On the Beach

by Nevil Shute

  Half an hour later they were hungry, hungrier than they had been for several days. When breakfast was sounded they tumbled below quickly; the cooks in turn came up for a spell on deck. When the watch was relieved more men came quickly up into the bright sunlight. The officers appeared upon the bridge, smoking, and the ship settled into the normal routine of surface operation, heading southwards on a blue sea down the Queensland coast.

  The radio mast was rigged, and they reported their position in a signal. Then they began to receive the broadcasting for entertainment, and light music filled the hull, mingling with the murmur of the turbines and the rushing noise of water alongside.

  On the bridge the captain said to his liaison officer, “This report’s going to be just a little difficult to write.”

  Peter nodded. “There’s the tanker, sir.”

  Dwight said, “Sure, there’s the tanker.” Between Cairns and Port Moresby, in the Coral Sea, they had come upon a ship. She was a tanker, empty and in ballast, drifting with her engines stopped. She was registered in Amsterdam. They cruised around her, hailing through the loud hailer, and getting no response, looking at her through the periscope as they checked her details with Lloyds Register. All her boats were in place at the davits, but there seemed to be nobody alive on board her. She was rusty, very rusty indeed. They came to the conclusion finally that she was a derelict that had been drifting about the oceans since the war; she did not seem to have suffered any damage, other than the weather. There was nothing to be done about her, and the atmospheric radiation level was too high for them to go on deck or make any attempt to board her, even if it had been possible for them to get up her sheer sides. So, after an hour, they left her where they found her, photographing her through the periscope and noting the position. This was the only ship that they had met throughout the cruise.

  The liaison officer said, “It’s going to boil down to a report on Honest John’s radioactive readings.”

  “That’s about the size of it,” the captain agreed. “We did see that dog.”

  Indeed, the report was not going to be an easy one to write, for they had seen and learned very little in the course of their cruise. They had approached Cairns upon the surface but within the hull, the radiation level being too great to allow exposure on the bridge. They had threaded their way cautiously through the Barrier Reef to get to it, spending one night hove-to because Dwight judged it dangerous to navigate in darkness in such waters, where the lighthouses and leading lights were unreliable. When finally they picked up Green Island and approached the land, the town looked absolutely normal to them. It stood bathed in sunshine on the shore, with the mountain range of the Atherton tableland behind. Through the periscope they could see streets of shops shaded with palm trees, a hospital, and trim villas of one storey raised on posts above the ground; there were cars parked in the streets and one or two flags flying. They went on up the river to the docks. Here there was little to be seen except a few fishing boats at anchor up the river, completely normal; there were no ships at the wharves. The cranes were trimmed fore and aft along the wharves and properly secured. Although they were close in to shore they could see little here, for the periscope reached barely higher than the wharf decking, and the warehouses then blocked the view. All that they could see was a silent waterfront, exactly as it would have looked upon a Sunday or a holiday, though then there would have been activity among the smaller craft. A large black dog appeared and barked at them from a wharf.

  They had stayed in the river off the wharves for a couple of hours, hailing through the loud hailer at its maximum volume in tones that must have sounded all over the town. Nothing happened, for the whole town was asleep.

  They turned the ship around, and went out a little way till they could see the Strand Hotel and part of the shopping centre again. They stayed there for a time, still calling and still getting no response. Then they gave up, and headed out to sea again to get clear of the Barrier Reef before the darkness fell. Apart from the radioactive information gathered by John Osborne they had learned nothing, unless it was the purely negative information that Cairns looked exactly as it always had before. The sun shone in the streets, the flame trees brightened the far hills, the deep verandahs shaded the shop windows of the town. A pleasant little place to live in in the tropics, though nobody lived there except, apparently, one dog.

  Port Moresby had been the same. From the sea they could see nothing the matter with the town, viewed through the periscope. A merchant ship registered in Liverpool lay at anchor in the roads, a Jacob’s ladder up her side. Two more ships lay on the beach, probably having dragged their anchors in some storm. They stayed there for some hours, cruising the roads and going in to the dock, calling through the loud hailer. There was no response, but there seemed to be nothing the matter with the town. They left after a time, for there was nothing there to stay for.

  Two days later they reached Port Darwin and lay in the harbour beneath the town. Here they could see nothing but the wharf, the roof of Government House, and a bit of the Darwin Hotel. Fishing boats lay at anchor and they cruised around these, hailing, and examining them through the periscope. They learned nothing, save for the inference that when the end had come the people had died tidily. “It’s what animals do,” John Osborne said. “Creep away into holes to die. They’re probably all in bed.”

  “That’s enough about that,” the captain said. “It’s true,” the scientist remarked.

  “Okay, it’s true. Now let’s not talk about it any more.”

  The report certainly was going to be a difficult one to write.

  They had left Port Darwin as they had left Cairns and Port Moresby; they had gone back through the Torres Strait and headed southwards down the Queensland coast, submerged. By that time the strain of the cruise was telling on them; they talked little among themselves till they surfaced three days after leaving Darwin. Refreshed by a spell on deck, they now had time to think about what story they could tell about their cruise when they got back to Melbourne.

  They talked of it after lunch, smoking at the wardroom table. “It’s what Swordfish found, of course,” Dwight said. “She saw practically nothing either in the States or in Europe.”

  Peter reached out for the well-thumbed report that lay behind him on the cupboard top. He leafed it through again, though it had been his constant reading on the cruise. “I never thought of that,” he said slowly. “I missed that angle on it, but now that you mention it, it’s true. There’s practically nothing here about conditions on shore.”

  “They couldn’t look on shore, any more than we could,” the captain said. “Nobody will ever really know what a hot place looks like. And that goes for the whole of the northern hemisphere.”

  Peter said, “That’s probably as well.”

  “I think that’s right,” said the Commander. “There’s some things that a person shouldn’t want to go and see.”

  John Osborne said, “I was thinking about that last night. Did it ever strike you that nobody will ever—ever—see Cairns again? Or Moresby, or Darwin?”

  They stared at him while they turned over the new idea. “Nobody could see more than we’ve seen,” the captain said.

  “Who else can go there, except us? And we shan’t go again. Not in the time.”

  “That’s so,” Dwight said thoughtfully. “I wouldn’t think they’d send us back there again. I never thought of it that way, but I’d say you’re right. We’re the last living people that will ever see those places.” He paused. “And we saw practically nothing. Well, I think that’s right.”

  Peter stirred uneasily. “That’s historical,” he said. “It ought to go on record somewhere, oughtn’t it? Is anybody writing any kind of history about these times?”

  John Osborne said, “I haven’t heard of one. I’ll find out about that. After all, there doesn’t seem to be much point in writing stuff that nobody will read.”

  “There should be something written, all the same,”
said the American. “Even if it’s only going to be read in the next few months.” He paused. “I’d like to read a history of this last war,” he said. “I was in it for a little while, but I don’t know a thing about it. Hasn’t anybody written anything?”

  “Not as a history,” John Osborne said. “Not that I know of, anyway. The information that we’ve got is all available, of course, but not as a coherent story. I think there’d be too many gaps—the things we just don’t know.”

  “I’d settle for the things we do know,” the captain remarked.

  “What sort of things, sir?”

  “Well, as a start, how many bombs were dropped? Nuclear bombs, I mean.”

  “The seismic records show about four thousand seven hundred. Some of the records were pretty weak, so there were probably more than that.”

  “How many of those were big ones—fusion bombs, hydrogen bombs, or whatever you call them?”

  “I couldn’t tell you. Probably most of them. All the bombs dropped in the Russo-Chinese war were hydrogen bombs, I think—most of them with a cobalt element.”

  “Why did they do that? Use cobalt, I mean?” Peter asked.

  The scientist shrugged his shoulders. “Radiological warfare. I can’t tell you any more than that.”

  “I think I can,” said the American. “I attended a commanding officers’ course at Yerba Buena, San Francisco, the month before the war. They told us what they thought might happen between Russia and China. Whether they told us what did happen six weeks later—well, your guess is as good as mine.”

  John Osborne asked quietly, “What did they tell you?”

  The captain considered for a minute. Then he said, “It was all tied up with the warm water ports. Russia hasn’t got a port that doesn’t freeze up in the winter except Odessa, and that’s on the Black Sea. To get out of Odessa on to the high seas the traffic has to pass two narrow straits both commanded by N.A.T.O. in time of war—the Bosporus and Gibraltar. Murmansk and Vladivostok can be kept open by icebreakers in the winter, but they’re a mighty long way from any place in Russia that makes things to export.” He paused. “This guy from Intelligence said that what Russia really wanted was Shanghai.”

  The scientist asked, “Is that handy for their Siberian industries?”

  The captain nodded. “That’s exactly it. During the Second War they moved a great many industries way back along the Trans-Siberian railway east of the Urals, back as far as Lake Baikal. They built new towns and everything.

  Well, it’s a long, long way from those places to a port like Odessa. It’s only about half the distance to Shanghai.”

  He paused. “There was another thing he told us,” he said thoughtfully. “China had three times the population of Russia, all desperately overcrowded in their country. Russia, next door to the north of them, had millions and millions of square miles of land she didn’t use at all because she didn’t have the people to populate it. This guy said that as the Chinese industries increased over the last twenty years, Russia got to be afraid of an attack by China. She’d have been a great deal happier if there had been two hundred million fewer Chinese, and she wanted Shanghai. And that adds up to radiological warfare …”

  Peter said, “But using cobalt, she couldn’t follow up and take Shanghai.”

  “That’s true. But she could make North China uninhabitable for quite a number of years by spacing the bombs right. If they put them down in the right places the fall-out would cover China to the sea. Any left over would go round the world eastwards across the Pacific; if a little got to the United States I don’t suppose the Russians would have wept salt tears. If they planned it right there would be very little left when it got round the world again to Europe and to western Russia. Certainly she couldn’t follow up and take Shanghai for quite a number of years, but she’d get it in the end.”

  Peter turned to the scientist. “How long would it be before people could work in Shanghai?”

  “With cobalt fall-out? I wouldn’t even guess. It depends on so many things. You’d have to send in exploratory teams. More than five years, I should think—that’s the half-life. Less than twenty. But you just can’t say.”

  Dwight nodded. “By the time anyone could get there, Chinese or anyone else, they’d find the Russians there already.”

  John Osborne turned to him. “What did the Chinese think about all this?”

  “Oh, they had another angle altogether. They didn’t specially want to kill Russians. What they wanted to do was to turn the Russians back into an agricultural people that wouldn’t want Shanghai or any other port. The Chinese aimed to blanket the Russian industrial regions with a cobalt fall-out, city by city, put there with their inter-continental rockets. What they wanted was to stop any Russian from using a machine tool for the next ten years or so. They planned a limited fall-out of heavy particles, not going very far around the world. They probably didn’t plan to hit the city, even-just to burst maybe ten miles west of it, and let the wind do the rest.” He paused. “With no Russian industry left, the Chinese could have walked in any time they liked and occupied the safe parts of the country, any that they fancied. Then, as the radiation eased, they’d occupy the towns.”

  “Find the lathes a bit rusty,” Peter said.

  “I’d say they might be. But they’d have had an easy war.”

  John Osborne asked, “Do you think that’s what happened?”

  “I wouldn’t know,” said the American. “Maybe no one knows. That’s just what this officer from the Pentagon told us at the commanding officers’ course.” He paused. “One thing was in Russia’s favour,” he said thoughtfully. “China hadn’t any friends or allies, except Russia. When Russia went for China, nobody else would make much trouble—start war on another front, or anything like that.”

  They sat smoking in silence for a few minutes. “You think that’s what flared up finally?” Peter said at last. “I mean, after the original attacks the Russians made on Washington and London?”

  John Osborne and the captain stared at him. “The Russians never bombed Washington,” Dwight said. “They proved that in the end.”

  He stared back at them. “I mean, the very first attack of all.”

  “That’s right. The very first attack. They were Russian long range bombers, II 626s, but they were Egyptian manned. They flew from Cairo.”

  “Are you sure that’s true?”

  “It’s true enough. They got the one that landed at Porto Rico on the way home. They only found out it was Egyptian after we’d bombed Leningrad and Odessa and the nuclear establishments at Kharkov, Kuibyshev, and Molotov. Things must have happened kind of quick that day.”

  “Do you mean to say, we bombed Russia by mistake?” It was so horrible a thought as to be incredible.

  John Osborne said, “That’s true, Peter. It’s never been admitted publicly, but it’s quite true. The first one was the bomb on Naples. That was the Albanians, of course. Then there was the bomb on Tel Aviv. Nobody knows who dropped that one, not that I’ve heard, anyway. Then the British and Americans intervened and made that demonstration flight over Cairo. Next day the Egyptians sent out all the serviceable bombers that they’d got, six to Washington and seven to London. One got through to Washington, and two to London. After that there weren’t many American or British statesmen left alive.”

  Dwight nodded. “The bombers were Russian, and I’ve heard it said that they had Russian markings. It’s quite possible.”

  “Good God!” said the Australian. “So we bombed Russia?”

  “That’s what happened,” said the captain heavily.

  John Osborne said, “It’s understandable. London and Washington were out—right out. Decisions had to be made by the military commanders at dispersal in the field, and they had to be made quick before another lot of bombs arrived. Things were very strained with Russia, after the Albanian bomb, and these aircraft were identified as Russian.” He paused. “Somebody had to make a decision, of course, and make i
t in a matter of minutes. Up at Canberra they think now that he made it wrong.”

  “But if it was a mistake, why didn’t they get together and stop it? Why did they go on?”

  The captain said, “It’s mighty difficult to stop a war when all the statesmen have been killed.”

  The scientist said, “The trouble is, the damn things got too cheap. The original uranium bomb only cost about fifty thousand quid towards the end. Every little pipsqueak country like Albania could have a stockpile of them, and every little country that had that thought it could defeat the major countries in a surprise attack. That was the real trouble.”

  “Another was the aeroplanes,” the captain said. “The Russians had been giving the Egyptians aeroplanes for years. So had Britain for that matter, and to Israel, and to Jordan. The big mistake was ever to have given them a long range aeroplane.”

  Peter said quietly, “Well, after that the war was on between Russia and the Western Powers. When did China come in?”

  The captain said, “I don’t think anybody knows exactly. But I’d say that probably China came in right there with her rockets and her radiological warfare against Russia, taking advantage of the opportunity. Probably they didn’t know how ready Russia was with radiological warfare against China.” He paused. “But that’s all surmise,” he said. “Most of the communications went out pretty soon, and what were left didn’t have much time to talk to us down here, or to South Africa. All we know is that the command came down to quite junior officers, in most countries.”

  John Osborne smiled wryly. “Major Chan Sze Lin.”

  Peter asked, “Who was Chan Sze Lin, anyway?”