Secret sea;
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"Good work. I'd like to have a full report on it, Martin."
"In the morning, sir."
The admiral put the chart away. "I've got a ship for you," he said. "Brand spanking new and
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all finished with the trial and shakedown. One of the new 'chasers."
**Thanks very much, Admiral."
"Your orders are on the way."
Pete's throat felt a little dry. "Admiral, could I have a couple of days to go see my folks up in Georgia?" he asked.
"Certainly. Let's see, this is the third. Get back Tuesday night, please. That'll be the seventh."
"Aye, aye, sir. Thanks very much. Admiral."
When Pete went up the gangplank of his ship, the officer of the deck saluted him and handed him a telegram.
Pete put it in his pocket, thanked the OD, and went on to his cabin. He checked through the various reports from the division officers and was opening the telegram when Bill Williams knocked and came in.
Bill closed the door, put the log, still wrapped up, down on the desk, and said, "Dad says its genuine. HSMS Santa Ybel never returned to Spain and no trace of her has ever been found after she sailed from Vera Cruz, Mexico, on the twenty-second of September, 1520."
"I've got a little news, too," Pete said. "But hold up until I read this." He unfolded the telegram. It read:
JOHNNY HURT CAN YOU COME HOME.
MOTHER.
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Pete gritted his teeth and read the thing again.
"Bad?" Williams asked.
"My kid brother." He handed Bill the telegram.
"What do you think happened?"
"Don't know. But Mother doesn't yell easy, Bill."
"You'd better get emergency leave."
"Just got four days from the admiral. But I've got a lot to do before I can go."
Pete rang for a messenger. "Please find Lieutenant Walsh and ask him to come up here," he told him. "And the executive officer. And the first lieutenant and the ship's clerk. Tell him to bring plenty of pads and pencils."
"Aye, aye, sir."
"While you were on leave, Bill, we ran some tests. The admiral wants a report tonight. And we're going in dry dock tomorrow."
"Yeah. Sandy Walsh told me. When'll you be through because I know a guy in Operations at the air station and maybe I can get you a plane ride?"
"That'd be fine. Around midnight, Bill."
"Roger. I'll be waiting for you in my car."
"Thanks a lot. Is the phone connected to shore yet?" •
"Yep."
Pete explained to the Navy switchboard that 49
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it was a personal emergency and then put in his call. As he was waiting, Sandy Walsh knocked.
"Sandy, Fm sorry as I can be, but the dinner's off. My kid brother's hurt himself and I'm going up there tonight."
"Fm sorry. Captain," Walsh said.
"Come on with me, Sandy," Williams said. "We'll give the skipper a rain check."
As Bill went out he tapped the package significantly with his finger. Pete saw him and nodded. "Fll take care of it," he said.
Then the ship's clerk came in and Pete started dictating to him the report of the experiments with the detector. "This is all top secret, Matthews," he said. "Burn your notebook and all your carbon copies when you finish."
It took more than an hour to get the call through and Pete's mind kept wandering away from the detector. He kept seeing his kid brother —a towheaded, good-looking kid who seemed to be always at the point of boiUng. He did everything at top speed and with complete enthusiasm.
But at last the phone rang, and Pete picked it up. The connection was very bad, and he could hardly hear what his mother said. He thought she said something about football, but there wasn't much football played in August. He kept repeating slowly that he was coming home, and at last she understood him.
While he waited for the ship's clerk to type
50
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up the report, he packed a few things in a suitcase. Bill WilUams came back and said there was a plane standing by out at the field.
At last the report was finished. Pete sent it over to the Officer Messenger Center and then locked the log of the Santa Ybel in his desk safe.
In Williams's, car going to the air station, Pete said, "We were testing an underwater detector, Bill, and close to two small islands it picked up a hulk of something about two hundred and fifty feet long by forty thick lying in a hundred and ten feet of water."
**What do you think?"
"I don't know how long a 'league' was in those days and the dead reckoning they used in 1519 to navigate with must have just about kept them in one ocean. But the book said the ship was sinking four leagues from one island and five from the other. Figuring a league at three nautical miles, that hulk lies just about where the Santa Ybel would have sunk."
"Dad says the log is the real McCoy, Pete. He looked up a lot of stuff about Cortez and the backbiting that went on between those Spaniards in Cuba and Mexico. Dad says the whole picture fits in with the known history. Cortez had been living the life of Riley in what we call Mexico City—they had some other name for it—when the Aztecs or whoever they were rose up and threw old Cortez out.
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"The city was built up on an island in a big lake with dirt causeways leading to shore. When the citizens began tossing the Spaniards out, Cor-tez and his boys grabbed all the loot they could get. That much is in the history books. And the fact that some of Cortez's men deserted him as soon as they got on shore is in the books. What isn't in the books is what happened to the swag. Somebody made off with it and Dad thinks it was the bunch of Spaniards who deserted Cortez. Anyway, it disappeared and—so did the Santa YbeV'
"And," Pete said, "if that wreck near the islands is the Santa Ybel, all you've got to do is dive down and bring up the gold."
"Did you get a fix on it?"
"Brother, Fve got the latitude and longitude down to tenths of,seconds written right across my brain," Pete said.
"All right, when this unpleasantness with His Lowness, Hirohito, is over, Dad says he wants to go look for the Santa Ybel. Of course, he can't go—he can't even get out of a wheel chair by himself—but he's got a little money and he wants to get up an expedition to go after it."
"What about you. Bill?"
Williams twisted a big gold ring around on a finger of his left hand and shook his head. "No. I'm staying in the Navy, Pete. I'm an old Annapolis man—excuse me. Trade School boy—and
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I'm making a career out of it. Always wanted to ride around in ships and the Navy is the only place you can have a ship but not pay for it."
As the car turned in to the airport, Pete said, "We're talking like a couple of civilians, Bill. Let's forget the whole thing. After all, I'm getting orders. I'm going back into the shooting war."
"You're taking me too, pal.**
Pete looked at Bill's face as the beacon swung across it. "You want to go?"
"No. But who'll run your engines for you if you don't take me?"
"You'll be sorr-eee."
"Sure. But how will you get another Navy Cross if you don't have me to save again?"
Bill stopped outside the operations shack. "Give Johnny my best, Pete," he said. "And I hope it isn't serious. See you when you get back."
"Thanks. By the way, stick around while we're in dry dock and see that those hammerheads don't leave a hole in the bottom of the boat, will you?"
"I'll get 'em to put curtains over your portholes. Captain."
It was after midnight when they took off in the SNJ. Pete looked down at the moonlit, dimmed-out country sliding below, and as he got closer to Georgia, his worry about his brother grew stronger. With nothing to do in the plane,
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he kept imagining things which a fourteen-year-old could do to hurt himse
lf.
At last he got home. Lights were on in the little house, and as Pete walked up the path, he saw, without noticing them, the magnolia blossoms still on the two trees.
His mother and Dr. Norfleet were standing in the living room talking when he came in. He kissed his mother and looked at her eyes. They were too dry, Pete thought.
*'What happened?" he asked.
**He was playing football, Pete," his mother said. **In that field behind the ice plant. Freddy said he was running for a pass with his head turned back watching the ball, and he ran into something—a pile of junk, crates, old iron things."
Pete looked at the doctor.
**Back. Two places," the doctor said.
"Can I see him?"
"Don't stay long, Pete," the doctor said.
In his brother's quiet, hot room the moonlight made the bed look very white, and Pete wondered if the white pillow and the white sheets were what made Johnny's face look so white. All the sunburn seemed to have been drained away, and Johnny's arms, already as strong as a man's, looked limp and heavy.
Pete said quietly, "Hello, Jawn," and saw his eyes open slowly.
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**Hi, Commander," Johnny said, but it was only a slow whisper.
"Hear you got fouled up."
"As a quarterback I'm a good water boy."
"Stop bragging and go to sleep, Jawn. I'll see you in the morning."
"Roger . . . wilco," Johnny whispered.
Pete shut the door softly and stood for a moment in the dark hall. A hard, painful lump was in his throat, and he swallowed twice before he went back to the living room. Pete put his arm about his mother's shoulder. "What happens now?" he asked the doctor.
"It's going to take a long, long time, Pete. Maybe he'll recover, maybe he won't. And it's going to take"—the doctor paused and looked first at Pete's mother and then up at Pete—"a whale of a lot of money. He'll have to be in a special hospital, with special doctors and nurses and expensive treatments. Lot of money, Pete."
"Okay," Pete said. "I've got a thousand now."
"That'll start it," the doctor said.
"Let's get it started then," Pete said. "What hospital has got what he needs?"
The doctor told him, and Pete said, "How about calling them up and getting space for Johnny, and I'll get an ambulance?"
When the doctor went out, Pete's mother began to cry. Not much, just softly as she sat huddled up in the chair.
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The next few days were hard on Pete. To see Johnny lying there unable to move from his shoulders down, not able to talk except in a halting whisper, was bad. But the kid's courage was worse. Pete never saw a sign of fear in Johnny's eyes; he never saw the kid's lips tremble or tears come up in his eyes. Pete, after watching his brother for a few days, decided that the doctor was wrong in not telling Johnny the truth. And on the night he went into the hospital Pete told him.
Johnny lay flat on his back in the high white bed and listened, his eyes never leaving Pete's. Once Pete saw the muscles around the corners of his mouth draw tight, but he took it without a whimper.
"So that's the way it is, Jawn," Pete finished.
"Okay."
"I thought you ought to know all about it," Pete said.
"Sure. I'll work harder. I thought ... I thought it was just sort of temporary, Pete."
"You'll get over it."
"You think so? Really, Pete?"
Pete nodded.
"That's all right then," Johnny said. "Have you got to go back to the war, Pete?"
"In the morning."
"Take care of yourself.'*
"Don't worry, Jawn."
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"Well, take care of yourself anyway.*' "I will. . . . Sack time for quarterbacks/' Pete said.
Johnny grinned. "You know what I thought when I hit the trash pile, Pete? I thought, Wow, somebody has really tackled me around the shoelaces this time. But I caught the pass."
They sold the house to get money, and Pete's mother found a room in a boardinghouse in the town where the hospital was. Before dawn on August 7 Pete caught the bus for Miami. He couldn't sleep, and he watched the sun come up and the baking-hot day begin.
At the lunch stop people in the little restaurant seemed very excited about something. Pete bought an Atlanta paper and saw huge headlines: New Bomb Wipes out Jap City. While he waited for his lunch, he read about the destruction of Hiroshima on Honshu. One 29 had dropped one bomb—some sort of atom thing— and the entire city was demolished.
This is the end, Pete thought. We've won it. It'll wind up fast now.
Riding in the hot, lurching bus again, Pete tried to keep thinking about the future and not about Johnny lying in that narrow bed.
The war was as good as over. No nation could take the sort of pounding we could give it with the atomic bombs. One bomb—one city. The
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war was over, and he would be out of the Navy soon. And no more blue checks twice a month.
But at a place where a hairline of longitude crossed a hairline of latitude lay the hulk of a Spanish ship.
Pete put his head back on the rest and closed his eyes. He didn*t sleep—he made his plans.
It was late at night when he found his ship. It had been hauled out on the marine railway in the repair yard, and Pete walked along the starboard side looking at the few barnacles on the plates. The whole place was lit up with floodlights and, as Pete climbed up the makeshift ladder to the quarterdeck, he could hear people inside his ship hammering and banging.
Pete went first down into the shaft alley to watch the night shift drawing the sprung shaft and replacing the big bearings. Then, tired and suddenly very sleepy, he went up to his cabin.
The curtains of the cabin hung motionless across the door, but under them there was a strip of light. Pete thought nothing of it and was about to go in when the light moved.
Pete stood for a second watching the strip of light moving. A cold shiver ran along his spine. Then, without making a sound, he drew the curtains back and stepped into his cabin.
A civilian in dirty overalls was down on his knees on the floor working at one of the deck
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plates with a wrench. He looked up over his shoulder as Pete came in.
"The trouble is down in the shaft alley," Pete said quietly.
**rve got to get down through this deck to one of the lines," the workman said.
"There's no lines under this deck."
The workman stood up, holding his flashlight down so that Pete could hardly see his face. "Isn't this 0-16?"
"No," Pete said. "0-16 isn't even on this deck."
"My mistake." The workman started to go out, but Pete stopped him at the door.
"Why didn't you turn the hghts on?" he asked.
"Oh well ... I thought they'd bother somebody in the next room."
"There isn't any next room. That's a bathroom." Pete reached over and turned the overhead lights on. The man was tall and thin but his shoulders were wide. The long bill of the sword-fisherman's cap he wore threw a dark shadow on his face so that Pete could see only the outlines of high cheekbones, a thin nose, thin lips.
Pete read his name and number on the identification badge and, as soon as the man went out, he called up the security desk. "I'm probably haywire," Pete told them, "but there was a workman in my cabin using nothing but a flashlight
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and trying to take up a welded deck plate with a monkey wrench. His number was 1753-A and the name on the badge was H. Weber."
"All right, Commander, we'll look into him and call you back."
Pete took a shower and went to bed. The telephone rang and it was Security. "Weber checked out of the East Gate just before we could notify all the gates, Commander."
"He's probably just a sneak thief," Pete said, "rd watch him though."
"We'll put somebody on h
im when he comes to work tomorrow."
"Okay," Pete said wearily. "Good night."
Pete was half asleep when he suddenly remembered the log in his desk safe. He flipped on the lights and opened the front of his desk.
The flimsy combination lock on his desk safe had been wrenched almost off and the gray enamel all around the lock was chipped down to bare metal. But the lock still held.
Pete called the O.D. "Got any mechs on duty tonight, Joe?" Pete asked.
"One right here, Captain."
"Send him up to my cabin with whatever he needs to break into my desk safe, will you, please?"
"Coming right up, Captain."
In a few minutes a machinist's mate came up with a bag of tools.
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"Somebody tried to break in. One of the yard people," Pete explained. '*I want to find out if he got in and then relocked it or whether I came in at the wrong time."
''Doesn't look like he got it open, Captain. But he was sure banging away at it."
The mech prized open the thin steel door. "No, he never got in. See, he broke the tumblers off. He couldn't have locked it again in the shape it's in now, Captain."
"Thanks very much, Larsen."
The mech saluted and went out.
Pete took out the package, unwrapped it, and flipped the pages with his thumb. Then he put it under his pillow and went to bed. Above his bunk, hanging in a shoulder holster, was his issue .3 8-caliber revolver. He took it out, opened the cylinder, and looked at the six cartridges in it.
Putting the gun back, Pete lay thinking.
Who is Weber? he wondered. Where did he come from? Had he ever been in Cuba?
Was he the "tall one"?
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xn the morning things looked different to Pete. For a long time, while his ship quivered with the hammering going on below, he sat in his cabin staring out the open porthole.
At last everything seemed to fall into line in his mind. All of his plans from now on had to be made to fit around Johnny lying in that hospital.