"But I do! I love you, Dick. I care for nothing except you and Asia, but I can't bear to see you killed or tortured even for Asia." She paused, suppressing her sobs.
"Plotkin is wild," she said. "He wired a copy of your statement to the university at Tsitsihar, and back came the scornful reply that all that your words meant was that the plague of algae is due to an increase in the amount of algae."
He smiled. "Well? Isn't that true?"
"Yes, but— Oh, Dick, it's becoming horrible! They've kept the cities supplied with water by adding calcium chloride to the supply, but all through the country—all through the world, I guess—wells are choked and rivers smothered, and oceans have become heaving masses of slime. And on land the mosses spread like flames of gray fire!"
He was still suspicious, though he held the girl tightly in his arms. "Is this an attempt to play on my sympathies?" he asked. "I warn you, Sally, I'll tell you nothing."
"I don't care whether you do or not! Don't you understand, Dick? I love you!"
"If you love me, you'll help me escape from here."
She pushed herself out of his arms, and stared at him with indignation at his disbelief. "And why else do you think I came?" she asked in a very low voice. "Follow me, quickly, before Plotkin cools down enough to put his mind on the details of your torture."
She stepped to the door, rapping sharply. It opened instantly, and they passed into the dim corridor beside a young Russian guard who looked at Sally with tragic eyes. She spoke softly; the man extended his bared arm, and the girl scratched it hastily with one of her finger nails. Lister watched the man as he sank slowly into a limp sprawl on the floor.
"Thus it will seem like American trickery," she whispered. "But I am afraid he will die for treason, none the less."
"Why did he do it?"
"Because," she said simply, "he loves me."
LISTER followed her up a narrow flight of stone steps, wondering how many of the barred doors in the corridor hid American prisoners. At last, she paused. "Wait here," she whispered, and moved from his view along a passage.
He heard a low-voiced conversation in Chinese, and then Sally was at his side again. "Come on," she called softly. "I've sent this one with a fake message to Plotkin."
Lister followed her up yet another flight of steps, and emerged suddenly into starlight. They had attained the roof of the structure, and he glanced apprehensively at the lights of Harbin all around. Sally was slipping toward a copter, a tiny, single-man observer.
"Quick!" she breathed, "get in."
"Both of us?" He frowned doubtfully at the tiny craft.
"We must. For I have to show you what to do. This alone would not carry, you far."
He crowded in beside her. The tiny cabin swung like a pendulum as the vertical screw whirred and whined, and bored its way heavily aloft. Sally flashed her green passage light, waiting anxiously for the reply from the ground.
"There!" she exclaimed in relief. "They've turned off this section of the Beckerley field. I have a pass, but if they had discovered your escape they might have blocked all passage—especially mine, I think; for I am sure that Plotkin has ceased to trust me."
The craft whined into darkness. The lights of the city diminished and dimmed; and, at last, Sally relaxed, leaning more comfortably against him in the close quarters of the cabin.
"We're beyond searchlights at last," she said. "Now they'll have to wait until dawn to pursue us, and by dawn we might be anywhere in this half of Asia, for all that they can tell. If this corkscrew only holds together—"
It did. When the red sunrise flashed up on the sea, they were directly over a narrow promontory that struck south into the waters. Lister gasped as he saw those waters, for surely this was the most amazing sea ever glimpsed by earthly eyes, at least since the plesiosaur looked over the oceans of the carboniferous age hundreds of millions of years ago.
It was a brilliantly smooth, green sea, seeming at first as motionless as turf. But, as the copter dropped toward the beach, Lister could distinguish motion, a slow heaving of the slime as if the vast expanse were breathing. There were no breakers, for the algae had at last tamed storm and wind, and the seas permitted the wind to slip as smoothly above them as if the waters had been covered with a film of oil. The one thing that sent a tremor of disgust through Lister was the sight of sea birds stalking dismally over a crust of slime that had dried enough to support them, gobbling up billions of flies.
SALLY wasted not a glance on the scene. "The south cape of Taiwan," she said, as the copter grounded on a slimy beach, "or, as you call it, Formosa. There's a boat here—"
"A boat? How can we use a boat—in that?"
"Listen a moment. In that shed, there's one of the experimental side-wheelers, a quick adaptation by our scientists, who had foreseen this outcome, if the algae were not checked. Side-wheels can push a light hull right over the algae. They don't foul like propellers. This one has a dynoline engine, and a range of about a thousand miles."
"A thousand miles! I can't get anywhere on that!"
"You can get as far as I want you to get," she retorted with narrowed eyes. "You can reach Hongkong— that's British—or you can make Haiphong in French Indo-China. Hongkong is much the closer."
"But they're neutral! I'll be interned, if I go into a neutral port. I want to get back to America and my job."
"And I," said Sally softly, "want to see to it that you don't. I'm being enough of a traitor to Asia now, without letting a dangerous enemy like you return to service. All I want is to see you safe, Dick."
She turned away, and he followed her to the shed she had pointed out. There was the boat, true enough, a thirty-foot, open affair with six-foot paddle wheels like a miniature old Mississippi side-wheeler.
"Do you see this?" asked the girl, indicating a curious device of twisted glass tubing. "That's a sun-alembic. You put sea water in it, and the evaporation creates a partial vacuum in which the sea water can be distilled for drinking. The sun does it, just as it does with the rain.
"Under here is concentrated food for about a month. Can you take care of a dynoline engine? If the algae clog the cooling coils, you must stop and clean them at once."
"I know all that, but what about you, Sally? Will you be safe after this?"
"I can take care of myself." Her tone was confident enough, but Lister could see that she was under a terrific strain in this struggle between duty and desire. "Oh, Dick," she said shakily, "if this war is ever over—"
"It won't be long now. As soon as the Khan's supply of fuel to Alaska fails him, he's ended."
"Ah, but he's laying—" She caught herself, flushing miserably.
"Laying a pipe line, eh?" finished Lister. "I rather thought he would. He'll power the Beckerley fields with oil, eh?"
Sally laughed bitterly. "The downfall of the Nightshade!" she declaimed. "No wonder they fear love in a spy. Dick, that is the first slip that I've ever made, and my one consolation is that long before you can get to any place from where you could send that information to America, it will be too late. The work will be completed and protected by fields. And so—good-by."
With the feel of her lips still on his, he watched the copter flutter its way into the north; then turned to the craft he was to use, whose only name was a Chinese ideograph. It slid easily into the slip; and, without further hesitation, he started the engine, engaged the paddles, and was on his way.
His progress was a queer species of locomotion. The blades threw up vast lumps of green slime that fell behind with sullen, splashless plumps; and the light craft, thrust forward by the incredibly powerful dynoline engines, slid easily along the surface of the magot-infested slime. It was not unduly slow; he judged that the boat made twenty-five knots.
Formosa was a receding shadow when he passed the first stalled ship. This was a Dutch freighter, and the crew —or what was left of them, since many had doubtless been put ashore by copter—crowded the rail to watch his passage. He waved, but t
here was never a sign of response.
Suddenly, he realized the cause of the grim silence; his craft bore gold and purple stripes—the colors of the Khan —and the Dutch, with Borneo, Celebes, and New Guinea in the very shadow of the vast Asiatic Union, had no love for the Khan.
His coil clogged, and he paused to clean the slime from the screens. It was at this moment that the idea struck him; he sat suddenly erect, staring eastward where the China Sea met the mighty Pacific. Why did he have to go to Hongkong or Haiphong—or any neutral port, for that matter?
What other possibilities were there? He glanced at the map of the East Indies, affixed to the cowl of the motor. There was Luzon, of course; but the Philippines, during their half century of independence, had grown far closer to Asia, in sympathy, than to the United States.
There were the Marianas, where Admiral Allen had all but annihilated the Asiatic fleet, and where surely there must be an American garrison, if he could but reach them. But the Marianas lay two thousand miles out in the Pacific, close to Guam. He had, fuel for half that distance, but—
HE SWUNG the craft about and set it lurching back toward the Dutch freighter. The maintenance crew watched him sullenly as he approached. He pulled close under the hull and shouted, "Any of you understand English?"
A man pushed to the rail. "Yes! What do you want?"
"Listen! I'm American, not Asian. Look!"
He was not in uniform, since the biological branch did not require it, but he displayed his identification tag, with its red-white-and-blue shield plainly visible.
There was a stir. "What do you want?" asked the man above him, but in friendlier tones.
"Just some information. I want to know if there's an American or British ship stalled between here and Guam. I want to buy some fuel. You been in touch with any?"
There was a long conversation in Netherlands dialect. At last Lister's informant spoke again. "De Britisher Resolute—she stuck—by latitude 21'20" and longitude 135'60"."
Lister looked at his map, marking the position. It would do; it was almost exactly a thousand miles east of his present position, and might be a close gamble with his fuel, but it was worth the try. If he reached the Britisher and got fuel, he could then certainly make Guam or the Marianas, and give to the American army the news that the lichens had blocked the Siberian railroads, thus cutting off the fuel supply to the Khan's Alaskan Beckerley fields, but that the Khan was frantically laying a pipe line.
Between the giving out of the Khan's coal supply and the arrival of his first oil, there might be a brief gap of time, during which his Beckerley fields would be dead. If America only knew this, and could strike then, the war would be won. Lister must try to get the information to America in time!
So he set the boat lurching away into the east. Little by little, the Dutch ship faded toward the horizon, and Formosa was a dark cloud sinking ever lower. At last he was alone on a dead, green sea that barely moved, and his passage left no wake save a slightly darker green scraping, that slowly closed behind him. No fin cut the slimy surface, and but few birds soared, for their slime-bred prey was too abundant to draw them far from land.
He set his course carefully on a great circle, to conserve his fuel. The malodorous slime sickened him with its stench. The perpetual lurching of his craft added to his nausea. Day faded into a starry darkness, and darkness into day.
He made it. At the second midnight, with scarcely a pint of dynoline remaining in his tank, the lights of the Resolute flashed out of the darkness.
But convincing the captain was almost as difficult a job as the passage itself.
"It's deuced irregular!" That official grunted. We're neutrals." But at last, because England had India and Papua and the Malay States, and hated Asia and all its component parts by tradition and policy, the British captain acceded to Lister's request, and Lister set out again with a full tank.
He had tried to get the captain to send a code message by radio to America for him, but to that the captain had proved adamant.
IV.
EARLY NEXT MORNING, on glancing back, he spied a plane, winging swiftly out of the shadows that still clouded the west and the distant China Seas. Soon it arrived, and circled far above him, then slanted downward in a wide spiral. The double-headed golden eagle of the Khan's air force glittered on its wings.
The machine swung close. An arm waved vigorously, gesturing in the direction of the west. The pilot was ordering him back.
Lister stared with narrowed eyes, but permitted his boat to jog right ahead. He was not going to be turned back so easily as that. All the same, he had a feeling anything but comfortable, for he was completely at the mercy of the Asiatic aviator, should the latter choose to use bullet or bomb.
The plane circled again. Suddenly Lister realized with a start of amazement that the craft was attempting to land—to alight on that sticky mass of heaving slime! It was impossible!
But the plane seemed able to achieve the impossible. Its pontoons skipped lightly over the treacherous stuff, bounding toward him. It was all but down safely, and then—then the inevitable! Either the plane dipped or the sea heaved—Lister could not tell which— and the idling propeller struck a mass of green slime. Very gently, the plane lifted its tail and nosed over, the green corruption spewing from the spinning blades. And the pilot—for a single instant Lister had a clear view of the form that was catapulted through the air—was plunged into the impassive algos. All that remained was a quickly filling depression and the sinking plane.
But he had seen enough. Sally Amber! It was Sally who struggled somewhere in the depths of that nauseating sea. And he—he was as helpless to aid her as though he were a thousand miles away.
He spun the wheel; the boat bounced and jogged toward the spot. As near as he could bring it without disturbing the gradually closing dent in the slimy surface of the sea, he halted the craft. He seized the twenty-foot rope fastened to the bow, and tied one end of the rope firmly around his arm. Then, fixing his gaze on the spot, he plunged down into the slime.
It was like trying to swim in heavy oil. To move his arms at all required a great effort, and then he was not sure whether he was going down, or up, or sidewise, or was just churning. The stuff clogged his nose, his eyes, his ears—even his mouth, when in an unguarded moment he opened it.
His hand struck something solid. It was an instant before he realized that it was Sally's ankle. He clutched it in a grasp of desperation, and gave a yank on the rope tied to his arm. Pulling in on the rope was difficult, as he had only one free hand with which to work. Once he lost hold of the rope in the slime, and had to start all over again, groping along it from where it was tied to his arm.
He scarcely knew when he reached the surface, so thick was the coating of muck he carried with him. He thrust the girl across the gunwale, and then had to stop to clear his nose and mouth before he could even breathe. He clambered into the boat.
Sally was not unconscious, but her nausea made her almost as green as the algae she clawed out of her eyes.
"Thank you, Dick," she said, "for the rescue. I'm ashamed that I needed it."
"Why are you here, Sally?"
Her eyes hardened a bit. "Why are you here, Dick? I told you to make for Hongkong or Haiphong."
"But I didn't promise to, Sally."
"Perhaps not, but do you think I can let you get to an American ship or port, with the information you have? It's bad enough that I let it slip, and that I helped you to escape, but I will not play traitor to Asia any further than that! Do you understand?"
"How'd you find me?"
"It occurred to me, after I left you, that you might try just what you did. I got back to Harbin before Plotkin thought of connecting me with your escape—if he's thought of it yet—so I was able to get a plane. I flew over the China Sea between Taiwan and Hongkong, until I was sure you weren't on that route. Then I flew east.
"For two days, I've been scouring this area. You see, I anticipated that you'd hea
d for Guam. But now, Dick, you're going where I say. We're going back to Luzon. The Philippines are neutral, but they're friendly to Asia, so I can have you interned there, and yet, with a little influence, go free myself. Start your engine."
He did. The boat took up its eastward course.
"Turn about!" she snapped. When he merely smiled, she reached suddenly into the bosom of her aviator's shirt and produced a tiny Japanese automatic, one of the diminutive nine-caliber, but deadly with its high-velocity, chrome-jacketed bullets. "Put about, Dick!"
With a movement so casual that she was caught completely off guard, he kicked the weapon from her hand, and. it spun off into the slime. "We go my way, Sally," he said quietly.
She sobbed, "I ought to have killed you! But I couldn't, and this is the result."
Abruptly she turned her glorious deep eyes upon him. "Dick, do you know what will happen to me, if you take me to Guam? You know what they do to spies! Do you want me to be shot against a wall?"
"Lord!" he muttered. "I didn't think of that. Listen, Sally. The Pelew Islands are Japanese, and they're not far off my course. I'm going to land you there about midnight, and you're going to be thoroughly bound, and very tightly gagged, so you can't rouse any pursuit. After the war is over, maybe you will forgive me."
"I forgive you now, Dick," she said softly, but with a puzzling note in her voice. "The Nightshade is dead. I'm no good as a spy when you're involved. But I warn you that I shall still try to defeat you!"
He swung the boat onto its new course. "If you can, Sally."
SUDDENLY he noticed something which altered all his plans! Staring out over the horrible, slimy sea, he noticed a change. In addition to the green, there were now vast patches of brown —of dying algae!
For a moment he failed to grasp the significance of this. Then, so suddenly that Sally jumped, he shouted, "I see it all now! It has happened!"
The Lost Master - The Collected Works Page 5