by Philip Wylie
However, early search drones had brought back mile upon mile of film showing utter desolation. No seagoing warship could be detected on that film by the experts. The seas were empty of such craft. No enemy submarines had been heard during the long confinement in the hidden Red bases. None showed on the film. None was reported by the solitary Red nuclear sub to survive.
Those naval officers who had managed to reach, later, via that single submarine, the arctic base (where, as planned, they were admitted under the sea to the vast, submerged "city") reported "absolute and total" destruction of all European, American, and other, even potential, enemy craft, surface or sub-surface. Their certainty was, doubtless, based in part on their well-founded fear of what would be done to them if they reported anything less than complete elimination of all enemy naval craft. They were sent out to make sure, anyway.
Listening attentively from their wait-areas under two seas and three mountainous regions, the Reds heard the world, both below and near the equator, talk--but never a sound or signal that could be attributed to an enemy vessel, and, in time, none from any enemy land base, however deep-driven in rock; no hostile sound in the United States, or Europe, Canada, or Japan.
The ingenious apparatus that had been extended forward of the silently probing Tiger Shark had not even been indicated by Red equipment as a "school of fish."
Therefore, in time, the first Soviet men emerged from the mighty portals of their tremendous forts--emerged through a series of huge "locks," wearing radiation-shielding garments, and later in radiation-shielded vehicles: especially bulldozers. No plane ever flew within range of their now circling radars, either of enemy origin or any military sort.
A few forays were noted by unarmed planes--no bombs were dropped--and these planes were apparently shielded. All were civilian in type and of non-enemy origin. Hurriedly, they shot across the U.S.S.R. at high altitudes--plainly, to observe. Some were shot down.
Those that were not, never came within optical or radar view of the emerged and moving men and machines, so far as could be ascertained. And if they did--and if they got back to base (Africa, probably, and only Africa, and only south of the Sahara)--their reports would certainly show a U.S.S.R. in ruins and without menacing life.
Little by little, then, as better radar facilities were set up, the work parties grew more bold. In time they had made ready some three-quarters of the rockets set, before the war, in remote, unlikely spots, deep-buried, and uncovered now at great cost in labor and life. These rockets carried heavy-megaton H-bombs as warheads, and were so designed that with the rise anywhere on earth of any rocket aimed at the U.S.S.R., they would track such a rocket or rockets, lock in on their source or, serially, their sources, and destroy with absolute certainty the point-of-launch of such an unanticipated weapon or weapons.
The satellite system which operated those defense weapons had been put in orbit years before the war, and checked out to the mile and millisecond. Unfortunately, those orbiting vehicles had not been equipped for any other type of TV scanning and reporting.
Moreover (and in this the Reds were again luckless, though measurelessly less so than any of the nations they had attacked), a secondary system, by which the "reports"
from the orbiting vehicles could be used to intercept and destroy any missiles or rockets on course toward the U.S.S.R., proved useless. The very violence and extent of the British, French, and (multiplied by a factor of thousands) American assault had wrecked irreparably the delicate mechanisms of the rocket-destruct apparatus. Thus the Soviets, on emerging, found they could still destroy--after a very large theoretical salvo, or perhaps two--any five-mile-square area, anywhere on earth. But they could not, as they had planned, intercept incoming missiles. There was no evidence, however, that men with such weapons, or even such weapons unmanned, existed any longer in all the world except for the Soviet Union.
It was not a grave matter, the Reds were certain. And, consequently, they went ahead with their next phase.
They were mistaken, as are all men at times, both individually and in groups the size of the greatest nations.
For now, at a point remote from the cratered nothing that had been Moscow--and the similar, lunar leavings of Tillis, too, and Vladivostok, and all the rest--a plan, made by the United States Navy and never ferreted out by Red espionage agents, was put into effect by at least one unit of those designated to take part in "Operation Last Ditch." The unit was a submarine, the Tiger Shark.
The point where she commenced that operation was not far from eighty degrees east longitude and fairly close to twenty-five degrees south latitude--the exact position determined long before the war. Therefore, it lay in the emptiest and least-cruised reaches of the warm Indian Ocean, between Africa and distant Australia, and more than a thousand miles below Ceylon.
One night the Tiger Shark surfaced, after a cautious survey by radar and periscope of sea and remotest sky. A tall spar then was raised, briefly, above the sub's mast. At exactly twenty-three minutes past midnight, that first time, a powerful radio transmitted from that height, three short dashes. At once the Tiger Shark dove and cruised rapidly away.
The next night, at another, predetermined position, and at a different, prearranged time, she sent, from the reaches of the Indian Ocean, one dash. On a third night the position and signals were again different. But always, both signals and new position would be of a sort already known to a few American commanders of various, specific vessels--if any such still existed.
And this went on for days, a week, then more days.
No sea-bursting enemy weapon ever followed the signals. No enemy, or other, plane or vessel appeared in the ever-shifted area. It was therefore evident that the surviving Soviets lacked the equipment for detecting the boat, or the signals--or else, and even likelier, the brief radio signals at their seemingly random times, if heard, had no meaning in a world full of scrambled radio chatter.
Ten nights of taut effort and then all-day hiding. Twelve.
Hope ebbed. The officers and men on the Tiger Shark had been intensely optimistic at first. Though she could set up, at will, on sixteen places of choice, anywhere, a volcano, followed by a splash as from a gob of the sun, with an aftermath of wide death in fallout, the Tiger Shark was hardly capable of exterminating the number of bases, at their distances from each other, now known to exist. And in two days more it would be time, by the plan, to remove to the central Pacific and try again. With less hope.
The men were in perfect shape; the boat was hardly less immaculate than when she'd left Norfolk, long ago. More than six months of provisions remained in her lockers.
It wasn't that diminishing future which lowered morale, but only the failure of any friend to show up and the consequent lessening of any chance of demolishing so evil a foe that men in all times had probably never hated other men with as much ferocity as blazed aboard that submarine.
The long trek of the Tiger Shark above the mid-Atlantic deep-sunken mountain range (where convection currents and even volcanic noise furnish some concealment) and round the Horn, submerged, then across the vast Pacific and south of Australia to the present position--all that had merely whetted vengeful hopes. Daily, now, they dwindled.
But on the night of their twelfth vigil, before they surfaced, Dingo, trotting in a circle as he swung the periscope, suddenly went stone-rigid. For a while, he fiddled with the handles that focused the scope. In the moonlit, warm night he'd seen an object.
Cautiously, he ordered the Tiger Shark to close, and finally his tenseness changed so suddenly, the Exec and Chief nearby almost panicked.
Dingo straightened and let out a yell which the wincing auditors below decks first thought meant someone gone nuts. "Yoweeeee! One of us!" Dingo bellowed. Then:
"Take her up!"
It was the White Shark.
In darkness, with muffled flashlights, the skipper of the White Shark, his Exec, and three submarine chiefs rowed across the starlit sea to the Tiger Shark. They were w
elcomed aboard with whoops of joy. But those whoops faded when the arrivals went below and could be seen clearly. They were gaunt and sick-looking. Their captain, Randy Bleek, known well to Dingo Denton, told the story in one word: "Starving."
"Lord!" Dingo was amazed. "We're not even halfway through."
The other skipper sat down on a handy bench, below the mast and conning tower, in the control room. "We ran across a carrier--oh--long ago. Out of grub. The Conner.
Nuclear."
"Know her!" Dingo grinned. "Skippered by the toughest admiral in the seven seas!" His men were already bringing coffee and sandwiches, with mountains of food on the way.
The White Shark's captain talked as he ate: "The Conner hardly got in the war.
Afterward, some days, she put in at Puerto Limón, Costa Rica. Those people got scared of her presence, finally, and shooed her away. Her captain--your admiral--thought Australia would be safer, anyhow. But the Aussies refused to let the Conner even approach. When we met the carrier, we gave her two-thirds of our grub. Over a thousand guys aboard her, after all. And that's about it." He grabbed another sandwich.
"Where have you been since?"
"Around." Commander Bleek chuckled weakly. Then he fainted.
Ten days later the officers and crew of the White Shark were rapidly gaining weight and strength, as both boats followed the twenty-four-hour pattern of assembly, signaling, and hurried departure--along with new night work: fishing. They also maintained constant radar, and other search efforts. And a third, identical "mast" hove into dim view, at the pre-established point of reconnaissance, that tenth night.
The Leopard Shark had arrived, all hands in good shape, ample stores, weapons in A-one condition, her delay explained by the fact that she had been near-missed by a nuclear depth charge in the first hours of combat, and had been forced to spend weary months in hiding, on a remote antarctic island, while repairs were made by hand, to ready her for this return to service.
The three skippers decided to give it another week, inasmuch as they were now signaling a coded word of their rally. By then they also had a very good concept of the location and even of the numbers of the enemy, now alive and hard at work--preparing for some sort of military operation, they agreed.
When, in a week, no other vessel met them, they chanced an additional week. No air or sea patrols of enemy origin had come that way, after all.
The Whale Shark nosed up on the next-to-last night of that stretch of waiting. Her crew was woefully shorthanded and those aboard still living were barely able to operate the submarine. The reason was as simple as appalling: while surfacing, in a routine "war watch" off the eastern coast of the United States, near Long Island, during the night after the attack, mines of great power had exploded inshore. Before the Whale Shark could slam all ports and dive, enough radioactive sodium had been hurled aboard to sicken all hands, with fatal results for most.
Running clear of the contamination, ventilating the whole boat repeatedly, and washing down with uncontaminated water--all done as swiftly as circumstances allowed--
had not been enough to save the officers and men from death, or, at best, weeks of terrible illness. Great blotches of subdermal hemorrhage had appeared on their bodies, faces, and limbs. Every man had lost his hair. Internal bleeding and nausea had caused the first of many to go, in agony.
For months thereafter, the sub had merely cruised at random in the South Atlantic, South Pacific, the Indian Ocean, and back to the Atlantic, while the men aboard barely had strength enough, among them, to hold a course and to prepare occasional food.
Her skipper said, "There was a time, I can't say when, but it lasted for weeks, during which no one could stand up even for half an hour. Some of us, after that, started getting better. Some more died. A few--you'll see when you board us. Radiationwise we're a 'clean' ship now, and have been, a long while. But a few are sure as hell still going to knock off! We heard your signal--oh-three weeks back. We don't even know the date!
We thought we'd never get the Whale Shark to the rendezvous. But we did." The pallid, drawn, ruin of what had been an Olympic athlete, bared yellowed teeth, in what was thought a smile.
The three able crews were swiftly "raided" of manpower. The ill were given improved care. And all four submarine skippers decided that they might profitably wait yet a little longer, though they grew daily more anxious about the possibility of an enemy fix on their changing signals or their shifting rendezvous, with ensuing possible annihilation, by plane, ship or, perhaps, rocket.
The anxious delay paid off.
One night, toward the now very jittery end of that vigil the stupendous silhouette of the United States aircraft carrier Conner hove into murky view. Another major unit in the small surviving "Last Ditch" forces!
With eleven hundred and fifty-seven men, with only three planes sent into action and lost, with all other weapons systems intact, this great ship was the answer prayed for by the submariners.
After she had been ordered away from Costa Rica and then Australia, she had
"vanished," encountering only the Whale Shark. In actual fact she had taken a position near the continent of Antarctica.
On that grim, polar ice mass the aircraft carrier had soon, however, located American scientific bases and found that, immediately after the undeclared outburst of war, the Americans had flown in their specialized nonmilitary planes to the three Soviet outposts, where some four hundred men and seventy women had been taken prisoner.
The Soviet group had not been forewarned of their government's attack plan and had not sufficiently recovered from shock to resist the smaller number of civilian Americans, mostly scientists, who shared the wastes of ice.
Soviet radio stations and other Antarctic communication equipment had been destroyed and the enemy personnel were marched or flown to the American camps.
There, guarded but fairly free, the Soviet party had lived ever since, grim, humiliated, and helpless.
Admiral Sydnor, the captain of the Conner, a man of fifty-one, tall, broad, erect, black-haired and beetle-browed, described the events that had followed:
"We thought we and the White Shark, if she lived, alone of all the U. S. Navy had come through. No special orders for us were received ever, although for weeks we expected such orders." His listeners well understood that circumstance. "With summer coming down there, I decided the best move would be to take the Conner into the Pacific to an island I know where very deep water intrudes the land. It's uninhabited and densely jungle-covered. We did so, after the Antarctic people swore to keep our existence secret.
They're okay by the way. In that natural "slip" we managed to camouflage the whole carrier, at first with cut material and, as soon as possible, with growing, potted, living stuff-whole palms, tree ferns. Meantime, divers kept the ship's hull clean and all hands maintained ship and weapons. We were still there, aware, as you are, of the--Red's emergence, when we got your first signal. But we greatly feared it merely meant some Shark-class sub, or other craft in the 'Last Ditch' plan, had been captured, and some poor so-and-so, after enough torture, had turned us in. Our plan, I mean. So the signals could be the enemy, trying to lure together any U. S. Navy units left, so as to dispose of them.
Meantime, we'd orbited a satellite." Seeing the submariners' amazement, the captain chuckled. "Yes, we can do it! And from it we've figured exactly where the enemy is, what he's doing, and about what he intends to do. We have been trying to decide lately how, with the carrier alone, we could get in close enough to end all that. Various weapons system can be altered, and fabricated, on board. And have been, to fit our solo-attack plan. But with four Sharks to take aboard their quotas of the things we've prepared--
well!" He dropped his deep voice to a growl. "I think, gentlemen, we're on the winning side. Merely think. For what that's worth now!"
The moment when their first monitor was extruded through a six-inch bore (from which air instantly flowed outward) arrived about two hours after V
ance had summoned Ben and his aides to the pressure chamber.
As telescoped aluminum rods elevated a gauge above surface ground that, the bore-length showed, had been blasted away for six feet, all eyes watched the dials recording the level of atmospheric radiation.
They read above a thousand roentgens, until Vance pressed a button that would, electrically, remove a metal covering of the gauge and cast it aside. Then, the reading dropped to four hundred and eighteen roentgens. The gauge was elevated ten feet. Down went the reading to ninety-six roentgens. With another ten-foot elevation, it dropped to forty-one r's.
Vance then said, quietly, "I suspect, if we shove the dingus as high as we can--
fifty feet--we'll reach air the filters can make breathable, safely, for people, not just, motors!"
In the next whelming moment, when the guess proved correct, Ben felt an unprecedented, strange urge. An inward voice rendered it aloud: "Thank God!" he whispered.
He had never used that phrase and meant it before.
Why, now? he wondered. Why am I not amused at myself for "thanking" some
"Being" in which, or whom, I don't believe? Another question erased the first: How could the rapid drop in radiation in so short a rise be explained?
He pondered that, but it remained baffling.
Meantime, he was vaguely aware of people shouting with joy. Of Kit taking Vance Farr in his lion-strong arms and whirling him in a circle. Of George raptly kissing Lodi. Later on he also remembered that kiss had lasted beyond any time to express mere relief, and that he had seen Kit let Vance down gently to stare with a gathering frown at the Chinese girl kissing the Japanese boy and the possessive return of the kiss.
At the time Ben's mind didn't even register Kit's ensuing scowl of anger, jealousy, or whatever it was-an emotion not directed at the two lovers exactly, just an emotion Kit had felt and for an instant displayed, clear as night fire. Ben saw and ignored seeing. He joined briefly in the celebration held in the Hall, right after that, with everybody present, champagne flowing and people doing extempore dances and swapping kisses in pure jubilation.