Forest nodded, frowning. “You’ve noticed it, too, eh, sir?”
Admiral Hallet’s agreement was grim. “They seem to be forgetting Pearl Harbor already,” he declared.
“Not all of us, thank God,” Forest said.
ADMIRAL HALLET shook his head. “No, not all. But far too many. Their civilian defense organizations are beginning to take on the aspects of social teas. It isn’t good for the morale of those who are more serious.”
“You can count on none of that in our group,” Luke Forest promised vehemently.
Admiral Hallet nodded. “I know I can, Luke. From every indication of the calibre of the amateur yachtsmen you’ve assembled in our group, I’m confident it won’t degenerate into a social service.”
“That’s one thing about yachting,” Luke Forest observed. “It is one sport that doesn’t breed weak timber. It takes money, but those who follow it have to be tough—or they damn soon turn in their skipper caps.”
They were paused now beside Luke Forest’s battered roadster. Admiral Hallet gripped his hand briefly.
“You’ll be back here later tonight to make the weather and course checks for tomorrow morning’s primary patrols?” he asked.
Forest nodded. “You can count on it. I’ll have time to be by here about midnight.”
Admiral Hallet grinned. “See you in the morning, then.”
He turned away then, and moved down the parking lot to his own modest, black coupe. Moments later he was wheeling the car out of the driveway and turning off along the beach road leading to the highway that would take him into nearby Los Angeles . . .
ADMIRAL HALLET dined that evening in a small restaurant just off Hollywood Boulevard. And as he ate, a copy of the evening newspaper spread at his elbow came in for a thorough scanning.
Now and then the doughty old sea dog paused in his reading, while his white eyebrows raised in tufted annoyance.
“They’re taking this whole damned thing too casually out here,” he muttered.
A waitress, just setting his coffee on the table, thought he had spoken to her.
“What did you say, sir?” she asked politely.
Admiral Hallet looked up, startled. “Eh? Oh, nothing. Nothing at all. Say, do the people out here seem to realize that there’s a war on?”
The waitress smiled. “Oh, yes, sir. Everyone is aware of that!”
Admiral Hallet shook his head disgustedly. “They seemed aware of it for about a month or so, but now where’s the fever gone?”
“Why,” said the waitress, her turn to be indignant, “there’s a practice blackout in town tonight. It should be so exciting—such fun!”
Admiral Hallet held his breath and his temper until the waitress left. Excitement, was it? Such fun, was it? When in the hell were they going to learn it was a deadly serious business? His jaw went grim. If it would be at all possible for his duties to rouse them from their lethargy, by God, he’d see they soon snapped out of this!
It was fifteen minutes later when Admiral Hallet finished his dinner and stepped out of the restaurant into the darkness of Los Angeles.
A glance at his watch showed him that it was shortly after nine. He walked slowly to the side street where he had parked his car, idling occasionally to observe the happily laughing civilians thronging the boulevard.
Passing the bars, he could see that they, too, were crowded to the capacity point with careless, laughing men and women. He shook his head disapprovingly. Gayety had its place, he mentally acknowledged, in this war. It was, in fact, a necessary part of morale. But there should be a limit to it, and carelessness was beyond that limit.
Climbing into his coupe, Admiral Hallet started the machine, made a U turn, and started in the direction of Santa Monica Boulevard.
He had driven half a block toward his hotel when, throughout the city, the sound of an air raid alert took up. And suddenly, all around him, lights were blinking, people were shouting, cars were pulling over to the curb, and darkness was settling over the great coastal city.
The admiral pulled his car over to the curb and snapped off the headlights.
He recalled the statement of the waitress about the practice blackout. He settled back against the cushions and prepared himself for a short stay hi that position. Unconsciously, his hand went to his pocket in search of a cigarette. Then he caught himself and smiled.
“And I was muttering about the carelessness of others,” he grinned aloud. Then his eyes were serious again. “At any rate, I don’t believe I could be classed as complacent,” he decided.
BESIDE him, a few yards from the curb, swinging along the sidewalk gaily, laughing loudly, were two men and two women, all four of them obviously a little drunk.
Admiral Hallet’s face went grim again.
“It would be a hell of a note if those were bombers up above,” he muttered, “and if our ack-acks were really raining flack all over the city.”
He shook his head disgustedly, watching the foursome weave on along the sidewalk, pausing long enough to light two cigarettes at the corner.
Then he settled back against the car cushions once more and relaxed.
The minutes passed slowly. Several cars crawled snail’s-pace down the street past his own, their headlights covered with special blackout preparation.
Admiral Hallet nodded mental approval at these.
“Probably wardens on special patrol,” he decided. “Alert chaps, no doubt. Pity there’s so few of them.”
He thought then of his own group, and his mind went to work busily sorting and arranging the vessels he had to chose from for the primary patrols to be made first thing in the morning.
Then, before he was aware of it, and sooner than he had imagined, the all clear sounded. Admiral Hallet looked at the clock on his dash. Blackout had lasted half an hour.
Across the city, the lights began to flicker on once more. The admiral threw on his headlights and started up the car. Back to the hotel for some shut eye. Had to rise early . . .
CHAPTER III
The Mysterious Explosion
ADMIRAL HALLET had been asleep several hours when the sudden strident jangle of the phone awakened him. He raised himself on one elbow and switched on the night light.
He pushed his hair from his eyes and pulled a blanket up around his thin shoulders, before picking up the phone.
“Yes?” he said.
Luke Forest’s excited voice came over the wire.
“Forest speaking, admiral. I’m at the club. How soon can you get down here?”
The admiral flicked a glance at the illuminated hands of the small clock on the night table. It was three in the morning.
“It’ll take me a half hour,” he answered. “What’s the matter?”
“I don’t know,” Forest’s voice was strained and breathless. “Nobody knows just what happened, but all hell is breaking loose. We’re getting calls here at the club from a dozen spots along the coast. It may be an invasion.”
“Steady now,” Admiral Hallet snapped. “I’ll be there as soon as I possibly can. Don’t lose your head.”
The admiral jammed the phone back to its rack and climbed out of bed in almost the same motion. In five minutes he was in a cab speeding toward the Billing’s Yacht club.
He didn’t allow himself to speculate on what might have caused the frantic call from Luke Forest. Thirty years of command had taught him to wait until he had the facts before making decisions or guesses.
But he couldn’t curb his impatient nervousness. The cab seemed to be crawling along.
“Driver!” he snapped. “Can’t we make a little better time?”
“Sorry, sir,” the driver said. He was crouched over the wheel peering into the swirling green fog that shrouded the road. “I can hardly see ten feet ahead of me with this fog.”
The admiral inspected the billowing fog with impatient annoyance. In his years at sea he had developed a personal attitude toward the elements. The fog that was rolling in from the o
cean was heavy and green, a typical West coast phenomenon, and the admiral was disgusted with it.
Even though the windows of the cab were closed tightly, steamy wisps of fog seeped in and drifted about the admiral like vapors from a sputtering radiator.
There was nothing to do but wait. The admiral spent the interval sulphurously damning the weather.
WHEN the cab pulled to a stop at the yacht club, the admiral found Luke Forest waiting anxiously for him on the steps of the sprawling boat house.
With the young clubman were several navy officers, and a half dozen of the members who had offered their boats and services for coast patrol duty.
Admiral Hallet paid off the cab and strode up the steps of the boat house.
“Now, gentlemen,” he said briskly, “just what’s the situation?”
His keen eyes raked over the circle of faces, focused on Luke Forest’s pale determined features.
“You’d better tell me, Forest,” he said.
“There’s not a lot to tell,” Forest answered. “About an hour ago there was a tremendous explosion about three miles off shore.”
“Explosion?” Admiral Hallet repeated. “Just how did you determine that it was an explosion?”
“We haven’t, really,” Forest answered. “That’s just the assumption of those who heard the noise.”
The admiral’s thin lips compressed wryly, but he only said, “Please, go on.”
“Since that time,” Forest continued, “we have had phone calls from a number of spots along the coast asking for information about the explosion. We have checked all the calls and they are within about a six or eight mile point of the club, so we feel sure that whatever caused the noise was located somewhere offshore, within a few miles of the club. The sound of the explosion wasn’t heard in Los Angeles. I suppose it’s just as well. There’s no point in frightening the civilian population.”
“I’m not so sure about that,” the Admiral said grimly. “Frightened people sometimes make the best fighters. And at least it would wake them up. Did you hear anything after this noise?”
“Not a thing,” Forest said.
“Have you taken any steps to find out just what caused the noise?”
“Not yet, sir,” Forest said.
The admiral turned to the two naval officers. They straightened under his gaze. The taller of them, a thin, square-jawed intelligent looking young man said,
“Lieutenants Hawckett and Bedlow of the Second Naval District, at your service sir. We arrived here a few moments ago and we thought it best to wait for your orders, sir.”
“I see. Were you sent here to check on this disturbance?” the admiral asked.
“No sir,” Lieutenant Hawckett answered. “It’s merely a coincidence that we happen to be on hand. Our purpose here is the testing of a new PT boat to be put in service next month. Lieutenant Bedlow and I were instructed to give the boat a work-out here in choppy water before it is put into service.”
“Where is the patrol boat now?” the admiral asked.
“In the yacht club harbor,” Lieutenant Hawckett answered. “We were intending to take a trial run about seven this morning.”
“You may make a run sooner than that,” the admiral said. He turned to Forest. “Where can I make a phone call?”
Luke Forest said, “Follow me.”
He led him into the boat house, and to a public phone.
THE admiral dialed Naval Intelligence and waited impatiently for the call to go through. When a brisk voice snapped, “Office,” he said, “Admiral Hallet. There’s been a little fireworks off the coast. I’m sending a PT boat out on a reconnaissance trip. It’s fast enough to keep out of any trouble. But I’d like an observation plane to scour the area also. Can you have a plane over this district, in say, half an hour?”
There was a slight pause. Then: “I’ll see to it, sir. But will an observation plane be of any use in this fog?”
“Fogs have been known to lift,” the admiral said mildly, and hung up.
He turned to the two naval lieutenants who had heard one-half of the conversation. Their faces were impassive, but the admiral smiled slightly as he saw the eager expectancy in their eyes.
He chuckled. “Get that sea-going wasp of yours ready, boys.”
“Yes sir,” they answered almost in unison. Saluting, they turned and marched away.
The admiral watched their straight young backs with a smile on his face. Luke Forest asked worriedly.
“Supposing it’s an Axis battle ship off the coast, sir?”
The admiral looked at him with just a touch of scorn.
“Why,” he said, “they’ll sink it, of course.”
CHAPTER IV
Shan Finds the New World
IN the cabin compartment of the huge silver space ship, Shan of Jupiter tensed over the controls. Through the radii-screen on the mechanism board before him, he saw the bulk of the approaching planet growing larger and larger with every passing second.
“It is almost at hand,” Shan thought. “Soon I shall be there!”
And the heart in his great body pounded with excitement, for this was the moment that he had long dreamed of. This was the moment where he, greatest of all the scientists of Jupiter, would justify the theories and claims he had long held on the possibility of a voyage such as this.
“There is life on that planet,” Shan had long insisted in the courts of science of Jupiter. “There is life and, I believe, a civilization of some advancement.”
Now Shan’s great hand moved expertly over the delicate mechanism of the control panel. He was speeding toward the gigantically growing planet with tremendous velocity, and already it was time that he brought the degravitation instruments into play.
He thought of the scorn with which his first theories had been greeted by the other scientists. They had been jealous of Shan.
“A planet of water,” they had scoffed.
“A planet of swamp and wasteland. The life there is but of the most crude animal variety. You would be mad to undertake such a voyage. What would there be to gain from it? What would it profit Jupiter?”
But Shan had brushed away their scorn and jealousy.
“If I, Shan, am right, if my theories are substantiated, and there is civilzation, life, on this planet, then why cannot we merge our two civilizations?” he had demanded.
But not all those on Jupiter had been stupid, jealous. There had been many who believed in Shan’s theory. And it was with their aid that the scientist finally prepared the great space ship for his voyage to the lesser planet.
“They will be proud,” Shan thought, “when I return.” He flicked a second degravitator device into operation. “I will justify their faith in Shan.”
A union of Jupiter and this approaching planet!
Shan thrilled at the thought. It would be the first merging of the interplanetary system. His was a mission greater than any creature of Jupiter had ever undertaken . . .
HOURS had passed, and now the great space ship was plummeting down toward the silver sheen of watery fog that crusted the surface of the approaching planet. Its deceleration had been great in these last hours, and now its speed was but enough to give it necessary momentum.
The first great fog bank was nearing, and Shan’s great hands tightened on the controls. He switched on the cabin illumination as the mists shrouded the nose of the great craft. Vainly, he tried to peer through the radii-screen.
Some instinct made Shan cut the power completely as the ship was totally immersed in the fog layer.
And it was well that he did. For in the next half minute Shan and the space ship in which he sat were shaken by a violent, tremendous shock. Blindly, Shan threw full degravitation power on. And then he was climbing to his feet as the ship twisted slowly over and over. Climbing to his feet and moving toward the escape hatch exit . . .
It was later, and Shan, the giant from Jupiter, stood up to his waist in a large body of water.
Behind him, al
most covered by the water, was his huge space ship. His inspection of it, after climbing forth, had assured him that it was undamaged.
But now the fog was around his head, and Shan peered forward through it with difficulty, barely discerning the white stretch of land far in.
His great heart pounded furiously in his huge body. There was land in there. White sanded land, apparently, but not the desolate swampland the scoffers had said he would find.
But where were the inhabitants? Where were the members of this civilization?
Shan’s large eyes were beginning to focus through the heavy fog now. And then he saw the city.
It was away. Farther off in the distance than the white sand ahead of him. But it was there, a metropolis of many structures strangely designed.
And then Shan noticed for the first time that the dwellings in that metropolis—if it was such—were tiny, fragile things. He blinked bewilderedly. Perhaps visual distances on this strange planet were not as they were on Jupiter.
Shan saw, then, that the water in which he stood was unlike that of Jupiter. It was greenish, almost the color of his own great body. On Jupiter water was crystal white, colorless.
For a moment Shan wondered why his arrival—there had been a great, thunderous noise as the ship crashed nose-on into the water—had not already brought the creatures of this planet out to him.
Slowly, he started forward through the water toward the white sand stretches in the distance. As his great legs churned the green foam, he noticed that the water dropped away from his waist as the way grew more shallow.
And then Shan saw the small, beetlelike creature scuttling across the surface of the water toward him. He paused, blinking in amazement as he noted the small spray of foam it made nosing toward him. His amazement was even greater, however, when he saw the tiny figures, man-like figures, standing on the back of the beetle-like creature.
Shan stood still, watching in fascination as the realization grew on him. These were creatures of this planet. Men of this planet. They were infinitesimally small, and the thing in which they rode, the thing that looked like a mechanical water bug, was undoubtedly a boat.
Collected Fiction (1940-1963) Page 89