Andre Norton - Sea Siege

by Sea Siege(lit)

  "Yah—so far!" was the pessimistic answer.

  But they were on the move about their constrained quarters, pushing supplies into a line about the wall, dragging other boxes into the open.

  "Gunston!" Murray seemed surprised. "Thought you were with the island crowd— What's the matter, son?"

  "There was an island family down in a valley to the south. I found them when Burrows sent us out to round up stragglers. They were safe enough then and didn't want to move in. One of the women was ill—so—" That jar vibrating through the rock reminded him of that other valley he had explored with Le Marr, where the contents of the sea's floor had long ago been dumped through a storm's wild fury.

  "Nothing we could do for them, Gunston." Murray repeated the same argument his own mind had pre­sented. "We couldn't have brought them here in time. And there's no assurance that we're going to weather this ourselves. Also—this storm is driving from the north!"

  Griff's incomprehension must have been plain, for the commander added a terse and frightening explanation.

  "If there has been an all-out atomic attack up there— we've got to face the possibility of fall-out. And it may be headed here."

  Fall-out! The radioactive debris blasted into the high­est heavens to drift or be driven by storms, to settle at last maybe thousands of miles from the site of the actual explosion—but equally deadly to its victims.

  "The dust!" Griff blurted out, that gray cloud which had been with them for days—was it—? But Murray was shaking his head.

  "Not the stuff that's been dropping here. That was mostly volcanic ash. The counter did a little jittering, but not enough to hurt. Doc's played it safe and taken hourly readings for a while. And we'll play it even safer if we get through this blow."

  The hours spun wearily by. All of them wore watches, but, except for the measurement of time, they had no idea whether it was night or day. There were instru­ments chattering at one end of the rock room. They must have had some meaning for Murray, for the two men who watched them constantly.

  Once an ugly serpent of water curled from beneath the door barrier, setting them busy damming its ad­vance. It gathered, crept, and then stopped. Moved by impulse, Griff dipped his finger and touched it to his tongue—salt! Had the sea reached them?

  But there was no more water. They slept, ate sparing­ly of concentrates. A card game ran for hours. Books passed from hand to hand. But Griff was sure that few of his companions were able to concentrate any better than he was. He nodded into a nightmare-tormented sleep, aroused to find himself being shaken none too gently as one of his exasperated neighbors demanded to know why he was groaning.

  There was a period when Murray hunkered down beside him to ask a series of questions about the sea life in the lagoon. Griff answered as best he could, with a dull wonder as to why this should matter now.

  "Squid—octopus—what are those things after us?"

  "Octopi, I think. They could always exist for a short time out of water, and this new breed apparently can do even better. Also those we saw along the reef be­fore the blowup were acting oddly—"

  "How oddly?"

  "When I was diving with Casey—on that last morn­ing—they ringed us in, watching to see what we were doing. Octopi are normally afraid of divers—they'll slip into crevices and hide—"

  "So those were the new super-octopi? Did your fa­ther have any explanation—"

  "I never had a chance to tell him about them. But those along the reef were much smaller than the type attacking now. The red plague, the dead sea serpent we found were both 'hot.' You've heard the old argu­ments about mutation forced by atomic radiation. Maybe this new type are mutants. You'll have to ask Hughes— he knows more about it than I do."

  "Hughes is with Doc. And I know that they were working on it," mused Murray. "Maybe they can give us the dope—if and when we get out of here."

  How much later it was that the end came Griff could never afterwards determine. Maybe hours—days were lost in that period of vicious upheaval. But the rocks were stable once more, and men arose to pull aside the barrier, allowing a queerly dressed figure out to explore. The stiff white coveralls, with the windowed cowl cov­ering head and face, made a robot out of a man—a robot who walked with the clang of heavy boots, the rigidity of the thick material weighing down his limbs.

  The explorer clanked out as the atomic-powered lamp was switched off. Sun—yellow sunlight—lay in a shaft through the door. Thin and disembodied words came from the walkie-talkie.

  "So far—so good, skipper. But—boy, oh, boy, there've sure been alterations! Hey—here's a pall Out of Doc's burrow—"

  "Stanley reporting, Commander," another voice broke in. "All okay in burrow four. But there're 'hot' signals from a drift here."

  Murray picked up the small mike. "Bad?"

  "Not to danger point. Looks, sir, as if this whole area had been scrubbed right out. Well, I'll be—" The re­port broke off in a bewildered exclamation.

  "What is it?" Murray prompted impatiently.

  "Crawler planted right on top of the cliff—upside down! How in the world—" That was the first ex­plorer answering. "Wait—getting something new, skip­per—"

  Magnified through the walkie-talkie, they were all hearing that click, click, faint and regular at first and then rising to a furious chatter of warning sound.

  "Where's that coming from?" Murray demanded.

  "Wreckage, sir. So banged up we can't tell what it was—some sand and dust caught in drifts around it."

  Again the counter gave the radiation chant.

  "It's the wreckage all right, sir. None of our stuff—"

  "That's the tail of a jet!" His partner in exploration cut in excitedly. "What is it doing here?"

  "What's anything doing here? Including that half of a horse hung up in what's left of those palms? But this jet can be cleared, skipper—and it's the source of the infection."

  "Good enough. But quarter the area and let us know if there is anything else. How about the sand—are there any dust deposits?"

  His first answer was a sound that might have been laughter.

  "Skipper, except around a few rocks there isn't any sand. This place has been scoured right down to the bottom. If there was a fall-out, it was washed and blown right off our map again. Shall we try to break out one of the crawlers and lug this wreck off?"

  "Not yet. Go over the area first. We want to make sure—"

  But the report continued to be negative. And the others were free to crawl out and stand blinking at the pallid sun, seeing the scraped world that bore a sharp resemblance to the lunar landscapes drawn by painters of the fantastic.

  A working party headed for the place where they had parked the machines that had built this refuge, only to discover that the storm had been there first. There was a jumble of metal, tangled and jammed, thrust into a split in the wall. And there was the single crawler perched upside down on the cliff. Perhaps others would be found later, but for now that was the total machine survival.

  In the end the dangerous, radiation—'hot' wreckage was dragged away by hand, the lead-suited explorers fixing the ropes, the others lending their weight at a good distance. It was snaked up and over a ridge and wedged into a crevice, which could be walled up against future accident.

  "Jet tail, right enough," was Murray's verdict. "Won­der where it was blown from?"

  Decom chemicals were sprayed on the section where it had lain, on the sand pocket that had gathered about it. And then both men in their grotesque suits stood in the heavy stream of cleansing liquid.

  Now that the all-clear signal had been given, the other burrows spilled out their inhabitants. But while the Na­val personnel poured out eagerly, the islanders came slowly, moving like people caught in a bad dream. The sight of the stranded crawler on the cliff, the changes in the valley, added to their stupefaction.

  A child whimpered; a man swore softly in the island idiom. The commissioner came up to Murray.

/>   "Thanks to you, sir, we've been saved. I gather that radiation is not to be feared?"

  "There was a piece of 'hot' wreckage, but we've cleared it. Tell your people to take it slow leaving here. We are sure of nothing beyond this valley."

  Burrows smiled. "Look at them, sir. They are not yet ready to take up life again. In fact, they must be shaken into it. They are a simple people, Commander, and much which has happened to them in these past terrible days has been beyond their comprehension. Now many of them are in a state of shock. We—" he hesitated and then continued—"already we have two who are totally insane. But the rest—I think that they will be all right. If this last storm is only the end to our misfortunes—"

  Murray turned his face to the sky, bright and clear, untroubled. The trade wind was blowing again, although its touch did not dip into the valley where the survivors were gathered.

  "We can hope that the worst is over. Luckily we do have supplies—concentrates mainly—which will do for some time. I don't believe that we may expect any help from outside soon—"

  "If ever," the commissioner agreed. "But there is no use thinking about that now, sir. I gather we are fronted with the business of taking stock and seeing how we can put to the best use all that can be salvaged."

  "Just about that. I'm sending out exploration teams as soon as it is practical. They have to go slow and care­fully. We've escaped fall-out here, but elsewhere—"

  "It may be a different matter? Just so, Commander. Whatever we can do to aid in your plans, please let me know at once. Le Marr has a very intimate knowledge of the island—as it was. of course. There were certain na­tive plants which might be added to the food supply— if they are still in existence" The commissioner smiled ruefully. "One's speech nowadays becomes overbur­dened with 'ifs.' Men have been accustomed to taking so much for granted, as a part of their personal security. We shall have to learn that nothing can be lightly ac­cepted now. But consider what little we do have to of­fer at your service. Commander." His hand sketched a gesture close to a salute as he turned away.

  Murray gave orders: the Seabees carried them out as precisely as if they were the robots now. But Griff, with no assigned duties climbed the cliff wall. When he reached the top of the knife ridge, he swung to the north dreading what he might see, yet forced to that inspection.

  He shaded his eves from the sun. Less than half a mile away he caught the rainbow lights of spray beat­ing into the air against a new coast line. The site of the first base must now be under water. But to the east there was an even stranger sight. He had expected land to disappear—he had not expected it to rise above water. Yet a long strip steamed there under the sun's heat, dotted with clumps of decaying ocean vegetation. It stretched out far beyond where the reef had once en­circled this end of San Isadore. Newborn land indeed!

  III

  PORT OF REFUGE

  "well—that's that!" Casey leaned back against a con­venient rock and absent-mindedly smeared dark streaks of grease across the shorts that were his only garment. "We can take her all apart, but she'll still be scrap as far as doing her regular job is concerned."

  However, he did not appear in the least downcast by his own verdict as he surveyed with narrowed eyes the smashed and twisted wreckage just disinterred from a wind-sculptured sandbank. Undoubtedly he was al­ready mentally tearing the defunct machine to pieces and assembling from its parts a new and efficient tool, which would aid in the reconstruction project. Griff could see no such possibilities. But then, Griff thought bleakly, he had taken on his present role of survivor with very little practical preparation. And the one thing he could have contributed to their general store of knowledge—the lore of a diver—was of no use at present.

  "We'll have to dismantle her right here—" Casey was continuing buoyantly. "You know, kid, we have one thing on our side. Maybe it was atomic bombs that got us into this mess, but it's atomic engines that are going to pull us out. In the old days we had to have gallons of fuel to run things. And a slam-down like we had would have finished off all machines—no gas—no oil— we couldn't have run them. But now—we still have plenty of power, and that'll bring us through. Unless—"

  He glanced downslope to the distant line of blue. That earlier experimental installation, which had given man a short domination of a strip of that blue water, had gone out in the big storm. Another might be improvised in time. But for the present they were leaving the sea alone, for the menace still lurked there. Two islanders, attracted beyond caution by the jetsam strewn along the strand after the storm, had ventured into the water to haul at a waterlogged boat, to be dragged under shrieking before their companions could move to their aid. And when the others did come to the waves' edge, there was nothing at all to be seen. Hunters and prey were gone.

  For a people who had lived on and by the sea for generations, this peril, this divorcement from their usual way of life, was doubly terrifying and at last induced such a shrinking from the boundaries of the ocean that they even avoided the beaches, though the wealth that came drifting in with every thrust of the changing tides was bewildering in its range and value. The in­habitants of San Isadore had benefited from storm sal­vage ever since the island had been first settled. But now they had to be herded down to the work under supervision and then would go only in full daylight.

  The Naval party kept aloof from that task. They had their own repair and rebuilding problems left by the fury of such a storm as this section of the world had never seen before.

  And the diversity of the shore gleanings underlined vividly the crash of the civilization that had nourished them. None of the finds were ever approached until after they were checked for radiation. But the pile of loot grew high and pleased both islanders and Americans alike because of future possible uses.

  Hughes prowled the dunes on his own project, shar­ing only with the doctor the secret of his finds, spend­ing long hours afterwards in the improvised laboratory.

  Casey dropped down cross-legged, still contemplat­ing the machine they had uncovered. He fumbled in a pocket, pulled out a badly battered pack of cigarettes, regarded it wistfully for a moment, and then stowed it away again.

  "It's the little things you miss first," he mused. "Did you hear Lawrence telling off the supply officer this morning when he couldn't promote a tube of tooth­paste? We can rebuild old Arabella here—or at least make her earn her keep in some way—but we can't produce a pack of smokes or some toothpaste. Funny to think that there'll be no more zippers, Coke, or disk jockeys —not in this lifetime. The very props of civilization come to dust! What were you in training for, kid—to be a fish hunter like your old man?"

  Griff rubbed his hands together. Blisters were shap­ing nicely along the palms. He hoped some day that they would be as resistant as Casey's hard paws.

  "I was hoping for an appointment to the Air Academy." He was able to mention that dead and gone ambition with a sardonic kind of humor. How long had it been since he had walked along the cliffs above Carterstown pouting at his inability to manage his future? Well, his future had been managed—but good!

  Casey chuckled. "Off into the wide blue yonder." He made flapping wings with his hands. "I don't think! Nothing less than a jet, I suppose."

  Some tight string within Griff loosened. The ap­athy with which he had worked, obeyed orders, faced the strange new life, was fading. Casey hadn't changed —there was something easing in his attitude. To be with the islanders was to return to the tenseness, the watch­ful waiting. With Casey it was like being at home, the home he could not yet force himself to believe had ceased to exist.

  "Nothing less than a jet," he echoed. "Maybe some day a space ship—" He laughed self-consciously. "Kid stuff!"

  But Casey shook his head. "Maybe yes, maybe no. We had what it took to get us out there—everything but the sense to try that instead of building for the grand smash. Now—no stars—and we start over."

  "Casey." Griff dared to put into words the question he had not voiced
before. "Do you think it's all gone— everything?"

  Casey rested his bristly chin on his fist. "S' funny, kid, you tell yourself that everything went up—smash! —just as all the croakers always said it would. But sit­ting here you can't really believe it. You're sure inside that off there"—he waved his hand to the north—"New York still stands—and St. Louie, Frisco—all the rest of them—just as they always have. As long as we don't see the hole, we'll go on with the sneaking feeling that they're there. Maybe it's a good thing we'll never be able to take it in—to see what's up there now."

  "As long as we believe in it, maybe it is there—in a way—" Griff thought he had not put that into words very clearly, but Casey understood.

  "Maybe you got something there, kid." His mouth pulled tight. "Anyway we can keep on an even keel if we keep busy. Our supplies aren't going to last forever, and we have mouths to feed—to say nothing of those jokers hiding in the drink to grab off anyone dumb enough to go fishing. I wouldn't be a bit surprised if they start throwing bait up on land to hook us down to where they can get us. They may be some sort of octopi with brains. But we've had brains longer, and they can't come out here after us, any more than we can go in after them—now. Too bad that last blow got the plane. It'd be good to have a bird's-eye view of the surrounding territory. I'm betting that this island is half again as big. Whatever spouted fire out there humped us up a lot. Did pretty well for itself too—regular mountain."