?"

  Hammond swung his light around to McWilliams' shaking fingers. They appeared to be meeting resistance. In the light beam, he and Yablonski watched with rising astonishment as an apparition began to take shape. Under the lieutenant's groping fingers, a sallow face materialized, bobbing slightly in mid-air. Sunken pale-green eyes gazed at the light. Then shoulders appeared, covered by a watch jacket and an open shirt with gold oak leaves pinned to the collars. The image spread downward; the uniform was Navy, but decidedly out-of-date.

  McWilliams was moaning, his words jumbled.

  Hammond wrenched his eyes from the apparition's face. There, on the jacket over the breast pocket, was a name stenciled in black letters...

  SARTOG.

  McWilliams tried to pull away, but a ghostly hand locked onto his wrist and he shrieked. The head turned slowly and the eyes swung past Hammond to rest on the compass stand. Thin lips struggled to form a word, but there was no sound.

  Hammond followed Sartog's gaze and saw the binnacle light on the compass wink out. Then the compass card spun rapidly back the other way, the degree indicators blurring in the dim light.

  McWilliams threw up his hands violently, breaking the grip on his wrist. He crashed to the deck and rolled backwards.

  As soon as contact was broken, the body started to fade from view. Hammond couldn't move: he was mesmerized by the pain and suffering etched into that tormented face. The vanishing hand stretched out toward him and the eyes pleaded for him to take it....

  Yablonski shouted, "Grab him!" and lunged forward, tripping over McWilliams and sprawling to the deck.

  Hammond tried to take the hand and missed. He watched the phantom disintegrate, fading to a dim pulse of light, then out, leaving no trace.

  Yablonski crawled across the deck and jabbed at the air, trying to make contact again. Too late. The thing was gone. They were frozen in silence, listening to their own labored breathing. Hammond recalled Rinehart's chilling words: "Sartog went zero and got locked out." The phrase drummed at his mind again and again, finally blending with the rain beating overhead. And he remembered Warrington and the other crewmen getting locked out in their hospital rooms, the laying-on of hands the only thing that saved them. But this was something else. What had Rinehart called it? "Deadlock. A state of invisible suspension." The victim was trapped in another dimension. Scattered atoms, confined to a certain area, waiting to be brought back into a cohesive whole by human touch and something else....Residual velocity of the force field? After thirty-odd years? It didn't seem possible...or likely. He gazed again at the compass. There were magnets built into it to act as dampers, to keep it accurate. Only a magnetic field stronger than the one in the compass could have caused the shift they had witnessed.

  And the reappearance of Sartog.

  But what magnetic field? Where?

  Yablonski stood up, shoulders sagging in despair. He took it as a personal failure. "He went zero on us, Hammond—"

  McWilliams also rose. "Mother of God," he groaned. "What the hell was that?" He stumbled to the hatch, avoiding the area where the figure had materialized.

  Hammond edged toward the spot and felt around slowly, carefully, for Sartog's body. Nothing. Not even a trace of body heat.

  "Come on, Hammond. We've had enough." Yablonski was standing at the hatch with McWilliams.

  "What do you mean, enough?" Hammond controlled his own shaking. "I thought you were hot to get these people. Christ, we've got more evidence than we can handle—"

  "No heroics, damnit!" Yablonski snarled. "Let's be smart and get reinforcements." McWilliams nodded vigorously.

  Hammond stared at them. Of course Cas was right. Hammond was himself feeling giddy, spaced-out. Events were moving too fast. Sartog—what an astonishing find! He felt daring, but he couldn't risk the lives of these two men.

  He stepped out and looked fore and aft, but the rain obscured his vision. He swung his leg over the lip of the bridge and one-handed himself down the ladder, followed by the others.

  On the main deck, he drew the Browning again, and released the safety. Now it was getting to him too. The silence seemed ominous. Even the rain thudded louder than usual. He motioned for Yablonski and McWilliams to go ahead to the gangplank.

  Then they all heard a hatch slam open somewhere aft.

  They stood like granite statues just behind the starboard breakwater, each one ready to urge the others to run, each so petrified he couldn't move.

  A figure appeared on the main deck, and they fumbled with their flashlights. The figur
e froze, caught in the triple beam.

  "McCarthy!"

  It was Yablonski who yelled. Hammond peered through the rain at the figure backing away toward the lifeboat mounting.

  Yablonski swore and charged after him.

  Dr. McCarthy stumbled backward and almost fell through the open hatch.

  "Yablonski!" Hammond yelled, cocking the Browning. He broke into a run, McWilliams following, and they caught up with Cas a moment after he had jumped into the passageway. A noise from aft drew all three flashlight beams. For an instant, they saw McCarthy again; then he shot down a ladder and disappeared from view.

  "The engine-room!" yelled Hammond, wondering even as he said it why McCarthy would go there, allowing himself to be trapped.

  Then Yablonski bolted down the corridor and Hammond stopped thinking. He just ran, with McWilliams at his heels. They stormed down the ladder, stumbled through two other compartments, then stopped just short of the engine room.

  The overhead lights were off.

  Hammond stuck his head through the hatch and looked down. "McCarthy!" he yelled. "You've had it! Come on out!"

  No answer. Hammond beamed his flashlight down, taking cover behind the hatch. No one fired back at him, so he eased out onto the platform and swept the engine room with his light. McCarthy was nowhere to be seen.

  Yablonski heard it first—a low whirring sound. He stiffened in alarm.

  Hammond listened. The whirring sound grew.

  On impulse, Hammond swung his light over to the pump casings. Fear shot through him as he realized how wrong all this was. McCarthy could escape just by punching the back of his neck and disappearing. Why run down here, back to the pedestal?

  Unless it was a trap.

  The balsa crate was lying where he'd placed it, and he could just make out the top of the pedestal. He swung the light away and realized the pedestal was glowing—horizontal shafts of orange-yellow, stacked one on top of the other like light through Venetian blinds...or through a vent.