Andre Norton - Sea Siege

by Sea Siege(lit)

  Clapping on his palm straw hat, Griff went down to the town. And it was as he threaded his way along the ruts of a side lane that he noticed the second mystery. About one house in three or four was still inhabited. But usually there were signs of life about those. Now—

  In spite of the blaze of the sun Griff shivered. Closed shutters, no scrawny chickens scratching half-heartedly in the littered doorways—a brooding quiet, he might be walking through a town waiting for an attack.

  The Union Jack hung limp from the pole in front of the Government House, its folds sun-bleached from scarlet to rose. Griff hesitated for a moment and then climbed the three broad steps that set the building on a more imposing level than its neighbors. The wide inner hall was deserted, but echoing loudly through the general silence came the click of an inexpertly pounded typewriter. Someone was busy during the siesta period, and Griff went in search of the worker.

  In the second office he found his quarry, a young man of his own age hunched in concentration over the keyboard of an old and battered machine, pecking out some composition letter by painful, two-finger style.

  "Henry Grimes!" Griff approached the desk.

  The other looked up, startled, but not with the wel­come Griff expected from Angus Murdock's nephew. Grimes was due to leave the island in two weeks time on a scholarship the governor at Santa Maria had helped to arrange. But now Henry's square young face, a less tough edition of the pirate Murdock visage, was very sober, and his eyes were both cold and wary. Griff asked the question that had brought him there.

  "What's the news from the Queen? Didn't she come in on schedule?"

  "Did you see her in—the—bay, mon?" Henry counter-questioned, changing in midsentence to the precise dic­tion he tried so hard to use.

  "What happened?"

  "Ask—the—Navy mons—men— Trouble comes with them. The Queen, she don't answer the wireless!" As his agitation grew, Henry lapsed into the island idiom. "The commissioner, he speak to San' Maria. They say Queen sail on time, same as always. But she no come—"

  Griff stiffened. Those other stories of the mystery ship, the drifting derelicts—he had listened to them, speculated concerning their fate with Chris and Mur­dock himself. But those reports had never seemed true. They were just something that happened beyond the horizon to strangers, nothing that touched his own world. Only now—what if the Island Queen was caught up in that ugly web?

  "They've tried to reach her by radio?"

  "The commissioner, he expect something important comin' by my uncle's hand—to him from the governor. When the Queen do not come, he worry, so he call San' Maria—'cause there be no storm, no thing to keep her back. San' Maria say Queen sail like always—calm sea, no winds, no thing bad. But the Queen, she do not come. So there is something bad!"

  "And her own radio?"

  Henry's shoulders hunched as he leaned farther over the typewriter. "They call—they are still callin'. She do not answer."

  Griff started for the radio room, the islanders' one link with the outside world. There was the shuffle of hide sandals behind him as Henry followed.

  The room was hot and dark, the shutters having been pulled to against the straight glare of the afternoon sun. Commissioner Burrows had shed the white coat he wore in public, but he had made no other concession to the heat. He glanced up as Griff hovered in the doorway, gave a nod, which was both greeting and invitation to enter, and waved to a chair. But he did not remove the earphones clamped across his crisp black hair, nor did he relax his listening attitude.

  Henry coughed, and the shuffle of his sandals was unnecessarily loud. The commissioner sighed, slipped up one earphone, and reached for one of the strong island cigarettes lying in a box on the table.

  "No news, sir?" Henry asked.

  "No news for us."

  "And you can't raise the Queen at all, sir?"

  Burrows shook his head. "Santa Maria has sent out the cutter." His clipped English with its overseas ac­cent still carried a trace of the Indies drawl. "So far— nothing!"

  He watched the smoke curl lazily from the tube be­tween his fingers and then added abruptly, "Would you be willing to do something for me, Mr. Gunston?"

  "Of course—"

  "It may be necessary for me to see Commander Mur­ray at the base—but I don't want to make too much of our meeting. I understand very well the necessity for declaring the installation being erected there restricted territory, but you have a legitimate reason for visiting the base. The plane that flew your father to the States re­turned this morning. You will desire to have news—"

  Griff was already on his feet. Probably Hughes had already gone to the base for just that reason. He knew a twinge of resentment because the other had not wak­ened him for that trip.

  "Present my regards to Commander Murray"—the commissioner's tone became more formal—"and ask him when it will be possible to meet with him to discuss an important matter. Henry will run you up in our launch—"

  As Griff went out into the late afternoon with Henry, it was into a still deserted town. A pig sleeping in the rat of a side road, the ever-present hummingbirds flit­ting from one flowering spike of aloe to the next, were apparently the only living things in Carterstown.

  "Where is everyone?" Griff ventured to ask.

  "They wait—"

  "Wait? For what?"

  "For what comes!" Henry's hand went to the breast of his shirt, in that movement Griff had seen Rob make so many times. So Henry, too, had his gris-gris, his pro­tection against the unseen.

  The American spoke boldly. "The drums sounded last night. Le Marr—"

  Henry's broad face was impassive; it was as shuttered as the windows of those houses back in town. For all his scholarship, his off-island plans, Henry was of San Isadore. But he did volunteer one strange statement— something that startled Griff.

  "Dobrey Le Marr—that mon be not so big-big—" The words trailed off into a mutter as Henry realized that he had made that remark to an off-islander.

  Dissension in the island ranks? Griff wondered about that as he cast off the mooring lines of the small boat that was the commissioner's official "launch." Had a segment of the die-hards who had followed the dark beliefs of old Kristina begun to re-establish their brand of the ancient worship? Was that the explanation for the new drumming of the night before?

  They headed straight for the Naval settlement. But to Griff's surprise they were warned off long before they reached their destination by the cutter, which had run the laboratory boat from its work two days before. Griff signaled vigorously and shouted across the water that he had a message for Commander Murray from the commissioner. But in the end he had to transfer to the Navy craft and let Henry return alone to Carterstown.

  A guard, armed, marched him at a quick trot through the section where construction was in the same frenzied progress to a core of buildings that had sprouted rooms overnight, like cells in a wasps' nest. Once there he ran into Hughes in earnest conversation with the doctor, and Griff broke from his escort to join them.

  "He's more than holding his own," the doctor assured Griff. "That serum stemmed the poison until they could pump an antidote into him. But if he hadn't had that—" He shook his head. "Nasty beggars, those stonefish. I'll take one apart scale by scale and see if I can discover what makes them tick. In the meantime, I had them wire Gongware for some more serum. If he has a sup­ply on hand, they'll fly it out to us. Better to be pre­pared—"

  "Two more stonefish brought in this morning," Hughes told Griff. "I want the commander to offer a reward and see if we can get the islanders to hunt them. But how they got here in the first place—halfway around the world from where we thought they belonged—!"

  It was a puzzle all right, thought Griff—but no more of a puzzle than a lot of other things which focused on San Isadore at the moment. He saw over Hughes's shoul­der the plane bobbing on the water by the improvised landing, and in that moment an idea occurred to him. Visibility from the air was
wide. The Island Queen could not have drifted so far off her course since she had left Santa Maria that she could not be sighted by a search plane. Could the commander order the machine out to aid in the hunt? No longer attending to Hughes's talk about stonefish, Griff turned to the guard.

  "I'd like to see Commander Murray as soon as possible"

  "You've been the one holding up the procession, fella—"

  "What's up?" Hughes gathered that there was some­thing else in the world beside fish.

  "The Island Queen is late—and she doesn't answer radio signals," Griff flung over his shoulder as he trotted after his guide.

  VIII

  HOUR OF ULTIMATUM

  but griff was to have no satisfaction from Commander Murray. Scant attention was paid either to the message from the commissioner or to his own idea of using the seaplane in the search for the Queen. The atmosphere of the base had always been one of hurry and tension, but now it was building to a kind of controlled frenzy. If the Seabees had been working against time from the start of the project, they now raced with disaster. And Murray had no moments to spare.

  Shunted to one side, not knowing how he was going to return to Carterstown, since an overland trek at night was a risky business and Murray had made no offer of a trip in the cutter, Griff watched the scene in be­wildered amazement. The lamps flashed on as night closed down.

  More lights tonight—this time at sea beyond the brok­en reef. Then landing craft, a rugged fleet, coming ashore in a steady procession to land quantities of bales and boxes on the beach. Tractors towing flat trucks toiled down to that point, where robots loaded with a speed and efficiency that made Griff tired to watch. He did not understand a tenth of what he saw—he had never known that such machines existed. Most of the labor was apparently done by push-button control over new unmanned cranes and trucks.

  The train of goods waddled by, passing the now al­most completed administration building to some hidden interior destination. A second tractor with its tow was already pulled up beside the mountain of material on the strand. About him the handful of men were direct­ing only, most of the work was robot. Griff was ignorant of construction work, but surely this precision and re­mote control was new, though any dullard could have guessed that government brass never published all it knew, nor displayed openly all that it might accomplish in times of stress. Atomic power for machinery had been commonly discussed, and there had been a few timid and costly excursions into that in the civilian field. But Griff guessed now that he was probably surrounded at the present by machines running on atomic power. Per­haps the atomic breakdown also supplied the light un­der which those various pieces of apparatus went their efficient way.

  What was the purpose of the base anyway? He could make a rough guess at a storage depot. The mound of goods moving in a steady and unending stream to an inland pool could not be just for the use of the fifty or so men now stationed here—unless they were only the fore-runners of a large garrison.

  But the low, heavy-walled building that served as headquarters, barracks, mess hall, and hospital was still the only erection in sight, and there was no indication of another being planned. A sub base? Griff was trying to fit that idea into the general scheme of things when Hughes and the Navy doctor came out. The doctor halted to light a cigarette. In the glare of the working lights his eyes were red and puffy, and he inhaled the smoke with the sigh of a tired man. But Hughes was alert, alive, his fingers drumming on his belt, then mov­ing to ram into the pockets of his slacks.

  "Mutant—" Hughes said.

  "If you think so. It's your field rather than mine. And I don't remember ever dissecting a fish before. Mu­tant—? But it wasn't 'hot.' "

  "Not this generation—"

  The doctor's lips shaped a soundless whistle. "So that's your theory. Well—maybe so." But he didn't look con­vinced. "Twenty-five years since Hiroshima, and we haven't seen what the horror merchants dreamed up would follow that—no superbrains or monster-men—"

  "Not quite a full generation," Hughes pointed out. "And maybe man reacts more slowly to radiation than—"

  "Than your fish? You think that thing you found on the beach, and whatever it was in the cave, were mutant forms also? Mutants of what—whales—seals—?"

  "There have always been reports of strange things seen at sea, even weird remains washed ashore," Hughes countered. "Dr. Gunston's theory was that unexplained radiation suggested some experimentation in the depths—"

  "Which drove Fido up here?" The doctor grinned. "You may have something there. Or maybe the Reds have turned a gimmick loose—just to foul up the pic­ture generally for you brain boys—"

  "We could accept that, too, if one of our undercover men hadn't gotten the tip out to us that they're also worried—having trouble with the same red scum off China. They're making their own investigations."

  "Which could be a blind—"

  Hughes shrugged. "Sure enough. Only we do have it on our hands. And sooner or later we'll get to the bot­tom of it."

  "It had better be sooner." The doctor's levity vanished. "There may not be a later—"

  "War? But power's too evenly balanced. They know what the retaliation would be if they dared to jump us—"

  "They also know what revolution would mean—to them. And there's always the hope that you can move faster than the other fellow—if you jump him without warning. Their grain crop was a failure last season, and they have other internal troubles. They would like to focus their people's anger elsewhere than on their own policies. I know—cold war for twenty or so years. We've heard all the rumors and alarms until they don't mean much any more. But that doesn't mean that a spark at the right place at the right time won't set off the blaze!"

  Hughes shook his head slowly. "They're not idiots. No one wins an atomic war. Oh, I wouldn't deny that they may be trying some fancy tricks under cover. And maybe we're doing some crowding, too, where it doesn't come out into the light of day. But an out-and-out war —that's suicide!"

  The doctor tossed away his half-smoked cigarette. "Let's hope that you're right and we're heading into a half century or so of hot peace. Now I'm going to call it a day—" He yawned widely, but Griff cut in.

  "Have you had any more news of my father, sir?"

  The doctor blinked at him. "You here, too? Yes, there was a report about an hour ago. He's got a long pull ahead, but he ought to be back poking into your smelly fish in a month or two. Sooner if the bright boys at the lab there can get that poison broken down." He turned to Hughes. "We'll ship your specimens up in the morn­ing. If Dr. Gunston can identify them as the thing which attacked him, we'll be set—"

  Hughes nodded. "I'll do my own report. Thanks for the help—and good night, Doctor."

  The Navy man glanced at the brilliant flood around them. "I've forgotten what night's like since I've been here. But there'll have to come an end sometime. Be seeing you—"

  Hughes had the solution for their return to Carters-town—the lab launch. As they swung out and away from the light and din of the base, Griff noted that the sup­ply ship was still unloading.

  "Looks as if they're getting ready for an army."

  Hughes studied the laden craft discharging cargo on the beach.

  "Might be preparing for a siege. I wonder—"

  "Sub base?"

  "Could be that. Well, here comes our escort."

  The Navy cutter drew alongside, flashed the search­light beam across them, and then cut throttle, dogging behind the small boat in a warning to get out.

  But the radiance that wreathed the base was not the only beacon blazing that night from San Isadore. As they rounded the western bulge of the island and chugged into Frigate Bay, they saw the second illumina­tion, a high leaping column of flame on the cliff ahead. "The lab!" Hughes shouted.

  But Griff was not sure it was that building. After all, the thatched roof, the wooden interior fittings would burn speedily, and the coral block walls could not feed such a fire as they now sa
w. Hughes set the motor at top speed, and the small craft bounced along on the surface of the water. It looked as if they might run ashore, and Griff moved toward the controls.

  Though the dark bulk of the Island Queen was not anchored there, he counted four of the weedy hulks of fishing boats, more than he had ever seen in port together before. And the town, which had been dead when he left it hours earlier, was now alive—windows lighted.

  Hughes was out of the launch, stumbling ahead on the wharf as his will moved faster than his feet. Griff made the craft fast before he followed. But when he caught up with Hughes, he found the ichthyologist strug­gling with someone in the dark.

  "Mon—don't go up there. Not now, mon—"