Sea Siege

by Andre Norton

  "You have fear—" The words had only a faint touch of the island slur, but he recognized the voice.

  "Le Marr?"

  "Yes, Griff, you have done what is right to do. There is that which must be done waiting for you. But the end is not failure."

  There was conviction in those words out of the dark. Griff had always believed that Le Marr had his own sources of information. There were odd quirks in many human minds that led to a measure of foresight—cases were known, but as yet no one could explain how or why. And the very inability to control such a talent made it more a curse than a gift.

  Now he asked without disbelief, "What waits for us?"

  There was a sigh. "That I cannot tell you, my son. But you will return, bringing with you what you seek, also much else."

  "Le Marr—who are you?" Griff demanded impulsive­ly.

  This time the answer was akin to a chuckle. "Have I not asked myself that these many times, mon? I am a son of San Isadore, also I am a Papa-loi, the ignorant witch doctor of the mixed bloods."

  "You're a lot more than that! Dad thinks so anyway."

  "Dr. Gunston is a seeker of the unknown. In my small way I walk the same path. Thus are we fellow travelers, owing each other the courtesy of the road. Now do you sleep, for the morning will bring much to be done."

  The hand exerted pressure, and Griff yielded to it, sinking back. Then the warm palm went from his shoul­der to his forehead unerringly, as if the other could see in the dark, and rested there in a light touch. For the first time Griff was able to relax.

  "—can't use the regular stuff. It's not for a Job like this." The protest came unmistakably from Casey.

  And Griff, as he came downslope through the gray light of predawn, was not surprised to see the chunky Lieutenant, J.G., facing up to the leaner figure of Lieu­tenant Holmes.

  "Sure I told Henley to break open those crates. We gotta know what we have. Maybe some of it can be adapted to this job. All right, all right, so I broke about nineteen dozen regulations when I said rip off the pack­ing! Who in Hades cares now? Go tell Washington, if you can still find it—" His round face was almost as red as the thatch of hair above it as he stood, hands on his hips, a ring of Seabees for an audience and a row of small, sleek, torpedo-shaped canisters laid out on the sand.

  "I shall make a full report—" Holmes returned coldly. He must have heard that snicker from one of the group, but he gave no sign.

  "Report your head off!" was Casey's hot retort. "I was given a job to do, and I'm doing it—to the best of my ability. I don't care how many reports you make, or to whom. You'd better get it through your head, Lieu­tenant, that the Navy's washed up. We're on our own—"

  "You forget yourself, Mr. Casey." Holmes swung around, his face set in stiff lines. He marched back to­ward the settlement, passing Griff without any greet­ing.

  "Now." Casey shifted his attention to his working crew. "We'll let this stuff go." He indicated the row of cylinders. "For all we can tell it'd send us to hell and gone if we tried to make it into depth charges. Put in that box of grenades along with the extra ammo. We want to get rolling as soon as the skipper gives us the high sign."

  The LC was not trim in line. On shore she had the ponderous shape of one of the crawlers, suggesting bru­tal power rather than speed or great mobility. During the night the workmen had rigged wire nets along her sides, nets which would offer no deterrent to the firing of the guns now mounted at her bow and stern, but which might give pause to anything trying to clamber on board from the water line. Since the LC was made to carry cargo or a sizable landing party to shore, the six-man crew Murray had designated occupied very lit­tle of the cockpit-like interior. But some of the empty space was being filled with boxes of supplies.

  "Hello, lad. Come aboard!" Casey had sighted Griff from his commanding position by the wire barrier, where he was now overseeing the last-minute stowage.

  As Griff dropped down into the cockpit, the other pointed to the guns.

  "Good stuff. They were hush-hush—rapid-fire atom­ics—something new. Probably planned to use against subs."

  "Yeah." One of the Seabees at the nearest gun spoke over his shoulder. "If they work. Me, I'm glad we've got a full case of them aboard in addition—" He jerked his chin left to indicate a line of automatic rifles of new design leaning barrel-up along the edge of the cockpit.

  "Can you handle one of these?" Casey asked.

  "I've used a shotgun," Griff returned, willing to ad­mit his own greenness, if it were necessary.

  "They've got a lack, but their fire power is great Here comes the skipper—maybe now we shove off."

  Murray's last-minute orders were few enough. Ap­parently having selected Casey to captain the expedition, he was willing to allow the proceedings to be at his subordinate's discretion. Years of working together in and out of the service had made them a team; each knew and depended upon the abilities and character of the other. The commander's one instruction dealt with time.

  "Three days only. Then whether you have made con­tact or not—come in. We'll try to keep in touch by radio. Any sign of a storm, and you head back at once!"

  "That's for true, skipper. We won't try to ride out any blow in this old mud turtle. Okay, Barnes, give her the gun and let's push off!"

  There was a snort as the LC motor came to life. She started a slow progress over coral rock and sand, a prog­ress that was close to a waddle but that brought them into the washing waves.

  "Come up here to the lookout, kid," Casey called. "You know these blasted fish and how they move. If you see anything coming—sing out!"

  "Lookout" proved to be a wide water glass set into the LC itself so that they could watch below the wave line as the amphibian craft took to the sea. When the treads no longer caught, she began to chug, a floating tank.

  To Griff's surprise the sea world he viewed through the glass was much as it had always been. The rainbow fish, the animal-vegetable foliage of the underworld was, as far as he could tell, normal, apparently untouched by the blasts of storm that had so beaten the island. But he watched alertly for the first hint of trouble.

  Sun banners flooded the eastern sky. Was that coming light a threat to the enemy? And who or what was the enemy? Mutants caused by atomic radiation from earlier testing? Such a neat answer, but probably they might never know for certain.

  Griff froze. That dark trail—it could be a twist of weed, an extra-long sea plume half torn from its moor­ings— But it was not!

  "Casey!" He gave the alert, still tracing that rippling, ropelike thing back to the crevice from which it pro­truded. It was a tentacle right enough, but the largest he had ever seen. The squid or octopus it belonged to was far more formidable than any of the creatures he had watched along the reef in the old days.

  "What is it?"

  "Octopus—very big one. See—it must be holed up there—right behind that big stand of red sponge!"

  "I don't— Oh, that's one of its arms waving about. But —Good Lord, kid, that arm must be about twelve-fifteen feet long! I didn't know they grew so big around here."

  "As far as I know, they didn't—before. Ink!"

  The murky cloud shot out of the crevice, forming a screen through which even the water glass could not aid their vision. Casey went into action.

  "Barnes, let's have the best she can do! Hall, you and Briggs stand by—"

  The LC's crawl stepped up a notch, but her speed was no better than a snail's compared with the agility that any of the great cephalopods could show, as Griff well knew. He reached for one of the rifles and saw that Casey had already picked one up.

  "They shoot that ink when they're afraid, don't they?"

  "It can also be a signal. With no speech, no hearing, it's their means of communication."

  "Maybe we've alerted a lookout." Casey peered fruit­lessly into the glass. "It sure muddles things for us."

  Griff watched that murk, hoping that soon the LC would be beyond its fogginess. Minutes pas
sed with drag­ging slowness. Nothing broke the waves, showed any desire to challenge the LC. Leaving Griff on duty by the glass, Casey went back to control to check their course. It had the look of a calm day. The sea moved in lazy swells. There was only a fair wind, hardly more than a breeze, and the sun was rising into a cloudless sky.

  Behind them San Isadore became a black smudge on the horizon. They approached within a mile of the new volcanic island cone and coughed in the sulphur-tainted air blown toward them. Storm wrack, in the form of dead fish, matted weed, and wreckage, floated by, caught along the LC, and had to be pushed away. There was an unpleasant odor, partly from the flotsam, but alien to the clean scent of salt and sea wind.

  Then that cone drew astern, and they were in the open. Gulls beat over them; one of Mother Carey's neat black and white chickens escorted them for a moment or two before tiring of their slow pace and flashing on. Casey held the headset of the small radio so that one ear could catch any message from shore. At half-hour intervals they tapped back their own monotonous record of no action. As the sun beamed down, they put on dark glasses and covered their heads. But, save for the birds, they might now be traversing a deserted ocean.

  "If it's this quiet," Barnes spoke up, "those guys from Santa Maria won't have it so bad. Maybe there ain't all the trouble that we think there is."

  "Or else it hangs about land, around the islands," Casey replied. "Wait!" The rifle slipped from his loose grasp. He had clamped the earphone tighter to his head with one hand, and his sun-reddened face was the picture of blank astonishment.

  "Something coming in?"

  "The Santa Maria crowd? Maybe, they got that radio fixed! They can give us a beam to ride, and we'll be right with them—"

  Casey held the earphone away, surveyed it as if he could not believe he had heard what he did, and clamped it back in one fluid movement.

  "Not Santa Maria—?" queried Griff.

  "Not unless they speak Russian there!"

  "Russian!" Hall fairly spat out the word, and his hand fell on the mounted gun he was to operate.

  "I learned some. That's Russian right enough." Casey was emphatic.

  "Expeditionary force—?" Barnes gazed bleakly ahead at the still empty sea.

  "Did any expeditionary force ever signal 'SOS Ameri­kantsky'?"

  "They're asking us for help!"

  "Seems that way." Casey's grin was back. "Sounds as if they'd like to see us quick, too. Well, boys, what do we do? Ride their signal beam in—it's in the general direction we're steering—"

  "It's a trap!" That was Lawrence at the bow gun.

  But Casey shook his head. "I don't think so. They may not know there's anyone around. Sounds to me like a general appeal. How about it, boys, do we go or don't we?"

  "We don't!" Barnes's retort flashed.

  "I don't know." Hall fiddled with the ammo belt of his gun. "We're armed, and they can't take us by sur­prise. After all—if they did plaster us—they must have got it as good. We're both finished—why keep on fight­ing? Kinda silly to do that, seems to me. And if it's in the same direction, we may run into them anyway. I'd say—have a look."

  "Suppose we vote." Casey spit overboard one of the slivers of wood he had taken to chewing in place of the vanished cigarettes. "We ride in on their beam and look them over— Ayes?"

  There were five "ayes" to Barnes's still defiant "no," but the dissenter accepted the decision with good grace when Casey pointed out that they would advance ready to open fire at the least hint of treachery.

  With the call signal ringing in his ears, Casey set about the delicate task of guiding the LC along the flickering beam, hoping to contact those transmitting it.

  V

  WHO IS THE ENEMY?

  "what's below?"

  With a guilty start Griff looked from the horizon to the glass, which was their spy-hole on the sea. But, though the murk of ink was missing, there was no clear glimpse of what might lurk there. They were out of the shallows, as the color of the waves about them testi­fied. Any ocean flooring now went down to the big deeps, where even the armored divers dared "not pene­trate. An occasional fish was all he could see, and so he reported.

  "How are we doing, sir?" Barnes asked Casey.

  "We're still on signal—"

  "Do they say anything else?" That was Hall.

  "Not so far. The broadcast may be automatic."

  "Bait." Barnes still held to his negative opinion. "New type booby trap—"

  "Maybe." Casey cupped the earphones closer. "Two points starboard—yes—" As the LC swung on the slight­ly altered course, he nodded. "That does it—beginning to fade a little. We must have it dead center now."

  "Something dead ahead!"

  It was a dark smudge on the water.

  "Reduce speed," Casey ordered. He produced binocu­lars from the case hanging on his chest and tried to ad­just them with one hand. Unable to do so, he held the glasses out to Griff with an impatient grunt.

  "What is it? A wreck?"

  Griff dropped his sunglasses and used the binoculars. Rocks, slime-green velvet in places with sea growths, leaped out at him—undoubtedly a newly born islet. But projecting from its crown, as a finger might point to the unclouded sky, was something too sharply edged, too smoothly sided, to be natural.

  "Island. Just heaved up, I'd say. Something on it-might be a wreck."

  He was still not satisfied. A wreck would be more irregular as to outline. This showed no breaks. He saw something move, flip up from the water's edge toward that smooth pinnacle.

  "Look out! Lord—!" Was he really seeing that—that ropy thing lift from the water to hurl an object at the structure above! "They're under attack!"

  Casey snatched the glasses. But Griff could see the islet without their aid now. And he could distinguish movement along the shore line.

  "They sure are! Quarter speed, Barnes. We don't want to hit a reef in these waters."

  The LC crept while Griff leaned over the vision glass

  alert to any movement beneath. The ocean floor shelved suddenly, and now he could see ooze and fish. But the shallows were too new to harbor the life forms of the San Isadore lagoon.

  "Port—look to port!"

  The thing broke water, its long neck curling up into the sunlight, the dark skin rough and warted, the fanged jaws open. It gave a whistling scream and snaked for­ward with a speed out of proportion to its bulk. But the guns were ready, and the chatter of their defiance crackled.

  A thin stream of red spurted high, the neck twisted, and the head flopped back and forth until the rags of skin, torn by the guns' fire, snapped, and it splashed into the sea on the other side of the LC. The convul­sions of the dying monster rocked the heavy craft while Barnes fought the controls and tried to back out of the blood-frothed water.

  "Lob an egg over." Casey stood braced in the center of the amphibian. "Anything else bound our way, Griff?"

  Griff, clutching the rifle, had an answer. "Plenty! Octopi—big ones— Ink!"

  Again that cloudy murk cut off his view.

  "Maybe this egg will give them other ideas!" Hall hooked a grenade from the box at his side, drew its firing pin, and pitched it over in the general direction of the islet.

  Water—water and other things, grisly flotsam—foun­tained. But a tentacle flushing yellow as it flipped into the air was planted against the side of the LC. Another joined it, and a third!

  "They're over here, too!" shouted Lawrence. Sucker-armed muscle and flesh smacked against the wire net­ting and shook it.

  "Stop the engine!" Casey ordered. "We don't want them wrecking the vanes—"

  "We're being pulled down!"

  "We are, are we? Well, we'll give them something else to think about. Get out that torch, Briggs. You— the rest of you—plant some more eggs. Nothing like discouraging reinforcements."

  The LC was rocking heavily. With the same precision as if he were repairing some part of his beloved ma­chinery, Casey aimed a welding torch
at the nearest length of tentacle and let go. There was the stench of burned meat as muscle and flesh crisped and blackened. The length fell away, the charred strings floating for a second or two on the surface of the water, and then disappeared. Methodically Casey turned and applied the heat to the arms showing on the opposite side of the LC, while his crew obeyed orders with zeal, lobbing grenades out in a circle about the bobbing craft.

  How many of the octopi attacked them they were never to know, but, as the sweat channeled in streams from the men in the heat generated by Casey's torch, there came a time when no new arms clutched at the amphibian, no shadows drifted toward them through the ink-tainted water. Casey leaned panting against the combing of the cockpit.