Up Periscope

by Robb White

  At one thirty-six the man’s breathing became noisy—a dry, steady snoring.

  Ken picked up one of the full bottles and, still creeping, the bottle held ready by the slim neck, he went around the man’s limp feet and into the shack.

  He put the bottle on a shelf and, for an instant, looked around. Dead ahead was a shelf with a transmitter-receiver reaching from wall to wall. On the shelf to his left there was an old typewriter. To his right there were what looked like comic books, old newspapers, some dirty dishes and cups, and a rusty stove.

  There were, as far as he could see, no books, nor any sort of coding board or machine.

  Feeling a sick rush of disappointment at the lack of any sign of a code, he went on with his preparations.

  First he set the little metal mirror on the door hinge so that, just by turning his head, he could look into the mirror and see all the way down the path to the barracks.

  Next he got both Minoxes and the meters out from under his coveralls. With them dangling around his neck, he took one step over to the shelf with the radio gear.

  There was not a single piece of paper with writing on it. Lying in front of the receiver was a pad of cheap ruled paper without a mark on it and, beside that, two or three yellow pencils, all sharpened with a pocket knife.

  He turned to the shelf with the comic books and dishes. He went through the old, tattered papers swiftly. There was nothing.

  One of the comic books showed a U.S. sailor on a battleship. On the sailor’s chest was tattooed another battleship. Then a Japanese battleship appeared and sank the U.S. ship, blowing the sailor up into the air. While he was still in the air a Japanese main battery rifle shot a hole in him, sinking the ship tattooed on his chest.

  Ken didn’t think it was very funny as, almost desperate now, he turned back to the transmitter shelf.

  He went through the pad of paper page by page. They were all blank. Then—why, he could never explain—he lifted the hinged metal lid of the receiver.

  Pasted inside the lid were long strips of paper covered everywhere with ideographs. The first thing he recognized was a column of numbers. Opposite them were two more columns of ideographs, only some of which he knew.

  There were two electric lights in the shack, one overhead, the other a gooseneck lamp. He brought the lamp over and twisted the shade so that all the light fell on the strips of paper pasted on the lid.

  Then he checked the mirror.

  For an instant his heart stopped. His breathing stopped.

  A Japanese, in uniform, with a cartridge belt and holster, was walking down the path toward the radio shack.

  As he passed what Ken thought was a bathhouse another man came out. The two talked for a moment, then the first man came on.

  For what seemed like centuries Ken couldn’t even make his mind work. He just stood there, paralyzed, his hand on the shelf holding him up.

  Then, gradually, his mind began to work again. The first and most important thing was not to be seen.

  But there was no way out of the shack except by the single door. The windows had been screened simply by nailing the wire over them.

  He was trapped there in the shack. For a moment he felt panic coming up solid in his throat.

  Then he accepted the fact that he was trapped and put it aside.

  He took one quick step and picked up the full bottle of sake. He held it in his right hand, by the neck.

  He was now standing opposite the man in the chair which faced the barracks. Thus he could see the man coming down the path, in the mirror above the drugged man s head.

  It was two o’clock in the morning. Ken noticed that now things were much quieter. Only a few tuneless strains of singing came from the barracks and these were almost drowned out by the sound of birds and bugs and the wash of the sea on the windward side of the island.

  The walking man s feet made a soft, swishing sound in the cloth sandals he wore. If he had been drinking there was no sign of it for he walked without any staggering or weaving along the path.

  His image in the mirror grew larger and larger until at last it was just a blur of grayish uniform.

  Then Ken saw one of the curious sandals swing into his area of vision. The sole was made of layers of cloth and a short length of padded rope came up between the big toe and the next one, thinning out into a cord which went around the yellow ankle and held the sandal on.

  Then the trousers and, at last, the man.

  He stopped—about two feet from Ken—facing the man in the chair, and said something. Ken could not understand the words but the tone was angry.

  He said the same short sentence two or three times. Then he reached out and slapped the mans face with the palm and the back of his hand.

  Then, just as Ken had done, he walked around the sprawled legs and entered the radio shack.

  What happened then was, to Ken, a strange, unreal thing. Even as it happened he felt as though he were watching this event at a movie or on a stage and that the people taking part in it—himself and the Japanese soldier—were only actors.

  It was unreal, too, in that it seemed to him that the whole thing took a very, very long time. Although he knew in a part of his mind that only a few seconds went by, it seemed to him that hours—years—were spent there.

  He felt no fear whatsoever. In fact, he felt nothing at all personal. No fear, no regret, no feeling of sympathy, nor of compassion, nor of achievement.

  It was, simply, an act which had to be done. Although he had not included this thing in his plans, now that it was here it had to become a part of them and, like getting the tunnel dug, it had to be done.

  The Japanese looked straight at him. First he looked into Kens eyes and then his own slanted eyes flicked down to the cameras hanging from the thin chains. Then they moved back to Kens face.

  The movement had started long, long ago and, it seemed to Ken, it went on, and on.

  The green, heavy glass bottle had a nice feeling of balance in his hand, of weight and leverage. If he had swung it straight down it would have felt even better. But he did not swing it that way for, a long time ago—a second—Ken had realized that nothing short of killing the Japanese would do.

  So he swung the bottle sideways, aiming for the little sunken place in the yellow skin just beyond the left eye.

  The Japanese was moving his hand toward the pistol hanging in the cloth holster from the cloth belt when the bottle got there. Ken had swung it with all his might and, at the end, had added speed to its movement by snapping his wrist into it.

  The green bottle broke just beyond Kens fingers and the man’s skull broke also.

  Before he could fall Ken took him by the shoulders and shoved him back out past the sprawled legs. Then he let him fall slowly on the concrete, his head lying in a pool of foam and blood.

  The pulse in the yellow wrist went on for a few seconds and then stopped.

  Ken took one long, deep, shivering breath through his open mouth. Then he looked again into the mirror. The path was empty now.

  Going back to the receiver, Ken checked his exposure meter readings and began photographing the strips of paper glued in the receiver. He used different exposure times and lens openings, different lighting angles and distances, and used both cameras.

  When he was through he closed the lid and put the lamp back where it had been. Then he made a final and thorough search but found nothing else.

  Going over to the drugged man, he pulled the earphones off and threw them on the floor. He then pushed the man out of the chair and rolled him half into the room. Taking the broken sake bottle, he put the neck of it in the limp hand and made it stay there.

  The trip back to his buried gear Ken never could remember. He saw no one, heard no sound of man.

  At the beach, ready to start for the Shark, he whistled once— the signal that he was through. It was answered from far away and, as he walked into the water, he was sure that, already, the natives were filling the tunnel so that, by dawn, th
ere would be no trace of it.

  As soon as it was deep enough Ken went under water. Then, staying only a few feet below the surface, he watched his compass course and the time.

  It was three-thirty.

  When he guessed that he was within a hundred yards of the Shark he went deeper, stopping his descent when he was forty feet down. Then, still on the compass course, he swam slowly.

  There was no fight from the world of air and land, so that, actually, he could see nothing. But there in the water were a million fights. Some drifted, pale, pale green and faint; some moved like shooting stars; some were only twinkles and flashes. All pale and deathly faint.

  When he thought he was close he stopped breathing so that the exhaust from the Aqua-Lung wouldn’t drown out all other sound. Now he could hear noises coming from the sub. He had gone a little to the left of his course, so he turned now and headed straight for the sound of low, slow machinery, of an occasional dull bang of metal against metal.

  He ran into the rough steel side of the Shark, scraping his wrist against her.

  Feeling his way along, he found the conning tower structure above the deck. Floating beside it, he got the knife and began hammering on the steel.

  In a moment he heard answering bangs from within the ship.

  At last, the cameras safe in their waterproof cases, Ken stood in the blackness of the escape hatch.

  Then the water dropped away from around him and light streamed up.

  He looked down between his legs and saw Pat Malones great black beard and the scar on Carney’s face.

  It was like coming home after a long and dangerous time.

  Chapter 6

  In Willy’s service pantry it was hot and dark and, after two hours of being shut tight, smelled badly. Ken wiped sweat off his face as he pulled the long, thin strips of film out of the wash water and started drying them.

  Here on these little strips of film was either the success or failure of his mission. Here, perhaps, was the secret which would save ships and men and time in this war against the Japanese. Here was what he had risked his fife for.

  And killed a man for.

  As he carefully dried the strips he felt the angle of the deck tilt down and heard the roar of the diesels stop.

  Dawn.

  Dry at last, he opened the door and wiped the sweat off his face.

  Carney was waiting in the wardroom.

  Ken put the first film into a battery-operated viewer which magnified the frames about twenty times.

  There, the writing white, the background black, the negatives sharp and clear, were photographs of the strips of paper pasted in the hinged lid of the transmitter. With a flood of relief, he handed the viewer to Carney. “At least I got pictures,” he said, “but I don’t know what of.”

  “They look clear,” Carney agreed, “but meaningless.”

  Ken looked through the viewer for a long time, sweat beginning to run on him again. At last, he pushed the viewer over to Carney. “Do you see those columns in dot-dash code? It isn’t Morse. But do you notice that, starting with the right-hand column, the dots and dashes change under each column?”

  “Yes, they do.”

  Ken got the dictionary and began looking up the ideographs at the top of each column. “They’re phases of the moon.”

  “Say that right-hand column is the basic code,” Carney suggested. “The one coming in from Pearl. Then, with each phase of the moon, the island operator would shift to the code under that phase.”

  “Could be,” Ken said. “Or it could be just—nothing at all.”

  “How long will it take you to break that down into a message we can send?”

  “All day, I should think,” Ken told him.

  “All right, we’ll set up to send it as soon as we surface tonight. But why don’t you get a little sleep before you tackle it, Ken? That must have been quite a party last night.”

  Ken glanced at him. “I wonder if I killed a man for—nothing.”

  It was a long day. In the first place, Ken couldn’t sleep. For almost an hour he tried, but whenever he felt drowsy he would begin to remember the tunnel, the shack, the green bottle, the eyes of the Japanese man just before all expression went out of them.

  Giving up, he went to work translating the columns into English. That done, he spent the rest of the day in the hot radio shack encoding the message for Pearl.

  As soon as the boat surfaced that night Carney came down to the radio shack. When he saw the length of the message he frowned. “That’s going to be a long transmission. Hope there’s nothing taking bearings on it.” He initialed the release and Shelton began tapping it out on the bug.

  “Come on down to my cabin,” Carney said to Ken.

  Ken followed him and willingly sat down on the bed when Carney motioned toward it. Suddenly he was dead-tired, drained out, so tired that he seemed to ache. His brain was so tired that he could hardly make it figure out that he hadn’t had any sleep for thirty-six hours.

  “What do we do now?” he asked.

  Carney didn’t answer until he had settled in the single chair and put his feet up on the tiny desk. “Tell me this, Ken,” he said quietly, “how did it go?”

  Ken told him briefly what had happened on the island.

  When he finished, Carney just sat studying the ragged sandals he had on his bare feet. Finally he said, “Only two things worry me. I wonder if the natives are going to talk. Maybe a kid will accidentally say something. The other thing is: what are they going to think when they find those two-one dead, the other drugged?”

  “That’s the only thing that worries me,” Ken told him. “The natives won’t talk. I’m sure of that. And no children ever saw me. They hate the Japs too much and we mean peace and freedom to them. They won’t talk. Now that other thing: in the first place, no one—except the dead man—saw me. I’m sure of that. So what else can they think but that the drunk (they’ll think he’s drunk, not drugged) got into a fight with the other guy, smacked him with a bottle, and then passed out?”

  “Don’t see what else they can think,” Carney agreed. He was still studying the ragged sandals, lining up the tips of them and squinting at them.

  Slowly through Kens weary brain he began to feel that something was wrong. Carney was usually perfectly direct; he usually looked at you when he talked to you. So far, Ken suddenly remembered, Carney hadn’t looked at him at all.

  “What’s the trouble, Skipper?”

  Carney finally turned his head and looked straight at him. “It’s this, Ken. You came back with some pictures. We don’t know what they are. They might be nothing at all. We won’t know until we get the word from the cryptanalysts in JICPOA.”

  Ken nodded. He was sure now that something deep and serious was bothering Carney.

  “We’re going to hang around the atoll until we hear,” Carney went on. “In case”—he stopped and looked at Ken again—“we have to go back and look harder for that code.”

  Ken straightened up on the bed. “I looked pretty hard, Skipper. If that isn’t the code then it isn’t in that radio shack.”

  “Are you sure, Ken?” Carney asked. There was no insult in his tone, no meanness. Just a sort of doubt. “Did you look everywhere?”

  For a moment Ken just sat there. Then he leaned slowly back and rested. “Phil,” he said, “you’re thinking about the time I puked in the bucket, aren’t you?”

  He could tell by Carney’s face that he was hating this. “Well, yes, Ken. And you were a little shaky on the bridge that day, too.”

  Ken grinned. “I sure was. I was scared stiff, Skipper. But I wasn’t afraid when I was in the shack. I don’t know why I wasn’t, I just wasn’t. Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t feel brave, I just wasn’t scared. I looked everywhere for that code and I left no sign that I had been there.” He paused and looked at Carney. “I wasn’t scared, Phil. Just a little when I saw the Jap coming, but then only for a second.”

  You could see Carney relax, see th
e furrows of strain in his face smooth out. “That was something I had to know, Ken. I think I knew it anyway, but I wanted you to tell me. And I just hope you got what you went for.”

  “So do I,” Ken said.

  Carney lit a cigarette and slipped his feet out of the sandals. “Wouldn’t it be nice now if we got word from COMSUBPAC that you’d done your job and, next, that we could go hunting? We’ve got fuel, food, and fish for a nice little patrol.” Then he suddenly laughed out loud. “Boy, I’m dreamin,” he said, still laughing.

  “Why?”

  Carney stopped laughing. “COMSUBPAC wouldn’t let me and Frank take his little yacht on a patrol for anything in the world. I’ll bet the admiral has gnawed off every fingernail he’s got already.”

  “I don’t see why,” Ken argued, amazed.

  “I’m just temporary skipper. I haven’t even passed the qualifications for command yet. I’ll bet you a day’s pay, Ken— yours against mine—that the next word we get from COMSUBPAC says, PROCEED DIRECTLY TO PEARL HARBOR STOP DO NOT ATTACK UNLESS UNAVOIDABLE STOP… .” He was about to go on when Shelton, hardly pausing to knock at the door, shoved the curtain aside.

  “Here’s an OP priority URGENT for us, Captain,” he said, handing Carney a dispatch page and the coding board.

  “OP URGENT?” Carney said, his tone changing. “Must be something hot. Maybe I lose that bet, Ken.”

  “I didn’t take it,” Ken reminded him as he started decoding the message.

  COMSUBPAC SENDS TO SHARK STOP LARGE ENEMY TASK FORCE IN YOUR AREA STOP ASSUMED TO BE EN ROUTE TO ATTACK OUR FORCES IN GILBERT ISLANDS STOP BASE COURSE ONE EIGHT SEVEN STOP RADICAL ZIGZAG ESTIMATE SPEED ON COURSE ONE FIVE STOP POSITION LONGITUDE EAST ONE SEVEN EIGHT DEGREES ZERO FOUR MINUTES ONE ZERO SECONDS LATITUDE NORTH ONE FIVE DEGREES THREE TWO MINUTES ZERO EIGHT SECONDS STOP AT THIS DATE TIME GROUP ZEBRA STOP ESSENTIAL THAT THIS FORCE BE DELAYED OR DIVERTED STOP SHARK ACKNOWLEDGE STOP.

  As Ken broke the words one by one, Carney plotted the position. He then advanced it to the present time and called up for the Shark’s own position. Then, scribbling on the back of the original message, he handed Ken the piece of paper. “Shoot this one out in a hurry.”