Divide and Rule
Page 18
For a breathless thirty seconds the parties glared at each other, as the two craft bobbed closer and closer. Duke-Holmquist spun the wheel a little, the yawl nosed downwind a few points.
"They're going to drift astern of us," said Juniper-Hallett.
Duke-Holmquist laughed shortly. "Don't you think I ever ran a boat before?"
The wind pressure on the seaplane's rudder had swung the craft into the wind like a weather vane, so that, though it was drifting astern of them, its left wing was still toward them. Justin Lane-Walsh gathered himself to jump: but they were not quite close enough.
"Hey," said Juniper-Hallett, "we need that bird!"
He snatched the boathook from Damaso and shot the business end up to the seaplane wing. He caught the hook in Lane-Walsh's starspangled pants and yanked. Lane-Walsh's legs went out from under him; he sat down on the wing tip, bounced, and smacked the water. A cloud of spray rose, and was instantly blown down against the receding seaplane.
Juniper-Hallett caught a glimpse of a head of copper-wire hair, but it was already out of reach of his hook. Duke-Holmquist nodded and brought the boat around in a big circle. They came upon Lane-Walsh, swimming heavily in his clothes toward the seaplane, which was drifting swiftly in the general direction of Ensenada. They hauled him aboard. The chatter of his teeth came clearly over the puttering of the engine. The Pacific off sunny Southern California is icy in February.
Juniper-Hallett explained: "I just remembered that he was with me in the Crypt the night we made our raid, and recognized several of the Ayesmy members. He'd have made trouble for them if we'd left him here."
"Good work, boy," said Duke-Holmquist.
Juniper-Hallett winced at the "boy." If being married didn't make one a full-grown man, entitled to the respect accorded to such, what did?
He asked: "Are we safe now, sir?"
"No," said Duke-Holmquist. "They'll radio their company, and the company will appeal to the Board of Control to order the Navy out to stop us."
"Then it's useless to try to get away?"
"We'll see."
Ryan climbed out of the cabin, whither he and Damaso had taken Lane-Walsh to change his clothes. Juniper-Hallett asked him: "How do you fit into this, sir?"
Ryan's smooth brown face smiled, and the wind ruffled his stiff gray hair. He said: "I was to be a go-between for the Ayesmy and the Hawaiians. The Hawaiians wanted to back the Ayesmy in upsetting the Corporate system, because it would end the siege of the Islands. But they wanted somebody they could trust, not having any agents on the mainland. I was the only one, and I was in a hibernine sleep.
"Then that Stromberg engineer discovered the effect of strontium bromide, and the Strombergs stole me from the Crypt to try to get the secret of the Hawaiians' power from me. It was developed back before I went to sleep, you know. Of course, the Stromberg engineers who were also Ayesmies knew about the theft, and arranged to have the Ayesmy rescue me."
"How did the Ayesmy communicate with the Hawaiians? I'd think their messages would be intercepted."
"They would have been, if they had been sent the normal way But people used to communicate with the Islands, centuries ago, by undersea cables, and those cables are still there. The mainland end of one of them is in a museum in Frisco. The Ayesmy spliced a lead into it and used the ancient dot-dash method."
"What is the Hawaiian power?"
"Maxwell demons, sir," said Arnold Ryan.
"What?"
"Special bacteria. Bacteria are the only things that can break the second law of thermodynamics, you know. They can, for instance, separate levulose from fructose, though the molecules of these sugars are identical except that one is a mirror image of the other. Starting with these bacteria, the Hawaiians have developed strains that will build up hydrocarbons out of water and carbon dioxide, taking their energy directly from the heat of the solution. So the solution gets cold, and has to be brought back to outside temperatures to keep the reaction going. But they have the whole Pacific Ocean to warm it up with. It's like putting a lump of ice in a highball, and instead of the ice's melting, having the ice get colder and the highball hotter."
Juniper-Hallett did not understand much of this. He asked: "Then are all these plans for breaking the Corporate system finished?"
"Not quite. The Antarctic coal fields will run out in a couple of years, and we'll be able to dictate our own terms to the Empires. Meanwhile we'll sit in the sun in the Islands and take life easy. You'll like it, I think. We Hawaiians haven't such an elaborate code as the mainlanders, but we stick better to the one we have." He shaded his eyes. "That is, you'll like it if we get there alive. Here comes the Navy now."
They all looked back toward the mainland. The air was full of a deep throbbing sound which grew to the roar of one of the giant flying-boats.
The monster thundered past them, seeming to skim the waves, though it actually was a good thirty meters up. A gun cracked, and a 10.5-centimeter shell crashed in front of them.
"That means heave to," said Duke-Holmquist. His red face got redder and he shook his fist. He made no move to stop the boat.
The machine came back on the opposite side, between them and Santa Catalina Island. Another shell crashed, this time closer. It sent up a tall finger of water, which hung for an unreasonable time before collapsing.
Juniper-Hallett asked: "Will they try to board us?"
"Not if I know the Navy," said Duke-Holmquist. "They'd like a little target practice on a live target."
The machine banked ponderously astern of them. This time as it passed, it let loose a full broadside.
"Duck! yelled Duke-Holmquist, doing so. The air was suddenly full of noises like a train wreck and six shells hit all around them. Splinters whined overhead; a couple crashed through the yawl's planking; one of the columns of water toppled onto their deck, drenching them.
The yawl staggered, but kept on. The next time, Juniper-Hallett thought, they'll blow us to pieces. He hugged Janet, and heard Ryan's voice in his ear: "Sorry we got you kids into this—didn't have time to warn you—"
The Navy ship thundered past again. Juniper-Hallett held his breath. It was coming—
Their engine stopped with a wheeze. Duke-Holmquist hounded to his feet with an inhuman scream. "They did it!" he yelled, dancing and waving his big fists.
"Did what?" asked Juniper-Hallett. Then he realized that the rumble of the flying-boat's propellers had ceased. The only sounds were those of wind and water. He looked over the lee gunwale to see the flying-boat glide silently down to the surface and settle like a big duck a kilometer or two away. He repeated: "Did what?"
"The Hawaiians got their thing that multiplies the terrestrial magnetic field turned on, so that there's a strip all along the coast that nothing can get through but a sailboat or rowboat. That's what I was wiring about from the Crypt. Now do you see why we started out in this little thing? Damaso! Damn it, come out of that cabin; the war's over. Fix those holes in the woodwork. Arnold, do you know how to get the sails up? Here, boy, take the wheel while I'm helping Ryan."
The deck was now sharply canted to the brisk northeast breeze. The sun was half below the horizon ahead of them. When they crested a swell, a broad highway of golden reflection glared in their faces.
Horace Juniper-Hallett and his wife sat bundled in sweaters and things, their feet braced, watching for flying fish and ducking the cold spray. The Navy flying-boat was out of sight, even from the tops of the swells.
Janet gave up trying to wax her nose to the proper degree of shininess, and turned to Juniper-Hallett. She said. "Horace! I just remembered my cat! My little Dolores!"
"Dolores'll have a nice home—in the zoo."
She sighed. "I suppose so. Anyway we're alone at last, dearest."
Juniper-Hallett looked around the little yawl, which was very much occupied by its seven passengers. The cabin seemed to be half full of canned goods, and the other half full of a morose, blanket-wrapped Justin Lane-Walsh. Obviously e
veryone would be very much in everyone else's hair for many days.
"Not quite, sweetheart," Juniper-Hallett replied. "But we shall be. We shall be."
THE END